Reclaiming His Wife. Susan Fox P.

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      ‘How long before you jumped into another man’s bed after leaving mine?’

      Something flared in her eyes, locking her jaw tight. ‘How dare you even ask that when—’

      She bit back her words, her body stiffening from the footsteps moving along the hall, tension warring with anger inside of her. He had come here assuming the worst about her, and through a crazy desire to lash out at him she hadn’t put him straight. Now she was torn between wishing she had and relishing his being taken down a peg when he realised that he had made a total fool of himself.

      ‘Hello, Tay…’ The young woman who had just come in stopped dead, her greeting curtailed by the sight of the tall man standing there in the kitchen.

      ‘Jared! Jared Steele!’ A year or two older than Taylor, Charity Lucas had a sparkling smile that seemed as wide now as her mane of short shaggy auburn hair. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

      ‘Charity?’ Jared’s greeting was cordial, yet laced with puzzlement.

      Though she was inches shorter than Taylor and totally dwarfed by Jared, Charity’s ebullient personality seemed nonetheless to instantly fill the room. ‘Do you two know each other?’ Her words were strung with surprise as she looked from one to the other.

      ‘You could say that.’ Jared’s tone was dry. ‘And I could be forgiven for asking you the same thing?’

      Charity laughed. ‘Taylor rents from us. Upstairs. I’m her landlady.’ She held out her arms to the baby who, ever since she had come in, had been making little noises of recognition and was now straining towards her. ‘How’s he been?’

      ‘Fine.’ Handing Josh over to the other woman, Taylor couldn’t look at Jared, but she could sense clarity dawning on that sharp brain. ‘Craig told me to tell you he’d be late tonight.’

      She was too aware of Jared listening to every word, as conscious, no doubt, of her tense discomfort as he was of the other woman hugging and kissing the happy, gurgling Josh.

      ‘I can do that now.’ Taylor was disappointed when Charity readily took the baby bottle from her. She would have preferred to deal with the feed herself, desperate, at that moment, for something to do. ‘You didn’t tell me you knew Jared.’

      Not sure what to do with her hands, now that she had nothing to hold, Taylor uttered an awkward little laugh, reaching for her coat. ‘No.’ She wondered how Charity knew him, but was too disconcerted to ask.

      ‘Hardly a reflection on you, Charity.’ Moving towards them with that lithe grace of his, on the surface Jared oozed irresistible charm. ‘It seems she decided to keep us both in the dark,’ he breathed with the flash of a smile. His eyes, though, pierced like rods of steel. There was a flush lying along his cheekbones that hinted at some fervent emotion, but one that vied with something like satisfaction that said he had the upper hand and was enjoying every minute of it.

      ‘In what capacity do you two know each other?’ Charity asked, balancing Josh on a curvy hip while she started to warm his bottle, adding laughingly, ‘Or is that rather an indelicate question?’

      Dark head tilted, Jared’s eyes met Taylor’s in penetrating enquiry. It was strange, she thought swallowing, how he had made all the wrong assumptions, and she was the one left feeling like a fool.

      Her small breasts lifted as she caught her breath, wondering what to say. She hadn’t told Charity she was married and she didn’t want to spring the truth on her friend like this. And whether Jared was surprisingly sensitive to that fact, she wasn’t sure, but swiftly he was answering, ‘Let’s just say we go back quite a way.’

      ‘Really?’ Bustling around the worktop, Charity sent an enquiring glance at each of them over her shoulder, bouncing Josh on her arm as he suddenly started crying again. But then obviously sensing that she was treading on uneven ground, quickly she went on, ‘Jared’s a friend and business associate of Dad’s. I met him first when I came home one hols from university and he was staying with them, and in those days I must admit to having had a glorious crush on him.’ The contentment and security in her marriage gave Charity the freedom to declare it so openly, Taylor realised, although the hint of colour in the woman’s cheeks assured her that where Jared Steele was concerned, even the most fulfilled of women weren’t entirely immune. ‘Will you let me make him some tea? Or are you keen to have him all to yourself? Take him upstairs?’

      Exchanging glances with Jared, Taylor clung to her coat as though to a protective shield.

      ‘Well?’ she asked, hoping he wouldn’t accept Charity’s offer, yet wanting to delay the inevitability of being alone with him again.

      ‘I think,’ he said, dropping a glance at Thai who, having wolfed down his meal, suddenly shot out of the room as if he’d been startled by some unseen horror, ‘tea would be very nice—some other time. But right now Taylor and I do have things to discuss.’

      Do we? she thought, watching the smaller, more subdued Asia delicately picking at her food, and feeling something like cold desolation trickling through her. Surely there could be only one thing he would want to discuss after the tumultuous peaks and troughs that had been their marriage?

      ‘I’ll look in before I leave,’ he promised Charity, before Taylor guided him back into the hall and up the stairs leading to the top floor.

      ‘So the cats aren’t yours. The baby isn’t yours. And your lover’s somebody else’s!’ he comprehended as soon as he was in her flat. There was a marked silence about the place after all the domesticity downstairs.

      ‘I never said anyone was my lover! Unlike you, I do have some respect for other people’s marriages!’ she flung at him, tense from the effort of trying to stay in control.

      The hard masculine face was etched with some harsh emotion and anger darkened his eyes to slits of jet, but he said nothing.

      ‘I work with Craig,’ Taylor continued then, ‘and he took Josh to the studios today because Charity’s mother had a fall and needed her there. You saw us together and just assumed what you wanted to. Like you were so quick to assume that Josh was mine!’ she accused, tossing her coat over the back of one of a pair of matching sofas which, though in immaculate order, she had managed to pick up cheaply at a clearance auction.

      ‘A natural deduction, in the circumstances,’ Jared muttered, ‘as I think you’ll agree.’ He was standing in the middle of the impeccably furnished room, looking around him, and even its generous proportions couldn’t detract from his magnificence, or that air of innate authority that was as much a part of him as his shadow. ‘I should have known better, shouldn’t I? Somehow that delightfully homely scene downstairs didn’t quite gel with my memory of the girl I knew.’ His gaze was still raking over her carefully chosen belongings; over the sparse but tasteful ornaments and co-ordinating pictures, the flawless rugs and sofas and the low-level bookcases with their immaculate veneer. ‘Now this is more like it,’ he breathed heavily, making her wonder what he was thinking because, after the domestic chaos to which he had just referred below, the flat only seemed to emphasise the ordered isolation of her own existence. ‘This is much more in keeping with the Taylor Steele I knew. Or is it back to Taylor Adams now?’ He didn’t need to ask if she was using her maiden name. If she hadn’t been, then Charity might have guessed the truth. ‘Why didn’t you tell her you were married?’ he demanded with some unfathomable emotion burning like dark fire in his eyes.

      She СКАЧАТЬ