He leant over and blew out the candle, and in the velvety blackness she felt his lips press briefly over her ruffled brow, her eyes—each in turn—and her mouth. Then, still without speaking, he was gone, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE WAS driving her crazy!
Four days later her uninvited house guest was still firmly ensconced, and Jane’s peace and quiet had been irrevocably shattered. The phone was constantly ringing and Ryan was a perpetual whirlwind of activity. If he wasn’t firing off mem
os and faxes or conducting conference calls, he was despatching his domestic duties with infuriating efficiency or tackling some of the most urgently needed repair work on the house with tools and materials he had salvaged from the garage.
He seemed impervious to the discomforts of the cramped cottage—indeed, seemed to treat the daily drudgery as a challenge! If she escaped down to the beach he imposed his presence on her there, too—jogging, body-surfing, leafing through reports or pestering her with conversation that was impossible to ignore. He was every bit as relentless on his mission of mercy as he had been at pursuing his vengeance.
‘Don’t you ever relax?’ she had grumbled at him on the second evening, when he was once again nagging at her to play a game of chess rather than curling up next to the oil lamp with her book. For all he wouldn’t let her lift a finger he seemed determined to involve her in everything he did.
He looked genuinely surprised. ‘I am relaxed.’
‘If this is you relaxed I’d hate to see you excited,’ she said drily, and instantly regretted her words when his eyes gleamed with amusement.
‘You already have,’ he reminded her. ‘And you didn’t hate it at all.’
She scrunched deeper in the comfy old easy chair, wishing he didn’t look so impossibly sexy in black. His trousers and short-sleeved shirt were plain, and unadorned by designer labels, yet somehow were rendered elegant by the wearer. He could ring the changes in a wardrobe that seemed to mysteriously grow larger by the day while Jane was forced by convenience to wear whatever was easiest to put on—usually the ubiquitous shorts and T-shirt.
She tossed her head. She didn’t care how she looked, she was no longer one of the dress-to-impress brigade.
‘I meant you seem to think you have to fill every waking moment with activity,’ she said, watching him set out the chess pieces he had found in some dusty corner. ‘The only time you rest is when you’re sleeping.’
She’d used to be like that, too, she realised—constantly wound up, always restlessly looking for the next challenge, alert for the next stab in the back from friend or foe. Until it had all been snatched away from her she hadn’t realised how subtly it had ground down her enjoyment of life.
He shrugged. ‘It comes naturally to me. I’ve worked hard all my life. In fact, this is the closest thing I’ve had to a holiday for years.’ His eyelids drooped as he remembered that the last holiday he had planned was going to be his honeymoon.
Jane shifted uncomfortably under his stare. ‘Ava always said you found business more interesting than you did her,’ she blurted, unknowingly echoing his thoughts.
He abandoned the chess pieces to come prowling across the room. ‘Did she come running to you with all her petty complaints about my shortcomings?’
‘They weren’t petty, not to Ava.’
‘Obviously not. But if she had come to me with them, instead of you, we might have worked them out.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Jane involuntarily, remembering Ava’s soft brown eyes brimming with anguished tears over her love for Conrad. Whatever Ryan had suffered, at least he hadn’t had to cope with the added humiliation of knowing he was being dumped for a man who didn’t have a tenth of his personal charisma.
His eyes narrowed as they always did when he aimed one of his stinging verbal darts. ‘Didn’t I satisfy her in bed? Was that why she was so quick to believe I’d been having an affair with someone else?’
‘You weren’t even sleeping together—’ Jane protested, and bit her lip as she realised the trap he had set.
He looked grimly satisfied by her admission that she had been privy to the most intimate details of his relationship with Ava. ‘Did she also tell you why?’
‘It was none of my business,’ she said, looking away. Maybe if she hadn’t actively discouraged Ava’s early confidences about her relationship with Ryan events might not have been forced to such a drastic turn. But she had dealt with the fierce envy that she had felt whenever Ava had talked about Ryan by appearing to be supremely uninterested.
‘I guess you knew she was still a virgin. She said she wanted to wait until we were married,’ he said softly, his shrewd gaze on Jane’s guiltily averted face. ‘Did you encourage her in that view, during your girlish chats, by any chance...?’
Jane’s blue eyes flashed as her chin tilted proudly up. ‘Oh, no, you don’t—you can’t blame me for that! I never did understand how she could—’ She clamped her jaw shut before she said too much.
‘What? Deny me? Resist me?’ he probed, with a trace of his former silky malice. ‘I know you find me sexually irresistible, Jane,’ he said, making her blush. ‘But we’re talking about someone with a strong sense of morality and an innate shyness.’
Jane couldn’t help snorting. It hadn’t been morality that had stopped Ava from sleeping with her fiancé—it had been her love for another man. She certainly hadn’t been shy with Conrad!
‘Whereas you...’ he murmured speculatively. ‘I think that if you were in love with a man, he wouldn’t be able to keep you out of his bed.’
Her flush deepened as she thought of the wanton way she had behaved in that hotel room. ‘If you’re implying that I have no sense of morality...’