Getting It Right This Time (11 page)

She picked up one of the two glasses of red wine sitting on the coffee table and took a sip.

“Then will you stop acting like a man walking around in a timeless bubble,” she said, looking at him. “You’ve changed and I accept that. So please, extend the same courtesy to me and stop acting like such an ass.”

“An ass?”

She nodded, fought the smile on her lips. “An ass.”

Rachel Brimble

53

He nodded slowly, as though contemplating her succinct summary of him before walking to the coffee table and picking up the other glass. He drank. “Fine. So you’ve changed. But you’ll have to excuse me because so far I have seen no evidence to discredit the fact you are still the loyal, passionate, sexy woman I knew and loved for practically my entire adult life.”

She took another sip of wine. “Flattery will get you nowhere. Sit.”

He grinned, a flash of teeth splitting his handsome face and making her resistance to him waver. Why did he have to look and smile like that? Why couldn’t he get angry? Throw something?

She swallowed and lowered onto the settee. Because Mark wasn’t James, that’s why.

The settee dipped under his weight as he sat down beside her. “Well? Tell me,” he said, his hazel eyes never leaving hers. “Tell me how you’ve changed and what I don’t understand. Tell me what it is you’re going to throw out there as a reason I will not fit into your life, or more to the point, Jessica’s life.”

At the mention of Jessica’s name, her heart picked up speed. Her mind scrambled for the excuse she needed to ask him to leave. To be able to tell herself and everybody else, Mark Johnston had become an ignorant, arrogant asshole over the five years she’d been away. With every inch of his success, he’d worsened. Surely it was rare for a man to gain such phenomenal success and still retain the consideration he had before?

Yet no matter how long she looked into his eyes, no mocking derision appeared--all his gaze told her was he wanted her. She snatched her gaze away and stared into the burgundy depths of her glass. “My life with James wasn’t good, Mark.”

A long silence ensued. He lifted his own glass to his lips and drank deeply. “Tell me,” he eventually said. The tone of his voice lifted the hairs at the back of her neck.

Kate looked at him. “He was ambitious, you know that. I…we, me and Jess, became a problem for him. We didn’t fit in with his image of what an international snowboarder should look like. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t abusive but he said enough to stop me loving him a long time before he died. Yet I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t take his child and fly halfway around the world.

He loved her.”

He leaned forward and placed his glass on the coffee table. She waited. He said nothing.

Only locked his hands together between his knees, his eyes looking at a spot on the carpet as his jaw clenched and released over and over. A whisper of unease trickled into her bloodstream but she forced herself to continue. He must hear this.

“So when he died, my baby’s heart shattered. Shattered into a million pieces that took me over a year to put together. And even now, I know those pieces are held together with the weakest glue, Mark. She grieved and I grieved. James wasn’t a bad man and he gave me Jessica, but I didn’t feel the devastation a young widow should. So I decided it would be best for both me and Jess to come home and be close to my family.”

54

Getting It Right This Time

She paused, waiting for something from him. But he didn’t speak, or even glance in her direction. Just the same eerie silence and the same regular clenching and unclenching of his jaw.

She picked up her wine, eased her arid throat.

“So here I am.” She sighed, glancing at him sideways. “I’m home, but the last thing I need is another relationship. Especially with a man who not only knew James but now emulates him.”

He snapped his head up. “What?”

Trepidation skipped along her nerve endings as Kate wondered if her decision to provoke him this way was the right one. Of course it was. She must do something to deter him from pursuing her--it would end in heartbreak for everyone. How could someone like Mark have a family life?

And a secure family life was what Kate desperately wanted for Jess. She didn’t need this thing Mark had started the night of Marcia Langton’s theatrical debut. The night he’d looked at her in a way no man had looked at her since she left the UK…and him.

“Kate?”

His voice broke through her reverie, and she clutched the glass tighter. She met his gaze, and her stomach lurched. The raw hot anger burning in his eyes pierced at her heart and sent flames of foreboding licking at her teetering strength.

“You’re ambitious,” she said, with more authority than her racing heart belied. “You’re not the man I knew, anymore than I’m the woman you knew. You don’t get a career like yours in five short years by being anything less than driven, money-hungry and maybe even ruthless. Success like yours comes to people who lead their lives with absolute single-mindedness.” She paused and looked into her wineglass. “And I will not share my life with someone like that. Nor will Jessica.”

He continued to glare at her. The silence bore down on her chest like a lead weight, but she didn’t move and she didn’t breathe. After a long moment, he put his glass down and met her eyes.

“If you truly think that, why have I come after you the way I have?”

She swallowed, the shaking in her legs traveled higher until it quivered inside her stomach and bashed against her heart. “What do you mean?”

“I have money, I have power, I have success. Yet, for the last week I’ve barely spent any time with my clients, and no time at all striking up deals worth thousands of pounds. Instead I’ve been pursuing a woman I lost to my dead best friend five years ago. So you’re right, I am single-minded. But unfortunately for you, that attribute is no longer focused on my career but on you and the little girl asleep upstairs.”

Passion, anger, desire and fear mixed together and tore at her senses. She’d once loved Mark with every inch of her soul, and now he looked at her as though she’d taken a knife and stabbed it straight through his heart. The undeniable pain raging in his eyes could not be mistaken. She’d hurt him, and she’d really been trying to save him.

“I loved you too, Mark.”

The fire in his gaze wavered. “What?”

Rachel Brimble

55

“I loved you, but I needed what you couldn’t give me. You were so easy, so carefree, you thought life would fall into place and it doesn’t. I was getting older, wiser, I didn’t want to spend anymore time hoping you’d understand how I felt about you. James gave me what I needed. He swept me off and made me his. I knew at last someone wanted me.”

He turned away, ran his hand over his handsome face. “My God, Kate, you were all I wanted.” He stared deep into her eyes. “You still are. As soon as I saw you standing in the bar at the theatre, I knew the way I feel about you will never go away.” He gave a soft laugh. “I felt like an idiot walking toward you like a bloody zombie, but I couldn’t stop myself. We’ve wasted so much time.”

She touched his bicep. “It’s not wasted time. You’ve made your fortune and I have Jessica. I wouldn’t change that for the world. But I won’t risk anymore heartbreak for either myself or her.”

He took her hand. “Heartbreak? The last thing I will do is hurt either of you. Is that what this is all about? Trust?”

“You have to understand what it was like for Jess when James died. She loved him. One day he was there, the next gone. She didn’t understand. She didn’t have a chance to work through what happened.” Kate’s voice cracked. “All she knew was James was gone. I’ve explained, but she still asks me if he’s coming back. Even now.”

He leaned forward, pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. “I won’t leave you, Kate.”

She pulled her hand from his, fisted the hair back from her face. “You don’t know that.

Nobody does. I can’t get involved with you and risk it not working out between us. Jessica lost her father. I can’t risk her coming to love you and then taking that away from her. Surely you understand?”

His jaw clenched as he watched her. Kate’s heart ached. She could do this. She could make it clear to him--to herself--what they shared was nothing more than a memory which never became a reality and never would.

“No.”

She swallowed. “Mark…”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t want you or Jessica to ever feel pain again. And I will always be around to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Tears burned her eyes. “You’re not listening to me. Children are…”

“Are what I want of my own one day,” he said firmly. “Children with you. Your children, including Jessica. I made a huge mistake standing by and watching you leave. I will not do it again.”

Fear struck her heart like a sword through flesh. What was he thinking? Why mention more children? Future dreams? Yet her stomach clenched with undeniable excitement, her heart swelled with love for him. A painful, unfair feeling, but there all the same.

“Mark--”

“Do you love me?”

She pursed her lips together, trapping the declaration inside.

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Getting It Right This Time

He took her hand. “Do you? You said you did then, do you think you could again?”

Her breath rasped in her throat. She knew he meant every word he’d said and doubted whether she was strong enough to resist him. Did she have any more strength than Mark to walk away a second time? Every possible circumstance was stacked against them. Their different lives, their incomparable responsibilities, the press interest…

The intensity of his gaze was preventing her from thinking straight. She closed her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter if I could or if I couldn’t,” she finally said. “Look at what’s happened since I’ve been back. The press are watching our every move, your star client is feeling neglected and dare I say it, threatened by the mere sight of me.” She gave a short laugh. “What more can an over-protective mother of a three-year-old child contend with?”

“You can forget about Marcia for a start,” he said gruffly.

Kate opened her eyes, looked at his stiffened profile. “She’s part of this too. All your clients are. The last thing I want is to step on anyone’s toes, or cause trouble in someone’s career.” She paused. “Especially Marcia’s. The woman gives glares close to Hannibal Lecter’s.”

He tipped his head back and laughed. Kate’s stomach did a wobbly loop-the-loop. She grinned and their eyes locked. He hadn’t laughed since she’d seen him again. There was a time when Mark never stopped laughing, all those years ago, before this new man emerged. A new man, who knew his own mind, knew what he wanted and would take it without question. It suited him to laugh--it made her think that behind closed doors he was a million miles away from his public persona of theatrical agent cum ladies man extraordinaire.

Their laughter slowly dissolved and their smiles wavered. Mark cupped her jaw. “I love you.

Nothing will happen to you, me or Jess. James died in a freak accident.”

She covered his hand with her own. “I want her surrounded by people who love her. Who will never put their best interests above hers. Could you do that? Honestly?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not pressuring you for an answer. I want you to understand what starting something with you means to me. It means I’m not just risking myself, I’m risking Jess, and I don’t know if I can.”

“I have never been more serious in my life, Kate. I mean it. We’ll take things one step at a time if you want, but I want you more than anything else in the world. And now I want Jessica too.”

Kate’s blood pumped hard through her veins. She had not allowed herself to even think he might accept Jessica so quickly. Even if his heart was open to both her and her daughter, she knew he had no idea of the emotional strain a child could bring to a couple--or the joy.

She took his hand from her face and pushed back her hair. “I don’t know…”

“Give us a chance, Kate. Please.”

Chapter 7

The sincerity in his eyes cut through her heart, slicing away the last trace of Kate’s resistance and common sense. She wanted him. Emotionally, physically. It had always been Mark. Always.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“I’ll never forgive you if Jess is hurt through this.”

“Through this?”

She opened her eyes. “Through us.”

His mouth curved into a slow, boyish smile. His eyes sparkled with excitement and dare she say it, love. “You mean…”

Fighting her own smile, Kate held up her hand. “We take things slow.”

He edged along the sofa toward her. “Absolutely.”

“I’m not ready for her to meet you yet.”

Another inch. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be there.”

She trembled with suppressed laughter. “Everything is still new to her in Foxton, she doesn’t need the added confusion of meeting Mummy’s new boyfriend.”

His eyebrows wiggled, reminiscent of old black and white movie characters. “Boyfriend?”

Kate laughed and slapped his rock hard bicep. She shivered, wanting those arms around her.

“You’re an idiot.”

“And all yours.”

He slid his fingers up her legs to her waist. The feel of his hands gliding over the contours of her legs and hips sent a shudder of desire sweeping through her. She prayed her gaze wasn’t reflecting the illicit focus of her body. But his eyes darkened and she knew damn well he’d seen it.

She pulled back, opening the space between them even though his hands remained firmly clamped in place.

“You mess this up, Mark Johnston, and I’ll kick you to the curb without a second thought,”

she said. His smile was wolverine. Her vagina twitched, her body heated. “I’m serious.”

“So am I,” he said, his gaze lingering hungrily at her lips. “Everything is going to be a hundred times better than you can imagine.”

She opened her mouth to say more but his lips came down on hers, swallowing any futile protestations. Kate inwardly groaned and surrendered to the inevitable. Lifting her hands, she clung to his broad, hard shoulders.