had cried almost hysterically after losing the baby, and felt as if she had cried herself out. All that was left was a numb feeling—and her hatred of Jordan.
‘The doctor told me I have to expect strange moods from you,’ Jordan eyed her thoughtfully, ‘but don’t expect my patience with you to be limitless.’
‘I don’t expect anything from you,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to my room to rest before dinner.’
‘Our room, Kelly,’ he corrected softly.
She gave him a sharp look, dark colour creeping into her pale cheeks. ‘I consider it my room, as you haven’t chosen to share it with me for several months.’
‘I intend changing that now that——’
‘Now that I’m no longer pregnant!’ she finished shrilly. ‘You can do what you choose, but don’t expect me to welcome you back.’
‘Kelly——’
‘I believe I’ve already said this once today, Jordan, but go to hell!’ This time she managed to escape to the bedroom without further interruption.
Once inside she almost collapsed on to the bed, feeling curiously weak. If Jordan was serious about sharing her bed once again then she knew she had to get away from here as soon as possible. Not that she thought he would expect a physical relationship from her just yet, but she couldn’t even bear to have him sleeping in the same room as herself.
Why on earth had he married her? In the six months they had been married not one word of love had passed his lips, words of passion and possession, but never love. This had never particularly bothered her, their lovemaking seeming to show her the depth of his feeling for her, and yet even that hadn’t been hers alone; she had been sharing him with his sexy secretary, and heaven knew how many other women.
She had fallen asleep soon after going to her bedroom, woken up to find there was only half an hour left before her father arrived. As she swung her legs to the floor Jordan came in from the adjoining bathroom, dressed only in a navy blue towelling robe, Kelly instantly stiffened at the intimacy of the situation, although the cool look she gave him showed him none of her tumultuous feelings inside.
‘You should have woken me,’ she remarked distantly.
‘Should I?’ he drawled, rubbing his damp hair dry with a towel. ‘You said you wanted to rest.’
‘But not for this long.’ She pushed her hair back, forcing herself not to be aware of the way Jordan’s towelling robe had fallen open at the chest to reveal his smooth dark skin and the silky mat of dark hair that grew there. ‘You’ll have to entertain Daddy while I shower and dress.’ She turned away.
Jordan threw the towel on the huge double bed they were to share from now on, moving towards her with a determination she knew of old. ‘Entertaining your father wasn’t quite what I had in mind for my immediate future,’ he murmured, his eyes on her mouth. ‘Come here,’ he ordered huskily.
‘Not just now.’ She stood up to begin looking through her numerous evening dresses in the floor-to-ceiling wardrobe, dresses she hadn’t been able to wear the last few months with the thickening of her waistline. Looking down at her slenderness, it had seemed hard to think that she had ever been carrying Jordan’s child.
‘Kelly!’ his hands came down on her hips, pulling her back against him. ‘God, I’ve missed you in my arms,’ he groaned into her throat.
Kelly felt sick, his touch almost obscene to her. ‘Please, Jordan,’ she squirmed away from him. ‘This is hardly the time for that sort of thing.’
‘That sort of thing?’ he repeated softly. ‘All I wanted to do was kiss my wife, maybe hold her against me for a while.’
She gave him a vague smile. ‘We don’t have the time for that, Daddy will be here soon, and neither of us is ready to go down and greet him.’
‘Damn Daddy,’ he said viciously, his face darkening angrily. ‘You don’t want me to kiss you, is that it?’
She had shuddered at the very thought. As far as she knew he could even have been with Angela Divine while she was in hospital, and now he wanted to kiss her! ‘That’s right,’ she agreed unhesitantly. ‘I have no desire to be kissed by you.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ He turned away.
She had felt nothing in his arms, nothing but a cold emptiness that bore no resemblance to her former love for him. She felt nothing but hate for him, felt none of the love, and none of the pleasure of just being with him. She had known in that moment that their marriage had to end.
Kelly shuddered back to an awareness of her surroundings, sure that only minutes had passed since she had seen Jordan step into that lift, and yet in that time she had relived all the pain and disillusionment she had suffered at his hands.
To him their marriage vows had meant she became his exclusive property, while he still continued to live and act like a bachelor. He must have thought her so naïve, must have found her childish pleasure in being his wife so amusing.
Well, she was a woman now, five years older—and wiser, she hoped. She was a calm self-assured woman who was unnerved by little. She lived with her father, played his hostess, and had heard nothing from her ex-husband since the evening she had walked out on him. Not that he actually was her ex-husband, there had been no divorce. But although she had retained his name she had considered herself a free woman for the last five years. And Jordan had assuredly considered himself a single man!
Her father had been her strength from that first night, in the end accepting her pleas for him to let her go home with him. It had all been so much easier than she had thought it would be, as her fears of Jordan coming after her had never materialised. For all his threats that she would never be allowed to leave him she had been calmly allowed to walk out of his life for ever.
And now he was here, in the same hotel as she was.
She would have to book out of here as soon as possible. She hurried over to the reception desk, aware that once again she would be running away from Jordan, but also knowing that with him here it was the safest course. How he would love a situation like this, would find her embarrassment amusing.
She smiled at the beautiful girl behind the reception desk, subconsciously wondering whether Jordan had found the young girl attractive. Jordan had a passion for blondes, which made it all the more surprising that he had chosen to marry her. She had had long black hair when he had last known her, although it had now been styled into a becoming bob, framing the thinness of her pale face, emphasising the intensity of her navy blue eyes.
She had been a step out of character for Jordan, a deviation from the usual type of woman he was attracted to. But that he had been deeply attracted had been obvious from the first, and once they had been married not a day went by when she didn’t know the deep fierceness of his possession. Until she had told him about the baby! Knowing she was carrying his child had turned him off her physically, and with the added strain of this estrangement from her husband’s arms she had been forced to acknowledge they had little else to keep them together.
‘Mrs Lord?’ The beautiful curvaceous blonde behind the desk smiled at her enquiringly.
Yes,
