by Helen Brooks
‘What?’ Such was the power of his presence she had forgotten she had been crying. Recovering immediately, she said, ‘Oh, yes—yes, thank you. It was just—Well, you know.’
‘In part. My mother died five years ago but after a protracted illness. We had a while to come to terms with the fact she was going to leave us, although I don’t know if that helped much when the time came. Anyway, I’m glad I’ve seen you.’
He was speaking as though they had bumped into each other out shopping or something and Marianne blinked in the darkness. She could just make out the outline of him now—big and dark against the sliver of moonlit sky slanting through the leafy branches of the trees.
‘I was out of line earlier.’ His voice was low and deep and smoky. ‘Not that I spoke less than the truth, but it wasn’t the time or place, not with the shock of the accident and all.’
‘You might have spoken the truth as you see it but you’re wrong.’
‘I’m not going to argue, Marianne.’ His tone said that was exactly what he was going to do. ‘But the facts speak for themselves.’
She stood up. ‘You’ve had too much to drink and earlier today agreed not to discuss this again. Come into the house and phone for a taxi. You shouldn’t walk back to the hotel along the cliff path.’
He stood up, too, his voice impatient as he said, ‘I’ve had a couple of whiskies, that’s all.’
He was standing so close she could feel his body warmth reaching across the space between them and a tingle of excitement danced over her skin. The velvety darkness was perfumed with a thousand summer scents and the air was balmy and rich. ‘It’s gone two in the morning,’ she said breathlessly. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘No, I shouldn’t.’
He bent towards her and she did nothing to avoid him. One hand closed around her wrist, drawing her into him, and the other pressed into the small of her back, urging her still closer. Marianne felt she couldn’t breathe as she waited for him to kiss her.
When his mouth closed over hers she felt the impact in every part of her body, even though his lips were gentle, even sweet. She had expected…She didn’t know what she had expected but his tenderness was her undoing. It cut through any defences like a knife through butter and she found herself wanting more as she pressed into him in a manner which would have shocked her only seconds before.
‘This is crazy.’ His voice was husky against her mouth and suddenly the tempo of the kiss changed, his lips becoming more demanding as he sensed her response. ‘Madness…’
She agreed with him but was powerless to move away. The intimacy of the dark, quiet garden was like a different world and, as she began to tremble, his lips moved over her face with swift burning kisses before returning to her half-open mouth. He plundered the undefended territory with ruthless expertise and she heard herself moan as he triggered the desire for more. Her arms had wound round his neck and her fingers tangled themselves in the dark crisp hair at the base of his neck. He groaned in his throat and at the same time she felt the unmistakable proof of his arousal against the soft swell of her stomach.
It was all she needed to bring her back to reality and the enormity of what she was doing. This was Rafe Steed—Rafe Steed. The same man who had caused her such anguish this afternoon and who had besmirched her mother’s good name, and here she was encouraging him to think she was up for goodness knew what. Had she gone stark staring mad?
‘No.’ She struggled slightly against the broad chest and immediately found herself released. ‘I don’t want this.’
He didn’t answer immediately but she could hear his ragged breathing as he stepped back a pace, giving her room. ‘If it helps, neither do I,’ he said after a long moment. ‘It was a mistake, OK? Put it down to the whisky and the darkness and the general theme of knight in shining armour comforting fair maiden in distress.’
‘Knights in shining armour don’t behave like you’ve just done.’ He had a cheek, calling her a mistake, Marianne thought furiously. And how dared he say he didn’t want to kiss her?
‘How many knights have you met to date?’ Rafe drawled.
Unforgivably, the tone was one of amusement. Drawing on all her considerable will-power, Marianne forced any anger out of her voice and matched her tone to his. ‘Not too many.’ She could do the this didn’t matter a jot scenario, too. She’d rather die than admit she was still trembling from the sensations his mouth and hands had wreaked.
‘I’m sorry, Marianne. It won’t happen again, OK?’ His voice was cool and smooth now. ‘I’m not usually so crass, believe me.’
She did. That kiss had told her Rafe was nothing if not experienced and supremely accomplished in the lovemaking department. Eternally thankful the darkness was hiding her flushed cheeks, she said lightly, ‘Think nothing of it. I won’t.’ And put that in your pipe and smoke it, Rafe Steed. ‘Now, do you want to come to the house and phone for a taxi?’
‘No need. I told you, I only had a couple of whiskies. I’ll continue my walk back if you’re sure you are OK.’
‘I’m fine.’ And I hope you fall off the path into the sea. No—no, she didn’t. But perhaps a twisted ankle or something similar would cause a dent in that infuriating self-confidence.
She saw the black bulk that was him move and then heard a scrambling noise, and when he next spoke his voice came from the top of the wall. ‘I’ll be in touch when I hear from my architect then. We want to progress things as quickly as we can so all this can be finished with.’
Quite. ‘You’ve got my number in London,’ she said coldly.
‘Goodnight, Marianne.’
‘Goodnight.’ She heard him drop down on the other side of the wall and then the sound of his footsteps disappearing along the cliff path. ‘And good riddance,’ she whispered childishly, wrapping her arms round her middle as she shivered suddenly.
Once back in the house, she made herself a mug of hot chocolate for the comfort factor and carried it up to her room with a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits.
The mirror in the en suite bathroom showed a woman who had definitely been very thoroughly kissed. Her eyes were wide and dazed, her lips swollen and her cheeks burning. After splashing cold water on her face for a minute or two, she went and pigged out on the chocolate biscuits, eating the whole packet and finishing off with the mug of hot chocolate. It helped—a little. At four o’clock she had a long warm bath, generously doused with an expensive bath oil, and at five o’clock she packed for London and did her make-up.
Crystal was always an early riser and she looked up in surprise from stirring porridge on the stove when Marianne strolled into the kitchen at six-thirty. ‘I was going to wake you with a cup of tea shortly. I know you want to get away early. Sleep well?’
‘Not the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.’ Understatement of the year.
Crystal nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s all this with Rafe Steed, that doesn’t help. Still, at least when his father’s here he won’t need to be around. We perhaps won’t see him hardly at all after that. Tom says he’s very much in charge in the States and it’s a full-time job for anyone. Quite a little empire, apparently.’
Marianne nodded. She found she wanted to know more about Rafe Steed and yet she didn’t, which made no sense at all.
‘Did you know he’s been married?’ Crystal asked as she bustled about setting tea and toast in front of Marianne. ‘Didn’t last too long, apparently. Tom said he wouldn’t talk about it, so goodness knows what went on.’
Married? She hadn’t bargained for that. And divorced. Well, well, well. Perhaps that explained the cynical twist to his mouth. ‘Poor woman, that’s all I can say,’ Marianne said flatly. ‘Getting mixed up with someone as heartless as Rafe.’
‘Well, we don’t know he was to blame,’ Crystal put in reasonably.
Marianne bit into a slice of toast, chewed and swallowed. Was she being unfair? Probably. Suddenly she didn’t recognise herself any more and it was all his fault. Wret
ched man. Much as she loved Seacrest and Crystal and the area in which she had been born and brought up, she found herself wishing she could disappear back to London for good. Something was telling her the next few months were not going to be easy in all sorts of ways.
He wanted his head examined. Rafe sat in the breakfast room of the small hotel he was staying in, staring moodily at his cup of coffee. How could he have been so monumentally stupid as to make his presence known to her last night? And, having done so, what had possessed him to further compound the error of judgement by kissing her? And not just a chaste comforting peck either; he could have got away with that and still retrieved something from what was a disaster.
His waitress arrived with his cooked breakfast. He glanced down at the plate and felt momentarily cheered. It was swimming with grease and the bacon had been frazzled to cinders, whereas the sausages still looked worryingly pink. Not much competition from this place then. If Seacrest couldn’t do better than this they wouldn’t deserve to pick up the custom. If there was one thing Steed hotels prided themselves on it was their attention to good food, be it an establishment sleeping twenty or two hundred.
Pushing the plate to one side, he buttered a slice of toast and spread it with a rather mediocre blackcurrant preserve, his thoughts returning to the problem which had given him a sleepless night. Marianne Carr. He didn’t know what had drawn him to the beach below the house last night but that wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d damn well stayed there. But, oh, no, he’d had to walk home via the cliff path.
Swigging the last of the coffee, he poured himself another cup. And once he’d heard her, what could he do but try to assist? He couldn’t have just walked on. He wouldn’t have left an animal in that state.
Face it, buddy. The voice in his head was relentless. Since the first time you set eyes on the woman you have been fighting an overpowering need to take her in your arms and kiss her senseless. And he didn’t know why she fascinated him like she did. OK, she was lovely, but he knew lots of beautiful women and most of them didn’t look at him as though he were the devil incarnate. Not that he could blame the present state of affairs on Marianne, he admitted irritably. He had set out to make sure she knew he had got the measure of her—and her mother—from their first meeting. No way was history going to repeat itself—that was what he had been determined on. His father might have been made a fool of by Diane Carr but he was a different kettle of fish. He knew what was what. He had learnt it a good while ago. Give a woman your heart and she would treat it like dirt, fit only to be trampled under her dainty little feet.
For a moment the image of Fiona, wrapped in the arms of her lover, flashed on the screen of his mind. It had been a good party, he had been enjoying himself until he had taken a walk in the host’s garden to clear his head from the smoky, cloying air within the house. And he had fallen over them—literally. They had been too occupied in what they were doing to hear his approach and he had been thinking of his and Fiona’s conversation in the car on the way to the party. He didn’t want to put off having children any longer, he had insisted, and there was no reason for her to give up seeing her friends and having a social life—her normal excuse when he’d attempted to discuss having a family. He could work from home some of the time and share caring for their child and he was quite happy to hire a nanny, too.
It had been much later, in the midst of a divorce battle which had turned very ugly, that he’d discovered she had never intended to have children. She’d seen him as a meal ticket and an introduction into the wealthy golf and bridge set, and had been prepared to buy her place with her body and her lies. And he’d fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. The affair with the guy at the party had apparently been going on for some months and he hadn’t been the first since their marriage six years before. Nevertheless, she had taken him to the cleaners without a shred of remorse. So much for women being the gentler sex. He smiled sourly.
But all that had been almost seven years ago. He had married at twenty-two and been divorced at twenty-nine, but since then he had made up for lost time. And he made no apology for it. Nor for the fact that he was not going to put himself in the position where betrayal could be an option again.
Reaching in his pocket, he drew out his mobile phone and punched in Victoria Blackthorn’s number. No more walks on the beach. No more stolen moonlit kisses. He had his feet on the ground again. This brief…madness was terminated herewith.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE next week in London was hectic but Marianne welcomed this. She worked late every night at the hospital in an effort to begin setting the wheels in motion for an easy takeover by her replacement, who was yet to be appointed, making copious lists and notes to assist the new therapist. Once home, she ate her evening meal and then had an hour or so cleaning out cupboards and things of that nature before falling into bed about midnight. She wanted to leave the flat in pristine condition when she left.
As promised, she duly returned to Cornwall at the weekend to help Crystal with the heart-rending task of sorting out her parents’ belongings and clothes. Most of these they packed away and put up in the roof space for the time being, neither of them being able to face actually disposing of them for the present. Thankfully, she saw nothing of Rafe Steed while she was home, but when she and Crystal accepted an invitation for Sunday lunch from Tom and his wife, Gillian mentioned that Rafe had taken Victoria to dinner in the previous week.
‘I didn’t know he was up in London.’ Crystal turned to her. ‘Did you see him?’
‘Me? Of course not.’ She kept her voice nonchalant, her smile untroubled. ‘Why would I? He wouldn’t have got the details from the architect yet.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Crystal agreed, and then the conversation turned to Victoria and how well she was doing in her chosen career.
Marianne joined in and acted relaxed and interested, but inside there was a peculiar feeling which she couldn’t put a name to. She didn’t want to see Rafe Steed again, even though she knew it would happen, so why was she bothered that he had been in London and hadn’t contacted her but had taken Victoria on a date?
But she wasn’t, she assured herself silently in the next moment. Of course she wasn’t. That wouldn’t make sense. Nevertheless, she was glad when Sunday evening came and she drove back to London to begin another strenuous week which left her no time to think.
It was on the Wednesday evening and she had just got home from work and run herself a warm scented bath when her mobile phone rang about eight o’clock. One foot poised over the tub, she deliberated whether to ignore it and then bent down and rummaged in her handbag, which she had taken into the bathroom with her. These days, with Crystal all alone at Seacrest, she kept her phone by her night and day.
She didn’t recognise the number. Even as she spoke, her heart began to hammer. ‘Hello, this is Marianne Carr.’
‘Hi, Marianne. It’s Rafe.’
The deep voice was cool and smoky, the accent causing her toes to curl. She cleared her throat and then said carefully, ‘Hello, Rafe. What can I do for you?’
‘I’ve a few ideas I need to put past you. Have you eaten yet?’
‘What?’ Think quickly. Say yes. Simple.
‘I’ve had a hell of a day and I’m starving. If you haven’t eaten I thought we could thrash things out over dinner.’
Not like a date, then. And she was absolutely starving, having skipped lunch to fit an extra patient in. Cautiously, she said, ‘A business dinner. Yes, that’d be fine. Where and when?’
‘I’ll call for you in say…fifteen minutes?’
‘No need.’ Distant and businesslike. She could do this. ‘I’ll meet you there, wherever there is.’
‘Perhaps you could recommend somewhere? I’m still finding my way around.’
She’d bet Victoria chose somewhere glitzy-glam that cost a fortune. Mind, she would have paid very nicely for her dinner afterwards.
Horrified she could think such a thing and not knowing
where the thought had come from, Marianne chose a steak house where the food was good, the service excellent and the whole was unpretentious. After agreeing to see Rafe there at eight-thirty, she stood staring at the phone in her hand for some seconds before coming back to life.
She had the quickest bath she’d had for a long time, washing her hair and then blow-drying it with one hand as she rifled through her wardrobe with the other, bringing out one garment after another and then discarding it until she had a pile a foot high on her bed.
What was she doing? At eight-twenty she caught hold of herself. This was not a date. This was so not a date. It didn’t matter what she wore. Reaching for a pair of cream wide-legged linen trousers, she teamed it with a short-sleeved top in violet cashmere. It had rained earlier in the day and the evening had a slight bite to it. Slipping her feet into flat cream pumps, she ran a comb through her hair, which she left loose, and applied just a touch of mascara to her eyelashes. Finished. No titivating beyond a pair of silver hoops in her ears.
Grabbing a cream cardigan and her handbag, she left the flat at eight twenty-five. She had purposely chosen a restaurant that was a couple of minutes’ walk away, and arrived dead on time.
Rafe was standing outside. He looked good. More than good. Much more.
He levered himself off the wall he’d been leaning against at her approach, smiling slightly. ‘A woman who is punctual,’ he drawled lazily. ‘Are you real?’
‘Very real,’ she assured him evenly. Real enough to register it was time to admit he was the most attractive man she had ever met. Which would have given him an unfair advantage if it hadn’t been for the fact that they disliked each other so thoroughly.
Once inside the restaurant they ordered steaks with all the trimmings and then sat facing each other over a bottle of red wine. ‘So you’ve had a bad day?’ Marianne asked politely. He looked tired. Perversely, it added to his appeal ten-fold.
Rafe shrugged. He had spent hours with the architect over the last few days but he still wasn’t happy with what the man had proposed. The trouble was, he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong, which was unusual for him. He didn’t like that, considering he thought indecisiveness one of the cardinal sins. ‘I need to get back to the States,’ he said quietly. ‘I guess I’m getting impatient.’