Penny Jordan - Campaign For Loving

‘If you tell me which room she’s in I’ll take her up,’ Blake drawled. Fern looked so right and at home in his arms that Jaime had to fight against the desire to cry. In sleep her tough independent daughter looked unfamiliarly vulnerable.

‘You go up and show Blake the way,’ Sarah suggested, ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Charles came round to see if you were back,’ she added, answering Jaime’s unspoken question. ‘He told me you’d gone out with Blake.’

The cottage had only three bedrooms, but the third had been split to provide a small bathroom and a tiny room which could only be reached through Jaime’s bedroom. She saw Blake glance mockingly at her single bed as she indicated the small room which was Fern’s.

‘Very nunlike,’ he commented, as he carefully placed Fern on her bed. ‘I imagine your dates must find it frustrating if they ever get this far, to find you’re almost sharing a room with your daughter.’

‘There’s always their bedrooms,’ Jaime pointed out, angry at his mocking assumption that she lived the life of a nun, even if it was true. She doubted that he was any monk, and it galled her that he should assume that her life was bereft of the sexual involvement he no doubt had a surfeit of.

Just for a moment, his eyes seemed to darken, his mouth compressing.

‘I’ll just slip Fern’s dress off. You go down, I won’t be long.’

‘I’ll wait for you.’ There was an old rocking chair in her room in which she used to sit when she was feeding Fern, and he walked over to it, setting it in motion with his foot. His presence in her bedroom made Jaime feel acutely uncomfortable, and her fingers fumbled over Fern’s small buttons. The little girl stirred, but didn’t wake, and at last she was tucked up.

‘Thank you for taking us out,’ Jaime said formally, as she rejoined Blake in her own room.

‘So very polite… but you always were that, weren’t you, Jaime? So polite and correct. The only place I could get to the real Jaime was in bed; it was the only place you ever lost your inhibitions.’ He laughed when he saw her expression, his fingers suddenly and surprisingly curling round her wrist. ‘Ah, Jaime, aren’t you going to thank me in the traditional manner? Like this,’ he added huskily when she frowned.

His seeking mouth found hers before she could move away, the warm, intimate pressure of it, transporting her to another world, her lips softening and responding before she could even think about rejecting him. Her eyes widened and darkened, her fingers clutching convulsively at the thin fabric of his shirt to hold herself upright. ‘Ah, Jaime, this at least was always good, wasn’t it?’

Blake’s husky voice seemed to weave a spell around her, her mind and body acquiescing almost instantly to his unspoken commands. When his mouth left hers, she arched her throat, instinctively giving him access to the vulnerable skin his lips were seeking. Tiny frissons of reaction shivered across her flesh, a small moan suppressed in her throat as Blake’s delicately thorough exploration triggered off feelings she thought had gone for ever. His teeth found the lobe of her ear and tugged on it gently, her fingers automatically curling into the thick springyness of his hair, her body unconsciously moulding itself to him.

‘Jaime.’ His hands slid down her body, lingering against the curves of her breasts, the pressure of his mouth gradually increasing as it moved across her skin, teasing tormenting kisses against her trembling lips, his tongue stroking their vulnerable contours until they parted in soft invitation.

She was lost, drowning in a warm, lapping sea that called out a siren song to her senses. Everything she had ever wanted or would want was here within her reach. Her fingers sought for and found the space between Blake’s shirt buttons, feverishly stroking the silky dark hairs that shadowed his chest. She felt the sudden compression of his muscles as his mouth lifted from hers and dizzyingly and bewilderingly she was free.

‘Your mother just called us.’ Amusement danced in his eyes. ‘Poor Jaime,’ he taunted, ‘despite all your attempts to hide it, you still respond to me physically, don’t you?’

‘How can I help doing?’ Miraculously her voice sounded much calmer than she had expected. ‘You were the one who first taught my body the meaning of physical pleasure.…’

‘The first? Meaning there’ve been others since?’ His eyes were almost black, glittering with a savage anger she couldn’t understand.

‘But Thomson isn’t one of them, is he?’ he tormented. ‘He looks at you the way a dog eyes a particularly juicy and unobtainable bone.’

‘My relationship with Charles has nothing to do with you,’ Jaime choked out. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘No? Aren’t you forgetting something?’ He picked up her left hand and raised it until she was looking at the narrow gold wedding ring she still wore. ‘You are still my wife, Jaime.’

‘That can soon be changed,’ she responded, goaded into making the declaration. Didn’t he know how much he was hurting her with his careless lovemaking that stirred her body into an acutely painful response, and his equally careless assumption that she was still his for the taking, as though he had looked into her heart and seen the foolish love for him that still lived there. ‘I can quite easily get an uncontested divorce. We’ve been separated long enough.’

‘An uncontested divorce requires a separation of two years without any marital relations between the divorcing couple.’

‘Meaning…’ She was shivering all over now, wondering if Blake really meant the threat hidden in his dulcet comment.

‘Meaning that just at the moment it suits me to remain a married man, and moreover that I intend to remain a married man, and that I’m fully prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that I do so.’

He saw her expression and smiled derisively.

‘While you’ve been busy with your life, Jaime, I’ve been busy with mine. My first two books have been extremely successful in the States, and I’m now a comparatively wealthy man. A healthy bank balance makes a man appealing husband material. I have no intention of being trapped into a marriage it will cost a great deal to extricate myself from and, while I remain married to you, that won’t happen.’

‘Unless of course I decide to sue you for alimony.’

‘Coming from the woman who’s refused to accept a penny support from me for the last four years, that’s hardly likely is it? I think we’d better go downstairs before your mother puts the wrong interpretation on our absence, don’t you?’

When he left half an hour later, Blake turned to Jaime in the privacy of the cottage door and said, ‘Remember, you’ve got two days to come to a decision about Fern. You know where to find me, Jaime, and if you don’t, I’ll have to come looking for you.’

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