Читать книгу Reclaiming His Wife - Susan Fox P. - Страница 9

CHAPTER FOUR

IT was the silence that woke her. The thick, heavy silence and the light that burned with a peculiar brightness through the chintzy curtains.

Snug in the small double bed in the smaller of the two main bedrooms she had opted to sleep in the previous night, Taylor was reluctant for a moment to give up its warmth.

Suddenly though, as realisation dawned, she was pushing back the duvet and racing over to the window, gasping as she pulled back the curtains.

Everything was white—the garden, the trees and the hillsides, dazzling—like the mountains beyond them—under a crisp heavy fall of virgin snow.

She shivered, wondering why the air felt so icy, and went over to feel the radiator on the opposite wall. It was stone cold.

Fetching her light robe from the bathroom, quickly she slipped it on, pushing her hair into place with agitated fingers.

Jared must have gone to bed without setting the heating to come on, or the thermostat in the hall was too low, she thought, racing downstairs to set the control higher. Either that, or it had come on and gone off again hours ago which meant that Jared wasn’t even up yet. Which was unlike him, she remembered from their marriage, when he had been up at six most days of the week.

As she reached the hall, sounds coming from the sitting room brought her up sharply.

Jared?

She could smell smoke now—wood smoke—and could hear what she instantly distinguished as the crackling of an open fire.

He didn’t see her at first. He had his back to the door and was bending over the fireplace, tossing logs from a wicker basket onto the brightly burning flames, and the sight of him performing that simple, domestic chore tugged unexpectedly at something deep down inside Taylor.

Greedy for the smallest chance to feast her eyes on him, undetected, her hungry gaze tugged unashamedly over his pleasing torso.

He was wearing a dark-blue cable-knit sweater and jeans, which showed off the superbly fit lines of his body. His hair was waving, dark and thick, over the polo neck of his sweater, while the thick wool encased shoulders that could set themselves squarely against anything that promised trouble. His hips were hard and lean, his buttocks tightly muscled, and even through the denim his long legs looked packed with the whipcord strength of a hunter. On his feet he wore a pair of casual black shoes, but it was his hands to which Taylor’s eyes were ultimately drawn; those long sinewy hands that could apply themselves to any manual task, however mundane, seeing it through with the same skilled competence with which they could also caress and arouse a woman…

‘So you’re up.’

He turned round so suddenly that he couldn’t have failed to notice her interest in him and, from the rather sensual amusement tugging at his mouth it was clear he hadn’t.

‘You should have woken me,’ she protested, blushing and tousled in her dressing gown and slippers. She had slept for hours, she realised, having claimed a headache and gone to bed straight after their light dinner last night.

‘Why? Are you going somewhere?’ He was grinning so shamelessly that she wanted to hit him.

With an exasperated glance at him, she hurried over to the window. Unlike her bedroom, the sitting room faced the lane and she could just make out her car, virtually buried beneath a thick mound of snow.

‘Still thinking of leaving, Taylor?’ The deep tones were overlaid with mockery, and she whipped round, eyes daring him to carry his joking any further. It didn’t help having noticed that he had had the foresight to put his own car straight in the garage when he had driven in last night.

‘I suppose you think this is all very funny!’ She moved away from the window, rubbing her arms, shoulders hunched against the cold.

‘Are you going to blame me for this too?’

No, of course she wasn’t. It was his complacency she couldn’t take, which made her reply in a way that sounded childish even to her own ears, ‘You knew I was bent on leaving here this morning.’

‘Then start walking.’ Suddenly he wasn’t amused any more. The alarmingly swift movement that brought him to face her had her recoiling from him. His teeth were clenched between grim lips and his whole face was harsh with anger. Lifting her chin, Taylor caught the strong scent of wood smoke clinging to his sweater, with the underlying freshness of the great outdoors. ‘I’ve got enough problems here without you whingeing and whining like some petulant little schoolgirl.’ He swung back to resume tending to the fire. ‘I can’t help the damned weather, all right! Contrary to what you think I didn’t order it to help me with some Machiavellian scheme to trap someone who’s made it very plain she clearly doesn’t want to be married to me—because if you’re going to be like this for the next two or three days, believe me, it’s not going to be any picnic for me either!’

Two or three days? Mentally Taylor shook that unsettling possibility aside, aware of Jared’s anger in every movement of his body, the way he was suddenly tossing logs onto the fire with more vehemence than before, sending sparks and ash flying up into the huge chimney. She supposed she deserved his anger, in a way.

‘Problems?’ she repeated tentatively to his broad back, wanting to smooth things over between them. ‘What problems? What’s happened?’

He stood up again, one hand on the back pocket of his jeans. A deep sigh lifted the thick cable stitch of his sweater. ‘The snow’s brought the power cables down. There’s no electricity. No heating. That means no hot food or water—except in any way we can improvise ourselves.’

A barely audible, shocked little oath escaped her.

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘So you see, I didn’t instigate the weather or this situation. Nor do I like it, though I will reiterate what I said last night. I wanted some time with you.’

‘Why?’

‘To sort out our differences.’

‘You think they can be sorted out?’

‘I don’t know, but I sure as hell want to try. I’m not proud of having the label of Failed Marriage stamped on my head either. Isn’t that why you kept your marital status a secret from Charity and Craig?’

Taylor’s back stiffened. How well he knew her! Or was it simply from the realms of his knowledge marked Human Psychology, gleaned from life and the wealth of books he kept in his own extensive library?

‘I saw coming here as an opportunity, that’s all. An opportunity for us to talk—relax—without the pressures of our jobs, life or anything else getting in the way.’

She let out a short brittle laugh because he had given her no say in the matter. Apart from which they had tried before; tried and failed, and it had only resulted in pain, pain that, even until he had stormed into her life again, hadn’t even really begun to ease.

‘And supposing I don’t go along with your optimism— don’t share your idealistic view of what you think our marriage should be? Don’t want to be here?’

A hint of a smile touched his mouth as he looked from her flushed and finely contoured face towards the window and the heavy snowfall that imprisoned them.

‘I hate to say this, darling, but I hardly think you have a choice.’

He was chopping logs when she came back downstairs, having already cleared the path at the back of the house leading from the kitchen to the log store.

He was wearing black rubber boots now, pulled high and tightly over his jeans. His black hair was falling forward as he worked. Wielding the axe against the backdrop of the snow-swept valley and the awesome vastness of the sparkling mountains, he looked like the wild man of the moor, Taylor fancied, feeling the tug of something reckless inside of her as she stepped out into the biting air.

Throwing down the axe, he glanced up and saw her.

‘That’s much more practical,’ he commented laconically with a swift appraisal of her thick dark sweater, warm trousers and sensible shoes before bending again to his task.

He was using a large steel wedge to split the logs he had already chopped, driving it into the wood with a mallet, the strike of metal on metal ringing out across the frozen hillside.

He was working hard—looked hot, Taylor thought, volunteering, ‘Do you want any help?’

He paused from his work, one booted foot resting on the cut ring of a tree trunk he was using as a platform to split the logs, a hand resting on a denim-clad knee.

‘Are you any good with an axe?’

She looked at him uncertainly, then at the implement lying beside him.

Well, she had never done it before, but there was always a first time, she thought, moving to pick it up.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, so that she realised then that he was joking. ‘Go and see if you can rustle up something appetising for breakfast. Bacon, scrambled eggs and blueberry pancakes will do to start.’

‘Ha!’ Her laugh rose on a cloud of warm vapour before she glanced back at him over her shoulder. ‘You wish,’ she told him with a grimace, going back along the cleared path and wondering how she was even going to heat any water let alone anything else.

As it turned out, she found the answer almost immediately in the large black kettle, only kept now for ornamental purposes on the hearth. She supposed it had been used domestically in Jared’s grandmother’s day, in the larger fireplace in the kitchen that now housed the modern equivalent of the old range. Even that needed electricity to operate it, she thought rather despairingly, pulling a face as she picked up the ancient kettle.

Gratefully, however, she took it out into the kitchen, half filled it, then struggled with it into the sitting room, first adding more logs to the fire to make a flat surface for the kettle to stand on, before placing it carefully on top. Only then did she decide it was safe to leave, before grabbing the pale fleece she had unpacked and hung in the hall the previous night and venturing back outside.

‘What will we do if the pipes freeze?’ she called out worriedly to Jared, coming down the path to where he was filling the wicker basket with logs. ‘If we can’t get any water?’ While filling the kettle it had suddenly struck her how much worse things could get.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, seeing her concern. ‘There’s next to no chance of that happening. With these Lakeland winters no one risks being without the necessary insulation. They’re far more diligent about such things up here than we are in the south. The place was already well protected when my grandmother was alive but then just before she died I persuaded her to let me get a major reinsulating job done. Grandmother was stubborn—fiercely independent and quite unmovable in most things—but I was determined she’d let me do that much, though I must admit, she did put up quite a fight.’

Taylor smiled, catching the fond note in his voice, regretting that she had never met the kind-looking grey-haired woman who had died the year before she had met Jared and whose photograph stood in a little silver frame on the tall oak chest in the room she was occupying. It was taken with Jared’s grandfather, almost on the spot where Taylor was standing. She had a feeling that it was Jared who had taken it.

‘You loved her a lot, didn’t you?’ she remarked, slipping her hands into the pockets of her fleece to keep them warm. His grandfather too, she thought, remembering how he had said that when his own father had died just before his second birthday, his grandparents had opted to look after him when their daughter-in-law had insisted on pursuing her acting career.

For an answer he simply went on tossing logs into the basket.

‘Were you close to your mother?’ It surprised her to realise that, despite having lived with him for more than eighteen months, there was still a lot about him she had failed to discover.

‘Not as close as I would have liked.’

‘Did she visit very often?’

‘No.’ The log he threw made a dull ‘chick’ as it landed on top of the others, alarming a little brown dunnock that had been foraging around with scant hope of finding a staple meal of insects, worms or seeds beneath the heavy covering of snow. Watching it hop unobtrusively beneath a winter jasmine which was bravely sporting its bright yellow flowers against the boundary wall, Taylor made a mental note to put down some scraps. ‘She didn’t like Cumbria,’ Jared was enlarging then. ‘She liked bright lights and city life.’

‘Does she still live in New York?’

He stopped what he was doing, and stood, stern-mouthed, looking out across the snow-laden hedge to the silent valley.

‘No,’ he said at length. ‘She died. A couple of months ago.’

‘She…’ Taylor stared at his dark, tousled hair as he stooped to finish loading the last few logs into the basket. ‘How?’ she whispered, shocked.

‘She had a crippling illness that came on gradually over the past fifteen months or so,’ he surprised her by saying. ‘I spent a lot of time going backwards and forwards to the States. If I hadn’t, I would have come looking for you a long time ago,’ he interjected grimly, without looking at her, which explained why she hadn’t seen or heard from him for so long, Taylor realised, her heart going out to him over what must have been an extremely difficult time. ‘I tried to spend as much time with her as I could during her last months and I suppose we became closer than we had ever been throughout our lives. After all, she did her best for me—gave me everything,’ he said, with something of the strain he must have suffered showing briefly in that hard, handsome face. ‘But I would have traded it all for some of her time.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Taylor whispered, catching that note of deep regret—the loss—for what might have been—in that last, softly uttered statement.

She had only met the woman once. It was shortly after their wedding when they had come back from Hawaii. A fading actress who had never really achieved star status, Calista Steele had been in London with an equally fading male counterpart and had called to see them at Jared’s penthouse flat.

Tall and elegant, with a swathe of grey streaking her thick black hair, the woman had nevertheless possessed the same awesome detachment as her son. And while there had seemed to be a deep respect for each other, between mother and son, Taylor had noticed no real display of obvious affection in their relationship.

‘Why didn’t you let me know?’ she repeated emphatically.

‘When?’ His voice, as he swung the basket up into his arms, was harshly cynical. ‘Yesterday? Last week? Or at the time?’

‘Well…’ Taylor gave a quick bewildered shake of her head. She couldn’t believe something like that could have happened to him and she hadn’t even known about it. ‘At the time of course.’

‘I didn’t feel I needed to involve you when you’d made it quite plain you no longer wanted any part in my life— even if I had known where you were.’ He was all muscle and fitness striding ahead of her down the path, those brawny shoulders effectively blocking her out.

‘You thought I wouldn’t care because I couldn’t live up to what you wanted me to be?’

‘And what was that?’ he threw back over his shoulder.

‘A dutiful wife and mother.’ She hadn’t intended to get back on this subject but his low opinion of her hurt more than she could have imagined possible. ‘Ready to turn a blind eye to any other woman you wanted in your life. Effectively second best!’

He stopped, turning so abruptly that she almost collided with the wicker basket. The cold anger in his eyes chilled her more than the bitterly cold day.

‘Is that what you thought you were?’

‘Wasn’t I?’

‘What you thought I wanted? An obedient little mouse and bed partner? Someone I could manipulate and bend easily to my will? What respect do you think I would have had for you—for myself—if I’d thought that was all you— and I—were worthy of? Credit me with some ethics, Taylor, because we did have something, only you were too damn blinkered to see it!’

Feeling unjustly chastened, she retorted heatedly, ‘Too besotted, you mean, not to see what was going on!’

‘What was going on, dearest, was all inside your head. Oh, I admit Alicia tried to ring me a few times, but that didn’t mean I was still seeing her. As I told you before, it was your petty jealousies and suspicions that killed our marriage—nothing else!’

‘That isn’t true!’

‘Isn’t it?’

Those inky eyes seemed to be penetrating right through to her soul and his features were as bleak suddenly as the ice-packed fells across the valley.

Of course, he was probably still mourning his mother, Taylor thought, chastising herself for not having immediately realised that. Regrettably she wished she had kept her mouth shut.

‘Believe it if you want to,’ she said wearily, tired of continually fighting with him. She was relieved when he turned and carried on down the path.

With her eyes on his broad back she considered what he had said about her doubts and suspicions all being in her head. Were they? she wondered wretchedly. Certainly he had done nothing to allay her fears and insecurities. So what was he saying? That it had all been her fault? Their rows? Her refusal even to entertain having his children?

When he had been flaying her with his hurtful insinuations about terminating their unborn child—accusing her of wanting nothing but her precious job, had he, she wondered suddenly, somehow been comparing her with his mother?

‘Come inside,’ he commanded gently, as though sensitive to her change of mood and, with unerring courtesy, stood aside to let her pass.

The kettle was singing on the fire as they came back inside the house. The sound was comforting, helping to lift Taylor’s downcast spirits.

‘I’m afraid I can’t conjure up anything more than plain bread and rock-hard butter,’ she murmured, hearing him come into the kitchen just as she was lifting the lid off the butter dish. At least they had plenty of the basic foods, she thought with some sense of relief, since Jared had doubled up on some of the provisions she had brought last night.

‘Is that so,’ he said, not sounding at all perturbed. ‘Then you go and make the tea—’ he was thrusting a teapot into her hands ‘—and I’ll see to whatever has to be done here.’

Taylor was only too glad to. Standing in a cold kitchen, making holes in fresh bread with unspreadable butter wasn’t her idea of fun, she thought, adding cups, saucers and a jug of milk to a tray with the teapot, before carrying them through into the welcoming warmth of the sitting room.

She had just made the tea and was sitting on the rug in front of the fire when he strode in carrying another tray.

‘Crumpets!’ she breathed delightedly, her face aglow as he set them down on the low table she had dragged nearer the fire. They looked plump and soft. Hungrily she watched him spear one with a toasting fork.

‘Always look further than only at what at first appears to be apparent,’ he advised, and she knew he wasn’t just talking about the crumpets. ‘We used to do this on winter nights just for the sheer hell of it.’

We. ‘You and your grandparents,’ Taylor supplied, surprised that he had never confided even that small piece of information to her before.

His mouth compressed in wry contemplation as he stood there, turning the fork expertly before the flame. The crumpet was beginning to brown and it smelled yeasty and delicious as it cooked. ‘They were good days. Especially when my grandfather was alive.’

‘They must have been.’ Taylor sat back from pouring tea into the two cups she had set down on the hearth, drawing her legs up under her. It was easy to visualise how things must have been, the domestic, happy family scene. It was something she had not known. Not in the same secure, taken-for-granted way…

‘Ouch!’ he said, shaking his hand, bringing her attention to the fact that, in turning the crumpet, Jared had just burnt his finger.

‘Hot?’ she taunted laughingly.

‘Not so you’d notice.’

She looked up into his strong abstracted features, flushed from the heat of the fire. He hadn’t shaved, either because of an uncharged razor or because he had had more important things to do. But in his country clothes, with that dark stubble shading his jaw, he looked at ease, relaxed and totally at home.

Often, in his high-powered world, sporting his clean-cut executive image she had tried to imagine him as a child and hadn’t been able to. Now, away from the pressures of the fast lane in which he functioned, here amidst the rugged country where he seemed to belong, she could see him as a gangling youth, obstinate, determined, a free spirit. She could visualize him sitting here with his grandparents on winter nights, and, during the summer, fishing for minnows in the tumbling becks, running barefoot, wild as the moorland and the fells.

Her eyes still trained on his formidably handsome features, almost involuntarily Taylor murmured, ‘This place brings out the best in you, too.’

His cruel mouth slackened broodingly as he gazed down on her, those black eyes holding hers with such dark power that she couldn’t look away. Sitting there on the rug she felt like a slender flower beneath the shadow of a great tree whose daunting presence was capable of blocking out the sunlight from her life, or giving her the strength to grow and thrive from its protection.

With their eyes linked, Taylor felt the stark desire that seemed to flow from the very root of him, filling her with a mutual need that rose like a dark and dangerous sap through her veins. Her breath came shallowly as her pulse rate quickened, and her throat ached so that she had to swallow to ease its dryness.

Light flared in his face at the same instant as Taylor smelled the smoke, became aware that the crumpet he was toasting had caught fire.

‘Look what you’re doing!’ she gasped with a shaky little laugh, catching the oath he uttered before he swiftly pushed the charcoaled offering, still flaming, onto a plate.

‘You’ll never make Chef of the Year like this!’ she laughed, more easily now, relieved that the emotion-charged moment was past.

‘Perhaps Chef of the Year doesn’t have the world’s sexiest siren to distract him,’ he chastised, defending himself as he speared another crumpet with the fork.

Putting a lump of butter on the blackened pikelet, careful not to burn her hands, Taylor watched the gold butter melt instantly across its surface, filling the holes. The way he could melt her resistance—fill her—she thought shamefully, and didn’t say anything because it was safer that way.

Breakfast was delicious, she decided, watching Jared chomp his way through at least a plateful of his own efforts, while Taylor surprised herself by eating at least three of the crumpets. She had brought some honey with her from Edinburgh and while Jared had refused it, she had indulged herself, spreading it thickly over each warm buttered mound.

‘That’s better,’ Jared commented when she put her plate down on the hearth, having finished every last crumb. ‘That’s the most I’ve seen you eat since we’ve been together.’

Lounging beside him on the rug, Taylor tensed.

‘We aren’t back together,’ she reminded him swiftly. She had made no such agreement, nor was she ready to.

‘Of course not.’ He flashed her a smile that didn’t quite warm his eyes. ‘I was speaking figuratively.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, don’t presume, Jared. I haven’t said I’m coming back to you.’

‘Taylor,’ he exhaled, the way he addressed her alone assuring her he wasn’t exactly very pleased. ‘The last thing I would ever do with you is presume.’

Feeling strangely chastised, Taylor looked down at her greasy fingers. A small trail of honey clung to the third finger of her left hand, she noticed, with her little finger splayed.

‘No,’ she uttered, her breath coming rapidly when Jared grabbed her hand and she saw the purpose in his face, realised his intention.

‘Stop me,’ he whispered, and it was a deeply sensual challenge.