Two-Timing Love. Kate Proctor
godlike creature who was almost eight years her senior and her older brother’s closest friend. Child and man, Jamie Castile was one who regarded life as something to be lived to the hilt—and live it to the hilt he had done with a total disregard to either convention or his own personal safety.
‘That Castile boy’s been allowed to run wild for far too long—he’ll come to no good,’ had been the oft-voiced opinion in the small Sussex village in which they had both been born…yet there had always been a note of grudging admiration—pride almost—behind the words.
And Jamie, with his strange background of opulence and poverty, had turned their dire predictions upside-down. Never one to compromise, he had thrown himself heart and soul into what he loved most, racing and designing yachts. The fact that he had made a considerable fortune from what he so loved had probably been of scant consequence to him initially, although, judging by his earlier remarks, he now seemed fully aware of his responsibilities towards those deriving their livelihoods from the fortune his skills had brought him.
It was around the time she was fifteen that she had stopped bemoaning the fact she hadn’t been born a boy and that her heart had begun doing strange things whenever Jamie was around. At sixteen, finding herself plotting painfully lingering deaths for any female who caught his attention—a veritable army, for Jamie’s eye roved far and wide—she had finally faced up to the fact that the hero-worship of her earlier years had matured to love. And with a maturity far beyond her years she had bided her time, the woman’s heart within her adolescent body vacillating between despair and relief as a daunting procession of rivals caught and then lost the attention of his restlessly roving eye.
Three years later, on the night of her brother’s wedding to Jamie’s sister, she had decided, at nineteen, that even Jamie could no longer regard her as a child. That night—a full four years ago—the brutal totality with which he had rejected her naïvely explicit advances had devastated her; and today had been the first time she had so much as laid eyes on him since. She was cured of her obsessive love of him, but the savage wound he had inflicted on her pride had left a scar that she now realised would always be with her.
‘Jenny?’
As her eyes flew open they found Jamie standing in the doorway, a small circular tray balanced on one hand.
‘He kept crying each time I tried to put him in his cot,’ she explained defensively, thrown by the flash of pure hatred the sight of him had sent searing through her. She struggled upright, the soundly sleeping baby clasped to her.
‘He’s just about due for another feed,’ stated Jamie, approaching the bed, then sitting down on it.
‘Did you make it up for him?’ asked Jenny, forcing her mind back to the present as she glanced down at the two bottles on the tray he had placed on the bed—one filled with milk, the other apparently containing water.
The darkly defined curves of his eyebrows rose in pained disbelief. ‘Mercifully, it’s a service the hotel provides. Clare gave me a few tins of the formula and sheets of instructions—which you’ll no doubt need.’
Jenny’s sharp exclamation of impatience brought a whimper of protest from the bundle in her arms—a whimper that fast developed into a full-blooded yell.
‘I think you’d better feed him now,’ she said, placing the bellowing infant in his arms and jumping to her feet as he showed signs of wanting to pass him back. ‘And, at the risk of sounding repetitive,’ she stated firmly, ‘Jamie, I really do have to be back at work by tomorrow, if possible.’
‘Surely they can give you a bit of time off, in the circumstances,’ he exclaimed, deftly transferring the baby to the crook of his arm and testing the temperature of the milk in the bottle before proceeding with the feed with a casual air of expertise that took Jenny’s breath away. ‘After all, it is your brother’s baby—’
‘And your sister’s!’ she cut in exasperatedly, drawing up a chair and sitting down. ‘Which is all beside the point. Jamie, I’ve only been in this job for a couple of weeks…it’s one in a million, as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t want to jeopardise it.’
He glanced up from the baby and pulled a wry face.
‘One in a million, eh?’
Jenny nodded. ‘And I’m on an initial three months’ trial.’
‘It seems as though we have a bit of a problem on our hands,’ he muttered, then suddenly removed the bottle from the baby and hoisted him up on his shoulder, pummelling him vigorously on the back.
‘Jamie, don’t you think you’re being a bit rough with him?’ she gasped.
‘Stop trying to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs,’ he retorted with a grin that became a chuckle when the baby obligingly burped with gusto. ‘He’s a tough little tyke,’ he laughed, transferring the baby back into his arms and resuming the feed.
Jenny raised her hand to her mouth in an attempt to hide the disbelieving laughter mounting within her—she would have given anything for a camera, preferably a cine.
‘And you can stop smirking, clever clogs,’ he warned, ‘because it isn’t nearly as simple as it looks. The first two feeds were sheer hell, until I got the knack…as you’ll soon find out.’
‘Jamie, how many times do I have to tell you?’ she exclaimed in exasperation, all trace of laughter gone. ‘I can’t look after him!’
His heavily lashed grey-green eyes lifted to hers, holding them for a brief moment before returning to the baby lying in abandoned contentment in his arms.
‘The point is, Jenny, that we’re going to have to come up with something,’ he said quietly. ‘When it comes to the crunch, no matter how successful you or I may be at the work we do, we’re neither of us indispensable—whereas, right now, your brother and my sister are…wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Of course I would,’ she muttered uncomfortably.
‘Their being part of a team geared to deal with precisely the type of catastrophe that’s just happened in Czechoslovakia and being virtually on the spot is pretty miraculous…which is why Clare regards the fact that she’s technically on a year’s maternity leave as being neither here nor there.’
‘Which is only natural—someone of her training finding herself in the middle of something as ghastly as that,’ exclaimed Jenny with a decided twinge of guilt. ‘Especially when she feels secure in the knowledge that my mother would be taking care of Jonathan. Jamie, what are we going to do?’
‘I suppose we could tell Clare the truth…Graham would obviously stay on, but there would be nothing to stop her coming back—’
‘How can you possibly say that?’ exclaimed Jenny, aghast. ‘It’s specialists like Clare and Graham that the other doctors will be turning to for advice!’
‘Well, she’s ringing here in about half an hour,’ he told her, returning the empty bottle to the tray and subjecting the baby to another bout of pummelling, ‘so we’d better think up something to tell her.’
‘Think up something?’ repeated Jenny, her heart sinking somewhat. ‘You make it sound as though you plan telling her a pack of lies!’
‘Only a fool would try that,’ he snapped with a flash of impatience that was a sharp reminder of how quick a temper he had. ‘Right now, Graham and Clare are where they’re most needed—desperately needed—and the last thing they deserve is worry over who’s looking after their baby.’
‘They’re bound to worry when they realise Mum and Dad aren’t around to do it,’ protested Jenny.
‘Why should they—there are the two of us, aren’t there? Just let me finish, for heaven’s sake!’ he barked impatiently as Jenny shook her head vehemently. ‘If I can be on the morning flight to Rio I could get back in time for you to be at work on time on Monday—Jenny, will you shut up and let me finish?’ he roared as