‘It can’t be helped…unless you’re willing to go through with the wedding just to stop them being disappointed?’
‘Of course not, you idiot,’ she retorted instantly. When he put it like that, it was obvious. ‘I wouldn’t marry Liam if he was the last man on earth.’
Jake didn’t comment, and the longer he was quiet the heavier the silence seemed to grow.
‘What?’ she demanded with a frown, needing to know what had put that disapproving expression on his face.
‘Well, I’m just a bit…surprised how quickly you can change your mind about someone,’ he said seriously. ‘Just a few hours ago he was the love of your life and your husband-to-be, and now he’s the last man on earth you’d marry.’
His delivery was quiet-voiced enough to sound offhand but landed with the weight of condemnation. Not that she needed him to pile on the guilt. Perhaps this was the time for her to purge her conscience.
‘He was never the love of my life,’ she admitted uncomfortably, deliberately avoiding looking at him in case he was as good at reading her mind as he seemed to be with his patients.
‘What?’ Now he sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Then why the blazes were you going to marry him?’
‘Because he asked me!’ she retorted flippantly, anxious to avoid delving into deeper waters. Jake’s friendship was all she could ever have of him and she wasn’t going to risk losing that by admitting that he was the man she loved. It was far safer to steer the conversation to other waters. ‘And also because I’ll be thirty on my next birthday and I didn’t want to wait too much longer before I had the first of those babies I’ve been wanting all my life.’
‘So your biological clock’s ticking, and you won’t be content just to bring up someone else’s babies,’ he charged grimly. ‘What would you have done if you’d married someone without children and then found out that he couldn’t father any of his own? I suppose you’d have divorced him and gone looking for someone else.’
A tiny alarm sounded in her head at the unexpected vehemence in his tone but, as Liam’s long-time friend, she supposed he was bound to see things from the man’s point of view.
‘Not at all!’ she exclaimed, stung by the implications that she would be so fickle. ‘I’m not just looking for a sperm donor. I want a real marriage to a man I can respect and trust. I thought I’d found that, but even as his friend you have to admit that underneath that charming exterior Liam falls a long way short on every count.’
Unable to sit still any longer, she scrambled to her feet, but there was no room to pace off her returning anger.
‘I’m making another cup of coffee. This one’s gone cold,’ she muttered, needing to do something to ward off the heated prickle of tears that had suddenly tried to overwhelm her.
Was that really what Jake thought of her? Did he honestly see her as someone willing to marry just for what she wanted to get out of the relationship? Didn’t he know that she’d already cared deeply for little Ellie and Jamie and would have loved them just as much as any babies she carried?
She blinked furiously, forbidding a single tear to fall, while she switched the kettle on. She had far too much to think about to waste time on crying.
For example, there was the matter of cancelling the fortnight’s honeymoon she’d paid for—Liam still hadn’t paid her for his share and she had no idea whether she would be able to make a claim on her holiday insurance to recover the money. Then there was the problem of finding herself somewhere to live now that she wouldn’t be moving in with Liam. What were the chances that she’d have somewhere by this time tomorrow? With all the money she’d spent on her dress and the honeymoon she couldn’t afford to splash out on a hotel, so she could very well end up out on the street…
She’d been so involved with her thoughts that she hadn’t heard Jake moving around. The first time she realised that he was standing right behind her was when she swung round with two steaming mugs in her hand and splattered the scalding liquid over both of them.
Jake swore rawly even as he reached out to pull the sodden towelling robe away from her skin. ‘Dammit, Maggie, I’m sorry. I thought you knew I was there.’
‘It’s all over your shirt!’ she exclaimed, ignoring the searing heat against her own flesh in her efforts to undo his shirt buttons with shaking fingers. ‘You need to get cold water on it to take the heat out.’
Suddenly, without any warning, he scooped her up in his arms to hurry towards her tiny bathroom.
‘Forget about me,’ he growled as he dumped her unceremoniously in the shower cubicle and reached for the taps. ‘My skin’s far tougher than yours.’
She gasped as the water hit her like an icy wall, then gasped again when he finally managed to wrench the heavily sodden fabric off her shoulders.
Distracted by her efforts to try to wrest the first of his shirt buttons through their holes, she shrugged the restricting dressing-gown off her shoulders and it fell to the floor of the cubicle with a resounding slap.
With the impact of the icy water on her totally naked body Maggie froze, her eyes wide with the shocked realisation that she was standing in front of Jake without a stitch to cover her blushes.
‘Oh, Maggie,’ she heard him whisper, and when she saw the heat of desire turn his hazel eyes to molten gold as they roamed her naked body from head to toe, suddenly she wasn’t cold any more.
She reached out trembling hands towards his shirt again, half expecting him to stop her, then whimpered in frustration when she found she couldn’t force the little discs through their respective holes anyway.
‘I can’t do this!’ she complained. ‘And I want to see you, too.’
His eyes met hers, the heat in them fierce enough to turn cold water into steam, and her arousal was so intense it was almost pain.
It had never felt like this before, even though she’d desired Jake from the first moment she’d met him.
‘Maggie, you don’t want to do this,’ he was warning her, even as he was stripping his shirt over his head. ‘It’s just the result of the shock of being scalded coming on top of the scene in the club.’
Her only response was to reach for his head with both hands, sliding her fingers through his hair to pull him closer.
‘If you don’t want to make love with me, then say so,’ she said, her steady words totally at odds with her trembling body. She was very afraid that he would be able to see her vulnerability in her eyes but she couldn’t look away.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to…’ he denied quickly, but she wasn’t reassured—not when he wouldn’t meet her eyes properly. Had she read him so wrong? Was it just because she’d never wanted anything as much as she wanted this, that she was presuming that he felt the same way?
‘Jake!’ She heard the pleading in her voice but after two long years of wanting him it didn’t really matter. ‘I need you,’ she whispered, the words almost lost in the sound of the freezing torrent as her teeth started to chatter and she reached for the fastening of his waistband.
Whatever reservations he may have had disappeared completely then. In moments, he was stepping back into the cubicle and her heart soared as he reached for her.
‘Kiss me!’ he growled as he wrapped his arms around her in the confined space, but she was already tilting her face up towards him.
It was everything she’d dreamed of and more—hot, sweet, fierce and every bit as ravenous as she could have wished.
‘Please!’ she whimpered, tightening her grasp so that her slick flesh slid against his in a graphic illustration of her need for more.