Forgotten Sins

She pushed the tangled locks from her face with shaking fingers.

By then in the front, Jake turned. ‘Seatbelt,’ he mouthed, pointing to the belt with one imperative hand.

Biting her lip, she nodded and groped for the straps. After watching until she’d buckled them across her waist, Jake pushed the door closed before reaching for a pair of headphones. Beneath the fine material of his shirt his body flexed with spare masculine grace.

Aline watched his lips move as he said something to the pilot. Was she being incredibly stupid to go with him?

Well, if she was, who cared? She closed her eyes. Michael, she thought drearily, oh, Michael…

Yet deep in her innermost heart she’d always known she wasn’t enough of a woman to keep Michael satisfied. Lauren’s ripe femininity was what men wanted.

A howling increase in the blast of the engines was followed by a sudden lurch and then lift-off. Aline settled back and let her eyelids drift up. With bent head, Jake was checking something in his lap. The westering sun painted a wash of gold over his face, emphasising its bold stamp of authority, its stark, forceful command.

Heat seared through her, smashing past the layers of weary grief. She shivered with muted apprehension as they flew away from the sunset over water the colour of wine, heading over peninsulas and bays and islands. How on earth had she let herself be hijacked like this?

Cowardice, she decided, and Jake’s uncompromising will. She should have seen it coming; she’d soon learned to respect his intelligence and his grasp of business. He’d known exactly what he wanted from his association with the bank, and he’d used his clout and a certain amount of ruthless power in negotiation, although the final deal satisfied both partners.

Yet beneath the civilised—if aggressive—businessman, she thought with an odd primitive thrill, lurked a warrior, a man with hunting instincts as keenly honed as those marauders who’d swept periodically out of the desert or the forest, or from frozen wastes to plunder and loot and enslave. In spite of his mask of civilised discipline, Jake Howard radiated a primal intensity that slashed through her misery and humiliation, homing in on the basic need of a woman for a man.

When he caught her watching him the arrogantly handsome face didn’t change expression, but his unreadable eyes narrowed when he mouthed, ‘OK?’

Bitterly angry at the betraying tug of sensation deep in the pit of her stomach, she nodded and glanced away. How odd that she should be torn between grief at the shattering of her memories and this heated awareness of another man.

From their first meeting she’d reluctantly responded to Jake’s sexual energy, the supercharged physicality that his expensive tailoring didn’t hide, but she’d done her best to ignore it, seeing her unwilling response as treachery to the memory of the man she’d loved with all her heart.

And if that thought didn’t hurt so much she’d be laughing at her own naïve foolishness.

Once more she closed her eyes and tried to sink into nothingness. It didn’t work.

Angry and tense because Jake’s presence kept jerking her back into the real world, she peered sideways, picking out places she recognised—various islands and the intertwined arms of sea and land. The helicopter rode through a sunlit canopy while darkness overtook the land, and in its wake sprang scatterings of golden pinpricks. Trying to keep her mind from fixing obsessively on the man in front, Aline named every cluster and string of lights.

At last it was too dark to see, and she closed her eyes again, only opening them when the helicopter banked.

They landed in a purple and indigo night that bloomed with stars. Jake pushed the door back and swung long legs down; turning, he beckoned Aline.

She fumbled with the seatbelt; once free she hunched her shoulders and eased herself across to the door. Jake didn’t move, and when she looked into his face he gave a sudden humourless smile and lifted her down. Frustrated by her involuntary response she stiffened, knocking her temple against the side of the opening.

It hurt, and she said, ‘Ouch,’ putting up a hand to the slight contusion as he carried her easily across the grass, setting her down well away from the helicopter.

‘What happened?’ he demanded, running his fingers through her hair to discover the small bump. Frowning, he traced its contours gently.

Shaken by his nearness and his unexpected gentleness, Aline stepped back and shook her head.

‘Stay there,’ he commanded, and strode back to collect two bags, hers and one that must have been waiting for him on the chopper.

‘Thank you,’ she said bleakly when he dumped them at her feet.

She picked them up and turned towards the dark bulk of a house. After two or three steps she realised he wasn’t with her. A swift glance over her shoulder revealed him unloading a couple of cartons from the helicopter.

Food, of course; he’d have organised it while she’d packed. No, he’d planned this holiday before he’d gone to Emma’s christening, so supplies would already have been seen to.

She dropped the bags and started to go back to help unload, but Jake, his rangy body outlined in light from the helicopter, had almost reached her. As he put the cartons down the helicopter rose like a squat, noisy beetle, its lights blinking steadily while it banked above them and then soared away.

Jake straightened up. ‘How’s your head?’ he asked abruptly. ‘No headache?’

‘No, it was just a small bump.’ She cleared her throat. ‘It’s fine.’

‘Welcome to my bach,’ he said, and took her hand.

Automatically Aline pulled back, but the warm, strong fingers didn’t release her. ‘The grass is uneven,’ he explained, scooping up the bags and urging her towards the house.

‘What about the cartons—?’

‘I’ll come back for them. Come on, you’re cold.’

‘I’m not.’

He brought her hand up to his face, pressing it for one tense second against heated skin and the subtle abrasion of his beard. That fleeting contact seared through every quickening cell in her body.

‘Definitely cold,’ he said calmly. ‘Let’s get inside.’

And because she didn’t want to get involved in an undignified tug of war she couldn’t win—not because his clasp was strangely comforting—she let her fingers lie in the warmth of his and walked beside him towards the house.

Behind them the chop-chop-chop of motors faded into silence. Stars pulsated above, far brighter than they ever were in the city. A cool breeze flirted across her face, heavy with the delicious perfume of mown grass. Every sense suddenly and painfully alert, Aline pretended to gaze around.

At the house Jake dropped her hand and unlocked a wide door. Pushing it open, he switched on a light inside the door and glanced down at her, his face oddly rigid in the bright flood of light. ‘Come in, Aline,’ he said with unusual formality.

‘I wouldn’t call this a bach,’ she remarked, hesitating a cowardly second before bracing her shoulders and walking inside. ‘It’s far too big and modern. How many bedrooms does it have?’

‘Four. I didn’t know that baches had to have a certain number of rooms to deserve the name.’ His voice was cool, entirely lacking in any undercurrents, but his eyes scrutinised her face with a perceptiveness that screamed an alarm inside her. ‘It’s built to be easy to look after, suitable for casual holidays, so as far as I’m concerned it’s a bach.’

‘It’s lovely,’ she said quickly, looking around with assumed interest.

Apprehension prickled through her. Jake had seen her desperate and hurting; would he use that pain and desperation against her?

Not that it mattered; later her pride might suffer, but for the moment she didn’t—wouldn’t—let herself care.

She just wished it had been any other man than Jake Howard who’d offered her a refuge.

Perhaps he felt some guilt for that scene with Lauren, but a sideways glance as he strode beside her along the wide, tiled hall dispelled that idea. Why should he? It hadn’t been his fault, and anyway, Jake didn’t look the sort of man who did guilt.

‘Let me see that bump.’

‘It’s perfectly all right,’ she said, voice sharpening. ‘I can’t even feel it now, and it didn’t break the skin.’

But he insisted on parting her black hair with exquisite care so that he could check it. Aline closed her eyes, only to open them swiftly when she found that darkness emphasised his faint male scent—salty and sensual—and the slow fire of his touch on her head. Tensely she bit her lip.

He released her, saying abruptly, ‘It’s going down already. You’re rocking on your feet. I’ll show you to your room and you can rest there if you like.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It was barely a bump.’

The room he showed her was huge; Aline stood staring at the vast bed as Jake opened windows, letting in a great swathe of fresh, salty air. ‘The bathroom’s through that door,’ he said, indicating one in the wall. ‘I’ll bring you something to drink.’

‘I don’t want—’

‘Aline,’ he said very softly, his face hard and watchful, ‘just let go, will you? You’ve been running on adrenalin and will-power ever since that bloody woman spilled her guts. A drink will ease a bit of that tension, and a decent meal will give you something to use for energy. At the moment you look like the princess in the tower—white and drawn and so tightly wound you’ll shatter if a mosquito lands on you.’

Her chin lifted. ‘I don’t need a drink to ease tension. I’m not in the habit of “spilling my guts”—’ her voice infused his phrase with delicate scorn ‘—to perfect strangers, thank you.’

He gave her a thin, unsparing smile. ‘That sounds more like the Aline Connor I know. Not even my mother said I was perfect, but as for being strangers—I don’t think so…’

Something mesmerising in his fierce eyes, in the deep voice, tightened around Aline and imprisoned her in a cage of indecision. Breath clogged her lungs; she heard the distant drumbeat of her pulse, slow and heavy and then faster, faster, as Jake took her face in his hands and tilted it to meet his uncompromising gaze. Two lean forefingers traced the black, winged length of her brows.

Eyes glittering with a crazy mixture of anger and hunger, Aline jerked her head back. ‘Let me go,’ she said, the words hoarse and laboured.

‘We’re not strangers, Aline,’ Jake said, laughing in his throat as he dropped his hands and stepped a pace away from her. ‘Far from it.’

Sickened by the shivering pleasure his expert touch had given her, she said crudely, ‘You said I wouldn’t have to sleep with you.’

‘And I meant it.’ He didn’t seem angry, although his eyes were calculating. ‘But I’m not going to let you lie to yourself. You know as well as I do that from the moment we met we’ve been acutely, uncomfortably and inconveniently conscious of each other. Sooner or later we’re going to do something about it.’

‘I won’t—’

‘Calm down.’ He said it so forcefully the words dried on her tongue. ‘I’ve already told you I’m not such an insensitive clod that I’d try to persuade you now. Come out when you’re ready.’

Aline waited until the door closed silently behind him before unpacking with rapid, angry energy, stacking her clothes in the walk-in wardrobe next to the bathroom.

Then she gazed around the room—large and light, furnished with a casual expertise that breathed skill and money—and found herself liking it very much.

Retreating, she showered, sighing when her tense muscles finally relaxed under the hot water. But by the time she’d towelled herself dry and dressed—the same black trousers topped this time by a soft silk shirt in the moody aquamarines and blues that went so well with her eyes—she was once more as tight as a coiled spring.

‘Stupid!’ she muttered between her teeth, picking up the hairdrier. ‘So, why wouldn’t the bathroom have everything a woman might need? Do you care?’

A twist of jealousy gave her an answer she didn’t like. Refusing to consider the highly suspect implications, she used the drier and her brush to free her hair of tangles before winding it firmly into its knot and venturing out of the sanctuary of her room.

‘Ah, back to normal,’ Jake said enigmatically, looking across the high bar that separated the kitchen from a huge living and dining area. ‘A pity—I liked that wild, uncaged look.’

She frowned, shocked anew by the pulse of response through her. He’d changed too, his long legs and narrow hips shaped by casual trousers, with a tawny, superbly cut cotton shirt clinging to his wide shoulders. Rolled sleeves revealed tanned forearms, and damp hair fell across his brow as he stirred something that smelt delicious.

‘The wild uncaged look doesn’t fit into corporate life,’ she said evenly. ‘Can I help?’

‘Can you cook?’

‘I can stir,’ she retorted, irritated at the defensive undertone to the words.

He laughed. ‘It’s all right—I’ve got dinner organised.’ He set the spoon down and put a lid on the saucepan, then emerged through the doorway and strode across to a sideboard where a tray held a bottle of champagne and two tall flutes.

Aline shuddered. After this afternoon she didn’t think she’d ever be able to drink champagne again without recalling Lauren. She said tautly, ‘A man who can cook—wonderful!’

‘All the great chefs are men,’ he said, still amused.

‘Not any longer they’re not.’

Smiling, he eased the cork from the bottle. His charismatic mixture of confidence and grace and authority made everything he did seem easy.

Aline glanced at the bottle; this wasn’t merely champagne, it was superb French champagne. ‘Are you trying to impress me?’ she asked, a cynical smile touching her mouth.

Gleaming gold eyes scanned her face with cool interest. ‘Could I?’

CHAPTER THREE

A HEATED recklessness gripped Aline. Tomorrow she’d regret this, but she replied, ‘No, you’re not trying to impress; that armour-plated confidence is tough enough for you to ignore what anyone thinks.’

Especially a woman he’d seen comprehensively humiliated. Jake probably felt sorry for her, she thought, outraged pride gouging more holes in her disintegrating armour.

‘I do have some respect for some people’s opinions,’ he said dryly.

‘But none for public opinion.’

‘A hundred and fifty years ago public opinion held that women were unfit to vote.’ His smile was ironic. ‘Most women believed that too. So, no, I don’t listen to public opinion.’

He had the sort of mind that stimulated her, made her want to sharpen her own wits against his. Stubbornly she kept silent as he poured the pale gold liquid into the flutes—lean, tanned hands, strong and deft, capable and expert…

‘We should drink a toast,’ Jake said. When she looked up sharply he handed her a glass with an enigmatic smile. ‘To the truth.’

Aline’s mouth twisted. “‘And the truth shall make you free”?’ she scoffed before she drank. Bitterness spiked her words as she set the glass down onto the polished wood table with an audible click. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Would you rather still be chained by comfortable lies?’ Jake asked sardonically. ‘You surprise me.’

Her eyelashes quivered but she kept staring into the glass. Tiny bubbles beaded and winked, rising in columns to the surface of the champagne. ‘Why?’

‘Surely you’d rather deal with a painful truth than live a lie.’ He waited, and when she said nothing he added deliberately, ‘You’ve always struck me as being as strong and fine as spun steel. Only weaklings hide behind convenient falsehoods.’

Aline lifted the glass to her lips again. Although some detached part of her brain conveyed to her that the champagne was dry and exquisite, it might have been sour milk for all the pleasure she took in it. ‘I’m gratified you think I’m strong,’ she said, folding her lips on the other words that threatened to tumble out and angry with herself for saying that much. Vulnerability brought predators prowling.

Sure enough, Jake’s glance sharpened. ‘But?’

She summoned a light, casual shrug and a cool smile. ‘Sometimes it’s the only thing a person’s got going for them, and steel is utilitarian stuff.’

His brows met over the blade of his nose. ‘The world runs on utilitarian stuff,’ he said dispassionately, watching her with unsettling curiosity. ‘Steel, coal, oil, trees felled to make paper, metals dug from the ground, food grown in the earth. Are you a closet romantic, Aline, yearning for moonbeams?’

‘No,’ she said with a brittle lack of emphasis, tight shoulders moving uneasily under his intent golden scrutiny. She thought to sip some more champagne, but put the glass down untouched. The last thing she needed was a head clouded by bubbles.

The glimmer of starlight on the sea gave her an opportunity; she walked across to uncurtained windows and gazed out. ‘What a lovely spot you have here.’

It was a clumsily obvious ploy, but to her relief he let her get away with it. Ten minutes later they were discussing a controversial takeover that had been exercising the minds of financial journalists for the past week.

Usually Aline could do this sort of thing without thinking, but tonight Jake’s trenchant, perceptive comments kept prodding her brain out of neutral; by the time dinner was ready she realised with sick shame that she hadn’t thought of Michael for at least an hour.

At first she ate the scallop and noodle salad automatically, hardly tasting the sophisticated lime juice and sesame oil dressing, but soon the bite of chilli and fresh ginger and the smooth richness of the scallops shook her tastebuds awake.

‘That was delicious,’ she said with real appreciation when she’d finished. ‘You’re not just a man who can cook—you’re a superb cook.’

‘Thank you,’ he said laconically.

Aline watched as he collected the plates and took them into the kitchen. The combination of food and champagne and impersonal yet exhilarating conversation, the strange novelty of being cosseted and cared for, both stimulated and lulled her into a languid mood.

Jake was dangerous. When all she’d wanted to do was hide for the rest of her life he’d forced her senses and mind into enjoyable alertness. Simply by being himself—a compelling, attractive man—he’d broken through the bitterness of betrayal.

Heat surged from deep inside her, stinging her skin, clouding reason and logic in fumes of sensation. Shakily she got up and walked across the big room, pushing back the folding doors to gulp in cool air, moist from the sea, lush with the scent of greenery. She didn’t want to feel, to cope, to recover; for once in her life she longed to hide and howl at her emptiness.

When Jake came in from the kitchen carrying a couple of serving dishes she asked with tight formality, ‘Do you mind if I leave the doors open?’

‘No,’ he said, setting the dishes down. He straightened and stood watching her as she came towards her.

Something about his stillness, the metallic light in his golden eyes, the controlled lines of his sculpted mouth, chased ripples of unease across Aline’s skin. Lightly, steadily she said, ‘I was suspiciously close to nodding off, and I don’t want to miss any of this superb dinner.’

His smile was enigmatic. ‘Then sit down and eat it.’

An hour later she sighed, ‘No, no coffee, thank you. That was a wonderful feast. Where on earth did you learn to cook—or were you a chef in a previous incarnation?’

‘I couldn’t afford to eat out when I was at university,’ he said, getting up and holding out his hand to her. ‘So I learnt how to make a decent meal. I like to be good at what I do.’

Oh, she believed him. At everything he did, she thought, trying to banish an image of him making love, bronzed skin gleaming…

‘Who taught you?’ She let her hand lie in his, adding with a brittle smile, ‘The current girlfriend, I suppose.’

‘A restaurant.’

He let her go, but before she had time to feel bereft he supported her elbow in an easy grip, startlingly warm through the fine silk of her sleeve.

Shamed by the untamed frisson of need zigzagging through her, she said, ‘A restaurant altruistic enough to give lessons in gourmet cooking to penniless university students? If only I’d known about it I might be able to cook something more sophisticated than scrambled eggs.’

‘If you can make a good fist of those you can cook anything,’ he said, steering her towards the seating area. ‘I started in the kitchen as a part-time hand and gradually rose through the ranks. By the time I finished my degree I was allowed to cook the odd dish if the chef was in a good mood and there weren’t too many customers that night.’

Something—probably the second glass of champagne she’d been unwise enough to drink—persuaded her to confess, ‘I can produce very basic meals, but that’s all.’

‘Yes,’ he said austerely, ‘you look as though you survive on salads. Don’t you enjoy cooking?’

She shrugged, collapsing into a sofa that faced the wide open doors. ‘My sister was the domestic daughter. She could conjure a fantastic meal from some stale cheese, a couple of lettuce leaves and a spoonful of chutney, so she went to gourmet cooking classes while I collected degrees. I was going to follow my father into his business.’

He switched off the lights.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, jerking bolt upright.

‘Any moment now you’ll see the moon rise over the Coromandel Peninsula. It’s worth watching.’ His amused tone further unsettled her.

However, when she heard the soft sounds of him settling into a chair close by she relaxed her taut body, turning her head to look at the little bay. Miles away, over a waste of sea that trembled in the starshine, a faint glow outlined a high hill.

Out of the darkness Jake asked casually, ‘So did you follow your father into the business?’

‘No.’

Silence stretched between them until he prompted, ‘What happened?’

‘My sister and mother were killed in a car accident.’ Aline looked down at her lap and carefully untangled her knotted fingers. ‘My father sold the business and used the money to set up a foundation in their memory.’ She paused, before finishing evenly, ‘And then he killed himself.’

Because she kept her eyes fixed onto the scene outside, she neither heard Jake move nor saw him. As moonlight rimmed the horizon in silver she felt the sofa cushions give beside her. Her skin burned with primitive awareness and she had to concentrate on her breathing.

‘A cruel and cowardly thing to do.’ His voice was corrosively contemptuous.

‘It’s all right,’ she said calmly, holding herself upright to fight an abject weakness that craved the warmth and the solid support of his powerful body. ‘I understood. He loved them very much.’

Jake’s silence had a forbidding undercurrent. She finished, ‘It was almost six years ago; I’ve got over it.’

‘So well that you have to gird yourself up when you speak of it?’ he asked coolly. He ran a swift, unsparing hand the length of her spine from her shoulder to her waist. ‘Pure steel,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Did you cry for them?’

‘I’m not a freak! Of course I cried for them.’ Aline fought back the spurt of anger to add more temperately, ‘But you can’t cry for ever. Sooner or later you have to leave the past behind.’

‘Something your father was too cowardly to do, apparently.’ His scathing tone revealed his lack of sympathy for those who wallowed in grief. Instead of returning to his chair, he leaned back into the cushions.

Aline stole a swift sideways glance as she inched away from him until stopped by the arm of the sofa. The moon had risen, filling the night with a glowing, coppery radiance that turned in a breath to silver. Against the light Jake’s profile outlined power and force, controlled yet dangerous.

He said, ‘Tell me about your husband. What made him set up that trust?’

Even as he said the words he wondered savagely what the hell he thought he was doing. She’d had too many betrayals in her life and here he was contemplating the possibility of another.