Forgotten Sins

The drawing-room was large and filled with people, all at that pleasant state of talkativeness engendered by a glass of excellent champagne. More people had spilled out of the open French doors onto the wide Victorian verandah beyond. It bore the hallmarks of an excellent party, yet Aline sat alone, imprisoned by his inflexible will.

Hands clenched by her sides, she said, ‘No,’ the word a stone dropped into echoing silence.

Strong fingers closed around her wrist, shackling it. ‘I can feel your heartbeat against my fingertips,’ Jake said thoughtfully. ‘It’s going twice the normal speed.’

Before she tried to twist free he released her. ‘No,’ she said again, the meaningless word splintering into the tension between them. ‘And don’t ever do that again. I don’t like being manhandled.’

From behind came a sly voice, soft, heavy with innuendo. ‘She’s never liked being touched. Except by her husband, of course,’ Lauren Penn said. Her smile bubbled into laughter, low and mocking. ‘And you know, that’s a joke. Just the biggest joke in the world.’

‘Lauren…’ Aline’s glance swerved to the half-empty glass of champagne in the other woman’s hand.

Lauren swallowed the rest of the wine, setting the empty glass down with exaggerated care on a table. ‘Lauren,’ she mimicked. ‘Lauren, shut up. Lauren, go away. Lauren, stop making a scene. You know, I’m so sick of you. Ever since he died you’ve worn your grief for your darling lost Michael like a bloody crown. Other people grieved too, but that never occurred to you, did it?’ Her glance darted to Jake’s angular face.

As though encouraged by his dispassionate regard, she purred, ‘You see, Jake, poor Aline has a little problem. She really doesn’t like being touched—and that’s straight from the horse’s mouth. Mike said she was like turquoise, cold and smooth and shallow—nothing but surface colour. He called her the Untouchable—sometimes the Snow Queen. He said that when they had sex it was like worshipping at some shrine instead of loving a flesh-and-blood woman—’

‘That’s more than enough.’ Jake’s voice held such crackling menace that Lauren went white. Her eyes moved from Jake’s grim face to Aline, locked in a hideous stasis.

Jake said softly, ‘Get out of here.’

Lauren whispered, ‘It’s time she knew. She’s eating her heart out for a lie. I loved Mike and he loved me. We’d been lovers for a year when he died.’ Her eyes glazed with tears and her mouth trembled. ‘He wanted to come away with me, but he didn’t want to hurt her. We were going to get married.’

Unable to hold back, Aline retorted in a shaking voice, ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Because you don’t want to.’ Open antagonism sharpened her words. ‘Do you know what happened when he died? I lost our baby.’

Her anguished glance across the room to Emma, smiling in her father’s arms, struck both Jake and Aline mute.

Bitterly she went on, ‘If you hadn’t clung so hard he’d have left you, and then he and my baby would still be alive. I wouldn’t have let him fly across the sea looking for some idiot solo yachtsman who’d got himself lost. You killed Mike—and you killed my baby because you wouldn’t let go!’

That was when Aline knew she was telling the truth.

CHAPTER TWO

IT HURT, Aline realised, to breathe. It even hurt to think. The last time she could remember such pain was when they’d told her Michael was dead. The irony almost knocked her to her knees.

Lauren said softly, ‘You’re so stubborn and self-centred, so sure you’re always right, but tomorrow you’ll have to believe me. I even lent the author Mike’s letters.’

Jake’s eyes narrowed. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he asked in a tone that wilted Lauren’s antagonism.

Defiantly she said, ‘Aline refused to talk to the writer—Stuart someone—when he contacted her about a biography of Mike. But I did. I told him everything about Mike and me because I wanted people to know he loved me. Tomorrow morning everyone in New Zealand will read that Aline gave Mike nothing, and I gave him everything.’

Locked in a savage agony of rejection and betrayal, Aline closed her eyes, listening to the meaningless words buzz around inside her head. She craved numbness, forgetfulness, with the avid hunger of an addict.

‘And that book’s coming out tomorrow?’ Jake demanded so silkily that Aline’s lashes flew up.

No emotion showed in his face, but his gaze focused on Lauren with the searing lance of a laser. Behind the hard, handsome features Aline saw a predator, menacing, relentless, and lethally dangerous.

Visibly bracing herself, Lauren took an instinctive step backwards. ‘It’s being launched next week, but tomorrow there’ll be a big extract in one of the Sunday papers.’ From somewhere she produced an aggressive tone. ‘Mike put New Zealand on the map with his single-handed sailing voyages around the world, and he cared enough about kids to set up the Connor Trust and raise millions of dollars for it. Some of the money from the book’s going to the Trust, yet Aline would have stopped publication if she’d been able to.’ She cast a scathing glance at Aline. ‘People need to know what a wonderful man—a truly great man—he was. I’m not ashamed of loving him, and I’ll be proud until I die that he loved me.’

Jake would have liked very much to wrap his hands around that slender throat and throttle the life out of her, but he needed to get Aline out of there before the confrontation—already drawing covert attention—went any further. White and frozen, her subtle cosmetics displayed for the mask they were, she hadn’t moved since Lauren had started her attack.

It was the first time he’d seen her at a disadvantage, and he was startled by the fierce protectiveness that unexpectedly gripped him.

Ignoring Lauren, he stepped between the two women and touched Aline’s arm. When she didn’t respond he said gently, ‘Aline, come with me.’

After a taut moment she shivered.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, relieved when she let him steer her out of the nearest door and into the entrance hall, mercifully empty of onlookers.

With a firm hand at her elbow, he led her across the gleaming wooden floor with its priceless Persian rug; he wondered if the door to Keir’s study would be locked, but it yielded to his urgent hand.

Mentally thanking Keir for his trust in his guests, he pushed it open, noting with a half-smile that Keir wasn’t that trusting; everything but the desk and the bookshelves had been locked away in a bank of cupboards.

Obediently, silently, Aline went ahead, finally stopping in the middle of the room to look around with dazed bewilderment. Succumbing to his concern, Jake folded her slim, cold hands in his, but although she didn’t resist it was like touching a statue.

‘She could be lying,’ he said harshly.

‘She’s not lying.’ Aline’s voice sounded distant, muted, empty of the subtle sexy texture that made it so erotic beneath the surface crispness.

‘How do you know?’

She shuddered. ‘He used to say my eyes were like the very best turquoise. How would she know that unless he told her?’

Pillow-talk, he thought savagely. ‘It could have slipped out in conversation.’

She shook her head. ‘Keir must know; he was Michael’s best friend,’ she said. And then with a half-sob, ‘Yes, of course. That’s why…’

‘Tell me,’ he commanded when her voice trailed away into nothingness.

She didn’t ask him what business it was of his. The shock of Lauren’s revelation had smashed the barriers he’d tried so hard to penetrate these past months. Ruthlessly practical, he decided it might be a good thing; if she’d been living in a fool’s paradise the truth could only set her free. It might even help the small personal crusade he’d embarked on—finding out exactly what was going on in the Connor Trust.

But, God, he hated to see her in such pain.

In that same empty monotone she said, ‘About a year before Michael died I noticed a distance between them, and after that we didn’t see much of Keir. I asked Michael why, and he said that it was the natural way of things—married men didn’t have so much in common with their single friends.’ She lifted her lashes and looked at him with blank eyes like enamelled jewels, their vivid colour framed by long black lashes. ‘You believe people when you love them because it hurts too much not to.’

Looking into that lifeless, beautiful face, Jake thought violently that if he could kill a dead man he’d do it right then.

A soft sound from behind alerted him to the opening of the door; instantly he swung around, thrusting Aline behind him as their host entered the room.

Frowning, Keir demanded, ‘What’s going on here?’

Jake stood to one side and let Aline tell Keir exactly what Lauren had said.

He was good, Jake thought with respect; their host’s ice-grey eyes registered only a single flash of fury, but of course Aline noticed.

She whispered, ‘Was Lauren the only one?’

‘Yes,’ Keir said brusquely.