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.“How long have you known exactly who I am?” she said plainly.Because he did know.She was sure now that he did.So why hadn’t he told her that days ago…?CHAPTER TWELVE“HOW long have you known, Gabe?” she repeated in a steady voice, fully clothed again now, standing across the room looking over to where Gabe still sat on the couch.He drew in a ragged breath, running agitated fingers through the darkness of his hair.“I—”“Don’t even attempt to avoid answering me, Gabe,” she warned harshly.“We both know—now—that you realise I was once Janette Smythe-Roberts!”How long had he known? she asked herself again.And why hadn’t he said so as soon as he made the discovery?She literally went cold at the only explanation she could think of!“You still are Janette Smythe-Roberts, damn it!” he rasped, standing up himself now, instantly dwarfing what had already seemed to her to be a space too small to hold them both.She felt sick, had perhaps cherished some small hope inside her that he really didn’t know.But his words confirmed that he did!“Don’t come near me.” Jane cringed away from him as he would have reached out and touched her.“You still haven’t told me exactly how long you’ve known,” she prompted woodenly.Or what he was going to do about it! He hadn’t been behaving like a man still out to wreak vengeance, but perhaps making her want him was his way of exacting retribution…?Gabe gave a weary sigh, shrugging wide shoulders.“I realised who you were about thirty seconds after I came into the kitchen with Felicity last week,” he admitted quietly.Jane drew in a shaky breath, her arms wrapped about herself protectively.“That long? How on earth—?”“Your hair may be a different colour, Jane,” he rasped.“And your face has taken on a certain maturity it didn’t once have.But it’s still the same face I remember,” he added huskily.“A face I’ll never forget.”She shook her head disbelievingly.“But I never even saw you face to face until last week—”“But I saw you,” Gabe cut in firmly.“We were never actually introduced to each other, but I saw you at a party one evening with your husband.”Her husband.Gabe’s wife’s lover.The man Jennifer had left him for.She sighed.“I don’t remember that evening.” She shook her head; a lot of the time before the accident was a blank to her, her misery as Paul’s wife already well established.“You looked beautiful that night,” Gabe recalled softly.“You were wearing a brown dress, the same colour as your eyes, little make-up that I could see—but then, you don’t need make-up to enhance your beauty.And your hair—! I had never seen hair quite that colour before, or that long; it reached down to your waist like a curtain of gold! I didn’t need to be introduced to you to remember you, Jane—you stood out in that crowd like a golden light in darkness!”Her mouth twisted scornfully.“Please stop waxing lyrical about me, Gabe; I was very unhappy at that time; I probably didn’t even want to be there.I no longer loved my husband but felt trapped in the marriage—”“Until he walked out of it!”“Until Paul walked out of it,” she acknowledged shakily.“To be with your wife,” she added hardly.Gabe shrugged.“So the fairy story goes,” he said dryly.Jane gave him a sharp look.“There was no fairy-tale ending to that particular story—for any of us! And you’ve been playing with me for the last twelve days—”“To what end?” he challenged harshly.“I have no idea.” She sighed wearily.“I presume for the same reason you tried to find me after the accident.” She shrugged.“The same reason.But not the one you think! And I backed off then when I heard the rumour that you had lost your baby,” he rasped.“Did you?” she said heavily, no longer looking at him but staring sightlessly at her music centre.The CD had long since finished playing.But neither of them had noticed that fact; they’d been too engrossed in each other at the time.Which brought her back to Gabe’s kisses and caresses
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