‘Jed! Wait!’
But he was already striding back towards the house, finding his way through the narrow, winding paths, and much as she would have liked to stay out here, nursing wounds, she knew she had to follow.
It was almost fully dark now, the only signposts the darker undersides of the crowded plants where they encroached on the edges of the paths. Angry frustration beat through her veins, making her temples throb. It wasn’t the fact that she was carrying another man’s child that was responsible for this unholy mess, it was his own damned intransigence, his refusal to listen, his uncompromising hostility!
She caught up with him in the kitchen. He was pouring whisky into a tumbler. He had his back to her, and when he turned she could see he was calmer, back in control of himself and his emotions.
Well, bully for him! She wasn’t. No way! Flooded with adrenalin, she stared at him, rigid with strain, seagreen eyes clashing with the cool, slightly contemptuous grey of his.
‘Instead of trying to bend my ear with the details of your affair with my brother, why don’t you tell me something about your first husband?’
‘Liam?’ Her brows pulled down in a frown. ‘Why? You never wanted me to talk about him before.’
‘His existence in your life wasn’t important when I believed you were perfection on two legs. The past didn’t matter—only our present and our future. But now we don’t have a future worth the name.’ He pulled a chair out from the central table and straddled it, arms leaning across the back-rest, beautifully crafted hands holding his glass loosely. He looked set for an hour or two of relaxed conversation.
Elena knew better. She brushed past him to get to the fridge to pour orange juice, to ease the tense muscles of her parched throat. She wanted to scream and shout, but knew she couldn’t risk waking Catherine.
He took a mouthful of whisky. ‘Well? Given the drastic alteration in my opinion of you, I’m asking now. You divorced him, you said. Why was that? Didn’t he look right? Wasn’t he good enough in bed? Rich enough?’
She wanted to toss her juice in his face, but her hands were shaking so badly with reined-in temper she could barely hold the glass. She slid it onto a work surface and Jed lobbed at her. ‘Or was it the other way around? Did he divorce you because he, too, found out you weren’t what you seemed?’
She felt her face flare with redoubled anger. Perhaps he wanted to discuss Liam because he couldn’t bear to hear about her relationship with Sam. Suddenly she was too enraged to care. And what had possessed her to fall in love with someone so bitter and twisted she would never know!
He wanted a run-down on her relationship with Liam. So she’d give him one. And if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear he had only himself to blame. She forced her mouth into a defiant parody of a smile. ‘Liam was very good to look at’ Slightly brash, though, she could see now, from her vantage point of maturity, but she wasn’t telling Jed that. ‘All the girls were crazy about him and Mum thought he was God’s gift—and for a woman who’s as embittered as she is about the whole male sex, that’s some accolade!’ Her mouth gave another defiant twist. ‘One of my friends threw a birthday party at some fancy club and that’s where we met. He swept me off my feet, as the saying goes.’
Because she’d been desperate to be loved. Her parents had given her little of that precious commodity. Her father’s job had taken him away a lot, and, in any case, he’d been too busy chasing anything in skirts to have time for his daughter. And her mother had been too busy wallowing in self-pity over the miserable state of her marriage to have time to think of her child’s very real needs.
Unconsciously, she placed a hand over her tummy. Her child wouldn’t suffer because of its mother’s wrecked marriage!
‘And I had no complaints about his performance in bed, either,’ she told him toughly. She’d been a virgin when she’d met Liam, so she’d had no experience to draw on. Only when making love with Jed had she discovered the ecstasy, the almost terrifying rapture. But she wouldn’t think about that. If she did it would remind her of the love they’d found together, and lost, and she’d start crying again.
She saw his hard mouth twist, and knew she’d pierced the veneer of calm indifference. She ignored it because she couldn’t afford to feel any empathy with him and stated bluntly, ‘There was plenty of money, too. I kept my job on as a dogsbody in a local newspaper office, and he managed one of the city’s betting shops. He drove a fast Japanese car and we spent our evenings in the best clubs. He liked me to look glamorous for him. He spent money like there was a bottomless pit of the stuff. I found out where that pit was when I came down with flu one day and left work early. I discovered his lucrative sideline in criminal activities by chance—he cloned credit cards.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Believe it, or not, I despise dishonesty. I despised him for the web of deceit he’d spun around me. I left him.’