Reawakened by His Touch

‘My baby?’

How weak and hesitant her voice sounded, when she felt as though she had all but screamed the words at him!

Watching Jonas, Sara saw his expression lighten immediately and knew that whatever it was that had brought that drawn quality to his face, it had not been a miscarriage.

‘He or she is fine,’ he told her with a small smile. ‘In fact you’re both fine, luckily. Dr Heathers was very worried when you first came in—that was some crack you gave your head—but apart from mild concussion it seems you’re OK. You’ll have a nasty collection of bruises for a while, and possibly even a black eye.’

‘I thought when I woke up that I’d come in for the abortion.’ Sara spoke slowly, saying the words more for her own benefit than for his. ‘I wanted to tell them that I’d changed my mind, but I couldn’t speak.’ She shivered, her eyes unknowingly agonised. ‘It was terrible…awful…’

She was stunned when Jonas came across to the bed and sat on the edge of it, facing her, taking her in his arms.

He was wearing one of his soft woollen checked shirts, and the fabric felt good against her face. Through it she could smell his skin and she wanted to bury her head against him and go on breathing in the essence of him for the rest of her life. She could feel his heartbeat, surely highly accelerated. One of his hands stroked her hair. It must be a dream, she thought hazily, and hadn’t realised she had said the words out loud until he released her rather abruptly and said curtly, ‘Doctor Heathers says you’re well enough to go home, but of course if you’d prefer to stay in for another day or so.’

‘Another day? How long have I been here?’

‘Two days,’ Jonas told her. He had his back to her and his voice was muffled. The words sounded almost anguished, that could not possibly be—witness the way he had released her so quickly just now.

‘I should never have spoken to you the way I did.’ He said it under his breath, swinging round abruptly. The expression of anguish in his eyes shocked her. For a moment hope, golden with promise, floated through her, and then she was dashed back down to reality when he went on rawly, ‘You could have so easily lost the baby, and…’

‘And then you’d have married me for nothing,’ she supplied bitterly for him.

She watched him frown, but the anger she anticipated wasn’t there. If anything his expression was rather abstracted as he asked her slowly, ‘Why did you tell me you loved me?’

Why? Why had she? ‘I thought it might help to get our marriage on a better footing.’

‘A conciliatory lie, in other words?’

A lie? He was still watching her, and Sara felt her heart leap and lodge in her throat. Without knowing it, he was giving her an opportunity to retract, to pretend she had never really meant what she had said, or was he simply offering her a way out that would embarrass neither of them; was this his way of telling her that he didn’t want her love, either now or at any time in the future? For a second she toyed with the idea of telling him that she hadn’t lied, that she did love him, but what good would it do? With her mind growing clearer with every passing second, she could all too easily remember the anger and contempt with which he had greeted her admission of love.

Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to actually tell him yet another lie. Instead she shrugged and, avoiding his eyes, said listlessly, ‘If you like.’

The silence stretched on for so long that she was forced at last to look at him. He was frowning slightly, sharp grooves of pain scoring his skin. She wanted to go up to him and take him in her arms to tell him how much she loved him.

The door opened and a nurse came in.

‘All ready to get dressed, are we?’ she demanded brightly of Sara, starting to shoo Jonas out. ‘Doctor will be in to have a few words with you before you leave.’ Taking Jonas with her, she left Sara to get dressed.

Jonas seemed very preoccupied on the drive back to the house. Despite her protests, he insisted on carrying her inside the house and depositing her carefully on a settee in the sitting-room, saying that Mrs Lyons had be

en in and left them something to eat. ‘There was a card from Vanessa and Sam this morning.’

The newly married couple and Carly were still on honeymoon, and Sara tried to will her tensed muscles to relax as Jonas disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. He seemed different in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on; gentler somehow.

He wasn’t gone long, coming back with a loaded tea-trolley. Sara stared at the mounds of sandwiches and scones.

‘Mrs Lyons believes in ladies in your interesting condition eating for two,’ he told her with a grin.

‘There’s enough there to feed two hundred!’ exclaimed Sara wryly. In point of fact she wasn’t hungry at all; sitting here listening to his lazy drawl, having this brief glimpse of the relationship they might have had had things been different, was suddenly far too painful. She felt as though her throat was raw with the threat of tears. Her head ached and so did her heart. When she put down her sandwich untouched, she saw Jonas frown.

‘Are you feeling all right?’

He was at her side instantly, watching her, lifting his fingers to her face and touching the still tender flesh of her temple, pushing back her hair as his fingertips caressed her skin in what she could only assume must be an automatic reflex action. Whatever the origin of the caress, it was playing havoc with her self-control. She wanted him to go on; she wanted him to stop. She made a small sound of protest in her throat, her eyes meeting his for an unguarded second. Amazingly, he was smiling at her, a warm, teasing smile that held so much promise that for a moment her heart seemed to stop beating.

Dropping down beside her so that their heads were level, he took her wrists in a light grip and said huskily, ‘Sara, are you sure you were lying when you said you loved me?’

His question was so unexpected that she simply stared at him, while a betraying tide of colour swept up under her skin.

His grip on her wrists tightened; the warmth of his breath brushed against her skin as he muttered, more it seemed to himself than to her, ‘Silly question.’ And then his mouth was touching hers, moving against it with a heady languor that made her bones melt, clinging and caressing, moving so gradually from possession to passion that Sara was barely aware of how the transition took place.