‘You little fool!’ he groaned, gathering her close, his face buried in her hair. ‘Don’t you realise that you could have died too?’
She looked up at him with tear-stained cheeks. ‘I could?’
‘You aren’t strong enough to have children,’ he muttered into her hair.
‘Is that why you moved out of our bedroom?’ She stroked the thick dark hair at his nape, wanting his version of what had happened. ‘Why you left me when I needed you beside me?’
He was trembling against her—strong, forceful Jordan trembling! ‘And do you think I didn’t need you?’ he sounded agonised. ‘But I couldn’t be near you and not want to make love to you. I had to let you sleep alone because I couldn’t keep my hands off you. I still can’t.’
‘Jordan…?’ She held her breath, almost afraid to hope.
‘I love you, Kelly,’ he groaned. ‘Surely you’ve realised that by now?’
She blinked back the tears, tears of happiness. ‘Love, Jordan?’ she choked.
‘Yes—love! Insanely, passionately, mindlessly. I’ve always loved you, right from the moment I first saw you. I would have married you immediately, but your father insisted I wait. You see, I’m what could be called a freak, emotionally. I have a quirk in my nature that isn’t very pleasant. Your father recognised it and was worried for you. With just cause,’ he added grimly.
‘But what is it?’ Kelly searched his face worriedly. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she demanded to know.
Jordan swung away from her, his shoulders hunched. ‘I have a disease, a sickness,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s eating me up alive.’
‘Jordan!’ she cried. ‘Tell me what’s wrong with you!’ ’I’m obsessed with you!’ He turned to her with tortured eyes. ‘If I could lock you away from other people, allow no one else to see you, I would. I’m jealous of anyone who so much as looks at you, talks to you. When I thought the baby might take you away from me I went completely to pieces. It could have killed you, taken you away from me for good. If you’d died I think I would have killed myself.’
‘But—but you let me go.’
‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘I let you go before I destroyed you.’
‘It was thinking you didn’t love me that was destroying me.’
‘Not love you?’ he scorned derisively. ‘Sometimes I wish to God I didn’t. This obsession with you is completely against my nature. Until you came into my life I lived perfectly normally, I had my women friends and they meant nothing to me. As soon as you walked into the room I began to vibrate with this burning obsession, and it hasn’t stopped for a moment since. When you walked out on me I used to lie awake every night plotting ways of getting you back, but by morning I would have come to my senses. I’m no good for you, Kelly. And you make me weak where usually I’m strong.’
‘And how would you feel about my marrying someone else?’ she asked softly.
His eyes seemed to burn, his expression dangerous. ‘I’ll never let you belong to another man! I’d kill you first.’ He shook with a rage that made his breathing ragged, his fists clenched.
‘But I want children, Jordan. At least two. I want—’
‘You still want children, even though you know it could kill you?’
She nodded. ‘It’s important to me.’
‘And you’re important to me.’ He pulled her roughly against him. ‘God, I can’t go on without you any more, Kelly. Don’t leave me again
,’ he pleaded. ‘Stay with me. Be my wife again.’
‘And children?’
‘Never!’ he said forcefully. ‘I won’t see you exposed to that danger again. I couldn’t bear the torture for nine months, each day wondering if I’m going to lose you. It drove me to drink last time.’
She knew, oh God, how she knew. She had never guessed that Jordan kept all this molten emotion inside him. Maybe he had been wise to keep it from her five years ago, to encase this fierce love behind a wall of cool mockery. Five years ago she would have been terrified by the intensity of his love for her, now she would have revelled in it. But it was too late, too late. Jordan couldn’t go through the agony of this pregnancy with her, it could just kill him.
She pulled out of his arms. ‘I can’t come back to you, Jordan.’ She sounded much calmer than she felt.
His hands dropped to his sides, a look of utter defeat on his face. ‘I knew this obsession would frighten the hell out of you. It would frighten any woman.’ Suddenly his gaze was sharp. ‘Or is it just that you no longer love me? You used to love me, used to tell me all the time, and I daren’t even tell you back in case I went berserk and made an absolute fool of myself.’
Poor Jordan, how he had suffered for loving her so much. Her father’s referrence to Jordan not being an easy man to live with now made sense; he had known of the strength, the singlemindedness of Jordan’s love, and had been concerned for her.
‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ she told him huskily.