He stopped, turning so abruptly that she almost collided with the wicker basket. The cold anger in his eyes chilled her more than the bitterly cold day.
‘Is that what you thought you were?’
‘Wasn’t I?’
‘What you thought I wanted? An obedient little mouse and bed partner? Someone I could manipulate and bend easily to my will? What respect do you think I would have had for you—for myself—if I’d thought that was all you— and I—were worthy of? Credit me with some ethics, Taylor, because we did have something, only you were too damn blinkered to see it!’
Feeling unjustly chastened, she retorted heatedly, ‘Too besotted, you mean, not to see what was going on!’
‘What was going on, dearest, was all inside your head. Oh, I admit Alicia tried to ring me a few times, but that didn’t mean I was still seeing her. As I told you before, it was your petty jealousies and suspicions that killed our marriage—nothing else!’
‘That isn’t true!’
‘Isn’t it?’
Those inky eyes seemed to be penetrating right through to her soul and his features were as bleak suddenly as the ice-packed fells across the valley.
Of course, he was probably still mourning his mother, Taylor thought, chastising herself for not having immediately realised that. Regrettably she wished she had kept her mouth shut.
‘Believe it if you want to,’ she said wearily, tired of continually fighting with him. She was relieved when he turned and carried on down the path.
With her eyes on his broad back she considered what he had said about her doubts and suspicions all being in her head. Were they? she wondered wretchedly. Certainly he had done nothing to allay her fears and insecurities. So what was he saying? That it had all been her fault? Their rows? Her refusal even to entertain having his children?
When he had been flaying her with his hurtful insinuations about terminating their unborn child—accusing her of wanting nothing but her precious job, had he, she wondered suddenly, somehow been comparing her with his mother?
‘Come inside,’ he commanded gently, as though sensitive to her change of mood and, with unerring courtesy, stood aside to let her pass.
The kettle was singing on the fire as they came back inside the house. The sound was comforting, helping to lift Taylor’s downcast spirits.
‘I’m afraid I can’t conjure up anything more than plain bread and rock-hard butter,’ she murmured, hearing him come into the kitchen just as she was lifting the lid off the butter dish. At least they had plenty of the basic foods, she thought with some sense of relief, since Jared had doubled up on some of the provisions she had brought last night.
‘Is that so,’ he said, not sounding at all perturbed. ‘Then you go and make the tea—’ he was thrusting a teapot into her hands ‘—and I’ll see to whatever has to be done here.’
Taylor was only too glad to. Standing in a cold kitchen, making holes in fresh bread with unspreadable butter wasn’t her idea of fun, she thought, adding cups, saucers and a jug of milk to a tray with the teapot, before carrying them through into the welcoming warmth of the sitting room.
She had just made the tea and was sitting on the rug in front of the fire when he strode in carrying another tray.
‘Crumpets!’ she breathed delightedly, her face aglow as he set them down on the low table she had dragged nearer the fire. They looked plump and soft. Hungrily she watched him spear one with a toasting fork.
‘Always look further than only at what at first appears to be apparent,’ he advised, and she knew he wasn’t just talking about the crumpets. ‘We used to do this on winter nights just for the sheer hell of it.’
We. ‘You and your grandparents,’ Taylor supplied, surprised that he had never confided even that small piece of information to her before.
His mouth compressed in wry contemplation as he stood there, turning the fork expertly before the flame. The crumpet was beginning to brown and it smelled yeasty and delicious as it cooked. ‘They were good days. Especially when my grandfather was alive.’
‘They must have been.’ Taylor sat back from pouring tea into the two cups she had set down on the hearth, drawing her legs up under her. It was easy to visualise how things must have been, the domestic, happy family scene. It was something she had not known. Not in the same secure, taken-for-granted way…
‘Ouch!’ he said, shaking his hand, bringing her attention to the fact that, in turning the crumpet, Jared had just burnt his finger.
‘Hot?’ she taunted laughingly.
‘Not so you’d notice.’
She looked up into his strong abstracted features, flushed from the heat of the fire. He hadn’t shaved, either because of an uncharged razor or because he had had more important things to do. But in his country clothes, with that dark stubble shading his jaw, he looked at ease, relaxed and totally at home.
Often, in his high-powered world, sporting his clean-cut executive image she had tried to imagine him as a child and hadn’t been able to. Now, away from the pressures of the fast lane in which he functioned, here amidst the rugged country where he seemed to belong, she could see him as a gangling youth, obstinate, determined, a free spirit. She could visualize him sitting here with his grandparents on winter nights, and, during the summer, fishing for minnows in the tumbling becks, running barefoot, wild as the moorland and the fells.
Her eyes still trained on his formidably handsome features, almost involuntarily Taylor murmured, ‘This place brings out the best in you, too.’
His cruel mouth slackened broodingly as he gazed down on her, those black eyes holding hers with such dark power that she couldn’t look away. Sitting there on the rug she felt like a slender flower beneath the shadow of a great tree whose daunting presence was capable of blocking out the sunlight from her life, or giving her the strength to grow and thrive from its protection.
With their eyes linked, Taylor felt the stark desire that seemed to flow from the very root of him, filling her with a mutual need that rose like a dark and dangerous sap through her veins. Her breath came shallowly as her pulse rate quickened, and her throat ached so that she had to swallow to ease its dryness.
Light flared in his face at the same instant as Taylor smelled the smoke, became aware that the crumpet he was toasting had caught fire.
‘Look what you’re doing!’ she gasped with a shaky little laugh, catching the oath he uttered before he swiftly pushed the charcoaled offering, still flaming, onto a plate.
‘You’ll never make Chef of the Year like this!’ she laughed, more easily now, relieved that the emotion-charged moment was past.
‘Perhaps Chef of the Year doesn’t have the world’s sexiest siren to distract him,’ he chastised, defending himself as he speared another crumpet with the fork.
Putting a lump of butter on the blackened pikelet, careful not to burn her hands, Taylor watched the gold butter melt instantly across its surface, filling the holes. The way he could melt her resistance—fill her—she thought shamefully, and didn’t say anything because it was safer that way.
Breakfast was delicious, she decided, watching Jared chomp his way through at least a plateful of his own efforts, while Taylor surprised herself by eating at least three of the crumpets. She had brought some honey with her from Edinburgh and while Jared had refused it, she had indulged herself, spreading it thickly over each warm buttered mound.
‘That’s better,’ Jared commented when she put her plate down on the