She couldn’t bear him to think his generosity was being tossed back in his face. She couldn’t bear him to be hurt.
Not stopping to analyze the depth of her feelings or the impulse that made her move quickly to place her body in front of him, reach out to touch his perfectly hewn features, she said gently, ‘Liz would hate you to think she was ungrateful. It’s the last thing she’d want. But her pride is all she’s ever had, remember. And now she finds herself in a position to provide for herself she’s walking on air. Don’t try to deny her that.’
She wasn’t conscious of the way her cool fingertips were softly stroking his temple, the palm of her hand gently laid against the hardly sculpted side of his face, until he turned his head, his eyes holding hers with lancing intensity as his lips moved erotically against the suddenly unbearably sensitized palm of her hand. She gave a small, shaky gasp as wildfire sensations seared through her body and saw his hooded eyes grow speculative. She snatched her hand away.
Touching hadn’t been part of their contract. Non-consummation had been agreed on. She was too fastidious to contemplate sex without love and he wouldn’t want a sexual relationship, with all its inherent emotional complications, to put their down-to-earth and mutually beneficial partnership in jeopardy.
Was that why he had gone out of his way to avoid any physical contact—even the most innocent? Had he known something she had never even suspected—that his slightest touch would send her up in flames?
Praying she wouldn’t betray her humiliation with something as uncool as a blush, she stepped briskly back and squared her shoulders, summoned her normal, politely friendly tone and stated, ‘If we’re going on to Lither ton from Lark Cottage then I’d better throw a few things in a bag. But I warn you, much as I like your sister, don’t expect me to bury myself down there for the next two weeks. I’d be bored out of my skull.’
Not true. She and Jake had spent a wonderfully relaxing time at Litherton Court last Christmas, plus a gloriously lazy long weekend in the early autumn, but she wasn’t going to admit that she would be miserable if she didn’t see him for two whole weeks, because she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself.
And despite having been the last to speak she had the distinctly edgy feeling, as she swept out of the room, that she hadn’t had the last word.
Four hours later Liz said happily, ‘Oh, it’s lovely to see you!’ and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Jake’s lean, hard cheek, smothered in the bulk of his sheepskin jacket as he hugged her, then turned to her daughter for her embrace. As Claire’s arms went round the tiny frame she thought, She’s not nearly as frail as she used to be, and felt tears of gratitude for all Jake had done sting behind her eyes and clog her throat.
‘Come along in, out of the cold. As soon as we heard your car come round the corner of the lane Sal went to put the kettle on. And your rooms are ready, so go along up if you want to freshen up before we snack.’
As the door closed on the cold grey mist of the December afternoon Jake’s height and breadth and alarmingly magnetic male presence filled the tiny, cheerful hall and Claire grabbed her suitcase, suddenly needing the quiet privacy of her room, space to breathe, away from that throat-grabbing presence. But Jake, shrugging out of his sheepskin, said, ‘I want a private word with you, Liz, before we do a damn thing.’
‘Does that dour tone tell me that Claire has at last got around to giving you my news?’ Faded blue eyes twinkled up into commanding grey slits. ‘I always think it’s bad taste to get excited over a legacy. But in Uncle Arnold case I think I can be excused. He never cared about anyone in the whole of his life and in the end no one cared about him.’ Her mouth drooped at the corners as she added, ‘Though I sent him a card each Christmas, keeping him up to date with whatever news there was, even after he...’
Her voice tailed away and Jake took her arm in a gentle but inescapable grip, urging her towards the door that led to the sitting-room, his voice firm as he told her, ‘Stop trying to soften me up. You’ve got some serious explaining to do. What are families for, if not to help each other when possible? I hope you’re not going to tell me you found what little help I gave a burden you’re delighted to shrug off?’
Although his words were tough his voice was soft around the edges as he ushered Liz into the sitting-room. Claire sighed briefly and mounted the stairs. The question of his allowance was something they’d have to thrash out between them and she was deeply thankful that she’d been able to persuade her mother that her decision to reimburse Jake fully for the purchase price of Lark Cottage, and everything in it, would have been seen as gross ingratitude, and hurtful.
She was thankful, too, that she’d made Jake promise never, in any circumstances, to divulge that his care of her mother had been the only reason she’d agreed to marry him.
As she reached her room and closed herself in with the cottage pine antiques, the lemon-yellow and grey and cream fabrics which picked out the main colors of the sunny sprigged wallpaper and the thick scatter rugs on the oak-boarded floor, her mouth twisted wryly as she remembered how appalled Liz had been, the first time they’d visited, when she had explained that, being modern and sophisticated, she and Jake had decided on separate rooms.
But Liz would be even more appalled, and permanently so, if she knew that her daughter’s marriage to the son-in-law she openly adored and respected was nothing but a business arrangement.
She hung her mulberry-coloured wool coat in the wardrobe, unpacked the few things she’d need for the two days Jake had said they would be spending here and allowed the tranquility of the cottage, set as it was on the outskirts of a tiny Shropshire village, to soothe her unaccustomed ruffled soul.
There really was nothing to get in a state about, she assured herself. She and Jake had agreed that their paper marriage would end when it was no longer useful. And as far as she was concerned its usefulness had ended with that legacy. And as for Jake, well, his unprecedented lack of discretion over the principessa affair had to signal that he wanted his freedom—even if he wasn’t fully aware of it yet.
So their days were numbered, the last hours ticking away, and it truly didn’t matter, did it? she asked herself as she sank down on the window-seat and gazed down on the garden that, even at this dead time of year, was her mother’s pride and joy.
With a sense of inevitability, the tying up of loose ends, her mind slid back over the years, looking at everything that had happened, taking her to the point when she had agreed to marry Jake.
The foundations had been laid in her childhood. She barely remembered her father because he’d gone by the time her seventh birthday came around. Apparently, he had never wanted the responsibility of children and Liz had been thirty-eight when Claire was born. Liz had never been physically strong and after the birth she had had to give up her job working for a florist, pushing even more responsibility on to the man who hadn’t wanted it in the first place.
So no, she wouldn’t recognize her father now if she passed him in the street, but she could remember the build-up of tension as the weekends approached, when her father, a company rep, would be home. Recall how her mother had seemed frightened of him, of his sudden bursts of temper, his long sulks.
Once, long after he’d disappeared, and the eventual divorce, Claire had asked her mother why she had stayed with him as long as she had. Liz had looked blank, as if such a thought had never entered her head, and simply imparted that she’d made her marriage vows in good faith and, having made them, wouldn’t be the one to break them. It was then Claire had realised that her father had taken a naïve, trusting, loving soul and turned her into a doormat, and she had made a private vow never to allow it to happen to her.
When her husband had walked out on them Liz had had to find work to support them. She’d brought a child into the world and loved her devotedly, and no way was that child to be deprived of decent food and respectable clothes. They’d moved to a small flat because Liz couldn’t afford the rent on the house they