As he reached the door, Daniel paused. He ached to turn round and go back to her, to sweep her up in his arms and tell her how much he wanted her, how much he needed her, to beg her to come with him. She had responded so sweetly to him when he kissed her, until she'd realised how aroused he was. He cursed himself under his breath. What was the point in telling himself that he must not rush her when he then went and did exactly the opposite? As he opened the door, he-Iorced himself to say as casually as he could, 'Thanks again for loaning me your car, Angelica.' 'You're welcome.' She dared not go towards him in case he read in her eyes all that she was trying so desperately to deny. As he opened the door and walked out, she ached to tell him that she'd be thinking about him.
For a long time after he had gone, she sat in her cold, empty kitchen forcing herself to admit the unwanted truth. She loved Daniel in a way that made her laugh at the shallowness of the emotion she had once thought she felt for Giles and which she had so misguidedly given the same name. There was no comparison between them. No way in which the way she had felt about Giles could ever come within a million miles of reaching the intensity and complexity of emotions she now acknowledged she felt and didn't want to feel for Daniel.
Without him time dragged, and it appalled her that she, who had not only been quite content to spend time on her own, but had actually relished it, hoarding it away like a miser with gold, to be enjoyed stealthily and almost guiltily when she was on her own, should now feel such a burden of aloneness, such an intensity of need for one specific other human being, that time itself actually seemed to stand still.
The weather was glorious, tempting her to find her way down on to the beach so that she could lie in the warmth of the sun and watch her city-pale skin taking on a golden peachy glow. With the small cove to herself and no one to see her, she quickly lost all self-consciousness and found herself quite easily dispensing with the rather staid one-piece swimsuit which she had thrown into her suitcase at the last minute.
She even ventured as far as the farm, and lingered once she was there, not so much because she wanted Mrs Davies's company but because the farmer's wife was so easily induced to talk about Daniel whom it quickly became plain she greatly admired.
It quite shocked Angelica to discover how much it meant to her to find that Mrs Davies had no idea what had brought him to this quiet corner of the Pembrokeshire coast.
He had confided in her simply because he had needed the use of her car, Angelica reminded herself as she walked back to the cottage. It would be stupid of her to look for a more personal reason, to allow her silly heart to imagine that he had told her because ...
Because what? Because he loved her. Well, she knew already that that wasn't the case.
She stopped abruptly within sight of the cottages. Daniel ... She ached for him so much, missed him so much, longed for him to return.
He had only been gone a couple of days. Today was the third day of his absence, and as yet it was barely lunchtime. The sun shone from a cloudless blue sky. She would make herself some sandwiches, take a book and go and lie on the beach, and if it was a poor substitute for being with Daniel, well, at least no one other than herself knew of it.
Half an hour later she was making her way down the narrow path that led from the cliff-top to the small secluded cove with its protective arms of sharp-toothed, jutting rocks which made it impossible for anyone to walk round from another beach to disturb her privacy.
Once she had eaten her lunch, the hot burn of the sun through the nylon of her swimsuit began to become uncomfortable, and, as she had done previously, she took it off, and then blissfully if somewhat guiltily stretched out on the towel she had brought with her, feeling the deliciously hot beat of the strong sunlight warming her naked body.
The book she had brought with her couldn't hold her interest; the combined effect of the heat and her lunch was making her feel very sleepy. She rolled over on to her stomach and closed her eyes.
It wouldn't do any harm just to catnap for a few minutes. She was after all supposed to be relaxing, resting, and if it helped to pass the time until Daniel's return ...
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS the wave that woke Angelica, or rather the sensation of it breaking icily cold and wet against her spine, shocking her into an abrupt awareness that had her opening her eyes and rolling over in one swift, horrified motion as she realised how long she had been asleep and how dangerously fast the tide was coming in. She had been lying almost at the foot of the cliffs where their height gave the small cove the maximum amount of shelter, and even if she had noticed the tell-tale signs of the seaweed that clung to the cliffs some distance above her head, she doubted if she would have thought anything of it. It had not been her intention to fall asleep down here on the beach, nor to stay asleep for so long that the tide had turned and started to race in, covering the exposed sand, covering her, she recognised on a sudden jerky breath of panic as another, stronger wave came crashing down on top of her.
She scrambled to her feet, her hand going automatically to retrieve her basket and her swimsuit, but both of them had disappeared, swept away no doubt by the dangerous swirl of the tide. She was shivering now, chilled not just by the sea, but by fear as well. She wasn't in any real danger. She only had to climb the cliff path and within minutes she would be out of the tide's reach, but if she hadn't woken up when she did, if she had remained asleep for even another fifteen minutes, her exit could have been blocked off by the small channel of water she could already see forming between her and the path. Now it was only inches deep and she could wade through it with ease, but had she left it any later ...
Quickly wrapping herself in her now wet towel, and securing it as best she could sarong-wise just above her breasts, she headed for the cliff path, trying not to think about what the sharp rocks could do to her bare feet.She was lucky that all she was likely to suffer was a few cuts and bruises. And, she added mentally to herself as she slipped on the shale of the path and had to pause to readjust her makeshift toga, that there was no one about to witness either her folly, or her undignified struggle to the top of the cliff.
She was within a few yards of reaching the cliff-top when she suddenly discovered that she was not after all alone.
After so many hours of longing for Daniel's return, the sound of his voice from the cliff-top calling her name ought to have filled her with delight, but instead it made her gasp with the horrified realisation that far from returning to find her soignée and in control of both herself and her life, he was about to discover her half dressed, covered in damp sand with her hair in tangles, her face free of make-up and her knees and feet bearing the evidence of her scramble up the hillside.
For a moment she toyed with the idea of pretending she hadn't heard him and staying where she was virtually out of sight here under this small overhang of cliff, but then he called her name again, sharply and with such urgency that she automatically called back to him.
'What the-?' She saw him check as he came down the path towards her and saw her for the first time. The look on his face was one she found it impossible to interpret.
She could see anger-see it? She could practically feel the heat of it, and all that surprised her was that smoke wasn't coming out of his ears, but there was more there in his eyes than mere anger, and for a moment she remembered what he had told her about his father and felt a sharp spasm of guilt that he had had to come back after a visit to Cardiff which must have aroused all manner of unwelcome memories of his father's death, to find her in this semi-dangerous position.
'Daniel... I didn't expect you back this afternoon.'
She smiled cheerfully at him to reassure him, trying not to imagine the odd picture she must present huddled inside her wet towel, her hair all blown and tousled, her face hot from the sun and the climb.
Ignoring her casual greeting, he grabbed hold of her upper arms, making her wince as the strong pressure of his fingers rubbed the salt and wet sand into her sunburned skin.<
br />
As she winced and automatically tried to wriggle free of his hold, the loose knot she had tied in her towel gave way, and as Daniel released her and automatically stepped back from her in response to the demand contained in the movements of her body, she made a frantic grab for the towel, feeling the embarrassed colour scorch her skin as she failed and the rapid descent of her towel revealed to Daniel her sun-warmed body, its golden glow deepened and intensified by the hot burn of embarrassment that flooded swiftly down from her face, the whole length of her body, until she was actively curling her toes in an agony of mortification.
'What happened to your shoes?'
He was holding her towel and as she made to snatch it from him and wrap it quickly around her body, grimacing beneath its damp embrace, she told him crossly, 'They were swept away by the tide, like the rest of my things.'
'Like you could have been yourself as well. For God's sake, Angelica, have you no sense?'
'Of course I have,' she told him, stung by the accusatory condemnation in his voice. 'I was tired, I fell asleep, when I woke up--'
'Tired. Why?'
Cursing herself under her breath, she admitted reluctantly, 'I haven't been sleeping very well. I suppose I'm just not used to the silence here.'
She wasn't going to admit that her inability to sleep sprang from the fact that she had missed him so much that she hadn't been able to sleep and that today warmed by the heat of the sun, her exhausted body had finally given in to its need for the healing beneficence of the sleep it needed so much.
'You realise what would have happened if you hadn't woken up, don't you?' he demanded fiercely, adding as though she were a small child and incapable of comprehending, 'It wouldn't just have been your clothes and your shoes that were swept away. The tide in these small bays here is perilously strong.'
'But I did wake up,' Angelica told him firmly, spoiling the effect of her independence stance with a violent fit of shivering. They were standing out of the warmth of the sun, and, despite the brave face she was trying to assume for Daniel's benefit, it had been frightening to wake up and realise how easily her exit might have been cut off by the racing tide. She was not a very good swimmer; certainly nowhere near good enough to battle against a strong tide. And now she was both damp and cold, with reaction setting in to add to the chill already trembling through her body. The last thing she felt like right now was standing up for herself and being firmly independent. In fact what she really felt like doing, quite humiliatingly, was flinging herself into Daniel's arms and giving way to a hearty bout of tears, the kind she last remembered enjoying when she was six years old and had fallen off her new bicycle.
Almost as though this sudden mental memory of her childhood had somehow blocked her adult self-control, she felt the tears fill her eyes and roll unchecked down her face. One of them fell on to Daniel's hand, shifting his attention from her sore and scratched feet to her eyes. She saw his own widen, and then surprisingly witnessed the swift dilation of his pupils as though her emotionalism, far from irritating or embarrassing him, aroused a similar flood of emotion within him.
She shivered again, but this time not with cold, and then heard him curse as he stripped off the woollen shirt he was wearing and tugged impatiently at the knot on her towel, ripping its damp folds from her before she could stop him, and then bundling her into his shirt with a swiftness and ease that made her remember how often he must have performed this simple task for her in the days when she was so desperately ill with food poisoning. Certainly there was no awareness in his touch that her body was feminine and softly curved in all the places where his hands so objectively wrapped her in the blissful warmth of his shirt and then fastened it around her.
However, it was only when he picked her up in his arms that she finally thought to protest, saying huskily, 'No, Daniel. I can walk-your leg--'
'My leg is fine, which is far more than can be said for your feet,' he told her brutally, ignoring her added protests that she was far too heavy for him to carry and that she could manage on her own.
It was only when they had reached the top of the path and he had set her down on the grass that he derided, 'So you can manage on your own, can you? It certainly looks like it, doesn't it? I turn my back on you for two and a half days and you nearly manage to drown yourself, not to mention what you've done to your feet. You'll be lucky of you can walk on them by tomorrow morning, they're practically cut to ribbons. When we get back, you'll have to bathe them in salt and water. God knows what kind of infection you're likely to have picked up with open cuts like those.'
'Who knows, I might get to be really lucky,' Angelica muttered under her breath. 'I might get blood poisoning to go with my food poisoning.'
'Don't tempt fate,' Daniel advised her harshly. 'In your shoes .. .'
Angelica was tired of being lectured by him. If she was honest with herself all she really wanted was for him to pick her up in his arms again, for him to ...
She sternly told herself that there was no point in letting her mind drift in that particular and very dangerous direction, that there was no point at all in letting her imagination furnish her with her far too vivid memories of what it felt like to be held and kissed by him.
Wriggling her bare toes in the grass, she reminded him wryly, 'I'm not wearing any shoes.'
It was warmer up here on the cliff-top, standing in the sun, sheltered from any breeze by the small copse of trees behind them. Daniel, who had been about to turn away from her, spun round so fast that it made her catch her breath.
'You little fool,' he said roughly. 'Do you really think it's a joke? You don't know these tides along here the way I do. You could easily have drowned.'
There was so much torment in his voice that instantly she felt ashamed and guilty. He was of course thinking still of his father, of the way he had died before he could help him, and her attempt to make light of her own plight must seem to him to be thoughtless and cold-hearted in the extreme.
She reached out and touched his arm placatingly, intending only to apologise to him, but the sensation of his sun-warmed bare skin beneath her questing fingertips made the muscles lock in her throat, such a wave of mingled love and longing sweeping over her that its pull was as strongly insidious as that of any ocean.
She started to apologise, her voice husky and low as she stumbled over the words, suddenly silenced as Daniel took hold of her and said rawly, 'Don't. It doesn't matter. You're safe, that's the important thing. When I couldn't find you at the cottage, I went to the farm. They said you'd mentioned that you'd been spending some time down here on the cove. As I came back I realised that the tide was on the turn-I stood up here and looked down into the cove, saw that the beach had been flooded by the sea. Have you any idea what that did to me? What you do to me?' he demanded savagely, and then before she could reply he was kissing her, not with tenderness or hesitancy, but with a mind-shredding intensity that left her with neither the ability nor the desire to do anything other than respond helplessly to the demand of his mouth.
And in truth wasn't this how she had dreamed of him kissing her, how she had ached for him to kiss her? she recognised as his hands slid into her hair, locking her beneath the fierce pressure of his mouth so that there was no way she could have avoided its intimacy even if she had wanted to do so. But she didn't want to do so. She wanted to stay right here where she was, her body against his, her mouth open to his, her hands smoothing eagerly over the powerful muscles of his back.
She could feel the warmth of the sun on her shoulder-blades, heating her skin through Daniel's shirt, but its heat was nothing compared to the heat within her.
'Angelica.' She felt him whisper her name against her lips as they clung eagerly to his mouth. She bit dangerously at his bottom lip as she felt his hands slacken their grip, not wanting him to release her, not wanting to let these precious moments of intimacy go. Ignoring every anxious warning sent to her by her frantic brain, she caressed his mouth with her own, her nails digg
ing urgently into the hard muscles of his back, deaf to everything but the clamorous music of the desire that beat through her.
Her long, lazy afternoon in the sun had relaxed her inhibitions. Daniel's sudden and unexpected appearance had reactivated the desire she had thought she had safely under control, and his anger, his concern for her had been like a spark to dry tinder.
Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she clung to him, raining tiny frantic kisses on his face until he groaned and pulled her hard against his body, holding her so tightly that she couldn't mistake the fierce throb of arousal that pulsed between them.
'You want me.'
Her voice quivered slightly as she said it, triumph mingling with an instinctive and primitive dart of apprehension. He would be her first lover ... Her only lover. Was she really ready for this? Was it really what she wanted?
To make love here on the sun-warmed grass with the cry of the sea birds in the distance and the soft, lulling music of the ocean down below them; to become one with Daniel here with all of the generous bounty of nature all around them. To become his, not in the shadowed darkness of a shuttered room, but here in the warm, benign light of the sun. How could she not want this? It was what she had been born for.
She bit gently on his earlobe, listening to the protest he groaned against her ear, smiling a secret woman's smile to herself when he told her thickly, 'This has to stop. And right now-if it doesn't .. .'
Delicately and yet with great precision she investigated the secret pleasures of his ear with the tip of her tongue, her own pulse accelerating as she felt the fierce, primeval race of his. He wanted her. Whatever else he might not feel for her, there was no mistaking this.
'Angelica.' He said her name slowly, harshly, as though each syllable was drawn out of him on a rack of tormented desire. 'We can't do this. We can't take the risk. I could make you pregnant.'
Jordan, Penny Page 11