Catherine Spencer - Passion in Secret

“I could never hate you,” he muttered. “You were my first love…my best love.”

“Don’t!” she cried. “You’re in denial over Penelope. You don’t want to accept that she betrayed you. You just need someone to hold on to, and I happen to be here.”

He wished it were so. It would make everything so much easier. But he was tired of pretending. Tired of trying to preserve a charade that had played itself out years ago.

“Not just anyone, Sally. Only you. You make me feel again. You make me want to live.”

She melted against him, her protests dying on a sigh. Who knew what might have happened next, if a too-bright light hadn’t splashed against the window from outside?

“What the devil…” Jake swung her behind him. But whoever had come sneaking up to the house had found what they’d been seeking, and he doubted they’d keep it to themselves. “I’m sorry, Sally. I’m afraid whatever problems you thought you had before I showed up here tonight have just multiplied a thousand times over.”

CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin ®romances. Within two months she changed careers, and she sold her first book to Harlequin ®in 1984. She moved to Canada from England thirty years ago and now lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons—plus a dog and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

EVEN without the bitter wind howling in from the Atlantic, the hostile glances directed at her as she joined the other mourners at the graveside were enough to chill Sally to the bone. Not that anyone said anything. The well-bred residents of Bayview Heights, Eastridge Bay’s most prestigious neighborhood, would have considered it sacrilege to voice their disapproval openly, before the body of one the town’s most socially prominent daughters had been properly laid to rest.

No, they’d save their recriminations for later, over tea, sherry and sympathy at the Burton mansion. Except that Sally wouldn’t be there to hear them. The blatant omission of her name from the list of guests invited to celebrate a life cut tragically short, was an indictment in itself, and never mind that her name had been officially cleared of blame.

“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust….” The minister, his robes flapping around him, intoned the final burial prayers.

Penelope’s mother, Colette, gave a stifled sob and reached out to the flower-draped casket. Watching from beneath lowered lashes, Sally saw Fletcher Burton clasp his wife’s arm in mute comfort. Flanking her other side and leaning heavily on his cane, Jake stood with his head bowed. His hair, though prematurely flecked with a hint of silver, was as thick as when Sally had last touched it, eight years before.

Seeming to sense he was being observed, he suddenly glanced up and caught her covert scrutiny. For all that she knew she was encouraging further censure from those busy watching her, she couldn’t tear her gaze away. Even worse, she found herself telegraphing a message.

It wasn’t my fault, Jake!

But even if he understood what she was trying to convey, he clearly didn’t believe her. Like everyone else, he held her responsible. He was a widower at twenty-eight, and all because of her. She could see the condemnation in his summer-blue eyes, coated now with the same frost which touched his hair; in the unyielding line of his mouth which, once, had kissed her with all the heat and raging urgency perhaps only a nineteen-year-old could know.

A gust of wind tossed the bare, black boughs of the elm trees and caused the ribbon attached to the Burtons’ elaborate wreath to flutter up from the casket, as if Penelope were trying to push open the lid from within. Which, if she could have, she’d have done. And laughed in the face of so much funereal solemnity.

Life’s a merry-go-round, she’d always claimed, and I intend to ride it to the end, and be a good-looking corpse!

Remembering the words and the careless laugh which had accompanied them, Sally wondered if the stinging cold caused her eyes to glaze with tears or if, at last, the curious flattening of emotion which had held her captive ever since the accident, was finally releasing its unholy grip and allowing her to feel again.

A blurred ripple of movement caught her attention. Wiping a gloved hand across her eyes, she saw that the service was over. Colette Burton pressed her fingertips first to her lips and then to the edge of the casket in a last farewell. Other mourners followed suit—all except the widower and his immediate family. He remained immobile, his face unreadable, his shoulders squared beneath his navy pilot’s uniform. His relatives closed ranks around him, as if by doing so, they could shield him from the enormity of his loss.

Averting her gaze, Sally stepped aside as, openly shunning her, Penelope’s parents trekked over the frozen ground to the fleet of limousines waiting at the curb. She had attended the funeral out of respect for a former friend and because she knew her absence would fuel the gossip mills even more than her presence had. But the Burtons’ message set the tone for the rest of the mourners following close behind: Sally Winslow was trouble, just as she’d always been, and undeserving of compassion or courtesy.

That being so obviously the case, she was shocked to hear footsteps crunching unevenly over the snow to where she stood, and Jake’s voice at her ear saying, “I was hoping you’d be here. How are you holding up, Sally?”

“About as well as can be expected,” she said, her breath catching in her throat. “And you?”

He shrugged. “The same. Are you coming back to the Burtons’ for the reception?”

“No. I’m not invited.”

He regarded her soberly a moment. “You are now. As Penelope’s husband, I’m inviting you. Your friendship with her goes back a long way. She’d want you there.”

She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear the cool neutrality in his voice. “I’m not sure that’s so,” she said, turning away. “Our lives had gone in separate directions. We didn’t always see eye to eye anymore.” Especially not about you or the sanctity of your marriage.

Unmindful of the buzz of speculation such a gesture would surely give rise to, he gripped her arm to prevent her leaving. “It would mean a lot to me if you’d change your mind.”

“Why, Jake?” she felt bound to ask. “You and I haven’t been close in years, either, and under the circumstances, I can’t imagine why you’d want to seek me out now.”

“You were the last person to see my wife alive. The last one to speak to her. I’d like to talk to you about it.”

“Why?” she said again, stifling a moment of panic. “The police report spells out the events of that night pretty clearly.”

“I’ve read the police report and also heard my in-laws’ account of what took place. It’s what you have to say that interests me. They know that an accident occurred, but you’re the only one who knows how or why.”