‘Yes,’ she told him fiercely, ‘that’s all it is.’ Recklessly she threw back her head and stared into his eyes. ‘I’ll go to bed with you, if that’s what you want, Jonas, but I don’t love you.’
For a moment she held her breath, stupefied by her own recklessness. She watched as his eyes hardened, his mouth compressing with open cruelty.
‘So you’ll go to bed with me, will you? Why? So that you can relieve the frustration of loving a dead man? Oh no, Sara,’ he told her with soft venom. ‘There’s no way I’m playing that game. Sorry to disappoint you,’ he added, subjecting her to an insultingly sexual inspection that told her he was both aware of and unmoved by her arousal. ‘I’m afraid you’re just going to have to burn,’ he taunted her. ‘I’ll take you home now,’ he added coolly. ‘Think of me tonight when you’re all alone in your cold little bed.’
Sara’s emotions were too close to the surface to allow any degree of self-control. Shaking with a mixture of longing and hatred, she said thickly, ‘My bed isn’t cold, and I won’t be alone, Jonas. Rick lives on in my mind and my heart, even if he isn’t with me in the flesh.’
For a moment she thought he might actually strike her. She could see his muscles tense under his savage attempt at self-control, and as he threw open the door and strode out into the hall without a word to her, she almost wished he had hit her. On a wave of sickening self-knowledge, she recognised that part of her had actually, even if it was only for a second, wanted his physical abuse of her, because in hitting her, in giving way to the emotions she had deliberately aroused in him, he would have given her a genuine reason to resent and despise him. As it was, as he drove her home in an icy cold silence, the person she despised was herself.
Luckily Vanessa and Sam were too engrossed in one another to express anything more than concern at her excuse that she had returned early because of a headache. It was only when Sara was alone in bed that she was able to examine in more detail the improbability of Jonas actually being in love with her, and the intensity of her own fear that he should be. Fear sprang from an inner admission of one’s own vulnerability; she knew that. She shivered. If she was vulnerable to Jonas, it was only sexually. Sexually he could arouse her, but that didn’t mean she loved him or wanted his love. She didn’t.
It seemed incredible that she could have aroused such deep feelings in him in such a short space of time. She and Rick had fallen in love slowly and gradually, gently almost. And yet she knew Jonas hadn’t been lying to her. The truth had been there in his eyes, his feelings laid bare for her to read. For the first time it struck her how hard it must have been for a man of his stamp to openly admit his feelings for her. Or had it simply never struck him that they might not be reciprocated? It would be typical of his arrogance, Sara told herself, finding release for her guilt in the thought.
CHAPTER SIX
FOR three days they saw nothing of either Jonas or Vanessa, and Sara told herself that she was glad that Jonas had decided to accept the fact that she just wasn’t interested in him.
A spell of thundery weather kept her out of the garden, but there was still plenty to do inside the house. However, Sara was not so sure now that she should be the one to choose its new décor, and when she was alone with Sam one afternoon, she decided to raise the subject with him.
‘We haven’t seen much of Vanessa lately,’ she commented, and watched him scowl.
‘I told her to stay away.’ He looked up in time to catch the shock in Sara’s eyes, and moved restlessly in his chair. ‘It’s no use, Sara,’ he told her. ‘What can I possibly offer a woman? My legs will never be as they were; I’m going to have to spend a considerable amount of my life in this chair; I’ve got a six-year-old daughter and all the emotional baggage that comes from having a committed relationship. If Vanessa was less sensitive, less easily hurt…’
‘She wouldn’t be the woman you love,’ Sara said quietly. ‘And you do love her, don’t you, Sam?’
‘Too much to tie her down to the sort of life she’d have with me. Financially I’m comfortably off, I know, but I can’t offer her anything that compares with what Jonas gives her.’
‘No, but you can give her something she wants far more. She loves you,’ Sara told him. ‘If I wasn’t sure that you loved her I’d agree with what you’re doing,
but you do love her. And if it’s me you’re worrying about, then don’t,’ she added crisply. ‘I can soon bring my secretarial training up to date and get a job…’
‘You’ll always have a home with me, Sara,’ Sam interrupted roughly. ‘And Vanessa knows that. If I could be sure that she wasn’t acting out of some misguided sense of pity…’ he burst out emotionally, his face muscles tense and compressed. ‘She offered to drive me in to Dorchester for my hospital check up tomorrow, but I told her you’d take me…’
Hesitating only for a moment, Sara said coolly, ‘Then you’d better telephone her and tell her that you’ve changed your mind, because I can’t. I’ve got a date of my own that I can’t break, tomorrow afternoon.’
‘With Jonas?’ her brother grinned teasingly at her. ‘Aha, I thought you weren’t as immune as you’ve been claiming! Vanessa will be over the moon; she’s convinced that you’re the ideal girl for him. She says she’s never seen him get in such a state over any woman before.’
She had made up her fictitious date on the spur of the moment, determined to give Vanessa an opportunity to convince Sam that her feelings were genuine, but she was appalled that Sam should leap to the conclusion that her supposed date must be with Jonas.
However, her brother was frowning again, his movements as he levered himself out of his chair and walked haltingly over to the French windows, jerky with tension and frustration. ‘I can’t just ring her up like that and tell her I’ve changed my mind,’ he protested. ‘Besides,’ he added roughly, ‘whatever she may or may not feel for me, everything I’ve already said holds good. She might think she cares for me now, but she knows nothing about living with the reality of a man who’s half crippled.’
‘Maybe not, but what makes you feel you have the right to deny her the chance to discover if she can live with that reality?’ asked Sara coolly. ‘You’re not being fair to her, Sam,’ she told her brother. ‘If the situation was reversed, would you still love her?’
His immediate, ‘Of course,’ made him grimace faintly and look at Sara with lifted eyebrows. ‘Okay, I get your message, Sara, but the point is…’
‘The point is that you’re letting your pride blind you to the fact that you could be hurting Vanessa more by rejecting her than you ever could by marrying her—I take it it is marriage that’s in your mind, and not…’
‘For God’s sake, of course it is!’ exploded Sam roughly. ‘Just what do you take me for, Sara? She’s already had enough bad knocks from life without me adding another. She isn’t secure enough in herself to feel happy in a relationship she couldn’t feel was permanent.’
‘No, she isn’t,’ Sara agreed. ‘Go and telephone her, Sam,’ she begged her brother. ‘Tell her you’ve changed your mind and that you’d like her to pick you up after all. Let her make her own decisions about whether or not she can adapt to your way of life—don’t make them for her.’
Holding her breath she watched as her brother sat down and reached for the telephone. He knew the number off by heart, she recognised, watching him punch in the numbers. Vanessa must have answered the phone; Sam’s voice was distinctly husky as he said her name. Quietly moving out of earshot, Sara left him to it.
* * *
That he hadn’t been entirely successful was obvious the next day when Vanessa drew up outside in her car.
She looked pale, her mouth tight with pain and tension, and although she longed to reassure her, Sara felt she could not interfere further. Carly came rushing down from her room to greet their visitor, flinging herself enthusiastically into her arms.