Not Even for Love by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online

“It’s just that you lied to me. I despise mendacity, Jordan.”
    “I didn’t—”
    “What would Helmut think if he knew about last night? Hm? Would your diamond have been just a tiny bit smaller? Or
does
he know? Maybe you accommodate him so well that he’s willing to overlook your occasional indiscretions. Maybe he shares you with his friends.”
    “Shut up!” she shouted as she flew out of the chair and almost lost her balance as she stumbled across the windy deck. “It isn’t like that. I was going to tell you about Helmut this morning, but you had split, hadn’t you? When I woke up and saw you were gone, I couldn’t decide if you were an incredibly vivid dream or a nightmare. I had slept with a tender, sensitive man who turned out to be a cad who sneaked out at first light. A one-night stand? Is that what all the boys in the locker room refer to me as?”
    Tears now blurred her eyes and she swiped at them angrily. She hadn’t wanted him to know how devastated she had been when she awoke long after the sun was up to find him gone without a trace. Had the mattress not borne the imprint of his body, had not the spicy fragrance of his cologne still clung to the linens, she might have thought he had been a figment.
    But the most evident traces of his existence were on her body. Her lips were slightly bruised and chafed from the ardency of his kisses. Her breasts tingled with remembrances of his caresses. If she concentrated, she could accurately recall the sensation of having him full and deep inside her, imagine it still. No. He had been all too real.
    “I came back this afternoon, but you had conveniently deserted the premises,” he fired back at her. “Were you in there all the time while I knocked on your door like some frustrated Romeo?”
    Yes, she had been. By midafternoon, ashamed and distraught over what had happened, she had closed the shop and gone upstairs to lie down. She hadn’t slept much the night before. Helmut had called her to tell her he would have one of his servants pick her up and escort her through the alleys of the old town to the quay, where a motor launch would be waiting for her. She was to bring her clothes for the reception with her and change at the château, where Helmut kept a suite available for her use.
    She had only hung up the telephone when she heard the knocking on her door downstairs. Surreptitiously she peered through the closed shutters of her bedroom window down into the street. Her heart lurched when she saw the sun shining on Reeves’s hair. He tried the locked door knob again a bit impatiently, then knocked harder. He even called her name and glanced up toward the window. She jumped back in time for him not to see her.
    Why hadn’t she gone down and opened the door? What had made her stand there, petrified of seeing him again? Shame? Embarrassment? Maybe in the light of day he wouldn’t find her so attractive. Or maybe he wouldn’t be nearly so appealing to her. She dashed that thought. He was the most attractive man she had ever seen, by candlelight or sunlight. What had kept her from going down and flinging the door open wide and throwing herself into his arms?
    Fear.
    For the past few years she had lived by her own devices, learning from her own mistakes, celebrating her own accomplishments. She had kept herself insulated from exterior intervention. She had once placed her life in a man’s hands and it had ended disastrously. When she had finally left Charles, she had pledged never again to entrust her life to another human being. Charles’s untimely death had irrevocably prevented her from returning to an unhappy marriage, but she had never again allowed herself to become attached to a man to the point of dependence.
    For months Helmut had pursued her, but caution had kept her from totally accepting his affection. That same caution had held her back from charging down the stairs that afternoon to embrace Reeves with all the happiness that welled up