CHAPTER TWO
"Well?" Alex demanded when the seconds that had ticked away since he had asked the question grew into minutes and still Louise hadn't answered him. "Are you going to tell me just what's going on?"
"Nothing. Nothing that would interest you anyway."
"Ah, but there you're wrong. I am interested. And you have to admit that I have cause. After all, why would you suddenly claim to be my wife when we haven't seen each other for over eight years? When all that there ever was between us was an adolescent fling that was over before it started?"
Liar! His conscience reproved him. It might have been an adolescent fling to her, but to him it had been the forming relationship of his life. The relationship against which he had measured every woman he had ever met since — and found them lacking. And if he wanted the reason why he was here, back where he had sworn he would never be again, then it was quite painfully simple.
It could be summed up in two short words.
Louise Browning.
He had never forgotten her. Never been able to get her out of his mind.
And given half an excuse to come back and see her again, he had been on the plane before he had even had time for second thoughts.
"So what I want to know is just why you should lay claim to the name of a man you hated, a man who…"
"I never hated you!" Louise broke in sharply, unable to let that go.
"No?"
"No!"
And it wasn't just "an adolescent fling," she wanted to add. She had adored him. Loved him with all the strength of her young heart. And he had broken that heart when he had walked out of her life for good, leaving her alone and pregnant.
Oh no — no! She could not — must not — think of Gabrielle. To do so would destroy her. Especially now, with the living example of her daughter's heritage standing right there in front of her. If her baby had lived would she have had Alex's dark coloring, those beautiful gray eyes…?
Desperately she forced her attention back to the present.
"Well, you certainly gave me the impression that you couldn't stand the sight of me," Alex drawled. "That you wanted me out of your life for good.'
"As I recall, you were the one claiming that it was over and done with."
She had come to him to tell him that she was carrying his child, and he had refused to listen.
"You were on your way out to your new life — your new family in Spain."
"Louise, I had nothing to keep me here. My mother was dead."
You didn't want me.…
"My father had suddenly decided to acknowledge my existence. I was barely twenty-one and a whole new future suddenly offered itself. I had lost my job, narrowly avoided ending up in prison…"
Alex pushed himself away from the door and came to stand in the middle of the room, his hands on his hips. Looking at them, Louise felt shivers of sensual awareness slide down her spine. It was impossible not to recall the pleasure those hands had given her in the past.
"Tell me, did you really think that I was callous enough to have left you asleep after making love to you and gone though your parents' house, helping myself —"
"I didn't know what to think. I woke up and I was alone."
"So would you have preferred that I stayed? And been found there when your father came home? That would have been fun."
"But then I found that all my stepmother's jewellery had gone…"
And foolishly she'd swallowed her father's belief that Alex wasn't to be trusted.
"So you told your parents everything. You must have known they'd hit the roof.""I couldn't just keep quiet."
"No, you did the one thing guaranteed to raise your father's blood pressure even higher. You let him know that I had taken his precious daughter's virginity. Tell me, Louise —" Alex levered himself away from the table and began to prowl round the small kitchen "— did you really think that would help me get a fair hearing?"
"I didn't know what else to say," Louise admitted edgily.
She wished he would stand still — or sit down — anything other than this disturbingly restless movement. He seemed too big, too powerful, too elemental to be enclosed in the confined space of the tiny room. And her own guilt and the bitterness of her memories blended uneasily with the potently sexual appeal he seemed to project without any effort to produce a dangerously explosive combination.
"I felt hurt — more than hurt. I felt betrayed! I thought you'd used me. I was only nineteen. If it makes you feel any better, when I found out that Geoff Thornton had been caught trying to sell the jewellery, I hated myself. I had never thought they'd sack you anyway."
"No?"
Alex had come to stand in front of her, looking down into her pale face surrounded by the tumble of soft brown hair. Those changeable eyes were deep mossy green in this light, clouded with anxiety.
"What did you think they'd do? Welcome the gardener — the housekeeper's son — into the family? The Brownings of Helpcote Manor? You were young, Louise, but not that foolish."
Moving this close to her had been a mistake, Alex admitted to himself. A big mistake. When he'd kept his distance he'd also been able to keep control of his feelings. But up close like this he could see the peach-fine ****ure of her skin, smell the faint floral scent of some soap or body lotion she had used.
They said that scent was the sense most likely to evoke powerful memories, and right now he could well believe it was true. Sensual hunger clawed at him instantly and cruelly and the burn of it roughened his voice when he spoke, though this time on a very different note.
"We were both young then. But we've grown up since. I know I have, and you…"
He reached out and closed both hands over the delicate bones of her shoulders.
"You've changed from a lovely girl into a beautiful, desirable woman…"
Not this.
The words sounded in Louise's head but she couldn't force them out onto her tongue. Her throat seemed to have seized up, her lips frozen, and all she could do was wait for the kiss that she knew was coming. The kiss that she could read he wanted in the darkness of his eyes.
It was his gentleness that shocked her. The almost delicate, slow taking of her mouth brushed away her doubts, her fears, her hesitation on a sigh of sheer delight. She felt her senses swim, her heart kick up a beat.
The last time he had kissed her they had both been so young, not much more than adolescents. He had kissed her like a boy, with a boy's urgency and impatient hunger. Now he kissed her like a man — a man who knew exactly how to treat a woman. He made her feel intensely female, totally sensual, all woman.
And she wanted more.
With another sigh, a very different one this time, she moved closer, slid her hands up around his neck, pulling his head down toward hers to deepen the kiss. She let her tongue dance with his, heard the heavy thud of his heart, felt the heated pressure of his desire against the softness of her stomach, and the no that had formed in her thoughts melted away into a deep and totally submissive yes, oh yes
"No!"
It was Alex who spoke this time. And his tone made it plain that there was no room for argument, no chance of debate.
His body spoke more clearly than his words, stiffening and pulling away from her, twisting free of her clinging hands and leaving her feeling cold and lost and desperately alone.
"No!" he said more forcefully this time. "This is not going to happen."
The fight he was having against the demands of his senses made it sound far harsher, more brutal than he had actually intended, but perhaps that was just as well. In the past he had let his physical responses to Louise drown out the warning cries of his thoughts — and look where that had got him.
Homeless, unemployed, and facing possible criminal charges.
Well, he'd learned his lesson. Things had to be very different this time.
"This is not what I came here for."
"Oh, isn't it?" The misery of rejection forced the words from her. "I thought it was exactly what you wanted!"
"Well then, you thought wrong. The only thing I want is an explanation. I want to know why you're using my name when you have no right to."
08-05-07, 08:50 AM
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