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  Valerie Thorne loved her husband with passionate devotion. When they’d first met, Jonas’s bewildering moods and stunning tenderness had breathed new life into her. Now, three years later, Valerie felt a deep desire to be his partner and his equal in every sense of the word.

  A brilliant, dynamic businessman, Jonas faced few unsolvable mysteries—except his wife. But after Valerie led him on a merry chase of discovery—and self-discovery—a tragedy threatened to part them forever. Suddenly the tables were turned. Jonas needed her more desperately than ever. Valerie would have to summon all her strength to lead them into a future brighter than they had ever dreamed possible!

  Thorne’s Wife

  Joan Hohl

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  “This time I’ll kill her!”

  The solid thud of the slammed car door punctuated the angry mutter. Settling his long frame behind the steering wheel, Jonas Thorne jabbed the car key into the ignition with an impatient flick of his wrist. The powerful engine under the gleaming black hood of the big Lincoln came to life with a well-tuned purr.

  Breathing slowly, deeply, Jonas backed the car out of the space marked for his exclusive use, and with a sweeping movement of one broad hand on the wheel swung the vehicle around on the large lot that surrounded the office complex of J.T. Electronics. Consumed by fury, Jonas didn’t spare a glance for the tall building that was the result of his labor. At that moment, every molecule of his body was centered on reaching home and the woman he felt he could happily throttle.

  Long months leading into longer years had gone into the making of the taut expression on Jonas’s strong, sharply delineated face. Strangely, over the previous three years and until a few hours ago, his face had apparently reversed the aging process, growing younger-looking instead of older. That very morning, one month shy of his forty-second birthday, Jonas had looked younger than he had at thirty-five. Now, ten hours later, he looked every one of his years on earth, and more. For both the young and the old look Jonas had his wife to thank.

  His wife. Valerie.

  A vision of her captured his imagination and flooded his senses. Valerie—small, delicate and wafer-thin. Valerie—with the elusively haunting beauty of a heart-shaped face, large violet eyes and long, gleaming black hair. Valerie….

  Jonas sighed. God! How he loved her!

  And, damn! How she infuriated him at times!

  Harshly expelling his breath, Jonas drove off the lot and into the flow of early-evening traffic. Handling the car with automatic expertise, he mentally replayed the telephone conversation he’d had earlier that afternoon with Val. His teeth clenched now as they had then.

  “Darling,” Val had greeted him as always. “I thought I’d better call and tell you not to make any business or social plans that would include me for the week of the twenty-fourth of next month. I’ll be in California.”

  “What?” His mind still assimilating the information in the business report he’d been studying when her call came in, Jonas frowned, positive he’d misunderstood her.

  “Jonas, really!” Exasperation was sharp in Val’s tone. “Do you ever pay the slightest attention to a word I say?”

  “I heard the bit about California.” A smile lurked in his deep voice; Val accused him of not listening to her on an average of once a week.

  “Yes, Cal-i-for-nia,” Val said distinctly.

  “Where in California?” he’d asked immediately. “And why, for God’s sake?” Jonas had had to strive for the note of indulgence in his voice; Val had involved herself in the damnedest projects since the accident that had caused her to miscarry with their child almost three years ago.

  Val sighed loudly. “I’m going to attend a rally of the Protect Artistic Individuality group in San Francisco,” she’d explained with lessening patience.

  Though Jonas snorted at the first part of her reply, he responded to the last in a carefully controlled tone. “San Francisco?” Merely repeating the name of the city evoked the memory of their short honeymoon trip.

  “Yes, San Francisco!” Val’s tone was edged with suspicion now. “Jonas, are you reading something and talking to me at the same time again?”

  Jonas could picture the indignation flushing his wife’s lovely face. He grimaced. With a flash of guilt, he acknowledged Val’s right to be indignant; he had taken to paying only partial attention whenever she started on the latest of her varied and—at least to him—confusing interests.

  “No, Val, I’m not reading.”

  “You’re angry?” Val was never deceived by his even replies. “Again?” she’d snapped.

  Up to that point, Jonas had been more confused than angry. Val’s barb had further shortened a fuse that had already grown extremely short the past few months. “Forgive me if I’m wrong,” he’d retorted sarcastically, “but hadn’t we planned to visit San Francisco together?”

  There were fully thirty seconds of utter silence before Val exploded. Warned by the lull, Jonas had tilted the receiver away from his ear.

  “I absolutely do not believe you have the gall to say that to me, Jonas Thorne! It has been three years…three years!” Val had actually sputtered. “You…you promised to take me back there! Yet not at any time since then have you as much as mentioned returning!” The sound of her erratic breathing came clearly over the connecting wire. “I—I— How dare you say we planned to go back together?”

  Jonas winced, because every incoherent word was true. “I’ll take you in a couple of months,” he’d responded, trying to smooth her ruffled feathers.

  “I will take myself next month, thank you!” Val slammed her receiver onto the cradle, and Jonas yanked his farther away from his ear.

  “Damn it!” he’d growled. “This positively does it!” His own receiver crashed onto the phone console.

  Shoving back his desk chair, Jonas had jumped to his feet and marched to the door with every intention of rushing home to straighten out his infuriating wife. He had grasped the door handle, then remembered the meeting he had called with his executives. He had frowned at the slim gold watch on his wrist. He had set up the meeting for four sharp; it was already three minutes after the hour….

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, while adeptly maneuvering the Lincoln from one crowded lane of the bypass to another, Jonas now merely simmered at the memory of his inattention at that meeting. Though he should have been concentrating on new uses of the electrical components under discussion, he’d been reevaluating his marital situation. And with each successive mental step, his frustration had escalated into cold fury. By the time he’d ended the meeting a half hour ago, he had primed himself for a fight.

  If only Val had conceived again.

  As the still-painful memory of that terrible night unwound in his mind, Jonas’s fingers tightened around the leather-covered steering wheel in reaction.

  God! What a mess he had made of everything! he recalled, shuddering reflexively. He didn’t want to remember that night, yet was powerless to withstand the force of memory’s flow.

  They had been married two months; two months, during which all hell had seemed to have broken loose, both at home and in the office. Jonas remembered clearly—too clearly—that it had begun the day after the wedding with a phone call from his assistant, Charlie McAndrew.

  If he and Valerie had only had some time together, Jonas reflected with a sigh. After the thrilling wedding night they’d shared…if they had only had some private time
together. But they had not had that time. Their private time had ended with Charlie’s phone call.

  Because of a breakthrough Jonas had made in the field of communication systems for space exploration, J.T. Electronics was about to become embroiled in an industry fight with another, failing company, whose president just happened to have friends in very high places in Washington, D.C. The president of this firm had decided to save his floundering company by grabbing a piece of Jonas’s action…. But Jonas wasn’t about to share his action with anyone.

  As he had told Valerie during their rushed return flight from San Francisco to Philadelphia, “No one picks my brain.”

  That had been three years and one month ago. The industrial fight had lasted four weeks but, though Jonas had won the professional battle, he had at the same time apparently lost the personal war. For although their nights together had been sheer heaven for Jonas, he had been too involved with the business battle to devote any of his daytime hours to getting to know his new wife in any way other than physically.

  A sharp curl of sensual arousal broke through Jonas’s reverie. A wry smile skipped over his thin lips as, savoring the physical discomfort, he noticed that he was almost home. And home, to Jonas, meant Valerie.

  Valerie, who had coolly announced that she was going to San Francisco next month without him.

  Next month.

  June.

  Jonas cursed as he remembered the anger and anguish he had lived through three years ago during his birthday month.

  Jonas had turned thirty-nine that June. He hadn’t cared a damn about that fact. What he had cared about was Valerie’s apparent interest in Jean-Paul DeBron, the man his French associate had sent to Jonas as a liaison for the special project they were collaborating on.

  The Frenchman had arrived the same day Jonas’s daughter, Mary Beth, came home from the finishing school she had been attending in Switzerland. Lynn, Jonas’s ex-wife, had returned to the States with her daughter. Marge, Jonas’s beloved ex-mother-in-law, rounded out the group.

  Even now, three years later, the memory of that day retained enough power to wrench a groan from Jonas. The entire day had proved to be a debacle. In retrospect, Jonas accepted the guilt not only for ruining his daughter’s homecoming, but for having put his new bride at such a disadvantage.

  Jealousy. Damn, Jonas hated the word. But what was more important, he hated what the emotion had done to him three years ago. His long fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly that the skin paled over his broad knuckles. Grimacing, he forced himself to relax his grip.

  The memory ate at his mind like acid.

  If he hadn’t been so damned jealous and so scared of losing Val, he wouldn’t have been blind to the brother-sister affection between Val and Jean-Paul, or to the growing love between the Frenchman and his daughter.

  But Jonas had been blinded by his own unreasonable jealousy to the extent that, when Val told him she was pregnant, he had actually accused her of being unfaithful.

  The big car was air-conditioned, yet Jonas’s brow was beaded with perspiration. Cursing beneath his breath, he carefully monitored his driving, while reliving the horror of the consequences of his accusation.

  Knowing he was wrong to accuse her, Jonas had apologized almost at once, then had turned and left the house. Valerie had run after him. As he backed around in the driveway, Jonas hadn’t seen her running toward his car. He could still hear the echo of his own cry of warning on catching her fleeting image in the rearview mirror. But his warning came too late. The back end of his car struck her a glancing blow, and Valerie had suffered a miscarriage later that night.

  Jonas knew that he would go to his grave blaming himself for the accident.

  Valerie wanted a child so very badly. How very different their life together would be today, if only she had conceived again.

  Like Val, Jonas longed for a child from their union. He wanted a son…. Hadn’t his desire for a son been the reason for proposing marriage to Val in the first place?

  Oh, sure Thorne, you bet. The jeering voice of his conscience mocked Jonas. Desire had first, last and always been the reason for his proposal.

  Recalling that far from romantic proposal, Jonas’s lips tilted derisively. At the time he had in actual fact offered Val a business proposition. In exchange for his name, wealth and protection, all Val had to do was give him a son. Yet from the outset, Jonas had known full well that he had acted on the strength of the attraction he felt for her. Val, then his personal secretary, was simply playing havoc with his libido by showing up for work every day.

  The jarring blare of a car horn, too close for comfort, jolted Jonas back into the present. If he wasn’t careful, he advised himself scathingly, he wouldn’t live to challenge Val’s decision to go to California without him.

  His thoughts centered once more on making it home in one piece, Jonas concentrated anew on the traffic weaving in and out and around him until he turned the car onto the private lane that ended in a circular driveway before the house he had had built over two years ago.

  Pulling the Lincoln to a stop in front of the four-car garage, Jonas stepped out and slammed the door behind him. Anger simmering at near boiling point, he strode along the flagstone path to the front door of the trilevel glass and redwood house. Key at the ready, he shoved it into the lock, only to curse fluently when the door opened with the turn of the knob.

  How many times had he cautioned Val about keeping the door locked when he wasn’t at home? Jonas railed inwardly, marching into the house. And she had the temerity to accuse him of never paying attention!

  Jonas paused in the black and white marble foyer, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. Val was doing her thing again in the kitchen, he decided, noting the delicate aroma of cooking food. What was it this time? he mused. Stir-fry? Greek? Tex-Mex? Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply and identified the mouth-watering scent of shrimp tempura.

  The low rumble of Jonas’s stomach reminded him that he’d forgotten to eat lunch—as usual. Moving with his normal long-legged, loose-limbed gait along the hallway to the kitchen, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  Valerie knew how much he enjoyed her stir-fried meals. Had she hoped to avoid a confrontation by preparing his favorite rice and shrimp tempura dish? If that had been her plan, Jonas thought unmollified, Valerie Thorne was in for an unpleasant surprise.

  But as he drew nearer to the kitchen, Jonas’s appetite sharpened with the increasing strength of the tantalizing aroma. Damn! He was hungry, he grumbled to himself. Maybe he’d wait until after dinner to throttle her.

  Pausing in the kitchen archway, Jonas propped one shoulder against the smooth wall and ran his narrow-eyed gaze over the small, slender form of his wife. She was standing at the stove, her back to him, humming softly as she busied herself with two long-handled utensils.

  From the back, Valerie looked more like a teenager than a mature, thirty-one-year-old woman. A frothy, lace-trimmed apron was tied in a large bow at the back of her tiny waist, protecting her paisley cotton skirt. A leaf-green sleeveless blouse was neatly tucked into the waistband of the skirt. Slim-heeled sandals complemented her small, narrow feet. Her glorious mane of gleaming black hair was piled into a haphazard mass on top of her head, revealing her slender neck.

  Jonas’s teeth ached with a sudden overwhelming need to nip at her satiny skin. Compressing his lips, he swallowed a groan. The mere sight of her, even her back, aroused an appetite much sharper than the one tormenting his stomach. The hunger for food could easily be appeased by regular meals or even periodic snacks. Yet oddly, the hunger Jonas felt for Val had never truly been slaked, no matter how many times he availed himself of her ardently offered bounty. If anything, each and every physical encounter with Val left Jonas hungry for more. It had been that way between them from their very first time together on their wedding night.

  Feeling himself beginning to weaken, Jonas straightened and squared his broad shoulders, reminding himself that t
his time Val had gone too far.

  “You are not going to San Francisco next month, and that’s final.” Although his voice was low, it held steely conviction. If Jonas hoped to get the advantage by startling Val—and he had—he succeeded admirably.

  Emitting a tiny screech, Val whipped around to face him. “Darn you, Jonas!” she exclaimed. “How dare you sneak up on me like that?” Still clutching her tools, Val planted her fists on her hips and glared at him. “Are you trying to give me heart failure?” she demanded, her eyes flashing angry warning signals.

  “And rob myself of the pleasure of beating you?” Jonas retorted, arrogantly raising one ash-brown eyebrow.

  Valerie mirrored his expression with a perfectly arched black brow. “You wouldn’t dare,” she taunted confidently.

  “Don’t make book on it, sweetheart.” Jonas sauntered into the room as he offered the advice. “There is a limit to how much I’ll put up with from you.”

  Valerie angled her chin defiantly. “Oh, heavens, please don’t frighten me like this.” She didn’t sound frightened; she didn’t look intimidated, either. “I’m going to California, Jonas, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Casually turning her back on him, she attacked the large wok once more. “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.” Beginning to hum again, she gently stirred the shrimp.

  “Damn it, Val!” Frustrated, Jonas grasped her by one arm and swung her around to face him, feigning retreat as one utensil flashed by his head.

  “How would you like to be skewered?” Val brandished the two-pronged fork threateningly.

  “How would you like to be—?”

  “Jonas!” Val’s sharp exclamation covered his words. “Don’t be crude,” she admonished, lips twitching with her attempt to contain a smile. “At least not before dinner.”

  Jonas wanted to maintain his anger…. An errant smile of his own defeated him. “I really should beat you, you know,” he muttered. “But I won’t.” His tone thickened to the consistency of honey. “At least not before dinner.”