‘Is it?’ He prowled back to the chair opposite hers and sat, his hands clenched in the side pockets of his trousers. Steel-grey eyes searched her face. His voice was low, sombre, as he imparted, ‘Sam and I had our differences, but he was my brother and I loved him. His death rocked me. Until coming here, to where he was happy, where he found peace and comfort, I haven’t been able to open up about what I feel. Yet it seems to me that you don’t want to talk about him Get edgy when I mention his name. Why is that?’ he wanted to know.
What to say? She couldn’t deny it. She picked up her cup of now cold coffee and swallowed half of it down a throat that was aching with tension, and Jed asked tightly, ‘Were you lovers? Is that the reason?’
Dread tore at her heart, knotted her stomach, perspiration dewing her forehead. For the first time since meeting him she deeply regretted his uncanny ability to see right into her soul. She twisted her hands in her lap and tried to smile.
‘Why do you ask? Don’t tell me you’re trying to pick a fight!’ Did her prevarication come out sounding as jokey as she’d intended? Or had she merely sounded as if she were being strangled?
‘I ask because my talking about him appears to disturb you. It’s something I never considered before, but from what I can gather Sam spent a fair amount of time here. He was a handsome son-of-a-gun. Add the spice of a dangerous occupation—no mere shopkeeper , our Sam—and an extremely beautiful woman with a talent he greatly admired, and what do you get?’ He lifted one brow. ‘I repeat the question.’
Elena felt everything inside her start to shake. Although Jed was doing his best to look relaxed and in control, his hands were still making fists in his side pockets, and that tough, shadowed jaw was tight. There was more to this than she could fully understand.
The fact that she’d been married before hadn’t mattered to him. He hadn’t wanted her to talk about it, had assimilated her, ‘It was a dreadful mistake; he turned out to be completely rotten,’ then refused to let her go on with the complete explanation she’d intended to make.
He’d dismissed her marriage to Liam Forrester as a total irrelevance, and had never once asked if there had been any other man in her life in the intervening years. He had acted as though their future was the only thing that was important to him.
Yet couple her name with Sam’s and something suspiciously resembling jealousy and anger stared out of the eyes that had, thus far, only looked at her with love, warmth and hungry desire.
Because Sam had been his brother? Was there a twist of bitterness on that sensual mouth now? The sardonic stress he’d laid on the word ‘shopkeeper’ told her that Sam must have tossed that taunt at him at some time, told her that it still rankled.
And had Sam been handsome? Looking back, she supposed so. Not as tall as his brother, nothing like as powerfully built. Smooth, nut-brown hair and light blue eyes, with elegant features. He would have been a wow as an old-style matinee idol. Handsome he might have been, but he couldn’t hold a candle to his older brother... Sam had had none of Jed’s dangerous masculinity, none of that forbidding sexual excitement.
‘Elena. I need to know.’ There was a raw edge to his voice she had never heard before, and a few short hours ago she could have reassured him. But now, knowing what she knew, the task seemed impossible. Nevertheless, she had to try.
‘I first met your brother at a party I threw to celebrate my second movie deal.’ She concentrated on the facts because that was the only way she could handle this. ‘I’ve made a lot of friends in this area—ex-pats as well as Spaniards. Sam came along with Cynthia and Ed Parry. He was staying with them for a few days—apparently he’d known Ed since university.’
She saw the way his brows pulled together, the way his mouth went tight, and knew he was turning over every word she said, impatient because she wasn’t telling him what he wanted to know. But she had to do this her way, or not at all.
‘That had to be about a couple of years ago,’ she went on, needing him to see the whole thing from her perspective, needing to get it right. ‘And, as you know, he often visited this corner of Spain when he needed to unwind. Usually he stayed with the Parrys—’
‘But not always?’
‘No,’ she agreed, doing her best to stay calm, to ignore the churning, burning sensation in her tummy. ‘We got to know each other well, enjoyed each other’s company. He’d wander up here in the evenings and we’d talk, and sometimes, if it got very late, I’d offer him the use of one of the spare roms. You asked if we were lovers...’ She lifted slender shoulders in a light shrug. ‘He once admitted he had a low sex drive—something to do with using all his emotional and physical energy in his work. He knew the dangers of getting news out of the world’s worst trouble spots. He talked a lot about you, your mother, your home. He was proud of his family. He told me he’d never marry, that such a commitment wouldn’t be wise, or fair, because of the way he earned his living. But he said you would. Some woman to give you children because you wouldn’t want the business to die out with you. Said that women flung themselves at you, couldn’t keep away. But that you were picky. And discreet.’
Too late, she realised exactly what she was doing. And loathed herself for it. She had side-stepped his question and was trying to turn the situation round and become his accuser, letting the implication that he was a calculating user of women hang contentiously on the air between them, pushing them further apart.
And the bleak, most scornful look on his face told her he knew exactly what she was trying to do. And why.
Suddenly, the nausea that had been threatening all morning became an unwelcome, undeniable fact. She shot to her feet, one hand against her mouth, and lurched through the house to the bathroom.
Knowing he had followed her didn’t help a scrap, and when it was over she leant weakly against the tiled wall, the futile wish that she could turn the clock back three months uppermost in her mind.
‘Sweetheart—come here.’ He pulled her into his arms and she rested her throbbing head against the hard, soft-cotton-covered wall of his chest, wishing she could hold onto this moment for ever and knowing that she couldn’t.
The look of compassion, of caring, on his face didn’t help. It made things worse because she didn’t deserve it. And when he said softly, ‘What brought that on? Something you ate? I’ll drive you to the nearest surgery if the sickness carries on,’ she knew she had to tell him now.
Waking before him early this morning, she’d been rooting round at the back of the bathroom cabinet, looking for a fresh tube of toothpaste, when she’d found the pregnancy testing kit she’d bought.
Over the last few days she’d felt strangely nauseous on waking, had suffered one or two inexplicable dizzy spells. Common sense had told her that there were no repercussions from what she and Sam had done, but she’d run the test all the same, just to put her mind at re
st.
And now she was going to have to face the consequences.
She pulled out of Jed’s arms, her face white as she told him, ‘I’m pregnant, Jed.’
Despite her ashen face, the dark torment in her eyes, he smiled at her, slowly shaking his head, one brow drifting up towards his hairline. He pulled her back against his body and enfolded her with loving arms. The unresolved question of whether she and his brother had been more than good friends could wait
‘How can you possibly be sure of that, sweetheart? After only one week! It’s a nice thought, but I’m afraid it’s got to be something you ate!’