Free The Lost Wife by Maggie Cox Page A

mad at you,’ Ailsa whispered back brokenly.
    Almost unconsciously she’d been leaning towards him, and she didn’t know or care right then who made the first inflammatory move but as soon as their lips met she knew she was lost … swept up in a maelstrom that she didn’t have a prayer of resisting. Allowing the power of it to suck her under, she didn’t protest when Jake held her face so that he could plunder and ravish as she ached for him to do. There was no doubt in her mind about letting desire have its way. She supped and drank him in with equally passionate ardour, hardly noticing that his beard-roughened jaw scraped her skin and would probably leave it feeling tender. Winding her arms round his lean, hard middle, she secretly thrilled at his indomitable male strength … the rock-solid physicality of him, the rugged warmth and scent that made her want to jump rightinside him. It was, perhaps, the aspect of his presence that she’d missed the most.
    It was actually Jake who regained his sanity first. With his hands still cupping her face he lifted his lips away from hers, his head making a rueful motion. ‘You know where this is going to end if we don’t call a halt to it right now, don’t you? Are you ready for that, Ailsa? Is that what you want?’
    She hadn’t wanted him to give her a choice.
If he had just continued kissing her until her lips were numb and she was too weak with desire to stand then she would have definitely succumbed to being seduced by him. But Jake
had
given her a choice, and now that sanity had prevailed she was moved to act on it.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. Her face burned with guilt and embarrassment as she shakily stepped out of his embrace. ‘Call it a weak moment.’
    ‘What we had between us was never weak or halfhearted, baby. It was always like a lightning storm. It seems that some things haven’t changed as much as we thought they had.’
    ‘I can’t deny it.’ Regret was like a heavy blanket smothering her—regret that Jake had stopped kissing her and regret that an accident had destroyed all their hopes and dreams and torn them apart. Ailsa wished she knew a way to throw off that smothering blanket for ever. Unfortunately she didn’t. ‘But I know that if we give in to it,’ she continued across the ache in her throat, ‘it might satisfy a momentary urge but it’s not going to mend anything. How can it? We’ve built separate lives Jake. They may not be perfect, but living apart has kept us from blaming each other for what happened and being angry all the time. Towards the end we were so bad to each other, and I really regret that. We added to our suffering by making eachther feel guilty. At least we both get a little peace now, and so does our daughter.’
    ‘Peace? Is that what you call it?’ His mouth twisting with derision, Jake muttered a curse. ‘The memory of that accident is like being hunted day and night by a pack of rabid wolves. No matter what I do, no matter where I go, I’m never free of the darkness it brings. I’m glad that you feel peace sometimes, Ailsa. I really am. But I can’t say that I ever do. I was going to string the lights. I’ll go and get them.’
    He was out through the door before Ailsa could call him back …
    Adding another sweet-smelling applewood log to the wood-burner, Ailsa sat back on her heels. Glancing up at the clock on the mantelpiece, she noted that Jake had been outside stringing lights in freezing temperatures for at least a couple of hours now. Earlier, remembering that he didn’t touch alcohol these days, Ailsa had taken him a warming mug of non-alcoholic mulled wine. He’d reached down from the ladder he’d rested against the cottage’s sturdy stone walls, murmured ‘thanks’, then climbed back up the ladder without so much as a backward glance.
    The chasm of hurt and tension between them was like an icy splinter embedded in her heart. By the time the weather let up sufficiently for him to be