squeezed his chest. Why the hell hadn’t Danny rung him?
Jake clenched his fists by his sides. She was his life, his reason for being. What the hell had happened? He snatched the phone book up and slammed it onto the bench, rifled the pages for hospitals.
‘You won’t find her in there.’ Danny’s voice was slow and gentle.
Jake swung around. Danny stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, his face dour.
‘What is it? What’s happened to Meg? Where is she?’
‘She’s gone.’
Gone. His legs shook under him and he sank into the nearest chair. ‘What do you mean gone? Gone where? How?’
‘She left you three weeks ago.’
‘What?’ His voice broke and he covered his mouth with his hand, rubbing his bristles. This couldn’t be happening. Not to them. Not to him. Not after all he knew. He was never going to muck up his life like his parents had.
‘She packed up and left you.’
‘I don’t understand.’ The words choked him. He did everything right, didn’t he? Sure, he was away a lot. He was working hard for the security of owning their own home. Which was more than his own father ever had…half-sloshed in the front lounge and out of work until he walked out the door one day and didn’t come back.
Danny touched him on the shoulder. ‘She didn’t love you, mate, that’s all.’
‘That’s all?’ The words burst from his throat. How could it be? They were like music together. His loins heated at the memory of her.
‘You shouldn’t have swept her off her feet like that, so soon after her dad dying and all.’ Danny stalked to the door. ‘You didn’t deserve her.’
Jake lifted his head.
‘You weren’t good enough for her, mate.’ Danny stood tall and rigid, glaring at him. ‘You took her at a vulnerable time but now she’s woken up to her senses. She wants a life that doesn’t include you.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Apart from being here when you weren’t?’ He shifted his weight and looked at the floor. ‘Because I love her.’
‘What?’ Jake stood up and reduced the distance between them in a heartbeat, his blood surging with fury.
Danny quailed. ‘I didn’t tell Meg. Truly, I didn’t.’ He looked to the door. ‘I wish I had.’
Pain branded Jake deep in the chest. ‘Get out!’
The man who had been his best mate for as long as he could remember turned away from him like a stranger and melted into the shadows.
Jake blindly stumbled to the mantelpiece, his breath coming harsh and hard. He reached out, touching the photos, tracing Meg’s smiling eyes, her soft lips, her silky blonde hair that used to drape over his chest as she slept.
So he wasn’t what she wanted.
Regrets assailed him. Yes. He’d done a lot wrong. Too fast. Too busy. Too blind. He looked to the door and it was all he could do not to go after her. But it wouldn’t change anything. He was still the man he was.
Jake sat in lonely silence, his thoughts jagged, painful. A bitter battle raged between his own desires and the needs of the woman he loved with all his heart and soul.
There was only one decision to make. He was going to become his own man, become more civilised, become the man that would win Meg’s heart. And then he’d find her, make her his…and never let her go.
CHAPTER ONE
‘WOW, would you get a load of that one?’ Suzie gestured wildly. ‘He’s a 9.9 on the male Richter scale!’
Megan James turned in her seat and smiled at her best friend’s enthusiasm. She scanned the busy Melbourne restaurant obligingly, perusing the suited men that crowded the place. Suzie sure knew how to pick restaurants for single women to have lunch in—there had to be at least ten men for every woman, and the added bonus of the very virile, handsome Italian waiters.
‘The tourist.’ Suzie pointed to the well-built man at the bar.
His casual attire made him stick out among the businessmen. He was tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped and long-legged. A tailor’s delight. It would have been nice to design that shirt and trousers around his body.
A warm tingle caressed her spine. He certainly radiated ‘wrap your arms around me’. Meg sighed. So he had a nice body, but nothing outstanding she could see that would elicit such a response from Suzie—except his taste in clothes. But then, she couldn’t see his face.
Suzie nudged her. ‘Well?’
Meg shrugged and pushed a strand of her short blonde hair back from her face. ‘I can’t even see him properly. He could have a face like—’
He turned towards them as if on cue. His vivid green eyes scanned the room with a casual indifference.
Meg’s stomach clenched tight. He was clean-shaven, his strong jawline giving his features a power that she’d forgotten. His dark hair was cut short now, but there was no mistaking him; his ruggedly handsome face was all too familiar.
Meg grabbed the menu she’d left idle in front of her and slapped it to her face, her heart thudding fiercely.
‘What are you doing? Have you gone crazy, Meg?’
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she whispered shakily from behind the menu. Meg’s mind tumbled around in confusion. How could he have found her after all this time? It had to be coincidence.
Desire pulsed hot through her veins, bringing a deep low ache to her body, enticing her mind into fantasies of what they’d shared once, long ago.
Damn him. She was still as disturbed by him as she had been three years ago. And now he was here. She shook off her body’s traitorous response. She’d always told herself that if he came looking for her it would be out of obligation, but as the days, weeks and then months had gone by, and he hadn’t turned up, she’d concluded soberly that she hadn’t meant anything to him. She’d been a notch for his ego with a dose of obligation thrown in—nothing more.
‘Why?’ Suzie sounded bewildered. ‘Don’t you like him? You’d look great together, and he’s definitely loaded. He’s perfect for you.’
‘Believe me, he’s not.’ Meg lowered the menu slightly to see her over-zealous friend ogling the man she could only label as an ordeal personified. The man who had sent her whole life awry.
‘Come on, Meg. Gosh, you sound like some old prude. He looks like the perfect stranger to me.’
He’s not a stranger—and he’s far from perfect! she wanted to yell. For years Meg had fostered a crush on him. Years of teenage fantasies about the boy next door falling in love with
