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‘Yes, but we’re not in this long-term, are we?’ Jude muttered thickly, one hand sliding into her hair, keen to urge her in the right direction, unashamed lust gripping him with need all over again. ‘So that angle doesn’t come into it.’
Momentarily, Tansy froze and tried to make herself continue what she was doing, but it was impossible when she felt as though Jude had dropped a giant rock on her from a height, squashing breath and hope from her as he forced her back into the world of reality, rather than the world of fantasy where she had been getting rather too comfortable.
‘My goodness, I’m starving!’ she exclaimed, sitting up suddenly, rescuing herself.
Jude frowned, not an easy man to deflect, and he caught her hand before she could move off the bed. ‘What did I say?’
Her fine-featured face froze. ‘You didn’t say anything.’
‘About us not being long-term?’ Jude pressed. ‘But that’s a fact.’
‘Yes, of course, it is,’ Tansy agreed, still trying to work out how best to evade that awkward subject.
Jude scrutinised her with shrewd dark golden eyes. ‘Don’t get attached to me, moli mou. I’m a bad bet.’
Tansy flipped her rippling hair off the side of her face with a steady hand. ‘I wouldn’t get attached to you. You’re not my type,’ she replied flatly.
‘How can you say that?’ Jude demanded, thoroughly disconcerted by that reply, and spreading lean brown hands to indicate the tumbled bed she had just slid off as if it were evidence to the contrary.
Tansy steeled herself to stand where she was, naked and vulnerable and seemingly unconcerned. ‘That’s simple chemistry and basically meaningless,’ she downplayed, reaching for a robe with studious calm.
‘We’ll be flying back to Athens for my birthday party tomorrow. Isidore insisted. He always insists on throwing me a party,’ Jude imparted ruefully. ‘One would think that a thirtieth celebration could be left for me to enjoy in my own way.’
‘But listening to you, one would also think how very spoilt and entitled you are,’ Tansy incised thinly. ‘Nobody ever threw a party for me in my entire life! Your grandfather loves and cares about you. For goodness’ sake, the man’s on the phone to you every day, interested in every breath that you take! What does it take for you to appreciate what you have?’
Colour scored Jude’s high cheekbones. He clenched his teeth together on an acerbic response. Tansy viewed his family through a different scope, possibly because she had been pretty much neglected by her own mother, he reasoned inwardly. Tansy had never been put first or spoiled or indulged by a proud or loving parent. But he had been, Jude registered for possibly the first time, thinking of how every household he had lived in from childhood had revolved around him and of how Isidore had scrupulously made time for him whenever his father was unavailable. It was strange how Tansy’s opinions were changing his outlook on some areas of his life, he acknowledged uneasily.
Isidore had instilled his grandson with the belief that women were innately untrustworthy, probably in the hope of driving another wedge between Jude and his mother. After Althea had proved Isidore’s theory, Jude had strongly resisted the concept of being influenced by any woman. As for love, he was never doing that again, that went without saying. He got by fine without love, had done so for years. But the suggestion that he might have been blind to the reality that his grandfather loved him pierced him on a deep level, cutting through the barriers that his mother had set up inside his head when he was much younger. He wasn’t enjoying Tansy’s insight into his family as an onlooker, but it was certainly making him think for the first time in a long time about how his dysfunctional background could have moved certain facts weirdly out of focus.
‘I appreciate what I have,’ Jude countered ruefully. ‘Enough serious talk though…let’s concentrate on what you’re wearing for the party. It will be a very glitzy event.’
Tansy nodded with a jerk and vanished into the palatial en suite bathroom, her eyes burning with moisture. He had warned her not to get attached to him. He had missed the boat, Tansy reflected wretchedly. She had done what she had believed she would not do, had let feelings take hold, because it would never be just chemistry for her with Jude. There was just so much she liked and appreciated about him that he made her head spin.
Foremost in that line was his uncompromising honesty and his compassion for his troubled mother, whom he rarely saw. Then there was his quick and intelligent brain, because there was no denying that a clever man was the most entertaining and the best company. His kindness towards Posy, his lack of snobbishness when Tansy sometimes got things wrong because she had grown up at another social level, his generosity with other people because, for someone she had called spoilt, he was remarkably tolerant. She could have kept listing admirable attributes for longer, she conceded while she stood in the shower, letting the tears finally fall, but what was the point?
She had fallen in love with a guy who would never love her back and that broke her heart. She had nothing to hope for either, when their arrangement excluded love in favour of practicality. Jude had ringed their entire relationship with boundaries. In addition, she felt guilty about loving him, about having failed to keep emotion out of their agreement while at the same time Jude was fully meeting his end of the deal to be a father to Posy. How could she complain when she had caught feelings for him? He had specifically warned her against getting attached to him. He had, in short, given her exactly what he had promised, and it would be ridiculously naive of her to hope for anything more permanent when he had been so candid from the outset…
