The Lost Wife Read Online Free PDF

and work too. The human capacity to endure never ceased to amaze her.
    But she was even more unsettled tonight by the fact that Jake was occupying the spare room upstairs. Seeing him again had been wonderful and dreadful all at the same time.
But the sight of him had always made her react strongly.
The deeply grooved scar on one side of his chiselled visage made him no less charismatic or handsome, she reflected. She was grief-stricken at the idea he believed that it did. And. yes … she privately admitted it
did
make him look rather piratical—although she hadn’t wanted to hear that other women thought so too. It nearly killed her that he seemed to have forgotten the passionate love they’d shared and moved on. There was no such ‘normal’ pattern of existence for her. How could she even
look
at another man with the prospect of a relationship at the back of her mind after someone like Jake Larsen?
    She’d been a trainee receptionist in the Larsen offices when they’d first met. Only nineteen, yet brimming with determination to better herself after her difficult start in life, she’d been so grateful for the chance of such a ‘glamorous’ job when she’d barely had any qualifications under her belt. But she’d been studying hard at her local adult education facility to remedy that. When Jake had walkedthrough the revolving glass doors one day, wearing a single-breasted black cashmere coat over his suit, his lightly tanned skin and blond hair making him look like some kind of mythical hero from one of those magical folk tales that had at their roots the trials and travails of life and the story of how the handsome hero and beautiful heroine overcame them together, Ailsa almost forgot to breathe.
    As he’d walked up to her and her colleague, her much more confident fellow employee had whispered under her breath,
‘It’s the boss’s son … Jake Larsen. He’s come over from Copenhagen.’
But even before her colleague had told Ailsa his identity her heart had already turned over inside her chest at the arresting sight of all that sculpted Viking beauty and the spine-tingling charisma that Jake exuded. She’d
never
been so fascinated by a man before. And especially not a man who was clearly light years out of her league, who wore the mantle of authority and power as though it was a natural component of his DNA. Yet he’d warmly introduced himself to her, the most junior and in-experienced of his staff, as though she were no less important than one of the firm’s directors, she recalled. When he had followed up his welcome to her with a near-incandescent smile—a smile that had wiped every thought clean from her head—she’d found herself well and truly under his spell …
    ‘Blast!’ She dropped a stitch, patiently unravelled the multi-coloured wool, then cast on again. The logs in the burner hissed and spat and she glanced mournfully across at the beautiful Norwegian pine standing in the corner. It poignantly reminded her of a shy young girl at a party, waiting to be noticed by a boy and asked to dance … Once upon a time, in another life, Jake would have happily volunteered to help her dress the tree, singing lustily along to the carols playing in the background and teasinglyincreasing the volume of his voice when she protested he was singing out of tune.
    It hurt that he wouldn’t discuss the baby’s death with her.
Ailsa had hoped such a discussion would help them be a little easier around each other and truly be able to move on. They hadn’t had a prayer of being able to do that after the accident and then leading up to their divorce, when they’d both been so wounded, hurt and angry, blaming each other for everything. She’d even hoped that such a mutually frank discussion might at last help her to sleep better at night.
    ‘Oh, well …’ Murmuring under her breath, she sighed softly. When he leaves tomorrow I’ll just carry on as normal. It’s not all bad … I’ve still got Saskia. And