by Lynne Graham
The owner of the inn intervened at that point to tell them that their table was ready. Drew didn’t refer to Paula again. They were at the coffee stage when an American woman with an embarrassed husband in tow stopped by their table to demand an autograph.
‘Have you and Grant really split up?’ she gushed in decibels that echoed round the suddenly silent dining-room. ‘I hope you get back together again, I really do. You always seemed so marvellously well suited to each other.’
As the woman reluctantly took her leave, Drew grimaced. ‘I take back what I said about envying celebrity status. I noticed her staring at you but I didn’t think she’d do anything about it.’
Faint flags of pink had burnished Kitty’s skin. ‘I’m used to it. It goes with the territory.’
As they walked out to his car, he said, ‘Damn, I have a call to make at the estate. Do you mind if I make it now?’
She shook her head. On the outskirts of the village, Drew turned between stone pillars topped by weather-beaten lions. The rambling sprawl of Haggerston Grange was visible from the first bend in the driveway. The earliest part of the house was Georgian, but in Victorian times a wealthy Tarrant with a love of extravaganza had done his best to conceal that fact. Turreted wings, adorned by gothic windows and half shrouded by ivy rose at either end of the main building, were linked by a castellated frontage.
Drew made a sharp turn off the driveway into a lane. The old gatehouse had become the estate office. As he parked, she said, ‘Do you think Mr Creighton would mind my having a look round the Grange? I’d love to see it again, and since it’s empty…’
‘Why not? I wouldn’t object to having a tour either,’ he confided, dismaying her. ‘I shouldn’t be long with Bob. He queries every bill we send him as a matter of course. I could follow you up there after we’re finished.’
She hadn’t wanted company, but she concealed her disappointment. Her impulsive suggestion hadn’t allowed for the small amount of time at her disposal if Drew was not to be kept waiting for her.
The manager was a heavy-set man in his forties. He engulfed her hand in a hearty handshake. He would have kept her in conversation had not Drew helpfully intimated her desire to see the Grange.
Bob Creighton shot her a surprised glance. ‘There’s not a lot to see. It’s a great barn of a place and it’s not furnished, you know. The last tenant found the upkeep too hefty, but of course you’re welcome to the keys.’
The consequences of the secrecy she had insisted on caused her colour to fluctuate. It didn’t seem right to deal with this man without admitting that she was, in fact, his employer.
An estate worker escorted her up the lane. After warning her to watch out for loose floorboards, he cheerfully left her to her own explorations. The shabby exterior paintwork had made a bad first impression on her and the interior was no brighter. The elaborate plasterwork on the ceilings was dingy. Oak panelling was warped and discoloured by damp in the hall and the dining-room. As she wandered from room to room, she noted that the same signs of neglect and deterioration were everywhere.
Had the house been this run-down eight years ago? Her troubled eyes were rueful. To her then, this house had been the last word in absolute luxury. Antique furniture and Sophie Tarrant’s decorative flair had undoubtedly concealed a wealth of flaws. Kitty was no longer surprised that the estate was having trouble in attracting a new tenant. The Grange required extensive renovation.
Well, maybe not that extensive, she adjusted thoughtfully. The panelling would be easily replaced. Bright, fresh colour would banish the shadows. She smiled, seeing the shutters thrown back in the drawing-room. The daylight would flood in again. She would drape the windows with gorgeous fabric, spread a rich Persian rug, and from that it was only a step to picturing the furniture.
But the floorboards echoed with her footsteps in the eerie silence. Bemusedly she shook her head as if to clear it of the fantasy that had seized a powerful hold on her imagination. She mounted the stairs to the second floor where Jessie’s flat had been. Without conscious thought, she strolled into the room with the sloping ceiling where she had slept what now seemed a lifetime ago.
From the window she stared down unseeingly at the courtyard below. Jumping out of bed that morning, she had drawn a heart on the condensation on the pane. Kitty loves Jake, she had inscribed before sheepishly rubbing it out again. Distractedly her forefinger traced that former path on the dirty glass, as if she could feel again what she had felt then when she had still been more child than woman and in no way prepared for what was to come.
And was it that dreaming teenager or the adult she was now who controlled her emotions? A chill ran over her. She shivered and crossed her arms over her breasts to contain the sheer force of her fear. Could she still love Jake? Could God be so cruel? Could she still be so pitifully stupid? She thought of a tarnished silver trinket that she had never been able to bring herself to discard and the last veil of self-deception was ripped away. As answers came hammering back at her, she twisted clumsily and practically ran out of the room.
On the landing outside she froze in an attitude of flight, stricken paralysis seizing up her limbs. Jake was lounging against the wall a flight of stairs below her, dark animal-direct eyes nailed to her. A curious satisfaction dwelt in that unremitting stare.
CHAPTER SIX
‘I KNEW you’d visit the scene of the crime.’
A headless ghost rattling spectral chains could not have shocked Kitty more. Mortification was eating her alive. Her heart jumping behind her breastbone, she stared mutely down at Jake, not entirely sure in her chaotic frame of mind that he was real.
‘I see this is one of those rare occasions when you’re stuck for a venomous come-back. Now, if I was a gentleman I wouldn’t take advantage of that,’ he murmured, settling a purposeful hand to the dusty bannister as he prepared to close the distance between them. ‘But I don’t feel like a gentleman—’
‘Stay away from me!’ Shrilly she recovered her tongue, a sixth-sense apprehension that had nothing to do with reasoning taking her over.
He mounted three steps with dark, prowling ease. ‘You sound almost hysterical, Kitty.’
‘Drew must be wondering where I am,’ she muttered, fingering an unsteady hand through her hair.
‘I’m afraid not. He left about ten minutes ago. I assured him that you’d reach home safely,’ Jake imparted smoothly.
‘You told him to leave and he just went?’ She quivered with incredulous resentment.
‘Admittedly it took a little persuasion, but Drew can take a hint like any other man even when he doesn’t want to.’ He took another lazy step up, a predator already confidently viewing a prey caught in a trap.
‘What the heck did you think you were playing at?’ she demanded, struggling to stand her ground when every nerve-ending was cravenly urging retreat.
‘Kitty…the subtle difference between us is that I’m not playing.’
Her hands clenched by her sides. ‘What are you doing here?’
A black brow arched. ‘Looking for you, what else? I went to Lower Ridge first and then I came here. If I hadn’t found you here, I’d have checked out every possibility until I ran you to ground,’ he admitted. ‘In short, I was determined that we would have this meeting.’
‘Well, I don’t want it…I don’t want anything to do with you!’ she flared.
‘Then it seems to me that you’ve backed yourself into a tight corner. No audience and no rescue party,’ he enumerated hardly. ‘I can assure you that you’re not leaving until I’ve finished with you.’
‘If you dare lay a single finger on me—’ she warned shakily.
‘I plan to lay all ten on you before the day’s out, and let’s not deceive ourselves that that is a threat of violence.’ The fading light issuing through the great, domed skylight above cast a shadowy darkness on the hard, angular planes of his sculpted features as he drew lithely level with her.
‘I don’t find that amusin
g!’ His disturbing proximity made her step back a pace. She was as shamefully afraid of him as she was of herself. Her emotions were primed to fever pitch. She didn’t trust her tongue, she didn’t trust her mind and she didn’t trust her body either.
‘I wasn’t joking.’ Eyes topaz-bright between black luxuriant lashes held hers in glancing, remorseless challenge. ‘And don’t use Drew to strike back at me. I can take whatever you want to throw, but leave him out of it!’ he gritted.
‘I’m not using Drew for anything,’ she countered angrily. ‘But I don’t need to explain myself to you. My God, you are so egotistical!’
‘Am I?’ he spoke caustically, contemptuously. ‘You don’t want Drew.’
She forced a laugh. ‘I don’t want you either, if that’s what you’re driving at. Now will you get out of my way? I intend to walk home.’ Her voice pitch had acquired a thready tremor she despised.
He stayed exactly where he was, big and dark and very, very sure of himself. Raising a hand, he ran a taunting fingertip in a tormentingly slow trail over the warmth flooding her cheekbones. ‘Where does the Amazonian stature go when we’re alone?’
‘Don’t touch me!’ Breathlessly she jerked her head back before that torturingly familiar weakness could seize hold of her defences. His tie was loose, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, framing a triangle of tawny skin. This close, the thin white silk was an insufficient barrier to conceal the dark whorls of hair hazing his chest. His hand had dropped down to rest on her shoulder and she knew an insane need to touch him and to match and deepen that contact. Her fingers braced on the door-frame behind her, seeking the strength not to sway forward, not in any way to invite or incite the smallest intimacy.
His thumb gently massaged the sensitive flesh just below her ear and her bones turned to water. ‘No,’ she muttered feverishly.
‘Your game got out of hand, didn’t it?’ His dark skin bore the merest sheen of dampness, his eyes a merciless beat of gold on her strained face.
‘There was no game!’ she snapped starkly.
He wasn’t listening to her. ‘You’re as caught up in this as I am, and I was never into spectator sports. I’m not into hole-in-the-corner affairs either.’
Her head flew back, strands of shimmering hair springing back from her slanted cheekbones in pale silk wings. ‘I wouldn’t have an affair with you if you were the last man alive on this earth!’ she derided.
Long fingers were twining with caressing cool into her tumbled hair, smoothly preventing her from an inch of withdrawal. ‘Well, that’s what I came here to tell you, Kitty. As far as you’re concerned while you’re up here, I am the last man alive on this earth. I don’t share,’ he spelt out sibilantly. ‘I don’t care how you behaved with Maxwell, but by God you’ll be different with me.’
An overriding awareness of the hand lazily tracing the line of her extended throat was turning her brain into an inactive wasteland. ‘You’re crazy!’
His mouth twisted. ‘Ground rules not to my lady’s fancy? They’re on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Non-negotiable,’ he emphasised, his formerly even intonation steadily harshening. ‘I’m not down on my knees, Kitty, and I never will be. So if that is your objective, you’re in for a disappointment.’
The instant she attempted to jerk free, something seemed to snap in him. His eyes blazing down at her, he pressed her back against the wall. He took her lips fiercely, ravishing the tender interior of her mouth with his tongue until the hot blood pounded in her veins, sapping her of all will to protest. He trembled against her. With every lean line of his taut body moulded to her, she could not have been unaware of the extent of his arousal, yet she dimly sensed the duality in him, the anger as powerful as the hunger he couldn’t deny.
He released her mouth with a ragged groan. ‘God, not here…anywhere but here.’
Self-loathing dug bitter claws of reproach into her. She pulled violently free of his loosened embrace and made for the stairs. Near the foot of the first flight, her heel went skidding off the edge of a step, catapulting her into the air. She landed with a sharp cry on hard boards, her ankle twisted painfully beneath her. Hot tears flooded and blurred her vision.
‘You could have broken your neck!’ He let rip at her with a rage that made her flinch as he came down beside her on his knees, careless of his suit. Firm hands pushed away her clutching fingers and lightly probed her ankle. ‘I imagine that hurt.’ White under his tan, he stared down at her, releasing his breath in a tortured hiss, none of that anger betrayed by the gentle investigation he pursued.
The tears she had been fighting inexplicably fell all the more freely. ‘Go away!’ she sobbed furiously.
Instead he lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his thighs as he sank back on the stairs, holding her as easily as if she were a small child. Her hand balled into a weak fist and struck against a broad, muscular shoulder. ‘Don’t!’ she gasped.
He pressed her hot face almost roughly into his shirt-front. The throb of her ankle was already receding under the soothing massage of his fingers. She struggled hoarsely to catch her breath. The husky male scent of his warm flesh was drowning her already stormed defences. She felt weak and defeated, utterly incapable of contesting the ridiculous sense of security she was experiencing. His heart was a solid, reassuring thump against her ear. He held her until her breathing steadied and unwillingly she lifted her head away, her hair screening her face from him.
‘Do you miss this place?’ she whispered in the strangely comfortable silence.
Fingertips lightly caught her chin, pushing it up. ‘What do you think?’ A ruefully amused smile played over his mouth, softening the implacability so often etched there. Her pulses quickened to the inherent dark charm of that almost forgotten smile. ‘Two hundred years of family heritage once belonged under this roof. I knew when my father died that I’d never be able to keep it, but it didn’t make moving out any easier.’
Her lashes cloaked her disquiet. Becoming uneasily conscious of the childish fashion in which she was still sprawled across his thighs, she slid on to the step beside him. ‘Was there no way you could have kept the house?’
‘At the time I couldn’t afford the maintenance. A clean break seemed wisest,’ he said dispassionately, his honesty piercing her with guilty discomfiture. ‘Look around you. If certain steps aren’t taken soon, this house will be derelict in another few years.’
‘For goodness’ sake, it’s not that bad!’ she protested.
‘You’d be surprised how fast a house goes downhill when it’s empty. The damp’s getting in all over the place. The roof and the windows are overdue for renewal, and that would only be the beginning. I doubt if the consortium who owns the estate now would consider the expense worthwhile,’ he drawled. ‘It’s hardly in the stately home bracket.’
‘It’s a very attractive house. It’s unusual,’ she argued half under her breath, constrained by the weight of her deception.
Jake grimaced. ‘It’s a Victorian folly, built for a half-dozen servants, not for convenience. It’s surprising that the estate hasn’t made more profitable use of it. It could be split up into apartments or even turned into a small hotel.’
Since both of his suggestions had been tabled to her and costed several years previously, she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. At her insistence the Grange had remained a private dwelling. She swallowed. ‘The condition of the house bothers you, doesn’t it?’
‘Possibly because there’s always that little doubt that asks me if I tried hard enough to hang on to it,’ he confessed bleakly as he slid fluidly upright and dusted himself down. ‘How’s your ankle? Can you stand?’
Clutching his supportive arm, she slipped back into her discarded shoe and tested her foot. ‘It’s fine,’ she dismissed, immediately moving away from him. ‘We should be going. Mr Creighton will be sending out a search party soon.’
He caught her hand, dark eyes diamond-hard on her withdrawn profile. ‘You started this, you
can’t stop it now.’
‘Tell me, where does Paula fit into this ménage à trois?’ she prompted curtly.
‘She doesn’t. Paula and I had a convenient arrangement which is now at an end,’ he breathed harshly. ‘Paula appreciates her freedom as much as I do. I haven’t even known her for very long. We have never been lovers, Kitty. If you are looking for an exit, you are not going to find it through Paula.’
She turned away, a prey to conflicting emotions. Guilt, relief, panic and pleasure all tore at her simultaneously. The emptiness of her unsteady hands provided a welcome distraction. ‘I must have left my bag upstairs.’
He released his breath in the tension that had sprung up again. ‘I’ll get it.’
Momentarily she let her shoulders slump back against the wall. Dear God, what was happening to her? Ten minutes ago she had broken down completely and somehow Jake had put her together again. Eight years ago she had sewn up her emotions tight and now feelings that she had suppressed for so long were gushing out in a damburst. She was conscious of a treacherous, unreasoning happiness blossoming inside her.
He was hers. His violent pride might take refuge in aggression, but he was no more in control of events than she was. Even as she stood there, that bold belief faded, leaving behind an appalled awareness of her own vulnerability. He wanted no more from her than he had wanted before. What a fool she was, what a blind, stupid fool to still want him no less even facing that unpalatable fact!
Her feelings for Jake had limpet-strong tenacity. Breaking away would be like walking down these stairs. One step, then another, each one slightly harder, that invisible elastic fighting to yank her back to him, regardless of every self-preservative instinct. She remembered the dark days when despair had been her shroud, shutting out the rest of the world. Love was a gift, God’s greatest gift, she had been taught in Sunday school. But love could be a burden and an agony, a ceaseless craving that you could be desperate to root out of yourself. And the will to do that seemed to be beyond her.