Читать книгу Christmas Eve Wedding - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 7

JAZ smiled excitedly as she hurried towards the luxurious house in the centre of the French Quarter of New Orleans, where Caid was staying for the duration of his visit.

He had given her his spare key to the house the same night he had declared his love for her—a week to the day after they had first met—and now, as she turned it gently in the lock and opened the door to step inside the house’s hallway, Jaz wondered how on earth she was going to cope tomorrow morning when she was due to fly home—without him!

Already, secretly, she had fantasised about the life they would live together—the children she hoped they would one day have. A boy, a miniature Caid, patterned on his father, and a girl, to fill the home they would share. Suddenly it struck her that she did not know where Caid’s permanent home actually was!

Not that it mattered, she assured herself. After all, she knew all the really important things about him…Like the fact that he slept on his right-hand side and that he was such a light sleeper that if she so much as brushed the lightest of kisses against his skin he was immediately awake—even if on one occasion he had fooled her into thinking he wasn’t, and she had betrayed herself, giving in to her female longing to relish the secret intimacy and pleasure of touching and exploring him whilst he slept.

Hastily Jaz dragged her thoughts onto more mundane things. She knew that Caid had been to college in Boston, where his family also had a store, and that his work as a financial consultant required a certain amount of travel.

‘Fortunately I can work from any base, so long as I have a computer,’ he had told her, adding jokingly, ‘And my own plane.’

Did ‘anywhere’ mean that he was thinking of basing himself in her hometown, Cheltenham?

Or did he have somewhere else in mind? Jaz had been thrilled when his mother had sought her out privately to tell her how much she admired her work.

‘It could well be that there are opportunities for you to branch out rather more after the takeover,’ she had told Jaz, excitingly. ‘Would you be interested? It could mean a change of scenery for you.’

‘I’d be very interested,’ Jaz had replied dizzily.

‘Good,’ Caid’s mother had approved.

Had Caid perhaps hinted to his mother that Jaz might possibly work in one of their American stores?

He had told Jaz very comprehensively how well suited he thought they were, and she certainly felt the same way. She had deliberately refrained from saying too much to him about her job once she had realised who he was, not wanting him to think that she was trying to make a good impression on him out of some ulterior career-driven motive, but she had mentioned to him that she had known where her life lay from being a young girl.

The speed of their relationship and her own love for her parents had kept her from saying anything to him about the problems she had experienced as a child—as yet—but she knew that with his family background he would completely understand and sympathise with how she felt.

From the house’s stately drawing room a corridor led to its other rooms, and from her end of the hallway Jaz could see the door that opened into Caid’s bedroom was ajar. Instinctively, Jaz knew that Caid had reached the house ahead of her and was waiting for her. It was all she could do to stop herself from breaking into an undignified run and rushing into the bedroom to throw herself into his arms.

When she pushed open the bedroom door she saw that she had been right.

Caid was lying on the bed, a thin sheet pulled up to his waist, the rest of his body exposed as he lay back in the bed, his arms raised and his hands folded behind his head.

Hungrily Jaz’s gaze feasted on him. There was, after all, no need for her to try and hide her feelings from him. After all, Caid understood her desire, her arousal…her love.

‘Miss me?’ he whispered as she hurried unsteadily towards the bed.

‘Mmm…’ Jaz admitted. ‘But the warehouse was wonderful. I thought our buyers at home were good, but your mother is in a class of her own.’

‘Tell me about it!’ Caid agreed cynically, but the grimness in his voice was lost on Jaz, who was reliving the awe and excitement she had felt when she had toured the New Orleans store.

‘I know that she personally approves everything that your buyers source.’ Jaz shook her head. ‘How on earth does she do it? She must be totally dedicated.’

‘Totally,’ Caid agreed tersely.

Frowning a little as she caught the sharpness of his voice, Jaz looked at him. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked him.

‘Nothing,’ Caid responded firmly, smiling at her as he added softly, ‘Apart from the fact that you’ve got far too many clothes on and we’re wasting too much time talking.’

‘You said you wanted to talk,’ Jaz reminded him. ‘To talk and make plans,’ she emphasised.

‘Mmm…and so I do,’ Caid agreed. ‘But right now you’re distracting the hell out of me and making me want you so damn much that the way I need to communicate with you has suddenly become much more personal and one on one. You haven’t said hi to me yet,’ he told her softly.

‘Hi…’ Jaz began, but Caid immediately shook his head.

‘No. Not like that. Like this.’ Swiftly he reached for her, his mouth starting to caress hers.

‘Oh, that kind of hi.’ Jaz managed to find the breath to tease him.

‘That kind of hi,’ Caid agreed, releasing her mouth to look into her eyes.

Jaz could feel the heat spreading through her body. She started to quiver, and then to tremble openly. She could see from the look in Caid’s eyes how much he was enjoying her helpless response to him.

Well, he would pay for that enjoyment later, when she tormented him the way he was tormenting her right now.

‘I’ve never met anyone who shows her feelings so clearly and so openly,’ Caid told her quietly. ‘I love that honesty about you, Jaz. I don’t have any time for people who cheat or lie.’

For a second he looked so formidable, so forbidding, that Jaz felt unsettled. To her he was the man she loved, but she could see that there was another side to him—a fiercely stubborn and unforgiving side, she suspected.

‘I love the way you show me your feelings,’ she heard Caid saying. ‘The way you show me how much you want and love me. Show me that now, Jaz.’

Jaz didn’t need a second invitation.

The heightened sound of Caid’s breathing accompanied the speedy removal of her clothes, until her progress was interrupted by Caid’s refusal to allow her to complete the task unaided, his hands hungrily tender against her body as they exchanged mutually passionate kisses and whispered words of love.

The heat of a New Orleans afternoon was surely made for lovers, Jaz reflected languorously a couple of hours later as she lay in Caid’s arms, enjoying the blissful aftermath of their lovemaking. After all, where better to escape the heat than in the shadowy air-conditioned coolness they were enjoying?

‘Time to get dressed,’ Caid murmured as he leaned over to kiss her.

‘Dressed? I thought we were going to talk,’ Jaz reminded him.

A sexy smile crooked his mouth.

‘We are!’ he confirmed. ‘Which is why we need to get dressed. If we stay here like this, talking isn’t going to be what I feel like doing,’ he added, in case Jaz had missed his point. ‘I can’t wait for us to be married, Jaz, or to take you home with me to Colorado—to the ranch. We can begin our lives together properly there. With your background, you’ll love it, I’ll get you your own horse, so that we can ride out together, and then, when the kids come along—’

‘Your ranch?’ Jaz stopped him in a shocked voice. ‘What ranch? What are you talking about, Caid? You’re a businessman—a financial consultant. The stores…’

‘I am a financial consultant,’ Caid agreed, starting to frown as he heard the note of shocked anxiety in Jaz’s voice. ‘But that’s what I do to make enough money to finance the ranch until it can finance itself. And as for the stores…to be involved in the stores or anything connected with them is the last way I would ever want to live my life. To me they epitomise everything I most dislike and despise.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘I could say that I have a hate-hate relationship with them. Personally, I can see nothing worthwhile in scouring the world for potential possessions for people who already have more than they need. That’s not what life should be about.’

Jaz couldn’t help herself—his angry words had resurrected too many painful memories for her.

‘But living on a ranch, chasing round after cattle all day, presumably is?’ she challenged him shakily.

With every word he had uttered Caid had knocked a larger and larger hole in her beliefs, her illusions about the kind of relationship and goals they shared. Jaz recognised in shocked bewilderment that Caid simply wasn’t the man she had believed him to be.

‘The stores aren’t just about…about selling things, Caid,’ she told him passionately. ‘They’re about opening people’s eyes…their senses…to beauty; they’re about…Surely you can understand what I’m trying to say?’ Jaz pleaded.

Caid narrowed his eyes as he heard the agitation and the anger in Jaz’s voice. From out of the past he could hear his mother’s voice echoing in his six-year-old ears.

‘No, Caid. I can’t stay. I have to go. Think about all those people I would be disappointing if I didn’t find them beautiful things to buy! Surely you can understand?’

No! I don’t understand! Caid had wanted to cry, but he had been too young to find the words he wanted to say, and already too proud, too aware of his male status, to let her see his pain.

But he certainly wasn’t going to make the mistake of holding back on telling Jaz how he felt.

‘I thought we were talking about us, Jaz! About our future—our lives together. So why in hell’s name are we talking about the stores?’

‘Because I work in one of them, and so far as I am concerned my work is a vitally important part of my life.’

‘How vitally important?’ Caid demanded ominously, his voice suddenly icily cold.

Jaz felt as though the ground that had seemed so safe and solid was suddenly threatening to give way beneath her, as though she was rushing headlong into danger. But it was a danger she had faced before, wasn’t it? Listening to Caid was in many ways just like listening to her parents—although Caid’s anger and bitterness was a frighteningly adult and dangerous version of parental emotion.

She felt intensely threatened by it—not in any physical sense, but in the sense that his attitude threatened her personal freedom to be herself.

As she looked at him, remembering the intimacy they had just shared, the love he had shown her, she was tempted to back down. But how could she and still be true to herself?

‘My work is as important to me as it gets,’ she told him determinedly. Though what she was saying was perhaps not strictly true. It was not so much her job that was important to her as the fact that it allowed her to express her creativity, and it was her creativity she would never compromise on or give up. ‘As important,’ she continued brittly, ‘as you probably consider yours to be to you!’

‘Nothing—no one on this earth—could ever make me give up the ranch!’ Caid told her emphatically.

‘And nothing—no one—could ever make me give up my…my…work,’ Jaz replied, equally intensely.

Silently they looked at one another. The hostility in Caid’s eyes made Jaz want to run to him and bury her head against his chest so that she wouldn’t have to see it.

‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ Caid’s voice was terse, his jaw tight with anger.

‘If I had known—’

‘You did know,’ Jaz interrupted him fiercely. ‘I have never made any secret of how much my…my creative my work means to me. If I had thought for one minute that you might not understand…that you were a…a farmer…there is no way that—’

‘That what? That you’d have jumped so eagerly into bed with me?’

‘I was brought up on a farm.’ Jaz struggled to explain. ‘I know that it isn’t the kind of life I can live.’

‘And I was brought up by a mother who thought more of her precious stores than she did of either my father or me. I know there is no way I want a woman—a wife—who shares that kind of obsession. I want a wife who will be there for my kids in a way that my mother never was for me. I want a wife who will put them and me first, who will—’

‘Give up her own life, her own dreams, her own personality simply because you say so?’ Jaz stormed furiously at him. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Just what kind of man are you?’

‘The kind who was fool enough to think you were the right woman for him,’ Caid told her bitingly. ‘But obviously I was wrong.’

‘Obviously,’ Jaz agreed chokily, then emphasised, ‘Very obviously!’ And then added for good measure, ‘I hate farming. I loathe and detest everything about it. I would never ever commit myself or my children to…to a man as…as selfish and narrow-minded as you certainly are. My creativity is a special gift. It means—’

‘A special gift? More special than our love?’ Caid demanded savagely. ‘More special than the life we could have shared together? The children I would have given you?’

‘You don’t understand,’ Jaz protested, her voice thickening with tears as she forced herself not to be weakened by the emotional pressure he was placing her under. If she gave in to him now she would never stop giving in to him, and she would spend the rest of her life regretting her weakness. Not just for herself but for her children as well.

But still she tried one last attempt to make Caid see reason, telling him huskily, ‘When I was growing up I knew how important it was for me to fulfil the creative, artistic side of my nature, but my parents didn’t want to accept that I was different from them. If it hadn’t been for Uncle John I don’t know what would have happened. I had to fight far too hard for my right to be me, Caid, ever to be able to give it up for anyone…even you.’

What he hadn’t understood as a child Caid certainly understood now, he acknowledged bitterly. Once again, the most important person in his world was telling him that he wasn’t enough for her, that she didn’t love him enough to want to be with him for himself.

‘I thought after what I’d been through with my mother I’d be able to recognise another woman of her type a mile away,’ he growled angrily. ‘And perhaps I would have done too, if I hadn’t heard your precious Uncle John talking about you and saying that your family expected you to return to your roots and settle down to the life they’d raised you in.’

The accusation implicit in his words that somehow she had actively deceived him infuriated Jaz, severing the last fragile thread tugging on her heartstrings.

‘My parents might want that, but it certainly isn’t what I want, or what I ever intend to do. And if you misinterpreted a conversation you overheard, that’s hardly my fault. If marrying a farmer’s daughter is so important to you, why didn’t you say so?’

‘Because I believed that what is important to me was equally important to you,’ Caid told her bitingly. ‘I thought that you were the kind of woman strong enough to find her fulfilment in—’

‘Her husband and her children? Staying home baking cakes whilst her big strong husband rides his acres and rules his home?’ Jaz interrupted him scathingly. ‘My God. If your father was anything like you, no wonder your mother left him! You aren’t just old-fashioned, Caid, you’re criminally guilty of wanting to deny my sex its human rights! We are living in a new world now. Modern couples share their responsibilities—to each other and to their children—and—’

‘Do they? Well, my mother certainly didn’t do much sharing when she was travelling all over the world buying “beautiful” things,’ he underlined cynically. ‘She left my dad to bring me up as best he could. And as for her leaving him—believe me, he felt he was well rid of her. And so did I.’

Caid started to shake his head, his eyes dark with a pain that Jaz misinterpreted as anger.

‘My mother was like—’

‘Like me?’ She jumped in, hot-cheeked. ‘Do you feel you’d be well rid of me, Caid?’

Broodingly Caid looked at her. Right now he ached to take her in his arms and punish her for the pain she was causing them both, by kissing her until she admitted that all she wanted was him and their love, that nothing else mattered. But if he did he knew he would be committing himself to a life of misery. After all, a leopardess never changed her spots—look at his mother!

The look he was giving her said more than any amount of words, Jaz decided with a painful sharp twisting of her heart that made it feel as though it was being pulled apart.

‘Fine,’ she lied. ‘Because I certainly think that I will be well rid of you!!’

She could feel the burning acid sting of unshed tears. As angry with herself for her weakness as she was with Caid for being the cause of it, she blinked them away determinedly.

‘I’m a woman with needs and ambitions of my own, Caid, not some…some docile brood mare you can corral and keep snugly at home.’

‘You—’ Infuriated, Caid took a stride towards her.

Immediately Jaz panicked. If he touched her now, held her…kissed her…

‘Don’t come any closer,’ she warned him, her eyes glittering with emotion. ‘And don’t even think about trying to touch me, Caid. I don’t want to be touched by you ever again!’

Without giving him any chance to retaliate she turned on her heel and fled, almost running the length of the house and not stopping until she was halfway down the street, when the heat of the New Orleans late afternoon forced her to do so.

It was over. Over. And it should never have happened in the first place. Would never have happened if she had for one minute realised, recognised, just what kind of man Caid was.

She had been out of her depth, Jaz acknowledged miserably, in more ways than one.

The only consolation was that, thanks to Caid’s practicality and insistence on protecting her, there was no chance there would be any repercussions from their affair. And for that she was profoundly thankful! Wasn’t she?