‘If it is you’re motivated purely by cowardice,’ he told her bluntly. ‘You won’t let yourself make a commitment to another man because you’re afraid. Don’t think I don’t realise that, or that I don’t sympathise, but try to see what you’re doing to yourself!’
‘We could argue about this for the rest of our lives, Sam, and still remain on opposite sides of the fence. You’ve chosen your way of life and you must leave me to choose mine. I’ll go out and get Carly and get her ready. You deserve to be happy,’ she told him quietly, ?
??and I’m sorry if I seemed churlish. I know that marrying Vanessa doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten Holly.’
‘No, it doesn’t, any more than you marrying someone else would mean that you’ve forgotten Rick.’
He saw the shuttered look close her face and sighed. ‘Okay, from now on we’ll consider the subject taboo, but there is one final thing I want to add, Sara. Vanessa and I are both agreed that you’ll always have a home here.’
He might say that now, but Sara knew that there would come a time when her brother would want his wife and family to himself. However, there was no point in discussing it now.
‘When do you plan to get married?’ she asked instead.
‘As soon as possible. Neither of us see any point in waiting. Of course there could be a problem in that Jonas will have to find someone to take over Vanessa’s job. I don’t suppose you’d fancy giving it a try?’
‘No way,’ Sara told him firmly. Work for Jonas? She shuddered at the very thought!
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE thunder which she had expected would clear the air hadn’t been totally effective, and a slumbrous stillness permeated the atmosphere when Sara walked round the garden a little later on.
She was leaning over the fence, talking to the donkey, when she heard Vanessa’s car. Its doors slammed and then she saw the flash of sunlight bouncing off the glass as Sam opened the French window, Vanessa coming out after him.
She was hidden from them by one of the overgrown rhododendron bushes that someone had planted to screen the paddock from the garden, but it was obvious that she had waited a little too long to answer Sam’s call, Sara realised in dismay as she stepped away from the fence and saw her brother take Vanessa in his arms.
There was nothing tentative or hesitant about the way they kissed, and the sight of them lost to everything but their blind need for one another invoked such a terrible tearing agony of deprivation inside her that she was half-way down the garden before she realised that she was running.
It was an indication of how engrossed they were in each other that neither Vanessa nor Sam seemed to have heard her noisy flight. She could hardly go back now, she thought numbly—at least not without embarrassing both herself and Vanessa. She had never considered herself prudish, but there was something particularly intimate about the kiss she had unwittingly observed, and all she knew was that she wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to witness her kissing and being kissed so passionately.
At the bottom of the garden where it touched the boundary fence of Jonas’s land was a heavy wooden gate. Biting her lip, Sara turned the handle and stepped through it.
Beyond the rough grass that edged the fence lay several very large polythene growing tunnels. Edging her way between them, Sara went in search of a path that would lead her back to the road that ran past the cottage. That way, she could get back without either Sam or Vanessa being aware that they had been observed. If they asked where she had been she could always tell them that she had gone for a walk.
Deeply engrossed in her thoughts, she was unaware of Jonas’s cat-like progress towards her until she almost cannoned into him. The shock of seeing him, on top of the turmoil she had already experienced, thoroughly shocked her, the colour draining out of her face as she stepped back warily.
‘Careful; the path is a bit rocky here.’
The sensation of Jonas’s fingers on her arm disturbed her. The sleeves of his checked shirt were rolled up to the elbows, revealing the lean muscularity of his arms. He had nice arms, she thought absently, neither too brawny nor lacking in muscle.
The trickle of sensation curling down her spine as she fought back the impulse to touch his skin with her fingers threw her completely off balance, and she tugged away from Jonas’s restraining hand more out of fear of her own emotions than resentment of his touching her.
As she stepped back her heel missed the cinder path, and she overbalanced wildly, falling heavily on her left ankle. The pain that shot through it was so excruciating that she couldn’t hold back a shocked cry.
The next moment Jonas was down on his knees in front of her, his fingers running capably and gently over her rapidly swelling flesh.
‘You haven’t broken it. It’s just a sprain.’
Looking down on him while he kneeled at her feet was the oddest sensation; something akin to tenderness welled up inside her. She almost reached out to touch the soft thickness of his dark hair, but fortunately common sense stopped her.
‘I’ll have to carry you up to the house,’ he said. ‘That ankle will need bathing, and you can’t put any weight on it.’
She was in his arms before she could find the breath to protest, the sudden insecurity of finding herself above the ground making her cling instinctively to him, her hands locking behind his neck.
This close, she could smell the scent of his skin. A soft sheen of perspiration dampened his throat, and where her fingers rested against his back, his shirt stuck to his skin.
One arm supported her beneath her knees, the other resting against her midriff just below the curve of her breast.
Outside the back door, Jonas balanced her against his thigh as he pushed open the door. The ripples of quicksilver heat that darted through her as she felt his muscles compacting in a subtle reminder of his masculinity infuriated her, all the more so because she knew quite well that there was nothing in the least provocative in his movements, and that he was simply reacting instinctively to a minor crisis. A crisis which he would have handled in exactly the same way whatever her sex.