The Ultimate Choice

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The walk up to Marian Park seemed longer than Kelly had ever remembered it. But she needed the time to think and bring her emotions under control. She had no problem passing through the cordon of men surrounding the property. What would happen when she reached the house became her main concern.

She tried to swallow her apprehension and devise some plan. If Justin didn't want to see her, what was she going to do? And if he did see her, the same question had to be answered. What was the best way to go about it? The closer she got to the house, the more daunting her task seemed to become.

This was going to be very much an ad hoc affair. She would have to float with the tide, see where it was taking her, adjust to whatever circumstances arose and seize any advantage she could. Her heart pounded one refrain over and over again, drowning out everything else. This afternoon she had been a fool. She had to reach Justin and never let him go again!

Roy Farley was in conversation with a number of hard-faced officials at the front steps of the house. He frowned at her appearance, but the way his eyes rolled over the curves of her body was more than flattering. Kelly hoped that the embroidered camisole top that she had teamed with her best white slacks was not too revealing of her intentions.

'Can I do anything for you, Miss Hanrahan?' Roy Farley asked. His manner was distinctly wary.

'I wish to see Mr St John,' she replied, her eyes challenging him with determined purpose. 'I know he must be very busy, but this is important.'

He hesitated, frowned again, and finally shrugged. 'He's in the drawing-room. Do you want me to announce your arrival?'

'It's all right. I can do that myself,' Kelly returned quickly, not wanting Justin to have any advance warning.

She hurried up the steps before Roy Farley could have second thoughts. Both the front doors stood open. Only the foyer to cross. Nothing could stop her now. It had all been much easier than she had anticipated. She prayed that Justin was alone. But even if he wasn't, he couldn't refuse to see her when she was right in front of him.

One of the doors into the drawing-room was slightly ajar. Kelly pushed it open without knocking. Her sense of urgency was too overwhelming for such niceties to mean anything. She stood in the doorway, her eyes seeking and finding Justin instantly.

He was seated on the sofa that faced the fireplace. His body was in a pose of total relaxation: legs stretched out in front of him, his head slumped back against the cushions, a drink of some kind nursed in one hand. He had not heard the door being opened. Nor did he sense Kelly's presence. He was staring at Noni's portrait. And the expression on his face…

The purpose that had driven Kelly here-to this place and this man and this moment in time- quivered into uncertainty as a tidal wave of insight crashed through her mind.

Noni…

The sadness etched deep into every line of Justin's face, and his eyes-the naked look of yearning for something forever lost, of hunger that could never be satisfied…

The revelation shook Kelly to the depths of her being as she tried to fathom all its implications.

Justin had loved Noni. Kelly was sure of it. It answered so much that she hadn't understood. Justin's unreasonable prejudice against show- jumping, his aversion to Rasputin-a black stallion-the kind that Noni had ridden, to her death.

It was why he had bought Marian Park and changed nothing, neither the staff nor the furnishings or anything else; nothing but the show- jumping.

Noni and Justin-they had been the same age; Justin playing polo-their interests locked in similar pursuits; Noni so beautiful-Justin so devastatingly attractive. They had shared so much sixteen years ago.

And Kelly a child-a child so young that to Justin she had only been remembered as Michael O'Reilly's granddaughter.

The years pressed down on her like a suffocating weight. Justin had lived and loved and known it all before Kelly had barely begun her life. And yet that didn't make what she felt for him any less real. Nor what he felt for her. The past was the past. They had to grasp the present and make the future!

Kelly trembled slightly from the force of mind she had to exert in order to quell her uncertainties. She slowly shut the door behind her.

Justin's head snapped around. The next instant he was on his feet, his body tense, his gaze raking her, taking in every detail of her appearance before looking her straight in the face. The glitter in his eyes radiated a bitter cynicism.

'What do you want?'

She flushed at the mocking taunt, but refused to let it sway her. 'I've changed my mind, Justin. I didn't know it this afternoon. But now I do.'

His mouth curled. 'You've had time to think of all I can offer you. You disappoint me, Kelly. I preferred it when you were honest and said "no".'

'That's a terrible thing to say!' Kelly cried, hurt by his accusation. 'I might be a fool for not recognising my own feelings, but I've always played straight with you.'

'You mean that you haven't thought of the wealth and the position I can give you, Kelly?' he said sardonically.

She slowly shook her head. 'I thought only of us.'

He stared at her and Kelly held his gaze with unflinching directness, compelling him to accept her sincerity. And for several moments only she and he existed, with the future a shimmering mirage of possibilities between them. Then, with a flicker of regret, his eyes wavered away from the promise in hers.

'I've had time to think, too,' he said wearily.

'Of Noni?' No more secrets, Kelly thought savagely. Let everything come out into the open where I can fight it. 'You loved her, didn't you?'

His face tightened. Kelly could feel him closing himself off from her, and almost panicked. Had she been too blunt? Was it foolish to remind him of someone else when she desperately wanted him to concentrate on her… on them… the togetherness they could have?

Minutes seemed to drag by. Kelly didn't think Justin was going to answer her. She almost didn't want him to. Yet his very silence was a wedge between them, making any true understanding impossible to reach.

Finally he spoke with cold, hard deliberation. 'Yes, I loved Noni Lloyd. With all the passion that a man is capable of. I couldn't replace her.'

A terrible hollowness burrowed through Kelly's heart. Tears of sadness blurred her eyes: sadness for herself, for Justin, for Noni… for the hopelessness of it all.

'No matter how much you wanted me to be her, I couldn't,' she said in anguished despair. 'I'll always be me.'

It seemed to jolt him. His expression darkened. 'Is that what you think I want?'

Kelly's mind whirled again, grasping wildly at threads of hope. 'I don't know what you want. But you can't say you don't feel passion with me, because it is there. I'm not mistaken about that.'

He gave a harsh, contemptuous laugh. Words exploded from his lips. 'Passion? You have no idea of the passion that has been driving me.'

'I want you to tell me!' Kelly challenged fiercely, driven to the edge of desperation by his seemingly callous dismissal. 'Tell me what you feel! This afternoon you said we had something special. You know we do. And I want you to tell me I'm not making some dreadful mistake!'

She started walking towards him, her hands stretched out in appeal, her heart thumping with the need to reach into him, claim him as her own. 'However much you try to hide from me, there's a bond that ties us together. I don't know why it is, but I feel it. It's your life and my life…intertwined.'

His face drained of all colour and his fingers dug into her shoulders, keeping her at arm's length. 'You feel that?' he demanded hoarsely. 'You really feel that?'

'Yes.'

His eyes probed hers, incredulous… pained… 'You know who I am?'

The question was strained through a gamut of emotions that made no sense to Kelly. 'Of course,' she answered.

'You remember me?'

The tortured, haunted look in his eyes frightened her. 'No… no…' she choked out. 'What do you mean?'

The coiled tension in him eased. He shut his eyes, expelled a long, shuddering breath, then opened his eyes to glittering slits. 'You don't know,' he said accusingly, and released her, his hands falling to his sides as he turned and walked over to the fireplace.

Kelly was shaking inside. 'Tell me!' she hurled after him. He couldn't withdraw now. Not having gone so far. She wouldn't let him, even though she felt dreadfully threatened by what had been left unsaid.

Justin's gaze swung back to her, and a terrible violence of feeling simmered in his eyes. His face was harsher than she had ever seen it, carved in angry bitterness.

'You shattered my life once, Kelly Hanrahan. I won't let you do it again. As much as you were unknowing and innocent then… you did it. And as much as you are unknowing and innocent now, I will not let you do it again.'

Kelly swallowed hard to fight down a wave of nausea. It couldn't be true…what he said. She wouldn't accept it. Couldn't. 'Please…explain!'

A grimness settled around his mouth. 'Sixteen years ago, you forced a choice on me that altered my existence. Why I did it I'll never know. And that's the bond we have-you and I-tied by destiny to a moment in time when I had to make a choice. And I didn't choose the woman I loved. I chose you.'

Kelly shook her head, stunned and bewildered by the hammering accusation. 'I don't understand!'

'Do you remember Noni Lloyd's accident?'

'Vaguely. Only vaguely. It was a long time afterwards before I realised she was dead. I saw her fall. And she didn't get up the way she always did. I ran to help her. There was a stranger and he…'

Her voice faltered. She looked fearfully into Justin St John's burning grey eyes.

'You were running… running on your little childish legs to help Noni,' he mocked savagely. 'The black stallion fell after it crashed into the wall. Noni was thrown and knocked unconscious. The horse had broken a leg. It was trying to struggle up. I didn't even see you until the last moment. You ran out from behind the fence-jump, not looking at the horse, crying out to Noni.'

The blood drained from Kelly's face. 'You were the man who pushed me away…' she whispered, her mind pummelled by a whole sequence of memories. The hands gripping her arms hard…being swept off her feet… falling… and the soft caress on her cheek as she cried… Grandpa picking her up, cuddling her, taking her home.

'You didn't see the danger,' Justin continued in a hard, driven voice. 'You were only a child. You would have been crushed…'

'As you picked me up, Noni's horse rolled on you,' Kelly realised with horror. 'Your hip and leg…'

'I was trying to protect Noni… until you got in the way.'

'And one of its hooves lashed out and killed her while you were pinned… rescuing me.'

'Yes,' he said, and his voice was drained of all expression as he added, 'Indirectly, you were responsible for her death.'

Kelly felt sick. Sick and faint and totally shattered by the dreadful revelation. Sheer anguish strangled any further words as the inexorable line of logic savaged her mind and heart. Justin had been unable to save Noni's life because he had chosen to save hers, crippling himself as he did so.

Too stricken to remain standing, Kelly stumbled to an armchair and dropped into it. She shook with nervous reaction as other memories cut into her consciousness.

Justin hadn't wanted to see her again after he'd realised who she was. The child…the child who had cost him too much already. That was what he had said just before she had asked him for the horses, before his vehement rejection of her riding them for show-jumping.

And she had blindly and stubbornly persisted; taking the black Hanoverian stallion that was so like the horse that had caused the tragedy. Justin had driven himself through pain in a desperate attempt to stop her, the child he had saved, who was wilfully taking the same path that had killed the woman he had loved. And lost, because of her.

All those afternoons he had watched her practising the jumps with the horses, how it must have tortured him! And today on Rasputin…the mistake in timing for the wall, and only the black stallion's great ability carrying them clear.

She lifted agonised eyes to the man who had paid so dearly for the choice he had made. 'I'm sorry, Justin. I never realised. You should have told me before. I won't jump again. Not when you've been so hurt by it.' He exploded out of the haunted thrall that was woven around his face, twisting with violent rejection at her offer, his eyes stabbing her with furious frustration. 'You think that's what I want? Why I tell you this?' Kelly flinched at the lash of his words. He turned away with a gesture of contempt, hurling more words at her with passionate intensity. 'You're free, Kelly. Free of me. You don't owe me anything. Your life is your own to lead. To risk. To do as you please. As is your right.'

'No!' Kelly pushed herself to her feet and caught his arm to make him stand and face her. 'I want you, Justin. More than anything else I want you. Even that afternoon when we first met, I felt it. You felt it too.' Conflicting emotions warred across his face. The grey eyes were shifting seas of terrible turbulence. His hand lifted and curled around her chin, clutching hard. 'Kelly, don't tempt me,' he commanded grimly. 'It's too easy for me to take what you offer. Believe me, we'd both pay far too much for it in the end.'

'You want me,' she argued, fighting for the future they could have together. 'You wanted me to marry you this afternoon,' she reminded him in desperate entreaty.

'I was mad to propose it,' he said vehemently. 'That first day…when I realised who you were… that you were the child I saved… I was drawn to you. There was an affinity. A sense of reparation being made for what had happened before. A woman to share my bed… give me the children I didn't have.' His mouth twisted with self-contempt. 'What a mockery of love! You saved me much embarrassment by refusing my proposal point-blank this afternoon. I don't want to go into it any further, Kelly. It's finished. I no longer care for you.'

'I don't believe that. You do care about me,' she said with passionate conviction. 'Why else would you have come to watch me ride? Why else give me everything I want? You indulge me all the time.'

He shook his head, his eyes bleak and tired now. 'It's all mixed up with the past. Let go, Kelly. Cut free. Be happy in your own way. On your own.'

'And what if my happiness lies with you, Justin?'

Something flickered in his eyes- hope?… desire?-but he ruthlessly closed it off. He forced a smile of dry irony. 'A passing fancy. You'll get over it. The young always do.'

'I'm the same age now as you were when you lost Noni. Look how long it's taken you to find someone else whom you want.'

'Enough!' he snapped at her, his control visibly slipping. 'Go home! Be grateful you've made a lucky escape.'

He wheeled away from her and strode towards the music-room.

'You're running away again!' Kelly threw after him, too pumped up to accept defeat.

He paused and sliced her a venomous look. 'Anyone who doesn't run from disaster is a fool! I won't take any more from you, Kelly Hanrahan. You've given me enough grief to last me a lifetime. Go and jump your horses. Kill yourself. Do whatever you like. I don't care. I won't care!'

He slammed the door behind him as he stalked out of the room.

But he did care. Kelly was in no doubt about that. And the freedom he flung at her was a false thing. She would never be free of him. Nor he of her.

Kelly shook herself out of any acceptance of his rejection and ran after him. She couldn't let him go. Not when he needed her so badly.

He wasn't in the music-room. But Kelly knew this house like the back of her hand. And she belonged here. This house, this place, Justin… they all needed her. She was certain of it.

She swept on through the banquet-room, past the office, and turned into the corridor which serviced the guest wing. He was there… almost at the door of the room where she had given him physiotherapy that first day.

'Justin…'

He turned a ravaged face as she flew towards him. 'No!' he cried, anguished by her persistence. He caught her and almost threw her against the wall, pinning her there away from him. 'Why must you torture me? Haven't I said it all?'

Tears welled up in Kelly's eyes, filling them with luminous appeal. 'I love you. I love you, Justin.'

He bent his head, shaking it as if trying to shake himself free of the burden those powerful words inflicted on him. 'Kelly…' Her name was an agonised rasp.

'Please…' she begged, too distraught to find any more words.

He dragged his head up, his face working with uncontrollable emotion. His eyes burned with the torment of hell. With a rapid violence of movement, he scooped her away from the wall, crushing her against him with one arm as he opened the bedroom door with the other. He whirled her inside, shut the door, and leaned back against it, breathing hard.

'This is madness!' he groaned.

'No,' Kelly breathed, careless of the consequences, knowing only that she had to take the crest of his temptation and ride it through all his defences to the heart of the man. She reached up ant wound her arms around his neck. 'It's what you want… what I want,' she whispered.

'It's wrong…it's wrong. I've got to let you go…' The words panted from him in sharp bursts, but his hands were running over the curves of her hips, her waist, up to the underswell of her breasts ant back again in a restless yearning to touch an‹ possess.

Kelly kissed the frantic pulse at the base of his throat.

An inarticulate cry burst from his lips. His hands clawed through her hair, pulled her head back, and he gave in, his mouth taking hers with a feverish passion that could no longer be denied.

And with the exultation of this triumph Kelly responded with a wild fervour, wanting Justin to forget everything but her and here and now. She wanted to wipe out the memory of Noni, the pain of the past, the differences between them. She wanted this to be the best, the most satisfying, most fulfilling experience in Justin's life…her life…their life together.

She kissed him with all the hunger of her mind and heart and soul, and Justin was irrevocably lost in his need for her, drawn beyond all vestige of control to taste all she offered, to savour it, plunder it, take, know, feel, immerse himself in the wonder of her.

So many times when Kelly had given him physiotherapy, she had wanted to touch him, not in the limited way she had, but to run her hands over the fine muscular tone of his body with sensual pleasure, to explore the firm texture of his flesh, to feel its warmth, its power, its raw masculinity.

She wouldn't let him stop her now. Wouldn't let him stop anything. She slid her hand down to pluck open the buttons of his shirt, felt his chest heave under her touch, thrilled to the rise of his excitement.

He tore his mouth from hers, pulled off his shirt, then slowly, gently peeled her camisole top upwards, his hands capturing her breasts, cupping their tender fullness, softly fondling for several breathtaking moments before he finished removing the flimsy garment.

He pulled her back against him, cried something unintelligible at the first brush of her flesh against his, then crushed her to him in a fierce embrace, showering hot kisses across her hair, rubbing his cheek over their path.

Kelly raked her fingers down his back, tasted the warm skin of his shoulder, rubbed her breasts sensuously against his chest, gloried in their semi- nakedness… man and woman.

Justin lifted her off her feet, carried her to the bed, dragged away her slacks and briefs, tossed her sandals aside. He looked down at her, touched her, his hand quivering across her flesh in hungry desire before he snatched it away to remove the rest of his clothes.

He came to her with all the tense urgency of his need, yet delayed the moment of ultimate intimacy, plunging both of them into a wild exploration of sensation, the heightening of every sensitivity of skin against skin, texture, taste, touch, smell, sliding from one exquisite pleasure into another until stimulation and response peaked at the screaming demand for the total merging of one with the other.

Kelly's whole body convulsed in spasms of melting ecstasy as Justin finally pushed inside her. In that moment she wondered why it was always referred to as a man's act of possession. She knew she possessed him. He was hers. And every full, warm thrust of him was a glorious confirmation that he belonged with her, in her, and the union, could never be sundered now.

She felt the jerking spill of his climax, hugged him tightly as the last tension eased away, and held him inside her, melting around him, bonding forever.

He brushed his lips over the soft, ecstatic curve of hers. Their breaths mingled. Their mouths mingled. A sealing of utter oneness… peace… contentment… fulfilment of every promise there ever was in the mating of a man and a woman.

It was complete. They would always be together from this time onwards.