of jealousy, envy, even?
‘He was a good friend,’ she responded, hating the breathless catch in her voice. She watched the long, hard fingers strip the peel from the fruit. Suddenly there seemed something ruthless about the movements. She wondered if she knew him as thoroughly as she’d thought she did.
She shivered, and heard him say, ‘In a way, I think he deplored the fact that I did my duty, as he called it—knuckled down and joined the family business and took the responsibility of heading it after Father died—despised me a little, even.’
‘No!’ She couldn’t let him think that. ‘He admired you, and respected you—maybe grudgingly—for doing your duty, and doing it so well. He once told me that your business brain scared the you-know-what out of him, and that he preferred to go off and do his own thing rather than live in your shadow, a pale second-best.’
Jed gave her a long, searching look, as if he was turning her words over in his mind, weighing the truth of them, before at last admitting, ‘I didn’t know that. Maybe I wouldn’t have envied him his freedom to do as he pleased and to hell with everyone else if I had.’ Regret tightened his mouth. ‘I guess there’s a whole raft of things I didn’t know about my kid brother. Except, of course, how fond he was of you. When he came home on those flying visits of his the conversation always came round to you. He gave me one of your books and told me to be impressed. I was; I didn’t need telling,’ he complimented coolly. ‘You handle horror with a sophistication, intelligence and subtlety that makes a refreshing change from the usual crude blood and gore of the genre.’
‘Thank you.’ I think, she added to herself. There was something in his voice she had never heard before. Something dark and condemning. She left her seat swiftly and went to lean against the wall, looking at the endless view which always soothed her spirits but signally failed to do anything of the sort this morning.
Perched on a limestone ridge, high above a tiny white-walled village, her home benefited from the pine-scented salt breezes crossing western Andalucia from the Atlantic, moderating the heat of the burning May sun.
Elena closed her eyes and tried to close her mind to everything but the cooling sensation of the light wind on her face. Just a few moments of respite before she had to face the truth, brace herself to break the news to Jed before the day ended. Could she use her gift for words to make him understand just why she had acted as she had? It didn’t seem possible, she thought defeatedly.
Since the ending of her first disastrous marriage, she had refused to let anything defeat her, get in the way of her fight for successful independence. But this—this was something else...
‘You haven’t eaten a thing.’ He’d come to stand behind her, not touching but very close. The heat of his body scorched her, yet she shivered. ‘Not hungry? Suddenly lost your appetite?’
His cool tones terrified her. He hadn’t already guessed, had he? No, of course he hadn’t. How could he? Despising herself for the way she seemed to be heading—spoiling the morning and the few hours’ respite she’d promised herself—she turned and forced a smile to the mouth she had always considered far too wide.
‘No, just lazy, I guess.’ She walked back to the table. She would have to force something into a stomach that felt as if it would reject anything she tried to feed it. ‘I thought we might go down to the coast today.’ She plucked a few grapes from the dewy bunch nestling in the fruit bowl. ‘Cadiz, perhaps, or Vejer de la Frontera if you fancy somewhere quieter. We haven’t set foot outside the property all week.’
Edgy, acutely aware of the way he was watching her, she popped a grape into her mouth and felt her throat close up as he answered, ‘So far, we haven’t felt the need to, remember?’
She bit on the grape and forced it down, because she could hardly spit the wretched thing out. His words had been idly spoken, yet the underlining accusation came through loud and clear. They hadn’t needed to leave the property; they’d had all they needed in each other. Simple expeditions through the gardens and into the pine woods, eating on the patio or in the rose-covered arbour, their lives attuned to the wonderful solitude, the rhythm of their lovemaking, the deep rapture of simply being. Together.
‘Of course I do.’ Her voice was thick, everything inside her panicking. The incredible feeling of closeness, of being made for each other, was slipping away. She knew it would happen once she’d broken her news, but the frightening distance between them had no right to be happening now. It hadn’t been there before he’d begun to talk of Sam. ‘Pilar, who helps me around the house, was instructed to keep well clear after stocking the fridge on the morning we arrived’ She spoke as lightly as she could, desperate to recreate all that wonderful closeness for just a little longer. ‘We’re starting to run low on provisions, so I thought we could combine shopping with sightseeing, that’s all.’
‘Is it?’ He prowled back to the chair opposite hers and sat, his hands clenched in the side pockets of his trousers. Steel-grey eyes searched her face. His voice was low, sombre, as he imparted, ‘Sam and I had our differences, but he was my brother and I loved him. His death rocked me. Until coming here, to where he was happy, where he found peace and comfort, I haven’t been able to open up about what I feel. Yet it seems to me that you don’t want to talk about him Get edgy when I mention his name. Why is that?’ he wanted to know.
What to say? She couldn’t deny it. She picked up her cup of now cold coffee and swallowed half of it down a throat that was aching with tension, and Jed asked tightly, ‘Were you lovers? Is that the reason?’
Dread tore at her heart, knotted her stomach, perspiration dewing her forehead. For the first time since meeting him she deeply regretted his uncanny ability to see right into her soul. She twisted her hands in her lap and tried to smile.
‘Why do you ask? Don’t tell me you’re trying to pick a fight!’ Did her prevarication come out sounding as jokey as she’d intended? Or had she merely sounded as if she were being strangled?
‘I ask because my talking about him appears to disturb you. It’s something I never considered before, but from what I can gather Sam spent a fair amount of time here. He was a handsome son-of-a-gun. Add the spice of a dangerous occupation—no mere shopkeeper , our Sam—and an extremely beautiful woman with a talent he greatly admired, and what do you get?’ He lifted one brow. ‘I repeat the question.’
Elena felt everything inside her start to shake. Although Jed was doing his best to look relaxed and in control, his hands were still making fists in his side pockets, and that tough, shadowed jaw was tight. There was more to this than she could fully understand.
The fact that she’d been married before hadn’t mattered to him. He hadn’t wanted her to talk about it, had assimilated her, ‘It was a dreadful mistake; he turned out to be completely rotten,’ then refused to let her go on with the complete explanation she’d intended to make.
He’d dismissed her marriage to Liam Forrester as a total irrelevance, and had never once asked if there had been any other man in her life in the intervening years. He had acted as though their future was the only thing that was important to him.
Yet couple her name with Sam’s and something suspiciously resembling jealousy and anger stared out of the eyes that had, thus far, only looked at her with love, warmth and hungry desire.
Because Sam had been his brother? Was there a twist of bitterness on that sensual mouth now? The sardonic stress he’d laid on the word ‘shopkeeper’ told her that Sam must have tossed that taunt at him at some time, told her that it still rankled.
And had
