that why you didn’t tell anyone, Annie? Because you didn’t want to admit what a terrible mistake you’d made?”
“I’ve been a coward, all right? Is that what you wanted to hear? I didn’t want to face everyone’s questions because I didn’t have any answers. At first I was waiting until you answered my letter, but you never did. The more time that passed, the harder it was to say anything.”
Jack rubbed his face. She was the one who hadn’t answered, not him. He’d sent her that ticket and she’d ignored it. “Let’s not argue about whether I answered your first letter or not. I’m here because of your second letter.”
She stared at him. “My second letter? You ignored the four-page letter I wrote you and came tearing back because I got mad about what some idiotic ex-girlfriend of yours did when she stopped taking her medication?”
He grabbed her shoulders to keep her from moving away. “You said you got an anonymous letter. That it threatened you. What did it say, exactly?”
“A bunch of nonsense about how I’d be sorry that I’d married you. For goodness’ sake, Jack, it wasn’t important.”
“Did you keep it?”
“Of course not.” She tried to shrug his hands off. “I can’t believe this. Is that letter the reason you’re here?”
“It’s one of the reasons. Look, Annie, we’ve got to get some things settled, and I’d just as soon do that before your brothers get home.”
The freckles that were scattered across that cute little nose stood out in stark contrast to her sudden pallor. “All right. All right, I know what you mean. You want a divorce. I won’t protest. I just hope we can handle it…quietly.”
“Divorce?” Anger rose, quick and hard, a thick snake wrapping its coils around him and squeezing. “I’m not here to ask you for a divorce, Annie. I’m here to claim the wedding night we never had.”
Chapter 2
Annie fell back a step. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“What’s so hard to understand? You keep saying our marriage wasn’t real. A wedding night ought to change your mind. And you owe me that much. You didn’t keep your other promises.”
Annie stared at the man she’d thought she knew as well as she knew anyone in this world. She didn’t recognize him.
Oh, she knew the face. Jack had one of those charmingly irregular faces made for crooked smiles and wicked suggestions, a collection of roughly matched features that somehow added up to be a whole that’s more appealing than the static gloss of standard good looks. But the look in his dark chocolate eyes turned that familiar landscape foreign and frightening. She’d never seen them so hard. Even on the terrible night when they’d hurled words at each other like grenades, his eyes had been hot with temper.
Now that anger seemed to have aged and hardened, twisting his thoughts into alien shapes.
“Oh, Jack,” she said sadly. “Is this what we’ve come to?”
“What do you mean? We’re talking, aren’t we? Working things out.” He moved closer. “You ought to be happy. From what I can tell, women are nuts about talking and working things out.”
“What is there to work out? You don’t even like me very much anymore.” And that was her fault. She’d known better than to give in to the attraction she’d always felt for Jack, because she knew Jack. He was a great friend—fun, funny and loyal. But he was hell on any woman foolish enough to care about him.
The alien anger vanished in a flash of surprise. “Of course I like you. You’re Annie.”
“You keep saying that as if my name were some sort of explanation!”
“Well, isn’t it? We’ve been friends for a long time.”
“We should have stayed friends. Only friends.”
“There’s no reason we can’t be friends and be married, too.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.” Probably he couldn’t understand, and because of that she had hurt him. She had put that calcified anger into his eyes, and that made her ache. “Jack, I want more than friendship from marriage.”
“It’s you who doesn’t understand.” Frustrated, he ran a hand over his hair. It was too short for his gesture to mess it up. “Look, if I’m willing to forgive you for running away, you ought to be willing to meet me halfway.”
His gesture distracted her…or maybe she just wasn’t ready to get into a discussion that she knew was going to hurt.
The last time she’d seen Jack, his hair had been long, shaggy, intriguingly streaked by the blistering sun of Paraguay. She’d touched those pretty streaks, tangling her fingers in his hair. But now it was too short to run her fingers through. Now the best she could do would be to pet it, stroke all that soft brown hair along the curve of his head….
Her lips tightened. She couldn’t afford those kind of thoughts.
“What’s wrong now?”
She said the first thing that came to mind. “You let the barber scalp you again.”
He gave her an irritated glance. “I’m trying to have a serious talk, here, Annie. Do you think we could save the comments on my appearance for later?”
“It’s not just your hair. You’re looking thin, too, and you’re limping. You need to take better care of yourself, Jack.”
He cocked his head to one side. “I know what you’re doing. The question is—do you?”
“I’m not doing anything except offering you a little advice.”
“You’re trying to go back to pretending you’re my sister. It won’t work, Annie. Not anymore. Not when I’ve held you in my arms and felt you turn to fire.”
Her face went hot and tight. She turned away. “I’m not going to go to bed with you.”
“Want to bet?”
Something dark and ominous in his voice made her whirl—but as fast as she moved, he was faster. He seized her shoulders and jerked her up against him, and she almost cried—at the harshness of his face, at the impossibly dear feeling of his body against hers. Her heart pounded. “Let go of me.”
His lip curled. “I don’t think so.”
He was looking at her mouth, and the throb of her pulse alarmed her more than the taunting arousal of his body. She tasted that dark rhythm in her throat. And elsewhere. “I don’t want this.”
“You know, I don’t think you ever lied to me before you married me.”
She’d been wrong. She had seen a hardness like this in Jack’s eyes before—when he was competing. Jack was easygoing most of the time, but there was a buried edge to him that surfaced when he set himself to win, and she had become a challenge to him. Something to be won.
