by Penny Jordan
In her arms, the cat gave a protesting miaow and wriggled.
Immediately he focused on it, frowning.
‘Where did that come from?’ he demanded.
‘I found her outside. Not that it’s any business of yours,’ Livvy told him furiously.
He was looking at her, his eyes full of contempt and a brilliant, dangerous anger. It was almost as though he wanted her to challenge him, to provoke him, Livvy recognised, swallowing on her reaction to him.
‘You realise that it’s probably covered you in fleas?’ he told her.
Livvy refused to respond. What did he think she was? The kind of silly idiot who would immediately throw the cat to the floor in horror? Nevertheless, she made a mental note to buy some flea powder when she next went shopping.
Ignoring his comment, she walked towards the door, still carrying the cat in her arms.
His terse, ‘Where are you going?’ checked her just as she reached it, and this time as she turned round to face him she made no attempt to hide her anger. Her eyes were brilliant with it, her whole body registering her independence and resentment.
‘I’m putting the cat out for the night, before I go to bed. Not that it’s any business of yours,’ she told him fiercely.
‘Going to bed? At this time?’ His eyebrows rose. ‘Somehow you don’t strike me as the early-night-with-a-good-book type.’
‘The reason I’m going to bed early is because I can’t bear the thought of having to spend any more time than I have to in your company.’
She opened the door, put the cat down and closed her eyes, trying to steady herself. Her car was parked only yards away and for a moment she was achingly tempted to get in it and simply drive away. But how could she do that? She had promised Gale she would stay, and besides, why should she allow a man like that to bully and manipulate her? And that was what he was doing. He was probably hoping she would leave, already gloating mentally over his victory over her.
Taking deep, steady breaths of fresh air, she turned round and walked back into the kitchen.
As she walked past him, Livvy saw that he was studying the list she had left on the kitchen table. Lifting his head, he looked at her, his eyes cold and cynical.
‘I see that despite the fact that Gale doesn’t seem to want George’s company, she isn’t averse to spending his money. How like a woman.’
‘That isn’t true,’ Livvy defended her cousin hotly. ‘George is the one who…’ She caught herself up abruptly. She wasn’t going to discuss her cousin’s marriage with him.
‘Gale made those plans for the farmhouse last year…’
‘When she must have known that George had already overextended himself to buy this place. No wonder the poor devil is…’ He stopped abruptly while Livvy stared at him, her own feelings pushed to one side as she wondered how he came to know so much about George’s financial affairs. George had never struck her as the kind of man to confide in other members of his sex. Come to think of it, a man like Richard Field was the very last kind of man she would have imagined someone like George having as a close friend. They were so completely opposite. George, the devoted, mild-tempered, placid husband and father, Richard Field, so openly contemptuous of her sex, and so very obviously neither mild nor placid.
And at the back of her mind, although she fought to acknowledge it, was an awareness of the greatest difference between them: George was her cousin’s husband and she knew Gale loved him, but there was no way that even her cousin could claim that George possessed one-tenth of the intense male sexuality that Richard Field had in such abundance.
‘Did your cousin even think of the financial burden she was forcing on him when she overruled him and insisted on buying this place?’
‘Gale wanted the farmhouse so that they could all come here and relax,’ Livvy protested, but nevertheless she was biting her bottom lip, remembering how often in the past other members of the family had criticised Gale for her domineering ways, and for the manner in which she often steamrollered over any opposition to her wishes.
Gale would never knowingly do anything to hurt George, Livvy was sure, but perhaps unknowingly… She caught herself up… What was she doing, allowing him to sway her judgement, to…?
Across the table from her he gave a harsh snort of derision.
‘For them all to enjoy? Or for her to brag about to her friends…’
‘She wanted to be able to get George to take a proper holiday,’ Livvy interrupted furiously. ‘She wanted to get him away from that monster of a boss of his who treats him like a slave, making him work virtually twenty-four hours a day. If there are any problems to Gale and George’s marriage, then he’s the one who’s caused them with his impossible demands on George, not Gale… Gale and George were perfectly happily married until he took over the company…’
Livvy stopped. She was breathing hard, her face flushed, her temper high. She flicked a look in Richard Field’s direction.
His face was shadowed and unreadable, his body still.
Something about his silence, his stillness goaded Livvy on, rushing her into impetuous, angry speech as she added contemptuously,
‘No wonder his own marriage ended in divorce. I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually wanted to break up George and Gale’s marriage, if he was actually deliberately…’
‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
Livvy tensed, blinking nervously. Something she had said had obviously touched a raw nerve. She had never seen him looking so angry, not even before when he had… She shivered and backed nervously away from the table. If he should try to take hold of her again, to punish her with a repeat performance… This time he wouldn’t find her such an easy victim; this time she would be prepared, on her guard; this time she would be able to withstand the fierce intensity of his sexuality, meeting it with icy coldness, letting him know how she truly felt about him, how…
‘If your cousin really wants to find an explanation for the breakdown of her marriage, she should look to her own behaviour and not try to blame it on someone else…’
The flat, dead tone of his voice made Livvy focus on him; his reaction was so very different from the charged, intense response she had had from him earlier that it took her several seconds to recognise that she had nothing to fear; that he was not going to reach for her and take hold of her, subjecting her to the kind of physical domination and punishment he had inflicted on her before.
‘I am not going to discuss my cousin’s marriage with you,’ she told him. ‘Your criticism of Gale is unfair and ill-judged, but then…’
She paused, recognising that there was little point in telling him that he was as wrong about Gale as he had been about her. The man plainly had a bias against the female sex, despite the fact that the aura of intense, raw sexuality which surrounded him must surely attract women to him like moths to a flame.
‘Yes?’ he prompted broodingly, watching her with a concentration that made her shiver again. ‘But then what…?’
Livvy shook her head. What was the point in entangling herself in another confrontation with him? She picked up her parcel of books off the table and turned away from him.
It was barely nine o’clock, and yet her body ached as though she had been up far longer and worked much harder, Livvy recognised as she showered tiredly. Her muscle-tension was no doubt the result of the strain Richard Field’s presence was imposing on her.
She was beginning to regret giving Gale her promise to stay, and yet there was also a small, stubborn part of her that would have been reluctant to retreat and leave Richard Field in victorious possession of the day—and the farmhouse.
It had been unfair of him to make those accusations against Gale. After all, what did he know of her? Gale had known nothing about him… Which meant that he could only have drawn his conclusions about her from things George had said to him.
Livvy paused as she got out of the shower, frowning as she turned this knowledge over in her mind,
ignoring the damp, naked state of her body as she worried at her thoughts.
Used to living on her own and the privacy of her small home, where she was accustomed to padding naked from her bathroom to her bedroom, it had never occurred to Livvy to lock the bathroom door.
In fact she was so disturbed by the issues raised by her thoughts that, when the bathroom door first opened and Richard Field walked in, she simply stared at him blankly until he drawled unkindly, ‘If this is meant to be some kind of invitation, then the answer is no…’
Flushing hotly, Livvy reached for her towel, wrapping it quickly round her naked body, outrage battling with embarrassment.
‘You had no right to walk in here without knocking,’ she protested huskily.
‘You should have locked the door.’
‘If I’d known you were going to come creeping in here like a…like a voyeur, I would have done,’ she retaliated.
She felt flustered and angry, thrown on the defensive and still embarrassed. Surely he must have realised as he opened the door that she was in here… Why hadn’t he simply closed it again and gone tactfully away?
Because he just wasn’t that kind of man, she reflected bitterly, because he was enjoying goading and humiliating her. She could just imagine how she would have felt had their positions been reversed; no way would she simply have stood there and stared, the way he had been staring at her…
It was on the tip of her tongue to resort to childhood and ask what was wrong, hadn’t he seen a naked woman before? But she suspected that to do so would be very dangerous indeed, and highly provocative as well.
She could see already that she had angered him by her earlier accusation. He confirmed it as he leaned towards her, blocking her exit, asking her softly, ‘What is it exactly you’re trying to do? I’ve already told you I’m not interested. Still, I’ll give it to you…you don’t give up easily. What is it? Does the thought of having sex with a man whom you know despises you excite you so much that it overcomes the potential humiliation of being rejected, or is it just that you’re so desperate for sex that you don’t care who you have it with?’
Livvy gave a small, choked gasp of shocked fury. There were a hundred things she wanted to say, denials she wanted to make, feelings she wanted to give vent to, but stronger than any one of them was her need to escape from him and from the humiliation scalding her.
Before she had met him, she would have laughed in disbelief at the idea of any man saying such things to her. She was simply not that kind of woman. She was quite reticent and even a little remote with the opposite sex, and she had certainly never, ever felt the remotest need to behave in any of the ways he was suggesting.
She could feel her legs starting to tremble and she was afraid that if she didn’t get away from him soon she would disgrace herself completely by either fainting or bursting into tears.
Her heart was pounding as though she had run a mile; she felt sick, tense and very, very vulnerable.
He moved slightly away from the door and she took her chance, almost running through it as she told him through gritted teeth, ‘You were the one who came barging in here. I did not invite you. If one of us is looking for sex, it certainly isn’t me…’
She shot past him and into her bedroom without allowing him to make any response and then stood leaning against the door while her body trembled with shocked reaction.
Beneath her towel she could feel the too-fast beat of her heart—and the taut stiffness of her nipples.
CHAPTER SIX
LIVVY didn’t sleep well. Her dreams were disturbed by vague images of a tall, dark-haired, hard-mouthed man who pursued her relentlessly, threatening her in some nerve-jarring, insubstantial manner that brought her abruptly out of her sleep, her mouth dry and her heart pounding heavily.
The moonlight streaming into her room alerted her to the fact that she had forgotten to close the curtains. She got up and padded quietly across to the window, halting tensely as she looked down into the yard and saw the solitary, motionless figure of Richard Field.
He was standing with his back to her, hands thrust deep in his pockets, something about his stance, its tension and remoteness making her pause instead of turning quickly away.
Alone in the moonlit yard, he seemed a different man from the one who had behaved so mercilessly to her earlier, less aggressive and antagonistic, the power and harshness she had sensed so strongly in him earlier muted.
As she watched, the cat she had fed earlier suddenly appeared, padding towards him, winding herself lovingly around his ankles. Livvy stiffened, half expecting him to push the cat away, but to her surprise instead he bent down and stroked her. He was talking to her, she recognised, and although she was too far away to hear what he was saying, she could still see the softly rueful smile which curved his mouth.
The sight of him exhibiting such a totally unexpected show of tenderness and humanity made her eyes sting suddenly with tears.
Fiercely blinking them away, she stepped back from the window.
‘Sentimental idiot,’ she derided herself as she hurried back to bed. Just because he had stroked the cat, that didn’t change anything. It didn’t change him, nor his attitude towards her. Just because for a second he had seemed human, and not just human but someone vulnerable and alone as well, that did not give her over-susceptible emotions an excuse to start reacting so treacherously.
He was still the same man who had uttered those dreadful insults, who had treated her so unforgivably…who was plotting with George to buy the farmhouse behind Gale’s back.
He had insulted her, humiliated her, made it all too plain what he thought of her, and yet, despite all that, some treacherous female part of her still remained very aware of him. Too aware.
She shivered as she got back into bed and pulled the bedclothes firmly over her head.
‘No dreams this time,’ she warned her subconscious. ‘It’s bad enough having to put up with him when I’m awake. I’d like my sleep to be relaxing and free of Richard Field, if you please…’
* * *
It must have worked, because when Livvy woke up in the morning and saw the clear blue sky outside, she rubbed her eyes in disbelief, grinning with pleasure as she remembered where she was. Six whole lovely, uninterrupted weeks in this peaceful, pastoral paradise. Bliss… And then abruptly she remembered that this particular paradise had its own very definite serpent in the large and unfriendly form of Richard Field.
Well, she wasn’t going to let him spoil her holiday, Livvy told herself firmly, and who knew, she decided optimistically, perhaps this morning he might have changed his mind, come to his senses and realised how unfair, how dishonest really his and George’s plans were, and decided to leave?
It was, after all, what any sane, responsible person would decide to do, wasn’t it?
Remembering what had happened the previous evening, Livvy was very careful to check the landing and to lock the bathroom door while she had showered and washed her hair.
Her optimistic mood continued when she went downstairs and found that she had the kitchen to herself.
Since she had not been able to shop properly yet, she would have to make do with cereal and coffee for her breakfast, but she could at least eat outside and enjoy the early morning warmth of the sunshine.
At present the yard wasn’t a particularly prepossessing place, but it didn’t take much imagination to transform it mentally with the addition of terracotta pots full of tumbling flowers, a wistaria perhaps framing the untidy collection of outbuildings, some weathered wooden seats padded with a collection of pretty cotton cushions in bright summer colours. Smiling to herself, Livvy let her imagination run riot.
A loud purring noise close at hand warned her that she was no longer alone. She laughed as she opened her eyes and bent down to greet her visitor.
Yes, Livvy decided as the cat jumped up on to her knee and settled happily there, purring, she had been silly yesterday to let Richard Field get to her; the best
thing, the most sensible thing for her to do was simply to ignore him, to pretend he just did not exist. Today for instance, instead of thinking about him, worrying about when he might appear and what he might say or do, she was simply going to concentrate on enjoying herself and carrying out all the happy plans she had made before she left England.
What she was not going to do was to allow him to bully or blackmail her into leaving, nor was she going to let him spoil her holiday.
‘No way,’ she told the cat firmly as she determinedly picked up the guidebook she had brought outside with her and opened it.
Since she needed to shop, today would be a good opportunity to drive into Beaulieu and seek out the bathroom fittings shop Gale had detailed on her list.
Once she had completed that task, she would then indulge herself with something a little more to her liking. Not the trip to the caves, which she wanted to save until she had a full day to savour it—exploring the town of Beaulieu itself and then perhaps a drive through some of the surrounding countryside where she could park and explore.
If she set off early enough, she could probably complete her shopping chores this morning, which would leave her the whole afternoon free to explore. She closed her eyes blissfully, imagining herself in some secluded spot enjoying a lunch of fresh, crusty bread, home-made pâté and perhaps some of the local cheese, while from her vantage point she watched the river.
‘Dreaming about your lover?’
Angrily, Livvy opened her eyes as Richard Field’s harsh voice destroyed her pastoral fantasy.
The cat, sensing her tension, jumped down off her knee, dislodging the guidebook as she did so.
Livvy bent to retrieve it, but Richard Field beat her to it. He frowned as he handed it back to her.