her long shapely legs, which were encased in soft worn denim, and the pretty pink top she’d donned, which was fastened at the front with little pearl buttons. In her apparent haste to get dressed the top two buttons had been left undone, inadvertently revealing the creamy cleft between her breasts, and the arresting sight made him catch his breath.
But she might not have left the buttons undone deliberately—she hardly needed to resort to feminine wiles to get his attention. All the woman had to do was glance at him with those bewitching emerald eyes and Jake was all hers.
‘Neither,’ he answered. ‘Why don’t you just come and sit down so we can talk?’
Caitlin acquiesced, her brows puckering when she noticed that one of her multi-coloured cushions was lying on the floor. Inside her chest, her heart was galloping at what felt like a worrying breakneck speed.
When Jake had asserted that sooner or later they would have to ‘deal with it’, had he been saying that it was inevitable that they had an affair? Because if he had then he hadn’t reckoned with her iron will. It didn’t matter how attracted she was to the man, she wasn’t the type to jump thoughtlessly into bed with him. Sean was the only man she’d ever been intimate with, and to be honest it hadn’t been anything to write home about even when she’d foolishly imagined herself in love with him.
Being a singer and a member of Blue Sky was far more important than having a hot little affair with the band’s manager, she told herself.
‘I was rough on you today.’ Still standing in the centre of the room, Jake rubbed a hand round his beard-darkened jaw. ‘I feel like I owe you an apology.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I pushed you too hard.’ He flinched as though genuinely regretting it.
‘You don’t have to apologise. I know I’ve still got a long way to go and I need all the help and guidance I can get. Rick says that you’re the best, and so do the others. I’m hungry to learn, Jake. You shouldn’t lose any sleep over the fact that you had to yell at me a few times.’
Gritting his teeth, he silently cursed the ache in his groin that refused to be tamped. It wasn’t the fact that he’d lost his temper a few times that he was losing sleep over. She was sitting on her sofa, looking about as tempting as Eve in the Garden of Eden, and her soothing velvet voice rolled over him like honey. She might not know it but she was seducing him as thoroughly as if she sat there naked, beckoning him to come to her.
‘Are you always this reasonable?’ He quirked an eyebrow.
Although he’d apologised, he was still spoiling for an argument—anything to defuse the sexually charged tension between them.
‘No.’ An amused smile played at the corners of her mouth. ‘Sean used to accuse me of being unreasonable all the time.’
‘Sean?’
‘My ex-boyfriend.’
‘The drug addict.’ Jake hadn’t meant to sound cruel, but the fact was he wasn’t in the mood to be magnanimous. A stab of jealousy had sliced through his insides at Caitlin’s reference to the man she’d previously been in a relationship with.
Suddenly rising to her feet, she let her fingers toy restlessly with the little pearl buttons on her blouse. The gesture inevitably drew his gaze.
‘Amongst other things he was a painter and decorator by trade. Not that he was in work very often…For obvious reasons.’ Her expression was briefly pained. ‘But, like you said, just because he was an addict, it didn’t mean he was a bad person. He was easily led by some unsavoury friends, that was the trouble.’
Caitlin dipped her head and Jake found himself automatically taking a step towards her.
‘So, you were “unreasonable” because you tried to warn him off those so-called friends?’
‘Yes… That and because I didn’t give him money as often as he liked to buy his drugs. I was struggling to keep the roof over our heads as it was. I had a lovely flat that I’d bought with a legacy my grandmother had left me and I was eventually forced to sell it because of Sean. He was in so much debt due to his drug habit.’
‘And where is he now?’ he asked. A million miles away, he hoped. Outer Mongolia wouldn’t be far enough.
‘When we broke up he said he was going to London. His brother lives there and he was going to stay with him to try and straighten himself out. I hope for his sake he was able to. But, that said, I’m just so glad he’s out of my life. Being with him had me fearing for my sanity. I hardly knew who I was any more. Sometimes I can’t believe what a fool I was to trust him and believe that he would change. One thing’s for sure…I’ll never give my trust so easily to a man again.’
Her emerald eyes glistened briefly and Jake swallowed hard. He hated the idea that she wasted even a second of her time thinking about her ex and what he had put her through.
‘Anyway, I don’t know why I’m standing here telling you all this,’ she finished.
‘I asked you to. What about your family? Were they supportive when they found out what was going on?’
‘My parents and my brother are in America. He moved out there first and they followed. They’ve started up a business out there. Anyway…’
With a shrug Caitlin briefly met his eyes and then looked quickly away again.
‘I didn’t want them to worry about me so I didn’t tell them. I made my bed and I had to lie in it. They gave me the chance of going with them when they left but I opted not to take it. Besides, they always taught me it was important to stand on my own two feet, and I wasn’t going to go running to them the moment I was in trouble. I wanted to prove to myself and to them that I could turn my life around and be proud of myself.’
‘Whilst that’s commendable, I thought families were supposed to help each other out when one of them was in trouble?’
‘Do yours? Help you when you’re in trouble I mean?’
Jake hadn’t expected her to turn the question on him. For a dizzying moment he found himself awash in a sea of feelings that he usually tried to submerge…feelings of pain, confusion and a sickening sense of being abandoned by life.
His mouth drying, he answered, ‘No… They don’t. They can’t. I don’t know who they are. I was raised in a children’s home.’
Caitlin’s bewitching green eyes immediately softened. ‘Oh, Jake…I’m so sorry.’
The suggestion of concerned sympathy in her voice was like a gun pointed straight at his heart. He immediately sought to deflect it.
‘Don’t be. I learned very quickly not to depend on anyone else for either my happiness or my wellbeing. I survived the experience—that’s all you need to know. That’s all anyone needs to know.’
Twisting her hands together, she took a few moments before commenting, ‘You’ve done more than just survive, Jake. You’ve made an amazing success of your life.’
‘Is that how it looks to you?’ The question was painfully ironic.
