Burning Obsession Read online

  The other woman stood up, her legs smooth and shapely, slightly tanned, and completely bare. ‘I have to be on my way now, I’m on duty soon,’ she said regretfully.

  Kelly’s father stood up too. ‘It’s very kind of you to offer me a lift. I’ll just get my jacket.’

  ‘But—’ Kelly frowned her puzzlement. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the hospital,’ her father replied cheerfully. ‘Dr Jones has decided to do some more tests on me.’

  ‘But this morning—’

  ‘I rang him, Kelly,’ her father said gently. ‘As I started to wake up this afternoon I have a vague recollection of remembering something. The doctor wants to see how far it goes.’

  Still she frowned. ‘And he sent Miss Fellows—Anne, in her spare time, to collect you?’

  ‘No,’ the nurse laughed. ‘I was driving over this way, so I offered.’

  Once again suspicion flared within Kelly. This woman’s explanation didn’t ring true. Why would an important part of a medical team drive out here to pick up a patient, even if she was in the area? There had to be a motive behind her actions, and that motive was Jordan!

  ‘That was—very kind of you,’ she said jerkily.

  ‘Oh, Anne is known for her kindness,’ Jordan said deeply, rather pointedly Kelly thought.

  ‘I’ll get my jacket,’ Kelly’s father repeated. ‘I won’t be a moment.’

  ‘I’ll wait outside in the car for you,’ Anne Fellows called out to him.

  ‘Fine,’ he turned to smile. ‘I can get a taxi back when I’m through.’

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to drive you?’ Kelly asked him. ‘I could wait with you and drive you back.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be. I don’t want to keep you waiting around for hours.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t mind—’

  ‘Let the man go off with a beautiful woman, Kelly,’ Jordan interrupted firmly. ‘At his age he won’t get many more opportunities,’ he added mockingly.

  ‘At his age?’ Anne Fellows frowned. ‘But I don’t understand, he’s only—’

  ‘Private joke,’ Kelly’s father explained. ‘I’ll tell you about it on the way to the hospital.’

  The nurse shrugged, turning to look at Kelly and Jordan. ‘It was nice to meet you both again. Perhaps I’ll see you again some time,’ she smiled.

  ‘I’d take bets on it,’ Jordan smiled back, a smile that tugged at Kelly’s heartstrings. It was a smile completely without mockery or cruelty, the sort of smile he had once given her.

  ‘You’d take bets on it!’ Kelly stormed once they were alone, the slamming of the front door telling of her father’s departure. ‘You know damn well it’s a certainty.’

  ‘As long as you do too…’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ she snapped. ‘I’m certainly not as blind as you think I am.’

  ‘Don’t you like her?’ he raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes, I like her! Is that supposed to make a difference?’

  ‘It should do.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t. Now what else did you find today apart from Anne Fellows?’ she asked caustically. ‘Or was she the leak to the papers?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ Jordan dismissed impatiently. ‘I found out damn all,’ he scowled. ‘No one was willing to tell me a thing, about Ben Durston or how he got his information. I spent all morning trying to get someone to talk to me, and then I had a boring lunch with an editor who had no intention of telling me a thing, except that Ben Durston is freelance, and that he occasionally comes up with an exclusive like this. Which is probably the reason for their silence—he must be invaluable.’ His mouth twisted.

  ‘So we’re no further forward?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why didn’t you telephone and let us know you wouldn’t be back for lunch?’ she asked waspishly.

  ‘Probably for the same reason you refused to tell Mrs McLeod where you were going,’ he said tautly. ‘I didn’t consider it any of your business.’

  ‘I didn’t refuse to tell Mrs McLeod where I was going! I told her I would be out for an hour, I didn’t realise I had to report my every move. Lunch was different,’ she insisted at his pointed glance. ‘You caused a great deal of inconvenience.’

  ‘Mrs McLeod told me that it was salad for lunch,’ Jordan taunted. ‘Hardly an inconvenience.’

  ‘It was to me,’ Kelly said tightly.

  ‘Where have you been this afternoon, Kelly?’ he demanded grimly.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Out where?’

  She faced him defiantly. ‘Just out.’

  ‘You’ve been drinking,’ he said harshly.

  ‘Only—’

  ‘Haven’t you?’ he demanded fiercely, his body taut.

  He was in a dangerous mood, Kelly could tell that. And yet she didn’t care, feeling in a rather tense mood herself. ‘Yes, I have. What has that to do with you?’

  He moved to shake her. ‘Who were you drinking with? Who, Kelly?’

  ‘M-Maggie,’ she faltered, his glittering eyes and bared teeth telling her of his knife-edge emotions. ‘I was drinking with Maggie,’ she repeated nervously.

  ‘Liar!’ he rasped. ‘You’ve been with some man this afternoon, haven’t you? Who was he, Kelly? What’s the name of your lover?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘I don’t have a lover. I told you I don’t, that I never have had.’

  ‘You lied to me,’ he told her fiercely. ‘Did he take you to his home or to a hotel?’

  ‘I’ve been to Maggie’s!’ she insisted. ‘Honestly I have.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he ground out.

  ‘But I have. Call her. Call her, Jordan,’ she suggested desperately, realising she had woken an anger inside him that she had never seen before.

  His mouth twisted with bitter humour. ‘Call that bitch? You have to be joking! She’d tell me any old rubbish if she thought it would get to me. You’ve probably covered this alibi with her, anyway.’

  ‘No, Jordan,’ Kelly’s tone was almost pleading, his fingers biting painfully into her arms. ‘I really was with her.’

  ‘You’ve been drinking whisky—you never drink whisky.’

  ‘It was an accident. I didn’t realise—’

  ‘You’re lying to me, Kelly. Lying!’ He shook her again.

  ‘No, no, I’m not. Maggie gave me the whisky and I drank it without realising. I—What are you doing?’ she cried as he swung her up into his arms. ‘Jordan, where are you taking me?’ she demanded to know as he started to stride out of the room.

  ‘Upstairs,’ he told her grimly, a determined glitter to his eyes.

  ‘Up—? What for?’ She began to struggle.

  The smile he gave wasn’t pleasant. ‘Why do you think?’ he taunted, walking easily up the stairs, even with her weight in his arms.

  Kelly swallowed hard, more frightened now than she cared to admit. ‘No, Jordan,’ she pleaded, now realising his intent. ‘Not like this!’

  ‘Exactly like this,’ his teeth were bared in a threat. ‘I know of only one way of getting the truth out of you. Before I’ve finished with you I’ll have you begging to tell me where you really went this afternoon—and who with,’ he added tautly.

  Kelly had never seen Jordan like this before, had never seen that wild glitter in his eyes, this hard unyielding anger that made her quake. And she had no doubt that while he might have liked to beat her his actual physical chastisement would come in a totally diffferent way from violence. Jordan intended making love to her until she pleaded for mercy.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JORDAN was dressing with jerky movements, his muscled back firmly turned towards Kelly as he sat on the side of the bed. Kelly resisted the impulse to reach out and touch that rippling flesh; Jordan’s mood was still an unknown quantity to her.

  She lay beneath the sheet, the clothes she had been wearing until an hour ago scattered all over the floor where Jordan had thrown them. Kelly thought that
one or two of these garments would be damaged beyond repair—Jordan’s impatience had not allowed for buttons and catches.

  What had followed this frenzied removal of her clothes had been totally unlike anything she and Jordan had ever shared before. Jordan had made love to her as if he physically wanted to hurt her, with none of his usual gentle arousal in evidence. In the end he had Kelly clinging to him unashamedly, eagerly telling him everything he wanted to know about this afternoon. Finally he had seemed to accept that her visit to Maggie was the truth, and took her with a fierceness akin to rape.

  Kelly loved every second of his possession, knowing that while she loved him it could never be called anything as ugly as rape. But Jordan had turned away from her the moment their heartbeats steadied, and he was even now dressing to leave her.

  ‘Jordan…’ her voice was tentative.

  ‘Yes?’ the single word rapped out angrily.

  ‘Do you believe me now?’ She at last dared to touch the warmth of his back, instantly feeling him flinch away from her. ‘Jordan?’ she bit her lip as he stood up.

  ‘Yes, I believe you.’ He buttoned his shirt, tucking it back into his trousers. ‘There are certain circumstances under which you never lie. This was one of them,’ he said harshly.

  Kelly had always believed lovemaking was a way of being emotionally close to someone as well as physically, but Jordan was even more remote to her at this moment than he had ever been. And now he was leaving the room, without a single word to say to her.

  When he had gone she collapsed against the pillows in a fit of uncontrollable weeping. He had just proved, in the most humiliating way possible, that she was still just a body to him. She couldn’t let it continue, not under these circumstances. She would ask Mrs McLeod to prepare a separate bedroom for Jordan tonight.

  Her father returned from the hospital just before dinner, and Kelly took the opportunity to see the housekeeper while the two men were having a pre-dinner drink.

  ‘Oh, but it’s already been arranged,’ the housekeeper assured Kelly at her request.

  She blinked hard. ‘It has?’

  ‘Yes. Mr Lord spoke to me about it earlier.’

  Kelly paled. ‘He did?’

  ‘Mm,’ Mrs McLeod nodded. ‘He explained that his insomnia is disturbing you.’

  Jordan’s lack of sleep did disturb her, but not in the way he had implied to the housekeeper! ‘I see,’ she bit her lip, giving a strained smile. ‘Well, as long as it’s been sorted out. I—I think I’ll join the men in the lounge. Excuse me,’ and she hurriedly made her escape.

  So Jordan didn’t want to share her bed any more either. Her appeal had waned much sooner this time. Thank goodness she had been spared the humiliation of telling him she still loved him. At least he wouldn’t have been able to realise the truth of her emotions, not with the cool way she had been treating him when they weren’t in bed together, making light of the times they were.

  She couldn’t face Jordan at the moment, she needed time to hide her despair from his piercing gaze. He was too shrewd at discerning her mood, and while she would have found great pleasure denying him access to her bedroom, to have him be the one to instigate such a move she found hard to bear.

  She was just retouching her lipstick when Jordan came into the bedroom a few minutes later. She was very pale, the lipstick a vivid splash of colour in her face, her movements jerky and unco-ordinated.

  ‘Your father is waiting to go in to dinner,’ he told her in a stilted voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said coolly. ‘I’m ready to go down now.’

  ‘Kelly…’ Jordan stopped her, sighing. ‘You can stop looking so damned scared, I’m not about to repeat the events of this afternoon. In fact, you won’t be bothered by my presence in here any longer. I shall be sleeping in one of the other rooms tonight, and every other night that I stay here.’

  His words were a warning of his intention of moving out as soon as her father was completely well. She had expected as much, but he had just confirmed it. ‘That suits me,’ she told him carelessly.

  ‘I thought it might,’ his mouth twisted.

  ‘Shall we go down?’ she asked lightly.

  ‘Why not?’ he shrugged, opening the door for her.

  Kelly spent most of the evening talking to her father. His visit to the hospital had gone very well. ‘Dr Jones wants me to spend a couple of hours there each day. He thinks it might be good therapy for me.’

  ‘Surely it would be better therapy for you to be with people you know?’ Kelly frowned her puzzlement.

  ‘Dr Jones says no.’ Her father grinned. ‘I’ve decided to let Miles carry on without me for a few more days.’

  ‘So he won’t be coming over now.’

  ‘Not now I know I don’t have the Landers contract to worry about. The way my memory is at the moment I don’t think I would be much help if I did go in to the office. I do at least remember the rapidity with which the business world changes. I’d be like an unfledged duckling among vultures!’

  ‘I take it I’m one of the vultures,’ Jordan drawled dryly.

  ‘The biggest,’ his father-in-law smiled to take the sting out of his words. ‘And the best.’

  Jordan gave a mocking bow. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  ‘I’m sure Daddy meant it as one,’ Kelly put in abruptly. ‘He’s always had admiration for people who see what they want, and take it.’ There was a double edge to her words, and by Jordan’s expression he hadn’t missed it.

  ‘Except once,’ her father said cheerfully, the underlying tension missed by him. ‘I didn’t appreciate him taking you away from me,’ he explained at their querying looks. ‘And with such haste too. It was almost indecent.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that, David,’ Jordan contradicted slowly, his eyes promising Kelly retribution for her dig at him just now. ‘It would only have been indecent if I hadn’t married Kelly,’ he mocked.

  ‘What the—? Oh—oh yes,’ her father laughed. ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘Well, I don’t!’ Kelly snapped. ‘I don’t like your implication, Jordan.’ She wouldn’t let his insult pass uncontested.

  ‘He’s only teasing, love,’ her father scolded gently.

  ‘Well, I didn’t like it!’ Two bright spots of angry colour heightened her cheeks.

  ‘Kelly doesn’t like to be teased,’ Jordan taunted.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ her eyes flashed. ‘Not about something like that.’

  He held up his hands in mock defeat. ‘Subject closed.’

  Her father yawned tiredly. ‘I’m off to bed. I’ll see you two tomorrow.’

  Jordan stood up once they were alone, moving to pour himself a whisky. ‘I hope you’re happy now that you’ve frightened—no, frightened is the wrong word, embarrassed is more appropriate. I hope you’re happy now that you’ve embarrassed your father into going to bed.’

  ‘I didn’t do that,’ she gasped. ‘You did. You implied that you did me a favour by marrying me.’

  ‘Did I?’ Jordan’s mouth quirked in a mocking smile. ‘I think you must have misunderstood me.’

  ‘I didn’t misunderstand anything,’ Kelly scorned. ‘You more or less told my father that if we hadn’t got married you would still have got to sleep with me.’

  ‘Did I?’ he repeated infuriatingly.

  ‘You know damn well you did!’ she snapped, standing angrily to her feet. ‘You conceited swine! I wouldn’t have slept with you. I wouldn’t have—’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ he cut in coldly. ‘I seem to remember a few occasions when you pleaded differently.’

  ‘You bastard!’ she stormed. ‘You don’t forget a damn thing, do you? You weren’t so unmoved yourself!’

  ‘I’ve never denied it,’ he acknowledged abruptly. ‘Whereas you do it all the time.’

  ‘I hate you!’ she glared at him fiercely. ‘I hate you!’

  Jordan shrugged. ‘That’s nothing new.’

  Her bottom lip tremb
led at his completely emotionless tone. ‘I always did bore you,’ she choked.

  ‘You never bored me,’ he denied grimly.

  ‘Got on your nerves, then. It amounts to the same thing.’

  His mouth twisted. ‘You said I never took the time to know you, it seems you never bothered to get to know me either. Maybe we were just too busy protecting the inner us, too frightened to let our barriers down.’

  ‘Frightened?’ Kelly scoffed. ‘You’ve never been frightened of anything in your life!’

  He shook his head. ‘You really don’t know me.’

  ‘I know the you you let me know,’ she cried. ‘You’re the one with barriers, Jordan. I’ve always been easy to read.’

  ‘Maybe you have at that.’ He turned away. ‘Goodnight, Kelly.’

  ‘Good—goodnight?’ she choked, the conversation far from over as far as she was concerned.

  ‘Yes.’ His back was firmly turned towards her.

  ‘Why is it you always clam up every time we get anywhere near understanding each other?’ she demanded to know.

  ‘Because it’s too late for that,’ he sighed. ‘Much too late. I said goodnight, Kelly,’ he reminded her pointedly.

  She swallowed hard, frustrated with his attitude. Why wouldn’t he talk to her, at least tell her he despised her if he did? He was a man made out of granite, needing a woman in his life only as a means of appeasing a natural body function, having no use for her outside of that section of his life. Kelly realised now that in the past she must have intruded, had demanded more than Jordan was prepared to give. And she had started to do it again, that was the reason he had once again rejected her. Thank God she hadn’t agreed to go back to him on a permanent basis; her attraction had lasted even less time than it had before.

  Sleep wouldn’t come to her. She had become used to the lean strength of Jordan’s body entwined with hers, had felt comforted and protected in his arms. The bed now seemed big and lonely, a poignant reminder of how things had been for them after she had told him about the baby.

  She shouldn’t have thought of the baby. Thinking of the baby brought Angela Divine back into her mind too, especially that last conversation she had heard between Jordan and the other girl. Kelly rolled over in the bed, her face buried in the pillow that still had a faint smell of Jordan’s aftershave and the cheroots he smoked. The conversation between Jordan and his secretary was indelibly printed in her brain, each hurtful, shocking word engraved in her memory.