No other man had ever affected her the way he did.
No other man had ever reached inside her heart to make her instinctively trust him, care about what happened to him.
If their marriage ended the way she had planned it should, and he disappeared from her life, she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
She wasn’t going to let that happen. She knew now that she couldn’t let it happen. He was already her husband. She was going to make him her mate. The fact that he had nothing, apart from the cheque she had given him, didn’t mean a thing.
Jethro Cole had enormous potential. He wore an aura of strength and purpose, though he probably didn’t know it. Together they could tap into it; together they could achieve anything!
She stood up, her spine erect, a soft smile teasing the corners of her mouth as she walked into the house. As of tonight, their marriage was going to be a real one—something worthwhile, something lasting.
She had the courage.
Jethro stared out of the master bedroom window, but it was dark and he couldn’t see a damned thing except his own reflection.
He swung away from the gaunt, brooding-eyed image impatiently and pulled his shirt over his head. He might as well shower and turn in. Hanging around, trying to second guess what was going on in her mind, would do nothing but give him a pain in the head.
So much for giving her time to get to know him, to make himself so much a part of her life that she couldn’t contemplate a future without him, he thought on a spurt of savage self-disgust. So much for his carefully laid plans. He’d kicked them out of shape so many times there was nothing now that could be salvaged.
Trouble was, around Allie his brain stopped functioning and his heart took over. And after what he’d said tonight there was no going back, no pretending it hadn’t happened. He’d laid himself open to her. Accept his love, or reject it. But she wasn’t willing to open her heart and soul to him. And he wasn’t willing to take her body, even though he knew he could have done, without that much deeper commitment.
A commitment she couldn’t give because he hadn’t given her time.
Muttering a string of oaths, he strode down the silent corridor to the bathroom. She was probably tucked up in bed, he decided rawly, planning her escape route. Probably deeply ashamed of her sexual response to a man she couldn’t love, and mortified, too, because what she’d offered had been rejected.
Hell! Why hadn’t he taken what had been on offer? She’d wanted sex with him and he could have given her sex. Good sex. Good enough to build on? So why, in the name of great balls of fire, did he have to have principles!
A hot shower did nothing for his state of mind, the cold one that followed even less. Tension was knotting up the muscles of his neck; the sheer frustration of knowing his bull-headed tactics had probably alienated the only woman he would ever love was making his temples throb.
Sleep was definitely out of the question. He knotted a towel loosely around his hips. If he’d had the Jaguar he would have burned up a hundred miles or so to release his tension, returning in time for breakfast and some sort of apology for his behaviour.
But the beat-up old van—no way! He’d just have to tough out the night—dress, pick up a flashlight and walk until dawn.
His jaw set, he stalked out of the bathroom. How the hell could he have been so bloody arrogant? He’d as good as commanded her to fall in love with him, called her a coward if she couldn’t! He wouldn’t blame her if she tried to get him certified!
His bedroom was in darkness. He was sure he’d left the lights on. Had all the bulbs blown? Hardly likely. Probably a fuse. He moved to the wall switch, but before his fingers connected Allie said, ‘What took so long?’
The soft rustle of cotton sheets came from the huge double bed and he wondered if she could hear his heart beating. He could. It sounded like thunder in his ears.
‘Allie?’ He sounded as if he had the croup. Badly.
There was a breath of laughter in her voice as she murmured in the darkness, ‘Who else were you expecting?’
His eyes were adjusting to the lack of light. He could just make out the shape of the bed, the piled pillows. He walked over to her, hardly daring to breathe now.
No questions, because this was the most important moment of his life. What happened now, what was said, would affect both their futures—his and hers. He so desperately wanted that future to run together. So far he’d made a pig’s ear of their relationship. It was down to her. He’d keep his big mouth shut and hope she’d make a better fist of this than he had done.
He could control his vocal cords but he couldn’t control his thoughts. Earlier she’d been fully aroused, his for the taking, and he despised himself now for his deliberate arrogance in demonstrating how easily he could make her want him.
So was she still burning with frustrated need? Was that why she had come to his bed? To make sure he finished what he’d started? And would that be enough? Could he take that crumb and hope to build something beautiful, strong and enduring?
Reaching out to flick on the bedside light, he noted, almost distractedly, that his hand was trembling. He needed to see her properly, to look into her beautiful eyes and discover what was going on in her mind.
The soft light caressed her, darkened the huge pools of her eyes to purple. His throat tightened. Her glorious hair was spread in silky golden tendrils over the pillows she’d piled up behind her, and she was clutching the hem of the sheet under her chin.
He waited. Her eyes moved slowly—lovingly?—over his near-naked frame, sweeping languorously across the width of his shoulders, his chest, following the rough haze of dark body hair to where it disappeared beneath the towel around the jutting bones of his pelvis.
The breath tightened in his lungs and still he waited. Her naked shoulders gleamed like fine ivory above the apricot-coloured percale sheet. He swallowed around the hard lump of rock that had formed in his throat. He ached to touch her, but his need to know what had brought her to his bed was greater.