When a Stranger Loves Me by Julianne MacLean

Author:Julianne MacLean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter 14

Chelsea ran into her room, slammed the door behind her, marched straight to her bedpost and shook it. She was imagining that she was strangling her mother.

She was so angry she wanted to scream!

Pacing around the room, she bit back a number of oaths and debated what she was going to do. This whole situation had spiraled out of control—not just the state of her emotions, but her mother’s ideas as well. The woman was determined to be the grandmother of the next Earl Neufeld, no matter what the cost. Now, it seemed that she was doing her mother’s bidding instead of her own, and would not have the freedom to change her mind.

Well, she would if she wanted to. Damn right, she would.

Just then she heard her doorknob turn.

God help her. If her mother was walking in here again without knocking, she didn’t trust herself not to strangle the woman for real.

But it was not her mother. It was Jack.

He entered the room and slammed the door shut behind him—just as she had a few seconds ago—and with fists clenched, glared at her like a devil wolf.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her heart suddenly pounding with fear. This was not the Jack she knew. This was a wild creature. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”

A muscle flicked at his jaw. “Hoped, you mean.”

She said nothing, for she seemed to have lost her voice. He took a few steps closer, and she backed up until she bumped into her chest of drawers.

Immediately she put two and two together. “Did you see what just happened between my mother and me?”

“I did.”

He continued to glare at her until she could barely breathe. “It’s not what you think.”

“No? How do you know what I think?”

“I can see it in your eyes,” she said. “You think I’ve been coming to your bed because she has been forcing me to.”

“Isn’t that’s what’s been going on? I heard what she said. She told you that you had a duty to perform for your family.”

“Yes, but—”

He glanced up at the ceiling. “I remember you saying something like that to me once. You said, ‘If I am going to be forced to be miserable while I do my duty for this family…’”

He paced back and forth in front of her like a lion in a cage.

“What a fool I was,” he ground out. “I didn’t realize that I was the miserable duty. Does your cousin, Lord Jerome, even exist? Or was that part of your plot to get me to do what you wanted? You really are a very good writer, Chelsea, a grand weaver of lies. You have a most promising future ahead of you, contriving elaborate fictions. Or perhaps you would do better on the stage, for clearly you are a gifted actress as well. You could write your own productions.”

“It wasn’t a story,” she insisted. “I was being forced to marry my cousin. I still am. I would show you the letter he wrote, but…”

“But what?”

“I threw it into the sea.

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