heat than in the shadowy air-conditioned coolness they were enjoying?
‘Time to get dressed,’ Caid murmured as he leaned over to kiss her.
‘Dressed? I thought we were going to talk,’ Jaz reminded him.
A sexy smile crooked his mouth.
‘We are!’ he confirmed. ‘Which is why we need to get dressed. If we stay here like this, talking isn’t going to be what I feel like doing,’ he added, in case Jaz had missed his point. ‘I can’t wait for us to be married, Jaz, or to take you home with me to Colorado—to the ranch. We can begin our lives together properly there. With your background, you’ll love it, I’ll get you your own horse, so that we can ride out together, and then, when the kids come along—’
‘Your ranch?’ Jaz stopped him in a shocked voice. ‘What ranch? What are you talking about, Caid? You’re a businessman—a financial consultant. The stores…’
‘I am a financial consultant,’ Caid agreed, starting to frown as he heard the note of shocked anxiety in Jaz’s voice. ‘But that’s what I do to make enough money to finance the ranch until it can finance itself. And as for the stores…to be involved in the stores or anything connected with them is the last way I would ever want to live my life. To me they epitomise everything I most dislike and despise.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘I could say that I have a hate-hate relationship with them. Personally, I can see nothing worthwhile in scouring the world for potential possessions for people who already have more than they need. That’s not what life should be about.’
Jaz couldn’t help herself—his angry words had resurrected too many painful memories for her.
‘But living on a ranch, chasing round after cattle all day, presumably is?’ she challenged him shakily.
With every word he had uttered Caid had knocked a larger and larger hole in her beliefs, her illusions about the kind of relationship and goals they shared. Jaz recognised in shocked bewilderment that Caid simply wasn’t the man she had believed him to be.
‘The stores aren’t just about…about selling things, Caid,’ she told him passionately. ‘They’re about opening people’s eyes…their senses…to beauty; they’re about…Surely you can understand what I’m trying to say?’ Jaz pleaded.
Caid narrowed his eyes as he heard the agitation and the anger in Jaz’s voice. From out of the past he could hear his mother’s voice echoing in his six-year-old ears.
‘No, Caid. I can’t stay. I have to go. Think about all those people I would be disappointing if I didn’t find them beautiful things to buy! Surely you can understand?’
No! I don’t understand! Caid had wanted to cry, but he had been too young to find the words he wanted to say, and already too proud, too aware of his male status, to let her see his pain.
But he certainly wasn’t going to make the mistake of holding back on telling Jaz how he felt.
‘I thought we were talking about us, Jaz! About our future—our lives together. So why in hell’s name are we talking about the stores?’
‘Because I work in one of them, and so far as I am concerned my work is a vitally important part of my life.’
‘How vitally important?’ Caid demanded ominously, his voice suddenly icily cold.
Jaz felt as though the ground that had seemed so safe and solid was suddenly threatening to give way beneath her, as though she was rushing headlong into danger. But it was a danger she had faced before, wasn’t it? Listening to Caid was in many ways just like listening to her parents—although Caid’s anger and bitterness was a frighteningly adult and dangerous version of parental emotion.
She felt intensely threatened by it—not in any physical sense, but in the sense that his attitude threatened her personal freedom to be herself.
As she looked at him, remembering the intimacy they had just shared, the love he had shown her, she was tempted to back down. But how could she and still be true to herself?
‘My work is as important to me as it gets,’ she told him determinedly. Though what she was saying was perhaps not strictly true. It was not so much her job that was important to her as the fact that it allowed her to express her creativity, and it was her creativity she would never compromise on or give up. ‘As important,’ she continued brittly, ‘as you probably consider yours to be to you!’
‘Nothing—no one on this earth—could ever make me give up the ranch!’ Caid told her emphatically.
‘And nothing—no one—could ever make me give up my…my…work,’ Jaz replied, equally intensely.
Silently they looked at one another. The hostility in Caid’s eyes made Jaz want to run to him and bury her head against his chest so that she wouldn’t have to see it.
‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ Caid’s voice was terse, his jaw tight with anger.
‘If I had known—’
‘You did know,’ Jaz interrupted him fiercely. ‘I have never made any secret of how much my…my creative my work means to me. If I had thought for one minute that you might not understand…that you were a…a farmer…there is no way that—’
‘That what? That you’d have jumped so eagerly into bed with me?’
‘I was brought up on a farm.’ Jaz struggled to explain. ‘I know that it isn’t the kind of life I can live.’
‘And I was brought up by a mother who thought more of her precious stores than she did of either my father or me. I know there is no way I want a woman—a wife—who shares that kind of obsession. I want a wife who will be there for my kids in a way that my mother never was for me. I want a wife who will put them and me first, who will—’
‘Give up her own life, her own dreams, her own personality simply because you say so?’ Jaz stormed furiously at him. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Just what kind of man are you?’
‘The kind who was fool enough to think you were the right woman for him,’ Caid told her bitingly. ‘But obviously I was wrong.’
‘Obviously,’ Jaz agreed chokily, then emphasised, ‘Very obviously!’ And then added for good measure, ‘I hate farming. I loathe and detest everything about it. I would never ever commit myself or my children to…to a man as…as selfish and narrow-minded as you certainly are. My creativity is a special gift. It means—’
‘A special gift? More special than our love?’ Caid demanded savagely. ‘More special than the life we could have shared together? The children I would have given you?’
‘You don’t understand,’ Jaz protested, her voice thickening with tears as she forced herself not to be weakened by the emotional pressure he was placing her under. If she gave in to him now she would never stop giving in to him, and she would spend the rest of her life regretting her weakness. Not just for herself but for her children as well.
But still she tried one last attempt to make Caid see reason, telling him huskily, ‘When I was growing up I knew how important it was for me to fulfil the creative, artistic side of my nature, but my parents didn’t want to accept that I was different from them.
