Page 24 of Consequences of Their Wedding Charade
Had he found her sexy when he’d been stroking the nape of her neck...? Touching her in a way he had never done before?
‘I’m glad you explained.’ She shot him a one-hundred-watt smile and began rising to her feet. ‘I guess, all in all, we’ll only be in public when we’re at the wedding...and you’re right, it would be awful if John and Philippa’s big day was clouded by...er...antics from your ex-fiancée...’
She was keen to get skiing, disconcerted by the way the familiar had veered off into the unknown, by the inroads being made into safe territory. ‘I guess a few fond shows of affection aren’t going to hurt anyone!’ she trilled with nervous enthusiasm. ‘And now we’ve gone through all that, shall we head for the slopes?’
Curtis watched as Jess tugged off the black and red striped woolly hat, releasing her hair before running her fingers through it.
Where before her body language had been that of someone trying to disappear into the background, now she was looser, more confident in her sexiness. Was it any wonder Caitlin was now so unnerved by what she must consider a real threat to any chance of them getting back together?
He had had over a dozen texts since they had chatted the evening before. He had answered one and that was to tell her that he didn’t want her texting him.
It was true that he had once worried, and still did, about the fragile state of her mental health, which had encouraged her unhealthy obsession with him. He was now concerned about her unpredictability. Her texts had been intrusive and out of order. She had reverted to pleading that he give them another chance because she had changed, because the therapy had done her a world of good.
She couldn’t believe he could possibly be interested in someone like Jess. Didn’t he remember the fun they used to have in bed?
Curtis was seriously considering telling John that the situation was too flammable for him to stay for the wedding, although there was no part of him that didn’t curse the fact that this was a situation that should never have come about in the first place.
Who was it who said that a good deed never went unpunished? He would have been better off walking away from the woman instead of trying to lend a helping hand.
The scars he carried from his own childhood had coloured his responses to Caitlin, had, for the first time in his life, blinded him to the hard-line path he had forged for himself, one from which he never wavered.
Just went to show what happened the minute you opened that door a crack and allowed emotions to start calling the shots, even in the smallest possible way.
Only William would ever lay claim to his emotions...
For once, he fully allowed the past to intrude, without the mental censoring he usually employed. He played in his head, like a movie set to warp speed, the events that had led to him being rescued from the loneliness of life in foster care. William had shown up, just like that—‘a visitor’to see him. Curtis could remember sitting in that chair, feet barely touching the ground, and looking across at a kindly man he had never seen in his life before. He remembered being asked to stay where he was while Mrs Evans, the middle-aged lady in charge, who ruled the place with a rod of steel, disappeared for what had felt like ages with the kindly faced stranger.
Then she’d returned and his life had changed course for ever.
Later, in drips, he had discovered what had led his godfather to the doors of that foster care home.
William had been his mother’s tutor at university, a caring guy who had done his best to keep her on the straight and narrow, and for a while, after his mother had graduated with a first-class degree, they had kept in touch. But Sophie Hamilton, herself the product of a broken home, without any support network in terms of family, had always hovered on the fringes of a bad crowd.Beautiful, clever and utterly irresponsible, she had dumped her job and vanished with Curtis and her boyfriend of the day to the world of alcohol and drugs.
She and William had parted with angry words exchanged and, soon after, his godfather had, himself, been offered a job abroad. He’d tried his best to keep in touch, he’d later told Curtis, but to no avail. From the other side of the world, he had been able only to pray and hope for the best.
Time had passed and it was only when he’d been returning to the UK, and with a newfound knowledge of all those search engines that enabled people to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances, that he’d laboriously and piece by piece found out what had happened to Sophie and his godson.
Appalled, he had descended on the foster home with rescue in mind and the rest...history.
Yes, his godfather would have the love and trust he denied the rest of the world. Caitlin? A mistake and that lapse in his strict code of behaviour? Also a mistake. Look where it had got him.
‘Hello? Where are you?’
Curtis blinked to find that his torrent of thoughts had swept him away and now here was Jess, standing in front of him, smiling, her deep blue eyes curious.
And, just for a split second, he wanted to pull her inside and sit her down and fill in all those bits he had earlier left out, fill her in on the dark motivations that drove him forward and the past that had propelled him into taking his eye off the ball, so that Caitlin, instead of being relegated to the past, was still, unfortunately and despite his best efforts, very much in the present.
Where had that weak compulsion come from? he wondered, confused. Jess was his friend and sure, he was open with her, but confiding his innermost thoughts? He did that with no one. So how was it that suddenly he’d been tempted...? How was it that he looked at her and his self-control felt precarious?
‘Thinking that you ski like a pro.’
He grinned and shook himself free from his thoughts. Life was something over which he needed to exert control and it paid to know the parameters of his friendship with Jess. ‘But I still managed to beat you, despite the extremely generous head start...’
Had he really been thinking that...?
Jess could swear that he’d been a million miles away. Where? Work? With his wretched ex?
She hadn’t had such fun on the slopes since for ever. She had set their conversation to one side and out there, racing with the cold air against her face and the wide-open white wonderland all around her, she had felt completely free.
