'Do you take me for a complete fool, Keri?'
She was taken aback by the depth of his venom. 'How did you guess?'
'How did I guess?' he exploded. 'That you'd sent your twin to try to do your dirty work for you? Do you think I'm completely lacking in comprehension?'
'But we're identical!' she blurted out.
'No, you look nearly the same,' he corrected grimly. 'But you are not identical. No two human beings are-nor ever could be. For a start you're a model, and you have a way of moving which is both studied and natural-your sister doesn't. She talks differently. She clearly thinks differently too. I've never seen a woman look more uncomfortable-tell me, did you have to twist her arm to get her to agree?'
Keri turned and began walking away, but Jay followed her, and once they had reached the sitting room there was no escape left to her. He caught her, turned her round to face him, the grey-green eyes blazing.
'Did you?'
'Yes,' she admitted, in a whisper.
'Why, Keri? Just tell me why! If you want it to be over, then why the hell didn't you tell me so yourself? You're a strong woman-an independent woman-surely you must have had to say that to men plenty of times during your life?'
She bit her lip. In this he was wrong. She wasn't strong-not around him. She was all open and raw and hurting, weak and wounded from the pain of wanting him.
'Don't make me say it, Jay!'
'Say what? That you've had enough? That your rough-tough man was good for a while but now he's shown you that you're a normal woman who can experience pleasure it's time to move on to someone more suited to a high-class model?'
The way he said high-class made it sound like something else altogether.
'Don't be so dense!' she snapped. 'It isn't like that, and you bloody well know it!'
Jay expelled a breath. His heart was pounding like a piston and he wanted to shake her and kiss her all at the same time. What the hell was she doing to him? 'Then tell me what it is like, Keri?' he demanded silkily.
'You're the one who just upped and went off without even telling me you were going! You're the cautious, wary man who goes on about your independence and the way you like your flat to look. As if I'm trying to ensnare you and get you to march me down the aisle!'
'This is all to do with the fact that I went away on business without first asking your permission?'
'That's got nothing to do with it! You were running away!'
He froze and stared at her incredulously. 'I was what? And just what, pray, was I running away from?'
'From me! From the relationship! Just the way you always do. Andy told me.'
'Oh, did he?' he questioned dangerously. 'Well, I'll just have to have a word with Andy-he works with me, for God's sake, he's not my damned analyst!'
'Oh, don't shoot the messenger!' she declared furiously. 'I didn't actually need Andy to tell me, if you must know. I'd worked it out for myself and he just confirmed it. Well, I've made it easy for you. I'm giving you the let-out clause. It's over! That's what you want, isn't it?'
There was silence for a moment, and when he looked at her his eyes were bright and piercing. 'Is that what you want?'
Of course it wasn't what she wanted! She glared at him. 'I asked first!'
He felt a pain so fierce he couldn't believe that it wasn't physical. 'Oh, Keri,' he groaned. 'Of course it isn't what I want.'
She didn't care if it scared him away; she just knew that she could not exist in this curious half-life of not knowing. 'Then just what do you want, Jay?' she asked pointedly.
He knew he owed her this, but it was difficult to find the words to describe the way he felt-he'd never had to do it before. Not even to himself. Yet he looked into her dark eyes and knew he had to. No, he wanted to. He just wasn't sure he knew how.
Just when had this all happened? he asked himself dazedly. This connection to another person which seemed to have reached out and captured him? In his time he had triumphed in hostage rescue and guerrilla warfare, but this was completely unknown territory.
'I want you,' he said at last.
There should have been joy, but all she felt was suspicion. And feelings which she had been flattening down, as you would a sandcastle, suddenly erupted out in a storm.
'Sure you do, Jay-that's why you ran away. Because I had the temerity to turn up uninvited at your apartment and end up staying the night with you! My God, you couldn't have given me a clearer message if you'd tried!'
He sighed. 'I know.'
It was the first chink she had ever seen in his armour. A fleeting moment of something which, if it were any other man than Jay, might almost be described as vulnerability. And all her anger left her. She felt as cautious as someone trying to offer food to a wild, starving animal.
Her voice softened. 'So why? What's changed?'
'I have,' he said slowly. 'I've changed-or, rather, you've made me want to change. I've never wanted to settle down before, and I always ran away from commitment because … '
He could blame a lot of things; that was what people did. His parents' divorce and the subsequent transatlantic ping-pong. Or his choice of a male-dominated career and his need for the emotional detachment which that career demanded.
Or he could say it how it was. Incredibly and unbelievably how it was. So simple, really, like all the very best things in life.
He looked at her, and she had never seen his eyes look so bright. 'Because I never found the right woman before, and now I have.'
For a moment she didn't believe him. Didn't dare to for fear that she was dreaming it and in a moment she would wake up to the bleak reality of a life without Jay. But the message burning from his eyes told her that he spoke the truth, plain and simple. He cared for her. Deeply. Deeper than deep. He hadn't yet used the conventional vocabulary for saying so, but then Jay was not a conventional man. And love didn't always have to be spoken out loud.
Some women might have wanted more than that, but she took the words at more than their face value. He was breaking what for him was a taboo. He had started searching beneath what was happening on the surface of his life, and for a man like Jay that was something pretty big.
Those other words might follow, but she wanted to savour this-the look in his eyes which was reaching out to her, telling her that this strong, experienced man could be vulnerable too.
Come to think of it, she felt a bit that way herself. As if she was standing on the brink of a great big sea, and was about to dabble her toe in and get it wet.
'Oh, Jay,' she whispered.
Some day he would tell her about the bitter transatlantic custody battle which had dominated his growing up. And of the fear of making any place too permanent, knowing that the courts could snatch him away at any time. Through all his childhood he had never trusted in the word 'home'.
He held his arms out and she went into them, as if she had found her safe harbour too, and they stood there together for a long, long time.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE light had that bright, almost bleached quality which was particular to the Caribbean. Huge, fleshy palm trees fringed the dancing aquamarine of the sea and provided welcome shade from the dazzling sun overhead.
The photo-shoot was finished, and the other models and stylists and photographers were paying serious attention to the cocktails on offer at the beach bar, but Keri felt light-headed after one and a half Cosmopolitans. It was really too hot to drink alcohol, and she wished she could just find herself on a plane heading back to England.
And Jay.
'Think I'll head back to the hotel.' She yawned. 'Maybe have a sleep and then go for a swim.'
No one could persuade her to change her mind, and she didn't think they'd miss her much. Something happened to a woman when she was in love and the object of her affections was several thousand miles away. It meant she was there only in body and not in spirit, no matter how much she tried.
Over the months something had changed in her too, because time changed everything. Her feelings for Jay had grown deeper and stronger-the tiny pebble on which their relationship had started had become a firm bedrock. They lived their lives in parallel harmony-each with their successful career, spending nights and weekends together in his flat or hers.