Bride By Blackmail

Back to the subject of her honesty with Andrew about her previous marriage…!

‘And you, I see, are still as dogmatic as ever,’ she returned scathingly, not rising to his challenge. ‘What do you want, Jed?’ she prompted sharply.

He shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not sure you want to hear that,’ he murmured softly.

Georgie’s head snapped up. His eyes were now a deep gunmetal-grey, and a nerve was pulsing in his squarely set jaw. What—?

She took an involuntary step backwards as Jed stood up, her eyes blazing deeply green as she saw his look of speculation at her obvious response.

‘Not as self-possessed as you would like me to believe, are you?’ he observed with lazy satisfaction.

‘Even a fox knows when to be frightened of the hound!’ Georgie shot back insultingly.

Angry colour darkened his cheeks. ‘Frightened?’ he echoed harshly. ‘You’ve made it more than obvious—on several occasions!—that you hate me, Georgie. But fear…?’

‘Wary, then,’ she amended wearily. ‘Jed, it’s late, and I—’

‘Frightened was the word you used,’ he persisted hardly.

Maybe because frightened was the right word! Five years ago, as an inexperienced eighteen-year-old, she had been frightened of the intensity of her own feelings towards this man—had sometimes felt that she couldn’t breathe for loving him. Becoming his wife had only intensified those feelings, until at times she’d felt as if she was being totally consumed by him, that her own personality was becoming totally melded with his…!

‘So it was,’ she acknowledged lightly. ‘But, as I said, it’s late, and perhaps I used the word unwisely.’ She sighed heavily. ‘It was—a shock, finding you here this evening, Jed. Perhaps if I had known—’

‘You would have found an excuse not to be here!’ Jed finished for her, laughing softly as he saw more guilty colour enter her cheeks. ‘Don’t try to deny it, Georgie, I know you too well to be fooled by the lie. Or did you think I didn’t know exactly how you would react if you had known I was to be a guest at the Lawson home this evening?’

Her eyes widened. ‘So you did know I was going to be here?’ she said slowly. She hadn’t been wrong, then, in her feeling earlier that Jed had been in no way as surprised to see her this evening as she had to see him?

Jed seemed unconcerned. ‘You’re a very difficult woman to track down.’

Georgie was taken aback. His words had been ‘track her down’. But why? What possible reason could he have for—?

‘My grandfather sent you, didn’t he?’ she realised quickly, her spine stiffening in instinctive defence.

Jed eyed her coldly. ‘Nobody sent me, Georgie,’ he rasped harshly.

Of course not; Jed wouldn’t allow himself to be anyone’s errand boy!

‘Asked you to find me, then,’ she corrected impatiently. ‘But it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?’

Jed’s eyes were narrowed to icy slits. ‘Your grandfather has no idea that I intended seeing you this weekend,’ he bit out coldly.

That didn’t exactly answer her accusation, did it…?

She shrugged, turning away to toy absently with a china shepherdess that adorned the dressing table. ‘In what way was I difficult to track down?’ she asked.

But she already knew the answer to that. She lived in a secure apartment building, where the doorman had firm instructions not to allow any of the Lord or Jones family admittance; her telephone number was ex-directory, and as she worked from home there was no office where she could be contacted either. But she had arranged her life in that way for a purpose.

A purpose that had been rendered completely null and void by Jed’s unexpected presence at the Lawson home this weekend!

‘I’m sure you already know the answer to that, Georgie,’ Jed replied. ‘It was only the announcement of your engagement last month in The Times newspaper that gave us any idea of your present whereabouts,’ he explained grimly.

An announcement that had been put in the newspaper by Annabelle Lawson, the other woman having firmly assured Georgie that it was social etiquette for her son’s engagement to be publicly announced in this way.

‘You didn’t waste much time after the divorce, did you?’ Jed accused.

Georgie looked at him sharply. ‘I don’t think my personal life is any of your business, Jed—’

‘Until six months ago your personal life was completely my business!’ he came back angrily, that nerve once again pulsating in his jaw.

‘And now it isn’t,’ Georgie reminded him. ‘Just say what you want to say, Jed, and then leave, hmm?’ she prompted bluntly. ‘It’s been a long week.’ And an even longer evening! ‘I would like to get some sleep now.’

He stepped back from the bed. ‘Don’t let me stop you,’ he said.

She sighed her impatience. ‘You and I both know that I have no intention of getting into bed until you are out of my bedroom!’

‘Why not?’ he queried softly.

Her cheeks coloured hotly at his deliberate probing. ‘You know why not!’

‘Because you and I once shared a bed as husband and wife?’ Jed’s face had hardened angrily. ‘You’re a beautiful woman, Georgie, perhaps even more so now than you were a year ago. But I’m really not so desperate for a female to share my bed that I need to force my attentions on a woman who has claimed—more than once!—to hate me!’

‘Especially when there’s one just down the hallway who so obviously doesn’t feel the same way!’ she came back heatedly.

Jed became very still, his expression unreadable now. ‘You’re referring to Sukie Lawson?’ he said slowly.

‘Of course,’ Georgie snapped. ‘Although Annabelle doesn’t seem impervious to your charms either,’ she commented scathingly as she remembered the way the older woman had lightly flirted with Jed during dinner.

He shook his head. ‘That’s your future mother-in-law you’re talking about.’

‘She’s still a woman, isn’t she?’ Georgie scorned. ‘And you—’ She broke off, completely dazed as she realised she was resorting to the sort of arguments that had peppered their three year marriage.

‘Georgie—’

‘Forget I said that, Jed,’ she cut in quickly, disgusted with herself—and Jed!—for allowing the conversation to deteriorate in this way. ‘As I said, it’s been a shock seeing you here this evening,’ she said in a calmer voice. ‘But that’s no reason for me to be insulting.’

‘My, my, you have grown up,’ he mocked.

Georgie ignored the taunt. ‘You said earlier, or implied—’ she corrected ruefully ‘—that you’ve been trying to contact me… I’ve had the final decree through for our divorce, so it can’t be anything to do with that.’ And those papers, signed, sealed, and legally verified, were very securely locked away in the safe at her apartment.

‘No, it’s nothing to do with the divorce,’ Jed conceded. ‘As you say, that is definitely final. But there is a problem. A family problem,’ he went on.

Georgie froze, her hands clenching into fists at her sides as she tensed. ‘My grandfather—?’

‘No, not your grandfather,’ Jed interrupted her harshly. ‘I have no idea what the rift that exists between the two of you is about, but he, it seems, knows better than to ask you for anything!’ he concluded disgustedly.

Georgie was well aware that his disgust was levelled at her…

And maybe on the face of it that feeling was justified. Her grandfather had brought her up after her parents, his only son and his daughter-in-law, had both been killed in a skiing accident when Georgie was only five.