Forgotten Sins

His smile was enigmatic. ‘Then sit down and eat it.’

An hour later she sighed, ‘No, no coffee, thank you. That was a wonderful feast. Where on earth did you learn to cook—or were you a chef in a previous incarnation?’

‘I couldn’t afford to eat out when I was at university,’ he said, getting up and holding out his hand to her. ‘So I learnt how to make a decent meal. I like to be good at what I do.’

Oh, she believed him. At everything he did, she thought, trying to banish an image of him making love, bronzed skin gleaming…

‘Who taught you?’ She let her hand lie in his, adding with a brittle smile, ‘The current girlfriend, I suppose.’

‘A restaurant.’

He let her go, but before she had time to feel bereft he supported her elbow in an easy grip, startlingly warm through the fine silk of her sleeve.

Shamed by the untamed frisson of need zigzagging through her, she said, ‘A restaurant altruistic enough to give lessons in gourmet cooking to penniless university students? If only I’d known about it I might be able to cook something more sophisticated than scrambled eggs.’

‘If you can make a good fist of those you can cook anything,’ he said, steering her towards the seating area. ‘I started in the kitchen as a part-time hand and gradually rose through the ranks. By the time I finished my degree I was allowed to cook the odd dish if the chef was in a good mood and there weren’t too many customers that night.’

Something—probably the second glass of champagne she’d been unwise enough to drink—persuaded her to confess, ‘I can produce very basic meals, but that’s all.’

‘Yes,’ he said austerely, ‘you look as though you survive on salads. Don’t you enjoy cooking?’

She shrugged, collapsing into a sofa that faced the wide open doors. ‘My sister was the domestic daughter. She could conjure a fantastic meal from some stale cheese, a couple of lettuce leaves and a spoonful of chutney, so she went to gourmet cooking classes while I collected degrees. I was going to follow my father into his business.’

He switched off the lights.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, jerking bolt upright.

‘Any moment now you’ll see the moon rise over the Coromandel Peninsula. It’s worth watching.’ His amused tone further unsettled her.

However, when she heard the soft sounds of him settling into a chair close by she relaxed her taut body, turning her head to look at the little bay. Miles away, over a waste of sea that trembled in the starshine, a faint glow outlined a high hill.

Out of the darkness Jake asked casually, ‘So did you follow your father into the business?’

‘No.’

Silence stretched between them until he prompted, ‘What happened?’

‘My sister and mother were killed in a car accident.’ Aline looked down at her lap and carefully untangled her knotted fingers. ‘My father sold the business and used the money to set up a foundation in their memory.’ She paused, before finishing evenly, ‘And then he killed himself.’

Because she kept her eyes fixed onto the scene outside, she neither heard Jake move nor saw him. As moonlight rimmed the horizon in silver she felt the sofa cushions give beside her. Her skin burned with primitive awareness and she had to concentrate on her breathing.

‘A cruel and cowardly thing to do.’ His voice was corrosively contemptuous.

‘It’s all right,’ she said calmly, holding herself upright to fight an abject weakness that craved the warmth and the solid support of his powerful body. ‘I understood. He loved them very much.’

Jake’s silence had a forbidding undercurrent. She finished, ‘It was almost six years ago; I’ve got over it.’

‘So well that you have to gird yourself up when you speak of it?’ he asked coolly. He ran a swift, unsparing hand the length of her spine from her shoulder to her waist. ‘Pure steel,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Did you cry for them?’

‘I’m not a freak! Of course I cried for them.’ Aline fought back the spurt of anger to add more temperately, ‘But you can’t cry for ever. Sooner or later you have to leave the past behind.’

‘Something your father was too cowardly to do, apparently.’ His scathing tone revealed his lack of sympathy for those who wallowed in grief. Instead of returning to his chair, he leaned back into the cushions.

Aline stole a swift sideways glance as she inched away from him until stopped by the arm of the sofa. The moon had risen, filling the night with a glowing, coppery radiance that turned in a breath to silver. Against the light Jake’s profile outlined power and force, controlled yet dangerous.

He said, ‘Tell me about your husband. What made him set up that trust?’

Even as he said the words he wondered savagely what the hell he thought he was doing. She’d had too many betrayals in her life and here he was contemplating the possibility of another.

Night-attuned eyes scanned the pale oval of her face, turned resolutely to the rising moon. With her shoulders squared at right angles to a wand-straight spine, her tilted chin, Aline’s whole body expressed a slender, indomitable refusal to surrender. He felt her resentment, knew that the large turquoise eyes would be flat and opaque.

That inconvenient protectiveness—more debilitating than the restless lust that stirred his groin—almost made him give up, but he’d made a promise.

Expecting a flat refusal, a curt suggestion to mind his own business, he was surprised when she answered. ‘Hope Carmichael reminds me a bit of Michael—partly it’s the colouring, so warm, as though the sun’s always shining on them. My sister and mother were like that too—they attracted people like magnets and wherever they went they brought laughter and empathy with them like gifts.’

Jake watched her unblinkingly. Buried deep beneath the cool, level tone was a resigned envy, as though her own talents were worth nothing; her father’s legacy, probably.

Jake found himself thoroughly disliking the man who’d convinced her she wasn’t worth staying alive for.

He enjoyed women, but none had intrigued him like Aline, hiding her passionate intensity beneath a guarded self-possession. He wanted that caged passion for himself.

Now, however, was not the time. Ruthlessly tamping down his familiar hunger, he observed, ‘And Michael Connor?’ She stayed stubbornly silent, so he remarked, ‘As well as a superb yachtsman, he was a brilliant photographer. I’ve seen his Oceans collection.’