Jennifer smiled a watery smile. ‘Very good, actually. Rafe said he thought you should be proud of me.’
‘Then so I shall be,’ her mother said stoutly. ‘Is that why you and Rafe quarrelled? Because he wanted to tell me and you were embarrassed?’
‘I thought you’d be embarrassed.’
‘Well, I suppose I might be, darling, when I get around to reading one,’ her mother said, going a little pink. ‘But sex is a natural part of life after all. I think I’ll still want to boast about my daughter the author—except to the vicar, of course!’
‘Oh, Mum!’ Jennifer shook her head helplessly—she’d been so wrong about so very many things. And such a coward. She’d taken Rafe’s words at face value without looking for the meaning beneath the surface, without realising that Rafe, too, was fiercely self-protective. A man so cautious of marriage would be even more cautious of love, of declaring and of accepting it in return. It had been a huge step for him just to admit that he had changed his attitude about children, and the woman he loved had thrown it back in his face!
‘Rate and I didn’t quarrel about that—not exactly.’ She hugged her arms around her waist. ‘He wants me to go back to England with him and I was worried about leaving you.’
‘Well, I didn’t expect him to move in here with us, Jen,’ her mother said deflatingly. ‘Of course your place is with your husband. How could it be otherwise? You never talked about it, but I knew that after his Amazon trip was over you would fly the nest with Rafe—I thought that was why you were arranging all those medical benefits for me. I guessed when Rafe mentioned about how we could use the upstairs room as a suite that it wouldn’t be long before you were leaving. It’s a good idea of his about the room, don’t you think? You wouldn’t mind us turning it into a guestroom? Of course, we’d make sure it was kept free for when you and Rafe and the baby visit...’
Paula was full of plans, and so, suddenly, was Jennifer. Why had
she insisted on making life so complicated for herself when it was really all so blindingly simple? Rafe was right—they could work things out, providing that she wanted to work things out. And she knew now that she did, that she wanted to embrace life, not hide from it or live it only vicariously, through her books.
She ran across the waving grass, listening for Bonzer’s bark but hearing only the empty wind in the beech trees along the drive. Through the shrubbery around the back of the cottage garden she thought she saw a glimpse of Bonzer’s waving tail, and she veered towards the orchard in so much haste she almost missed him.
Rafe was leaning against the side of Dot’s ramshackle potting shed, his head tilted back against the weathered timber, his eyes closed, and as she stepped closer on the soft earth she could see a faint glister on the high cheekbones and a thin trail of silver through the stubble on the side of his jaw.
Oh, God...
The shock of fierce tenderness that pierced Jennifer’s heart nearly sent her to her knees. He had freely displayed his rage but he had come out here to hide like a little boy with his pain, like the lonely, bewildered nine-year-old boy he must have been in his father’s house, desperately missing his mother and struggling against a deep sense of emotional isolation.
‘Rafe...’
Her soft sigh made his eyelids flicker in alarm, but they merely closed tighter, and he quickly raised his forearm to rest across his eyes, his fist clenched.
Not just pain—but grief and anger. She moved around in front of him, knowing that the measure of his hurt was also a measure of his love. He might never be able to bring himself to say it to her again, but she would know...
‘Rafe, darling...please, look at me.’
He didn’t move, his body a rigid line of fierce rejection, and she put her tentative hands on his chest, feeling the sharp recoil of his muscles.
She picked up his balled fist from his side and pressed her lips to the white knuckles, then placed it between her breasts against her heart, wondering how to begin. It awed and shamed her to think that she had brought the man she loved to the point of tears.
‘I’m so afraid of you,’ she whispered. ‘So awfully afraid of what you make me feel. You make me feel so greedy and needy—wanting things that I thought I could never have.’ She pressed herself against the rigid wall of his body, trapping his hand between them, resting her cheek against his chest, absorbing the shuddering beat of his heart as she slid her arms around his lean waist, knowing that she was going to have to humble herself and not caring.
‘Like you...I never thought I would be able to have you, except for this one, brief time. I couldn’t let myself even think of what a future with you would be like. I couldn’t even admit to myself that I loved you, let alone admit it to you. I was afraid it would give you too much power to hurt me...’
He didn’t move, but the quality of his rigidity had changed, his tension now charged with a new stillness.
‘I want—I want to be with you. I want to be allowed to love you, I want to be loved. I want to give you our child to love and be loved. I want you to have everything that you want and be happy for ever, and if I can give you any small part of that happiness I will.’ She buried her face in his chest. ‘So, please, ask me again, Rafe...ask me to come and live with you and be your love and prove all the pleasures with you. Or, if you won’t—let me do the asking...’
The arm that was over his eyes came down over her head, across the back of her shoulders, the fist still clenched.
‘Damn you! How could you do that to me?’ he said rawly, his angry breath stirring her fringe, and she knew it was going to be all right. ‘How could you listen to me tell you I love you and want to live my life with you, and turn me away like that, with those words?’
She lifted her head against the brace of his arm, letting him see her drenched brown eyes, seeing the bloodshot green of his. ‘But you didn’t tell me you loved me,’ she said gently. ‘You didn’t say anything about love until just now, in the car.’
‘I must have—I told you I wanted you, and my baby, and you kicked me in the teeth.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She lifted her hand and laid it along his rough cheek, her thumb stroking his jaw, feeling the dampness there. ‘But I didn’t know how you felt, only what I was feeling. I was so confused and it just sounded as if you wanted things convenient for you.’
‘I’ve never told a woman I loved her before,’ he said fiercely. ‘I was working up to it slowly, and you jumped in and wanted to know how long it would last, as if you thought you’d get tired of me.’
Tired of Rafe? She looked into his grim expression and knew that they had been racked by the same uncertainties.