Jed was under the shower, a cold one by the looks of things. She averted her eyes from his perfect male body, raised her voice above the sound of pounding water. ‘This situation’s impossible.’
‘I’m not over the moon about it, either.’ The gush of water stopped, and after a split second Elena steeled herself to look at him. He was wrapping a towel around his lean hips, his mouth taut, water plastering his hair to his skull, droplets gleaming on his fantastic body.
Elena clenched her hands at her sides, forbidding the instinctive, self-destructive need to touch. ‘Then do something about it,’ she ordered around the lump in her throat. ‘Or I will.’
The towel he’d been using to rough dry his hair dropped to his side, narrowed grey eyes lacerating her. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
She lifted her chin. He didn’t frighten her. After the loss of his love, nothing could ever frighten her again. ‘You could listen to me, for a start. Let me tell you exactly what happened between me and Sam.’
‘No.’ Angry emotion darkened his eyes. ‘I don’t want to hear what happened, listen to you trying to justify yourself. It sickens me.’
She couldn’t reach him, she recognised hopelessly. Even if she went down on her knees and begged him to hear her out it would make no difference.
Trying to control the frustration that churned inside her, the pain of it all, she said flatly, ‘If that’s the way you want it. If you want to be this stubborn you can never have really loved me. And I’m not going to plead with you. But I warn you, I’m not prepared to pretend we’re a loving couple when we’re not. I refuse to go back to Netherhaye with you and live my life that way. So Catherine has to be told, sooner or later.’
His eyes glittered sharply. ‘Later. Very much later. And you know damned well why! Or are you so wrapped up in what you want you don’t care about anyone else?’
The rasped barb found its target. Her heart twisted painfully inside her. Of course she didn’t want to cause Catherine any further emotional suffering, and it was an indictment of his so-called former love for her that he would so easily believe her capable of doing anything of the sort.
She closed her eyes, hiding the despised weak glitter of tears, and Jed said coldly, ‘While she’s here you’ll act the part of a besotted wife. You managed it in bed this morning, so carrying on the act in the light of day shouldn’t give you too much of a problem.’
Her eyelids batted open at that, revealing sea-blue glittery diamonds. How dared he? She hadn’t consciously instigated that close embrace, and, initially at least, he’d loved every second. Wanted her—
As he wanted her now! She recognised the slight flare of his nostrils, the tightening of his jaw, the slow burn of colour across his prominent cheekbones, the drift of narrowed scorching eyes over her as-good-asnaked body. Something curled, dark and sharp, inside her. He might not love her now, but he sure as hell still desired her, she thought in bitter triumph. Something that elemental would take a long time dying.
‘It’s all yours.’ He scooped up the clothes he’d brought in with him. ‘I’ll dress in the bedroom.’ He brushed past, colour still darkening his face. He couldn’t get away from her fast enough, she thought, untying her belt He might hate himself for wanting her but there was nothing he could do about it.
It must have been an unconscious desire to pay him back for the pain and humiliation he’d dished out that had been behind her decision to dress the way she had. Elena walked out of the living room onto the patio, where Jed and Catherine were eating breakfast, and saw fury darken his eyes and pull his mouth into a straight, hard line, and was wickedly glad she’d clothed herself in tiny lemon-yellow silk shorts and a matching cropped halter-necked top.
‘You look like a ray of morning sunshine!’ Catherine beamed, clearly having forgotten and forgiven Elena’s abrupt departure the evening before.
‘Thank you.’ She returned the older woman’s smile wholeheartedly. For the duration of Catherine’s stay she would play it Jed’s way—with an added twist of her own! A game she would play for all she was worth, because it would be a way of showing him, and, more importantly, herself, that she was far from beaten.
She pulled a chair out from the table and sat, angling herself towards her husband, her long, shapely legs stretched out. Triumphantly she watched a muscle jerk at the side of his tough jaw as his unwilling eyes travelled the lightly tanned length of them, fastened for a millisecond on the juncture of her thighs, swept up over her naked midriff, then lingered on her breasts, lovingly cradled in sexy sheer lemon silk.