Silver. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ that a voice and face that could look so benign and unemotional should at the same time be able to convey such an intensity of purpose. How different he was from Charles… as dark-visaged and formidably boned as a Roman god of war, where Charles was all golden promise, all physical perfection, with the face and body of a Greek statue. Under a similar threat, though, as she now had good cause to know, Charles would have reacted with violence and malevolence, so intense and strong that the shock of it would have terrorised his victim. Jake, while equally formidable, used so little anger, and no physical force, and yet the effect he was having on her right now was far more powerful, so much more effective than anything Charles had ever said or done.

      Idly she wondered who would be the victor if the two men were ever to confront one another as enemies. Pound for pound, inch for inch they were probably evenly matched, both tall, well-muscled men, although Jake had a way of moving that was somehow far more intimidating than Charles’s aggressively male stride.

      Physically, there was surely no comparison. Charles had the looks of a screen idol, and the charisma… Jake, on the other hand, had the kind of face that women would find challenging and a little austere.

      Charles had the natural hauteur and arrogance that came from having a privileged, wealthy background; he possessed charm, sophistication—sex appeal. He also possessed, as she had good cause to know, a deep vein of cruelty, a love of inflicting emotional and physical pain… a desire to dominate and destroy. Charles, all golden beauty on the outside, was inwardly corrupt… even evil… Silver gave a tiny shudder, remembering the extent of that evil, wondering how many lives it had touched and damaged.

      Jake, on the other hand, was without such cruelty. He was hard, yes, unyielding, savagely determined, completely impervious to the kind of vanities which she knew were going to be Charles’s downfall.

      In any kind of contest between them, Charles should have been the victor, and yet there was something about Jake that made her acknowledge that when he thought he was in the right he would hang on as grimly as the proverbial bulldog. She respected Jake, something she realised with a sudden start of shock she had never felt for Charles, despite her youthful idolatry of him.

      A tiny frisson of unwanted sensation touched her, an awareness… sharply poignant, shockingly intense—something dangerous and not to be thought of.

      She reacted to it as strongly as if Jake had physically laid hands on her and overpowered her, saying violently, ‘You can’t threaten me, Jake. I could walk out of here right this moment and there’s not a thing you could do about it.’

      She looked at him, and something cynical and world-weary in his expression tightened the coil of panic gripping her.

      ‘You can’t even see me, never mind stop me—–’

      She broke off, shaking with a mixture of panic-based rage and a deep sense of shame. That she, who had born so many taunts and cruel words because of her own physical handicap, should use such a weapon against someone else sickened her. She took one look at Jake’s shuttered, hard face, and the words of apology stuck in her throat.

      ‘If you want to walk out of here, Silver, I’m not going to stop you,’ Jake told her quietly.

      There was no recognition of her insult, her cruelty… her immaturity… Nothing other than the weary patience of an adult for a recalcitrant, awkward child. His reaction, so mild and restrained, bit into her soul like a tempered steel whip, lacerating her pride until it was raw with pain.

      ‘You aren’t the only one wishing this were over, you know,’ he told her calmly. ‘It would be the easiest thing in the world right now for me to let you walk away from here—as you just said, I can’t stop you.’

      Her face burned with guilt and self-contempt. His very acceptance where she had expected anger, his calmness where she had expected ferocity, made her feel far worse than if he had lost his temper with her.

      The trouble was… the trouble was, she ached for him to make some betrayal of vulnerability—of humanity. At the moment she felt like a stupid child confronted by a particularly intelligent and mature adult.

      She wanted to bring him down to her own level, she admitted wearily. She wanted to weaken him for the sake of her own conceit.

      She closed her eyes, feeling her stomach muscles knot. When had it happened, this dangerous desire to shift the entire axis of their relationship… this need to make him respond to her on a personal level, even if that response came only from anger?

      As she opened her eyes, she tensed, realising that he had moved and was now standing within inches of her.

      ‘And it’s not true that just because I can’t see you, I can’t find you,’ he told her softly. His hand touched her face and he said quietly, ‘It isn’t very pleasant when we make discoveries about ourselves that we don’t like, is it?’

      And Silver knew, immediately and shockingly, that he was as fully aware of her most private thoughts as if they had been his own.

      She tried to step back from him, but he wouldn’t let her.

      ‘Acknowledging that we aren’t perfect and then learning to make our vices work as well for us as our virtues is an important step on the road to maturity.’

      And then, before she could speak, he added almost ruefully, ‘I do know what it’s like, you know. I have been there myself… which is why I cautioned you against this goal you’ve set for yourself. All right, so you loved the guy and you lost him… He hurt you, and now you want to hurt him back…’

      ‘There’s more to it than that,’ Silver told him stiffly. ‘A lot more…’

      His hand left her face and she discovered that she was free to move away, but for some reason she no longer felt the need to.

      It was an odd sensation to be talking with him like this… to be communicating with him as one human being to another.

      ‘Such as?’

      Later, questioning the wisdom of having confided in him, she had been forced to admit that he had applied a startlingly skilful degree of emotional pressure on her, and in such a way that she had had no idea how she was being manipulated until it was too late and she had told him far more about herself than she had ever intended he should know.

      ‘He—my cousin—wanted to marry me—he didn’t love me—he told me that, and laughed at me for thinking he might. How could he love me? I was plain, fat, ugly.’

      ‘You mean you thought he wanted to marry you?’

      Silver shook her head, angry that he wouldn’t believe her.

      ‘No, I know it. He told me… boasted about it… said he would make me do it. That I had no choice. That our engagement—he said that he had to have Roth—–’ She broke off, biting her lip. No one, except Annie, knew who she really was… what she had originally been. And Annie might have told Jake everything else, but she wouldn’t tell him that—she had promised.

      ‘You were engaged to him?’

      She could see Jake frowning, and felt a sudden shaft of pleasure that she had at last managed to surprise him after all.

      ‘Yes, unofficially. But not because he loved me. He made that plain enough. And to think I’d been stupid enough to believe СКАЧАТЬ