Beneath This Man

He drops his head to his hands. ‘I didn’t take her away, Ava. She left of her own accord, but yes, he does want to take you away from me.’

‘But you were all friendly, you bought Lusso.’ My head is hurting.

‘It’s just a front, Ava – on his part. He had nothing on me, nothing he could hurt me with because I didn’t care about anything. But now I have you.’ He looks up at me. ‘Now, he knows where to stick the knife in.’

My eyes start to prickle, and I watch as his face falls, his own eyes glazing over. That’s as much as I can take being this far away from him. I walk over to his chair and he opens his arms to me. I ignore his swollen hand and crawl onto his lap, letting him swamp me in his arms and invade all of my senses. His touch and his smell settle me immediately, and the inevitable happens, as it always does when we unite with each other like this – all of the issues causing us turmoil seem inconsequential and of no importance. It’s just us in our own little sphere of contentment, soothing each other, settling each other. The rest of the world is getting in our way. Or, more to the point, Jesse’s history is getting in our way.

‘I’ll die loving you.’ he says with all of the emotion I know he truly feels. ‘I can’t let you go to Sweden.’

I sigh. ‘I know.’

‘And you should have let me deal with your things. I didn’t want you seeing him.’ he adds.

I’m just submitting to him now. ‘I know. He knows about you.’

I feel him stiffen under me. ‘Knows about me?’

‘He told me you’re a raving alcoholic.’

He relaxes and laughs. ‘I’m a raving alcoholic?’

I look up at him, shocked by his blasé reaction to something so detrimental. ‘It’s not funny. How does he know?’

‘Ava, I honestly have no idea.’ He sighs. ‘Anyway, he’s misinformed because I’m not an alcoholic.’ He raises his eyebrows at me.

‘Yes, I know.’ I relent, but I’m pretty sure that Jesse’s issue with drink would register somewhere on the alcoholic scale. ‘Jesse, what am I going to do? Mikael is an important client.’ I suddenly have a horribly unpleasant thought. ‘Did he re-hire me for The Life Building just because of you?’

He smiles. ‘No, Ava. He didn’t even know about us until yesterday. He hired you because you’re a talented designer. The fact that you’re also stunningly beautiful was an additional benefit. And the fact that I happened to fall in love with you was an even bigger bonus for him.’

‘You exposed yourself.’ I say quietly. If Jesse hadn’t trampled my meeting with Mikael, then he might never have made the connection.

‘I acted on impulse.’ He shrugs. ‘I panicked when I saw his name in your diary. I thought after Lusso you wouldn’t see him again. Anyway, he would have pursued you whether he knew you were mine or not. Like I said, he’s relentless.’

I remember his eyes bulging, his jaw ticking when he spotted my appointment in my diary. It wasn’t because I replaced the damn thing. It was because Mikael’s name was plastered all over it. ‘How do you know? He’s married. Well, was married.’

‘That never stopped him before, Ava.’

‘It hasn’t?’ I thought he was a decent bloke, a gentleman. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m in absolute mental meltdown. I can’t possibly work with Mikael now – not after discovering this. For a start, Jesse won’t let me within a mile of the man, and secondly, I don’t want to be anywhere near him, anyway. He wants to purposely hurt Jesse and is intending to use me as a tool to do this. He wants revenge and I’m Jesse’s only weak spot. Oh God, I’m supposed to be meeting him on Monday. This is going to get horribly messy. I want to yell at Jesse for not keeping it in his pants, but then my mind naturally shoots back to the day I discovered The Manor’s true happenings. That nasty creature who was being ejected by John, bawling on about husbands and conscience not getting in Jesse’s way. How many marriages has he broken? How many husbands out there want revenge?

I’m snapped from my unwelcome thoughts when Jesse cups my face with his hand. ‘How did you get here?’

I grin. ‘I distracted your appointed guard.’

His eyes sparkle, his lips twitch. ‘I shall have to sack him. How did you manage that?’

I lose my grin when I consider the repair bill Jesse will be getting. ‘Jesse, he’s sixty, if a day. I disconnected his telephone system so he couldn’t advise you of my escape from your tower in the sky.’

‘Our tower. Disconnected?’ His frown line is light across his forehead.

I bury my face back in his chest. ‘I ripped the wires out.’

‘Oh.’ he says flatly, but I know he’s suppressing a laugh.

‘What are you playing at getting a pensioner to try and keep me indoors?’ I ask accusingly. I could have outrun Clive, even in my heels.

He strokes my hair softy. ‘I didn’t want you to leave.’

‘Well, you should’ve stayed yourself then.’ I pull his shirt out of his trousers and slide my hands up to get my fix of his warm chest. He tightens his hold of me, and I feel his beating heart under my palms. It’s so comforting.

‘I was crazy mad.’ He sighs. ‘You make me crazy mad.’ He kisses my temple and burrows deeply into my hair. I shake my head in dismay. ‘Don’t shake your head at me, lady.’ he says in a stern, muffled voice, which I completely ignore.