Bittersweet Passion

She flushed unhappily. Dane had not once come back from Jamaica empty-handed. A diamond bracelet, a necklace and a ring languished in the box on her dressing-table. Jewels worth a king’s ransom that she shrank from. It was as though Dane felt that he had to buy himself out of their short-lived relationship. One more symptom of the feelings he didn’t have for her, and his own clear conviction that he had to somehow compensate her for sharing his bed, however briefly. And now he planned to hurl a house at her, too. ‘They’re lovely …’ She hesitated, reluctant to offend.

‘If Max had given them to you, you’d have been delighted,’ he interposed drily. ‘But not me.’

She was curiously cold, in spite of the heat. ‘You don’t owe me anything, Dane.’

‘I just want you to be happy.’

She flung him a bitter smile. ‘It can’t be bought.’

‘You’re still having the house,’ he delivered squarely. ‘It’ll be put in your name.’

‘Damn you, I don’t want it!’ she repeated angrily.

He looked at her coldly, so coldly that she shuddered. ‘Max might. I take it you haven’t heard from him yet?’

&nbs

p; The insinuation was so unbelievably insulting, she almost choked on her bitterness. He was gift-wrapping her for Max. It was incredible. Only Dane would have been capable of such a gesture. He would rest easy only when she was restored to Max and his conscience was sated. Unutterably humiliated now, Claire could feel hysteria closing over her like a suffocating blanket.

‘Not yet,’ she answered shakily.

Dane, misinterpreting her evident emotiom, folded his arms round her in a move that was so disgustingly big brotherly and asexual that she felt violent. ‘I’m sure you will,’ he soothed. ‘If you don’t, I’ll get in touch with him.’

In disbelief, her palms lodged against his chest to push him firmly away. ‘Don’t bother!’ she snapped.

‘When I said I could contact him, I only meant that I could explain,’ Dane replied aggressively.

‘Explain what?’ Her green eyes blazed her outrage. ‘What would you tell him? How would you describe me now? One owner, well maintained, complete new body? Maybe you’d like to run an ad in the paper to flog me to the highest bidder? My God, I despise you for this!’ Biting back a tearing sob she turned her back on him, the sound of footsteps crunching from the mouth of the trail behind them.

‘I think it’s time we got back,’ Dane said without expression. But he was pale beneath his golden tan, doubtless angered by her uncontrolled outburst and her lack of gratitude. As she realised how perilously close she had come to revealing her real feelings, she suppressed a stark quiver of relief. ‘I don’t think I ought to join you on the yacht. I could go home from here.’

‘You’re still my responsibility, Claire.’

She cringed from such brutal candour. ‘No, I’m my own. You’re really not much more liberated than Adam, are you?’

‘You’re different from the kind of women I’m used to. More vulnerable,’ he replied grimly.

She had not required the information. He would not have been wet nursing Mei Ling in the aftermath of an affair. But he would not have been landed with a memory of her as a child—a child, a teenager and a young woman who had inspired a protective instinct that was not easily overcome.

The Kirbys were still in their rooms when they got back, and on the upper landing Dane turned to say, ‘Get your maid to pack for you, Claire. We might as well leave here after lunch.’

For a flight to Jamaica where the yacht awaited them. A cruise was to follow, stopping off at various pleasure spots. By the end of that she would be even more savaged by Dane’s emotional immunity to her. Add Mei Ling and she could end up ready to throw herself overboard. She wanted to leave now. It would be much harder to think up an excuse on the yacht. Yet wasn’t such determination now likely to look suspicious in itself? She didn’t want Dane to suspect that Mei Ling’s arrival was driving her away, for of course it wasn’t as simple as that.

Hannah gave her her mail while she was reluctantly packing. She sat down to read the two letters. There was a ten-line note from Randy, asking when she would be back in London and ready to introduce her to Dane.

‘Curiosity is killing me,’ she added as a postscript.

The other was from Maisie and it elevated Dane to sainthood. She wrote to tell Claire that Dane had arranged for their cottage to be repaired and modernised. She had finished reading and was staring unhappily into space when the solution to her plight came to her. If Dane believed that one of those letters came from Max, he could hardly pressure her into remaining.

She found him in his bedroom. ‘I needed to talk to you in private,’ she essayed at his questioning glance. ‘I’ve heard from Max and I want to go back to London.’

He eyed her composed face assessingly. She stood blade-straight, a soft smile pinned to her lips in lieu of excitement. It crossed her mind humourlessly that she ought to have gone on stage.

‘Immediately?’ he queried shortly. ‘Don’t you think that’s a little indecently premature? What did he write? “Come home, all’s forgiven"?’ His scorn was palpable. ‘I’d like to meet the guy first.’

Flames of pink lit her cheeks at his tone. ‘How very civilised. Unfortunately, neither I nor Max would enjoy that, and my relationship with him is none of your business.’

‘No, we’re just two people who accidentally shared a bed on a few occasions, not married people,’ Dane qualified with carrying sibilance. ‘If you were my wife, I’d feel differently, wouldn’t I?’