Ryan traced it with a provocative finger. ‘Not necessarily...’
Jane’s abused heart clenched in her chest.
‘Not if we regularised the situation.’
The blood drained out of her face, rushing to restart her stalled heart. Shock made her whisper barely audible. ‘What?’
‘Well, if you married me, we could sleep together as often as we like without offending your puritan soul!’ But he was laughing as he said it. He was joking—he had to be!
She recoiled. ‘You never said anything about marriage!’ Or love. Didn’t a declaration of love traditionally come first?
He shifted back from her, an infinitesimal distance, still smiling, but with a wariness in the back of his eyes that deepened her sense of foreboding. ‘Does that mean your answer would be no?’
She noticed the conditional tense. He hadn’t actually asked her a question yet, had he? It had been more of an evasively phrased statement. All Jane’s old insecurities came rushing back as she remembered the numerous false hopes that Ryan had taken delight in tormenting her with over the past two years. A love/hate relationship he had called it—but it was Jane who had done the loving and Ryan the hating. What if this was just another trap?
‘I suppose, if I said yes, I’d find myself jilted at the altar. That would be the ultimate revenge for you, wouldn’t it? To turn the tables and humiliate me in exactly the same way that I humiliated you—’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she knew she had made a fatal mistake. Ryan’s face turned to stone and he slid out of the bed as if it were contaminated.
‘If that’s honestly the way you feel then any relationship between us is obviously futile. You’re never going to completely trust me, are you? No matter how many times I prove myself.’ He swept up his clothes and began pulling them on, the tenderness of a few moments ago wiped away as if it had never existed.
‘Oh, yes, you’ll sleep with me...even have a blazing affair with me against your better judgement. But you’ll always withhold yourself from true intimacy because you don’t trust me to behave honourably. I’m not the one who’s hung up on Ava—it’s you! You want to be a martyr to the past? Fine! You keep your trust...and I’ll keep my honour! I thought I’d found a woman of pride and courage, but it seems I was mistaken—you’re just another lost cause!’
CHAPTER TEN
THE long black evening gown shimmered and swirled around her ankles as Jane sailed through the crowded hotel restaurant, ignoring the curious looks of startled recognition that followed her determined progress.
She could see Ryan in a tight knot of people near the centre of the room. Less than twenty-four hours ago he had been shaking with pleasure in the privacy of Jane’s arms, teasing her about getting married. Now he was the quintessential public Ryan Blair, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, drinking champagne and making deals.
A lost cause, was she?
She’d show him courage!
It wasn’t going to be easy; she knew that. He was going to be savagely uncooperative. He was angry and he was hurting and he had had the whole day to brood. She had offered a gross insult to his honour, his pride and his manhood.
She should have known that Ryan wouldn’t flaunt the idea of marriage lightly. Given his traumatic experience with Ava, it was understandable that he might prefer to approach it obliquely, protecting himself with humour, his defences ready to snap into place at the slightest hint of rejection. He had never said he loved her, it was true, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t... She had never told him how she felt, either, and men were notoriously less articulate about their feelings than women.
Peggy had not been the only one to be shocked when she had woken up this morning to find that Ryan had driven back to Auckland some time during the night. He had left a brief note of farewell for his mother and siste
r and a sealed envelope for Carl. No message for Jane—which she supposed was a message in itself.
‘What happened?’ Peggy had asked her bluntly.
Jane, red-eyed with weeping, still hadn’t been able to believe it herself. ‘He asked me to marry him.’
‘And you turned him down,’ Peggy had sighed.
‘Yes.’ Her face had looked so tragic Peggy had nearly smiled.
‘Why?’
Jane had blinked. She’d tried to think of some of the reasons which had seemed so utterly compelling the night before.
‘I don’t know,’ she’d realised slowly, horror dawning at her own blind stupidity. ‘He took me by surprise...I suppose there was a part of me that just couldn’t believe that I deserved that much happiness...’
The part of her that was still too much her father’s daughter—the little girl who had learned to expect emotional blows instead of affectionate encouragement, the ‘plain Jane’ who had been told she wasn’t worthy of a mother’s love...
Someone murmured something into Ryan’s ear and he looked up. An intense flare of white-hot emotion flickered across his face when he saw Jane, and then he was watching her approach through veiled eyes, his expression terrifyingly impassive.