Free Unexpected Pleasures by Penny Jordan

they were lovers...not to protect her from Ritchie’s unwanted attentions, but to protect Ritchie’s wife from the pain her husband was causing her?
    A pain she hadn’t known she was capable of feeling unfolded achingly inside her. Her fingers curled tightly into her palms, nails pressed against her skin to prevent her crying out with the intensity of it. If they hadn’t been travelling at some speed she would have been tempted to wrench open the door and fling herself bodily out of the car.
    She frowned as she suddenly realised that they weren’t travelling in the direction of her home.
    ‘This isn’t the way to where I live,’ she protested.
    ‘No,’ Jake agreed calmly, pausing for a few seconds before adding, ‘I’m taking you home with me. We need to talk.’
    ‘To talk?’ Rosie stared at him, infuriated by his high-handedness. ‘What about?’
    The look Jake gave her made her toes curl in nervous self-protection.
    ‘The past...’ he told her shockingly. ‘And the future...’

CHAPTER FIVE
    T HE PAST ! R OSIE TREMBLED . What was he planning to do? Grill her so relentlessly that she broke down and retracted the statements she had made about what had really happened with Ritchie?
    She had already seen in his face how little he had enjoyed hearing the truth. She knew how much it must have infuriated him, hurt his pride.
    And it wasn’t just for the sake of his pride that he would want her to retract, either.
    She had read into his comments about Ritchie’s marriage a none too subtle warning off. Did he really think after what she had told him that she would want anything...anything to do with his precious cousin?
    He must do, otherwise why the charade about pretending they were a couple? Why that kiss?
    That kiss... Her heart started to thump unevenly. Against her will, an unfamiliar mixture of languor and sensuality spilled slowly through her.
    She had received other kisses, and yet she could not remember a single one of them affecting her as his had done.
    There had been a new dimension to it, an awareness within her of an aching sadness and pain, as though she had suddenly become aware that there could be something in a man’s kiss that could stir her so deeply that she was helpless to resist it.
    But she had to resist it. She had to remember just who Jake Lucas was, and just what the situation between them really was. That hadn’t changed just because she had lost her temper and challenged his perception of past events.
    He had not followed her into the Simpsons’ house to protect her , as she had initially so naïvely imagined. He had followed her to protect his cousin’s marriage.
    From her?
    She was the last person who wanted to threaten it. As far as she was concerned, she would have much preferred Ritchie to stay where he was in Australia.
    At least he seemed to have no memory of what had happened between them. Thank God, but then, remembering how much he had had to drink, it was perhaps not as surprising that he should have forgotten, as she had once thought.
    She remembered how terrified she had been all those years ago, dreading hearing that he had been boasting about what had happened, and then how stunned, how disbelieving, when it first began to dawn on her that he couldn’t even remember the incident.
    She had been glad, of course, but at the same time bitterly resentful that something which should have had such a devastating effect on her and her whole life had had so little effect on his.
    For him there had been no guilt, no pain, no suffering, and certainly no remorse.
    From what she had seen of him today, she doubted that he was capable of feeling any of those emotions, and for the first time she was thankful that the child she had conceived had been spared the discovery of what his or her father was.
    No child should have to suffer that kind of burden; she could see already the effect he was having on his own children.
    She shivered suddenly in reaction to what she was thinking.