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‘What?’ Lissa pulled away from him to look at him. ‘But Joel.’
‘Ridiculous I know, and I soon managed to convince myself that I was imagining it. I pushed you out of my mind … told myself I was suffering from some sort of delayed adolescent crush, but when John and Amanda died and I was faced with the prospect of seeing you marry someone else I knew I couldn’t let it happen. I wanted you for myself, and so I used the threat of taking the children away from you …’
She was quivering with a strange sensation of everything being totally unreal. Joel in love with her? She couldn’t believe it … and besides …
‘But Marisa,’ she managed to demand. “What about Marisa?’
He frowned down at her. “What about her?’
‘I thought … you … she … I thought you were lovers,’ Lissa told him quietly, ‘I also thought tonight you were trying to tell me you wanted to leave me so that you could be with her.’
His stunned incredulity might have been almost funny in other circumstances, but when Lissa thought of the agony she had put herself through believing him in love with the other woman she felt closer to tears than laughter.
‘Marisa is the wife of a friend of mine and that’s all,’ he told her firmly. ‘Okay, once I went out with her, and I agree she might sometimes have given the impression that there was more between us than there genuinely was, but that’s all there is to it.’
‘But you went to see her …’
‘To help her sort out somewhere to live and give her some financial advice. I also suggested that she think again about leaving Peter.’
‘But all those evenings when you went out …’
‘I drove around in the car because it was the only thing I could think of to do to keep my hands off you. Lissa after I’d made love to you it suddenly struck me how selfish I’d been. You said I’d acted humanely. Well maybe you see it that way, I don’t. I wanted to free you from the trauma of the past yes, but do you honestly think for one moment that if I hadn’t loved you as much as I do that I would have done that by making love to you? Couldn’t you tell when I touched you how I felt about you?’ His hands cupped her face, his expression so tender, so revealing that her heart seemed to stop beating. ‘I had to leave you alone after that night. I had to give you at least a chance to re-assess our relationship without the additional pressure of any sexual demands from me. I had to give you the opportunity to do at least some of the experimenting you never had the opportunity to do as a teenager. When I saw you with Greaves I feared the worst … and then when you didn’t tell me you’d seen him.’
‘It wasn’t my meeting with Simon I was trying to hide from you,’ Lissa admitted with a rueful smile, ‘it was the fact that I’d gone especially to London to buy a new dress, purely because I wanted you to admire me in it. When I thought that Marisa was your mistress—the true love of your life, I couldn’t bear to admit the truth to you in case you guessed …’ She broke off, and Joel prodded softly.
‘In case I guessed what?’
‘That I love you.’
He studied her face silently for so long that she began to think she had imagined it all … that he didn’t love her at all … that it was all a cruel trick but then he bent his head, his mouth gentle on hers, and then less gentle as he felt her response.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I found out you were carrying my child,’ he told her huskily when he released her. ‘I thought you must hate me because of it … because it would prevent you leaving me for Simon.’
‘And I thought you would hate me because it would prevent you from going to Marisa,’ Lissa admitted. ‘You were so different from the ogre I’d always imagined you to be,’ she told him dreamily. ‘So tender and caring that how could I avoid falling in love with you? Then you changed, and reverted to the man I’d always thought you were. I thought it was your way of telling me that you did not want any emotional commitment from me. I thought you’d guessed how I felt about you, and that your coldness towards me was because you didn’t want to encourage my feelings.’
‘Whereas in reality it was directed at myself. The fact that I’d made love to you, quite deliberately … in the hope of making you want me physically and then emotionally, destroyed all the previously conceived notions I held about myself. In any other man I would have ruthlessly condemned what I had done.’
‘You mean seducing me with champagne and kisses,’ Lissa laughed softly and gave him a coquettish smile. ‘Oh I don’t know …’ Happiness bubbled up inside her. ‘I rather enjoyed it!’
‘Oh did you indeed?’
There was nothing in the soft way he murmured the words to cause her heart to jolt into an accelerated beat, but Lissa wasn’t really listening to what he was saying, she was too busy looking into his eyes and reading the very private and explicit message they were holding for her.
Joel glanced at his watch and then smiled teasingly at her. ‘It’s just gone nine. Too early to go to bed, do you suppose?’
‘Oh definitely!’
‘Umm. Well then I shall just have to insist that we finish our fascinating discussion in the privacy of our own room. What do you say to that?’
‘I say that it sounds like an extremely good idea,’ Lissa confirmed innocently, teasing amusement gleaming in her eyes.
As he slipped his arm round her and propelled her towards the stairs she paused, watching the quick frown touch his forehead.
‘Something wrong?’
“Nothing at all,’ she assured him. ‘I was just wondering if we had a bottle of champagne anywhere.’
* * * * *
