‘I’ve never denied I went to her hotel room-’

‘Or why!’

‘All right! I went in for reasons I shouldn’t have done, but I changed my mind almost at once. I didn’t want to turn and run like a kid who’d lost his nerve, so I hung around drinking and making excuses to talk. Then I told her I wasn’t feeling well, and left. How was I to know that it was a set-up and the entire damned crew was out there timing me?’

‘Luckily for me.’

‘Unluckily for both of us. I didn’t sleep with Olympia, but they think I did, and you listened to them, not me. Dammit, even Olympia denied it, and you as good as called her a liar to her face.’

Which was what she wanted, Kelly thought. Oh, yes, Olympia had denied it all right, but she’d done it in a way that was half an admission, shaking her head earnestly so that her blonde hair swung around her delicate features, as if to say, You don’t really think a man could resist this, do you?

And Kelly hadn’t thought anything of the kind, any more than she’d thought Jake could be alone in a bedroom with that seductive, half-clad body, and not take matters to an inevitable conclusion.

‘Olympia said what you wanted,’ she told Jake now. ‘And later you admitted it, have you forgotten?’

‘I never admitted sleeping with Olympia,’ Jake said swiftly. ‘In the divorce papers I admitted “adultery with an unknown woman”-’

‘So that Olympia’s fair name shouldn’t be sullied. You’re a real knight in shining armour, Jake, you know that?’

‘I didn’t do it for her, I did it for you-’

‘From the goodness of your heart,’ she said sarcastically.

‘You were determined to have that divorce, one way or another. It wasn’t Olympia. She was just your excuse to be rid of me. So I made it easy for you. If it hadn’t been her it would have been something else.’

‘Something or someone?’

‘Whatever you’ve decided in that stubborn head of yours.’