Why would he care that none of that would be sufficient to make her happy? Why would he care that she was hurting so bad that she wanted to scream with the pain of it? He hadn’t asked her to care about him and she didn’t know when or how she had started caring again. In Spain it had begun with a smile, a shared look of understanding and discussion, a touch of his hand, six weeks of breathless excitement and more happiness than she had ever experienced before she lost it all again.
But, Jax had reappeared in her life and somehow shreds of those old feelings had taken root again deep down inside her where she didn’t explore very often. She cared. Much more than he deserved. But was that a true or fair view? Kreon had been vicious and Jax had been strong-armed by family affection into making a sacrifice he didn’t want to make. Sadly, Jax wasn’t any keener on the concept of marriage than he had ever been.
So, what did that leave her to work with? Lucy blinked back tears and went to clean up her face again, dashing on a little make-up in a desperate hope of relocating a hint of a lingering bridal glow. Unhappily she looked tired and heavy-eyed and pale and even bronzer didn’t help. In the end she washed it all off again before she went to look for Jax.
It was the early hours of the morning but everywhere was lit up. She didn’t even know what she was going to say to him but she knew that she had to deal with the situation and make something out of the mess Kreon had created. After all, they had Bella to consider and while Lucy was prepared to let go of her own dreams she wasn’t prepared to give up on her dream of giving her daughter a normal family life.
She peered into empty room after empty room on the ground floor and then she found him, sprawled with a glass in his hand on a huge fancy padded lounger sited on a wide terrace from which he was watching the sun come up in a glorious multicoloured reflective rainbow over the dark sea far below the house. She hesitated beside the patio doors and then noticed that the phone he was studying was displaying a wedding photo of their daughter. And that discovery softened her and empowered her in a way nothing else could have done into moving forward.
‘Jax?’ she murmured uncertainly.
‘We have to make a go of it...or at least try...for her,’ Jax breathed in a raw undertone without turning his head.
‘Yes...’ It was exactly what Lucy wanted to hear and yet she still felt as though her heart were breaking inside her because she knew that she wanted so much more from him.
‘I’m drunk,’ Jax confided gruffly, wishing he weren’t, wishing he were better at handling his own emotional turmoil. ‘But drowning your sorrows doesn’t help. It only darkens everything more.’
In the tense silence, Lucy dropped down onto the smaller lounger beside his. She didn’t recline, she sat on the side of it, rigid-backed and still. A photo lay on the table between them and she lifted it. It was a picture of another little girl, a little girl who looked similar enough to Bella to be her sister.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked worriedly, immediately wondering if Jax had another child.
‘My little sister, Tina. The reason why I didn’t need to wait on DNA test results to know that Bella was mine,’ Jax explained reluctantly.
‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’
‘Hardly anyone knows. When she died it was hushed up,’ he muttered.
Lucy frowned. ‘Your father’s child?’
‘No. From my mother’s second marriage to an actor. He was half her age. It fell apart quickly. By then Mariana was accidentally pregnant and as a devout Catholic there was no question of her not giving birth. Valentina was born the summer I was twelve. Mariana was determined to keep her a secret because she couldn’t bear the idea that her adoring fans would pity her for being abandoned a second time with a child. Unfortunately, she could never keep household staff for long. I looked after the baby that summer—’
‘At twelve years old?’ Lucy gasped although she was trying hard not to react to what he was telling her. ‘Where was your mother?’
‘Zonked out of her skull on prescription drugs...the way she always was,’ Jax confided grudgingly. ‘I got attached to Tina. She was a sweet kid. Mariana got another nanny before I went back to boarding school and for a couple of years everything was fine. I saw Tina in the holidays. And then Mariana had a fight with the nanny the day before she held a pool party...and Tina drowned because nobody was looking after her. My mother was a legendary star and the studio ensured that the death and the burial were dealt with very discreetly.’
‘I’m so sorry, Jax,’ Lucy whispered shakily.
‘The worst part of it was that nobody ever mentioned Tina again. It was like she’d never existed.’
Lucy slid to her feet and settled on the big lounger by his side, one arm draping over him protectively.
‘I don’t cuddle,’ he told her argumentatively.
‘You’re not cuddling,’ Lucy assured him. ‘I’m cuddling you.’
‘I really don’t need or like that sort of stuff,’ he growled.
‘Of course you don’t. You’re just tolerating me to be polite.’ Lucy sighed, feeling the rigid tension in his muscles ease and snuggling into the powerful heat of his long, lean frame. ‘You have such good manners, Jax.’
‘I do?’ Jax said in surprise, flipping over to face her, green eyes clear as emeralds in the dawn light.
‘Most of the time,’ Lucy murmured with amusement, colliding with those gorgeous eyes of his, eyes full of so much hunger and uncharacteristic uncertainty. ‘I wasn’t part of the blackmail plan.’
‘I know...’ Jax rubbed his dark stubbled jaw against her shoulder as if in apology. ‘But I think I preferred you not knowing about what your father did.’
‘I would’ve preferred that too,’ Lucy admitted. ‘But it happened and we have to deal with it.’
Assertive hands tugged at the edges of her robe and the sash before sliding beneath the crisp fabric. ‘Naked,’ Jax savoured. ‘I like, glyka mou.’
Lucy bridled. ‘I wasn’t thinking about that when I came looking for you. I couldn’t be bothered poking through another case to find clothes...’
‘Shush...’ Jax murmured, long brown fingers rubbing with devastating expertise over the most sensitive spot on her entire body to set off a devastating tingling awareness before sliding down below. ‘I want you.’
‘Here?’ she gasped in consternation even as her slender thighs parted and her hips shifted in a rhythm as old as time.
‘I sent the staff to bed when we arrived. Poor Theo had kept them all up,’ Jax told her. ‘I don’t need attention twenty-four-seven...except from you.’
Lucy’s rosy lips parted on a helpless gasp. ‘Twenty-four-seven?’ she framed with difficulty.
‘I’ll make it well worth your while,’ Jax promised, crushing her ripe mouth urgently under his as he unzipped his jeans and shifted over her with urgent intent. ‘Let’s take this back into honeymoon territory...’
And Lucy, at that moment malleable as clay in his expert hands with her body rising and burning and already defencelessly eager, had no objection to that plan. They had weathered the first storm, learned that for both of them Bella was their main focus. That had to be enough, she told herself urgently, a strangled sound escaping her convulsing throat as he pinned her under him and plunged into her with raw, hungry energy.
Pushing for more would only strain their relationship, which meant that she had to learn to settle for what she could get. And if that meant forgiving his suspicion that she could have been involved in her father’s blackmail, she had to do it. It was early days, she reminded herself.
Yet how could he suspect her of such dishonest behaviour? And why did he assume that her affection was faked? Was his past so littered with unscrupulous lovers that trust was impossible for him?
CHAPTER NINE
‘YOU WERE TELLING me about your adoptive parents,’ Jax reminded her as they walked along the deserted beach three weeks later, walking Bella between them to keep the little girl steady.
‘Was I? They were good people. I was nine years old and very fortunate to get a home at that age,’ Lucy declared wryly.
‘I imagine you were a very pretty little girl. I’m sure that helped.’
Lucy shrugged, thinking back to that brief three-year period when she had been part of a family. ‘They were very academic. When they took me on they were warned that I’d fallen behind at school and straight off they decided to hire tutors for me in every subject.’
Jax frowned. ‘Impatient, were they?’
‘No, they were trying to help but it put me under a lot of pressure. I was trying very hard to be everything they wanted and then I failed an important exam, which meant I couldn’t get into the school they had set their hearts on and they were really disappointed. I don’t think I was the right child for them,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘But when they died in the car crash, all that ended and I went back into care because none of their relatives saw me as being part of the family. At the end of the day and whether you agree with it or not, blood counts.’
‘Yes, doesn’t it?’ Jax agreed, thinking of his late brother, Argo, a good-natured, indolent young man, who with hindsight had been remarkably dissimilar to Heracles and Jax in nature.