‘You.’ His dark eyes widened in surprise, quickly followed by fear. ‘Has something happened to Kathleen?’ he demanded, stepping towards her.
‘No. No, she’s fine. Getting bigger every day. She can smile now. Mrs M. insists it’s just wind, but I know she smiles.’ She was babbling, she knew, but the flood of emotions she felt at seeing Conan again had knocked every sensible thought from her head.
His dark hair was slightly longer, and his face a little thinner, but he was still the most attractive man she had ever met. As she watched he slipped off his jacket and flung it on a chair, and, carrying on to the drinks cabinet, he poured himself a large whisky.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked, his back to her.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Then what do you want?’ he demanded coldly, turning around. One hip propped against the cabinet, he downed the drink in one go.
Her purse was on the sofa with the letter in it, she stepped forward to get it, and hesitated. Conan was watching her, his dark eyes roaming down over her slender body, and back to linger on the firm thrust of her breasts against the fabric of her dress, then slowly back to her face. What did she really want? she asked herself. Her violet eyes were doing s
ome wandering of their own. He looked slightly rumpled and infinitely dear to her, and with a courage she had not known she possessed she walked across to him.
‘I want you,’ she said huskily, and, reaching out, she touched his arm.
‘Want me?’ He laughed harshly. ‘Oh, please, Josie you must be desperate. What was it you called me? Half a man?’ he drawled with biting sarcasm.
She lifted her eyes to his and was stunned by the angry bitterness she saw in their black depths. She had set out to hurt him that day, but only now did she realise how well she had succeeded. ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean it.’
‘Yes, you did, Josie.’ He slammed his glass down on the cabinet. ‘The first time I tried to make love to you, you were thinking of him. I should have learnt then. But no, when the doctor told me you had lost your memory I quite ruthlessly took advantage of the fact to have you in my bed. Have you any idea what that did to me as a man? It almost destroyed me. Thinking every night, this is the last time; tomorrow she will remember. In the end it was relief when you did, knowing how low I had sunk in my desire for you.’
Looking back, Josie understood why she had thought he was withdrawing from her the last two weeks before her memory had returned. But the one thing that loomed large in her mind was that he had said he desired her. Standing close to him, her hand resting on his arm, she could feel the heat of his flesh through the fine silk of his shirt. ‘Then so had L Because I wanted you. Desired you. And still do,’ she said quietly.
But she got no further as Conan grabbed her around the waist and hauled her tight against his hard body. His dark head swooped down and his mouth ground against hers in a savagely hungry kiss. He made no pretence of tenderness. His hands slid from her waist, curving one around her bottom, the other fondling her breast, while he spun her against the wall, nudged her legs apart and forced his thigh between hers.
‘Please, Conan.’ She pushed against him, but her body betrayed her as she trembled in his arms.
‘Changed your mind again, sweetheart?’ he snarled. ‘Still hankering after Charles?’
‘No, no. You don’t understand. I never wanted Charles, not the way I want you. I never loved him,’ she cried—and stopped. She had told him more than she’d ever wanted him to know.
Conan’s grip tightened for a second. She felt the fierce tension tautening his huge frame and then abruptly he let her go, and if the wall had not been behind her she would have crumpled to the floor. ‘Don’t lie to me, Josie.’ He took a step back but still he towered over her. ‘I saw you, remember?’ he prompted with biting cynicism. ‘Or have you forgotten?’
She tilted her head back to stare into his dark eyes, as hard and unforgiving as sin. Something inside her snapped, and she lost it completely.
‘Oh, I remember very well...too well,’ she snarled. He was so bloody superior and she had had enough of feeling guilty. ‘You want the truth? I’ll give you the truth. I was a young girl with a crush on a blond-haired Adonis I had barely spoken to. The day Charles was supposed to be helping me at the church fête was the first time he asked me out. You were right. I went out with him three times in all, hardly a great love affair. Is that blunt enough for you?’
Conan went rigid, his eyes darkening with suppressed anger. That had got to him, she thought savagely, but she wasn’t finished yet. ‘The night I went to bed with him I’d had too much to drink, and I thought I loved him. When you found me lying on the bed, I wasn’t glowing in the aftermath of love. I was thinking, If that’s sex, it’s horrible.’ She didn’t notice the narrowing of Conan’s eyes, or the flash of some indefinable emotion contort his rugged face.
‘The very next day, I think I knew I’d made a mistake, because I wasn’t even sad that Charles had left. If anything I was relieved. Three weeks later, after a few telephone calls from Charles, I was certain. Talking to him without his image to blind me, I knew we had nothing in common. Then I discovered I was pregnant. I love my baby and wouldn’t be without her for the world. But the horrible truth is I never missed Charles at all, and I never intended to marry him.’
‘And you expect me to believe you?’ Conan said curtly.
His casual dismissal of her blunt confession was the last straw for Josie. ‘I don’t really care.’ With her small chin jutting out belligerently she continued. ‘I’m sick of feeling guilty. In fact I don’t feel guilty any more. The first night you and I made love, the only reason I froze for a second was because I remembered the other time and was afraid. I tried to explain, but you wouldn’t let me. It wasn’t my fault you chose to think it was because I loved Charles.’
Josie didn’t see the look of absolute horror in Conan’s eyes. She laughed, a harsh sound in the momentary silence. ‘In fact I should thank yon for deceiving me into your bed when I had amnesia. Not remembering I had been afraid, by the time I discovered you’d tricked me, you’d certainly cured me of any inhibitions. Ironic, isn’t it?’ Suddenly the futility of arguing with him hit her, and, brushing past him she picked her purse up from the sofa. Opening it, she withdrew the letter.
‘I actually came here to give you this.’ Sitting down on the sofa, she held the letter out towards him. ‘I don’t understand you at all. You married me to get the Manor and now you’re giving it away.’
Conan crossed the space dividing them in two lithe strides and, dropping down beside her, he grasped her by the shoulders. ‘I don’t want the Manor if I can’t have you, and Kathleen as well. I married you for one reason only. Because I love you. I used the excuse of getting the estate back to persuade you.’
She stared at him in shocked disbelief. ‘But you said your father was going to leave it to me if I didn’t marry you.’
‘He might have said something along those lines, but as I held all the mortgages he had taken on the property over the years it was an empty threat. The first time I saw you, my reason for visiting Beeches was to make a deal with my father. I agreed to pay all his debts and he agreed to my taking over the Manor. The next time I saw you, Charles knew I was coming down that night to finalise the deal. So, you see, nothing could have persuaded me into marriage,’ he declared huskily, ‘Unless I wanted to.’
‘So you didn’t marry me to get the house?’ Her heart turned over in her breast. ‘I don’t understand.’ But she was beginning to.