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Tears shimmered in her eyes at his cruelty. ‘Don’t lie!’ she husked. ‘Don’t tell me any of your lies!’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not lying. I speak from the heart—and I love you, Jade.’
The time for pussyfooting, she decided, was long past. ‘You don’t love me! You don’t even trust me! You think that I’m a heartless journalist who’d do anything for a scoop—even selling her own secrets. You think that I’m a seasoned seductress who pre- tended to be a virgin—’
‘I think none of those things,’ he said quietly. ‘I think that I have been an arrogant and blind fool and nearly lost what is most dear in all the world to me.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she sniffed.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You knew that I fell in love with you when we first met?’
‘So you said.’
‘Don’t you?’
Jade moved restlessly, refusing to make it easier for him, aware as she did so, that he still held her closely.
His eyes glittered with some satanic fire as he spoke the soft, husky words. ‘For years women had told me I was cold, arrogant, unfeeling; and maybe I was. And in my heart of hearts I suspected that I was one of those men who never can fall in love. Perhaps the death of my mother made me equate love with loss. But even knowing that, logically, changed nothing. I did not seem able to feel emotion for a woman other than liking, and, oc- casionally—desire. But then I saw you, and it was like…’ He shrugged, a rueful smile temporarily smoothing out the lines on his face. ‘How can I explain what it was like? I don’t think the words exist in either of our languages which could ad- equately describe it.
‘An explosion, if you like. Or implosion. I was dizzy with it. Crazy. It was something to which no logic could be applied—overpowering—this need to be with you. I saw you and I fell in love with you. And then, when I met you—you were every- thing I dreamed you would be, only more. Intelli- gent, questioning, funny, sexy.’ He gave a deep sigh. ‘When you left the island I went half mad with wanting you. And that frightened me. For the first time in my life I felt no longer in control, and I found the experience disturbing. Profoundly dis- turbing. When I went back to work I found that I was restless, deferring decisions because I could not think straight and the only thing which occupied my thoughts, was you. Always you. I couldn’t get you out of my mind.
‘So I forced the rational side of my nature to try and analyse things—I told myself that I knew nothing about you. That it had all happened so quickly, on a magically beautiful island, that when faced with the stresses of everyday life the relationship would probably die a natural death. That I had kept my true identity secret, and that perhaps you would not care to be the wife of a very rich man—you who seemed content with the simple life we lived those few days.
‘And then, when I found out who you were and what you did for a living, after my initial rush of anger I was almost glad to learn what I’d dis- covered about you.’
‘Glad?’ Jade echoed, totally confused.
‘Yes, glad. Believing you to have lied to me and betrayed me, meant that I now no longer had any reason to love you, and consequently I felt back in control.’
‘So you seduced me ruthlessly,’ she accused him bitterly, trying to wriggle out from beneath him, but his hips made her firmly their prey and she was made achingly aware of the fact that he was turned on.
‘Yes, I seduced you,’ he agreed grimly. ‘Which is not something I should be proud of, and yet it proved to be my undoing. Even believing myself to be hating you, I fell completely under your spell again. I’d never experienced lovemaking like that in my life—it blew my head off. I tried to convince myself that it was just a physical ache, that I could exorcise my desire for you by making love to you over and over and over again.’ The corners of his mouth turned down in self-deprecating mockery. ’But I was trapped, enmeshed by you. The more I was with you, the more I grew to like you. As well as love you. My little virgin,’ he added gently.
Jade’s head was spinning. She wanted to believe him, oh, how she wanted to believe him. ‘You told me I was no virgin. You said—’ Her cheeks became stained scarlet as she remembered his cruel gibes, but she forced herself to repeat them. ‘You said that if I was pretending to be a virgin, then I shouldn’t…’ But she couldn’t finish the sentence.
His face became
grave, and his voice was filled with anger, that even she could tell was directed inwards. ‘Because, my darling, my feelings were in complete turmoil; that’s why I lashed out at you the way I did. I felt honoured, humbled to be the man to whom you should offer the great gift of your virginity. And yet I was sick with remorse at the manner in which I took that gift. I should have wooed you quite gently in our marital bed, not taken you like that—so swiftly and so savagely. And then’ He hesitated. ‘I was wary, too.’
‘Wary?’
He gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘Indeed, since I recognised that my days as a single man were numbered. Because you see, I had discovered during that quite blissful interlude on the sofa that it was not going to be easy to give you up; indeed, I sus- pected that it was going to be damn nigh impossible.’
He reached his hand out to stroke one finger gently down her cheek.
She let him.
‘So you bought up the newspaper?’ she quizzed. ’A bit over the top, wouldn’t you say, Constantine?’
He didn’t look in the least bit abashed. ‘The situ- ation called for dramatic measures.’
‘Like forcing me to marry you by bribery?’
He shrugged. ‘What else could I do? When you walked into your boss’s office and gave me such a look of withering contempt, I knew that you would never agree to see me willingly again. I had to have you, and I was prepared to go to any lengths to do so.’ He stared down at her, the ebony eyes boring bright fire into her soul.
‘But you were so distant towards me, the morning after you made love to me at the Granchester.’
He gave a small sound of disapproval. ‘Because I was furious with myself. I had seduced you that first time, almost brutally—’
