‘My keys are m my bag, which is in the office—we’ll have to go back.’ The thought of backtracking and being the focus of all those curious eyes again made her cringe.
‘I’ve got a key, remember. If I go back in there I’ll probably throttle that overdressed, self-opinionated bore.’
‘What a trusting soul I was to give you a key,’ she said wearily.
‘Meaning what, exactly? It works both ways, remember: you’ve got my key. Do you want to sit in the front or lie in the back?’ he asked as they reached the underground car park. He placed her carefully on the floor and unlocked the four-wheel drive he drove.
‘I’m not an invalid,’ she snapped, displaying her independence by climbing into the front seat. ‘And what I mean is, I had watering my plants in mind when I handed over the key, not assaulting my friends. You’ve been watching too many Rambo movies.’
He started up the engine. ‘If life was as simple as it is in action movies I’d be a happy man,’ he admitted, with a lamentable lack of shame for his ludicrous behaviour. ‘There are roadworks at the junction so make yourself comfortable, it’ll be a long ride. You told Wood I’m the father?’ His eyes flickered to her face.
Sensational, thrillingly blue eyes that were part of his Celtic heritage. She’d never associated sensational and thrilling with Liam’s eyes before. She suddenly experienced a deep longing to step back in time and have their relationship back on its smooth, familiar footing.
‘Before your dramatic announcement, you mean? Yes, I did.’ Just as well—the poor man would probably have had an apoplexy if he’d first learnt the truth that brutally. ‘I think I owed Justin the truth after all we’ve had together.’
Liam’s nostrils flared and he made a sound of disgust.
‘Does it bother you he knows? Is it meant to be a secret?’ she shouted, her indignation rising at his sneering response.
Jo saw the flicker of anger in his eyes as he shot her a swift sideways glance. ‘It seems I was the only one not in on the secret—he probably knew before me,’ he accused thickly. ‘Forgive my confusion but I’m obviously out of date. The last time you spoke about Justin, he’d broken your heart. Or don’t you remember the occasion?’
‘I’m hardly likely to forget, am I?’
‘Neither am I, Jo.’ The inflection in his deep voice sent the colour flaring in her cheeks. ‘You didn’t tell me he wanted to marry you.’
‘No.’ She’d been distracted. Had he forgotten, or was he remembering what she had said that night?
The possibility that he was recalling the same things she was made the fine, downy hair on her forearms stand on end. A shiver slithered slowly down her spine as, dry-mouthed, she risked a swift look in his direction from under the sheltering sweep of her eyelashes.
He’d come hotfoot in response to her tearful phone call when Justin had walked out on her. She’d been too absorbed by her own misery to register the lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth and the tell-tale shadow on his jaw. He’d held her whilst she’d wept, murmuring soothing nothings in appropriate places, sliding his fingers tenderly through her damp hair, pushing the tangled strands off her hot forehead and gently patting her back. When the storm hadn’t abated his lips had replaced his fingers on her damp cheeks, across her forehead, the tip of her nose.
Finally, when her sobs had subsided, she’d given an exhausted sigh. ‘What would I do without you?’ His tenderness brought a lump of emotion to her throat and made her voice husky. She put all the gratitude, warmth and love that filled her heart to overflowing into the kiss she pressed on his lips.
The sudden tension in him communicated itself to her immediately. Had she offended him? ‘I’m sorry. . . ’ she began, suddenly horribly afraid she’d overstepped some invisible boundary.
His blue eyes were burning with a strange light. She was ill prepared for the sudden weakness that pervaded her limbs—it went bone-deep. His glance flickered to the bare curve of her right shoulder, exposed where the baggy neck of her nightshirt had slipped. A sharp, painful sound swiftly cut off emerged from his chest.
Holding her upturned face, his thumbs running down the length of her jaw, he bent closer. Like a sleepwalker he repeated her own impulsive action exactly. It should have been chaste, clinical even, their lips were modestly closed. It wasn’t!
Frantic! When he lifted his mouth from hers she felt frantic. It couldn’t stop! He had to do that again, surely he could see that too? Through half-closed eyes she tried to read the hard lines and angles of his face.
His laugh grated on her sensitised nerve-endings. ‘Feel better now?’ He wasn’t reading the right page of the script. She shook her head in a gesture of denial; this wasn’t the time for prosaic words.
She felt a spurt of anger as he ruffled her hair, a need to lash out. Why must he always treat her like a child?
‘Do you feel better?’ she enquired in open challenge. She didn’t even try to understand the compulsion which drove her.
She couldn’t plead error in retrospect; it was quite deliberate when her hands moved under the hem of his shirt. Fingers spread, palms flat, she slowly slid her hands up over his flat, tight belly and higher still to the muscle-packed expanse of his chest. Nothing, she decided, could feel better than his warm, satiny skin—the texture was intoxicating. The deep shudder that rippled through his immobile form must have involved every muscle in his body.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
If his voice had been icily cold it might have doused the fire in her brain, but it wasn’t—it held a husky rasp that made her tremble even harder. Tremble, yes, I am, she realised, feeling oddly objective about this discovery.
‘We both know what I’m doing, Liam.’ Her voice was husky but incredibly calm. Calm was the last thing she felt, she felt reckless, and drunk on power. ‘It’s what I’ll do next that’s got me wondering.’
‘You’re not yourself.’
‘You’ve no idea what a relief that is.’ Herself was miserable, depressed. . . repressed, a small voice added.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘I know that these buttons are hellish difficult. Could you help. . . ?’
He caught her wrists then, roughly, and pulled them away from his body. ‘Don’t play games.’
This had to be the most humiliating moment of her life! ‘Don’t look at me as if I’m an axe murderer! All I want is a kiss. If it’s too much trouble, don’t bother!’ she yelled, feeling totally mortified. She tossed her head and ripped her hands from his grasp. She held only a tenuous hope of salvaging even a shred of pride.
She didn’t get more than a step away before he reached her and, with one arm around her waist, lifted her feet off the ground. The impetus of his action as he turned her around drove them forwards until her back was against the wall. The breath was driven from her body.
Her head dropped forward. No wonder he was angry. She was acting like some sort of. . . of sex-starved tart. His hands were on her shoulders and she could feel his nearness from the heat of his body. She was too ashamed to look at him.
‘I’m sorry, don’t hate me. . . ’ Her voice cracked.
‘Hate? Oh, God, Jo, I could never, no, don’t cry again, darling. I know you’re feeling rejected; the bastard, I’d like to kill Justin,’ he said viciously. ‘You don’t need to indulge in casual sex to prove you’re desirable.’ She wanted to deny this analysis but he kissed the corner of her mouth, then the other corner. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but you’ll be better off without him.’
She did shake her head in denial this time, and the next kiss hit dead centre. He pulled back, but only a fraction.