Forgotten Sins

Hope’s brows shot up, but she returned a remark that made him laugh, and then Keir arrived, and for five minutes or so they chatted with relaxed ease.

Too soon, but inevitably, Hope and Keir moved on, taking Emma with them. With her usual store of small talk evaporating fast, Aline cast around for something innocuous to say before escaping.

Jake watched her from beneath his lashes, an unnerving glint of mockery lighting his eyes.

Edgily she summoned a cool smile. ‘I didn’t realise you were going to be here,’ she said, hoping the observation didn’t sound as inane to him as it did to her.

Her hope was dashed immediately. ‘You mean you assumed I wouldn’t be. Do you want me to go?’

‘No!’ She inhaled quickly, sharply, to settle her racing pulses. ‘Of course not,’ she said, encouraged when her voice revealed nothing more than polite interest.

She lifted her eyes, only to find them captured by his. Dazedly, she felt as though she’d fallen into frozen fire, lost all individuality, all reason, all control…

Forcing another tight smile, she went on, ‘I thought you were in Vancouver,’ and wrenched her gaze free of the forbidden imprisonment of his, fixing her eyes on his mouth.

Only to discover that it was as dangerous to her peace of mind as his tawny-gold eyes. Sex, she reminded herself sturdily, that’s all it is. Yes, it was humiliating to be attracted to a man like Jake, a man so unlike Michael they had almost nothing in common except their gender, but she’d get over it now she didn’t have to see him so often.

‘Jets leave Canada every day for New Zealand. I plan to be seeing quite a bit of Keir and his wife in the future.’

‘They’re a lovely family,’ Aline said tautly.

Silence stretched between them, buzzing with hidden significance. He waited, but when she refused to break it he said with smooth insolence, ‘And I plan to be seeing more of you.’

She gave him a small, meaningless smile. ‘I don’t imagine we’ll need to meet again now that we’ve stitched up the deal—’

‘This has nothing to do with the deal.’ He paused before saying in a voice underpinned by steel, ‘This is about us, Aline. You and me.’

The drawing-room was large and filled with people, all at that pleasant state of talkativeness engendered by a glass of excellent champagne. More people had spilled out of the open French doors onto the wide Victorian verandah beyond. It bore the hallmarks of an excellent party, yet Aline sat alone, imprisoned by his inflexible will.

Hands clenched by her sides, she said, ‘No,’ the word a stone dropped into echoing silence.

Strong fingers closed around her wrist, shackling it. ‘I can feel your heartbeat against my fingertips,’ Jake said thoughtfully. ‘It’s going twice the normal speed.’

Before she tried to twist free he released her. ‘No,’ she said again, the meaningless word splintering into the tension between them. ‘And don’t ever do that again. I don’t like being manhandled.’

From behind came a sly voice, soft, heavy with innuendo. ‘She’s never liked being touched. Except by her husband, of course,’ Lauren Penn said. Her smile bubbled into laughter, low and mocking. ‘And you know, that’s a joke. Just the biggest joke in the world.’

‘Lauren…’ Aline’s glance swerved to the half-empty glass of champagne in the other woman’s hand.

Lauren swallowed the rest of the wine, setting the empty glass down with exaggerated care on a table. ‘Lauren,’ she mimicked. ‘Lauren, shut up. Lauren, go away. Lauren, stop making a scene. You know, I’m so sick of you. Ever since he died you’ve worn your grief for your darling lost Michael like a bloody crown. Other people grieved too, but that never occurred to you, did it?’ Her glance darted to Jake’s angular face.

As though encouraged by his dispassionate regard, she purred, ‘You see, Jake, poor Aline has a little problem. She really doesn’t like being touched—and that’s straight from the horse’s mouth. Mike said she was like turquoise, cold and smooth and shallow—nothing but surface colour. He called her the Untouchable—sometimes the Snow Queen. He said that when they had sex it was like worshipping at some shrine instead of loving a flesh-and-blood woman—’

‘That’s more than enough.’ Jake’s voice held such crackling menace that Lauren went white. Her eyes moved from Jake’s grim face to Aline, locked in a hideous stasis.

Jake said softly, ‘Get out of here.’

Lauren whispered, ‘It’s time she knew. She’s eating her heart out for a lie. I loved Mike and he loved me. We’d been lovers for a year when he died.’ Her eyes glazed with tears and her mouth trembled. ‘He wanted to come away with me, but he didn’t want to hurt her. We were going to get married.’

Unable to hold back, Aline retorted in a shaking voice, ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Because you don’t want to.’ Open antagonism sharpened her words. ‘Do you know what happened when he died? I lost our baby.’

Her anguished glance across the room to Emma, smiling in her father’s arms, struck both Jake and Aline mute.

Bitterly she went on, ‘If you hadn’t clung so hard he’d have left you, and then he and my baby would still be alive. I wouldn’t have let him fly across the sea looking for some idiot solo yachtsman who’d got himself lost. You killed Mike—and you killed my baby because you wouldn’t let go!’

That was when Aline knew she was telling the truth.

CHAPTER TWO

IT HURT, Aline realised, to breathe. It even hurt to think. The last time she could remember such pain was when they’d told her Michael was dead. The irony almost knocked her to her knees.

Lauren said softly, ‘You’re so stubborn and self-centred, so sure you’re always right, but tomorrow you’ll have to believe me. I even lent the author Mike’s letters.’

Jake’s eyes narrowed. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he asked in a tone that wilted Lauren’s antagonism.

Defiantly she said, ‘Aline refused to talk to the writer—Stuart someone—when he contacted her about a biography of Mike. But I did. I told him everything about Mike and me because I wanted people to know he loved me. Tomorrow morning everyone in New Zealand will read that Aline gave Mike nothing, and I gave him everything.’

Locked in a savage agony of rejection and betrayal, Aline closed her eyes, listening to the meaningless words buzz around inside her head. She craved numbness, forgetfulness, with the avid hunger of an addict.

‘And that book’s coming out tomorrow?’ Jake demanded so silkily that Aline’s lashes flew up.

No emotion showed in his face, but his gaze focused on Lauren with the searing lance of a laser. Behind the hard, handsome features Aline saw a predator, menacing, relentless, and lethally dangerous.

Visibly bracing herself, Lauren took an instinctive step backwards. ‘It’s being launched next week, but tomorrow there’ll be a big extract in one of the Sunday papers.’ From somewhere she produced an aggressive tone. ‘Mike put New Zealand on the map with his single-handed sailing voyages around the world, and he cared enough about kids to set up the Connor Trust and raise millions of dollars for it. Some of the money from the book’s going to the Trust, yet Aline would have stopped publication if she’d been able to.’ She cast a scathing glance at Aline. ‘People need to know what a wonderful man—a truly great man—he was. I’m not ashamed of loving him, and I’ll be proud until I die that he loved me.’

Jake would have liked very much to wrap his hands around that slender throat and throttle the life out of her, but he needed to get Aline out of there before the confrontation—already drawing covert attention—went any further. White and frozen, her subtle cosmetics displayed for the mask they were, she hadn’t moved since Lauren had started her attack.

It was the first time he’d seen her at a disadvantage, and he was startled by the fierce protectiveness that unexpectedly gripped him.

Ignoring Lauren, he stepped between the two women and touched Aline’s arm. When she didn’t respond he said gently, ‘Aline, come with me.’

After a taut moment she shivered.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, relieved when she let him steer her out of the nearest door and into the entrance hall, mercifully empty of onlookers.

With a firm hand at her elbow, he led her across the gleaming wooden floor with its priceless Persian rug; he wondered if the door to Keir’s study would be locked, but it yielded to his urgent hand.

Mentally thanking Keir for his trust in his guests, he pushed it open, noting with a half-smile that Keir wasn’t that trusting; everything but the desk and the bookshelves had been locked away in a bank of cupboards.

Obediently, silently, Aline went ahead, finally stopping in the middle of the room to look around with dazed bewilderment. Succumbing to his concern, Jake folded her slim, cold hands in his, but although she didn’t resist it was like touching a statue.

‘She could be lying,’ he said harshly.

‘She’s not lying.’ Aline’s voice sounded distant, muted, empty of the subtle sexy texture that made it so erotic beneath the surface crispness.

‘How do you know?’

She shuddered. ‘He used to say my eyes were like the very best turquoise. How would she know that unless he told her?’

Pillow-talk, he thought savagely. ‘It could have slipped out in conversation.’

She shook her head. ‘Keir must know; he was Michael’s best friend,’ she said. And then with a half-sob, ‘Yes, of course. That’s why…’

‘Tell me,’ he commanded when her voice trailed away into nothingness.

She didn’t ask him what business it was of his. The shock of Lauren’s revelation had smashed the barriers he’d tried so hard to penetrate these past months. Ruthlessly practical, he decided it might be a good thing; if she’d been living in a fool’s paradise the truth could only set her free. It might even help the small personal crusade he’d embarked on—finding out exactly what was going on in the Connor Trust.

But, God, he hated to see her in such pain.

In that same empty monotone she said, ‘About a year before Michael died I noticed a distance between them, and after that we didn’t see much of Keir. I asked Michael why, and he said that it was the natural way of things—married men didn’t have so much in common with their single friends.’ She lifted her lashes and looked at him with blank eyes like enamelled jewels, their vivid colour framed by long black lashes. ‘You believe people when you love them because it hurts too much not to.’

Looking into that lifeless, beautiful face, Jake thought violently that if he could kill a dead man he’d do it right then.

A soft sound from behind alerted him to the opening of the door; instantly he swung around, thrusting Aline behind him as their host entered the room.

Frowning, Keir demanded, ‘What’s going on here?’

Jake stood to one side and let Aline tell Keir exactly what Lauren had said.

He was good, Jake thought with respect; their host’s ice-grey eyes registered only a single flash of fury, but of course Aline noticed.

She whispered, ‘Was Lauren the only one?’

‘Yes,’ Keir said brusquely.

‘So he did love her,’ she said, as though the words stabbed her to the heart. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Would you have believed me?’ When she shook her head he added more gently, ‘It wasn’t my place to tell you.’

Jake understood. He’d been in an impossible position. Was Keir’s knowledge the source of the tension he’d sensed between Aline and her boss?

Politely, Aline said, ‘Of course it wasn’t. I’m sorry I asked. Keir, I think I’d better go now.’

‘I’ll take you,’ Jake told her.

She swivelled as though she’d forgotten he was there. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said woodenly, ‘but my car’s here.’

‘You can’t drive.’ Jake’s voice was patient. ‘I’ll make sure your car gets home.’

He could see her try to muster her defences. ‘I’ll be perfectly all—’

‘You’re not fit to drive,’ Jake said brutally. ‘Kill yourself if you want to, but what if you kill someone else?’

Huge turquoise eyes held his until she made a blundering gesture of rejection, muttering, ‘All right, I’ll go with you.’ She turned back to Keir. ‘Please tell Hope I’m sorry?’

‘Of course. Will you be all right?’ He frowned, his eyes travelling from Aline’s shuttered face to Jake’s.

With an effort Jake could only imagine, she managed a faint curve of her lips.

‘Of course I will. You don’t die from disillusion. And I’ve got this week off—I’ll be fine once I’ve had a chance to get used to the idea of—of…’ She choked and caught herself up.

Harshly, Jake said, ‘I’ll look after her.’

He and Keir exchanged a look, golden eyes clashing with ice-grey. Jake said softly, ‘This has nothing to do with you.’

Keir didn’t like that, but after several taut seconds he nodded.

Once safely in Jake’s car, Aline sat back into the seat and stared at the window, trying desperately to summon a blankness that would blot out her thoughts.

It was useless. All her mind could register was the stark, inescapable fact that Michael had betrayed her.

Eventually she blurted, ‘I’m surprised she waited so long to tell me.’ The words burst from some secret part of her, rooted in a miserable mixture of anguish and furious humiliation.

‘Why would she want to tell you?’ Jake asked, backing the car skilfully between two badly parked others.

‘For years she hasn’t said a word! Why now, I wonder?’ And to her astonishment Aline heard herself say, ‘I’m so sorry for her; to love someone and not be able to grieve openly for him must be the worst kind of hell. And then to lose her baby…’ Her voice trailed off as she remembered that Michael had refused her a child. Stumbling, she said, ‘Perhaps she wanted to forewarn me—’

‘The baby,’ Jake told her with ruthless frankness. ‘That’s what she saw when she came in the door—you laughing with Emma.’

Aline looked down at her hands, realising they’d taken on a life of their own and were writhing together in her lap in the classic gesture of helpless indecision. Revulsion and sheer force of will subdued them into stillness.

‘I see.’ She straightened her fingers and stared at the wedding ring she’d worn with such pride ever since Michael had put it on five years previously. It weighed heavy, as crushing as treachery.

Clenching and unclenching her hands, she said thinly, ‘I feel a total idiot. Grieving nearly three years for someone who told his lover what pet names he called me!’

‘You’re not the first person to have your trust betrayed.’ Jake’s voice was infuriatingly calm, close to off-hand. ‘It happens to everyone.’

‘To you?’ she demanded.

He shrugged. ‘Of course.’

Suddenly aflame with reviving anger, she said intensely, ‘I’m not going to put myself in such a position again. Never!’

Jake glanced across and saw the savage, almost wild determination on her face as she wrenched off the wedding ring and wound down the window. He didn’t stop her when she flung the ring through the window. Fresh air whipped around them, carrying the scent of grass and manuka balsam and the faint, salty tang of the sea.

‘There,’ she said intensely. ‘It’s over. All I want to do now is forget.’

Brows slightly raised, Jake drove on.

A few miles down the road she said, ‘Turn right at the next turn-off. I live—’

‘I know where you live—in a townhouse beside the harbour on Whangaparoa Peninsula,’ he told her curtly.

Later she might wonder how he knew her address, but at the moment she couldn’t summon up the energy.

But he wouldn’t let her sink into the stupor she craved. Coolly persistent, he asked, ‘What are your plans?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said dully. She looked around as though in an unknown landscape. ‘Stay at home, I suppose. Regroup…’

‘Did you live there with him?’

‘Who? Oh, Michael. Yes.’ Stupid—she’d been so stupid! ‘I don’t want to go back there,’ she admitted with painful honesty.

‘You could come with me,’ he suggested casually. ‘I own a beach house not too far away—it’s completely isolated. I’m going there tonight for a few days before I leave New Zealand. You can come if you want to.’

She made a jerky movement, then clamped her hands together in her lap. ‘I couldn’t impose,’ she said in her stiffest tone.

His laughter was low and cynical. ‘You mean, you think I might try to seduce you. Naturally, after you’ve had such a huge shock, that’s exactly what I’d do. You don’t have much of an opinion of me, but, for the record, you won’t have to sleep with me.’

Scarlet-faced, she muttered, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’

Her head drooped sideways. Racked by an exhaustion of the spirit, by waves of tiredness that slowed her brain and made her unable to think sensibly, she muttered, ‘I’ll be fine. It was kind of you to offer, though. Thank you.’

But when the car drew to a halt outside her house a pleasant and determined young woman, with cameraman and sound recorder in tow, was waiting for her in the street. One or two neighbours were already outside, watching.

Strong face angry, Jake swore beneath his breath. ‘Do you want to turn around and get out of here?’

‘Where would I go?’ she asked, her voice so thin and apprehensive it horrified her. She dragged in a breath and said between her teeth, ‘No, I will not run away.’

‘Good,’ he responded smoothly, pulling in behind the television company van. ‘Give them that arrogant stare and walk right over the top of them. Wait in the car until I let you out, and from then on I’ll be just behind you.’

Clinging to that promise, Aline straightened her shoulders and disciplined her face as she got out of the car.

‘Mrs Connor?’ the journalist asked after a rapid, appreciative glance at Jake. ‘I wonder if I could have a word with you—?’

‘No, thank you,’ Aline said, appalled by the cold reptilian scud of fear down her spine. She saw the camera focus and had to hide an impulse to scuttle inside to safety.

‘It won’t take a moment—it’s about Stuart Freely’s biography of your husband.’ The woman gave a persuasive smile. ‘We thought you might like to make some comments.’

‘You heard Ms Connor,’ Jake said briefly. ‘She doesn’t want to comment.’

Smirched and sickened by the determined interest she saw in the woman’s face, Aline unlocked the door and walked inside.

‘It must be a quiet weekend for news,’ she said bitterly as Jake closed the door behind him.

‘Change your mind and come with me. The uproar will die down in a week or so—the media will soon find something else to feed on.’

‘You’re very kind,’ she said, fear mingling with a restless longing, ‘but it would be cowardly—’

‘Cowardly? To stop them putting you in a pillory to entertain an audience?’ Each scornful word cut through the armour of aloofness she’d erected. ‘Come up with a better excuse than that, Aline.’

Aline looked around the sitting room she and Michael had furnished with so much care, so much pleasure. Black anger and despair gripped her. The thought of spending one more moment in this shrine to a lie was beyond bearing.

At least in Jake’s abrasive company she wouldn’t wallow in self-pity, imagining Michael and Lauren in each other’s arms, hearing him whisper his love to another woman…

‘All right, I’ll come,’ she said, weakly surrendering.

‘Get some clothes,’ Jake commanded. He took a mobile phone from his pocket and began to punch in numbers. She watched as he held it to his mouth, his keen raptor’s eyes fixed on her. ‘Sally?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a couple of jobs for you, both urgent—’

Aline ran up the stairs and flung clothes from her wardrobe into a weekend bag. Feverishly but automatically, she stuffed cosmetics and toiletries on top, grabbed a pair of shoes, and changed from her silk suit into black trousers and a polo-necked T-shirt the same colour. After pushing the long sleeves up to her elbows, she slung a black linen shirt around her shoulders in case it got cold on the boat.

Abruptly her energy drained away; she stood for a long moment, staring blankly around. Michael smiled at her from the dressing table. Eyes filling with tears at the loss of a lovely dream, she walked over and put the photograph face down in the drawer. One day perhaps she would accept that to have loved him was worth it; all she could feel now was outrage and humiliation—and an angry, unexpected sympathy for Lauren, because Michael had betrayed them both.

‘Have you finished up there?’

‘Yes,’ she said promptly, and came out of the room. Behind her, jerked by her ungentle hand, the door closed with a small crash.

Six foot three of virile, compelling male, Jake waited at the foot of the stairs, the autocratic angles of his bronze profile gilded by the late-afternoon sun. Tawny lights glimmered in his black hair and a cynical smile hardened his mouth.

He was the ultimate challenge, she thought, stabbed by an urgent, primitive response—a challenge she wasn’t up to.

‘Do you need help with that bag?’ he asked briskly.

Heat burned along her cheekbones. ‘No, thank you,’ she said, lifting it and walking down the stairs. Instinct warned her that by going with Jake she was setting out on an unknown journey into perilous seas, a journey with no map and no compass. And she was a very weary wayfarer.

Perhaps her mental and emotional exhaustion showed in her face, for Jake took the bag from her and asked in a different voice, ‘Do you have a back door?’

‘Through there.’ She indicated the direction. ‘It leads into the garage, and then into an access alley.’

‘Good.’ His smile twisted as he glanced at her. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you when you haven’t been dressed in perfect taste. Those are ideal clothes for a fast getaway. Can you walk half a kilometre or so up to the golf course?’

‘Of course I can—but why?’

‘Because that’s where the helicopter will be.’

‘The helicopter?’ Her voice sounded flat, without inflection, but she didn’t care; she struggled to reach that shroud of grey nothingness that shielded her from pain and shock. She’d come to know it well after Michael’s death, but it was no longer there for her and she knew why; Jake’s raw masculinity had blown it into wispy shreds, leaving her quivering and exposed.

Patiently he said, ‘The chopper was to have picked me up in Auckland, but it’s on its way here now.’

‘What about your car?’

‘Someone will drive it back to town,’ he told her.

Because it seemed reasonable, Aline nodded and followed him through the back door, docilely handed him the keys and waited while he locked up behind them.

‘I’ll go ahead,’ he said.

But nobody ambushed them in the alley behind the townhouses.

‘Most people never think to check the back,’ Jake said, locking the gate behind Aline and pocketing the keys. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Sometimes, she thought, donning sunglasses as they strode away from the house she’d shared with Michael, it was easier and simpler to give in to an irresistible force. And if that was just another way to say she was a coward—well, so be it.

They had almost reached the golf course when they heard the helicopter coming across the ocean, descending rapidly.

‘Walk faster,’ Jake said calmly as the whump-whump-whump of its engine began to echo. ‘No, don’t run—we don’t want to attract any attention.’

But no one took any notice; people living around this superb golf course were accustomed to the arrival and departure of helicopters. The street was still empty when they turned into the gate and headed for the concrete pad where the chopper was settling with cumbersome accuracy.

The pilot lifted a hand. The door slid open and another man leapt down, crouching as he ran towards them. Jake dropped something into his palm, then grabbed Aline’s hand.

‘Keep your head down,’ he commanded, and towed her up to the open door.