Susan Fox - Reclaiming His Wife

‘I thought you’d accepted my decision,’ she expressed, uncomfortably conscious of the tremor in her voice. ‘I thought that was the reason why I’m here…’ a toss of her chin indicated the books she was holding ‘… doing all this.’ Puzzled green eyes searched those that were as dark and impenetrable as midnight. ‘It was the last thing you said— about me not divorcing you…’

His black brows came together while he inclined his head in the way he always did when something puzzled him, a gesture that was so poignantly familiar to her that she found herself battling with a host of treacherous emotions.

‘I said that there were things of yours here that you might want to have with you. Things I thought you might be missing or might even have forgotten you had. It wasn’t my intention for you to start clearing them out. You accused me of assuming too much, Taylor. Well I’m not the only one who’s been guilty of that. And what I said was, that if you tried to divorce me, I’d fight it all the way, and I will—until you come to your senses and realise that it was only your petty jealousies and suspicions that broke us up in the first place.’

How could he say that?

Taylor gritted her teeth, decided not to challenge that statement. Instead she said in a much steadier voice, ‘So I just jump back into your bed and everything will be all right?’

A nerve tugged in his jaw for a few silent seconds, the only life in a face that might have been chiselled out of rock.

‘If that’s all I thought it would take, we wouldn’t be standing here now,’ he answered her softly, his arrogance, with what his words conjured up, sending a menacing excitement licking through her veins.

He knew her intimately; from every small fantasy to every last sensitive part of her body, and he had recognised that dangerous attraction that still existed between them. OK. Perhaps he hadn’t come here to capitalise on it, she accepted, but he knew, as well as she did, that if he tried to seduce her back into his bed, she wouldn’t stand a chance against his lethal skill and charisma. And if she stayed here, who knew what sort of fool she could wind up making of herself over him—and at what cost to her self-respect?

Pain warred with anger over his audacity and the knowledge that he had, indeed, tricked her. Without a thought for what she wanted. Without a care about how it might affect her in the end!

‘I’m sorry for misconstruing all your motives,’ she uttered tightly. ‘But there’s one thing I’m not leaving either of us under any misconceptions about.’ Nimbly she stooped to scoop up the plate and mug he had put down on the table. ‘I’m still leaving here first thing tomorrow morning.’

CHAPTER FOUR

IT was the silence that woke her. The thick, heavy silence and the light that burned with a peculiar brightness through the chintzy curtains.

Snug in the small double bed in the smaller of the two main bedrooms she had opted to sleep in the previous night, Taylor was reluctant for a moment to give up its warmth.

Suddenly though, as realisation dawned, she was pushing back the duvet and racing over to the window, gasping as she pulled back the curtains.

Everything was white—the garden, the trees and the hillsides, dazzling—like the mountains beyond them—under a crisp heavy fall of virgin snow.

She shivered, wondering why the air felt so icy, and went over to feel the radiator on the opposite wall. It was stone cold.

Fetching her light robe from the bathroom, quickly she slipped it on, pushing her hair into place with agitated fingers.

Jared must have gone to bed without setting the heating to come on, or the thermostat in the hall was too low, she thought, racing downstairs to set the control higher. Either that, or it had come on and gone off again hours ago which meant that Jared wasn’t even up yet. Which was unlike him, she remembered from their marriage, when he had been up at six most days of the week.

As she reached the hall, sounds coming from the sitting room brought her up sharply.

Jared?

She could smell smoke now—wood smoke—and could hear what she instantly distinguished as the crackling of an open fire.

He didn’t see her at first. He had his back to the door and was bending over the fireplace, tossing logs from a wicker basket onto the brightly burning flames, and the sight of him performing that simple, domestic chore tugged unexpectedly at something deep down inside Taylor.

Greedy for the smallest chance to feast her eyes on him, undetected, her hungry gaze tugged unashamedly over his pleasing torso.

He was wearing a dark-blue cable-knit sweater and jeans, which showed off the superbly fit lines of his body. His hair was waving, dark and thick, over the polo neck of his sweater, while the thick wool encased shoulders that could set themselves squarely against anything that promised trouble. His hips were hard and lean, his buttocks tightly muscled, and even through the denim his long legs looked packed with the whipcord strength of a hunter. On his feet he wore a pair of casual black shoes, but it was his hands to which Taylor’s eyes were ultimately drawn; those long sinewy hands that could apply themselves to any manual task, however mundane, seeing it through with the same skilled competence with which they could also caress and arouse a woman…

‘So you’re up.’

He turned round so suddenly that he couldn’t have failed to notice her interest in him and, from the rather sensual amusement tugging at his mouth it was clear he hadn’t.

‘You should have woken me,’ she protested, blushing and tousled in her dressing gown and slippers. She had slept for hours, she realised, having claimed a headache and gone to bed straight after their light dinner last night.

‘Why? Are you going somewhere?’ He was grinning so shamelessly that she wanted to hit him.

With an exasperated glance at him, she hurried over to the window. Unlike her bedroom, the sitting room faced the lane and she could just make out her car, virtually buried beneath a thick mound of snow.

‘Still thinking of leaving, Taylor?’ The deep tones were overlaid with mockery, and she whipped round, eyes daring him to carry his joking any further. It didn’t help having noticed that he had had the foresight to put his own car straight in the garage when he had driven in last night.

‘I suppose you think this is all very funny!’ She moved away from the window, rubbing her arms, shoulders hunched against the cold.

‘Are you going to blame me for this too?’

No, of course she wasn’t. It was his complacency she couldn’t take, which made her reply in a way that sounded childish even to her own ears, ‘You knew I was bent on leaving here this morning.’

‘Then start walking.’ Suddenly he wasn’t amused any more. The alarmingly swift movement that brought him to face her had her recoiling from him. His teeth were clenched between grim lips and his whole face was harsh with anger. Lifting her chin, Taylor caught the strong scent of wood smoke clinging to his sweater, with the underlying freshness of the great outdoors. ‘I’ve got enough problems here without you whingeing and whining like some petulant little schoolgirl.’ He swung back to resume tending to the fire. ‘I can’t help the damned weather, all right! Contrary to what you think I didn’t order it to help me with some Machiavellian scheme to trap someone who’s made it very plain she clearly doesn’t want to be married to me—because if you’re going to be like this for the next two or three days, believe me, it’s not going to be any picnic for me either!’

Two or three days? Mentally Taylor shook that unsettling possibility aside, aware of Jared’s anger in every movement of his body, the way he was suddenly tossing logs onto the fire with more vehemence than before, sending sparks and ash flying up into the huge chimney. She supposed she deserved his anger, in a way.