enough for her, that she didn’t love him enough to want to be with him for himself.
‘I thought after what I’d been through with my mother I’d be able to recognise another woman of her type a mile away,’ he growled angrily. ‘And perhaps I would have done too, if I hadn’t heard your precious Uncle John talking about you and saying that your family expected you to return to your roots and settle down to the life they’d raised you in.’
The accusation implicit in his words that somehow she had actively deceived him infuriated Jaz, severing the last fragile thread tugging on her heartstrings.
‘My parents might want that, but it certainly isn’t what I want, or what I ever intend to do. And if you misinterpreted a conversation you overheard, that’s hardly my fault. If marrying a farmer’s daughter is so important to you, why didn’t you say so?’
‘Because I believed that what is important to me was equally important to you,’ Caid told her bitingly. ‘I thought that you were the kind of woman strong enough to find her fulfilment in—’
‘Her husband and her children? Staying home baking cakes whilst her big strong husband rides his acres and rules his home?’ Jaz interrupted him scathingly. ‘My God. If your father was anything like you, no wonder your mother left him! You aren’t just old-fashioned, Caid, you’re criminally guilty of wanting to deny my sex its human rights! We are living in a new world now. Modern couples share their responsibilities—to each other and to their children—and—’
‘Do they? Well, my mother certainly didn’t do much sharing when she was travelling all over the world buying “beautiful” things,’ he underlined cynically. ‘She left my dad to bring me up as best he could. And as for her leaving him—believe me, he felt he was well rid of her. And so did I.’
Caid started to shake his head, his eyes dark with a pain that Jaz misinterpreted as anger.
‘My mother was like—’
‘Like me?’ She jumped in, hot-cheeked. ‘Do you feel you’d be well rid of me, Caid?’
Broodingly Caid looked at her. Right now he ached to take her in his arms and punish her for the pain she was causing them both, by kissing her until she admitted that all she wanted was him and their love, that nothing else mattered. But if he did he knew he would be committing himself to a life of misery. After all, a leopardess never changed her spots—look at his mother!
The look he was giving her said more than any amount of words, Jaz decided with a painful sharp twisting of her heart that made it feel as though it was being pulled apart.
‘Fine,’ she lied. ‘Because I certainly think that I will be well rid of you!!’
She could feel the burning acid sting of unshed tears. As angry with herself for her weakness as she was with Caid for being the cause of it, she blinked them away determinedly.
‘I’m a woman with needs and ambitions of my own, Caid, not some…some docile brood mare you can corral and keep snugly at home.’
‘You—’ Infuriated, Caid took a stride towards her.
Immediately Jaz panicked. If he touched her now, held her…kissed her…
‘Don’t come any closer,’ she warned him, her eyes glittering with emotion. ‘And don’t even think about trying to touch me, Caid. I don’t want to be touched by you ever again!’
Without giving him any chance to retaliate she turned on her heel and fled, almost running the length of the house and not stopping until she was halfway down the street, when the heat of the New Orleans late afternoon forced her to do so.
It was over. Over. And it should never have happened in the first place. Would never have happened if she had for one minute realised, recognised, just what kind of man Caid was.
She had been out of her depth, Jaz acknowledged miserably, in more ways than one.
The only consolation was that, thanks to Caid’s practicality and insistence on protecting her, there was no chance there would be any repercussions from their affair. And for that she was profoundly thankful! Wasn’t she?
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