‘I could get used to this!’
Despite her bare feet, Jed must have heard her walk out of the whitewashed stone house onto the patio. Or felt her presence, she decided with a shiver of recognition, just as she always sensed his nearness before she actually saw him.
The black T-shirt he was wearing was tucked into the pleated waistband of a pair of stone-grey tough cotton trousers. The way he looked—lithe, lean and dangerously male—rocked her senses as he turned from the low wall that divided the patio from the sundrenched, steeply sloping gardens below. ‘And just in case you think I’m a cheapskate, saving on honeymoon expenses by using my bride’s home as a hotel, I’ve made breakfast.’
Coffee, a bowl of fresh fruit, crispy rolls and a dish of olives. Half her brain approved his efforts while the other half gloried in the warmth of his smile, in the unashamed, naked hunger in his eyes. ‘Though I might do without,’ he added. ‘Food, that is. You look good enough to eat. You satisfy each and every one of what I’ve discovered to be amazingly huge appetites!’
Did she? Elena’s aquamarine eyes locked onto his, warm colour flaring briefly over her high cheekbones. Every moment was doubly precious now, every word spoken with love to be treasured, because very soon now it would end.
After her shower she’d pulled on a pair of frayededged denim shorts and an old white T-shirt, not taking any trouble because half an hour ago, when he’d slid out of bed, she’d feigned sleep, needing just a little time on her own to decide what to do. And she’d faced the awful knowledge that it was no use waiting until the time was right before she introduced the serpent into their corner of paradise.
The time would never be right for what she had to tell him, and keeping the truth from him would only make him think more badly of her.
But the way he was looking at her, the way his eyes slid over every last one of her five-foot-six slender inches and endless, elegant, lightly tanned legs, paralysed her with physical awareness. So, despising her weakness but unable to do anything about it, she took his former remark and clung to it as to a reprieve. Just a few more hours. Surely she could give herself that?
Striving for lightness as she poured coffee for them both, she told him, ‘Stop fishing for compliments—there’s nothing cheapskate about you! I practically forced you to agree to spend our honeymoon here.’
She was justifiably proud of her home. She’d bought the former Andalucian farmhouse with part of the proceeds from the sale of the film rights of her first runaway bestseller. And she and Jed had already decided to keep it as a holiday home, to come here as often as they could—a welcome respite from the pressure of his position at the head of the family-owned business. Based in London, Amsterdam, New York and Rome, it had a two-hundred-year-old tradition of supplying sumptuous gems and exquisitely wrought precious metals to the seriously wealthy.
Sam had considered the business arcane, refused to have anything to do with it, making his mark in the highly competitive world of photo-journalism.
She pushed his name roughly out of her head, but, almost as if he’d known what she’d done, Jed pushed it straight back in again. ‘I can understand why Sam came here so often between assignments. Life travels at a different pace, the views are endless and the sun is generous. He told me once that it was the only place he could find peace.’
He refilled his coffee cup and tipped the pot towards her, one dark brow lifting. Elena shook her head. She had barely taken a sip. Listening to him talking of his brother was screwing up her nerves and shredding them. Why should he decide to talk about him now? She couldn’t meet his eyes.
Jed replaced the pot, selected an orange from the blue earthenware bowl and began to strip away the peel, his voice strangely clipped as he remarked, ‘Over the last couple of years, particularly, he was always getting sent to the world’s worst trouble spots. Though I think he thrived on the edge of danger, he must have been grateful for the relaxation he knew he could find here. With you. He seemed to know so much about you; you must have been extremely close.’
Elena’s throat closed up. He had rarely mentioned Sam’s name since the day of his funeral, but now the very real grief showed through. The brothers had had very little in common but they had loved each other. And now she could detect something else. Something wildly out of character. A skein of jealousy, envy, even?
‘He was a good friend,’ she responded, hating the breathless catch in her voice. She watched the long, hard fingers strip the peel from the fruit. Suddenly there seemed something ruthless about the movements. She wondered if she knew him as thoroughly as she’d thought she did.
She shivered, and heard him say, ‘In a way, I think he deplored the fact that I did my duty, as he called it—knuckled down and joined the family business and took the responsibility of heading it after Father died—despised me a little, even.’
‘No!’ She couldn’t let him think that. ‘He admired you, and respected you—maybe grudgingly—for doing your duty, and doing it so well. He once told me that your business brain scared the you-know-what out of him, and that he preferred to go off and do his own thing rather than live in your shadow, a pale second-best.’
Jed gave her a long, searching look, as if he was turning her words over in his mind, weighing the truth of them, before at last admitting, ‘I didn’t know that. Maybe I wouldn’t have envied him his freedom to do as he pleased and to hell with everyone else if I had.’ Regret tightened his mouth. ‘I guess there’s a whole raft of things I didn’t know about my kid brother. Except, of course, how fond he was of you. When he came home on those flying visits of his the conversation always came round to you. He gave me one of your books and told me to be impressed. I was; I didn’t need telling,’ he complimented coolly. ‘You handle horror with a sophistication, intelligence and subtlety that makes a refreshing change from the usual crude blood and gore of the genre.’
‘Thank you.’ I think, she added to herself. There was something in his voice she had never heard before. Something dark and condemning. She left her seat swiftly and went to lean against the wall, looking at the endless view which always soothed her spirits but signally failed to do anything of the sort this morning.
Perched on a limestone ridge, high above a tiny white-wa
lled village, her home benefited from the pine-scented salt breezes crossing western Andalucia from the Atlantic, moderating the heat of the burning May sun.
Elena closed her eyes and tried to close her mind to everything but the cooling sensation of the light wind on her face. Just a few moments of respite before she had to face the truth, brace herself to break the news to Jed before the day ended. Could she use her gift for words to make him understand just why she had acted as she had? It didn’t seem possible, she thought defeatedly.
Since the ending of her first disastrous marriage, she had refused to let anything defeat her, get in the way of her fight for successful independence. But this—this was something else...
‘You haven’t eaten a thing.’ He’d come to stand behind her, not touching but very close. The heat of his body scorched her, yet she shivered. ‘Not hungry? Suddenly lost your appetite?’
His cool tones terrified her. He hadn’t already guessed, had he? No, of course he hadn’t. How could he? Despising herself for the way she seemed to be heading—spoiling the morning and the few hours’ respite she’d promised herself—she turned and forced a smile to the mouth she had always considered far too wide.
‘No, just lazy, I guess.’ She walked back to the table. She would have to force something into a stomach that felt as if it would reject anything she tried to feed it. ‘I thought we might go down to the coast today.’ She plucked a few grapes from the dewy bunch nestling in the fruit bowl. ‘Cadiz, perhaps, or Vejer de la Frontera if you fancy somewhere quieter. We haven’t set foot outside the property all week.’
Edgy, acutely aware of the way he was watching her, she popped a grape into her mouth and felt her throat close up as he answered, ‘So far, we haven’t felt the need to, remember?’
She bit on the grape and forced it down, because she could hardly spit the wretched thing out. His words had been idly spoken, yet the underlining accusation came through loud and clear. They hadn’t needed to leave the property; they’d had all they needed in each other. Simple expeditions through the gardens and into the pine woods, eating on the patio or in the rose-covered arbour, their lives attuned to the wonderful solitude, the rhythm of their lovemaking, the deep rapture of simply being. Together.
‘Of course I do.’ Her voice was thick, everything inside her panicking. The incredible feeling of closeness, of being made for each other, was slipping away. She knew it would happen once she’d broken her news, but the frightening distance between them had no right to be happening now. It hadn’t been there before he’d begun to talk of Sam. ‘Pilar, who helps me around the house, was instructed to keep well clear after stocking the fridge on the morning we arrived’ She spoke as lightly as she could, desperate to recreate all that wonderful closeness for just a little longer. ‘We’re starting to run low on provisions, so I thought we could combine shopping with sightseeing, that’s all.’