He held her closer, resting his jaw against the top of her head, closing his eyes against the acid burn of his own tears. Not tears for himself--he didn't deserve them--but for her.

He tried not to think about how it could have been... how she might have turned to him, how they could have been united by a close bond of friends.h.i.+p and understanding, even if she could never have loved him.

Or maybe even that might have happened as well... Maybe she might even have trusted him enough to let him show her what the physical expression of love and desire between two people really should be.

He felt his muscles tense his desire for her--no longer an old hunger, but a sharp, immediate need.

He was old enough now to know that his love for her would never disappear... never change, and he knew enough of his own nature to accept that he was not the kind of man who could ever inflict on someone else, even if they never actually realised it, the role of being second best. Better to remain on his own than do that.

He looked down at the silky russet wing of hair that concealed Rosie's face.

He had hurt her, almost destroyed her. He, not Ritchie. It had been his reaction, his imagined judgement of her ... his imagined contempt for her that she remembered far more clearly than Ritchie's offence.

She was still trembling, but she had stopped crying... stopped talking.

Exhausted, Rosie lay against Jake's chest. She could feel the heavy,slightly uneven thud of his heartbeat, smell the special personal scentof his body warmth. Instinctively she nestled closer to him, comfortedby it.

She had got it wrong, Jake had told her. He had never blamed her, never felt contemptuous of her, and instinctively she had known that he was telling her the truth.

With that knowledge, with that barrier between them removed, had come an overwhelming need to talk about the past, to let the emotions she had kept dammed up inside her spill out.

Now she felt drained and shaky, light- bodied and empty, cleansed of all her corrosive, bitter memories. She lay in his arms, too weak to move, her physical actions still governed by her emotional needs, and the strongest of all those was her need to be close to him, to just lie here and be held by him, safe, protected, comforted, her pain shared and understood.

She closed her eyes sleepily and then opened them reluctantly as Jake said her name, lifting her head to look at him.

He watched her sombrely, and then lifted his hand to gently move her hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear.

Abruptly she remembered the way he had kissed her outside the Simpsons'

house, and automatically her glance slid to his mouth, her own lips parting, her lungs expanding as she had to gulp in air.

No one else had ever kissed her like that, made her feel like that, made her forget everything but the sweet intensity of the pleasure curling slowly through her.

Jake bent his head and her heart started to hammer frantically fast.

Was he going to kiss her again? Would it feel the same this time?

Would she...?

She touched her lips nervously with her tongue, wetting their dryness, her body tensing as she heard the way he said her name.

Somewhere within her a stern voice warned her that she was being deliberately, dangerously provocative, but she didn't want to listen to it. She wanted him to kiss her, she recognised with a fierce lurch of

her heart. She wanted him to hold her, to touch her, to... Impulsively she reached out and touched him, placing her palm against his jaw. Her breathing quickened with the sudden sensual awareness that flooded her.

"Rosie."

His voice sounded different as he said her name, thickened, slurred. He turned his head so that his lips touched her palm, caressing it.

A deep shudder went through her, her eyes unwittingly imploring as she reached up to wards him.

"Rosie..."

He had intended to protest, to stop her, to explain to her that what was happening to her was just an automatic physical reaction to the emotional turmoil she had just experienced, but instead, as she reached up to him and he felt her breath against his mouth, he ignored what conscience told him he should do and instead stroked her parted lips with his tongue, tasting the richness of the wine she had drunk, feeling the way her mouth and then her whole body quivered openly in response to him, feeling the way his own body responded as though galvanized by a surge of sensation he was to tally powerless to control.

He heard the soft murmur she made in her throat as he kissed her, felt the soft, vulnerable warmth of her body as she pressed closer to him, and knew that she was not really aware of what she was doing.

His hands touched her face, exploring its delicacy, tracing the shape of her ear, the line of her neck, feeling her shudder violently be neath his touch, and was helpless to prevent himself from deepening his kiss in response to that shudder, tasting her with his tongue, feeling her brief, hesitant shock before she melted against him, opening her mouth fully to him, her hands moving urgently over his back, so obviously impatient with his s.h.i.+rt and the bar rier it made between her touch and his flesh that he tugged it out of the way himself, whispering against her mouth how much he wanted her to touch him, and how much he wanted to touch her.

Jake wanted to touch her... Rosie tensed and opened her eyes.

Her hands were pressed flat against the hard, warm flesh of his back, her mouth was soft and swollen from his kiss the kiss she had silently implored him to give her.

She was trembling violently, aware of so many conflicting emotions that she could scarcely make sense of what she was feeling.

"Touch me," Jake had told her, and then he had told her as well how much he wanted to touch her.

Now he was holding her, his mouth gently caressing her throat, his hands... She shuddered as she realised how close his hands were to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. All she had to do was to move very slightly and then he would be touching them.

Would the fingertips which had traced the bones of her face so delicately and sensuously arouse the same pleasure within her if they touched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s?

Her body's response to her thoughts made her catch her breath in shock as she felt the fierce pulse of desire that arced through her.

"Rosie ... what is it? What's wrong?"

Unable to answer him, she wrapped herself around him, clinging shakily to him, half exalted by what she was feeling and half afraid, but not challenging the extra ordinariness of what was happening, or the fact that it should be this man who was causing her to feel like this, to experience desire and need, to suddenly know that behind the fear and selfloathing of herself as a woman lay a sensuality that was strong and powerful enough to sweep aside and overcome all the trauma of the past if she let it.

"Rosie..."

She felt Jake hold her, move her, as though he were going to push her gently away from him, but, as his hands slid against the silk of her dress and came into contact with the soft fullness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he went very still.

Rosie tensed as well, scarcely daring to move, to breathe... unable to initiate the touch her senses suddenly craved, but longing, aching for him to touch her, to gently remove the barrier of her dress and the silk bra she was wearing beneath it and to caress her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with the same care and tenderness with which he had touched her face... to make her feel whole again... clean again, to let her experience a man's desire and to express her own.

And yet, when he did as she had wished, she was suddenly overcome with tension and panic, freezing with a cold fear which could not be dispelled by the warm touch of his hands against her body.

"Rosie ... it's all right ... it's all right..." As she heard his voice, heard its rea.s.surance and steadiness, felt him gently release her, the band of fear imprisoning her snapped.

"No ... please ... don't stop ... I want..." The husky, stammered words pierced him like darts of acid fire as Jake watched her... loving her... wanting her... knowing that, in her emotionally wrought state, she believed she wanted him.. knowing that he had no right to take advantage of her confusion, and knowing as she raised her mouth to his and started to kiss him, that there was no way he was going to be able to resist her... to stop... This time when he caressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s the icy coldness of fear had gone, and in its place was a sensation so achingly sensuous and pleasurable that it was Rosie herself who arched her body up towards him, her hands holding his head, her fingers sliding fiercely into his hair, her head dropping back against the damask fabric of the settee as gently, watchfully at first, and then, as he realised that the sensation of his mouth caressing her nipples had not frightened or distressed her, finally giving in to his own pa.s.sionate need to express his desire for her, he suckled on the hard points of flesh until the needle-sharp darts of sensation that pierced her made her cry out frantically in shocked pleasure.

Drugged with arousal and need, Rosie moved closer to him, and then abruptly she realised what she was doing, and what could happen if she didn't stop.

Jake felt her tension, her withdrawal, and lifted his head to look at her. Her eyes had gone blank with shock and panic.

Had his touch, his caress... his love're minded her of Ritchie? Disgust and pain welled up inside him.

"Rosie, please..."

He had been about to beg her to forgive him, but Rosie misinterpreted the anguish in his voice and shook her head before he could finish, her eyes still registering the intensity of her emotions.

"No... No... I can't," she told him.

"I couldn't go through that again ... I couldn't endure killing another baby..."

Rosie was barely aware of what she was saying, driven by the weight of her pain and guilt, by the knowledge of how easily she had forgotten the past... forgotten what had happened.. She was sickened by how easy it would have been for her to give in to that ache still pulsing through her and to encourage Jake to make love fully to her.

How could she have forgotten what happened with Ritchie.-the baby she had conceived the panic and anger she had felt, the guilt and pain when she had lost it, the way that loss had haunted her, shadowing her life?

She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts, so shocked by her own lack of control by the speed with which her physical desire had overwhelmed everything else, obliterating all that she ought to have felt, that she was completely unaware of what she had said and what she had revealed until she heard Jake demanding harshly, "What baby? What are you saying? You told me..."

Realising what she had done, what she had betrayed, Rosie focused on Jake's face.

The panic that hit her was so intense, so strong, that it was like an icy tide physically engulfing her, swallowing her up and dragging her down into a dark, roaring void.

She came out of it slowly and reluctantly, not wanting to remember what happened, accepting the gla.s.s of wine Jake was giving her, distantly aware of his tension, but withdrawing from it.

She felt thirsty, her throat and mouth dry, but when she asked Jake for another gla.s.s of wine he frowned slightly, pausing before pouring it for her.

She drank it greedily, needing its warmth, its numbing benevolence, frowning uncertainly as she glanced down at her body and realised that, although her dress was fastened, she wasn't wearing a bra beneath it.

Her nipples pulsed and ached, openly erect beneath the silk.

She suddenly felt overwhelmed by a desire to close her eyes and go to sleep. She yawned and then yawned again, ignoring the sharp urgency in Jake's voice.

"I'm tired," she told him petulantly.

"I want to go to bed."

She stood up, her eyes widening in shock as she felt the room sway around her. The two extra gla.s.ses of wine she had insisted on having were making her head swim, confusing her thoughts. She yawned again, and closed her eyes.

Jake caught her as she staggered. By the time he had placed her carefully on the settee she was already deeply asleep.

And drunk? On three gla.s.ses of wine? A heavy, rich red wine, and she had not had any thing to eat, he reminded himself.

Add to that the emotional turmoil she had been through, and perhaps it was not surprising that her body and her mind wanted to find escape in sleep.

He ought to take her home, but he couldn't let her go until she had explained that frantic, pleading statement she had made to him.

Had she conceived Ritchie's child? When he had gone to ask her she had told him coldly that she had not conceived. But then, given what he knew now, was it likely that she would have told him anything else?

He bent grimly over her, picking her up.

Luckily Mrs. Lindow always kept the spare beds made up. She could spend the night in one of them and then tomorrow they could talk.

Whether she had conceived Ritchie's child or not made no difference to the way he felt about her, to his love for her.

But if she had... He flinched as he recognised what such an event must have done to her... on top of all that she was already suffering.

There was no point in trying to wake her now. As he carried her towards the door he paused and looked down into her sleeping face, brus.h.i.+ng his mouth gently against hers.

"I love you, Rosie," he whispered against her lips and, even though he knew she could not have heard him, her mouth seemed to soften into a slight smile.

An omen for the future?

CHAPTER SIX.

because he was determined there was going to be a future for them, Jake acknowledged as he carried her upstairs and carefully laid her down on the bed in the guest bedroom before removing her dress and then going to get one of his s.h.i.+rts to put on her before he pulled the duvet up over her.

She was so deeply asleep that she had barely stirred while he undressed her, and now he stood beside the bed, looking down at her.

It was just as well that she had called a halt to their lovemaking. He knew well enough that the pa.s.sion and intensity of her response to him had been caused not so much by any personal desire for him, but by the release of all her pent-up emotions.