Echoes of the Heart (7 page)

‘I asked her to come.’

It had been a month since Bennett’s funeral. In that time, he’d telephoned the Bennett household only to find the number was disconnected. He’d driven to the Bennett estate a couple of times but nobody answered when he buzzed for admission. Short of scaling the high, wrought-iron front gates and contending with the two Dobermans that stood growling at him from the other side, there was nothing he could do except bide his time and wait for Amanda to come to him.

He’d been sure she would. The passion burning between them was too hard to ignore. Hell! He’d tried and failed dismally. Amanda had been a thorn in his side—a lover he’d never been able to forget, or to forgive.

‘Jake, what in God’s name are you thinking?’ Sophie demanded quietly with a frown of concern.

‘Mr Formosa?’

All the men and women seated at the long conference table looked at him, waiting for him to respond to whatever it was that had been suggested. It was impossible for him to keep his mind on business proceedings. He had to go to Amanda.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me. An urgent matter requires my immediate attention.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’ll resume our negotiations after lunch.’

A peripheral part of his brain registered the surprised reactions of a few of his executives and a ripple of irritation from the representatives of the television corporation, but he didn’t care. Amanda was waiting for him. That was all that mattered. Finally she was here, ready to acknowledge their mutual attraction. Ready to become his lover again.

As he rose from his seat at the head of the table, urgency gripped him, making his heart pump harder. Barely able to contain his anticipation, it was hard to restrain himself from sprinting out of the conference room to meet her.

It was Sophie’s hand on his arm that made him pause.

‘No. Don’t do this to yourself,’ she pleaded in hushed tones as she waved away hovering employees who would have approached him.

‘I have to,’ Jake said.

She grabbed his hand, steered him into a small soundproof room off the conference area and closed the door. ‘Just what do you hope to achieve, Jake?’

‘You know as well as I do that I haven’t been able to get on with my life. I can’t move on until I finish this on my terms.’

Sophie let go of his hand and paced the length of the room, one hand at her narrow waist and the other running through her stunning red hair in agitation. ‘It’s a fatal attraction. She’s ripped you up before and I saw how destructive it was. Don’t let her do it to you again.’

‘She won’t. I don’t have blinkers on anymore where she’s concerned. I’ll get closure on this and I’ll do it my way.’

It seemed he’d been waiting for Amanda for an eternity. Seeing her again—no, he corrected himself—eradicating his feelings for her, was more vital than closing a multimillion-dollar takeover deal.

‘You should never have gone to Bennett’s funeral. To publicly align yourself to a woman whose deplorable actions have earned her public loathing...It was sheer insanity.’

‘I’d hoped, once I saw her again, I’d discover she didn’t affect me as profoundly as I remembered.’ He’d been wrong. He’d been aggravated that both her physical and emotional impact upon him was as strong as ever. He was still surprised at the overwhelming surge of protectiveness he’d felt for her as Fiona Bennett had attacked her. His vulnerability to Amanda annoyed the hell out of him.

‘But she did.’ Sophie sighed as she looked at him closely and her lips twisted in frustrated resignation. ‘We’re both as hopeless as each other when it comes to falling in love with the wrong people.’

‘No. My heart isn’t involved in this anymore. This is just about ending it.’

Sophie merely shook her head and grimaced. ‘This is me you’re talking to. Sometimes I think I know you better than you know yourself.’ She put her hands on his arms. ‘Don’t forget this was the woman who held that heart in the palm of her hand and didn’t think twice about squeezing the life out of it. She’s a faithless woman whose affairs drove her husband to suicide.’

Jake closed his eyes briefly. The pain of Amanda’s betrayal was still there.

‘I’m afraid she still affects me like no other woman has. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

It was his vulnerability to Amanda that had made him lash out at her with harsh words. He admitted he’d been pretty brutal in the things that he’d said to her, but the wounds she’d inflicted upon him when she’d left him to marry Bennett were still open and bleeding.

‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe the only reason you still feel this way is lack of closure. She never did provide you with any good reason for having left and I know that’s tortured you.’

It felt good to have Sophie put into words what had been plaguing him. He was still angry and hurt to think that Amanda had left his bed and immediately fallen pregnant with Bennett’s baby. To know that the tenderness and passion he’d felt when making love to Amanda hadn’t been reciprocated was a savage blow to his confidence and to his ego.

‘At the cemetery when I demanded an explanation, she sounded bitter when she mentioned your name. She claimed she thought I was involved with you when I was with her. I wanted to believe she left me because of some stupid misunderstanding. I lost sight of the fact that Amanda is a woman from a background of poverty whose primary goal was to snare a wealthy husband.’

‘Don’t forget she was the one who left you,’ Sophie said. ‘You would never have proposed marriage to me if she hadn’t.’

‘And you would never have accepted if you hadn’t been such an emotional mess at the time.’ He gave Sophie a quick hug and peck on the cheek. ‘You’re one in a million, Sophie. God knows I wish things could have been different between us.’

‘Me too,’ she told him lightly, pulling a face.

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Go do what you have to do so you can move forward with your life. Just don’t lose your heart again in the process.’

With a purposeful stride, Jake left the conference room, made his way to the elevator and jabbed impatiently at a button. The doors parted immediately. As the lift moved upward his heart felt too big to be contained in his chest. It seemed to swell and hammer against his ribcage as he pictured Amanda in his mind—not as the widow he’d seen dressed in black, but as the young woman he’d fallen in love with.

Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to remember the first time he’d seen her. Her long blonde hair had been braided and his hands itched to release it. Her slender frame was sheer perfection, and he knew her shapely, tanned legs would look even better wrapped around his hips. She moved like a ballerina, and her smile filled the room like sunshine on a wintry morning.

Her vivid blue eyes had locked with his. Her full lips had parted slightly in disbelief and he knew the same bolt of lightning had hit her. The same immediate, mutual attraction.

There had been only one course of action for him from that point. He had been determined to make her his.

Now he cautioned himself.
Keep your eyes wide open
.
Don’t let her make a fool of you again.

Like a knight donning a suit of armour, he summoned the hurt she’d inflicted after she turned her back on their relationship. He didn’t have to dig far to find it. The pain and anger still simmered just below the surface of the controlled façade he presented to the world.

He’d been planning to propose to Amanda.

He had thought he’d fallen in love with her but he’d merely loved the image she’d projected. All too late, he’d realised that the image was a role she played to hide the shallow vindictiveness of her nature.

Jake would’ve gone against his father’s advice and married her—given her the world. He could easily have been a willing slave for her desires and ended up the laughing stock of Sydney.

What a bloody idiot!

It was only his father’s sudden heart attack during their argument about Amanda that stopped Jake proposing to her. Gasping for each breath as the stretcher was lifted into the ambulance, his father choked out his words, making Jake promise to wait and think things through. Sick with fear for his father’s life, and riddled with guilt that their argument had triggered the cardiac arrest, Jake had agreed. He’d gone looking for Amanda to drive her home before he joined his mother at the hospital at his father’s bedside, but she’d already left.

The next forty-eight hours had been critical for his father’s life. Amanda had phoned him once and offered to be by his side, but Jake had declined, knowing it would upset his father more and that stress may well push him over the edge.

Although he’d intended to pursue Amanda once his father was out of intensive care, his father’s medical tests indicated immediate surgery was necessary. Medical complications followed. Then, knowing the chairman of Formosa Corporation was out of action, a rival company seized the opportunity to mount a takeover bid, forcing Jake to step in to ensure his father’s lifetime of work was safeguarded. He’d had to leave the country to shore up support in New Zealand and close off important negotiations in the United States.

It had been an exhausting time. His duties at work and the care he’d given his parents had consumed his every waking moment. He’d been angry with Amanda during that time, too. Angry and disappointed. After her initial supportive phone call, when she’d offered to be at his side at the hospital, she’d behaved childishly. She hadn’t taken his rejection of her offer well. Her response had been to disconnect her mobile phone. Then she’d refused the calls he’d made to her at work. And now she claimed she knew nothing about the calls.

In between meetings and trips to the hospital, he’d managed to squeeze in a quick visit to her legal firm. On that occasion he’d been told to leave the building or be escorted out by security.

So he’d decided to forget about her. But even when he’d buried himself in his work, she was ever-present in his mind. Sleep brought no reprieve either as she haunted every one of his dreams. He resolved to try one last time to see her when he returned to Australia.

God! When he’d left a message at the legal firm inviting her to dinner the night he returned, she’d had the hide to turn up at the restaurant with her obnoxious husband in tow—flaunting her marriage. Flaunting her pregnancy.

Jake’s heart had swelled when he’d seen her walk in. He’d only had eyes for her and hadn’t even noticed Bennett by her side. When Bennett announced their marriage, he may as well have taken a knife, cut open Jake’s chest and skewered his heart.

Jake wanted to punish Amanda.

The adamant denial she’d given him when he’d asked whether the child could be his, had been like a death knell. The pain he experienced once he knew Amanda was expecting another man’s child had been more than he could endure. His love for her had been killed. There was nothing he could do but try to bury that love alongside his ravaged heart.

Jake had heard speculation that Amanda had deliberately fallen pregnant to force Bennett into marriage. But no matter how hard Jake tried to convince himself he’d had a lucky escape, it didn’t ease his heartache. Thank God she hadn’t realised how deeply he’d loved her, and that he’d never proposed and been tied to her for life.

Perhaps the miscarriage of her child had been punishment enough.

Jake was shocked at that terrible, uncharacteristic thought. Despite the deep scars of her betrayal, he would not have wished that upon her. But part of him still wanted retribution.

His attempt at marriage to Sophie had been a dismal failure because of his experience with Amanda. Until he got over Amanda, he wouldn’t be able to commit to—or love—any other woman.

He would carry out his plan and remind himself Amanda had never been worthy of his love.

Lust?

That was an entirely different matter. He still wanted her and fantasised about her like some hormone-driven adolescent. Lust was something he could now deal with, something he
would
deal with. He was determined to slake his thirst for her, and then close the chapter of his life forever.

The elevator doors opened. The sight of her punched him in the gut and his harsh convictions shattered. Amanda was huddled in a chair, arms wrapped defensively around her midriff—she looked ill and completely broken.

He’d been shocked at her appearance at Bennett’s funeral—she’d appeared drawn and had lost a lot of weight—but the young woman who sat waiting for him was unnaturally pallid, almost ghost-like. There were smudged circles of bruised purple under her eyes, suggesting many nights without sleep. Her full lips were almost lost in the lines of strain around her mouth, and she’d lost even more weight, her fine bones pushing against the thin barrier of her skin.

Alerted to his presence, she jerked her head up and around to face him. The profound despair and vulnerability he saw in her eyes evoked every protective instinct he possessed.

Although she masked her expression quickly, what replaced the initial telling look was even more disturbing. Her beautiful eyes were blank, almost lifeless.

As his gut churned, he forgot his resolution to harden his heart against her. ‘Amanda, what’s happened? Are you sick?’

Shaking her head in denial, her shoulder-length hair covered her face like a curtain. Even her hair had lost its shine and had a dry, brittle appearance. It was no longer a golden halo around her head. Then again, he remembered, she was no angel.

‘Just a bit tired.’ She stood up and swayed.

His arms shot out to steady her and the familiar shock of awareness arced through him. Amanda trembled and he was sure she experienced it, too.

‘What the hell have you been doing to yourself?’ he ground out.

‘I’m okay.’

‘You’re not okay. You look bloody awful.’

‘Thanks for the compliment.’

He could feel the tension in her body. Her breathing was shallow and he guessed she was nervous.

‘Come into my office and sit down before you fall down.’ He opened the door and ushered her inside.

Her legs had always been slender, but now they barely had the strength to support her. She was breathless and wobbly, like a newborn foal, as she sank into the closest chair.