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'I'll stay long enough to see that Val is OK, and to discover if I'm to be a father unknowingly yet again. Obviously I'll want to keep in touch with my children, but I see no reason to delay any longer in giving you the divorce you requested.'
But she didn't want a divorce. She wanted Justin. But one look at the granite-hard countenance and and she knew now was not the time to tell him. Although she had started out determined to seduce him, and was guilty of what he had accused her of, as soon as he had touched her, kissed her, she had been lost to everything and had melted in his arms. She loved him. . .
Jess was waiting in the hall when they walked in. She took one look at their faces and said, 'Oh, no, I am sorry.'
'No need, Jess,' her brother responded, with a tight smile. 'I am a match. Val will be all right, and now, if you will excuse me, it has been a long day.'
CHAPTER TEN
Zoe watched his broad back as he walked up the stairs, tears in her eyes. Her son was almost saved but the euphoria she had felt in Professor Barnet's office had been replaced by a numbing certainty that Justin was lost to her forever.
'I don't believe this. What on earth have you done to my brother now?' Jess demanded harshly. 'He looks positively grim, when he should be celebrating.'
Zoe turned her tear-drenched eyes to the other woman and, mindful of who Jess was, said quietly, 'Can we talk? I owe you an apology, but if I don't sit down I think I might fall down.'
Five minutes later, seated on the sofa in front of the open fire, she glanced up at Jess, standing in the middle of the room, and she could not believe how blind she had been. Jess had the same eyes, the same hair—the resemblance to Justin had been there all the time if only she had not been blinded by jealousy and full of preconceived notions of Justin's penchant for large ladies.
'I never realised you were Justin's sister until today. I thought you were his girlfriend,' she confessed quietly.
'His girlfriend?' Jess exclaimed. 'You've got to be kidding; my brother has never looked at another woman in years. The day you ran off to the States with your lover you effectively emasculated the man. He was almost destroyed. Then you turned up in London again and crawled straight back into his bed. Now you're trying to tell me you slept with him thinking I was his girlfriend.
God! What kind of woman are you?' she asked derisively.
'A very mixed-up one,' Zoe muttered. 'I don't know where you got your information from but I never ran off with a lover. I loved Justin to distraction but I discovered he never loved me. That's why I left him.'
'You're mad!' Jess stared into her tear-stained face and something in the smaller woman's expression made her hesitate. 'You honestly believe what you're saying.'
'It's the truth,' Zoe closed her eyes briefly, reminded of the pain and disillusion of the past.
'Tell me,' Jess demanded, sitting down beside her on the couch. 'Give me your version.'
'Oh, all the signs were there.' Zoe sighed. 'I had hints that Justin's reason for marrying me wasn't love, but I dismissed them as idle gossip. Until the night of my twenty-first birthday.'
Once she started she could not stop; it was like a dam breaking, and for the next quarter of an hour she told Jess everything—the gossip of Mrs Blacket, Justin's withdrawal into work, the separate bedrooms, even his restraint in their intimacy, right up to the night of Janet Ord's revelations. Finally she described the fatal meeting with Justin in California where he had made it plain that he never wanted to see her again.
'Incredible as it seems, I believe you,' Jess said, with a shake of her dark head. 'How two intelligent people could make such a mess of their lives is mind-boggling.'
'Yes, well, I blame myself,' Zoe said, with a wry smile. 'I was young and easily hurt '
'And my brother is a repressed fool,' Jess cut in. 'Listen, Zoe, I know Justin loves you. He told me all about you long before he married you. You were his one topic of conversation for years. He even joined your uncle's practice thinking it would enhance his prospects as a suitor.'
'But he always wanted to be a judge!'
'Rubbish, he thrived on international law, but he gave it up for you. He worshipped you, and being a closet romantic he worried himself witless about the age-gap between you.
'He told me about your eighteenth birthday, and how he had taken another woman to your party. He was being noble. He was convinced you had to have the chance of a career, to see something of the world, before tying you down.'
She wanted to believe Jess, but if it was true why had Justin been so restrained in the intimate side of their relationship? 'Why the separate bedrooms?' She did not realise she had voiced the question out loud.
'Perhaps I can guess,' Jess offered, casting a reflective glance at her pale, troubled face. 'What did Justin tell you about our parents?'
'Not much—simply that his mother died at his birth and his father married again. His stepmother died when he was in his teens, as did his father a few years later. He never talked about his family; that's why I had the idea he had a stepsister, nothing more. Until today,' she said drily.
'Typical!' Jess snorted, before continuing. 'Dad was a Spaniard who had settled in London as a young man. He met my mother in the restaurant he owned. She was a ballerina—tiny, exquisite, a bit like you but dark. Justin doted on her; she was the only mother he had ever known and when I came along five years later he was equally protective of me.
'We had a happy childhood. Our parents adored each other; they were always touching, loving. Every summer we went to our villa in Spain for the holidays. Justin was only fifteen when it happened—a scream in the night. He dashed to our parents' room to find my fatherstanding naked by the bed, Mother dead of a heart attack. S
he died. . .' Jess hesitated '. . .during the act. . .'
