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  The phone on his desk rang. 'Shall I get that?' Davina asked, and without bothering to wait for a response lifted the receiver. 'Luke Devetzi's office, Davina here. Can I help you? Who did you say you were? Luke's wife—?'

  'Jemma!' Luke tore the receiver from Davina's hand. She'd never called him before—something must have happened. 'What's wrong?'

  'Nothing—nothing at all,' came the reply, and he felt a complete sense of euphoria when she added, 'Sorry to disturb you, Luke. I'm only ringing to wish you a happy birthday. I didn't know it was your birthday until Theo rang this morning to speak to you, and I feel awful I didn't get you a present. But I'll get you one before you come back. I thought perhaps a new briefcase or something. Or whatever you want. You can decide.'

  Luke had never known Jemma to babble on like this, and she hadn't finished yet. But just to hear her voice was a pleasure, and his earlier worries faded like snow on a fire.

  'Or maybe I should just surprise you; would you prefer that? Look, I'll ring off now; you're obviously busy at the moment,' she finished with a rush.

  'No, I'm not. My PA just surprised me with a celebratory glass of champagne.' He glanced at Davina and gestured with his hand for her to leave. 'But she's leaving now.' Luke settled himself in the chair behind his desk, mouthing the word 'out' at Davina, who shrugged and left, slamming the door behind her. 'She's gone now, and I'm finished for the day. I was just about to leave.'

  'Oh, well, I'll not keep you.'

  'Yes, you will. Don't you dare put the phone down,' he ordered. 'I'm delighted you called to ask me what I want for my birthday. You naked in bed would be a good start.' He heard her gasp and let his imagination run riot as he told her exactly what he wanted and where.

  Jemma had worried over ringing Luke all evening, and it had been almost midnight when she had picked up the phone and dialled his number. But allowing for the time difference she knew it was still early evening there. Overcome with nerves, she knew she had been babbling like a lunatic. But now, listening to Luke murmuring sexy suggestions in her ear, she was shocked.

  'Luke—please,' she said breathlessly. 'You shouldn't say things like that on the telephone!' But it didn't stop her temperature rising and heat pooling in her belly. 'It's late, and I'm going to bed now.'

  'To think of me, I trust,' he prompted, and she heard the smile in his voice.

  'Yes, I think you can safely say that's a foregone conclusion after your very descriptive flights of fantasy,' she quipped, and heard him laugh.

  'Good, because I'm destined to spend all evening in a cold shower! I'll try and get back sooner than two weeks, even if it's only for a day. In the meantime, perhaps you could check out the housing market. I've thought of something else I want. I know you don't really like the apartment, so I want you to look around for a house out of town with a large garden; that would suit you much better.'

  For a moment Jemma was silent as the full import of his suggestion sank in. He wanted them to move to the country and settle down, and the idea thrilled her. She heard him say her name, ask if she was still there. She placed a hand on her stomach and said, 'Yes, Luke, I'll do as you say. Goodnight.' And she put the phone down.

  Across the Atlantic Luke grinned and poured himself a glass of champagne. With the sound of Jemma's voice lingering in his head, his birthday had improved one hundred per cent.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  On Thursday afternoon, Jemma turned the key in the lock, opened the door, and walked into her old home in Bayswater carrying a cardboard box. It had the empty feel and the cold smell of a house no longer lived in. Not surprisingly, as she had only visited a couple of times before Christmas while Luke was abroad.

  She shrugged off her coat and then wandered around the silent rooms for the last time. She had made the decision on Tuesday morning, after a sleepless night tossing and turning in the huge bed thinking of Luke. Jemma had taken a long hard look at herself, and she hadn't liked what she'd seen. She'd accepted the hope of a baby and great sex as a basis for marriage and consciously avoided any deeper commitment. She'd been so determined not to get involved with Luke on anything other than a superficial level that she hadn't even known it was his birthday. It wouldn't have hurt her to have asked him when it was, she realised guiltily.

  When had she become so afraid of emotional involvement? With hindsight, she could see it had started after her mother had died. She hadn't made much of an attempt to get close to her stepmother and stepsister, preferring to cling to Aunt Mary and Alan. When she had lost Alan she'd been devastated, and losing her aunt the following year had simply compounded her problem. She was naturally a compassionate, caring person, but she had avoided developing deeper relationships with people and never dated men. She'd pushed away anyone who might pierce the wall she'd deliberately built around her deeper emotions. Anyone like Luke! She had been too frightened to allow him to get close, too scared of the pain that might follow if she lost him as well.

  As dawn was breaking Jemma had finally realised that she had to let go of the past, let go of her fear, and not allow it to blight what could be a great future with Luke. She might very well be pregnant, and her child deserved a whole woman for a mother, not an emotional cripple.

  Yesterday she had sadly discovered she wasn't pregnant, but it didn't change her mind. She had to move on, with hope for the future. She had already consulted an estate agent to enquire about a house in the country, as Luke had suggested, and to finally put her own house on the market. The valuer was coming around tomorrow, and she had nipped out from her shift at the shop this afternoon to collect the personal items she held dear—family photos, pictures from her childhood with her parents, her aunt and Alan—a photographic tapestry of her life so far. Hopefully one day she would have a baby and be able to show her child the family it belonged to.

  She placed the box on the table in the living room and began packing, something she ruefully admitted she should have done months ago. She lingered over one or two items, and laughed and sighed over a few more. She glanced around the room and realised there was nothing else she wanted except a few mementos she kept in a drawer in the bedroom. Then a quick dust and a run over with the vacuum cleaner and she would be finished.

  Jemma didn't hear the front door open, or the sound of someone mounting the stairs. She was sitting on the bed poring over a battered tin box holding her childish mementos of the past. An assortment of shells she had collected on summer holidays spent with her parents. A heart-shaped stone with a red ionised vein running through it in the same heart shape—a quirk of nature and as beautiful as any jewel made by man. Her eyes misted with tears as she recalled the day she had found it. Her father had been too busy at work, so Jemma and her mother had gone to Brighton for the day together and Jemma had dug the stone out of the sand. It was the last outing she had had with her mother before she died.

  Wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, she sighed, closed the box and got to her feet. There was no sadness any more, only beautiful memories. She turned towards the door—and stopped.

  Luke was framed in the doorway, dressed casually in a dark blue cashmere sweater and navy trousers, and her heart jumped in surprise and pleasure. 'What are you doing here? I wasn't expecting you back for another ten days?' she said with a smile.

  The grey eyes were enigmatic as they surveyed her, but there was something in the slow twist of his mouth that made her inexplicably nervous. 'I thought I'd surprise you, and when you weren't at the apartment I called Flower Power, Patty told me you'd gone to your house in Bayswater,' he said smoothly. I thought you'd sold it long ago—but then I should have known you never had any intention of giving up this shrine to your last husband.'

  'No, you're wrong.' She hastened to correct him.

  'Am I?' Luke asked, walking towards her, his grey eyes sliding insolently over her. Something dark leapt to life in their depths as he viewed the rumpled but made up bed. 'You probably sleep here every time I'm away.'


  'I don't,' Jemma quickly denied. His face was rigidly controlled, but she sensed anger simmering beneath the surface, and was perplexed by it. 'I only came today to collect a few mementos because the estate agent is due tomorrow.'

  A black brow arched sardonically. 'Odd, but I seem to recall you telling me you saw an estate agent last year.'

  Jemma flushed guiltily. 'Yes, well, that was a mistake. I never quite got around to it.'

  'Don't bother lying, Jemma. I've heard it all before,' he jeered, and his hand snaked out, catching her wrist in an iron grip and pulling her towards him.

  'It wasn't really a lie. But at the time you were rushing me,' she tried to explain, aware of feeling pleasure as his hard muscled thigh pressed against hers.

  'I rushed you? I seem to remember you fell into my bed the minute you set eyes on me, and you didn't take much persuading the next time, either,' he said in a bitter tone of voice. For the first time she saw exactly how furious he was, and a frisson of apprehension ran down her spine. 'What do you take me for? A gullible fool? I come second best to no man—living or dead.'

  Jemma stared back at him. Such anger over a tiny fib… Could it be that he was jealous? 'I never—'

  'Shut up!' he snarled. 'I can't stand to hear any more of your lies. You hang on to your past love like a limpet. But your body has no such hang-ups, does it, my sweet wife?' He hauled her hard against him, the strong planes of his face taut with some dark emotion. 'I could have you on that bed in a heartbeat.'

  Luke's long fingers came up to hold her head so that she couldn't move an inch.

  'Luke, please…' she gasped in a low shaky tone.

  Before she could say another word his mouth slammed down on hers, opening her lips and feasting on the sweetness within. When at last he released her mouth she tried to jerk away, trembling from head to foot, but, taking her by surprise, he tipped her back onto the bed.

  The breath was knocked out of her body, and anger surged up inside her. Whatever she had done to enrage him, and whether he was jealous or not, she didn't care. She was damned if she was going to let him manhandle her. She struggled to sit up, but he came down on top of her, pinning her beneath him.

  'Luke!' she cried.

  'Yes, say my name.' His smile was chilling. 'I want you to know who it is that's taking you in this bed of cherished memories. You won't ever be able to sleep in it again without thinking of me.'

  She put her hands between them, trying to push him away, but hardly moved the solid wall of his chest. His mouth descended on hers again, probing her lips apart and plundering them with a voracious passion. She could taste the anger in him, hear it in the thudding beat of his heart, feel it in the tension in his huge frame. Her eyes closed as his hands tore at her clothes. Her shirt was ripped open, her trousers unfastened and his hands feverishly caressed her flesh. His mouth was working havoc on her throat, her shoulders, her breasts, and she moaned out pleas for him to stop even as the familiar wild excitement flowed through her veins.

  A muscled thigh thrust between her legs and he moved between them, his mouth ravishing hers yet again with a driven urgency that she wantonly met and matched. She was thrown into a vortex of passion, her head thrashing from side to side as her mouth opened on a groan of pure pleasure. Her hands reached frantically for him, one tangling in the thick black hair of his head, the other sliding beneath his sweater to feel the rapid thud of his heart, the warmth of his flesh. She was aware of the hard length of him moving purposely against her, the heat of their bodies at explosive pitch, when suddenly he stopped.

  For a moment he lay still on top of her, dragging in ragged breaths, and slowly she raised her lids to look at him. He was watching her, his colour dark and his eyes fierce. 'What the hell am I doing?'

  Drunk on passion, her body achingly aroused, she widened her eyes in shocked disbelief as he stood up and straightened his sweater over his trousers.

  He stared grimly down at her and shoved his hands in his pockets. 'And to think I thought I might lo—' He stopped and shook his head. 'Thank God I found out in time. You're no better than any woman who's sold herself to the highest bidder.'

  'That's a despicable thing to say!' Jemma cried, jerking up into a sitting position, but he avoided her gaze. Hopelessly confused, she asked, 'What's wrong with you?' and hated the plaintive tone in her voice.

  'Can't you guess? I found you here, in your late husband's bed, crying.'

  'I wasn't crying—' she began, but he wasn't listening.

  'There's a Proverb—"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick". And I'm sick of you,' he ground out. Something shrivelled inside Jemma. 'I want a separation. You can stay here—it's obviously where you belong.' He gave her a sardonic glance. 'I was mad to think otherwise. I'll have your things sent over from the apartment. You can keep your allowance and do what you like with it. I don't want to see you ever again.'

  She looked at him and saw disgust in his glacial eyes, in the hard, cold line of his mouth—the mouth that had driven her wild a moment ago—and ice seeped into her veins. She turned away from him and, fastening her trousers, slid her legs over the side of the bed. She had wanted Luke just now with a hunger and need that shamed her, and finally she admitted to herself what she had known from the day she'd met him.

  Alan had never made her feel this way. Their love had been born of a long friendship, gentle and caring. But Luke dominated her thoughts and her body to the exclusion of all else. She had spent all her energy in maintaining a barrier between them and now, when it was too late, it struck her like a knife through the heart—she loved Luke.

  The pain started then, but Jemma refused to let him see how much he had hurt her. She pulled the remnants of her shirt up over her shoulders, fastened the one remaining button, and rose to her feet. It took every bit of will-power she possessed to lift her eyes to his. 'As you like,' she said, and she even managed to pull off a shrug. 'So long as our separation doesn't affect my father or the company.'

  'Your father and the company will continue to have my monetary support, as agreed.' His mouth twisted. 'And if there's any chance you're pregnant, we'll have to come to some amicable arrangement.'

  'No, I'm not pregnant. And tell Theo not to worry—he can stay at the house on Zante any time he likes.' So the irony was that the only person who'd not got what they wanted out of this marriage was her.

  'Thank you, but I insist on paying you rent when he's there. Theo doesn't need to know.'

  She stared at him, angry that he could even suggest paying her, but before she could reply Luke had spun on his heel and was gone.

  Jemma sat back down on the bed, her eyes dry, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Luke had left for New York with no hint that anything was wrong, and that evening when she had called him…

  She drew in a ragged breath. A woman had answered his phone. Davina—the name niggled at the back of her mind and then she remembered. According to Jan, the girl Luke had been dating before he'd married Jemma was called Davina somebody or other, and lived in New York. Suddenly Jemma saw it all. Luke must be back with Davina, and everything Luke had said over the phone when she'd called him on his birthday had been a sick joke—the sexy words Luke had murmured probably meant for the woman standing next to him in his office that evening. Had the two of them been laughing at her behind her back? When Luke had told Jemma to look for a country house with a garden because he knew the apartment did not suit her, she had naïvely thought he'd meant for them to share the new house. But instead it had been a hint for Jemma to move out of the apartment, to leave it free for him to move his other woman in.

  What a blind fool she had been. Luke had another woman. If she were honest, it was no more than she had expected from the beginning. She supposed she should consider herself lucky their marriage had lasted four months. But she didn't consider herself lucky at all. And she blinked and blinked again but could not hold back the tears…

  Luke climbed into his car and slammed the door shut, his
chest heaving. He started the engine and then gripped the steering wheel with hands that shook. He had to get away, as far and as fast as he could. He was appalled at his own behaviour; he had damn near taken Jemma without thought or consideration for what she wanted. He had never felt such all-consuming anger in his life. She obsessed him to the point of insanity.

  He had given Jemma everything, and ached for her love, and last night it had come to him after three frustrating days in the U.S.—the one thing he had not done was tell her he loved her. He had immediately chartered a plane and arrived in London determined to do so, with some romantic picture in his mind that she would fling herself into his arms and reciprocate his feelings.

  As soon as Patty had told him Jemma was in Bayswater he had known, but he hadn't wanted to believe it. When he'd walked into the bedroom and seen her crying over her dead husband he had lost it completely. Love had made a raging idiot of him—but no more. In every other area of his life he was a resounding success, but with Jemma he had failed. He no longer trusted himself anywhere near her. She was a weakness he could no longer afford, and he'd had no option but to finish it—before his passion for her destroyed him.

  A week later, Jemma was sitting in a restaurant with Liz, pretending to enjoy a lunch she had no stomach for.

  'Cheer up, Jemma. Luke will be back on Saturday.' Liz grinned. 'Think of the pleasure in store.'

  Jemma tried to smile and failed. What was the point? The truth had to come out some time? 'No, he won't, Liz. It's over.'

  'No—I don't believe it: Luke worships you!'

  'You know his reputation: he worships women in the plural,' Jemma said dryly. 'But never only one for very long, and I'm certain he has someone else.'

  'Luke wouldn't do that to you; you must be mistaken,' Liz protested.

  'I'm not mistaken. I saw him last Thursday. He made a flying visit to London to tell me in person it was finished. He's sick of me and doesn't want to see me ever again… Is that plain enough for you?'