A Valentine Kiss: A Marriage Worth Saving / Tempted by Her Tycoon Boss / The Unforgettable Spanish Tycoon. Jennie Adams
her—worse now that he knew about the guilt she felt. And the expression on her face—the completely exhausted expression—tempted him to ignore it, to tell her some other time.
But he knew that was just an excuse. He wouldn’t ever get to that other time—not when he had been meaning to tell her since the accident. And now she had bared her soul to him he knew he couldn’t keep it a secret from her any more.
‘There’s something I need to tell you.’ He said it quickly, afraid that he wouldn’t get through it otherwise. ‘I had to give them permission to operate on you, Mila. You were bleeding from the abruption, losing consciousness...’
He shook his head.
‘Waiting for the bleeding to subside would have put you and the baby at risk.’ He took a shaky breath, not daring to look at her—not yet. ‘I had to approve the C-section knowing there was a chance our baby wouldn’t survive. But I couldn’t take a chance on losing both of you...’
His voice had gone completely hoarse at this admission of something he had carried with him for what felt like for ever, and he forced himself to look at her before he lost his courage. She was staring at him, those eyes more haunting than ever before, carefully blank of all the emotion he wished he could read in her.
Her hand reached up, and he braced himself for the pain of a slap, but she only brushed away the remnants of her tears from her cheeks. Then she cleared her throat.
‘I know.’
He looked at her, his eyes wide. ‘What?’
‘The doctor told me when I went back for my check-up. And then I asked Greg about it and he confirmed it.’
‘Your check-up was...’ He sorted through the memories ‘I was still here, Mila... Why didn’t you tell me you knew?’ He couldn’t believe that the burden he had been carrying with him for such a long time wasn’t a secret after all.
‘I was waiting for you to tell me.’
The look she aimed at him made him feel like a schoolboy.
‘I wanted to, but I was afraid—’
‘That I would blame you for it?’
He nodded, and she folded her arms.
‘I did. I thought it was your fault that I didn’t get to see my son alive. Why do you think I asked for space?’
He was dumbfounded, the words of apology, of excuse, he’d prepared were wiped from his mind.
‘I thought you would go and stay with your dad for a while, and I would be able to deal with all the feelings. I was raw, hurting and in more pain than I thought possible. I just needed time.’
She looked at him, and he saw her anger.
‘But then you left me completely. And instead of space I got divorce papers.’
‘You’re angry with me...’ But he’d known that, he thought. Deserved it.
‘Yes, I am. But not about you giving them permission to operate. What choice did you have?’ She shook her head. ‘We both might not have survived if you hadn’t.’ She paused, kicked at a stone. ‘I was angry about it. But only because I wished I could have held him during those seventeen minutes he was alive.’
Her breath caught at that, and Jordan wished he could hold her again.
‘And then I thought that if it couldn’t be me—and since I was still under anaesthesia then it couldn’t have been—you were the only other person I would have wanted it to be. So after a while I forgave you.’ She looked at him stonily. ‘It wasn’t your fault either, Jordan.’
‘I can’t believe you’ve known all along. I’ve been carrying this with me ever since I...’ He trailed off when he saw her jaw set and she looked away. And then he realised that she’d said that she wasn’t angry with him about that any more. ‘Why are you angry at me, then?’
‘You really don’t know?’
He opened his mouth to answer, but she waved him away.
‘If you can’t figure it out then you don’t deserve to know.’ She set her jaw. ‘Can we just leave now, please?’
‘No, we can’t.’ He felt uncomfortable, but he said it because he’d shared one of his deepest secrets with her, which he wouldn’t have done with anyone else, and now she was pulling away. Even though he didn’t want to delve any further into emotion—his insides were raw and knotted from what had already been said—he persisted. ‘I want you to tell me what else I’ve done wrong.’
‘So you can continue with this victim mentality you seem to have going?’
Anger sparked, deep inside him, and pumped through his body with his blood. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Every tragedy that’s happened to you, you somehow blame yourself for it.’
He could see the anger in her, too, but that only fuelled his own.
‘You blame yourself for approving an operation that saved my life—that gave your son his best chance at living—and you blame yourself for your father’s death. Oh, did you think I couldn’t see the weight of guilt crushing you?’
He kept his face clear of the turmoil he felt—the anger and truth in her words were daggers piercing his insides—and wondered how she had realised what he felt about his father’s death.
‘You think that his heart attacks were because you left. Because you didn’t keep in touch over the past year. You hate it that he died without fixing whatever was wrong between you.’
‘Stop!’ he said, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
‘Why?’ she demanded, her face flushed from her tirade. ‘You were the one who wanted me to continue, remember?’ She didn’t wait for his affirmation before continuing, as though she was purging herself of everything that she felt. ‘Do you want to know what I’m really angry about, Jordan? It’s because you ran away when I needed you the most.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘You made me feel like you left because I had lost our child.’
She was trembling, and he itched to touch her, to comfort her, even as her words shook him. ‘Stop saying that! Stop blaming yourself for what happened. It wasn’t your fault.’ And she’d made him see that it wasn’t his either.
‘If that’s not the reason, then why did you go?’
‘I was running—just like you said,’ he shot out, and immediately stilled.
‘Why?’
‘Does it matter?’ he said, exasperated. He couldn’t deal with the emotion any more. ‘I’m back now.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Yes, it matters, Jordan. And here’s why.’
She grabbed the front of his top, and before he knew it her lips were on his.
SHE’D DONE IT out of desperation, to pierce through that controlled façade he clung to even though she could see that he felt beneath the surface. She wanted him to feel the earthquake that was happening inside her, to know the emotions that sprang from the hole the quake had opened, and the only way she knew how to do that was to kiss him.
But as she sank into the kiss she thought that she was a fool for being so impulsive, for letting go of the control she’d fought for around him. And then she stopped thinking, pressing her body closer to his as she tasted him.
The same...he tasted the same. Of fire and home and pure man.
Her anger had turned into passion, so there was no gentle sliding back into the heat they had always shared. No, they jumped straight into the fire, greedily taking