skirted the subject he had brought her out here to discuss and her anticipation had become a tight knot in her stomach.
‘Just over a year,’ she told him then. ‘Within a week or two of my being engaged by the studios. With Josh on the way, Craig and Charity decided it would be practical financially to let the top floor. I was looking for a flat. And that was it. I couldn’t have found anywhere better if I’d tried. Charity’s such a lovely person it wasn’t difficult striking up an instant friendship with her, and Craig’s so easygoing, it’s never been a problem working with him all day and seeing him socially as well. He’s been a marvellous friend to me too.’
‘Well, bully for Craig,’ he drawled.
His meal finished, he was sitting with one elbow resting on the back of his chair, so that a good deal of white shirt was exposed beneath his open jacket.
Disconcertedly, Taylor dragged her gaze from the dark shadow of his body hair, clearly visible through the fine cotton, aware of a different kind of tension invading her now.
‘You’re determined not to like him, aren’t you?’ she accused, wondering for a few fleeting moments if his motive sprang from jealousy. But, no, she decided, dismissing the thought before it had scarcely taken shape. Jared Steele was the type of man who evoked that emotion in others, not experienced himself. And, anyway, he was in love with someone else. He had always loved someone else… ‘I thought Charity was a friend of yours,’ she challenged when he ignored her last question.
‘She is. Or rather, her parents are.’
‘Well, then,’ Taylor uttered, with an unconscious lifting of her chin. ‘Don’t you think they—and she—might take exception to your insinuations that I’m having an affair with her husband? Because she’s my friend too—and I do!’
A faint smile played around the hard masculine mouth. He didn’t look at all perturbed.
‘You’ve grown more confident,’ he remarked.
His soft observation was unexpected and disarming and quickly she lifted her glass, took a last draught of the cool water.
‘What did you expect?’ she challenged, setting her glass down on the pale cloth. ‘Even the most naïve of us grow up—if we’re forced to. And boy! Was I naïve!’
He acknowledged this only with a subtle lifting of a dark eyebrow.
‘As I recall, you also didn’t always make friends so easily. Or perhaps it was just that you didn’t try.’
No, she thought. She always had been a bit of a loner, too shy and self-conscious for her own good. Even at school she had preferred to read or sketch rather than join in with the more communal pursuits of her peers. Perhaps that was just how she was. Or perhaps it sprang from a reluctance to get too close to anyone…
‘We all change—for better or worse,’ she said without thinking, and felt a sudden sharp emotion stab her.
She saw a furrow crease the high, intellectual forehead, met those far too perceptive eyes and looked quickly away.
‘So what were you doing for the first six months after you ran away? I did contact your mother but she couldn’t give me any information, and with no friends to pump—or relatives in this country—it proved to be an impossible task trying to find you.’
Had he looked for her? The knowledge brought a treacherous colour to her cheeks.
‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’ she murmured. After all, whatever his reason for trying to find her then, it didn’t alter the fact that now he had found her, it was with only one purpose in mind. Which suited her fine! she convinced herself, in spite of the dull ache under her ribs.
He sat forward then, resting his elbows on the table, his chin on his clasped fingers.
‘Humour me,’ he breathed.
So she did, telling him how she had moved north for a while, taking a short, intensive art course to further the basic grounding she had received at college. It was difficult though, keeping her voice steady, trying not to notice how strongly chiselled his face was, how his long lashes seemed to emphasise the darkness of his eyes and how his cruel mouth—a mouth that had once worked magic on her sensitive flesh—firmed now first with something like disapproval then with what…? Admiration? she wondered. Surely not!
‘I saw an opening for a make-up artist down here in London, grabbed it and moved back. So there you have it. My wild and exciting life in its most uncensored form.’
A contemplative smile touched his lips. ‘Can there be anything more wild and exciting than what we had, Taylor?’
The smoky quality of his voice played across her frayed nerves, working its own magic on her senses. Before her mind’s eye rose the image of his hard and superb physique, of his naked limbs entwined with hers, of strong, dark body hair grazing her softness.
No, she thought. Whatever else their marriage had lacked, it certainly hadn’t lacked sensuality.
That he still wanted her was obvious, in the most primitive sense at least. She could see it in those dark, dilated pupils, in the flaring of those proud nostrils that spoke of the huge hunting male catching the scent of a mate. She closed her eyes against it now, knowing that he would recognise an answering and involuntary response in her if for one moment she let her guard down, and with the instinct of self-preservation she forced herself to remember why he had come. Shakily she whispered, ‘If you try to press a settlement on me, I’d like you to know, I won’t accept it.’
When she looked at him again his heavy eyelids had come down over his eyes, cloaking any traces of desire. Grimness compressed his lips now and there was an unfathomable edge to his voice as he said, ‘We’ll talk about that later. In the meantime…’ he dropped a glance to the gold wristwatch peeping out from his immaculate cuff ‘… I think you’d better get yourself sorted out for your dental appointment.’
He had left the car in a nearby Pay and Display car park, a newer model of the type of low-slung saloon he had always driven.
The wind was biting as they crossed the tarmac towards it.
‘I thought spring was coming,’ Taylor remarked, struggling to keep her coat from being wrenched open by the tugging wind. She felt low and dispirited, seeing the turn in the weather as a reflection of how her life had suddenly changed over the past week.
On the surface, nothing was different. She and Jared were still living apart. She still had her job. Her interests. Her friends. But seeing him again had revived memories she didn’t want to think about; feelings she didn’t want to feel. Oh, if only he had stayed away! If only things could have stayed the same and she could have gone on with her life thinking…
Thinking what? That one day he might come and tell her that he missed her? Loved her?
‘What’s wrong, Taylor?’
Of course, he had always been able to pick up on her mood, even if sometimes he had misinterpreted—and grossly—exactly what she was feeling.
‘I was only thinking…’ Suddenly her stomach muscles were knotting painfully again. ‘What has today achieved, Jared? I mean, we haven’t talked about anything we couldn’t have said on the phone.’
