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With a genuine wedding ring on her finger, Jennifer had had no hesitation in telling her mother the good news, and, as she had anticipated, Paula had been frankly delighted for her, knowing that her daughter’s romantic daydreams had always included a family of her own.
‘No “of course” about it, where you’re involved,’ said Rafe drily. ‘Do they think I still don’t know? Is that why neither of them congratulated me on my impending fatherhood?’
She nodded briefly. In abstract she had accepted that this man was the progenitor of her child, but the concrete reality was still something she avoided. ‘I said I didn’t find out until after you’d left.’
‘So at least you didn’t make me the kind of cad who’d run out on his pregnant new wife to pursue his own dreams.’ He tossed the damp towel onto the bench and leaned one hip against the tiles, his mocking gaze darkening as it ran over her body, lingering on her breasts and reminding her of his earlier outrageousness. ‘Well...go ahead, do your duty. Tell your husband he’s going to be a daddy...’
A heavy tread made them both turn towards the door. It was Dot, carrying two disposable protective masks.
‘I’m just going out to check my plants and call the cats. Do you want to come and get that car-cover with me first, Rafe? Then Jenny can show you around and you can settle in.’
‘Sure.’ He straightened, taking one of the masks. ‘Would you like me to help you look for the animals?’
Dot took a can of fishy catfood from the fridge. ‘They’ll come pretty quick if I give them a whiff of this; it’s so potent we should always wear a mask when we dish it out!’
‘See you soon, darling.’ Taking Jennifer by surprise, Rafe chucked her under the chin and brushed a light kiss across her startled mouth as he exited, leaving her glaring after him, scrubbing furiously at the tingling brand. The fleeting kiss he had given her at her wedding, when that embarrassing photo had been taken, had been equally disturbing, and after that she had been even more careful to avoid his company. Now there would be no avoiding him, and by her own words she had condemned herself to allowing him to touch her whenever he liked...at least in public.
His suspicion, his bitterness, his contempt she could fight with reciprocal fierceness, but her defences were proving alarmingly vulnerable to his mocking humour, his quick intelligence and his sheer physical attractiveness.
Frowning, she quickly put the dried crockery away and went back to the living room, to find her mother unwinding the draught excluders that would stop the windblown ash from seeping in through the doors and windows.
‘I see Rafe’s bags are still out in the hall. Do you want to tidy your room before you take him up?’ Paula asked, adding teasingly, ‘Just in case there’s anything lying around you don’t want him to see. I know there are always some cosmetic secrets a woman likes to keep beyond the first few weeks of her marriage—’
The words were hardly out of her mouth before Jennifer dashed out of the room and up the stairs, her heart pounding. How could she have forgotten?
The sloping ceilings of the converted attic framed the friendly clutter of the room. Two dormer windows and bi-folding glass doors opening out onto a wooden balcony facing the mountain let in plenty of light to counteract the effect of dark wooden plank walls and ceiling. A squat double bed, an old-fashioned mirrored wardrobe and matching dressing table, a big bookcase and a large battered desk and chair were the main pieces of furniture.
Jennifer ran over to the desk on which her budget computer had pride of place. She knew she couldn’t rely on Rafe not to snoop and pry into every corner of her existence if he felt like it, so she quickly sat down and turned on the computer, mentally calculating how long it would take him to tie down a loose tarpaulin over his car as she deleted large chunks of her hard-copy files, safe in the knowledge that they were already doubly backed up onto floppies.
While the computer was chomping its way down the list she emptied all red-labelled floppy disks from the plastic box beside the screen and bundled them into her underwear drawer, wrapping them securely in an unattractive woollen spencer before pushing them deep to the back of her bras and undies. Then she gathered cardboard hanging files out of the bottom drawer of her desk and stuffed them, papers, files and all, into the slit between the wall and the back of the heavy oak wardrobe. Heaven knew how she was going to get them out again!
Fortunately she had formed the cautious habit of always cleaning up very thoroughly after herself every time she worked at the computer, and personally burning the contents of her wastepaper bin in the outside incinerator, so it wasn’t long before all that remained on her computer and desk was information regarding the running of Beech House that would probably bore Rafe to tears.
She stood for a moment in the centre of the room, nervously shifting from foot to foot, double-checking that there was nothing else she had forgotten, her roving eyes deliberately avoiding the big, soft feather bed.
The books! Even if Rafe wasn’t much of a reader himself he was clever enough to know that he could learn something about her character from the type of books she kept.
She swept a section from the middle row off the shelf, and one or two others at random, and dumped them into her wicker laundry basket, heaping her soiled clothes over the top. With luck Rafe would be gone before the next wash. If not—no, she refused to even contemplate not being able to persuade him to leave.
There!
Not a sign that the bedroom was inhabited by anything other than a normal, ordinary, twenty-seven-year-old woman of average, everyday tastes who had nothing to hide.
She just hoped that Raphael Jordan could be persuaded to believe the evidence of his own eyes!
CHAPTER FOUR
JENNIFER tried to look relaxed as Raphael dropped his soft-sided suitcase and expensive leather roll-bag under the dormer window and circled around her bedroom, his head tilted and eyes half-closed, almost as if he was tasting the air. He made her aware of the soft mingling of subtle feminine scents—lavender from the perfumed paper with which she lined her clothes drawers, a woodsy sweetness from the dish of dried petals on the bookshelf, rose from the lingering fragrance of her morning shower and hints of a darker, more sensuous floral tone from a spilled perfume bottle on the dressing table.
He ran his finger moodily along the outer edge of her pristine desk, lifted frosted make-up bottles on the dressing table, opened her wardrobe to inspect the contents and stepped into the adjoining bathroom, with its polished rimu cabinetry and deep, claw-footed white bath, with a modern, hand-held brass shower spray hooked high on the wall above the vintage brass taps.
On the way back out he passed the laundry basket, and in her nervous state of heightened anxiety Jennifer half expected him to lift the lid and rummage inside to find the evidence of her secret notoriety.
As she had expected, he stopped before the bookcase for the longest time, absently toying with the dish of petals as he studied the titles, an eclectic array of fiction and non-fiction, classic and contemporary, treasure and trash.
‘You like to read,’ he pronounced with faintly surprised satisfaction, stroking the flowing gilt inscription on the spine of a vintage cloth Bible. ‘Have you read this?’
She was wary of the innocuousness of his question. Nothing about Raphael Jordan was harmless. ‘Most of it.
