Breaking/Making Up: Something Borrowed\Vendetta (9 page)

‘
Treachery
?’

‘Yes. My parents’. They didn’t believe me when I told them I wasn’t guilty, you see. They said I had blackened their name, shamed the family. They said I wasn’t wanted around Glenbrook.’ His laugh was cynical. ‘I rather expected my mother to react that way. She’d always been more concerned over what other people thought and said than what her children felt. But Dad really disappointed me. He didn’t want me around either. When I asked about you he told me you were engaged to a medical student and that if I cared about you at all I’d go right away and leave you alone.’

‘But...but I
wasn’t
!’

‘I know that now, Leigh. At the time I was shattered. And torn. I didn’t know what to do. One part of me couldn’t believe you had forgotten me. I longed to see you, to take you in my arms, to force you to love me. But common sense and decency demanded that if you were going to marry another man I should stay away. But I needed someone else to look me in the face and tell me you didn’t care about me any more, someone I could implicitly trust. I went to Brisbane to speak to James, to the address where I was told he was spending the weekend with a friend. Mr Reynolds, as it turned out. It didn’t take me long to see which way the land lay there. Naturally, I was shocked, but I tried to be open-minded about it, for James’s sake. When I asked him about you and he confirmed what Dad had told me it never occurred to me he could be lying.’

‘But
why
did he lie? It’s not as though we were having anything to do with each other back then.’

‘He obviously wanted me to leave Glenbrook too, because I knew his secret. He was worried I would stay if I thought there was a chance for me with you.’

‘Oh, Jake... Do you realise what I thought when I’d heard you’d come home and hadn’t even come to see me? Do you have any idea how I felt?’

He drew her into his arms and held her there, her face pressed against his chest. ‘I hope you were devastated,’ he groaned. ‘I hope you wanted to kill me!’

She wrenched away from him and stood up, grey eyes wide with bewilderment. ‘But why would you want that?’

‘Because it would mean you still loved me as much as I loved you,’ he growled passionately. And, getting to his feet, he tried to embrace her again.

But she resisted, her heart and mind racing with a thousand tumbling, mixed-up thoughts. ‘Is that what we felt for each other, Jake? Love?’

Clearly he was startled by her querying their relationship. ‘Of course... What else?’

She shook her head in genuine dismay. ‘I think there are many names one could call what we felt for each other, what we
still
feel for each other. There’s an animal chemistry between us, Jake. It bums whenever we get close enough to each other to touch. But is it love?’

‘Of course it is, damn it!’

‘Was it love that kept you awake nights in that prison, Jake? Was it love tonight when you saw me in that satin nightie? Was it love that had to prove its power a second time, making me do things I didn’t really feel comfortable with after all these years?’

Jake grimaced at the memory. ‘I’m not proud of that, Leigh. My only excuse is that I was beyond reason, beyond control. I needed you to show me that nothing had changed between us, to bring to life all the things I dreamed about all these long, lonely years without you.’

Ashleigh sucked in a breath. ‘Are you saying, Jake, that there hasn’t been any other woman since you got out of prison?’

A slash of guilty red burnt momentarily in his cheeks. ‘No, dammit, I’m not saying that,’ he ground out. ‘Hell, Ashleigh, I thought you were lost to me. I thought... For pity’s sake, what do you honestly expect? I’m a normal man. Occasionally I’ve needed a woman in my bed. But that doesn’t mean I loved any of them as I loved you, as I
still
love you. Stop trying to make out our feelings are only sexual, damn you!’

‘And damn you too, Jake,’ she countered fiercely. ‘For thinking this was the way to handle the situation with James, for having the arrogance to take his place without telling me, for making love to me here tonight without revealing your identity first, for playing with my life and my feelings as though you’re some sort of god who knows best!

‘You
don’t
know best,’ she raved on, whirling away to pace angrily across the room, her hand clutching the towel so that it wouldn’t fall. ‘You never did!’ She spun round to face him from the safety of distance. ‘In the first place, you should never have gone on that rotten holiday without me. Then, after you were imprisoned, you should have given me the right to pine for you if I
chose
, to wait for you if I
chose
. Then, when you were released, you should have come to see me, fiancé or no, and once again given me the right to choose my own fate.

‘Damn it, Jake!’ she cried in real emotional distress. ‘I’m not some mindless puppet. I’m an intelligent woman with, I hope, a certain degree of courage and character. Why couldn’t you have treated me like one?’

Jake’s teeth clenched hard in his jaw. ‘Right. Well, to answer your first accusation, that holiday wasn’t my idea. It was my Aunt Aggie’s. You know she was my only adult confidante in those days. When I told her I wanted to marry you she thought the same as you—that our relationship was just sex. She made me a bargain. Said if I went away for a little while and still wanted to marry you when I came back she would give us some money to get started, to support us while we went through university. But I was not to tell you that. This was to see how
you
felt too after we’d been separated for a while.’

He lifted his chin with an unrepentant air and walked slowly towards her. ‘Well, we’ve been separated over ten years, Leigh, and it hasn’t made a scrap of difference to how I feel about you, or you for me. You love me, woman. Stop denying it.’

He took hold of her shoulders and looked down into her eyes. ‘As for the rest of your accusations... The truth is, I took James’s place today with the best of intentions, thinking I was saving everyone’s feelings, yours included. What do you think would have happened in a small town like this if I’d revealed the truth to you last night and the wedding was called off at the last minute? The speculation and gossip would have been horrendous. This way gives us time to work something out for everyone’s benefit. Oh, and, by the way, the wedding wasn’t a legal union. The celebrant was an actor Rhys employed for the event.’

Ashleigh was truly taken aback. ‘An actor?’ she gasped. ‘But how...why...I mean...’

‘He was an innocent enough accomplice,’ Jake explained dismissively. ‘Rhys told him you and I had been married secretly just before we found out our family had already planned a grand social occasion, and that we didn’t want to disappoint them. He was warned to keep his mouth firmly shut, but the idiot almost let the cat right out of the bag at the signing—remember?—till Rhys stepped in.’

‘But...but...the certificate...’

‘A cheap photostat copy. I’ve already torn it up. Believe me, Leigh, when I say I didn’t enjoy going through that charade of a marriage. You must know that I would have given my eye-teeth to marry you properly and publicly like that. Pretending to be James at your side was excruciatingly difficult. My only concession to my pride was having the celebrant read out John James instead of James John. Hardly anyone knows John is my real name and I knew they’d all think it was just a silly mistake, if they noticed at all. You were the only possible person who’d catch on, but oddly enough you didn’t seem to be listening the first time Johnson said it. You were away in another world. Then the second time...’

‘I thought it was just human error,’ she finished wearily.

‘Look, I know I deceived you, but at least I didn’t break any laws.’

Ashleigh stiffened and stepped back from his hold. ‘Maybe not in a legal sense, but there are moral laws, surely? Just how long had you intended waiting, Jake, before you told me the truth?’

A slash of guilty red coloured his high cheekbones again.

Understanding shocked her. He’d been going to keep it going as long as he could, at least for the duration of their wedding-night. ‘That’s what you were arguing with your mother about, wasn’t it?’ she accused shakily. ‘The extent to which you were planning on taking the deception. My God, you don’t have a conscience any more, do you?’

‘I wish to hell I didn’t!’ Jake shot back at her. ‘God dammit, the only reason I pulled in here was because my stupid conscience got the better of me. I was finally going to tell you the whole horrible truth—even if it meant you’d then hate me—but when you came out of that bathroom, looking so bloody beautiful, I couldn’t resist you. Sure, I was a little rough that second time and I’m sorry for that. But I’m not sorry for making love to the woman I love. Not one iota. So shoot me down with words, Leigh. Tell me I’m a savage. A barbarian, Call me any names you like. They’ll fit. But while you’re calling me names have a look at this and think about who and what turned me into such an animal.’

And, stripping off his shirt, he spun round and showed her what his captors had done to him.

Ashleigh could have cried. She lifted trembling fingers to touch his beautiful skin, criss-crossed with the ugly scars of a savage bamboo flogging. And her heart went out to him. What must he have been through, a young, innocent man, wrongly accused and imprisoned for something he didn’t do? How on earth could she stay angry with him, faced with such a heart-rending sight?

Impossible.

Which was exactly what Jake intended, she realised when he swung around and took her in his arms again.

‘Leigh, darling,’ he urged persuasively, ‘come away with me...back to Thailand... I have a house there on one of the beaches... You can practise medicine in the villages near by... They’re in desperate need of doctors there... You won’t want for anything, I assure you. I’ve—’

‘
No
,’ she cried out, appalled at how tempted she was to just fall in with his wishes. ‘
No
!’

She pushed away from him, clutching the towel defensively in front of her. ‘My God, Jake, you ask too much! You’ve always asked too much. I’m not an infatuated teenager any more, you know. I won’t come running when you click your fingers. Besides, even if I did still love you—which I’m not at all sure I do!—I can’t just drop everything in my life and go off with you like that. I have responsibilities here in Glenbrook. My family depends on me. I have patients here, friends. My
life
is here. You might be able to bum around on some far away beach in a grass hut for the rest of your life, but that’s not how I want to live my life. I...I...’

She broke off, flustered by the slow, ironic smile that was pulling at his lips.

‘And what do you think you’re smiling at?’ she threw at him.

‘At my lovely Leigh. So grown up now. So liberated. So wrong...’

‘I am
not
wrong!’

‘Oh, yes, you are, my darling. About so many things. We belong together. We’ve always belonged together. Fate has decreed it so.’

‘I don’t believe in fate!’

‘Don’t you?’ Again he smiled that infuriating smile. ‘Well, maybe it takes being released from a hell-hole by some incredible miracle to make one believe in such romantic notions. But I don’t mind you not believing in fate. I’m quite prepared to trust to your intelligence. And your love for me. I’m sure you’ll finally come to the same conclusion I came to this afternoon, Ashleigh O’Neil.’

‘Which is what?’ she snapped.

‘Which is that you’re going to become my real wife in the end, come hell or high water.’ His smile suddenly faded, replaced by an expression of thin-lipped determination. ‘Now go and get dressed. We’re going back to Glenbrook, where you can begin seeing for yourself that you’re not wanted and loved and needed there as much as I want and love and need you!’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘S
O! YOU decided to bring her back, did you?’ was Nancy Hargraves’s scowled remark when she opened the front door in her dressing-gown. ‘I presume she knows who you really are.’ She turned a perceptive eye towards Ashleigh, who tried not to colour guiltily, but failed.

Jake’s mother gave her a derisive look. ‘Well, nothing’s changed where you and Jake are concerned, I see,’ she bit out. ‘You were always his little puppy-dog, running along behind him, licking at his heels. I suppose you even believe all his protestations of innocence over that drug business. Yes,
you
would. But then sex does have a way of making certain women blind to certain men. I’ll bet you couldn’t wait to get into bed with him once you’d found out the truth, could you?’

She looked quite ugly in her contempt. ‘God! You make me sick, Ashleigh O’Neil. You probably only agreed to marry James so you could close your eyes every night and pretend he was Jake!’

‘Have you heard enough, Leigh?’ Jake said coldly, but placing a surprisingly warm arm around her by now shivering body.

‘Y...yes,’ she stammered, stunned by Nancy’s vicious attack.

‘Let’s go, then.’

‘You can’t take James’s car!’ his mother screamed after them.

Jake whirled. ‘Just try and stop me, Mother. You’re damned lucky that you and your precious James are getting off this easily. I could have pulled the plug on his little scheme with a very loud pop today. But I didn’t. One of the reasons I went through with that fiasco of a marriage was to save James’s reputation, as well as your miserable social position in this town. But somehow I don’t think you’ll be quite so generous with
Ashleigh’s
reputation, will you? I can hear you now, after we’re gone...

“‘You’ve no idea what happened on poor James’s honeymoon,”’ Jake mimicked in Nancy’s best plum-in-the-mouth voice. “‘Ashleigh ran into Jake again and you wouldn’t believe it! The wretched creature ran off with him. The poor boy is just devastated. I don’t think he’ll ever marry again...”’

‘Close, am I, Mother?’ he taunted.

Nancy lifted her patrician nose. ‘James is not really gay. He’s been led astray, that’s all, by a wicked, wicked man. I have to protect him till he’s himself again.’