‘No,’ she said. ‘He deserved it.’ Joel grimaced at that, making no attempt to lever himself up from his huddled position on the floor. ‘But he’s also right, isn’t he?’ She lifted empty green eyes up to Mac’s. ‘You do only want me for my body. I’m nothing special to you and never will be, will I? I’m not coming back to you, Mac,’
she concluded with dull finality.
He didn’t say a word, not a single word. And the silence clattered around all three of them as he stood there, glaring at the two of them on the floor at his feet.
Then, in a voice Roberta barely recognised as his, it was so raw, Mac said, ‘To hell with you, then,’ and, with a last searing look at Joel, he turned and walked out of the room, shouldering aside Jenny, who had just appeared at the sitting-room door, as if she weren’t there.
‘My God,’ Jenny gasped into the throbbing tension he left behind him. ‘What’s been going on in here?’ Then she saw Joel, still sitting on the floor, nursing his jaw, and alarm widened her big brown eyes. ‘Joel!’ she cried. ‘You’ve cut your lip!’
The front door slammed; Roberta sank weakly into a nearby chair, covering her burning eyes with a cold and trembling hand. ‘Why did you do it, Joel?’ she whispered thickly. ‘Why did you have to rile him like that?’
‘Contrary to your earlier statement today, Miss Chandler,’ he drawled as he dragged himself to his feet, ‘you do need protection when he’s around. Or hadn’t you realised that you were about to lie down and let him walk all over you yet again?’
She winced at the pointed sarcasm, the unpalatable truth in it shrivelling her insides with shame. Joel was right and she had been ready—more than ready—to do anything Mac wanted her to do.
‘Which doesn’t mean you had to be the one to protect me,’ she cried. ‘You and Mac are brothers!’
He nodded. ‘And it’s because I love my brother that I did what I did!’
‘By deliberately goading him into hitting you?’ she choked. ‘By pretending you had something intimate going with me!’
‘It worked, didn’t it?’ he countered. ‘He came on to you all macho and ready to drag you off by your hair.’
She sighed impatiently, half wishing that she had never started all of this. ‘I will not be a party to playing games with Mac’s feelings, Joel,’ she stated firmly.
‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘He’s been playing games with your feelings for long enough! No, listen to me,’ he went on quickly as Roberta paled under that brutal thrust. ‘Mac loves you, Roberta. He has from the first moment he laid eyes on you, only he’s just too damned thick to recognise it. He needs waking up,’ he stated flatly. ‘And if you love him as much as you seem to do, then you’ll help wake him up before he loses his last chance to gain some proper happiness in his life!’
‘He’s not Sleeping Beauty!’ she cried, looking at Joel as if he’d gone stark, staring mad.
‘Yes, he is—in a way,’ Joel insisted, though he smiled at the comparison he had unwittingly made. ‘Only in Mac’s case he was pricked in the finger by the marriage trap, and is so damned scared of being pricked again that he daren’t even look true love in the face without breaking out into a cold sweat!’
‘True love!’ she scoffed. ‘You’re the one who’s blind if you really believe that. Mac doesn’t want me because he loves me! He wants me because I excite him in bed!’
‘And no wonder, if you flame as spectacularly in passion as you do in anger!’ he drawled, hazel eyes twinkling as they ran over her own sparkling eyes, her deliciously trembling mouth and the wicked sensuality of her heaving breasts.
‘Well, find some other sucker to wake your brother up,’ she snapped. ‘I no longer care for the job.’
Joel was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on her bowed head while he played warily with his swelling jaw, then he said carefully, ‘I suppose dinner is off too? Only Lou will be—’
Her head snapped up, her green eyes threatening to splice him in two.
‘OK—OK!’ he said, putting up a defending hand. ‘I can see that you’re too angry with Mac to eat a single morsel, so I’ll just take myself off, and...’ It wasn’t just Mac she was angry with—and Joel knew it.
‘Just get out of here, Joel,’ she suggested huskily. ‘Before I do something we might both regret!’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘WHAT was all that about?’ Jenny demanded in bewilderment once Joel had left.
‘Nothing,’ Roberta said wearily. ‘Just Joel playing one of his sick jokes on his brother at my expense!’
‘You mean it was Mac who split his lip?’ Jenny gasped in disbelief.
‘Well, it certainly wasn’t me!’ Roberta derided, then added grimly, ‘But I’m now wishing it had been!’
Who did he think he was, she thought angrily, trying to interfere in her and Mac’s private life? And how dared he suggest that his brother loved her?
Mac didn’t know the meaning of love. He only knew the meaning of sex. And she was well rid of him! she told herself stubbornly.