Burning Obsession

Burning Obsession

Carole Mortimer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

KELLY’S face paled and her breathing seemed to stop as she saw the tall arrogant man entering the hotel, the usual blonde on his arm. She would have to be blonde, Jordan had a passion for them. But at least it wasn’t Angela Divine. That didn’t surprise Kelly either; after five years there would have been a couple of dozen blondes, Angela Divine long ago replaced.

Jordan hadn’t seen her as he walked over to the reception desk, so she had ample opportunity to look at him without him being aware of it. He would be thirty-nine now, and he looked it, the grey hair at his temples lending distinction to his bearing, a startling contrast to his jet black hair. The grey hadn’t been there five years ago, and the deep lines of cynicism beside his nose and mouth had become all the more noticeable. The grey of his eyes was just as steely, his full mouth set in a firm line, the deep sensuality of his nature held firmly in check.

Kelly stepped back as Jordan and the beautiful blonde got into the lift, and she remained hidden until the lift began to ascend. It had been inevitable that this would happen, that they would meet again sometime, and yet Kelly found she still wasn’t ready for it.

Five years ago she had been eighteen, an easy victim to Jordan’s lethal charm. She had fallen in love with the leashed vitality of him on sight, and had remained in love with him until the day almost seven months later when her dreams of belonging to Jordan for ever had been destroyed, as surely as the child she had been carrying had been destroyed.

She could still vividly remember that day, could remember waking up in that cold clinical room, a sense of doom about her even though she couldn’t remember what she was doing there. She had soon found out!

‘I’m afraid the baby is gone, Mrs Lord.’

Kelly had blinked up at the young doctor, her mind in a fog. Baby? What baby, she wanted to ask. More to the point, whose baby?

‘Sleep now, Mrs Lord,’ a nurse soothed. ‘Sleep now and your husband should be back when you wake up again.’

‘Back?’ Kelly asked, her mouth very dry. ‘Back from where?’

The nurse tucked the bedclothes more firmly around her. ‘Mr Lord had to leave, to go to his office, I think.’

‘Oh yes,’ Kelly accepted bitterly. She had known it would be something to do with his office that would take Jordan away from her when she needed him. She turned away so that the nurse shouldn’t see her ready tears. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured huskily. ‘I think I should like to sleep now.’

The nurse looked concerned. ‘Would you like something to help you sleep?’

‘Why?’ Her voice was shrill as she looked up at the other girl. ‘I’m not ill, am I?’

‘No, of course not. But you must be feeling weak after the baby.’

Kelly frowned, her eyelids starting to droop sleepily without the necessity of drugs. The nurse had mentioned a baby now. She just wished she knew what they were talking about …

When she woke again the loss of her baby had shot into her like a knife, the baby she had only carried for five months, the baby who hadn’t stood a chance of survival when she had started to miscarry.

Her blue eyes were tightly shut to hold out the cold reality of daylight for as long as possible. Would Jordan have come back from his office yet, or would he still be putting that first? After all, she wasn’t ill, she had just lost the baby that had come to be the most important thing in her life, the baby Jordan had neither wanted or desired.

Her breath caught in a sob and she turned to bury her face in the pillow, crying out her misery and pain.

‘Kelly?’ A hand caressed her shoulder through the thin material of her nightgown.

She had flinched away from that hand, turning slowly to look at her husband. ‘Jordan,’ she greeted coldly, her eyes huge and bewildered in her pale face. ‘Did you finish your business?’ she asked bitterly.

Jordan frowned, a tall man, very attractive, who had stirred many a female heart before their marriage six months earlier, and still continued to do so, as she knew to her cost.

‘You were asleep,’ his voice was stilted, his manner withdrawn. ‘There was nothing I could do.’

‘Of course not,’ she replied distantly. ‘Did you deal with the matter?’ She gave a choked laugh. ‘Of course you did, what a stupid question.’

‘I haven’t been to the office, Kelly. I——’

She struggled to sit up, not wanting to listen to him. ‘Could you get someone to help me, please?’

He lent over her, his hard presence at once overwhelming her, as it usually did. ‘I’ll help you,’ he sat her forward. ‘Just hold on to me while I adjust the back-rest.’

‘No!’ She shrank away from him. ‘Get someone else to help me. Get a nurse. Get anyone but you!’ she cried hysterically.

He instantly moved away, his face a shuttered mask. ‘There’ll be other babies, Kelly,’ he said coldly. ‘I’m sorry about this one, but——’

‘No!’ she cried again. ‘There won’t be any more. I won’t have any more!’ She looked at him like a frightened child, her fingers clenching and unclenching on the coverlet. ‘No more,’ she repeated, suddenly all the life flowing out of her as she collapsed weakly back on to the pillows.

‘You’re tired,’ Jordan said abruptly. ‘Try to sleep now and I’ll come back and see you later.’

‘Going back to work, Jordan?’ she taunted. ‘Or could Angela be the main attraction?’

Those grey eyes narrowed ominously. ‘Angela? You mean my secretary?’

Kelly’s mouth turned back with a sneer. ‘If that’s what you choose to call her.’

‘You’re more tired than you realise,-’ her husband snapped. ‘You’re becoming fanciful. Sleep now and we’ll talk later.’

‘I only want to know one thing,’ she said coldly. ‘When can I get out of here?’

‘A couple of weeks, the doctor said, and even then you’ll still be very weak.’

‘I’ve always been weak where you’re concerned,’ her voice was distant, all emotion locked away, ‘but not any more.’

He frowned. ‘What are you saying now, Kelly? I realise you’re upset about the baby——’

‘What was it?’ she asked dully.

Jordan looked startled by the question. ‘Don’t dwell on it, Kelly. It’s best forgotten.’

Forgotten! She would never forget the loss of the baby, or the reason behind it. ‘What was it, Jordan?’

He gave an impatient sigh at her obstinacy. ‘A girl,’ he told her curtly.

‘Then perhaps it’s as well it died, you wanted a girl even less than you wanted a boy,’ she scorned to hide her pain.

His hand came out to painfully grasp hers. ‘I’d much rather have you alive and well—’

Kelly snatched her hand away. ‘Don’t spout insincere platitudes to me!’ she snapped coldly, turning away from him. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to sleep now.’ She snuggled down under the covers in a pretence of sleep.

‘Kelly?’ he touched her shoulders.

She shook off his hand. ‘I’m sleepy. Goodbye, Jordan.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ There was weary resignation in his voice, but Kelly remained hardened against him.

She waited for the soft click of the door as he left before she allowed the tears to flow. She could still remember it all now, calling at Jordan’s office that morning, eager to show him the tiny clothes she had bought for the baby, rushing happily into his outer office to find his secretary’s desk empty. She could hear Jordan’s even tone as he talked to the girl who had been his secretary for the last year, but it hadn’t bothered her that they were working. She had met the other girl a couple of times, and her presence in Jordan’s office was immaterial to her.

But the conversation hadn’t been! What she had heard that day had shown her all too clearly that Jordan’s relationship with his secretary continued outside the office.

She had rushed out of the building as though pursued by the devil. Jordan and his secretary! Oh, she had felt sick, so sick she just ran and ran, not sparing a thought for the baby until she had felt that first searing pain, a pain that was quickly followed by another, and another, until she had thought she would die.

So she had discovered the reason Jordan hadn’t been near her since her pregnancy had been confirmed—he had been getting that satisfaction from his beautiful secretary. She had vowed there and then that he would never touch her again, a decision she quickly apprised him of, on returning from the hospital to their home in fact.

‘Comfortable?’ Jordan tucked the blanket more firmly about her legs.

She nodded distantly. ‘Thank you.’

He gave her a long searching look before moving impatiently to get in behind the wheel of the car.

They didn’t talk on the drive to their home, as they hadn’t talked in the two weeks since she had lost the baby. Kelly had nothing to say to this cold, hard man who was her husband, and he seemed to take his mood from her.

He held her elbow as they entered the house together, refusing to have his fingers dislodged.

‘Oh, it’s so good to see you, Mrs Lord,’ Mrs McLeod, their housekeeper, hurried out into the hallway to greet them.

‘Thank you, Mrs McLeod.’ She couldn’t even raise any warmth for the woman who had shown her nothing but kindness since Kelly’s marriage to her employer six months ago.

‘Tea in the lounge, I think, Mrs McLeod,’ Jordan suggested smoothly. ‘I’m sure Mrs Lord would welcome the refreshment.’

‘Of course, sir,’ the woman smiled. ‘I have it all ready. I won’t be a moment.’

Once alone Kelly had moved away from her husband and into the spacious lounge that even after six months still managed to convey none of her own personality but was all Jordan. The deep grey velvet curtains either end of the huge room perfectly matched the deep-pile carpet. The black leather armchairs and sofa were just as impersonal, and even the slightly feminine touches of ornaments and clear-cut glass seemed to bring no warmth to the room—as Jordan himself had no warmth.

She couldn’t even begin to guess why Jordan had married her in the first place; it certainly hadn’t been because he loved her, he didn’t know how to love. But love was the reason she had accepted him—her own love for him, a love that had died as her baby had died.

From the moment they had met at a dinner party given by her father, with her acting as his hostess, Jordan had begun to pay her attention. He had asked her out to the theatre that first evening, and for the next month they had met constantly. If Jordan had treated her rather like a child to be humoured she hadn’t minded. She had craved only his soul-destroying kisses that had always ended the evening, kisses and caresses that he was always in control of, no matter how she begged for more.

When he had asked her to marry him she had eagerly accepted, her love for him so strong by this time that she wanted only to be with him for all time.

Her father had been less delighted by the news, but despite his mild opposition the wedding had taken place only a month after their first meeting. They had honeymooned in Barbados, with Jordan introducing her to all the sensual delight her body was capable of, seeming to find pleasure in her pleasure, until they both reached the tumultuous climax of their senses.

It was during one of those sun-drenched, love-filled days and nights that Kelly had conceived their child, a child that had seemed the fulfilment of all her dreams. Jordan hadn’t shared her enthusiasm, but in her own happiness she hadn’t paid this much attention. She had put his reserve down to a reluctance to halt their nights of passion, although she hadn’t expected them to come to quite such an abrupt end, the very night she had told Jordan he was to be a father.

‘Your father is coming to dinner,’ Jordan informed her as they waited for Mrs McLeod to bring in the tea. ‘I haven’t told him the news. It didn’t seem the sort of thing I should tell him over the telephone, even if I’d known where to reach him in the States.’

Kelly’s mouth turned back. ‘Then I’m going to come as something of a shock to him.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed tersely, his expression grim.

She patted her flattened stomach bitterly. ‘Quite a shock,’ she repeated.

‘Yes,’ he said again, turning to fill a glass with whisky.

Kelly eyed him coldly. ‘Isn’t it a little early in the day for that?’

Grey eyes raked over her. ‘Do you care?’

She shrugged. ‘Not particularly.’

His mouth twisted tauntingly. ‘I thought not,’ he swallowed half the liquid in one gulp. ‘What the hell’s got into you?’ he rasped. ‘Losing the baby was traumatic——’

‘I’m glad you realise it.’ Her voice was harsh.

Jordan gave her an angry look. ‘I’m not completely insensitive. But I don’t expect this to have changed you out of all recognition.’

Kelly idly picked up one of the cut-glass vases that adorned the alcove, admiring its cool beauty with icy detachment. ‘Things like that have a way of making one grow up in a hurry. After all, Jordan, I’m not a child any longer,’ she scorned.

‘I wouldn’t call eighteen old. And I always liked your youthful enthusiasm for everything.’

‘Appealed to your jaded senses, did it?’ she taunted.

‘You see?’ he snapped impatiently, swinging her round to face him and knocking the vase out of her hand in the process. It shattered at their feet. ‘Oh hell,’ he swore, ‘now look what you’ve done!’

‘What I’ve done?’ she looked at him with accusing eyes, that vase a particular favourite with her. ‘You’re the one who had to use brute force—as usual,’ she sneered. ‘Take your hands off me, you—you——’

‘Yes?’ His narrowed eyes levelled on her mouth.

Kelly could tell he was going to kiss her and she jerked back, regretting her impulse as she saw the mockery in his eyes. ‘Just don’t touch me! I hate to be touched.’

‘That’s not the way I remember it.’

She blushed at his implication, remembering the nights when she had almost begged for his possession of her. Memories of other nights spent in his arms, of his lithe muscular body working a familiar magic on her, made her glare her dislike of him. ‘Forget the way you remember it. I don’t want——’

‘Here we are, then,’ Mrs McLeod bustled in with the tea things, beaming happily at the two of them. ‘Oh dear,’ she spotted the shattered vase, ‘did you have an accident?’

‘It slipped out of my wife’s hands,’ Jordan said smoothly.

Kelly compressed her lips to hold back her angry retort. After all, what he said was the truth, but it had only happened because of him. His touching her had been provocation enough for her to drop the vase.

‘Never mind,’ the housekeeper picked up the pieces. ‘It’s only glass.’

Kelly could see Jordan’s mouth twitch at the understatement. It had been a very valuable vase, one she had been very fond of, and although Jordan didn’t share her enthusiasm he could appreciate its value.

She sat down in front of the tea-tray. ‘Milk or lemon?’ she enquired coldly of her husband.

‘Milk,’ he drawled slowly. ‘There’s enough sharpness in this room already.’

Kelly glared at him, conscious of Mrs McLeod still picking up the broken glass. ‘Sugar?’ she asked with exaggerated politeness.

‘No, thanks.’ He sat down, his long legs stretched out in front of him. ‘But you have some—you need the energy,’ he added tauntingly.

She knew he hadn’t meant that at all, and her mouth tightened angrily. ‘How kind of you to think of my health. Isn’t he a considerate husband, Mrs McLeod?’

‘Well, of course he is.’ The housekeeper finally stood up. ‘We’ve all been very worried about you, Mr Lord most of all.’

‘But you had no need to be worrried,’ Kelly smiled warmly at the other woman. ‘I’m young and resilient.’

‘Of course you are. But I was telling Mr Lord he should take you away for a holiday, get you away from here and into the sunshine.’

‘No! No.’ Kelly studiously erased the sharpness from her voice. ‘I—I’d rather not.’ She didn’t want to go anywhere where she would have to be alone with Jordan.

The mockery in his eyes told her that he knew exactly the reason she had turned down the idea of a holiday. ‘Maybe later on,’ he said smoothly. ‘I can’t get away at the moment.’

He couldn’t leave his secretary! Angela Divine was beautiful, a tall shapely blonde. She was in her late twenties, ten years Kelly’s senior, and Kelly felt sure the other woman would make sure Jordan appreciate her added experience.

Kelly shivered as she remembered what it was like to feel like a woman in Jordan’s arms, to know the wonder of his caresses that could quickly turn to demanding passion.

He had been so patient with her on their wedding night, had gradually introduced her to the delights of her own body, until the initial pain of their consummation had seemed as nothing compared to the blinding pleasure that quickly followed.

She pushed these erotic thoughts to the back of her mind as she remembered the day of humiliation that had followed in Jordan’s office six months later.

Because of Jordan’s inability to get away Kelly had suggested that perhaps she could go away on her own. She had known she had to get away from Jordan; the love she had had for him had turned to hate in such a short time, the love that had seemed to be the pinnacle of her life.

Jordan waited for the housekeeper to leave them before vetoing that idea. ‘You aren’t going anywhere without me,’ he snapped. ‘Even if you do have this ridiculous aversion to me at the moment.’

Kelly stood up. ‘Go to hell!’ she said fiercely, turning in the direction of her bedroom, the bedroom that she had slept in alone since telling Jordan of her pregnancy.

He swung her round before she reached the door, a dangerous glitter in his cold grey eyes. ‘Don’t ever talk to me like that again, little girl!’ he rasped. ‘I won’t stand for it.’

Tears flooded her huge navy blue eyes. ‘And what happens if I do?’ she choked. ‘I suppose you’re going to beat me.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I suppose you’d like that.’

He shook his head impatiently. ‘You ridiculous child,’ he chided gently, pulling her against him to bury his face in her thick black hair. ‘Cry, Kelly,’ he encouraged. ‘It will help.’

She at once stiffened in his arm, feeling as cold to human warmth as a beautiful statue. ‘I have no intention of crying,’ she told him in a stilted voice, shrugging out of his arms with a cool dignity that didn’t encourage further contact between them. ‘Why should I cry?’

She had cried almost hysterically after losing the baby, and felt as if she had cried herself out. All that was left was a numb feeling—and her hatred of Jordan.

‘The doctor told me I have to expect strange moods from you,’ Jordan eyed her thoughtfully, ‘but don’t expect my patience with you to be limitless.’

‘I don’t expect anything from you,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to my room to rest before dinner.’

‘Our room, Kelly,’ he corrected softly.

She gave him a sharp look, dark colour creeping into her pale cheeks. ‘I consider it my room, as you haven’t chosen to share it with me for several months.’

‘I intend changing that now that——’

‘Now that I’m no longer pregnant!’ she finished shrilly. ‘You can do what you choose, but don’t expect me to welcome you back.’

‘Kelly——’

‘I believe I’ve already said this once today, Jordan, but go to hell!’ This time she managed to escape to the bedroom without further interruption.

Once inside she almost collapsed on to the bed, feeling curiously weak. If Jordan was serious about sharing her bed once again then she knew she had to get away from here as soon as possible. Not that she thought he would expect a physical relationship from her just yet, but she couldn’t even bear to have him sleeping in the same room as herself.

Why on earth had he married her? In the six months they had been married not one word of love had passed his lips, words of passion and possession, but never love. This had never particularly bothered her, their lovemaking seeming to show her the depth of his feeling for her, and yet even that hadn’t been hers alone; she had been sharing him with his sexy secretary, and heaven knew how many other women.

She had fallen asleep soon after going to her bedroom, woken up to find there was only half an hour left before her father arrived. As she swung her legs to the floor Jordan came in from the adjoining bathroom, dressed only in a navy blue towelling robe, Kelly instantly stiffened at the intimacy of the situation, although the cool look she gave him showed him none of her tumultuous feelings inside.

‘You should have woken me,’ she remarked distantly.

‘Should I?’ he drawled, rubbing his damp hair dry with a towel. ‘You said you wanted to rest.’

‘But not for this long.’ She pushed her hair back, forcing herself not to be aware of the way Jordan’s towelling robe had fallen open at the chest to reveal his smooth dark skin and the silky mat of dark hair that grew there. ‘You’ll have to entertain Daddy while I shower and dress.’ She turned away.

Jordan threw the towel on the huge double bed they were to share from now on, moving towards her with a determination she knew of old. ‘Entertaining your father wasn’t quite what I had in mind for my immediate future,’ he murmured, his eyes on her mouth. ‘Come here,’ he ordered huskily.

‘Not just now.’ She stood up to begin looking through her numerous evening dresses in the floor-to-ceiling wardrobe, dresses she hadn’t been able to wear the last few months with the thickening of her waistline. Looking down at her slenderness, it had seemed hard to think that she had ever been carrying Jordan’s child.

‘Kelly!’ his hands came down on her hips, pulling her back against him. ‘God, I’ve missed you in my arms,’ he groaned into her throat.

Kelly felt sick, his touch almost obscene to her. ‘Please, Jordan,’ she squirmed away from him. ‘This is hardly the time for that sort of thing.’

‘That sort of thing?’ he repeated softly. ‘All I wanted to do was kiss my wife, maybe hold her against me for a while.’

She gave him a vague smile. ‘We don’t have the time for that, Daddy will be here soon, and neither of us is ready to go down and greet him.’

‘Damn Daddy,’ he said viciously, his face darkening angrily. ‘You don’t want me to kiss you, is that it?’

She had shuddered at the very thought. As far as she knew he could even have been with Angela Divine while she was in hospital, and now he wanted to kiss her! ‘That’s right,’ she agreed unhesitantly. ‘I have no desire to be kissed by you.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ He turned away.

She had felt nothing in his arms, nothing but a cold emptiness that bore no resemblance to her former love for him. She felt nothing but hate for him, felt none of the love, and none of the pleasure of just being with him. She had known in that moment that their marriage had to end.

Kelly shuddered back to an awareness of her surroundings, sure that only minutes had passed since she had seen Jordan step into that lift, and yet in that time she had relived all the pain and disillusionment she had suffered at his hands.