If You Can't Stand the Heat... (Harlequin Kiss) (17 page)

Ellie gestured to her clothes and tipped her head. ‘No—no time. Listen, I just suddenly remembered that I made plans for today.’

She saw the disappointment on Jack’s face before he rearranged his features into a blank mask. ‘Okay. Have fun.’

Ellie tried not to roll her eyes and failed. ‘I’m having lunch with Luke and Jess—I forgot. Want to join us?’

Pleasure, hot and quick, flashed in his eyes. ‘Sure.’

Ellie thought she’d push her luck and try to satisfy her curiosity. ‘So why won’t you tell me about your scar?’

Jack tipped his head back under the stream of water. ‘Because it’s not important.’

‘If it wasn’t important then you’d talk about it,’ Ellie told him, and sighed when she saw the shutters come down in his eyes. She was beginning to recognise that look. It meant that the subject was no longer up for discussion. Ellie blew out her breath. She’d made sweet love to him all night but that didn’t mean she could go crawling around in his head. ‘Okay, then, be all mysterious. But hurry up, because they’ll be here any moment.’

Jack rinsed out the last of the shampoo, switched off the water and grabbed a towel that hung on the railing. He wrapped the towel around his waist and shoved his hair back from his face. Catching Ellie watching him, he placed his hand on her shoulder and leaned forward to drop a kiss on the corner of her mouth.

‘You okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Not too sore?’ Jack placed his forehead against hers and his hands on her waist.

She was a little
burny
in places that shouldn’t burn. ‘A little.’

‘Sorry.’ Jack kissed her forehead and stepped back. ‘I’m going to find something to wear. Jeans and open-collar shirt?’

‘No, shorts and a T-shirt,’ Ellie said, following him out of the bathroom. ‘We’ll probably end up on the rickety deck of some about-to-fall-down shack...’

Jack pulled a face. ‘And that’s where we’ll eat?’ he said, doubt lacing his voice.

‘That’s where you’ll eat the most amazing seafood in the world. Luke knows all the best places to eat up and down the coast,’ Ellie replied, and sighed when she heard the insistent pealing of her gate bell. ‘That’s them—early as usual. I’ll see you downstairs.’

‘Ellie?’

Ellie turned at Jack’s serious voice. Oh, God, what was he going to say?

Jack’s smile was slow and powerful. ‘Thank you for an amazing night.’

Ellie floated down the steps. Ellie Evans, she mused, sex goddess. Yeah, she could get behind that title.

* * *

In the late afternoon Jess and Luke, seeing the old lighthouse a kilometre down the beach, decided that they should take a closer look at the old iron structure. Ellie and Jack, who were operating on a lot less sleep, shook their heads at their departing backs, took a bottle of wine and glasses to the beach, found an old log for a backrest and sat in the sand.

‘How are you doing?’ Jack asked, pouring wine into a glass and then handing it to her.

Ellie squinted at him. ‘I’m utterly exhausted. I think we got about two hours’ sleep.’

Jack covered his mouth as he yawned. ‘I’m tired too. So, did you have fun?’

Ellie blushed. ‘Yes, thanks. You?’

Jack laughed. ‘I think the fact that I couldn’t get enough of you answers that question better than I could with words.’ He watched her face flush again and internally shook his head. Her confidence had really taken a battering at some point and never quite recovered.

‘Tell me about your ex.’

Ellie looked as if he’d asked her to swallow a spider. ‘Good grief—why?’

‘Because I think that he messed up your head—badly. Dented your confidence.’ Jack dug his toes into the sand as he looked at her. ‘Did he?’

Ellie picked up a handful of sand and let it drift through her fingers. ‘S’pose so. Not that I had much to start with.’

‘And why would that be?’

Ellie tipped her head at him. ‘Jack, you saw me. I was plump and very shy, and standing firmly in the shadow of my famous father—who was everything I wasn’t. Good-looking, charming, erudite, confident. Then I went to art school.’

He loved that secret smile—the one that lit her up from the inside out. ‘And...?’

‘And I flourished. I found something I loved and excelled in. I was happy and the weight fell off me. Boys were asking me out on dates, and although I never went I
was
being asked.’

‘Why didn’t you go?’

‘As I said, I was shy. They asked and I said no and I got the reputation of being hard to get. And, boys being boys, they thought that was cool, so I became more popular, which made me more confident and I finally started dating.’

‘Where does the grim gallery owner fit in?’ Jack asked, draping a possessive leg over hers.

‘He was a friend of one of our final-year lecturers and he came to give a talk to the graduating class. On a whim he said that he’d look at our work in progress. He asked to see my portfolio, said that I had talent and told me look him up if I ever got to London, saying that he might offer me an exhibition.’ Ellie watched a crab crawl out of a hole and scuttle towards the waves. ‘A couple of months later I did meet up with him in London. We started a relationship and he slowly eroded every bit of confidence I’d worked so hard to acquire.’

‘How?’

‘My art wasn’t up to standard.’ Ellie shrugged as thunderclouds built in her eyes.

‘Why did you stay with him?’

Ellie bit her bottom lip. ‘Because he told me he loved me and said that he’d never leave. The two sentences I’d waited to hear all my life.’

Jack rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh, sweetheart.’

‘Then, during the little time he spent with me, he started on everything else. Clothes and hair. Weight. My cooking, my friends, my skill in the bedroom.’

Jack felt his mouth drop open with surprise, which was closely followed by the burn of fury. ‘He said you were a bad lover?’

‘No, he said that I was a damned awful lover and a blow-up doll would be more fun.’

If that...Jack swallowed the names he wanted to call Ellie’s waste-of-skin ex. No wonder she’d frozen the other night. No wonder she seemed constantly to second-guess herself.

Ellie dug her bare feet into the sand. ‘Merri thinks that he and my father scarred me emotionally.’

Well, yeah.
‘What do you think?’

Ellie sipped her wine and dropped back so that her elbows were in the sand. ‘Of course they did. I’m scared to get close to people because I don’t want to run the risk of getting hurt and I know that they’ll leave me. I tend to keep myself emotionally isolated. It’s safer that way.’

‘Safer isn’t necessarily better,’ Jack pointed out.

Ellie slanted him a look. ‘You do the same thing, Jack Chapman, and don’t think you don’t.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jack asked, bewildered by her suddenly turning the tables on him.

‘You observe, watch, report and walk away. You don’t get involved, so you’re as much as an emotional coward as me.’

Jack sighed as her well-made point hit him dead centre. He took a minute to allow his surprise to settle before placing his hand on her knee. ‘Maybe I am, El.’

Jeez, he wished he could get the words out. It was a perfect time to tell her that they had no future, that she shouldn’t expect anything from him, that he couldn’t consider settling down with her—with anyone. That he couldn’t afford to take this any deeper, to allow her to creep behind the doors and walls of his self-sufficiency.

Ellie’s teasing voice snapped him out of his reverie. ‘You awake behind those shades, Chapman?’

‘Yep.’ Jack hooked his arm around her neck, pulled her to him and dropped a hard kiss on her mouth. ‘Just thinking.’

‘Careful, you might hurt yourself,’ Ellie teased, and yelped when his fingers connected with her ribcage. Her wine glass wobbled in her hand and she dropped it when his other hand tickled her under her arms.

‘Jack! You wretch! Stop...please, Jack!’ Ellie whimpered, and then her breath hitched.

He realised he was lying on her, her mouth just below his. Tickling turned to passion and laughter turned to need as he plundered her mouth.

Jack felt his heart sink into his stomach as he placed his head in the crook of her neck.

Dammit, Ellie, how am I ever going to find the strength to walk away from you?

* * *

‘I hate hangovers,’ Jack thought he heard Ellie mutter.

She was showered, teeth brushed and dressed, but she still looked headachey and miserable, huddled into the corner of the couch, tousle-haired and exceptionally grumpy. But, amazingly, still so sexy.

‘Why did I drink so much last night?’ she wailed.

Jack crouched down in front of her and smiled as he handed her a couple of aspirin and some water. ‘Hey, in reply to every drunken text you sent at various times throughout the evening I suggested that you stop. You told me that you could handle it.’

‘Well, I can’t,’ Ellie sulked.

‘Tough it out, sunshine.’

It had been Jess’s hen’s party last night and Ellie had hosted the pre-clubbing ritual of cupcakes and champagne. When he’d run down the stairs at eight Ellie had been sitting on the edge of the couch and his eyes had rolled back in his head when he’d seen what she was—almost—wearing: a piece of sparkly scrap material covering her breasts, held in place by strings criss-crossing her back, tight jeans and screw-me heels. She’d pulled back her hair into a severe tail, and with dramatic make-up she’d looked dangerous and sexy.

She’d had ‘trouble’ written all over her face. He’d decided to leave the house before he carried her upstairs, made her change and lectured her on exactly what the men in the club would think, seeing her in that outfit.

When he’d heard her stumble in—with Jess, Clem Copeland and Maddie—it had been after two. The dogs had wandered upstairs at three, and at three-thirty he’d heard the shouted suggestion of skinny-dipping in the pool. He really deserved credit for not looking.

He’d known he must be getting old when he’d chosen to roll over and go back to sleep rather than spy on hot naked women cavorting in the moonlight.

He grinned as he placed his cup on the coffee table in front of them. Oh, he was enjoying this, he thought as he took the opposite corner of the couch and settled in, his laptop between his crossed knees.

Ellie held her head. ‘What’s with the computer?’ she demanded. ‘Oooh, I think there are a hundred ADD gnomes tap-dancing in my head.’

‘You and I are going to talk about Mitchell,’ Jack said pleasantly.

Ellie groaned. ‘No, we’re not.’

‘Mmm, yes, we are.’ Jack looked from his screen to her.

His eyes were alert with intelligence, his fingers steady on the keyboard. He was after a story and she was part of it. ‘Jack, please...’

‘It’s just a couple of questions about your father.’

‘Questions I don’t want to answer,’ Ellie said stubbornly.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it doesn’t change anything!’ Ellie shouted, and watched as her head fell off her shoulders and rolled across the room. ‘He wasn’t there for me,
ever
! He was a drop-in dad, and I loved him far more than he loved me.’

Jack shook his head. ‘How old were you when your parents got divorced?’

‘Fifteen,’ Ellie snapped.

‘And how did your mother take it?’

‘How do you think? She was devastated.’ Ellie leaned forward to make her point, groaned and sank back. ‘Do you know she never fell in love again after him? He was her one love. And he brushed us both off like we were nothing...’

Ellie felt a sob rise and ruthlessly forced it down. She’d shed enough tears over her father, her ex, men in general. Hangover or no, she wasn’t going to shed any more. But she wanted to. She wanted to tell Jack how much it hurt, how much she wanted to be loved, cherished, protected. She didn’t
need
to be—not as she had when she was a little girl—but she still had a faint wish to be able to step into a strong pair of arms and rest awhile.

Like now, when her head felt separated from her body and her stomach was staging its own hostile rebellion.

‘So you ran from an emotionally and physically absent father to an emotionally and physically absent fiancé. Why?’

‘That’s not a question about Mitchell,’ Ellie retorted.

‘Why, El?’

‘Because it’s what I deserved! Because my love was never enough to keep someone with me! Because I choose badly!’

Jack sighed. ‘Oh, El, that is off-the-charts crap. You had a father who was useless and you had a bad relationship. It doesn’t mean that
you
are useless!’

‘Feels like it,’ Ellie muttered. ‘And might I point out that you dig around in my head, throwing questions at me, but you won’t answer any of mine?’ It wasn’t fair that he wanted to delve into her life and emotions and he wouldn’t allow her into his.

Jack’s hands stilled on the keyboard and he sent her a shuttered look. His sigh covered his obvious irritation. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘You
know
what,’ Ellie muttered. She gestured to his chest. ‘Tell me about that scar. How did you get it?’

‘Heart transplant,’ Jack said, his voice devoid of inflection.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard what I said.’

Ellie sat up, her headache all but forgotten under this enormous news. ‘But you look fine.’

‘That’s because I
am
fine! I’ve been fine for seventeen years!’

Ooooh
, touchy subject. Even more touchy than her father issues. ‘Hey, I’m still processing this—just give me a second, okay? How would you like me to react?’

‘Well, for starters, I’d like you to take that look of pity off your face!’ Jack picked his computer up and banged it down onto the coffee table. ‘That’s why I don’t tell people—because they instantly go all sympathetic and gooey!’

Oh, wait... His sharp, snappy voice was pulling her headache right back.

‘Stop putting words into my mouth! I never said that.’ Ellie pulled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees, her eyes on his suddenly miserable face. His expression practically begged her to leave the subject alone, but he’d opened the door and she was going to walk on in. ‘Why did you need a heart transplant?’