Jade Star (Star Quartet 4)

She looked at him helplessly.

“It is not that I haven’t enjoyed having Thomas and Penelope staying with us,” he continued, his voice becoming harder, “but this, Juliana! Damn you, how dare you?”

Juliana. She’d just regressed again. “Michael,” she began, sliding her tongue over her lips, “you don’t understand . . .” Her mouth felt like dry cotton.

“Yes?” he said, his voice silky. “You can, I am certain, manage a marvelously competent explanation. You’re rarely at a loss for glib words, are you? . . . Well?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t throw them away,” she said, cursing herself silently, her eyes, as if mesmerized, on those wretched sheets of paper.

“Juliana! Damn you, answer me!”

She raised pleading eyes to his face, and he cursed crudely.

“Do you have any idea how this makes me feel?” He waved the papers in front of her nose. “Less than a man—in fact, something far less than a tinker’s damn! How dare you keep this from me?”

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. The papers made a loud crumpling noise as they wrinkled between his hand and her shoulder.

“If I recall correctly, I said very nearly the same things to you before, didn’t I? Did my feelings then mean nothing to you?”

How dare he treat her to this ridiculous tirade, she thought suddenly. She jerked away from him. “All right,” she said, glaring at him. “I was protecting you, dammit! I love you and I couldn’t allow you to be worried!”

“I had every right to know that this . . . vermin was threatening you again!”

“No,” she said, stiffening her backbone, “no, you didn’t.” She added, “And stop cursing me. There was nothing you could have done in any case. If you don’t remember, you were blind! Helpless!”

He realized the justice of her reasoning, but was not ready to release the meaty bone of contention. “So,” he sneered, “you, my little wife, made the decision that I was to be left ignorant. Is there anything else I should know? Did it not occur to you to tell me yesterday, when, if you will remember, I saw the light of day again?”

“I was too drunk and too happy,” she said. “I forgot to tell you.” She thrust up her chin. “Even if I had thought of it, I wouldn’t have said anything. We were celebrating, remember?”

That halted him in his tracks, but for just a moment. “Then you should have told me this morning.”

Jules eyed him with growing anger. “You are acting ridiculously,” she said. “I will have no more of your silly shouting and wounded male vanity. I would do the same thing again, do you hear? Now, we have company downstairs.”

“I happen to be nine years older than you and twice your size,” he said. “I refuse to be ordered about by a little twit now or ever. Do you understand me?”

“Damned arrogant man,” Jules muttered. “If you wish to nurse your grievances, do so, Michael. I’m leaving!”

He stared at her a mome

nt. “ ‘Damned arrogant man,’ ” he repeated, as if disbelieving of the words until they’d come from his own mouth. “That’s what you think I am?”

“I do,” she said firmly, “if you continue to call me Juliana.”

“Oh shit,” he said, and thrashed his fingers through his hair. “Come here, you idiot.”

She gave him a hopeful, tentative smile, and at the answering tenderness in his eyes, she threw herself into his arms. “I’m sorry,” she whispered against his shoulder. “I did what I thought I had to do, what I thought was best.”

“I know,” he said, “I know.”

He began kissing her, and her response was immediate and most gratifying.

“Oh God,” he said, reluctantly releasing her, “company downstairs, did you say?”

“You’ve a lot of friends, Michael,” she said.

“Any chance of sending the whole bloody lot of them to the devil right now?”

“Probably not,” she said, a wealth of disappointment in her voice.