The Marriage Truce. Sara Craven
a short memory, Jenna. In those first few months of our marriage I came to know all your most intimate secrets—including some you’d never been aware of yourself until then.’
Her suddenly flushed cheeks owed nothing to the heat of the day.
She said in a suffocated voice, ‘You have no right to talk to me like this. No right at all.’
‘I need no reminder,’ Ross said softly, ‘of all the rights in you that I was fool enough to surrender.’
His words seemed to hang in the air between them, challenging, even threatening. Reviving old memories—old hungers. Shocking her with their potency.
He was watching her, the dark eyes glittering as they travelled over her in unashamed exploration. The cream round-necked sweater and close-fitting blue denim jeans she wore were no barrier to the intensity of his scrutiny, she realised as she stared back at him, eyes dilating, lips parted. Aware of a small, unwelcome stir of excitement deep within her.
Because he knew—none better—how she looked naked, after all the times he’d removed her clothes, his hands sometimes tender, often fiercely urgent. His lips caressing the warm skin he’d uncovered.
She was horrified to feel her nipples hardening involuntarily under the sudden force of the recollection.
This was what she’d always feared, she thought, swallowing. This was why she’d refused to allow any personal contact between them during the divorce, even in the safety of the lawyers’ offices. Or afterwards.
Because she knew she could not guarantee to control her physical responses to him.
However much she might have trained her mind to reject him, her body still shivered with remembered desire in his presence.
Suddenly she felt heat blaze from him like a dark sun.
And realised with swift, scared certainty that all she needed to do was reach out her hand …
Her throat tightened. She thought, ‘I can’t do this.’ And only realised she had spoken aloud when she saw his face change. The firm mouth harden.
Saw him take a step backwards, deliberately distancing himself from her.
He said quietly, ‘Unfortunately, you don’t have a choice, Jenna. And neither do I.’ He paused. ‘However, it might be better for me to walk back to Thirza’s. I’ll see you later.’
He turned and strode off down the quay.
For a moment Jenna stood where she was, watching him go, then, slowly and shakily, she made her way across the cobbles to her car.
She unlocked it and got in, stowing her bag on the passenger seat. Even fitting the key in the ignition. But she made no attempt to start the engine.
Her heart was thumping rapidly and noisily, and she felt slightly sick. Certainly she didn’t trust herself to drive. Not unless she wanted to find herself, and the car, on the bottom of the harbour.
She thought, I have to pull myself together.
But that, of course, was easier said than done.
She drew a deep breath and made herself review the situation. It had been lousy luck running into Ross two days in a row, but she’d make sure it didn’t happen again.
She was bound to see him at the wedding, of course, but there would be plenty of other people around, and he would be easier to dodge in a crowd. And there would be the unknown Tim to act as safeguard, anyway.
Apart from the wedding rehearsal tomorrow, there was no need for her to leave Trevarne House at all, and she would make sure that her every waking moment was full—even if all she could find to do was soothing Aunt Grace.
She folded her arms on the steering wheel and leaned her forehead against them, feeling the prickle of tears against her closed eyelids.
But who, she thought, with sudden desolation, is going to soothe me?
And for that she could find no satisfactory answer at all.
THE car was a cocoon. A refuge closing her away from everything except her thoughts. Those she could not escape, or even evade. Not any more.
Her mind was in chaos, yet somehow she found she was being dragged inexorably back in time to that night over three years ago when she, a child no longer, had met Ross again.
There’d been a private view at the Haville Gallery for a talented young painter having his first exhibition. The evening had gone well, and a number of pictures had displayed the red dot of success. People had begun to drift away when, suddenly alerted by an odd tingle in her senses that she was being watched, Jenna had turned and seen Ross standing a few yards away, his eyes narrowed in a kind of stunned disbelief as he looked at her.
They might have been alone. None of the chattering groups around them had seemed to exist any longer.
All the breath seemed to leave her body in one deep, startled gasp as her gaze had locked with his. Read what he was thinking as if he had shouted it aloud. The total astonishing certainty of the moment had taken her a willing, helpless prisoner. Joined them both in a new and devastating recognition.
It had been as if some lifelong search was suddenly over, and the hidden treasure—the Holy Grail—was there waiting for her.
Her stomach had churned—her pulses had gone crazy. A delicious heat had spread through her veins, and her senses had gone spinning into a kind of delirium.
And then she’d seen him smile and start towards her, and she had moved, too, going to meet him halfway. More than halfway. People had spoken to her, but she hadn’t heard what they said. She’d been oblivious, every fibre of her being focussed on this man now reentering her life with such unbelievable impact. She’d realised that she was accepting without question that here was the only man in the world whom she would ever want.
And that it was how, in some strange unfathomable way, she had always known it would be.
When she’d reached him, her voice had been a little husky croak. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was invited. Someone I met at a party.’ She watched him draw an uneven breath. ‘I—I almost didn’t come …’
And they both laughed in derisive rejection of the very idea. Because they knew that since time began it had been inevitable that they would meet again at this place—at this moment. That this was what they had both been created for, and that there was nothing that could have kept them apart.
She said, her voice smiling, ‘You recognised me—in this crowd?’
He said slowly, ‘I’d have known you anywhere.’ He paused. ‘But why are you here?’
‘It’s where I work.’
‘Of course.’ He shook his head. ‘Thirza told me that you’d done an art course.’
‘I’m surprised she remembered.’
He said quietly, ‘But I asked about you, Jenna. I always—always asked about you.’
And as she met his eyes, and saw the flare of passion, the unhidden hunger, she felt her skin warm passionately and involuntarily, and her throat tighten in a sweet excitement she had never known before.
She said, in a whisper, ‘I—I don’t understand. What is happening?’
‘We are.’ His voice was almost harsh. ‘We’re happening to each other. At long last.’ His hand touched her cheek, stroked its curve, and she turned her head in a swift, involuntary reaction, finding his caressing fingers with her lips.
‘Jenna.’ He spoke in a tortured whisper. ‘Dear God, Jenna …’
For a moment he was silent, mastering