Campaign For Loving

‘It’s long enough, I seem to recall you made an even bigger one in two hours—that’s how long it took you to decide to run out of our marriage, wasn’t it?’

Jaime didn’t know what he was talking about. Two hours! She had waited two long weeks for him to come looking for her and take her home, but he had left the country two days after their quarrel, without making the slightest attempt to get in touch with her.

‘I think it’s time we went back,’ she said shakily. ‘It’s getting close to Fern’s bedtime.’

‘Same old Jaime,’ Blake taunted mockingly. ‘Always ignoring the unpleasant.’

They arrived back in the village several hours later with Fern asleep in the back of the car. Before Jaime could protest, Blake lifted the sleeping child out and carried her to the house. Her mother opened the door to them, and smiled at Blake without surprise.

‘If you tell me which room she’s in I’ll take her up,’ Blake drawled. Fern looked so right and at home in his arms that Jaime had to fight against the desire to cry. In sleep her tough independent daughter looked unfamiliarly vulnerable.

‘You go up and show Blake the way,’ Sarah suggested, ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Charles came round to see if you were back,’ she added, answering Jaime’s unspoken question. ‘He told me you’d gone out with Blake.’

The cottage had only three bedrooms, but the third had been split to provide a small bathroom and a tiny room which could only be reached through Jaime’s bedroom. She saw Blake glance mockingly at her single bed as she indicated the small room which was Fern’s.

‘Very nunlike,’ he commented, as he carefully placed Fern on her bed. ‘I imagine your dates must find it frustrating if they ever get this far, to find you’re almost sharing a room with your daughter.’

‘There’s always their bedrooms,’ Jaime pointed out, angry at his mocking assumption that she lived the life of a nun, even if it was true. She doubted that he was any monk, and it galled her that he should assume that her life was bereft of the sexual involvement he no doubt had a surfeit of.

Just for a moment, his eyes seemed to darken, his mouth compressing.

‘I’ll just slip Fern’s dress off. You go down, I won’t be long.’

‘I’ll wait for you.’ There was an old rocking chair in her room in which she used to sit when she was feeding Fern, and he walked over to it, setting it in motion with his foot. His presence in her bedroom made Jaime feel acutely uncomfortable, and her fingers fumbled over Fern’s small buttons. The little girl stirred, but didn’t wake, and at last she was tucked up.

‘Thank you for taking us out,’ Jaime said formally, as she rejoined Blake in her own room.

‘So very polite… but you always were that, weren’t you, Jaime? So polite and correct. The only place I could get to the real Jaime was in bed; it was the only place you ever lost your inhibitions.’ He laughed when he saw her expression, his fingers suddenly and surprisingly curling round her wrist. ‘Ah, Jaime, aren’t you going to thank me in the traditional manner? Like this,’ he added huskily when she frowned.

His seeking mouth found hers before she could move away, the warm, intimate pressure of it, transporting her to another world, her lips softening and responding before she could even think about rejecting him. Her eyes widened and darkened, her fingers clutching convulsively at the thin fabric of his shirt to hold herself upright. ‘Ah, Jaime, this at least was always good, wasn’t it?’

Blake’s husky voice seemed to weave a spell around her, her mind and body acquiescing almost instantly to his unspoken commands. When his mouth left hers, she arched her throat, instinctively giving him access to the vulnerable skin his lips were seeking. Tiny frissons of reaction shivered across her flesh, a small moan suppressed in her throat as Blake’s delicately thorough exploration triggered off feelings she thought had gone for ever. His teeth found the lobe of her ear and tugged on it gently, her fingers automatically curling into the thick springyness of his hair, her body unconsciously moulding itself to him.

‘Jaime.’ His hands slid down her body, lingering against the curves of her breasts, the pressure of his mouth gradually increasing as it moved across her skin, teasing tormenting kisses against her trembling lips, his tongue stroking their vulnerable contours until they parted in soft invitation.

She was lost, drowning in a warm, lapping sea that called out a siren song to her senses. Everything she had ever wanted or would want was here within her reach. Her fingers sought for and found the space between Blake’s shirt buttons, feverishly stroking the silky dark hairs that shadowed his chest. She felt the sudden compression of his muscles as his mouth lifted from hers and dizzyingly and bewilderingly she was free.

‘Your mother just called us.’ Amusement danced in his eyes. ‘Poor Jaime,’ he taunted, ‘despite all your attempts to hide it, you still respond to me physically, don’t you?’

‘How can I help doing?’ Miraculously her voice sounded much calmer than she had expected. ‘You were the one who first taught my body the meaning of physical pleasure.…’

‘The first? Meaning there’ve been others since?’ His eyes were almost black, glittering with a savage anger she couldn’t understand.

‘But Thomson isn’t one of them, is he?’ he tormented. ‘He looks at you the way a dog eyes a particularly juicy and unobtainable bone.’

‘My relationship with Charles has nothing to do with you,’ Jaime choked out. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘No? Aren’t you forgetting something?’ He picked up her left hand and raised it until she was looking at the narrow gold wedding ring she still wore. ‘You are still my wife, Jaime.’

‘That can soon be changed,’ she responded, goaded into making the declaration. Didn’t he know how much he was hurting her with his careless lovemaking that stirred her body into an acutely painful response, and his equally careless assumption that she was still his for the taking, as though he had looked into her heart and seen the foolish love for him that still lived there. ‘I can quite easily get an uncontested divorce. We’ve been separated long enough.’

‘An uncontested divorce requires a separation of two years without any marital relations between the divorcing couple.’

‘Meaning…’ She was shivering all over now, wondering if Blake really meant the threat hidden in his dulcet comment.

‘Meaning that just at the moment it suits me to remain a married man, and moreover that I intend to remain a married man, and that I’m fully prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that I do so.’

He saw her expression and smiled derisively.

‘While you’ve been busy with your life, Jaime, I’ve been busy with mine. My first two books have been extremely successful in the States, and I’m now a comparatively wealthy man. A healthy bank balance makes a man appealing husband material. I have no intention of being trapped into a marriage it will cost a great deal to extricate myself from and, while I remain married to you, that won’t happen.’

‘Unless of course I decide to sue you for alimony.’

‘Coming from the woman who’s refused to accept a penny support from me for the last four years, that’s hardly likely is it? I think we’d better go downstairs before your mother puts the wrong interpretation on our absence, don’t you?’

When he left half an hour later, Blake turned to Jaime in the privacy of the cottage door and said, ‘Remember, you’ve got two days to come to a decision about Fern. You know where to find me, Jaime, and if you don’t, I’ll have to come looking for you.’

CHAPTER THREE (#uce995a19-b83d-5dfd-a6f5-4056c5d37c6a)

THE next two days were hectic ones for Jaime, and she should have found that she simply didn’t have time to think about Blake, instead of which he seemed to occupy her thoughts to the detriment of what she ought to have been worrying about. Sarah was busy preparing for her holiday, and Jaime herself had taken on a new assistant, a young girl from the village who had just left school and who, she thought, showed considerable promise. An interview with her accountant in Dorchester confirmed her own view that the studio was making good progress and becoming a modest success. Her accountant was in his late twenties and single, and made no secret of the fact that he found her attractive.

‘It’s a pleasure just to watch you walk,’ he commented as they left the restaurant where he had taken her for lunch. ‘I’d love to see you dance.’

Forestalling the invitation she sensed hovering, Jaime took her leave of him. On the drive back to Frampton, her mind was not on the studio and the success she had made of it, but on Blake. Time was running out. Tomorrow was Friday—the day of decision. She had talked the matter over with her mother, and as she had expected Sarah had been in favour of Blake’s suggestion. ‘He is Fern’s father, no matter how much you personally may resent the fact,’ she had pointed out calmly, adding, ‘Sometimes, Jaime, I think you hate him so much now because you resent how much you once loved him.’

Once! What would her mother say if she knew that, far from hating Blake, she was still painfully in love with him? Perhaps if she did tell her, Sarah would understand why she found the thought of seeing more of him, albeit on Fern’s behalf, so very distressing. It required a physical effort not to fling herself into his arms, not to beg him to take her back. As she stopped the car in front of her mother’s cottage she acknowledged that she couldn’t put off meeting him for ever. This afternoon, before she collected Fern from playschool, she would go and see Blake.

Her mother was out when Jaime walked into the cottage. After making herself a cup of coffee and then prowling restlessly round the small kitchen, she realised that, until she had got the interview with Blake out of the way, she would not be able to settle. Before she could change her mind, she picked up her car keys and opened the front door. It was only when she opened the car door that she realised she was still wearing the outfit she had worn to Dorchester, a soft pink silk dress her mother had bought her in Bath, its sleek lines emphasising the fluid grace of her body, her long dark hair a cloud of curls on her shoulders. She shrugged mentally as she slid into the Mini. Far from giving her the confidence to face Blake, in some subtle way the dress made her feel more vulnerable than she would have done in her normal jeans, but it was too late to go back and change now.

Blake’s powerful Ferrari was parked outside the Lodge. Stopping alongside it, Jaime tried to quell the urgent thudding of her pulse. The cottage door stood open, and she approached it hesitantly, knocking briefly on the door. When there was no response, she unconsciously exhaled in soft relief. Blake obviously wasn’t in. On the point of returning to her car, she caught the sound of tearing paper, followed by a muffled curse. The study door was flung open and Blake emerged, pushing irate fingers through tousled dark brown hair.

‘Jaime!’

‘If I’ve come at a bad time, I can always come back.’ Why did she have to sound so nervous? Her eyes shifted apprehensively from the frown on his face, her gaze skittering wildly over the exposed column of his throat and the tanned flesh of his chest where his shirt was unbuttoned. He was wearing a pair of faded, tight jeans, and it required a conscious effort for her to drag her eyes away from the twin columns of his thighs, as she tried to blot out the memory of how it had felt to have the powerful reality of his naked body against hers. A dull surge of colour consumed her body, and she turned away quickly, hoping he wouldn’t guess how desperately hungry she was for the sight and feel of him. With Blake making love had been a feast of all the senses and each one of hers now responded to his proximity.

‘If I’m interrupting…’ she hesitated half way to the door, and Blake grimaced saying, ‘You’re not interrupting anything apart from a monumental writer’s block—something I haven’t suffered from before with my other two. Come on in. It will be more comfortable to talk in here than standing out in the hall.’

Numbly she followed him into the small study. The settee and chairs had been pushed to one side to make room for a large desk and chair. An electric typewriter sat on the desk, sheaves of paper surrounding it.

‘I didn’t know you’d written anything other than newspaper articles.’

‘You wouldn’t, would you?’ Blake agreed sardonically. ‘I wrote my first book when I came back from El Salvador.’

Almost automatically, Jaime moved across to the typewriter. A half-finished sheet was rolled into the carriage.

‘Wait there, I’ll go and make us both a cup of coffee, I won’t be long.…’

‘There’s no need to bother.’ She said it stiffly, anxious to get their interview over and done with.