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“And you were doing your best I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-anything impression.”
“Did it work?”
“Oh, yeah. Big-time. Everyone who saw you thought you were the reason we’d hired security guards.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “That was a long time ago.”
“A lifetime,” she admitted, a trifle breathlessly. It was happening again, this feeling of closeness and intimacy that she wished didn’t exist.
“You weren’t married yet.”
“Neither were you,” she retorted.
“Never have been.”
“Why not?” she asked, but before he could answer, she added, “And don’t give me the line about not finding the right woman, Santini, because I wouldn’t believe it.”
He hesitated for a second, and when his gaze returned to hers it was dark, intense. The wind seemed to have died, and it was so quiet she heard the sound of her heartbeat in her ears. “Maybe I found her, but she was promised to someone else.”
Her breath caught in her throat
“In fact, she was engaged to my brother.”
Oh, God. There it was. So many times since Philip’s death she’d wondered. Had the one night she’d spent with J.D. been, as she’d told herself, just two people trying to console each other in their grief? Or had it been more? This was dangerous territory, very dangerous, and yet she couldn’t resist stepping over the imaginary line she’d drawn in her mind. “For me,” she said, swallowing against a lump in her throat, “commitments aren’t to be broken.”
“I know.”
“I...I loved your brother.”
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
“I know your family thought I married him for his part of the Santini estate, or for the fact that I never knew my own father and was searching for a replacement, but the truth is I fell in love with Philip. It might not have been the wild passion people expect to find, and it certainly changed and became…more difficult as the years went by, but I loved him nonetheless.”
J.D. snorted. “So did I.” His lips flattened into a thin, self-deprecating line. “Why do you think I stayed away for so long?”
“I…I didn’t know.”
“Why do you think I’m leaving now?”
“Oh, God, don’t say it—”
“Because I can’t stand the thought that I want my brother’s wife.” His expression was grave. “I saw your marriage falling apart,” he admitted. “I know that Philip became...less enchanted, and I beat myself up because a part of me wanted it to fail.”
“No. Please, Jay.” Somewhere deep in her being there was a rendering, painful and filled with remorse. Her heart was pounding so loudly he could surely hear its erratic cadence. “I…I don’t think we should be talking like this,” she said in a voice she barely recognized as her own.
“You asked.”
“But...” Somehow it seemed wrong, such a betrayal of Philip’s memory. “It’s just that what happened between you and me was…was…”
“Not supposed to,” he finished for her, his jaw tight, his nostrils flaring slightly. A muscle worked in the corner of his jaw, and his hands balled into fists of frustration as he gazed upon the still wa
ters of the pond and saw past its clear depths to the bottom of his own soul, his private hell. “I know. Believe me, I know.”
“I had no intention—”
“Neither did I,” he said crisply, as if to dismiss the subject. They walked down the natural bowl in the hill to the pond and a thicket of cottonwood, pine and oak that guarded one bank. The sky was turning a deep shade of lavender, and a soft breeze raced across the pond.
Guilt, never far away, nudged even closer. She’d been faithful to Philip, never so much as touched another man. Her heart had been with her husband. Always. Except for a few lonely moments when she’d thought of J.D., of his kiss, or what might have been. But she’d never said a word, never lifted the phone to call him, never uttered his name in the middle of the night when Philip, off on business or a gambling junket, hadn’t been around. She rubbed her arms to ward off a chill before she realized how warm the evening was.
