Jordan, Penny

by Second Time Loving2

Uncomfortably she admitted that it was almost as though a part of her had actually enjoyed challenging him, had actually wanted ...

  What? To be dragged into his arms and kissed with the kind of passion which would sweep away the barriers of her self-restraint without her having to make a conscious decision?

  She made a small moue of distaste. She had always semi-despised the kind of woman who did not have the courage to make her own decisions and then to stand by them, and yet here she was practically admitting that if Daniel had chosen to react in the kind of dominant male manner that surely had no place in any relationship between two modern adults, she would almost have welcomed it. She was becoming obsessed with the man and with how she felt about him. This was what came of having too much time on her hands; perhaps the mere fact that she was spending so much time thinking about Daniel was a sign that she ought to go back to London. For the sake of her emotional sanity if nothing else.

  She went to bed early, reminding herself that this was after all what she was here in Wales for-plenty of rest and relaxation, and besides, there was no incentive to stay up when there was no Daniel to spend the evening with. She missed him, felt lonely without him, found herself about to turn round and make some comment to him, and was appalled to discover how easily and quickly she had slipped into the habit of becoming used to having him there. It was only now that she was on her own that she recognised how much of a stimulating challenge living with him had been.

  Living with him. As sleep claimed her, she trembled inwardly, not wanting to slide into sleep with that thought clinging to her mind, frightened of the images it might release to torment her dreams, but knowing she could do nothing to stop them.

  It was the sound of something rattling against her window that woke her. At first she thought it was rain, very heavy rain, but then as the sleep cleared from her brain she realised that the noise was too intense and too spasmodic. It was... it was stones -someone was throwing stones up at her window.

  Without thinking of the danger, she pushed back the duvet and hurried over to the window, astonished to see Daniel standing on the lawn below, frowning up at her. Their quarrel was forgotten, as she hurried quickly downstairs to let him in, knowing that something must be wrong for him to have wakened her.

  It was still so early that the air was cold enough to turn to vapour as Daniel breathed. As she held open the door, he brought into the kitchen with him the cold, clean scent of the early morning, tinged with the salt smell of the sea.

  The coldness of the morning made her shiver as she asked him anxiously, 'What is it? What's wrong?' As she closed the door she glanced at her watch and saw that it was only half-past five. No wonder she felt as though she had been woken in the middle of the night. No wonder it felt so chilly outside. Panic raced through her nervous system, cramping her stomach and increasing her heartbeat. Something must be dreadfully wrong for Daniel to be here like this. Was the bug she had had contagious? Her brain felt like glue, her body heavy and clumsy as she tried to come fully awake.

  'It's my car,' she heard Daniel saying flatly. 'The damn coil's gone.'

  His car? She stared at him in disbelief. He had woken her up like that at half-past five in the morning to tell her that about his car!

  She paused in the automatic habit of making coffee. 'Your car--'

  'It won't start,' he told her brusquely, 'and I've got to be in Cardiff for nine. I was wondering ... Could I borrow yours?'

  He had come round here at this time in the morning because he wanted to borrow her car?

  'I'll be gone for a couple of days,' he told her, apparently unaware of her silence. 'I wouldn't ask, but this appointment with the specialist is something I daren't miss, and there's no phone here for me to ring him and try to change it.'

  Neither cottage possessed a telephone, but Angelica had stopped listening to his explanations after she had heard the word specialist. She had often wondered about his injury, but had not liked to ask what had caused it. Now she queried impetuously, 'A specialist?' remembering how the local doctor had commented to her that Daniel was very familiar with all the unpleasant physical indignities of illness.

  Normally Daniel hated discussing the accident with anyone, but Angelica was different, and, even more important, for the first time she was actually expressing curiosity about him, actually showing that she wanted to know something about him, that she was concerned for him.

  'Yes,' he told her gently, taking the coffee-jug for her and filling it with water. 'Six months ago he told me that unless I slowed down and gave my muscles time to heal, I'd be left with a permanent injury. He convinced me enough to make me look round for somewhere close enough to Cardiff for me to be on hand if necessary, but also remote enough for me to give my muscles a chance to recover. My father had always been particularly fond of this part of Wales, so I drove down here, saw the cottage, discovered that it was empty and arranged to rent it.'

  'Cardiff... is that where your home is?' Angelica asked him slowly. So he wasn't a local. He didn't live here permanently as she had at first assumed.

  'In a manner of speaking, although for the last five years, at one time or another, I've lived in Milan, New York, London and Paris. My father owned and ran a small and very highly specialised company producing very advanced electronics. I ran the sales side of the business. The idea was that, when he eventually retired, I would take over as managing director and that he would become our technical consultant. Unfortunately fate had other ideas. My father was a workaholic; I think perhaps after my mother died, he turned his attention more and more to his work as a means of coping with his grief. He was never very good at talking about his feelings, although as a child I grew up knowing that he loved me and feeling very secure in that love. The problem was that once I was adult I began to see certain flaws in my father's lifestyle, and he on his part couldn't always understand why I refused to devote myself one hundred and fifty per cent to the business in the same way that he had.

  'I tried to tell him that I wanted much more from life than a successful company. We quarrelled about it. He was working on a new invention, testing it out in our laboratories. He liked to work there alone at night after all the others had gone home. What went wrong we'll never really know. All I do know is that I suddenly had this need to see him. I was due to fly back to New York in the morning. I drove down to the factory. When I got there I could see the flames through the windows of the lab. The night-watchman had already rung for the fire brigade. He hadn't realised my father was inside.

  'I tried to get him out. .. but the heat, the smoke ... I must have collapsed. They told me later that I'd acted like a fool, imperilling the lives of the men who'd rescued me as well as my own, and that my father had probably died from asphyxiation within minutes of the fire's starting, that I couldn't have done a thing to help him. I tore my leg muscles when I tried to get in through one of the windows.

  'It doesn't matter how many times I tell myself that I wasn't to blame; the guilt remains, the feeling that I could have done something, that I ought to have done something-at least until recently. Now-now, I think I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that I'm not omnipotent.'

  He had stopped speaking. The room was silent, apart from the soft burble of the coffee-machine as the water filtered over the coffee.

  Angelica tried to speak and found that she couldn't because her throat was blocked by a huge lump of compassion and understanding.

  It overwhelmed her to realise how much that he was leaving unsaid, she automatically sensed and understood. She too knew the burden of responsibility that came with taking over a business built up by a much-loved parent, but in Daniel's case how much harder that burden must have been to assume, feeling as he so obviously did that he was in some way at fault for not having prevented his father's death, for not having been there to help him when he most needed help. Yes, she could understand his feelings, could understand and share them so much, in fact, that the intensity of her awareness of all th
at he must have suffered made her want to retreat from him and from the knowledge of her own emotional responsiveness to him. It frightened her, this intensity, this need to go to him and hold him, to offer him her compassion, her understanding, her love. She shivered, her feet and arms cold, realising suddenly that all she was wearing was her nightdress.

  Daniel In contrast was dressed for his journey to the city in clean jeans, and one of the checked shirts he seemed to favour and which as she well knew felt so soft against the skin. Over it he was wearing a dark green sweater warm enough to keep off the early morning chill.

  Her eyes burned with tears, as she suddenly saw him, not as he was now, but inert, a vulnerable crumpled figure, choking on the poisonous smoke that enveloped him, trying desperately to reach a man who was already gone beyond all human help. She shivered again, but this time not with the cold. Daniel saw it and frowned.

  She was so quiet. He had no idea what she was thinking, what she was feeling. She seemed so remote from him, so distant, while he on the other hand felt so open and vulnerable to her that her very silence was almost an act of rejection.

  What had he expected, what had he wanted, what had he hoped for-that she would open her arms to him, and embrace him as he had so often longed to be held as a child? That she would hold him and kiss him and tell him that he would never again have to be alone, that she would always be with him, share his life with him? He made a sound of angry self-disgust deep in his throat. He was behaving like a fool. He had already warned himself not to rush her, and yet here he was burdening her with the kind of emotional outburst which common sense told him would make her withdraw from him almost as fast as his lovemaking had done.

  Angelica heard the sound and it jerked her back to reality. So Daniel had told her about his father; so he had allowed her to see what he had suffered. She would be a fool to read too much into it. He had told her most likely because his visit to the specialist had brought it sharply into focus in his mind, and perhaps because he wanted her to understand just why he needed to borrow her car. If she allowed herself to believe there was any other reason, to imagine that there was any personal message in his confidences ... Turning her back on him, she walked across the kitchen and picked up her car keys.

  'I'm afraid there's only half a tank of petrol,' she warned him as she gave them to him. 'You'll have to fill the tank.'

  'No problem, mine only had a couple of gallons in it anyway, and naturally I'll replace whatever I use.'

  He was so formal now, so distant. The time for confidences was over, that was plain.

  She gestured towards the coffee and asked him abruptly, 'Would you like a cup? It's ready now.'

  He glanced at his watch, an expensive watch, she realised now, not the kind of watch a man who earned his living from a little fishing and a little farm labouring would ever be able to afford.

  'Yes, if you don't mind. I got in such a panic when my car wouldn't start, that I didn't bother making myself a drink.'

  'Will it take long to get to Cardiff?' she asked him as she poured their coffee, the question one she would have asked any casual acquaintance. And that was after all what they were, she told herself firmly.

  'Not really. I could see the specialist and be back by mid-afternoon, if I didn't have this other business to attend to.' He frowned and put down his coffee-mug. 'I don't really like leaving you alone here without any form of transport. I'll try to keep my trip as short as I can. If you need help of any kind, there's the farm, but that's a fair walk away and--'

  'I'm fully recovered now, and certainly capable of walking a mile or so if necessary,' Angelica told him crisply.

  She didn't want to hear the concern in his voice. It weakened her too much ... made her too aware of her lonely, stupid, emotional responsiveness to him ...

  Just to hear that undertone of concern in his voice made such e frisson of sensation run through her that she had to turn her back on him in case he saw the betraying reaction of her body. Under her nightdress she could feel the sharp stiffening of her nipples and the corresponding coiling tension that gripped her lower body.

  Behind her she heard the sound of the coffee-mug being placed on the work-top and knew that he was standing up, that soon he would be gone.

  'I'm sorry I had to disturb you so early,' she heard him saying, and knew that he was walking towards her. 'I'm very grateful to you for loaning me your car. I promise I'll take good care of it.'

  'It's the least I can do after all that you've done for me,' she responded in a low voice, not daring to turn round, knowing that he was standing right behind her.

  What did he want? He already had the keys. There was nothing else she could give him. But it seemed he thought there was. She tensed as she felt his hands on her shoulders, his breath warm and frighteningly arousing against her skin as he asked almost uncertainly, 'A good-luck kiss would be very much appreciated.'

  A good-luck kiss. Perhaps it was the sort of thing any man would say in such circumstances. The trouble was she wasn't familiar enough with the kind of intimacy they had shared to know how a man might react.

  Certainly it was true that on a handful of occasions she and Tom had exchanged fraternal kisses of good luck. Kisses given and taken in the spirit of true nonsexual friendship, and that on those occasions she had always appreciated his warmth and concern, the physical evidence of the friendship she knew he felt towards her.

  But to kiss Daniel in that way, Daniel whose mere presence behind her was enough to make her emotions go completely out of control; if she turned round now and kissed him ... She felt herself tremble and yet did nothing to resist when he slowly turned her round and then looked gravely into her eyes, so intently that she felt as though he was searching there for something. Her heart had started to pound so frantically she felt sure he must be aware of what she was feeling and why, but his hands still slid slowly into her hair, caressing her scalp, smoothing away some of its tension. She couldn't help it; all her concentration focused on his mouth, on knowing that soon it would touch hers, on knowing that when it did... She touched her tongue-tip to her own lips in an unintentionally betraying gesture, her body trembling as he made a very male and erotic sound of satisfaction in response.

  'Wish me luck,' he whispered softly against her mouth, gently rubbing his lips with hers, the warm pressure of his words sensitising her so that she sighed in tremulous eagerness as his mouth caressed hers, gently nibbling at it, coaxing it into clinging responsiveness so that she forgot how she had come to be in his arms in the first place and knew only how much she wanted to be there. How much she wanted the pleasure of this delirious physical contact of mouth against mouth, of his tongue-tip stroking against her half-parted lips, and then far less gently moving in rhythmic urgency against her own, reinforcing the sudden hardness of his body as his hands moulded her scalp, holding her still beneath the sudden flaring of passion that engulfed them both.

  She wanted him, Angelica recognised despairingly. She wanted him so much that if he picked her up now and carried her back to bed ...

  She gave a tiny shudder, and abruptly Daniel released her. Her face stung with hot colour, as she wondered if he had guessed what she was thinking, if he had recognised that while for him that urgent, fierce passion had simply been born of their physical proximity, for her it had its roots in something much more complex and dangerous.

  She wasn't going to use the word love. She dared not allow herself to use it, dared not allow herself to admit it into her vocabulary. Not so very long ago after all she had told herself she loved another and very different man. A man who had deceived her, lied to her, cheated on her.

  She shivered and tried to step back from him only to discover that Daniel had one hand tangled in her hair.

  'You're cold,' he said in sudden concern, frowning down at her. 'I should have realised before.'

  His frown deepened as he saw that her feet were bare beneath the hem of her nightdress.

  'You should still be in
bed, not standing down here in the freezing cold. That's my fault.'

  He was still looking at her and she had to fight to stop herself from crossing her arms protectively over her breasts to conceal from him the betraying hardness of her nipples as she prayed that he would mistake her arousal for cold.

  As he released her, he rested his free hand against the curve of her waist, unintentionally dragging the fabric of her nightdress tight across her breasts. She froze immediately, sensing the sudden concentration of his attention on her breasts.

  Suddenly she wanted-needed to draw air deeply into her lungs, but didn't dare. If he were to raise his hand to touch her breasts now, to delicately run his fingertip around the urgent crowns of flesh pressing so eagerly against the soft cotton, if he were to follow up that exploratory caress with the moist softness of his tongue ... She felt the heat burn through her body, a heat which had nothing to do with any outer change of temperature but which was instead generated and fuelled purely by her own thoughts and desires.

  'You're going to be late,' she told him huskily, forcing herself to step back from him.

  For a moment his fingers tightened on her waist as though he was reluctant to let her go, as though the same thoughts burning through her were echoed within him, and then slowly, reluctantly almost he responded.

  'Yes. Yes, I'd better make a start.'

  And she was free to turn her back on him and walk away from him, busying herself with their empty mugs, trying to behave as though she was no more aware of him as a man than had he been her father or Tom.

  She heard him walking towards the door, slowly almost as though he didn't really want to go. She ached to turn round and run to him, to wrap him in her arms and tell him not to be afraid.

  Which was about the most stupid thought she had ever had. Even if he was apprehensive about his consultation, he would scarcely thank her for mentioning it. She wanted to ask him when he would be back, as though knowing would give her a goal to wait for. Her heart missed a beat as she swallowed on that betraying need. She was allowing him to become far too important to her. Far, far too important.