For some reason this seemed to agitate Charles, and Jago frowned. ‘I think that’s enough talk now. You need to relax. Everything can be sorted out later.’
Charles ignored him, gulping in air and staring at his daughter. ‘I shouldn’t have said it. Any of it. None of it was true. He loves you and he always did. And you love him. I suppose that’s all that matters.’
Jago’s eyes rested on Katy and his firm mouth tightened ominously.
‘He said something to you?’ His voice was soft. ‘I should have guessed. What did he say to you, Katy? What was I supposed to have done?’
She licked dry lips, no longer caring that they had an audience. ‘Revenge. He said that you only wanted to marry me because that would be the ultimate revenge.’
There was a long silence. ‘And you believed him?’
‘I couldn’t think of any other reason you’d be marrying me.’
Jago inhaled deeply. ‘Could you not?’
He looked at her thoughtfully, but before he could speak the cardiologist arrived with his team and the attention turned back to her father.
Katy stood next to her father, feeling totally numb as Jago talked quietly to his colleague, explaining the history and discussing the ECG trace while the rest of the team listened.
She was only half-aware of what was going on as they examined her father again and made arrangements to transfer him to Coronary Care.
Satisfied that the cardiologists now had the situation well in hand, Jago strode over to the trolley.
‘They’re going to take you to Coronary Care now, Mr Westerling.’ His gaze rested on the older man’s face for a moment, his expression totally inscrutable, and Caroline sighed, indicating that she was completely aware of his conflicting emotions.
‘Jago, we owe you so much. How can we ever thank you for what you’ve done? And how can we ever make amends for keeping the two of you apart for so long?’
Galvanised into action by those words, Jago wrenched off his gloves and tossed them into the bin. ‘I don’t care about that. All I care about at the moment is having a conversation with Katy without an audience.’ He lifted his eyes to hers. ‘In my office. Now.’
‘I’ll sort out the transfer,’ Charlotte muttered, and Libby smiled weakly.
‘Exciting, isn’t it? Life with my family. I bet you can’t wait for the next episode.’ But her eyes were worried as they rested on her father and she stepped closer to the trolley.
Katy stood in Jago’s office waiting for him, her legs trembling.
The door clicked shut and she turned on him, her voice shaking with passion. ‘Eleven years ago did you really tell my father you wanted to marry me?’
He tensed, obviously surprised by the directness of her approach. ‘Yes.’
She gave a groan and sank onto the chair as all the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place.
‘So that’s why my father was so determined to break us up. I could never understand why he was so worried that it was serious. You never seemed serious to me. You kept telling me that you didn’t do commitment.’
‘I didn’t until I met you. When I saw you that day you fell off your horse, it took every ounce of willpower at my disposal not to roll you on your back in the grass and follow my baser instincts,’ he confessed rawly, dragging his gaze away from her and pacing across the room to stare out of the window. ‘You were so unlike the women I usually dated that I told myself that I had to back off.’
‘I was so in love with you,’ Katy muttered, ‘but I never for one moment thought that you loved me, too. You showed absolutely no signs of it.’
He gave a groan and raked his fingers through his glossy dark hair. ‘Of course I did, but you were just too inexperienced to see it. And I was afraid that what you were feeling for me was no more than a childish crush because I was your first lover.’
‘My only lover, Jago,’ she said quietly, and he stilled, every muscle in his powerful body suddenly tense as he absorbed what she’d just said.
‘That can’t be true.’
‘After what I shared with you, I just couldn’t bring myself to sleep with anyone else,’ she confessed. ‘I had several boyfriends, but when it came to it I just couldn’t do it. Part of me always felt that I was yours.’
Jago was across the room in three long strides. ‘Freddie?’
She shook her head. ‘We were only ever friends. It was very much a marriage of convenience. He didn’t even seem to mind when I ended it.’