An Insatiable Passion. Lynne Graham

someone have missed you?’

      ‘Sophie’s used to my being out at night.’

      Really? He stayed overnight with Paula, did he? Times must have changed in Mirsby. You’d have been a scarlet woman the length and the breadth of the neighbourhood if you had behaved like that when Kitty had lived here. Hating him, she let coffee scald her tongue. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone? Yesterday had been a truly ghastly day and Jake had clogged up far too much of it.

      ‘Throw on some clothes. I’ll take you home for breakfast. A neighbourly act,’ he specified drily.

      She nearly choked on her coffee. ‘Breakfast?’

      Abruptly he dropped down on a level with her. ‘I’ve had enough drama in the last twenty-four hours to last me into the next century,’ he warned abrasively. ‘I also have a suggestion I want to put to you.’

      ‘Keep it. Keep breakfast as well,’ she advised, bending her head to evade a collision with rich, dark eyes far too close for comfort.

      ‘Is it so hard for you even to be civil to me?’ he raked, low and rough.

      Her eyes closed. Every minute she spent in his radius heightened her inner turmoil. It would not be long before he questioned the depth of her bitter sensitivity to an episode he had firmly set behind him under the forgivable heading of misspent youth. She was terrified of exposing her vulnerability to that extent. But she would never be able to forgive him for the impossible choice he had once laid before her. How could she forget the agony of losing her baby?

      Her eyelids smarted with sudden stinging moisture. That was a period of her life that she did not want to recall in his presence. It made her too vulnerable.

      Jake expelled his breath, searching the drawn tension of her shielded profile. ‘Look, I can understand that you feel pretty raw right now, but I’m not the enemy.’

      With a shaken sound of disagreement, she pushed back the quilt. ‘Give me ten minutes.’