Burning Obsession

He nodded. ‘He has been for a few years now.’

‘Then I’m sure it wasn’t “sensibly” done at all,’ she defended indignantly. ‘Ian wouldn’t marry for any other reason than that he was in love.’

‘Love!’ Jordan scorned. ‘Laura is attractive enough, in a sweet way, but I wouldn’t want her for my wife.’

‘But then she isn’t, is she?’

‘Thank God!’

‘Are they happy together?’

He shrugged. ‘They seem to be.’

‘Then that’s all that matters.’

‘Not really,’ he drawled. ‘We seemed to be happy, but you still walked out on me.’

‘And you know why,’ Kelly said tightly.

‘It was my child too! But you didn’t see me walking out on my responsibilities——’

‘Responsibilities!’ she cut in shrilly. ‘You call our child a responsibility?’ she demanded angrily.

‘In a way——’

‘What way?’ Kelly was furiously angry. ‘Because you didn’t want it? Because it was a nuisance to you? Because——’

‘Shut up!’ he ordered through gritted teeth. ‘Shut up if you value your life.’

There was such a dangerous glitter in his eyes that Kelly instantly went quiet. Dry sobs racked her body. Jordan had just told her more than adequately his true opinion of the baby she had loved so much, and she hated him anew for his cruelty.

‘I’m sorry,’ he finally said in a calmer voice. ‘We never were able to converse reasonably about the subject. They found nothing wrong with you after the accident?’ he returned to their conversation of a few minutes ago.

‘I was only in for observation, just a standard thing.’

He dismissed the chauffeur when they reached the hospital, and Kelly felt very small and vulnerable next to Jordan as he guided her to her father’s room. She had forgotten how protected she had always felt with him, how fragile he had always made her feel. And after the last few days of trauma it was nice to let him take charge, to lean on him a little.

Her father lay pale against the pillows, a sterile white dressing on his forehead, the thin tube in his arm feeding him the necessary fluid for his body.

‘He looks better than he did,’ Kelly told Jordan. ‘He did have electrodes on his chest attached to this huge machine, and instead of that little dressing on his temple he had a huge bandage around his head.’ She shivered as she remembered her first sight of him after the accident. ‘I thought he was dying,’ she revealed huskily.

‘The doctor told me that they’re hopeful of a complete recovery,’ Jordan told her gently.

‘They told me that too.’ She sat down in her usual chair beside her father, taking his hand into her own. ‘I usually talk to him for a while. I know it sounds silly, but I think it helps.’

‘I’m sure it does.’ Jordan stood at the foot of the bed. ‘You go right ahead, I’m going to see if I can talk to the doctor.’

Kelly hardly noticed his departure, her attention all on her father. She had first started talking to him hoping that the sound of her voice would jog something in his memory, break this deadlock. She talked about everything and nothing. So far there hadn’t even been the flicker of an eyelid, but the doctor had told her constant talking on her part certainly couldn’t do her father any harm, and it could do him a lot of good.

Today she had something new to talk about. She told him of Jordan’s arrival here, of how he had unexpectedly booked into her hotel. That was another thing she had to ask Jordan about, what he had been doing in her suite. She had been too angry to think of asking him that earlier.

‘No change,’ Jordan reported when he came back. ‘He’s slowly coming out of it, but it could take a few more days.’ He pulled up a chair and sat beside her.

Kelly nodded. ‘Thank you. Jordan, earlier, at the hotel, what were you doing in my suite?’

‘Our suite,’ he corrected unhurriedly.

She gave him a sharp look. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means, my dear Kelly, that you are in fact staying in my suite. When you booked in as my wife you were automatically put in the suite I rent all year round.’

She gasped. ‘I’m in your suite?’

‘Correct,’ his mouth twisted tauntingly. ‘You don’t like that, do you?’

‘No,’ she agreed tightly. ‘I had no idea … I’ll get another suite when I get back.’

Jordan’s eyes became palely grey. ‘You’ll do no such thing.’

‘I——’

‘You’ll stay put, Kelly,’ he told her grimly. ‘How do you think it will look if I’m in one suite and my wife is in another?’

‘Since I’m your estranged wife I would have thought it would look perfectly normal.’

‘You’ll stay put,’ Jordan repeated tautly.

‘No——’

‘Yes! Don’t be so damned ridiculous. I’m not about to claim my conjugal rights, so you have no need to worry on that score. Besides, we’ll rarely be there at the same time.’

‘We won’t? Her cheeks were still flaming from his reference to ‘conjugal’ rights.

‘No. The doctor thinks that your method of talking to your father is what’s helping him. So I propose we take it in turns to sit and talk to him.’

‘You have no need to do that, Jordan.’ She looked down at her father. ‘I realise how busy you must be, how important your work is to you. There’s no reason for you to——’ she broke off as he roughly grasped her chin, forcing her to turn and look at him.

‘There’s a damned good reason,’ he snapped angrily. ‘You!’

‘Me?’ Her eyes widened.

‘Have you taken a good look at yourself lately?’ His gaze ran slowly over the gauntness of her body. ‘I bet in denims and a shirt it’s hard to tell what bloody sex you are!’

Kelly put up a selfconscious hand to her hair. ‘I know I’ve lost weight——’

‘Lost weight!’ he scorned. ‘You’re skeletal! Look at you, girl, you’re all eyes.’

She blinked back the tears. ‘I haven’t felt like eating the last few days.’