her vow never to become emotionally dependent on any man ever again.
Just one look and her life had changed; she had changed.
Jed eased himself down beside her and drew her bright head into the angle of his shoulder, holding her as if she were the most precious thing in the world. ‘I didn’t want one of the glossy harpies that crowd the social scene with monotonous regularity—shallow and superficial, the sort of woman whose main interest in a man is the size of his bank balance. I wanted you. Talented, successful, a self-made woman—heartwrenchingly beautiful. And scorchingly sexy is the icing on the cake, the ribbon on the package! And from what you’ve told me, you’re well rid of the man you married when you were little more than a child. What was it? Barely nineteen years of age? Sweetheart, everyone’s allowed to make one mistake, and he was yours!’
One mistake? What about this latest one? Would he dismiss it with such compassionate understanding?
If only they hadn’t rushed into marriage; if only she hadn’t believed there would be no consequences after what she and Sam had done—hadn’t believed she was right in dismissing the possible repercussions of that one last night, when wine, the heady promise of the beginning of the early Spanish spring, the feeling that something was missing in her successful life and an overdose of sentimentality had led to something that could poison her whole relationship with the man who had taught her to recognise the depths and strengths of a love she had never before even guessed she was capable of.
She turned her head and feverishly kissed his warm, hair-roughened skin, searching for the flat male nipples, the palms of her hands splayed against the heat of his skin, her fingers digging into the suddenly taut muscles of his stomach. She heard the passionate inhalation of his breath, felt the responsive surge of his body and swallowed hot, salt tears. She would not cry. She would not!
There could be few such precious moments left to them.
When his mouth took hers it was a statement of passionate possession, and she answered it with the fire of her need, her adoration, curling her legs around him, opening for him, accepting him eagerly, answering the fevered stroke of his hands as they caressed her body with a feverish exploration of her own.
She felt the intensity of his rapture as he possessed her, and she lost herself in their loving, fear forgotten, just for now, just for the slow, exquisitely languorous time of his loving, just while they drove each other to the outer limits of ecstasy. She rained wild kisses on the hot skin of his throat, felt the wild beat of his heart and clung to this, this perfection, because maybe it would be the very last time for them.
‘I could get used to this!’
Despite her bare feet, Jed must have heard her walk out of the whitewashed stone house onto the patio. Or felt her presence, she decided with a shiver of recognition, just as she always sensed his nearness before she actually saw him.
The black T-shirt he was wearing was tucked into the pleated waistband of a pair of stone-grey tough cotton trousers. The way he looked—lithe, lean and dangerously male—rocked her senses as he turned from the low wall that divided the patio from the sundrenched, steeply sloping gardens below. ‘And just in case you think I’m a cheapskate, saving on honeymoon expenses by using my bride’s home as a hotel, I’ve made breakfast.’
Coffee, a bowl of fresh fruit, crispy rolls and a dish of olives. Half her brain approved his efforts while the other half gloried in the warmth of his smile, in the unashamed, naked hunger in his eyes. ‘Though I might do without,’ he added. ‘Food, that is. You look good enough to eat. You satisfy each and every one of what I’ve discovered to be amazingly huge appetites!’
Did she? Elena’s aquamarine eyes locked onto his, warm colour flaring briefly over her high cheekbones. Every moment was doubly precious now, every word spoken with love to be treasured, because very soon now it would end.
After her shower she’d pulled on a pair of frayededged denim shorts and an old white T-shirt, not taking any trouble because half an hour ago, when he’d slid out of bed, she’d feigned sleep, needing just a little time on her own to decide what to do. And she’d faced the awful knowledge that it was no use waiting until the time was right before she introduced the serpent into their corner of paradise.
The time would never be right for what she had to tell him, and keeping the truth from him would only make him think more badly of her.
But the way he was looking at her, the way his eyes slid over every last one of her five-foot-six slender inches and endless, elegant, lightly tanned legs, paralysed her with physical awareness. So, despising her weakness but unable to do anything about it, she took his former remark and clung to it as to a reprieve. Just a few more hours. Surely she could give herself that?
Striving for lightness as she poured coffee for them both, she told him, ‘Stop fishing for compliments—there’s nothing cheapskate about you! I practically forced you to agree to spend our honeymoon here.’
She was justifiably proud of her home. She’d bought the former Andalucian farmhouse with part of the proceeds from the sale of the film rights of her first runaway bestseller. And she and Jed had already decided to keep it as a holiday home, to come here as often as they could—a welcome respite from the pressure of his position at the head of the family-owned business. Based in London, Amsterdam, New York and Rome, it had a two-hundred-year-old tradition of supplying sumptuous gems and exquisitely wrought precious metals to the seriously wealthy.
Sam had considered the business arcane, refused to have anything to do with it, making his mark in the highly competitive world of photo-journalism.
She pushed his name roughly out of her head, but, almost as if he’d known what she’d done, Jed pushed it straight back in again. ‘I can understand why Sam came here so often between assignments. Life travels at a different pace, the views are endless and the sun is generous. He told me once that it was the only place he could find peace.’
He refilled his coffee cup and tipped the pot towards her, one dark brow lifting. Elena shook her head. She had barely taken a sip. Listening to him talking of his brother was screwing up her nerves and shredding them. Why should he decide to talk about him now? She couldn’t meet his eyes.
Jed replaced the pot, selected an orange from the blue earthenware bowl and began to strip away the peel, his voice strangely clipped as he remarked, ‘Over the last couple of years, particularly, he was always getting sent to the world’s worst trouble spots. Though I think he thrived on the edge of danger, he must have been grateful for the relaxation he knew he could find here. With you. He seemed to know so much about you; you must have been extremely close.’
Elena’s throat closed up. He had rarely mentioned Sam’s name since the day of his funeral, but now the very real grief showed through. The brothers had had very little in common but they had loved each other. And now she could detect something else. Something wildly out of character. A skein of jealousy, envy, even?
‘He was a good friend,’ she responded, hating the breathless catch in her voice. She watched the long, hard fingers strip the peel from the fruit. Suddenly there seemed something ruthless about the movements. She wondered if she knew him as thoroughly as she’d thought she did.
She shivered, and heard him say, ‘In a way, I think he deplored the fact that I did my duty, as he called it—knuckled down and joined the family business and took the responsibility of heading it after Father died—despised me a little, even.’
‘No!’ She couldn’t let him think that. ‘He admired you, and respected you—maybe grudgingly—for doing your duty, and doing it so well. He once told me that your business brain scared the you-know-what out of him, and that he preferred to go off and do his own thing rather than live in your shadow, a pale second-best.’
Jed gave her a long, searching look, as if he was turning her words over in his mind, weighing the truth of them, before at last admitting, ‘I didn’t know that. Maybe I wouldn’t have envied him his freedom to do as he pleased and to hell with everyone