Passion in Secret. Catherine Spencer

enough.”

      Clamping down on the pain shooting up this thigh, he scooped Sally into his arms and made his way through the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea before Moses. There might be some there who felt sorry for her, but no one except possibly his relatives dared show it. Colette had cornered the market on any spare sympathy that might be floating around.

      The library was a man’s room. Paneled in oak, with big, comfortable leather chairs and a matching sofa flanking the wide fireplace, some very good paintings, a Turkish rug and enough books to keep a person reading well into the next century, it was Fletcher’s haven; the place to which he retreated when things became too histrionic with the women in his household. Jake had joined him there many a time, to escape or to enjoy an after-dinner drink, and knew he kept a private supply of cognac stashed in the bureau bookcase next to the hearth.

      Just as well. Sally needed something strong to bring the color back to her face. Come to that, he could use a stiff belt himself.

      Depositing her on the couch, he covered her with a mo-hair lap rug draped over one of the chairs. She looked very young in repose; very vulnerable. Much the way she’d looked when they’d started dating during her high school sophomore year. He’d been a senior at the time, and so crazy in love with her that he hadn’t been able to think straight.

      Even as he watched, she stirred and, opening her eyes, regarded him with dazed suspicion. “What are you doing?”

      “Looking at you,” he said, using the back of the sofa for support and wondering how she’d respond if he told her she had the longest damned eyelashes he’d ever seen, and a mouth so delectable that he knew an indecent urge to lean down and kiss it.

      Get a grip, Harrington! You’ve been a widower less than a week, and should be too swamped with memories of your wife to notice the way another woman’s put together—even if the woman in question does happen to have been your first love.

      Her glance shied away from him and darted around the room. “How did I wind up in here?”

      “I carried you in, after you fainted.”

      “I fainted?” She covered her eyes with the back of one hand and groaned in horror. “In front of all those people?”

      “It was the best thing you could have done,” he said, limping to the bureau and taking out a three-quarter-full bottle of Courvoisier cognac and two snifters. “You upstaged Colette beautifully. Without you to lambaste, she was left speechless.” He poured them each a healthy shot of the liquor and offered one to her. “This should put you back on your feet.”

      “I don’t know about that,” she said doubtfully. “I haven’t eaten a thing today.”

      “I wondered what made you pass out.”

      “I haven’t had much of an appetite at all since…the accident.”

      “Feel up to talking about that night?”

      She sat up and pushed her hair away from her face. “I don’t know what else I can say that you haven’t already heard.”

      Cautiously lowering himself into the nearest chair, he knocked back half the contents of his glass and, as the warmth of the brandy penetrated the outer limits of his pain, said, “You could try telling me what really happened, Sally.”

      The shutters rolled down her face, cloaking her expression. “What makes you so sure there’s more to tell?”

      “You and I were once close enough that we learned to read each other’s minds pretty well. I always knew when you were trying to hide something from me, and I haven’t forgotten the signs.”

      She swirled her drink but did not, he noticed, taste it. Why was she being so cagey? Could it be that she was afraid the booze might loosen her tongue too much and she’d let something slip? “That was a long time ago, Jake. We were just kids. People grow up and change.”

      “No, they don’t,” he said flatly. “They just become better at covering up. But although you might have fooled everyone else, including the police, you’ve never been able to fool me. There’s more to this whole business than anyone else but you knows, and I’m asking you, for old times’ sake, to tell me what it is.”

      Just for a moment, she looked him straight in the eye and he thought she was going to come clean. But then the door opened and Fletcher appeared. “I expect you might need this, Jake,” he said, brandishing the cane. “And I wondered if Sally felt well enough for one of the chauffeurs to drive her home, before the cars fill up with other people.”

      Masking his annoyance at the interruption, Jake said, “Can’t it wait another five minutes? We’re in the middle of something, Fletcher, if you don’t mind.”

      “No, we’re not,” Sally said, throwing off the blanket and swinging her legs to the floor. “If you can spare a car, I’d be very grateful, Mr. Burton. I’m more than ready to leave.”

      Frustrated, Jake watched as she tottered to her feet and wove her way to the door. Short of resorting to physical force, there was nothing he could do to detain her. This time.

      But he’d see to it there was a next time. And when it happened, he’d make damn good and sure she didn’t escape him until he was satisfied he knew the precise circumstances which had finally freed him from the hell his marriage had become.

      CHAPTER TWO

      YOU’VE never been able to fool me, he’d said, but he couldn’t be more wrong. She’d fooled Jake about something a lot more momentous than the events leading up to Penelope’s untimely end. She was very good at keeping secrets, even those which had ripped her life apart, both literally and figuratively.

      Guarding this latest would be easy, as long as she didn’t let him slip past her guard. And the only way to avoid that was to avoid him. Because, in her case, the old adage Out of sight, out of mind, had never applied to Jake Harrington. Just the opposite. No matter how many miles or years had separated them, he’d never faded from her memory. If anything, distance had lent him enchantment, and seeing him again had done nothing to change all that. The magic continued to hold.

      He looked older, of course—didn’t they all?—but the added years sat well on him. The boy had become a man; the youthful good looks solidified into a tough masculine beauty. Broader across the shoulders, thicker through the chest, he cut an impressive figure, especially in his military uniform. A person had only to look at him to know he’d seen his share of trouble, of tragedy, and emerged stronger for it. It showed in his manner, in the authority of his bearing.

      This was not a man to shy away from the truth or crumble in the face of adversity. And she supposed, thinking about it as she made her way along the crowded halls of Eastridge Academy on the following Monday morning, in that respect at least he wasn’t so very different from the-boy who’d stolen her heart, all those years ago, in this very same school. Even at eighteen, he’d possessed the kind of courage which was the true mark of a man.

      Still, Sally couldn’t imagine telling him about Penelope. Male pride was a strange phenomenon. It was one thing for a man to climb behind the controls of a fighter jet and risk life and limb chasing down an anonymous enemy. And quite another to confront betrayal of the worst kind from the woman he’d married, especially if he discovered he was the last to know about it.

      The senior secretary called out to her as she passed through the main office on her way to the staff lounge. “Morning, Sally. You just missed a phone call.”

      “Oh? Any message.”

      “No. Said he’d try to catch you later on.”

      He? “Did he at least give a name?”

      “No.” The secretary eyed her coyly. “But he had a voice to die for! Dark and gravelly, as though he needed a long drink of water which I’d have been happy to supply. Sound like anyone you know?”

      Premonition settled unpleasantly in the