A Reason For Marriage. PENNY JORDAN

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      ‘I’m fine, just a little weak…’

      ‘Jake said you were asleep when he left you. He told me not to disturb you last night. It’s just as well he was here. I had no idea you were subject to these attacks.’

      Jamie wanted to tell her that she wasn’t, that her faintness had been brought on by a headache and the acute tension engendered by Jake’s presence, but wisely she said nothing. Her heart was still pounding fiercely, her thoughts tormented by that hazy memory of Jake’s mouth against her own as she used all the skill he had taught her to soften its hard outline. Dear God, surely she could not have done such a thing? It must surely be her imagination playing tricks on her. How on earth was she ever going to face Jake again if…

      Other memories began to surface. Jake had tricked her into agreeing to go home at Christmas. But why? He could want her company as little as she wanted his. He had claimed that Mark and her mother missed her. Her mouth tightened. Was that why he wanted her there, or was it simply so that he could torment her further?

      ‘What did you think of Amanda?’ Beth asked eagerly, sitting down on the edge of the bed, as Jamie struggled to sit up. ‘She’s nice, isn’t she?’

      ‘Far too nice for Jake,’ Jamie replied promptly, wishing she hadn’t been so curt when she saw Beth’s surprised expression. ‘She was telling me last night that she isn’t at all keen on the idea of getting married yet, to anyone,’ she told Beth by way of explanation. ‘I get the impression she’s scared stiff that between them her father and Jake will force her into it.’

      ‘Oh no, surely not? Jake would never do anything like that. Why, if he wants to get married he could find any number of women who’d jump at the chance.’

      ‘Ex-mistresses, you mean?’ Jamie said sarcastically. ‘Jake’s too proud for that, Beth. He’ll want a wife he can mould and dominate. An innocent, untainted by any other man sexually or mentally. I’m sure in his eyes Amanda would make him an excellent wife. She’s an only child and her father is a very wealthy man.’

      ‘I know you and Jake don’t get on, but surely that isn’t really how you see him, is it?’ Beth was plainly troubled. “I know he can be strong-willed and arrogant, but…’

      ‘No buts, Beth,’ Jamie told her wearily. ‘Jake’s cool-headed enough to decide what he wants out of life and then to go out and get it without bothering himself over trivial little details like emotions and feelings.’

      Plainly perplexed by her cousin’s bitterness, Beth stood up. ‘I just came to see if you were awake. I’ll go and make you a cup of tea now. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’

      Nodding her head, Jamie turned her face into the pillow. All right was the last thing she felt. No amount of determination had protected her from the savage reality of seeing Jake. It was the same every time and it got worse, not better. She shuddered as she tried to eject from her mind the tormentingly hazy memory of being in his arms; of wantonly pressing herself up against his body, of betraying herself to him in the most humiliating way possible. Sweat broke out on her forehead, sickness cramping through her stomach. Please God, let it not be true, let that mocking elusive memory belong to the more distant past, or better still her imagination. She could not, would not endure the torment of Jake knowing that her years of cool indifference towards him were nothing more than a brittle barrier behind which she hid her love.

      CHAPTER THREE

      ANOTHER day over—thank God. Sighing faintly, Jamie locked the door of the office behind her and hurried out into the cold early November darkness.

      They had been busy recently, but that was not the reason for the lines of tension creasing her forehead and the overstrained look in her eyes. Even Ralph, her partner, had commented that she was not her normal cool, calm self. She had Jake to thank for that, she thought angrily, her soft mouth twisting.

      Only last week she had received an ecstatic letter from her mother telling her how thrilled she and Mark were that she was going to be able to get home for Christmas—Jake had told them, apparently.

      Trust him. He was tying her up in knots, making it impossible for her to find an excuse for not going home. How ill was Mark? A deeper frown touched her forehead. Whenever she asked her mother about her stepfather the replies she received were reassuring but evasive. Very mild angina was how her mother had described Mark’s condition, but what if it were more than that, what if… Panic and dread clutched her heart at the thought of anything happening to her stepfather, if he was more seriously ill than she was being told and something should happen to him. She knew that she would never forgive herself if Mark died without her having seen him.

      Even so the situation was an impossible one. If only Jake did not live so close to Queensmeade. Because he had taken over the running of the factory he was constantly in and out of Queensmeade discussing business with his father, and unless she knew specifically that he was going to be away she had purposely not gone home, unable to bear the thought of facing him in the place where she had once known such foolish joy.

      How typical it was of Jake’s arrogance that he should expect her to put the past calmly behind her and behave as though nothing had happened. If Wanda hadn’t opened her eyes to the truth she would have been married to him and it would have been too late. They had planned to tell Mark and her mother how they felt about one another on their return from holiday. Jake had been talking about a Christmas wedding. How naïve she had been to think he actually loved her, and how clever he had been to keep her in the dark as to his real feelings.

      What hurt her most was not that she had loved him, but that she had trusted him as well, had looked up to him and adored him all through their childhood—and been too bedazzled by the wonder of this demigod, whom she had worshipped all her life, actually loving her, to have the wit to question the reality of an experienced and very male man in his mid-twenties falling passionately in love with an inexperienced teenager he had known all his life.

      But if Wanda had not told her would she have been any better off? she wondered cynically, dodging down into the underground. She enjoyed her work—when she was working—but the PR side of the business, so necessary to keep commissions rolling in, was something she preferred to leave to Ralph. Wouldn’t she have been equally content to run the business as a small and probably only marginally profitable sideline, occupying most of her time as Jake’s wife and the mother of his children?

      She was not ambitious and never had been, which did not mean that she thought of herself as in any way inferior or subservient to any man. Her mother had shown her that it was possible for a woman to be all those things that were ‘feminine’ and yet to retain her independence and self-worth at the same time. She had seen for herself that for all his wealth and power Mark was as dependent on her mother as she was on him, perhaps more so. Any emotions one felt for another human being to some extent made one vulnerable, dependent. Some of her female acquaintances would have a field-day if they could read her mind, she thought wryly, as she stepped off the train and joined the surge of fellow commuters pressing up the escalators.

      The wind had picked up since she had left the office and it whipped icily at her exposed ankles as she hurried towards her small Victorian house. She had bought it with the small amount of money her father had left her, when it had been in a dilapidated and very run-down state. Now five years later it was an undeniable advertisement for the company’s work.

      She let herself into the small hall and snapped on the lights. The plain French-blue carpet soothed her eyes, the soft butter-yellow dragged walls banishing the cold dampness of the November night.

      Because СКАЧАТЬ