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He was gone less than five minutes, during which time she had pulled the bedclothes back up round her body, but the first thing Blake did when he walked back into the room was to pull them down again. ‘I love looking at your body,’ he told her simply. ‘It makes up for all the years when I couldn’t. You can’t imagine how I felt when I found out you were still a virgin.’ His lips caressed one deeply pink peak, bringing it achingly to life, and then as though unable to resist the temptation, transferred to the other, adoration giving way to passionate need as he felt her body’s unmistakable response and Sapphire arched achingly, longing to curl her fingers into his hair and hold him against her, but the paper he had dropped on the bed caught her eye and she tensed, causing him to stop and pull her into the warmth of his body so that she was leaning against his thighs her head cushioned against his shoulder.
‘Is this what you read?’ he asked her gently, offering her the close written sheets. Sapphire only needed to read the first few words to nod an assent.
‘And because of this you left me? Oh! Sapphire …’ His voice broke and she felt the damp warmth of his tears against her skin. ‘I wrote them for you,’ he told her brokenly, ‘I wrote what I daren’t tell you! What I couldn’t in all honour show you … You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved and when I saw you standing on that ledge, about to go over into the pool, I didn’t know what I wanted to do most—strangle you or strangle Alan for hurting you so much that you felt you needed to end your life because of him.’
‘It wasn’t him, it was you,’ Sapphire told him urgently. Right now it was almost impossible to take in the enormity of what had happened; but that Blake was telling the truth when he said he loved her she didn’t for one moment doubt.
‘After Miranda told me the truth about my father’s illness I knew I couldn’t stay with you—not when really you loved her, and yet I didn’t know where I was going to find the courage to leave, loving you so much.’
‘I’ve never loved anyone but you,’ Blake interrupted fiercely. ‘I think you were all of sixteen years’ old the first time I realised how I felt about you. Miranda lied to you.’
Because she had been jealous. Sapphire now realised, but she had been clever as well, using her sophistication and experience to drive a wedge between them, no doubt hoping that Blake would turn to her once Sapphire had left him.
‘So many wasted years,’ she said sadly raising bleak eyes to meet his.
‘No … not wasted. You were too young for marriage at seventeen,’ Blake told her. ‘I would always have felt guilty and uncertain wondering if I had stolen from you the right to make your own choice of husband, but now I know that you love me. You do love me, don’t you?’ he demanded thickly, when Sapphire remained silent.
Part of her longed to tease him just a little, but the rest of her responded eagerly to the plea in his eyes, her body curling into his as she kissed him, lightly at first and then with growing need, breaking away from him only
to murmur huskily, ‘So much … Blake if you hadn’t arrived at the quarry when you did …’ A shudder wracked her body and she felt him tense in response. ‘Don’t,’ he commanded her rawly. ‘Don’t even think about it, just tell me you’ve forgiven me for lying to you about your father. I hated myself for doing it; for causing you pain—a pain I could see every time you looked at your father, but I was desperate to get you back; willing to do anything to stop you from marrying someone else.’
‘And having got me back how did you intend to keep me?’ Sapphire teased, forgiveness explicit in the look she gave him as she reached out to push the unruly hair back off his forehead.
‘Oh, I’d have thought of something.’ The old assurance was creeping back into his voice, but she didn’t mind. Now that she had seen his vulnerability she could accept the macho side of his personality more easily. ‘Such as?’ she whispered, feathering light kisses along his jaw and glorying in his responsive shudder.
‘Such as this … and this …’ Blake’s voice deepened, raw need underlying the husky words as he caressed her body, kissing her silky skin, words no longer necessary.
Now she really had come home, Sapphire thought contentedly abandoning herself completely into his keeping, revelling in the fierce thrust of pleasure seizing his body as he recognised her surrender, and she was never ever going to leave again. Closing her eyes she murmured the words of love she knew he longed to hear, for the first time saying them in complete trust that she would hear them back in return.
‘The stock …’ she reminded Blake weakly long, satisfying minutes later … ‘You …’
‘To hell with the stock,’ Blake responded thickly. ‘Right now I’ve got far more important things on my mind, like making love to my wife, unless of course she has any objections?’
A smile dimpled the corner of Sapphire’s mouth. ‘Only one,’ she told him gravely, ‘and that is that you’re wasting far too much time in talk instead of action …’
Retaliation was every bit as swift as she had envisaged—and every bit as pleasurable, the words of love she had longed to hear for so long caressing her skin in silken whispers as Blake took her back in his arms.
* * * * *
Injured Innocent
PENNY JORDAN
CHAPTER ONE
SHE WAS IN a very dark, very smoky, very crowded room, crammed with unfamiliar faces, most of them contorted into frighteningly threatening grimaces. Panic surged through her in waves. She wanted to turn and run and yet for some reason her feet remained locked to the floor. Alien sounds and scents filled the air; she was overwhelmed by the despairing conviction that she could never, ever escape from the place of torment her inner consciousness told her her surroundings were, and then miraculously a door opened; light flooded the room and a man stood there his arms open wide to encourage her to run to him, his face in the shadows, but she knew without seeing his features who he was, and his name was torn from her lips on a glad cry as she ran for the haven of his arms.
‘Daddy …’ She cried his name again, her relief suddenly, horrifyingly turning to terror as he stepped into the light and she saw that he was not her father at all but someone else—a stranger—dark and forbidding, unknown to her and yet somehow recognised by her inner senses … recognised and feared. She screamed, and screamed again, and it was the sound of her own pain and fear that eventually jolted her out of the fantasy world of her nightmare and back to reality.
The nightmare. Lissa shuddered deeply, touching her damp skin with trembling fingers. It was years since she had been tormented by it—well three years at least, she amended mentally … since she had made the break from home and come to live in London. Sighing faintly she glanced at her watch. Six-thirty … There was no point in trying to get back to sleep now. She would have to get up in another hour anyway.
She padded through the bedroom of her small flat and into the kitchen busying herself making a mug of coffee. The fragrant scent of the beans soothed her sensitive nerve endings, the warmth of the drink stealing into her chilled fingers as they closed round the mug. It was still only January and the central heating hadn’t come on yet. She shivered violently in her nightdress and pattered back to her room, sliding under the duvet; snuggling its comforting warmth all around her. Amanda would have laughed and said something silly, like the best way to keep warm in bed was to share it with a man. When Amanda said things like that everyone laughed. Her sister had a way of saying the most outrageously suggestive things with an innocence that robbed them of their sting. Even after three years of marriage and two children Amanda still looked like a little girl, with her mop of blonde curls and her large blue eyes. Or at least she had done. Deep shudders of mingled guilt and pain racked her as she sat huddled beneath the bedclothes. Dear God even now she could hardly believe it was true; that that midnight call three days ago had actually happened … That her sister, her brother-in-law and both sets of parents had been killed outright when a freak thunderstorm had struck the light aircraft her brother-in-law had been piloting.
She had not seen much of her sister since her marriage—nor of her parents. There had been duty visits of course, but there had always been an air of uncomfortable restraint about them. She knew her parents had never forgotten, nor really forgiven her for what she had done. It was useless for her aching heart to protest that she was innocent. They would never have believed her. Tears formed in her eyes and fell unheeded rolling down her cheeks. Was she crying for her sister, or for herself Lissa asked herself cynically. She and Amanda had never been particularly close. There were four years between them, Amanda being the elder, and to Lissa as a child it had often seemed that whilst some Fairy Godmother must have looked down into her sister’s cradle and given her the gift of a happy life; hers had been blighted by the machinations of some mischievous spirit who had ensured that she was destined always to be in trouble.
It had taken her years of exhaustive self analysis to understand that she was not to blame; that those things which she saw in herself as hopeless inadequacies because they did not mirror her sister’s virtues, were not necessarily that. It was stupid to have the nightmare now, after so long had passed … Why had she had it? Why? Did she really need to ask herself that question, Lissa mocked herself. Of course not. She knew exactly why she had dreamed so horrifically of that party, of that long ago night, of Joel Hargreaves, her sister’s brother-in-law, and now, with her, co-guardian of the two little girls who had been orphaned in the plane crash that had robbed Lissa herself of parents and sister … just as it had robbed Joel of brother and parents.
She had not been able to believe it when she received the phone call from Amanda’s and John’s solicitors. She had gone to see them immediately, taking time off work to do so, and had been stunned to hear of the tragic accident that had taken place while Amanda and John were visiting John’s parents in Miami.
