She hated it when he was sarcastic. It made her hurt so badly she couldn’t think of a snappy come-back, and simply stared at him when he said, ‘I’ll take you home, then drive back in for that meeting. Shall we go?’
‘There’s no need. I’m—’
‘The state you’re in, do you think I’d have a moment’s peace if you were behind the wheel of a potentially lethal weapon?’
He held the door open for her and all she could do was follow. She’d been perfectly capable of driving—if not exactly looking forward to the city traffic—before he’d popped up where she hadn’t expected him to be and ruined everything.
She didn’t suppose he’d altered his arrangement out of concern for her well-being. He wouldn’t have a moment’s peace if he thought she was likely to put a dent in his prestigious car!
As he held the passenger door open for her five minutes later he gave her a narrow-eyed stare. ‘When we’ve cleared the traffic you can tell me more about this story you’ve concocted to convince Catherine that you and I can live happily ever after, despite the little hiccup of your being pregnant with my brother’s child. Fasten your seat belt.’
He closed the door and paced round the front of the gleaming silver car. She closed her eyes defeatedly.
Of course he didn’t believe her. Had she really expected he would? There was too much going on inside his head as far as Sam was concerned to let him accept the truth.
The silence between them was intense, building up to scary proportions as the sleek car edged forward in the inevitable traffic snarl-ups. Jed’s long fingers drummed impotently on the steering wheel, his profile grim. Despite the warmth of the early summer day Elena shivered. She couldn’t wait until they got out of this and hit the open road. Maybe then this twisting tension would ease off just a little, allow her racing heartbeats to settle down.
But when they did she wished they hadn’t, because he said, ‘Congratulations. When you came up with this fairy tale—nothing between you and Sam but a clinical procedure—I thought it was to placate me. But it wasn’t, was it? It was a way of getting Catherine on your side. Our marriage ends in divorce—which is what you want—you come out of it smelling of roses and I’m the big, bad ogre. Bully for you! Who else but you could have come up with such a story? It’s too incredible not to be believed.’
‘Except by you, of course,’ she said through her teeth, staring out of the window at her side, uninterestedly watching the stockbroker belt slip by.
‘Of course,’ he concurred, uncharacteristically slowing down a touch to keep within the speed limit. Elena gave a mental shrug. She had expected him to really put his foot down, deliver her back to Netherhaye in record time, not prolong the agony of being cocooned here together, physically close but mentally and emotionally at opposite ends of the galaxy.
‘Whether you believe it or not, it’s the truth,’ she told him bitterly.
Jed gave a derisive snort. ‘Lady, you slay me! Do you actually believe I’m green enough to fall for such an unlikely story? For starters,’ he bit out, when her only answer was a weary shrug, ‘if it had been the truth you’d have told me about it.’
Stung into speech by the unfairness of that, she retorted, ‘I tried to, remember? Several times. You flatly refused to listen. Then, when you had no option but to listen, you decided I was telling lies. You decided Sam and I had been having an affair and I’d married you knowing I was carrying his child.’
‘I mean before we married. You didn’t think to warn me we might be expecting the patter of tiny feet rather sooner than I might have expected.’
She let her head sag back against the smooth leather upholstery. She felt too wretched to speak. And what was the point in telling him anything? He would only accuse her of lying, whatever she said.
‘Well?’ he prompted coolly. ‘I do need to know, if you intend to spin this yarn for Catherine. We need to get our stories straight.’
Elena’s stomach knotted painfully. How could something that had been so beautiful have come to this? The death of love was a terrible, terrible thing. Couldn’t he see what tying them together with lies created for public consumption would do to them?
Outside the car the rolling countryside shimmered in the early summer heat; inside the air-conditioning made her shiver—or perhaps it was the icy wash of his voice. ‘If anyone asks I take it you intend to say I was fully aware of the situation all along? The truth—that I was completely in the dark until circumstances forced you to come clean—would point to a certain lack of common decency on your part.’