of your head. In the space of an hour she’s pushed every button you have...
‘Your mother didn’t leave you. She was coming back for you—’
‘Shut up!’
Luke jumped to his feet and looked down at her with furious eyes. Forget maybe—he definitely wanted a fight. He knew what buttons to push too. ‘You really do have a habit of thinking that you know it all, Jess.’
The colour leached from Jess’s face and she stared back at him, her eyes enormous in her face. She looked at the papers on the bed, sucked in a breath and tried for a normal voice. ‘You don’t understand! Luke, it’s not what you think. It’s good news!’
‘I don’t care! What did I say when you suggested that I contact my aunt?’
‘That you didn’t want to do it,’ Jess replied in a small voice.
‘What part of that sentence didn’t you understand? How dare you take the decision to investigate my past out of my hands? If I wanted to know I am quite capable of finding out myself!’
‘I’m sorry. I thought I was doing a nice thing!’ Jess protested. ‘I thought you needed to know—that I was helping.’
‘You know, the first time I met you I thought you were an arrogant, snotty witch. Essentially, nothing has changed.’
When shocked hurt ran across her face he knew he had scored a direct hit, but she recovered quickly.
‘That wasn’t what you were thinking every time you took me to bed.’
‘Hey, your body was on offer. I’m a man. I just took what was available.’
‘That’s an awful thing to say.’
It was, but he didn’t care. Somewhere in a place that was beyond his temper and his anger and his fear, Luke realised that he was hurting her—that every word that dropped from his lips was like acid hitting her soul. He didn’t mean it, but he was bone-deep terrified of the implications contained in that envelope—knew that they would change his perceptions about the past, change him. He didn’t want to deal with any of it. Not with Jess’s love, with the anger he felt that his mother had died, leaving him with his monster father, with knowing how much he’d needed her in his life. He just wanted to lash out...to put all this turbulent emotion somewhere else...on someone else.
Jess had a massive target on her forehead. It wasn’t noble, and it wasn’t nice, but she was somewhere to put this burning, churning rage that had his heart, stomach and throat in an unbreakable grip.
Jess wrapped her arms around her middle. Fine tremors passed through her body—a combination of cold and emotion. She felt annihilated and utterly lost... Who was this man who was doing his best to hurt her? This wasn’t the Luke she’d thought she knew, the man she’d come to love. He was cold, hard, ugly.
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Doing what? Being honest?’
Jess took a step forward and slapped her hand on his chest. ‘Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare call this being honest! This is you being a chicken-crap coward! This is you being scared of being close to someone, of exploring your feelings, of admitting that I mean more to you than a quick fling.’
Luke scowled at her. ‘Get real. This is about you making decisions on my behalf, insinuating yourself into my bed and my life—’
‘Insinuating myself into your bed and your life?’ The words roared out of Jess with the force of a freight train. ‘Who was the one who kept saying that this was a bad idea, that we shouldn’t sleep together because it would get complicated? That was me!’
‘Well, we did, and I knew that I’d regret it!’
Luke’s eyes were a deep green and as hard as granite. He was slipping further and further away from her to a place where she wouldn’t be able to reach him.
‘Luke, please don’t do this...’ Jess’s anger faded and she put her hand out to him. She winced when Luke jerked away from her touch. He was gone, slipped over. She’d lost him...
Jess felt her heart crack. ‘Why are you deliberately misconstruing my actions?’ she demanded. ‘I tried to give you a heads-up eight years ago about St Sylve and you tore me apart. I believe that you need to know that your mum loved you—adored you—but I’m being told that I’m an overbearing, interfering, controlling witch.’
Jess heard her voice grow stronger and she squared her shoulders and looked Luke in the eye.
‘And the icing on the cake? You slept with me because