Her Marriage Secret

‘No worries. Send her in.’ Better to get stuck into work than dwell on Jake and her traitorous body. How could he still affect her like that?

‘It’s a him. By himself.’ Joyce closed the door.

A ‘him’ was unusual. She catered for rich women who wanted original outfits for exclusive events. In all the time she’d been in business not one man had come in on his own.

Meg stood up and smoothed down her red top, flicking the creases out of her black trousers. She positioned herself squarely behind her desk, primed to set a good first impression.

The door opened. ‘A Mr Jacob Adams,’ Joyce announced cheerily, hanging onto the doorhandle whilst admiring the visitor’s tall, well-proportioned figure as he walked in.

Meg stared dumbly at Jake.

It wasn’t as if her appointment book was empty. He’d either used his charm or his money on Joyce. Or he’d known well in advance where she was and their meeting today at the restaurant had been no accident. Meg tensed. ‘Thank you, Joyce,’ she said as calmly as she could manage.

Meg glared at Jake. How long had he known where she was? More importantly, how much did he know? Her knees gave out from under her and she disguised her collapse into her high-backed leather chair with as much dignity and grace as she could muster.

The door closed and she leant forward. ‘What the blazes are you doing here?’ She willed her weakness to vanish so she could come out of her corner fighting. There was no way she was coming out of this second best.

Jake stood there casually, looking as strong and confident on her turf as he would anywhere, she guessed. He carried with him an air of confidence that chafed. His hair seemed a little more ruffled and he’d opened another button on his shirt since lunch, revealing the light scattering of chest hair that she’d used to coil her fingers in.

He strode towards her. ‘I want answers.’

‘Well, get used to living with disappointment.’ She stood up, to feel less intimidated by his height, his breadth, his power. Her legs held.

What gave him the right to come and demand anything? He had chosen what was important to him and it wasn’t her. She had gone on without him, managing quite well, on and off. ‘What did you do? Bribe my secretary or use your deadly charm on her?’

‘Neither.’ He shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘I did it the old-fashioned way—I made an appointment over the phone three days ago.’

She pressed her lips together and swallowed the rumble of distrust in her belly. It wasn’t coincidence that she’d met him at the restaurant. ‘You haven’t been following me, have you?’

‘Your secretary assured me that my appointment fell just before your lunch hour, Meg. I had planned to invite you to eat with me, but you’d already gone when I stopped in earlier.’

He probably couldn’t stand to wait for her as she’d done for him a million times before. Not just for minutes or hours, but day upon day, month upon month.

Meg shrugged. At least she had something to thank Suzie for—her surprise visits always sent her schedules awry, and today was the perfect day for it. Though maybe it would have been better to have met Jake in private first, rather than in the busy restaurant. At least here she could tell him exactly where to go in the least polite way.

‘So I made a few modest enquiries about your movements, and—’ He ran his eyes over her. ‘You know the rest.’

Meg walked over to her cabinet. She fingered the small, intricate crystal animals—a meditative practice that had always worked before to centre her thoughts. But not today. Not with Jake standing right there in her office, barely two metres away from her. She imagined she could feel the heat of his body radiating from him. She turned to face him. ‘I want you to go.’

He covered the distance between them in a moment, his large hands wrapping around her shoulders. ‘I’ve lived long enough without answers, and I’m not leaving your side without them.’

A familiar shiver of awareness coursed through her body and she raised her head to look directly into his face. ‘I’ll call the police,’ she challenged.

His firm mouth pulled tight and his eyes bored into hers with an intensity that jolted her senses. She moistened her dry lips.

‘Go ahead. I’m sure they’ll be interested to hear that you’ve dragged them away from real cases just because you’re scared of talking to me.’

Meg tried to regain some composure, but she found it difficult even to think straight with his hands branding her arms. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘Life’s not fair.’ Amusement glinted in his eyes.

‘Tell me about it.’ It wasn’t fair he could still twist her words against her. She bit into her bottom lip fiercely. ‘You spoke to Suzie, didn’t you?’

‘Suzie was very keen to talk about you.’

Her stomach lurched. Suzie had better not have told him everything, or the world would soon be short one gossipmonger. ‘And herself, no doubt.’

‘Is that jealousy I hear, Megan J?’ He watched her intently. ‘What’s with the J anyway?’

Heat flooded her cheeks. ‘J is for James. It’s my middle name. Not that you’d remember.’ Her father hadn’t been able to bear the idea of not using his father’s name for his only child—a curse when she was young which had finally turned out a blessing when she’d decided to disappear. And it was perfect for her fashion label.

Jake’s deep green eyes were dangerously warm. ‘Meg, what went wrong?’

The tenderness in his tone shocked her. She looked to her pale ceiling. The wrenching ache in the back of her throat took her by surprise, but she wasn’t about to fall into that trap. ‘If you don’t know then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought you were.’

‘That’s unfair.’ His grip tightened and his eyes searched hers, as if probing the depths of her soul for answers to questions he couldn’t form. ‘We were young.’

It was a statement. She didn’t need to answer. She didn’t want to speak in case she broke the silence.

Meg’s ears filled with Jake’s sharp, uneven breathing. She looked into his face and the sizzling promise in his eyes scared her.

‘And now we’re all grown up.’ She twisted in his arms and struggled to free herself from his embrace before he did something stupid. ‘Can you stick around and face reality?’

He flinched. ‘You don’t think I know what’s real? While you were home I was out working in the real world. Not just tame work in some office. Out in vicious temperatures, remote wild places—it was hard. Harder than you can imagine; harder than you’ll ever have to experience.’

She stabbed her finger into his chest. ‘You have no idea what I’ve been through, Jacob Adams, and I don’t think you would know real life if you fell over it. What you described isn’t real! It sounds like some adventure a Boy Scout would go on—but when he gets home there are people there who need him to stay, not for him to find the next big adventure going.’

‘We needed money.’ His voice softened. ‘I needed to work.’ His hands relaxed their grip on her arms and he ran his thumbs gently along her skin.

Her body screamed for all the years of loneliness and neglect. She felt an unwelcome surge of excitement. Making love was the one thing in which they had been in total agreement and unison, and her loins ached at the thought. ‘I could have done with less, much less.’

He raked a hand through his dark hair and stared boldly into her eyes.

She held them.

Jake pulled her against his hard body and wrapped her in his warm embrace. She could feel his chin resting against the side of her head, hear him breathing in her perfume, her shampoo, her very essence, and her heart wrenched at the futility of it all.

She pulled back and searched his face.

He was intense, watching her lips.

Meg’s heart thudded against her ribs. The vulnerability in his eyes frightened her more than anything else.

He leant towards her and touched her lips with his. The caress was feather-light, sending her stomach into a wild swirl.

His kiss gradually deepened and she surrendered to the sensations running wild in her body. It was the goodbye kiss they’d never had.

His mouth moved over hers, devouring its softness, exploring and caressing, and a hunger attacked her. She responded like an animal, wanton and abandoned, and the pain of the past faded in the wake of the passion he was evoking in her.