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His gaze moved swiftly over the small room, which had Melanie’s stamp all over it, from the two plumpy cream sofas and matching drapes and the thick, coffee-coloured carpet, to the old but charmingly restored Victorian fireplace, which had a pile of logs stacked against it. Very stylish but definitely cosy. Modern but not glaringly so. And giving nothing of herself away. A beautiful mirror stretched across the far wall making the room appear larger, but not one picture or photograph to be seen. Nothing personal.
‘Sit down and I’ll get the coffee.’ She waved to one of the sofas before leaving, shaking her hair free of the towel as she went.
Forde didn’t take the invitation. Instead he followed her into the hall and through to the kitchen-diner. This was more lived in, the table scattered with files and papers and the draining board in the tiny kitchen holding a few plates and dishes. He dared bet she spent most of the time at home working.
Melanie had turned as he’d entered and now she followed his glance, saying quickly, ‘I didn’t have time to wash up this morning before I left and I was too tired last night.’
Forde pulled up one of the dining chairs, sitting astride it with his arms draped over the back as he said easily, ‘You don’t have to apologise to me.’
‘I wasn’t. I was explaining.’
It was curt and he mentally acknowledged the tone. Ignoring the hostility, he smiled. ‘Nice little place you’ve got here.’
Her eyes met his and he could see she was deciding whether he was being genuine or not. He saw her shoulders relax slightly and knew she’d taken his observation the way it had been meant.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘I like it.’
‘Janet sends her regards, by the way.’
Janet was Forde’s very able cook and cleaner who came in for a few hours each day to wash and iron, keep the house clean and prepare the evening meal. She was a merry little soul, in spite of having a husband who had never done a day’s honest work in his life and three teenage children who ate her out of house and home. Melanie had liked her very much. Janet had been with her on the day of the accident and had sat and held her until the ambulance had arrived—
She brought her thoughts to a snapping halt. Don’t think of that. Not now. Woodenly, she said, ‘Tell her hello from me.’ Drawing in a deep breath and feeling she needed something stronger than coffee to get through the next little while, she opened the fridge. ‘There’s some wine chilled if you’d prefer a glass to coffee?’
‘Great. Thanks.’ He rose as he spoke, walking and opening the back door leading onto the shadowed courtyard. ‘This is nice. Shall we drink out here?’
She was trying very, very hard to ignore the fact she was stark naked under the robe but it was hard with her body responding to him the way it always did. He’d always only had to look at her for her blood to sing in her veins and her whole being melt. Forde was one of those men who had a natural magnetism that oozed masculinity; it was in his walk, his smile, every move he made. The height and breadth of him were impressive, and she knew full well there wasn’t an ounce of fat on the lean, muscled body, but it was his face—too rugged to be pretty-boy handsome but breathtakingly attractive, nonetheless—that drew any woman from sixteen to ninety. Hard and strong, with sharply defined planes and angles unsoftened by his jet-black hair and piercing silvery eyes, his face was sexy and cynical, and his slightly crooked mouth added to his charm.
Dynamite. That was what one of her friends had called him when they’d first begun dating, and she’d been right. But dynamite was powerful and dangerous, she told herself ruefully, taking the opportunity to run her hands through the thick silk of her hair and bring it into some kind of order.
When she stepped into the scented shadows with two glasses and the bottle of wine, Forde was already sitting at the bistro table, his long legs spread out in front of him and his head tilted back as he looked up at the riot of climbing roses covering the back of the house. They, together with the fragrant border plants in the pots, perfumed the still warm air with a sweet heaviness. Another month or so and the weather would begin to cool and the first chill of autumn make itself felt.
It had been snowing that day when she’d left Forde. Seven months had passed. Seven months without Forde in her life, in her bed …
She sat down carefully after placing the glasses on the table, pulling the folds of the robe round her legs and wishing she’d taken the time to nip upstairs and get dressed. But that would have looked as though she expected him to stay and she wanted him to leave as soon as possible.
The thought mocked her and she had to force her eyes not to feast on him. She had been aching to see him again; he’d filled her dreams every night since the split and sometimes she had spent hours sitting out here in the darkness while the rest of the world was asleep after a particularly erotic fantasy that had left her unable to sleep again.
‘How are you?’ His rich, smoky voice brought her eyes to his dark face.
She reached for her glass and took a long swallow before she said, ‘Fine. And you?’
‘Great, just great.’ His voice dripped sarcasm. ‘My wife walks out on me citing irreconcilable differences and then threatens to get a restraining order when I attempt to make her see reason over the next weeks—’
‘You were phoning umpteen times a day and turning up everywhere,’ she interrupted stiffly. ‘It was obsessional.’
‘What did you expect? I know things changed after the accident but—’
‘Don’t.’ This time she cut him short by jumping to her feet, her eyes wild. ‘I don’t want to discuss this, Forde. If that’s why you’ve come, you can leave now.’
‘Damn it, Nell.’ He raked his hand through his hair, taking a visibly deep breath as he struggled to control his emotions. A few screamingly tense moments ticked by and then his voice came, cool and calm. ‘Sit down and drink your wine. I came here to discuss you taking on the garden at Hillview and making it easy for my mother to manage it. That’s all.’
‘I think it’s better you go.’
‘Tough.’ He eyed her sardonically, his mouth twisting.
Her nostrils flared. ‘You really are the most arrogant man on the planet.’ And unfortunately the most attractive.
Forde shrugged. ‘I can live with that—it’s a small planet.’ He took a swallow of wine. ‘Sit down,’ he said again, ‘and stop behaving like a Victorian heroine in a bad movie. Let me explain how things stand with Mother at present before you decide one way or the other, OK?’
She sat, not because she wanted to but because there was really nothing else she could do.
‘Along with her damaged hip she’s got a heart problem, Nell, but the main problem is Isabelle herself. I actually caught her trying to prune back some bush or other a couple of days ago. She’d sneaked out of the house when the nurse was busy. I’ve offered to get her a gardener or do the work myself but she won’t have it, although under pressure she admits it’s getting overgrown and that upsets her. When I suggested it needs landscaping she reluctantly agreed and then flatly refused to have what she called clod-hopping strangers tramping everywhere. You can bet your boots once the nurse is no longer needed in a couple of weeks she’ll be out there doing goodness knows what. I shall arrive one day and find her collapsed or worse. There’s nearly an acre of ground all told, as you know—it’s too much for her.’
He was really worried; she could see that. Melanie stared at him, biting her lip. And she knew how passionate Isabelle was about her garden; when she had still been with Forde she and his mother had spent hours working together in the beautiful grounds surrounding the old house. But what had been relatively easy for Isabelle to manage thirty, twenty, even ten years ago, was a different story now. But Isabelle would pine and lose hope if she couldn’t get out in her garden. What needed to be done was a totally new plan for the grounds with an emphasis on low maintenance, but even then, if they were to keep the mature trees Isabelle loved so dearly, Forde’s mother would have to agree to a gardener coming in at certain times of the year to deal with the falling leaves and other debris. And she really couldn’t see Isabelle agreeing to that, unless …
Thinking out loud, she said slowly, ‘I’d obviously need to make a proper assessment of the site, but looking to the future, James, the young man who works for me, is very personable. All the old ladies love him.’ The young ones as well. ‘If Isabelle got to know him, perhaps she’d agree to him coming in for a day or two once a month to maintain the new garden, which I’d design with a view to minimum upkeep.’
Forde shifted in his seat. ‘You’ll do it, then?’ he said softly. ‘You’ll take on the job?’
Melanie brought her eyes to his face. There was something in his gaze that reminded her—as if she didn’t know—that she was playing with fire. Quickly, a veil slid over her own expression. ‘On certain conditions.’
One black eyebrow quirked. ‘I might have guessed. Nothing is straightforward with you. OK, so what are these conditions? Nothing too onerous, I trust?’
It was too intimate—the hushed surroundings enclosing them in their own tiny world, the perfumed air washing over her senses, Forde’s big male body just inches away, and—not least—her nakedness under the robe. This sort of situation was exactly what she’d strived to avoid by not seeing him over the last torturous months. She really shouldn’t have let him in.
She gulped down the last of her wine and poured another for Dutch courage. Forde’s glass was half-full but he put his hand over the rim when she went to top it up. ‘Driving,’ he said shortly, settling back in his seat and crossing one leg over the other knee. ‘Spell out your demands,’ he added, when she still didn’t speak. ‘Don’t be shy.’
The sarcasm helped, stiffening her backbone and her resolve, but she still felt as though she was standing on the edge of a precipice. One false move and she’d be lost.
‘But before you do …’ He moved swiftly, taking her hand before she had time to pull away and holding it fast in his own strong fingers as he leaned across the table. ‘Do you still love me, Nell?’
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS so typical Forde Masterson! She should have been expecting it, should have been aware he’d take her off guard sooner or later. His ruthless streak had taken the fledgling property-developing business he’d started in his bedroom at the family home when he was eighteen years old, using an inheritance left to him by his grandmother, into a multimillion-pound enterprise in just sixteen years. His friends called him inexorable, single-minded, immovable; his enemies had a whole host of other names, but even they had to admit they’d rather deal with Forde than some of the sharks in the property-developing game. He could be merciless when the occasion warranted it but his word was his bond, and that was increasingly rare in the cut and thrust of business.
Melanie stared into the dark, handsome face just inches from hers. His eyes shone mother-of-pearl in the dim light, their expression inscrutable. Somehow she managed to say, ‘I told you I’m not discussing us, Forde.’
‘I didn’t ask for a discussion. A simple yes or no would suffice.’ Black eyebrows rose mockingly.
She moved her head, allowing the pale curtain of her hair to swing forward, hiding her face as she jerked her hand free. ‘This is pointless. It’s over—we’re over. Accept it and move on. I have.’ Liar.
‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘I don’t have to.’ In an effort to control the trembling deep inside she reached out her hand and picked up her glass of wine, taking several long sips and praying her hand wouldn’t shake. ‘This is my house, remember? I make the rules.’
‘The trouble is, you never did believe in happy endings, did you, Nell?’ Forde said softly.
Her head jerked up as his words hit home and then he watched a shutter click down over her expression. She had always been able to do that, mask what she was thinking and adopt a distant air, but nine times out of ten he’d broken through the defence mechanism she used to keep people at bay. He knew her childhood had been tough; orphaned at the age of three, she couldn’t remember her parents. Her maternal grandmother had taken her in initially but when she, too, had tragically died a year later, none of Melanie’s other relations had stepped up to the mark. One foster home after another had ensued and Melanie admitted herself she’d been a troubled little girl and quite a handful. When he had fallen in love with her he had wanted to make that all better. He still wanted to. The only obstacle was Melanie herself, and it was one hell of an obstacle.
‘From the first day we met you were waiting for us to fall apart,’ he continued in the same quiet tone. ‘Waiting for it to all go wrong. I didn’t realise that until recently. I don’t know why. There were enough indicators early on.’
She spoke through clenched teeth. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
He studied her thoughtfully as she finished her second glass of wine. Her voice and body language belied her blank face. Underneath that formidable barrier she presented, that of a capable, strong businesswoman and woman of the world, Melanie was scared. Of him. He had acknowledged it at the same time he’d come to the conclusion she had never believed they’d make old bones together. She had loved and trusted him, he knew that, but he also knew now that those feelings had made her feel vulnerable and frightened. She had been on her own emotionally all her life before they’d met—twenty-five years—and that tough shell had been hard to break, but he’d done it. She had let him in. But not far enough, or they wouldn’t be in this mess right now.
Following through on his thoughts, he said, ‘I blamed myself at first after the accident, you know—for the distance between us, for the way every conversation fragmented or turned into a row. Stupid, but I didn’t understand you’d made the decision to shut me out and nothing short of a nuclear explosion could have changed things.’
She didn’t say a word. In fact she could have been carved in stone. A beautiful stone statue without feelings or emotion.
‘The accident—’
‘Stop talking about the accident,’ she said woodenly. Although she had been the one to insist they called it that. ‘It was a miscarriage. I was stupid enough to fall downstairs and I killed our son.’
‘Nell—’
‘No.’ She held up her hand, palm facing him. ‘Let’s face facts here. That is what happened, Forde. He was born too early and they couldn’t save him. Another few weeks and it might have been all right, but at twenty-two weeks he didn’t stand a chance. I was supposed to nurture him and keep him safe and I failed him.’
In one way he was glad she was talking about it; she’d refused to in the past, locking her emotions away from him and everyone else. In another sense he was appalled at the way even now, over sixteen months later, she was totally blaming herself. She had been a little light-headed that morning and had stayed in bed late after he’d left for work, Janet having brought her up a breakfast tray some time around ten o’clock. At half-past ten Janet had heard a terrible scream and a crash and rushed from the kitchen into the hall, to find Melanie lying twisted and partially conscious at the foot of the stairs, the contents of the tray scattered about her.
It had been an accident. Tragic, devastating, but an accident nonetheless, but from the time their son had been stillborn some hours later Melanie had retreated into herself. He hadn’t been able to comfort her, in fact she’d barely let him near her and at times he was sure she’d hated him, probably because he was a reminder of all they’d lost. And so they’d struggled on month after miserable month, Melanie burying herself in the business she’d started and working all hours until he was lucky if he saw her for more than an hour each night, and he— Forde’s mouth set grimly. He’d been in hell. He was still in hell, come to it.
He wanted to say, ‘Accidents happen,’ but that was too trite in the circumstances. Instead he stood up, drawing her stiff, unyielding body into his arms. ‘You would have given your life for his if you could have,’ he said softly. ‘No one holds you responsible for what happened, Nell, don’t you see?’
Melanie drew in a shuddering breath. ‘Please go now.’
She felt brittle in his grasp; she was too thin, much too thin, and even as he held her she swayed slightly as though she was going to pass out. ‘What’s the matter?’ He stared into her white face. ‘Are you unwell?’
She looked at him, her eyes focusing, and he realised she was holding onto him for support. ‘I—I think I must be a little tipsy,’ she murmured dazedly. ‘I missed lunch and I haven’t eaten yet, and two glasses of wine …’
Hence the reason she’d spoken about the miscarriage, but, hell, if he needed to keep her in a permanent state of intoxication to break through that iron shield, he would. He gentled his voice when he said, ‘Come indoors, I’ll get you something.’
‘No, I can manage. I— I’ll ring you.’
There was no way on earth he was walking out of here right now, not when they were talking—properly talking—for the first time since Matthew’s death. For a second a bolt of pain shot through him as he remembered his son, so tiny and so perfect, and then he controlled himself. He said nothing as he led her into the house and when he pushed her down on one of the dining room chairs and walked into the kitchen, she made no protest. He rifled the fridge before turning to face her. ‘OK, I can make a fairly passable cheese omelette—’ He stopped abruptly. Tears were washing down her face.
With a muttered oath he reached her side, lifting her against him and holding her close as he murmured all the things he’d been wanting to say for months. That he loved her, that she was everything to him, that life was nothing without her and that the accident hadn’t been her fault …
Melanie clung to him, all defences down, drinking in the strength, the hard maleness, the familiar smell of him and needing him as she’d never needed him before. She had never loved anyone else and she knew she never would; Forde was all she had ever wanted and more. At the back of her mind she knew there was a reason she should draw away but it was melting in the wonder of being in his arms, of feeling and touching him after all the months apart.
‘Kiss me.’ Her voice was a whisper as she raised her head and looked into his hard, handsome face. ‘Show me you love me.’
He lowered his mouth to hers, brushing her lips in a tender, feather-light kiss, but as she blatantly asked for more by kissing him back passionately, her mouth opening to him, the tempo changed.
She heard him groan, felt all restraint go and then he was kissing her like a drowning man, ravaging her mouth in an agony of need. When he whisked her off her feet, holding her close to his chest, his mouth not leaving hers, she lay supine, no thought of escape in her head.
Their lovemaking had always been the stuff dreams were made of and she’d been without him for so long, she thought dizzily. She needed to taste him again, experience his hands and mouth on her body, feel him inside her …
She was barely aware of Forde carrying her up the stairs but then she was lying on the scented linen of her bed and he was beside her, the darkness broken only by the faint light from the window. He continued to kiss her as he tore off his clothes in frantic haste, caressing the side of her neck, the hollow under her ear with his burning lips before taking her mouth again in a searing kiss that made her moan with need of him.
Her robe had come undone and now he slipped it off her completely, his voice almost a growl as he murmured, ‘My beautiful one, my incomparable love …’
There was no coherent thought in her head, just a longing to be closer still, and the fierceness of his desire matched hers. They touched and tasted with a sweet violence that had them both writhing and twisting as though they would consume each other, and when he plunged inside her she called out his name as her body convulsed in tune with his. Their release was as fierce and tumultuous as their lovemaking, wave after wave of unbearable pleasure sending them over the edge into a world of pure sensation, where there was no past and no future, just the blinding light and heat of the present.
Forde continued to hold her as the frantic pounding of their hearts quietened, murmuring intimate words of love as their breathing steadied. Her eyes closed, she settled herself more comfortably in the circle of his arms as she’d done so many times in the past after a night of loving, her thick brown lashes feathering the delicate skin under her eyes as she sighed softly. Within moments she was fast asleep, a sleep of utter exhaustion.
Forde’s eyes had accustomed to the deep shadows and now he lifted himself on one elbow, his gaze drinking in each feature of her face. Her skin was pure milk and roses, her eyelids fragile ovals of ivory under fine, curving brows and her lips full and sensuous. He carefully stroked a strand of silky blonde hair from her brow, unable to believe that what had happened in the last hour was real.
He had had women before he’d met Melanie, and when he’d first seen her at a mutual friend’s wedding he’d thought all he wanted to do was possess her like the others, enjoy a no-strings affair for as long as it lasted. By the end of their first date he’d fallen deeply in love and found himself in a place he’d never been before. They had married three months later on her twenty-sixth birthday and taken a long honeymoon in the Caribbean, which had been a magical step out of time.
His body hardened as he remembered the nights spent wrapped in each other’s arms. For the first time he’d understood the difference between sex and making love, and he’d known he never wanted to be without this woman again for a moment of time.
They had returned to England where Melanie had spent the next little while giving his house in Kingston upon Thames a complete makeover to turn it into their home, rather than the very masculine bachelor residence he’d inhabited. She had given up her job working for a garden contractor when they’d got married; Melanie had wanted to try for a baby straight away and whatever she’d wanted was fine with him. He knew her history, the fact she’d never had a family home or people to call her own, and had understood how much she wanted her own children, little people who were a product of their love.
He frowned in the darkness, still studying her sleeping face. What he hadn’t understood, not then, was that her haste to start a family was motivated more by fear than anything else. She’d been like a deprived child in a sweet shop cramming its mouth with everything in sight because it was terrified it would soon find itself locked outside once again in the cold.
And then the miscarriage happened.
He groaned in his soul, shutting his eyes for a moment against the blackness of that time.
And everything had changed. Melanie had changed. He felt he’d lost his wife as well as his child that day. He hadn’t doubted at first that he would get through to her, loving her as he did, but as weeks and then months had gone by and the wall she’d erected between them had been impenetrable he’d begun to wonder. When he had returned home one night and found her gone—clothes, shoes, toiletries, every personal possession she had—and read the note she’d left stating she wanted a divorce, it almost hadn’t come as a surprise.
He had been so angry that night. Angry that she could leave him when he knew nothing on earth could have made him leave her. And bereft, desperate, frantic with fear for her.
Melanie stirred slightly before curling even closer, her head on his chest and her hair fanning her face. His arms tightened round her; she seemed so small, so fragile, so young, but in part that was deceptive. She had walked away from him and made a new life for herself over the last months, managing perfectly well without him. Whereas he… He had been merely existing.