Something else, something to which he couldn't put a name, had stopped him making love to Gina, and it hadn't been her belated show of resistance. That, he could have overcome, but suddenly he hadn't wanted to see her like this—an unwilling victim!
He unlocked the library door, holding it wide open for her.
'That will be all for the moment,' he said formally, for the benefit of anyone within earshot. 'It would be as well if you went to bed now. You've a long day ahead of you.'
'Sunday?' she said, protest in her voice, despite her still uncontrollable shaking.
'In this house, Sunday is like any other day. Breakfast is served from seven-thirty. At eight-thirty you'll be out on the airstrip, suitably dressed for climbing in and out of an aircraft. Sleep well!'
He couldn't know what a mockery those last words were. How would she manage to sleep at all now? She'd known they would come some time, the flying lessons, but at least she'd believed herself to have one more day's grace in which to steel herself. She sidled past him, careful to avoid the slightest contact between their bodies, and made for the stairs.
But, honest with herself, she knew that it wasn't just the thought of tomorrow's lessons that kept her awake until the small hours, and, when she did sleep, her dreams were troubled and erotic.
Gina was glad to discover, next morning, that Tod had already breakfasted. At least he wasn't there to note and comment upon her lack of appetite, speculate as to its cause. As it was, the one piece of toast, which was all she dared eat, clung to the roof of her mouth with the consistency of blotting paper. Hastily, she washed it down with hot, strong coffee.
Inexorably, the hands of the clock crept nearer to eight-thirty and at last she could procrastinate no longer. The idly drifting windsock pointed out her direction and she was standing beside the aircraft hangar with exactly a minute to spare as Tod taxied out on to the runway.
She had been uncertain what to wear, settling finally for an emerald green track suit and tying back her tumbling red hair with a matching, silky ribbon.
Without any preliminaries, Tod ordered her into the plane, which looked extremely small and frail to Gina's nervous eyes. He told her to pay attention while he demonstrated first the bewildering array of controls and then innumerable take-offs and landings.
All the while, Gina remained rigid with fright. For her the next hour passed in a haze, her brain scarcely functioning as she struggled to give intelligent answers to his remarks, to take in what he was saying.
This procedure was repeated twice daily for a week and she received no kid-glove treatment from Tod. This was no hobby to be practised in idle moments, he emphasised. You persevered and if you couldn't take it, there was no point in continuing. Nor could you bluff your way through it.
'You can't fake an aptitude for flying. Either you can do it or, if you can't, you stick at it for hour after hour until you can.'
Once or twice during that week, to her horror, he demonstrated looping the loop.
'Not that you'll ever be called upon to perform one yourself, but it's as well to know the technique in case of accident, to know how to get out of one. Watch! You apply full opposite rudder, at the same time pushing the stick into forward position.'
However, by the end of the week, she was surprised to find that her mind was beginning to take in what it was all about, that she was beginning to conquer her fears. There came a morning when she was able to eat a hearty breakfast and set out for the airstrip full of enthusiasm and an intense curiosity to discover her own limitations, for that day she was to take the controls herself, with Tod at her side.
One thing lacking during the past few days, she realised with gratitude, had been any sense of embarrassment in his company. She'd been concentrating far too hard on conquering her fears to have time for indulging other emotions. And even though she felt more at ease in the little aircraft, there were new problems to contend with. Now the martinet at her side was informing her that, despite his presence, she was totally responsible for their safety.
It was hard physical work, too, she found, wrestling with a heavy plane; for, despite its deceptively fragile appearance, the Cessna was no featherweight to control by fingertip touch.
It was during the second week that she realised she was no longer afraid of actually being in the plane, that she was even enjoying herself, just so long as Tod was there to take care of any emergencies. But this euphoria was short-lived, for it dawned on her that the more she improved, the sooner he would make her go up alone. This thought actually impaired her progress for a couple of days, her blunders earning her bellows and harsh words from her inflexible instructor, bringing her almost, but not quite, to the verge of tears. She would not give way to such weakness before him! And his tactics worked where kindly patience might not have done, making Gina stubbornly determined to prove herself.
Then, one morning, after a series of practice take-offs and landings, Tod announced that he was getting out.
'Tod!' Panic-stricken she called after his departing figure. 'Please! Not yet! I'm not ready!'
He ignored her pleas and turned to gesture impatiently, indicating that she should take off.
Hands shaking, her lips muttering imprecations against the tyrant, she went through the motions. She had never been so scared in all her life. This was worse than her one flight in a commercial aircraft. How could she have been scared by that? At least then she had been in the competent hands of a qualified, experienced pilot. Now she was mistress of her own fate.
Unaware that she was doing so, she recited the takeoff ritual aloud, only assimilating, some considerable time later, the fact that she was actually flying; the altimeter told her that she was at nine hundred feet above the ground; the realisation had a strange, heady effect upon her.
She'd done it! She was supposed to land now, but her new confidence, the exaltation she felt, made that seem too tame a proceeding. Far off to her right, her attention was caught by the sight of another plane. Its yellow body small against the vastness of the sky, it cavorted around, practising aerobatics. The pricklings of a crazy desire invaded her being, a desire as strong, as compulsive as that of sexual stimulation. Could she? Dared she?
Without giving herself time to think, she turned Tod's Cessna into a rather ragged barrel roll. What had he said? 'Opposite rudder, stick forward'? It worked like a dream! She repeated the performance again and again, until suddenly the loop was a perfect, graceful arc, the machine she flew an extension of her being in a satisfying oneness, like the coming together of man and woman.
Now she was content to come down to earth, making a perfect three-point landing, taxiing to within a few feet of where Tod stood, by the hangar.
She released her harness, sprang from the plane, ran towards him, her lovely features alight with jubilation.
'I did it! I did it! I can fly! Did you see me?'
'I saw you all right, you bloody little fool!' His face was grey, drawn into grim lines, as he grabbed her arm and dragged her into the hangar. 'What the hell did you think you were doing up there? You were supposed to take off, do a few bumps and circuits and then land, not behave like a bloody flying circus. You haven't had enough experience for that sort of thing. Suppose you'd crashed the plane?'
His anger, its violent expression, quelled her exuberance, and anti-climax took over as she realised he was right. In her excitement at her own achievement, her triumph over fear, she had become over-confident, foolhardly even. Her legs began to shake with reaction and tears trembled on her eyelashes as with a quivering voice she sought to take out her sudden sense of mortification on him.
'If I'd crashed, I suppose I'd have been killed and your precious aeroplane would have been a write-off. But that wouldn't have mattered so much, would it? You're rich! You could go out and buy another plane, like some people buy a bicycle. And as you said yourself, redheads are two a penny.'
But not this one, Tod thought savagely, as her legs finally gave under her and she would
have fallen, if his arms had not gone around her in a steely hold. Unable to think, to feel beyond this moment, he lowered himself on to a pile of crumpled tarpaulins, taking her with him, kissing the salty tears from her eyelids, planting fierce little kisses all over her damp, pale cheeks.
'Don't ever do anything like that to me again!' he groaned, before his mouth took hers, hungrily, mercilessly.
She turned her head from side to side, trying to evade him, but to no purpose. His kiss was blistering her lips, his hands were seeking the lower edge of her track suit top, lifting it up so that he could curve his fingers about her breasts, exploring her body as though he would reassure himself that she had come to no physical harm.
Did he care that she had put herself into danger? She felt her body's involuntary surge against his, recognised their mutual arousal for what it was, an urgent, primitive response to the danger in which she had placed herself, a heady, frightening excitement, more powerful than any aphrodisiac.
He ripped the top off, over her head, burying his face between her breasts, his hands warm and proprietary upon her, hands that were beginning to move lower, gradually easing down the track suit trousers, stroking her stomach, shaping her hips.
With a little moan of pleasure she wound her arms around his neck, holding his head tightly to her breasts, loving the feel of his crisp hair against her skin.
'Let's get rid of these damned trousers,' he murmured thickly, and she didn't argue. Scorching desire rode her; the last of the icy barrier she had constructed around her had melted away.
His body was crushing her and, greatly daring, she felt for the waistband of his trousers. The ache in the pit of her stomach was becoming intolerable.
'Tod! Oh, Tod!' she whispered. 'Help me! Please help me!' Frustratingly, her trembling fingers could not master the task she had set them.
But suddenly, all in one fluid movement, he rolled over, thrusting her away from him. Rising to his feet, he strode to the door of the hangar and stood there, staring out over the airstrip. In the sudden silence, Gina could hear the drone of the little yellow aircraft, still performing its aerobatics, and it seemed to her that this moment would be forever imprinted on her memory with that accompanying sound.
'Tod?' Her voice was barely above a whisper. 'Tod? What is it? What's wrong?'
He did not answer for a moment or two, but flexed his shoulders, as if they bore an intolerable burden, ran his hand through his hair, trying to restore some order to the devastation her fingers had created. Then he turned towards her, his voice harsh, barely under control.
'I'm wrong! That's what it is!'
'But why? Don't you ... don't you want me?' Still her voice was barely audible, but he heard her.
'Damn you, Gina!' His voice shook with anger. 'Of course I wanted you. I still do, confound it!'
'Then ... then why?' she repeated. She didn't care that all the defences she'd ever erected had come crashing down. For a few moments, she had been alive again, gloriously alive. She had wanted Tod and he had wanted her. Where was the problem? She couldn't believe that he hadn't made love to dozens of women, before and since his marriage.
'Because ... because ... Oh, to hell with it, just because! For God's sake, Gina, take that look off your face. Get up and get dressed. Go back to the house. If it's any consolation, you've passed your flying test with honours.'
'But I didn't pass yours! Is that it?' The tears began to pour down her cheeks and she made to run past him. But the sight of her tear-stained face and hurt eyes was too much for him and he barred her way, holding her, crushing her against him, his body still hard against hers in arousal.
'Gina, Gina, for God's sake, don't cry,' he groaned. 'I can't stand it. I'm only human!'
'You're not,' she gulped. 'You're ... you're inhuman, to be able to stop, just like that, to be so cruel...'
'Damn it! Haven't you ever heard of being cruel to be kind? What would have happened, if I'd made love to you? Would that have been the last of it? You know it wouldn't. Women are all the same, with only a few exceptions. You'd have wanted some commitment from me and I can't give it.' But he buried his face in her neck and his body shook.
'I see!' In control of herself again now, desire effectively dampened by his words, she pulled free of him. 'Thank you for the flying instruction and,' bitterly, 'the other lesson. You're a good teacher in the school of hard knocks.'
She turned on her heel and marched away, head held high, shoulders back. Tod Fallon would never see her cry again. What a fool she had been to lower her guard, to let herself believe that there was something special about this man.
Half-way across the field, she halted, struck by a sudden thought. Surely it couldn't be anything to do with that ridiculous rule of his, no fraternising between the sexes during filming? Did he adhere to his own rules? No. She couldn't believe that. There had to be some stronger, more valid reason for his rejection of her. Another woman? That was more likely. She continued on her way.
Tod had watched her retreat, unbearably touching in its determined dignity. He had seen her pause. He held his breath. Did she mean to turn around, come back, make one last appeal? Almost he found himself hoping that she would. Knew that if she did, this time he would be unable to leash his desires, that he would have to make her his. But her pause was short-lived. She marched on as doggedly as ever, and he heard himself utter a single sigh, a mixture of disappointment and relief.
By the time he, too, returned to the house, he was fully in command of himself once more. Gina must continue her training; she must be ready by his deadline to commence filming. He wished now that he could hand her over to some other tutor, but, not given to false modesty, he knew he was the best tutor she could have.
He was not the only one to wish that her further training was in other hands. After dinner that evening, a cool, composed Gina sought him out in the library, standing poised in the open doorway, ready for instant departure should the need arise.
'Come in!' he growled. 'Shut the door! I don't bite!' Then his skin colour deepened beneath his tan at the unfortunate choice of words; for he had bitten her that morning, nibbling enticingly at her breasts, and they both remembered it.
'No thanks!' Her own face flushed, she remained where she was. 'I can say what 1 have to say from here. I want a different trainer. I want you to let Greg or one of the others teach me my job.'
He gave a short laugh.
'If any of them were capable, I'd grant your request, believe me! But Greg's no stuntman. Nor are any of the others.'
'But ... but he looks like…'
'Greg and Andy are here as bodyguards. You may not have noticed, but one or the other of them is always around. They're never off duty together.'
'Bodyguards? Who needs them? Not you surely?' she mocked disbelievingly.
'Not me,' he agreed. 'I can take care of myself. They're here to protect Melanie.'
'Your daughter? Why should she need protection, and from whom?'
His face was drawn into stern lines and she realised she was trespassing.
'That's a long story, an old, unhappy one; I've no wish to resurrect it. Besides, it doesn't concern you.'
'All right!' She turned on her heel. 'I get the message. Mind my own business. That will be easy. I'm not remotely interested in anything that concerns you.' It should have been a good exit, but,
'Gina!' His abrupt use of her name halted her in mid-stride. 'Wear riding clothes tomorrow.'
She swung around. Tomorrow! They'd only just completed a gruelling flying course. Was there to be no break, no relaxation? He caught her thoughts from her expression.
'We're working to a tight schedule. In another fortnight, we start the actual filming. If you thought learning to fly was tough, think again! The riding will take us all of that fortnight, maybe more. It depends on you. Think you can take it?'
'I can take it,' she told him confidently.
'You're not scared of horses I suppose?'
'Of course
not!' Her eyes widened in surprise. 'Why should I be?'
'You were terrified of the Cessna at first,' he said bluntly.
'I ...' Her words of denial trailed away at the certainty in his face. 'How did you ... ?'
'But you've got guts, Gina.' His tone was suddenly gentle, disarming, his voiced admiration genuine, she could swear. He took a step towards her. 'You were petrified, yet you never said a word. You went through with it, conquered your fear. How?'
She had retreated before his advance and despite his changed mood, or perhaps because of it, she was even more on the defensive.
'How?' Nervous tension lent a sharp edge to her voice. 'You need to ask me that, after all the cracks you made at me the very first time we met? I've a long memory. I swore I'd never give you a chance to call me a coward, ever again.'
'No,' he agreed, much to her amazement. 'I was wrong. You're not a coward, Gina, not in that way. It takes great courage to face and overcome physical fear.'
She was in physical fear now, but it stemmed from his increasing proximity. He had ably demonstrated his power to arouse her, yet each time he had demonstrated that he was only playing with her, that the undoubted chemistry between them meant nothing to him. She stepped backwards into the hallway.
'Good night!' she said, coldly formal. 'Will half-past-eight be suitable for the riding instruction?'
'Greg?' Gina came downstairs just as the security man was leaving the breakfast room. 'Can you spare me a moment?'
'Any number of them!' He grinned and followed her as she made a selection from the heavily laden sideboard. 'In fact I could spare you a few hours, if you'd only say the word. It's my evening off. How about it?'
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