The Passion Price by Miranda Lee Read Free Book Online

last. ‘Truly. I know how hard it is to lose someone you care about. A very good friend of mine died last year. Dorothy’shusband. You don’t realise how much you miss someone till they’re not there for you any longer.’
    Angelina was touched—and somewhat surprised—by Jake’s sentiments. But at least she’d had one of her questions answered. In part. She now knew who Dorothy was. The wife of an old friend.
    â€˜How did your father die?’ Jake asked. ‘Had he been ill?’
    â€˜No. He was as healthy as a horse. It was quite tragic, really. He was bitten by a snake. A King Brown.’
    â€˜Good lord. That is tragic. But isn’t it also unusual these days? To die of snake-bite? Don’t they have antidotes?’
    She nodded whilst she struggled to get a grip on herself. She hated talking about that awful day. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago. Three months and a bit.
    â€˜He might have lived if he’d been bitten on the hand,’ she explained. ‘Or a foot. But he must have been bending over and was bitten on the chest, not far from the heart. He…he stopped breathing before the ambulance arrived. They tried to revive him but it was too late.’
    Tears flooded her eyes as all the turmoil and torment of that day rushed back. Jake’s reaching over the table to cover her hand with his catapulted her back to the present, and made her hotly aware that she’d been wrong this morning. Jake, the man, still had the same effect on her as Jake, the boy. Whenhis long fingers started moving seductively against hers, a charge of electric sensations shot up her arm.
    â€˜Don’t,’ she snapped, and snatched her hand away from under his, clutching it firmly in her lap with her other hand.
    He searched her face with thoughtful eyes. ‘What’s wrong, Angelina? Are you still angry with me for what happened sixteen years ago? I wouldn’t blame you if you were. I was thinking earlier today how much I wanted to say sorry to you for how things turned out that night, so if it’s not too late, I’m truly sorry.’
    â€˜No need for an apology,’ she bit out. ‘I was as much to blame as you were.’
    â€˜Then what’s the problem? Why snatch your hand away like that?’
    Angelina could hardly tell him the truth. That just the touch of his hand fired up her hormones as no man had in the past sixteen years. Not even close. Even now, she was looking at his mouth and wondering what it would feel like on hers again; wondering what making love would be like with him, now that he was older and so much more experienced.
    Jake would be only too happy to accommodate her, she knew. Angelina had seen the way he’d looked at her during lunch today. She’d been on the end of such looks from men a lot lately. Invariably, they were followed up by some kind of pass.
    She wouldn’t mind betting Jake had organised leaving Dorothy behind for a while so that he couldbe alone with her. The realisation that he thought he could just take up with her where he’d left off all those years ago infuriated Angelina.
    â€˜You look as if you’ve changed, Jake,’ she said sharply. ‘But you haven’t changed at all. You still think you can have any female you fancy.’
    He smiled the most heart-stopping smile. ‘It would be hard not to fancy you, Angelina. You were a gorgeous-looking girl, but you’re one stunning-looking woman.’
    Angelina gritted her teeth to stop herself from smiling back at him. Damn the man, he was incorrigible. And almost irresistible.
    Wilomena arriving with the coffee and cake was a godsend. But she was gone all too soon.
    â€˜This is great cake,’ Jake praised after his first mouthful.
    â€˜Glad you like it,’ she remarked snippily.
    He took another mouthful, followed up by some coffee. She watched him, her own appetite nil, her frustration growing. Who