she said and decided to keep her comments to herself. She couldn’t be jealous of someone in Jesse’s past and it sounded petty to criticise the unknown woman.
‘I spent a lot of time with her being interviewed, being photographed.’
‘And you fell for her.’
‘Hard and fast.’
Lizzie jumped down hard on an unwarranted twinge of jealousy. Her imagination was running crazy wondering what kind of photos Camilla had taken of Jesse and whether he’d been wearing any clothes. But she couldn’t ask.
‘Her time with us was limited,’ Jesse continued. ‘It was a pressure cooker environment. I managed to get hold of a sapphire ring. I proposed. She laughed. Then turned me down.’
‘She laughed?’ Indignation for Jesse swept through Lizzie.
‘Seemed what I’d thought was a serious relationship was a casual fling to her. She already had a fiancé at home in London. That was the first I’d heard of him. She had never told me she was anything other than single.’ The delivery of his words was matter-of-fact, emotionless, as if he didn’t care. But the rigid line of his mouth told Lizzie otherwise.
‘You must have been devastated.’
He shrugged. ‘You could say that.’
‘So what happened?’
‘She went home to London to marry the poor sucker.’
‘And you never saw her again?’
He paused. ‘Not from choice.’
‘What...what do you mean?’
‘She showed up in India at the start of this year to do a follow-up feature.’
‘On you?’
‘On the organisation I worked for. I wanted nothing to do with her.’
Something about the tone of his voice made her ask, ‘But she wanted you?’
‘To take up where we left off. Another fling. She was married by then and prepared to betray her husband.’
Under her breath, Lizzie uttered some choice swear words in French.
‘I don’t dare ask what that meant,’ Jesse said with a shadow of his grin.
‘Don’t,’ said Lizzie.
‘Probably nothing I wouldn’t have said myself,’ he said. ‘I told her what I thought of her and got transferred to another site.’
Lizzie put her hand on his arm. ‘I hate her on your behalf,’ she said vehemently. ‘How dare she do that to you? And what an idiot to...to have let you go. I would have...’ Her voice tapered off as she realised what she had said. What she had revealed. ‘I...I mean—’
Jesse cradled her face in his hands, dropped a kiss on her mouth. ‘That’s sweet of you,’ he said.
She managed a weak smile. ‘I...I think you’re kinda wonderful. I can’t imagine every other woman wouldn’t think so too.’
‘I’m glad you think I’m wonderful.’ He rolled his eyes in self-mockery.
‘You...you must know I do. I don’t mean that as a joke.’
Her breath hitched with awareness of how attractive she found him but it was so much more than the way he looked. ‘I missed you terribly while you were away in Sydney. It...it scared me. The thought of what it would be like when you leave for your job.’
‘I missed you too. I thought about you every minute of that four-hour trip to Sydney and all the way back.’
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