‘I don’t cuddle…ever,’ Jax stressed.
‘Bella needs cuddles so you’ll have to revise your rule and I need them too,’ Lucy flung back at him rawly. ‘So, if you want sex, you’ll do it.’
An unholy flare of rage lit up Jax’s eyes, lightening them to the brilliance of sea glass gleaming in sunshine. ‘I’ve put up with a hell of a lot but I won’t stand for that!’ he raked back at her, every word slicing through the air like a knife. ‘I married you. Be grateful for it because you’re getting nothing else from me but the name and the money and a father for your child!’
And as Lucy stood there staring at him, involuntarily unnerved by the sheer force of his rage, she stilled a shiver, appalled by that assurance. ‘That’s not enough for me,’ she muttered shakily.
‘Tough,’ Jax enunciated with clarity. ‘That’s all you’ll be getting now and in the future.’
With that final statement of punitive intent, Jax strode out of the room and just left her there. Lucy ate through a whole plate of profiteroles and drank coffee and then felt sick. Her whole world had fallen into pieces round her feet and, with it, any sense of security. She lurched into the bathroom where she was sick and when she felt strong enough to stand up again she went for a shower. She knew she would never look at a profiterole again. She would never look at Jax the same way again either for she had just seen a side of him that he had never shown her before.
Now she knew what she really hadn’t wanted to know. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. In fact he had absolutely hated and thoroughly resented having to marry her. He had suppressed that fury successfully throughout the day and she had provoked him into expressing it by asking for something more: a stupid cuddle, of all things. Her eyes stung and she looked heavenwards as she struggled to control her wildly see-sawing emotions. As far as Jax was concerned he had already given her more than enough: his famous name, his great wealth, his readiness to be a father. Your child, he had called Bella, not our child.
Why would he care that none of that would be sufficient to make her happy? Why would he care that she was hurting so bad that she wanted to scream with the pain of it? He hadn’t asked her to care about him and she didn’t know when or how she had started caring again. In Spain it had begun with a smile, a shared look of understanding and discussion, a touch of his hand, six weeks of breathless excitement and more happiness than she had ever experienced before she lost it all again.
But, Jax had reappeared in her life and somehow shreds of those old feelings had taken root again deep down inside her where she didn’t explore very often. She cared. Much more than he deserved. But was that a true or fair view? Kreon had been vicious and Jax had been strong-armed by family affection into making a sacrifice he didn’t want to make. Sadly, Jax wasn’t any keener on the concept of marriage than he had ever been.
So, what did that leave her to work with? Lucy blinked back tears and went to clean up her face again, dashing on a little make-up in a desperate hope of relocating a hint of a lingering bridal glow. Unhappily she looked tired and heavy-eyed and pale and even bronzer didn’t help. In the end she washed it all off again before she went to look for Jax.
It was the early hours of the morning but everywhere was lit up. She didn’t even know what she was going to say to him but she knew that she had to deal with the situation and make something out of the mess Kreon had created. After all, they had Bella to consider and while Lucy was prepared to let go of her own dreams she wasn’t prepared to give up on her dream of giving her daughter a normal family life.
She peered into empty room after empty room on the ground floor and then she found him, sprawled with a glass in his hand on a huge fancy padded lounger sited on a wide terrace from which he was watching the sun come up in a glorious multicoloured reflective rainbow over the dark sea far below the house. She hesitated beside the patio doors and then noticed that the phone he was studying was displaying a wedding photo of their daughter. And that discovery softened her and empowered her in a way nothing else could have done into moving forward.
‘Jax?’ she murmured uncertainly.
‘We have to make a go of it…or at least try…for her,’ Jax breathed in a raw undertone without turning his head.
‘Yes…’ It was exactly what Lucy wanted to hear and yet she still felt as though her heart were breaking inside her because she knew that she wanted so much more from him.
‘I’m drunk,’ Jax confided gruffly, wishing he weren’t, wishing he were better at handling his own emotional turmoil. ‘But drowning your sorrows doesn’t help. It only darkens everything more.’
In the tense silence, Lucy dropped down onto the smaller lounger beside his. She didn’t recline, she sat on the side of it, rigid-backed and still. A photo lay on the table between them and she lifted it. It was a picture of another little girl, a little girl who looked similar enough to Bella to be her sister.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked worriedly, immediately wondering if Jax had another child.
‘My little sister, Tina. The reason why I didn’t need to wait on DNA test results to know that Bella was mine,’ Jax explained reluctantly.
‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’
‘Hardly anyone knows. When she died it was hushed up,’ he muttered.
Lucy frowned. ‘Your father’s child?’
‘No. From my mother’s second marriage to an actor. He was half her age. It fell apart quickly. By then Mariana was accidentally pregnant and as a devout Catholic there was no question of her not giving birth. Valentina was born the summer I was twelve. Mariana was determined to keep her a secret because she couldn’t bear the idea that her adoring fans would pity her for being abandoned a second time with a child. Unfortunately, she could never keep household staff for long. I looked after the baby that summer—’
‘At twelve years old?’ Lucy gasped although she was trying hard not to react to what he was telling her. ‘Where was your mother?’
‘Zonked out of her skull on prescription drugs…the way she always was,’ Jax confided grudgingly. ‘I got attached to Tina. She was a sweet kid. Mariana got another nanny before I went back to boarding school and for a couple of years everything was fine. I saw Tina in the holidays. And then Mariana had a fight with the nanny the day before she held a pool party…and Tina drowned because nobody was looking after her. My mother was a legendary star and the studio ensured that the death and the burial were dealt with very discreetly.’
‘I’m so sorry, Jax,’ Lucy whispered shakily.
‘The worst part of it was that nobody ever mentioned Tina again. It was like she’d never existed.’
Lucy slid to her feet and settled on the big lounger by his side, one arm draping over him protectively.
‘I don’t cuddle,’ he told her argumentatively.
‘You’re not cuddling,’ Lucy assured him. ‘I’m cuddling you.’
‘I really don’t need or like that sort of stuff,’ he growled.
‘Of course you don’t. You’re just tolerating me to be polite.’ Lucy sighed, feeling the rigid tension in his muscles ease and snuggling into the powerful heat of his long, lean frame. ‘You have such good manners, Jax.’
‘I do?’ Jax said in surprise, flipping over to face her, green eyes clear as emeralds in the dawn light.
‘Most of the time,’ Lucy murmured with amusement, colliding with those gorgeous eyes of his, eyes full of so much hunger and uncharacteristic uncertainty. ‘I wasn’t part of the blackmail plan.’
‘I know…’ Jax rubbed his dark stubbled jaw against her shoulder as if in apology. ‘But I think I preferred you not knowing about what your father did.’
‘I would’ve preferred that too,’ Lucy admitted. ‘But it happened and we have to deal with it.’