Man Hater Part 17

Jake was welcome to her, he had said, but did Jake still want her?

Could she believe what Lyn had told her? Did she have the courage to believe it?

There was only one way to find out, she decided, getting up. She only hoped that her courage wouldn't fail her!

"Well, another day over."

Kelly smiled at her a.s.sistant.

"Mmm."

Darting Kelly a curious glance, the other girl started to tidy her desk. Kelly had been preoccupied all day, and yet there was an air of suppressed excitement about her, a glow that she hadn't seen before.

"Going anywhere tonight?" she asked idly as she headed for the door.

"Er...1 may be."

Would this outfit do? Kelly wondered, staring at herself in her full-length mirror. She had changed twice since getting home, delaying tactics even if they were heavily disguised, and now suddenly the outfit she was wearing, a silk dress in a pretty pastel pink which suited her 'colouring, over which she was wearing a soft silver silk jacket, seemed too dressy for a casual visit, but it was too late to change again. It was already after eight and if she left it much longer Jake might have gone out.

It took every ounce of courage she possessed to get in the taxi and give the driver Jake's address. The huge office block looked cold and unwelcoming, the last batch of cleaners leaving as Kelly walked in.

A lift took her to the top floor, the doors opening on to a pale grey expanse of carpet and a curt sign reading "Penthouse--private."

Licking her dry lips, Kelly stepped out, crossing the carpet to ring the bell set into the marble wall.

An aeon seemed to pa.s.s before she heard any sound of movement, and as she heard the door chain rattle she had to fight down an urge to turn and flee. Panic filled her. What if she was wrong? What if Jake didn't want her? But it was too late now, the door was opening and she had a glimpse of Jake's to welling-clad back disappearing down a corridor as he called over his shoulder, "Late as usual, Lyn! Come on in, then."

With a tremendous sense of anticlimax Kelly followed him inside, closing the door behind her. Jake didn't stop walking until she had followed him into a huge living room, furnished in starkly masculine colours and shapes, greys and blues predominating.

"Sit down, then," he commanded.

"I thought you weren't coming."

"Did you, Jake?"

Her voice arrested his hand on its way to the decanter. He stiffened and straightened slowly, his face dark and inscrutable as he turned to look at her.

"Kelly?"

"I...1 ran into Lyn the other day and..."

Oh heavens, she was making a complete mess of this! Why on earth had she mentioned Lyn? She could see Jake's face closing on her, his eyes hard and unreadable as he said hardly, "I don't know that misplaced sense of pity brought you here, Kelly, but I don't need it. You know where the front door is," he added curtly.

"Do us both a favour and use it."

She wanted to cry out at the pain his words brought, stabbing a thousand needle-sharp wounds in her heart.

"Jake, please," she whispered huskily.

"Jake, please what?" he mimicked harshly.

She couldn't ask him if it was true that he loved her; not in cold blood with him standing opposite her as an enemy. She was turning to leave when a tiny inner voice urged her not to give in, not to be so fainthearted. This was her whole life at risk and the quality of the happiness she would find in it.

"Jake, please answer me one question," she managed calmly.

"Did you intimate at any time to anyone that you saw making love to me as a.. a challenge?"

She could tell that her question wasn't what he had expected. His eyes narrowed and he watched her thoughtfully.

"Who told you that?" he asked at length.

Her mouth was dry with fear and tension. She longed to back down, but too much was at stake. She hadn't come all this way to take the coward's way out now.

"The same person who didn't explain to you why I'd left Corfu," she told him evenly.

"Jeremy told me that he'd overheard you and Lyn talking. He deliberately misled me, allowing me to believe that you and Lyn were lovers."

"Lovers?" Jake shook his head disbelievingly.

"But..."

"Jeremy played on my insecurities. He knew where to hurt me," she admitted simply, taking a deep breath and holding it as she watched him levelly and said calmly, "He knew I loved you."

The silence lasted so long she began to despair, to think she had gambled everything and lost, and then Jake spoke, softly at first, and then more harshly as he demanded huskily, "You loved me?"

Kelly nodded her head.

"And still do," she admitted.

"Surely you could tell by ... by the way I responded to you when you when you made love to me?"

There was a huge lump in her throat, but she forced the words out, determined that she was not going to lose him this time by default. He might not love her, Lyn might be wrong, but she was still going to tell him the truth.

"That first day," Jake said slowly, "G.o.d--I was so furious with you!

You walked into that office and it was like seeing a dream come to life. You were there, everything I'd always wanted, and then you started to talk. You hated men--that came across loud and clear, but you needed a man--an escort, so I jumped in with both feet. I wanted you so badly even then. Time enough later to tell you the truth, when I'd gained your confidence, but everything was so complicated. You'd been married--I thought you must still be deeply in love with your husband; and then there was Jeremy; and you kept throwing my poverty in my face. Ridiculously, I began to want you not just to love me, but to love me as you thought I was. "

"I did," Kelly interrupted softly.

"Oh, I fought against it, but when we were in Corfu I forced myself to face the truth; that I loved and wanted you. That night I tried to tell you; I woke up wanting to tell you, wanting to admit to you that you mattered more than anything else. I was so happy..."

"That you ran away?"

"Jeremy told me who you really were; he laughed about it and said you had done too. Try to understand, it was more than my shaky selfconfidencecould take.

I ran away. I saw you at the airport with Lyn and that just seemed to confirm everything Jeremy had told me. "

"Oh, Kelly! I ought to beat you for misjudging me so badly. You really love me?" He cupped her face in his hands, studying each feature.

"So very much," Kelly told him softly.

"I hoped and prayed that you would come after me, explain ... make everything all right..."

"Jeremy told me you never wanted to see me again. He said you told him I reminded you of Colin--you can imagine what that did to me. All of a sudden you weren't making love with me, you were consummating a marriage to someone else. I told myself I hated you, but I was lying.

I managed to last out about a month before I gave in and persuaded my father to get you up to Edinburgh. I thought once I got you to myself on the island, we could work things out, I could prove to you that it was me you were responding to, not some shadow. "

"That was why you were so angry! I thought it was me--something I had said or done; I thought you must be laughing at me, knowing how I felt about you, and then I b.u.mped into Lyn in London and she told me you loved me, and I couldn't believe it. I went to see Jeremy, guessing that if he'd lied to me he could well have lied to you as well. You were never a subst.i.tute for Colin," she told him huskily.

"Everything I told you that night was true. I never really loved him, I've grown to see that over the years, but the scars he inflicted stopped me from making other relationships, from being able to trust, until I met you and I fell so hard that I couldn't help myself."

"That's a very tempting admission," Jake drawled, and Kelly was suddenly aware that all he had on was his robe, and that he was regarding her with a very disturbing glint in his eyes.

Her breathing suddenly changed, she murmured huskily, "Meaning?"

"Meaning that for the first time since we've met I can hold you in my arms like this, without any deceit between us, and I can kiss you like this--' he bent his head, brushing her lips with his until she was clinging dizzily to his shoulders, her breath coming jerkily from half parted lips--' without feeling that you're thinking of Colin, or worse still, Jeremy. And I can touch you like this," he muttered throatily, sliding his hands beneath the thin silk of her jacket, finding the full curves of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and caressing them urgently as he drew her against his body, kissing her with feverish intensity, showing her without the need for words that everything Lyn had said was true.

"I love you, Kelly," he told her thickly at last, releasing her throbbing mouth to trace a line of kisses downwards, slowly unfastening the tiny b.u.t.tons closing her dress.

"So much that it's an ache in my guts. I fell in love with you on sight, and then you nearly destroyed me with your ice R cold reserve, but I knew there was a living, warm woman inside somewhere, and I was determined to find her. "

"And now that you have?" Kelly whispered, shivering delicately with the pleasure of his marauding mouth, tracing pathways over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Now that I have she isn't going to escape until she's promised to make an old man very happy-my father's heard all about you from Lyn and he says if I don't return to Edinburgh with you beside me, I can definitely forget aboutMame and the chairmanship of the company. He admits that it's far harder to persuade a woman to change her mind than it is to run a company, but he says I'm not the right man to fill his shoes if I can't. Not that he's really thinking of vacating them--at least not until we provide him with a brace of grandchildren.

"Will you marry me, Kelly?" he asked roughly in a different tone.

"Will you?"

She raised herself on tiptoe, twining her arms round his neck, drawing his head down until she could reach his lips, murmuring her a.s.sent against them, feeling her body take fire from his as he tensed in response, letting her take the initiative until, with a groan, he pulled her tightly against him and her body melted into his, alive with the pleasure of the contact, revelling in the hardness of him against her without the barrier of his robe, her response urging him to swing her up in his arms and carry her--not to the bedroom, but to the fire, where the lamplight played revealingly over his features as he placed her carefully on the floor, bending tenderly over her as he drawled unsteadily, "This time there aren't going to be any interruptions--I hope!"

"Well, they certainly won't come in the form of planes landing," Kelly agreed with a chuckle.

"Oh, Jake," she whispered urgently, 'love me, please love me! " She reached up to pull him down against her, revelling in the tenseness of his body, the fine film of perspiration de wing his skin, the hungry pressure of his mouth as it possessed hers, obliterating all that was past and welcoming the future.

end.