If You Can't Stand the Heat... (Harlequin Kiss) (20 page)

‘Good God, I’m a goner,’ he muttered, placing his mouth on the sensitive dip where her spine met her bottom.

‘No, but you will be,’ Ellie promised as she turned back. She gave him an impish look. ‘Are you game to see how much this table can actually take?’

* * *

‘Next week’ was here. Despite her not wanting it to, it had crept stealthily and inexorably closer and had finally arrived. Despite her every effort Ellie had not been able to hold back time, and Jack was booked on a flight to London later that morning.

It was time to face reality, pay the piper, face the music, bite the bullet...to stop using stupid idioms.

Jack’s clothes were on her bed, his toiletries were in a bag and not on her bathroom shelves, and he was preparing to walk out of her life. Ellie sat on the edge of her bed, sipping a cup of coffee she couldn’t taste and wondering what to say, how to act.

It was D-day and she knew that she would have to break through the uneasy silence or else choke on the words that she needed to verbalise. Because if she didn’t she was certain she’d regret her silence for ever.

He was too important, too crucial to her happiness for her to let him waltz away without discussing what he meant to her, what she thought they had. Courage, she reminded herself, was not an absence of fear but acting despite that fear.

She had to do this—no matter how scary it was, how confrontational it could become, he was worth it. She was worth it.
They
were worth it.

Too bad that her knees were knocking together and her teeth were chattering. She’d practised this, she reminded herself—had spent the past few nights lying awake, holding him, while the words she wanted to say ran through her head.

All she could remember of those carefully practised phrases was:
I’m in love with you
and
Please don’t leave me.

Ellie put her coffee cup down on the floor next to her feet and crossed her legs. She sat on her hands so that he wouldn’t see how much she was shaking.

‘Jack...’

Jack looked at her and she sighed at his guarded expression. ‘Mmm?’

‘Where to from here?’ Ellie asked. She winced, hearing the way that the words ran into each other as she launched them out of her mouth.

She saw him tense, caught his jaw hardening. He picked up a pile of shirts and shoved them into his rucksack. ‘Between you and I? Ellie, I’m coming back. I mean, I’d like to come back between assignments. To you.’

Well, that was better than him saying goodbye for ever, but it wasn’t quite enough. Ellie sucked in her bottom lip. ‘Why?’

Jack’s eyes flashed in irritation. She could see that he’d been hoping to avoid this conversation.
Tough luck, Chapman.

‘What kind of question is that?’

‘A very reasonable one,’ Ellie replied. ‘Why do you want to come back?’

‘Because there’s something cooking between us!’

Ellie stood up and walked over to the window, staring out at the sunlight-drenched garden. ‘“Something cooking between us”? Is that
all
you can say?’ Ellie demanded.

‘I don’t know what you want me to say!’ Jack was quiet for a long time before he spoke again. ‘Okay...I’ve never felt as much for anyone as I do for you.’

Ellie shook her head and her ponytail bounced. Seriously? That was all he could come up with? Where had her erudite reporter gone—the one who relied on words for his living? Where had he run away to?

Well, if he wasn’t going to open up she would have to.
Courage, Ellie.

‘Jack, this has been one of the best times of my life. I’ve loved having you here, with me. I don’t want it to end but I am also not prepared to put my life on hold, waiting for you to drop back in.’ She pulled in a breath and looked for words, hoping to make him understand her point of view. ‘I can’t spend my life wondering if you’re alive or dead, worrying about you constantly. I don’t want to deal with crappy signals and brief telephone calls and even briefer visits home. Living a half-life with you, missing birthdays and anniversaries and special days!’ Ellie stated. ‘I’ve lived that life. I hated that life.’

‘That was your father, not me! Stop judging me by what he did and said. We are nothing alike!’ His expression was pure frustration. ‘I am not your father and I don’t make promises I can’t keep! When I say I’ll do something, I’ll
do
it. And might I point out that technology has made it a lot easier to stay connected.’

Ellie sent him an enquiring look.

‘We have mobiles with great coverage, and when I can’t get a signal on my mobile I’ll have a satellite phone. I could be on Mars and still be able to call you. There is internet access everywhere, and we could talk every day—hell, every hour, if that’s what you needed. And I couldn’t survive only seeing you every six weeks. A week, two at the most, and I’d be home.’

‘But you can’t
guarantee
that!’ Ellie shouted.

‘Nobody can, Ellie! But I’ll do my damnedest!’

Ellie swallowed. She wanted to believe him. She really did. And she believed that he believed it—right now. But without a solid commitment, a declaration of love and trust, it couldn’t last. Long-distance relationships, especially those tinged with danger, had a finite lifespan. If he couldn’t make a commitment then she had to let him go now, while she could. Now—before she completely succumbed to the temptation of heaven and hell that loving him would be.

Heaven when he came back; hell when he was away.

No, that grey space in between the two, purgatory, was the safest place for her to be. It was the only place where she could function as a semi-normal person.

Ellie shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, a mostly long-distance relationship is not an option. I...can’t.’

Jack threw up his hands. ‘I don’t understand why not.’

‘Because all you’ve told me so far is that I am somewhat important and that you’ll come back when you can. How can you ask me to wait for you when that’s all you can give me?’

Jack pushed both his hands into his hair and linked his hands around the back of his head, his eyes devastated.

‘Ellie, I’m doing the best I can. There’s never been anyone who has come as close to capturing my heart as you. Ever. But I won’t tell you something you want to hear just because you want to hear it. I’m giving you as much as I am able to. Can’t you understand that?’

Oh, God, how was she supposed to resist such a naked, emotion-saturated statement? But she had to. There was too much at stake.

‘It’s not enough for me, Jack. It really isn’t.’

‘Ellie—’

Ellie held up her hand. ‘Wait, let me get this out.’ When she spoke again her voice was rich with emotion. ‘Over the past couple of weeks I’ve come to realise—
you
taught me!—that I’m worth making sacrifices for. I think
you
are worth making sacrifices for. But the reality is that you’re the one who would always be leaving. I can’t force you to change that, I can’t force you to need me, and I certainly can’t force you to love me. All I can be is a person who can be loved, and I am. I know that now. I want it all, Jack. Dammit, I
deserve
it all!’

‘You’re asking me to give up my career—’

‘I’ve never asked you to do that. I’m asking you to look at your life, to adjust it so that there is space for me in it. I’m asking you to make me a priority. I’m asking for some sort of commitment.’

Jack’s voice was low and sad when he spoke again. ‘I need to be able to move, Ellie, breathe. I can’t live a humdrum life. I can’t be confined—even by you.’

‘It’s not good enough, Jack. Not any more.’ Ellie felt her heart rip out of her chest. ‘I can’t be with someone who thinks life with me would be humdrum, tedious, boring.’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Yes, you did!’ Ellie shouted, suddenly pushed beyond her limits. ‘You want to think that a life with me would be unexciting and dull because anything else would mean that you would have to get emotionally involved, take a stand, make a choice that could lead to pain. Don’t you think you’re taking this protecting-your-heart thing a bit too far? You’ve stopped
living
, Jack.’

‘Of course I’m living! What the hell do you think I’ve been doing for the past seventeen years?’ Jack roared, his eyes light with fury.

‘That’s not living—it’s reporting! Living is taking emotional chances, laughing, loving.’ Ellie shoved her hands into her hair. ‘I’m in love with you and I’m pretty sure that you’re the man I can see myself living the rest of my life with. Would you consider loving me, living with me, creating a family with me?’

He stared at his feet, his arms tightly crossed. His body language didn’t inspire confidence.

‘This is emotional blackmail,’ Jack muttered eventually, and Ellie closed her eyes as his words kicked her in the heart. And here came the pain, roaring towards her with the force of a Sherman tank.

‘I’m sorry that you consider someone telling you that they adore you blackmail. Goodbye, Jack.’ Ellie turned away and folded her arms across her torso, gripping hard. ‘Lock the front door behind you, will you?’

‘Ellie—’

Ellie whirled around, fury, misery and anger emanating from every pore. ‘What? What else is there to say, Jack? I love you, but you’re so damn scared of feeling anything that you won’t step out of that self-protecting cocoon you’ve wedged yourself into! Of the two of us,
you
are the bigger pansy-assed coward and I am done with this conversation. Just leave, Jack. Please. You’ve played basketball with my heart for long enough.’

She heard him pick up his pack, jog down the stairs. From behind the curtain of the bay window Ellie watched him storm to his car, his broad shoulders tight and halfway up to his ears, his arms ending in clenched fists.

I love you
, she wanted to say.
I love you so much it scares me. I wish you knew how to take a real chance, how to risk your very precious heart.

But two sentences kept tumbling over and over in her head.
Please don’t leave me. Please come back.

But he didn’t stop, didn’t turn around. When she saw his car back down her driveway and watched the tail-lights disappear down the road and out of sight, Ellie sank to the floor and buried her face in her hands.

It was over and she was alone. Again.

TEN

Five days after
he’d left Cape Town Jack and his cameraman were standing next to a pile of rubble that had once been a primary school on the outskirts of Concepción, Chile. What had originally been a black car was buried under a pile of rocks. A massive earthquake had hit the region and Jack had been asked if he’d like to report on it. He hadn’t even left transit at Heathrow. He’d just caught the first flight he could to Chile.

Behind them were mounds of bricks and twisted iron and the half-walls of the decimated school. Since the quake had struck early in the morning most of the children hadn’t arrived yet for lessons, but Jack knew from talking to the family members who stalked the site that there had been an early-morning staff meeting and there were still a few teachers unaccounted for. Their relatives were still digging through the rubble, slowly moving piles of bricks to find the bodies of their loved ones. Few held out any hope for their survival. The devastation was too widespread, too intense, for hope to survive for long.

Jack rubbed his hands over his face as he prepared to link live to New York. He didn’t want to be here, he thought. He wanted to go home to that bright house with its eclectic art and two rambunctious dogs. He wanted to run with the dogs on the beach, stretch out on the leather couch, listen to the sea at night and the wind in the morning.

He wanted Ellie.

But Ellie would mean giving this up, Jack reminded himself. He couldn’t...this was what he did, what he was. He needed to work.... Jack blew out his breath. But was that just years of habit talking? He couldn’t avoid the truth...he
needed
her. As much as his work. More.

Jack leaned back against a dusty car and lifted his head to the sunlight. He’d been seventy degrees of dim that last night in St James. He’d thought he was so strong, so in control. While she’d launched those emotional arrows at his soul he’d kept telling himself that it wouldn’t hurt, that he’d be fine. Now, five days and too much horror later, he felt as if he’d taken a series of punches to his stomach and heart. He was doubled over in pain.

He was generally level-headed and unemotional, and in truth he’d never been a crier. He could count on one hand the amount of times he’d wept since he was a child. Even the bleakest times of his illness, the fear he’d felt when he’d had the transplant and the relief of being normal again had never reduced him to tears, but the fact that he’d lost Ellie had had him choking down grief more than once or twice. The early hours of the morning were the worst; that was when he felt as if his heart was being physically yanked from his chest.

What was he going to do? Sacrifice his job for her? Sacrifice her for the job? Be bored with a normal life with Ellie in it or miserable with an action-packed existence without her?

He didn’t know—couldn’t make a decision. All he was certain of was that he missed her, that his world had gone from bright colours to monochrome, that he was plodding through each day feeling adrift without his connection to her. He was fine physically. Mentally and emotionally he was a train wreck. He felt as if he’d been stripped of all his internal organs—heart included—that he was just a shell of a man, marking time.

Ted, his cameraman, told him he was about to go live so Jack stood up straight and waited for the signal. He greeted the anchorwoman and launched into his report. Death, destruction, the cost of rebuilding people’s lives...

Jack was midway through when a commotion from the decimated building behind him caught his attention. He knew that noise—it was an indication that someone had been found. Still live to New York, he bounded with Ted over the rubble to where a lone man, his face ravaged with grief, was furiously tossing bricks and stones off a pile. Jack recognised his look of terrible excitement, of despair-ravaged hope. He’d found someone he loved...