It Was Only a Kiss - By Joss Wood Page 0,39

hands on top of her cue and shook her head at him. Her brown eyes sparkled in the low light of the bar.

‘Make the reservation, Savage, and bring your credit card with the biggest limit.’

Luke shook his head at the empty table. ‘How?’

‘I keep telling you that I have four elder brothers. When are you going to learn?’

* * *

Luke placed his elbow on the table and looked at Jess, who was making patterns in the condensation of her glass. She looked tired, Luke thought, and glanced at his watch. It was close to midnight and the band had switched from dance music to blues. It was freezing out, but a fire roared at one end of the room and the mood in the bar was mellow.

Owen and Ally had made their way back to St Sylve, and he supposed he needed to get Jess home, but he was reluctant to end the evening.

‘Crazy week ahead,’ Jess said quietly.

‘Like the last couple have been a walk in the park?’ Luke responded with a wry smile.

‘We’re filming the family scene at St Sylve on Tuesday, and my own family is coming in on Thursday night.’

He hadn’t forgotten. Luke licked his bottom lip and asked the question that he’d been longing to ask since he’d heard about her family. It was one he’d frequently asked of his friends growing up, trying to capture what it felt like to be part of a group, a clan...a family.

‘Tell me about your family.’

‘What do you want to know?’

Luke shrugged. ‘I don’t know...did you go on family holidays? Did your brothers tease you? What do you remember most about your teens?’

He sounded almost wistful, Jess thought as she put her elbows on the table and cupped her face in her hands. ‘Um...I felt like I was playing catch-up most of my life with my brothers. They were always bigger, stronger and faster, and they gave me no handicap because I was a girl. It was keep up or go home. They teased me incessantly and I made a point of annoying them in retaliation. Family holidays...?’

Jess thought for a moment. ‘We spent most holidays at my grandfather’s cottage at the beach. It was tiny, and we were packed into the house like sardines in a can. We had the best fun: hot days, warm seas, ice cream, blistered noses, beach cricket, bonfires on the sand. My brother John would play the guitar and we’d sing along—rather badly. Those holidays stopped when I was about sixteen.’

‘Why?’

Pain flickered in Jess’s eyes. ‘My grandfather walked out on my grandmother and he and his mistress hightailed it to that cottage.’

‘And that rocked your world?’ Luke commented. Why would the disintegration of her grandparents’ marriage affect her so much? He wanted to know. Just for tonight he wanted to know everything about her. ‘Why?’

‘My gran thought they had an awesome marriage. She considered him her soul mate, her best friend. Hearing that he’d been having an affair for ten years side-winded her. She moved in with us for a while, and I watched a vibrant, intelligent woman shrink in on herself. It was as if someone had removed her spine.’

Ouch, Luke thought.

‘And my mom took the strain because my grandfather still wanted a relationship with her, but he’d hurt her mother so badly... It was a nasty time, and because this was my family, highly volatile and voluble, nothing was kept from me. My brothers went to boarding school but I stayed at home, so I heard it all: the rants, the tears, the curses.’

Luke considered her words for a moment. ‘So when you caught your boyfriend in bed with someone else it was a double whammy? A visit to the past wrapped up in the present?’

Jess half smiled. ‘Along with dinged pride.’ She dropped her hand so that it lay beside his and curled her pinky in his. ‘Did your wife cheat on you?’

Luke waited for the fist in his sternum and frowned when he didn’t feel the normal punch the subject generally instigated. ‘I never caught her at it.’

‘Why did you divorce her?’ Jess asked, the side of his hand warm against hers.

Luke stared at a point past Jess’s shoulder and wondered whether or not to answer her question. Because she had a crazy shopping habit? Sure. Because she was bat-crap insane? That was a really good reason. Because...because...

‘Because I looked at her one day and realised that I really didn’t want her to be the mother of my