Forgotten Sins

The blast of turbulent air whipped long strands of black hair from the neat coil at the back of her head, tossing it around her cold face. Jake dumped the cases, and in spite of her protests lifted Aline into the machine.

The way her eager flesh reacted to his impersonal grip finally robbed her of any chance of reaching that barren, emotionless refuge she longed for. She might have been able to put the swimming in her head down to the thud of the rotors, but what set her heartbeat pummelling her breastbone was Jake’s touch, the faint salty fragrance of his skin, and his effortless strength.

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?’

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