by Emma Darcy
‘He said he didn’t want to sell,’ Caitlin reminded David. She didn’t want to be involved in any kind of scene. On the other hand, she couldn’t help but feel the wellsprings of disappointment.
The next half-hour was a flurry of bid, counterbid, demurral, change of mind, change of heart, and overriding everything else was David’s insistence that Caitlin should have what she wanted.
It got down to Danny Boy’s love-life, who he was to be mated with and why. Caitlin switched off. Genetic breeding was all very well, but she knew what she would do. She would put Danny Boy in a huge paddock and let him choose for himself. Nature had a good track record in looking after these things without any interference by humans.
At last the sale was made. When they climbed back into the Ferrari, David was full of elation. ‘I got what you wanted, Caitlin,’ he said, ‘and only paid three times as much as I should have had to.’
It didn’t seem to bother him at all. Was he so desperate to get back into her bed that he thought this had to be a winning stroke?
‘I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my life,’ Caitlin said quite truthfully. ‘You were dreadful, David. Absolutely dreadful.’
‘What was I dreadful about?’
‘You wouldn’t take no for an answer. That poor horse is going to be so exhausted doing what the owner wants...’
‘I wish I were that exhausted.’
He was totally unabashed. His eyes twinkled happy triumph at her. Maybe he thought he was at last getting somewhere. Something had been achieved!
Well, he still had some learning to do as far as Caitlin was concerned.
‘Now all we need is a property,’ he said with a satisfied air.
‘I don’t think I could go through it again,’ Caitlin said weakly.
The Clydesdale stud farm was on the Calga plateau. David took the route down Bumble Hill to link up with the Yarramalong Road to Wyong.
He had already outlined his plan to Caitlin about buying a property in the Wyong district. It was in easy reach of Sydney, her father could keep an eye on the horse, and land was always a good investment in this area.
Land was also exorbitantly expensive in this area, Caitlin reflected as they drove on. It worried her. Was David in his right mind at the present moment? Would he pay anything to get the matter settled between them? To prove whatever he thought he had to prove? He had certainly ripped up his schedule and divested himself of his business concerns on her behalf. That showed an enor-mous commitment.
Caitlin grew more and more disturbed about the situation. She spotted The Last Retreat coming up. It offered some kind of resolution to her inner turmoil.
‘Stop at the hotel, David.’
‘What for?’
‘I want you to book us a room.’
David shot her a piercing look. The Ferrari veered towards the edge of the road.
‘Look where you’re going! Keep your mind on what you’re doing!’ she hastily warned him.
He corrected the drift of the car before they ended up in the ditch. He forced himself to relax back in his seat. ‘Caitlin,’ he said quietly, ‘the horse was not a bribe. I don’t want you to do anything. I don’t need to be paid off.’
‘I want to be sure you’re sane before you start buying a property,’ she answered bluntly.
The Ferrari slowed down. David eased it into the hotel car park and brought it to a halt. He switched off the engine, then turned to her, his face serious, his eyes probing hers with urgent intensity.
‘I’m perfectly sane, Caitlin. I don’t need your body to work off some madness inside me. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t ache to make love. I do.’
‘I do, too,’ she confessed. ‘And if we’re here, I won’t be thinking of Crawley knowing about it.’
His brow furrowed. ‘Is that what’s been worrying you?’
‘He said he knew. Every time you made love to me. His words were “laying me”.’
David winced. ‘I wasn’t laying you, Caitlin. I was loving you. Blindly and selfishly perhaps, but you were never what a man calls a lay. There is a difference, a big difference. If it takes a month or a year of celibacy to prove that to you, I’ll do it.’
‘No.’ She shook her head and looked down at the wing of motel units. A week ago, David had followed her here. She hadn’t known what to believe then. It was different now. He had more than amply proved she was special to him. The only question left was, how special? That wasn’t something she could make happen. It had to come from him.
‘I’m sorry about Crawley,’ David said, his voice roughening. ‘I should have known better, Caitlin. I regret, very much, that I didn’t stand by you that night and throw the filthy scum out on his lying face.’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she murmured.
‘It matters to me. I failed you in the worst possible way. It made me take a long, hard look at myself, Caitlin. I didn’t like what I saw.’
Was that why he had suddenly stepped away from his business? Changed his priorities?
His hand touched her face. Very gently he turned her head towards him. His eyes blazed with a turbulent mixture of concern and need.
‘I’ve been trying to erase my mistakes, Caitlin,’ he said gruffly.
‘It’s not done with money, David.’ Her mind dictated the words. Her heart was torn with the desire to simply forget everything in the passion of coming together again.
‘The money’s irrelevant,’ he said dismissively. ‘I wanted to please you, Caitlin. To show you I’m not all take. I can give. And I’ll give you all I can.’
Tears swam into her eyes. ‘Go and get us a room, David,’ she said huskily.
He looked uncertain. ‘Are you sure, Caitlin? You’re crying.’
She nodded. ‘I’m just being over-emotional. It’s been hard for me, too. Please go. I’ll wait for you here.’
He leaned over and brushed his lips tenderly over hers. She felt his tension, knew he was barely restraining himself. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he murmured, and left her.
Caitlin blinked the tears away. David wasn’t promising her all she wanted, but she felt wrong about holding out on him any longer. Love wasn’t a matter of barter. If it wasn’t freely given, what was it worth? He needed her. She needed him.
She alighted from the car to wait for him. He wasn’t long. He came striding towards her, so essentially male, strong, dynamic, and passionately involved with her. She moved to meet him. He didn’t break stride. He scooped her to his side, his arm almost encircling her waist with possessive fervour.
‘It’s number three,’ he said, the key to the unit held ready in his other hand.
She said nothing. Her heart had started to thump with almost painful wildness. She was intensely aware of his thigh brushing against hers.
‘I’ll tell you why you’re special to me, Caitlin. You wanted a list. I’ll tell you what’s at the top.’
Caitlin looked at him inquisitively. She didn’t know what was bringing on this flurry of words, whether they reflected the urgency of his desire or the deep well of his inner feelings.
‘You are the essence of womanhood and femininity. You act coquettishly, but you’re not a coquette. A coquette teases and tantalises for the pleasure of it. You tease, tantalise and satisfy for the pleasure of it.
‘You surprise me continuously with your range of responses to situations. Unpredictable but always logical. No woman could give more in her infinite variety.
‘You warm me, charm me, keep me smouldering. When the flames die down to embers you fan them into a roaring blaze once more. No other woman could suffice.
‘A man buys a woman when he can get up and leave her without a pang or a single regret. That never has happened between us, Caitlin. It never will.
‘When I hold you in my embrace, I know with a certainty that there can be no other woman. There is no other woman. There never will be any other woman.’
His breathing was ragged, his pulse erratic. It was a
s close to saying he loved her as it was possible to get without saying the words.
She kissed his neck. ‘Would you mind repeating all that, David?’
‘Fiend,’ he said.
They reached the door of the unit. She pushed her thoughts away. They weren’t important right now. David wanted her. She wanted him. Feeling again what they felt together was more important than anything else.
He used the key.
The door opened.
Caitlin did not hesitate.
It was another threshold to be crossed in her love for David Hartley.
She crossed it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PERHAPS it was knowing he cared that made the difference. It seemed to Caitlin that everything meant so much more...the way David kissed her, touched her, held her. He seemed attuned to her every response, nurturing it, heightening it, pleasuring her with a slow, intense sensuality as though wanting to savour every moment of increasing intimacy with her.
Despite his earlier pent-up frustration, David displayed no sense of haste. It was as though he was discovering her again as he peeled her clothes from her body, pausing to caress and love each part of her he uncovered. If she had been a goddess she could not have felt more thoroughly worshipped.
Caitlin was too mesmerised, too enthralled by what he was doing to her to think of undressing him. When she was finally, tremulously naked, and she fumbled at the buttons on his shirt, he stopped her, sweeping her off her feet and laying her on the bed.
‘I want to look at you, waiting for me to join you,’ he said huskily. ‘There’s no more exciting sight in the world.’
Nor to her, watching him divest himself of clothes, feeling the anticipation swell inside her as his body emerged, taut with desire for her.
‘Remember the first time you entered my office for the job interview?’ David murmured.
‘Yes. Very well.’ It had been like entering an electric field, her whole body tingling as the man behind the desk rose to greet her, the most handsome, vital man she had ever met.
‘I’d never felt anything like it,’ he confessed. ‘The hair on the back of my neck prickled. My heart kicked. Life was suddenly super-charged. When you spoke, your voice seemed to sing through my head. When I took your hand, the mere touch of you sent a fever through my blood. I had to have you, Caitlin.’
So that was the effect she had had on him...an instant chemical reaction so strong that it consumed any consideration he might have given to other interviewees. Caitlin felt awed by the fact he had never felt it before, awed and elated. She was different from every other woman who’d been in his life. As he was different for her.
‘Is it still like that?’ she asked.
‘More. It’s hell not having you.’
A straight statement of fact, the truth of it burning in his eyes, burning into her heart, touching on the same truth for her. As he discarded his last piece of clothing, Caitlin swung herself off the bed and wrapped her arms around his waist, hugging the heat of his flesh to herself, feeling and revelling in the solid muscle-and-bone reality of the man she wanted and loved.
‘It’s hell without you, too, David,’ she whispered, pressing feverish little kisses down his throat, along his collarbones.
‘Caitlin...’ It was a half-strangled cry of need. His hands skated down her back and clasped her to him. His chest expanded, crushing the pliant softness of her breasts, confining her movement.
‘Let me love you, David, as you did me,’ she softly pleaded, running her fingernails lightly down over his buttocks.
She felt the muscles tighten. He took a quick, shallow breath and eased his hold on her. The desire to pleasure him, to show him how beautiful he was to her, was like a fever in her blood. She could feel his sensitivity to her touch, the excitement rippling under his skin, the acute response to the intimacy of her mouth sliding over him, the tremor in his thighs...and it stirred a passion to make him feel more and more, to imprint not only his body but his soul with her love.
His hands writhed through her hair. He arched back. Then with an anguished groan he jack-knifed forward, picked her up and carried her to the bed. He drove himself inside her in a frenzy of need and she wildly welcomed the intense thrust of possession, goading him to reach as deeply within her as she hoped she had with him, wanting the searing sensation of his flesh pounding within hers, seeking the ultimate fulfilment of melding into one.
It came like a white-hot flash, engulfing her body, engulfing them both in a moment of ecstatic union, peaking to a pinnacle of utter perfection, completion, then slowly, slowly sliding into a trough of languorous sensuality that fed an almost insatiable passion for more and more pinnacles.
Their bodies were so sensitised that the merest caress effected arousal. David had only to close his mouth over her breast and softly draw on it to make her writhe with the sweet piercing pleasure that streamed through her. She had only to stroke the innerside of his thighs and his need for her stirred anew. The constant heat of their involvement in each other melted the hours away.
There was a blissful sense of belonging, a recognition of it in their eyes, a celebration of it in every kiss, an affirmation of it in each intimate connection. Even when exhaustion set in and the need for sustenance cried out to be met, they were reluctant to release each other from the intense togetherness they had shared.
‘Do we have to go back to Sydney?’ Caitlin asked, burrowing her head into the curve of his neck and shoulder, wishing this incredibly wonderful interlude could last forever but knowing it had to come to an end.
David didn’t reply at once. He stroked her hair for several moments, clearly mulling the decision over in his mind. Then he cuddled her closer, and rubbed his cheek over the top of her head. ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘We’ll do whatever we want.’
They spent the night at The Last Retreat. All night. They had breakfast together the next morning. Caitlin was so happy she couldn’t stop smiling. Her high spirits were infectious. David was more relaxed, more light-hearted, more ready to laugh than she had ever seen him.
Their hunt for precisely the right piece of land for Danny Boy turned into a delicious game as they bounced ideas off each other, building a picture of what would be absolutely idyllic. They not only needed good pasture for grazing, there had to be a creek or a big watering hole he could splash around in, the right amount of shade trees, solid fences, and it shouldn’t be too lonely for him. This led to a discussion on the purchase of some mares as well. David was very eloquent on the subject of a stallion’s needs.
Going back to Sydney was postponed indefinitely. David took Caitlin on a shopping spree, since their quest would obviously take a few days and they needed fresh clothes. They also bought a book on Clydesdales.
David clasped the concept of spontaneity to his soul.
They made love. They had fun together. The sun shone. They shared a joy in life they had never shared before. It was wonderful. David found out that the best Clydesdale mares should have a very feminine face. He couldn’t believe it!
The dream property grew and grew. If they were going to buy some mares for Danny Boy, and the mares had foals, they would need stables and a feed-barn. They would also need a house because someone would have to live on the property and look after everything. An investment of this size demanded a good manager.
They finally found the perfect place. It not only had a house, but a workman’s cottage, as well. David had no hesitation in buying it, despite the horrendous cost. ‘The ideal country retreat,’ he said. Caitlin could not help thinking he meant it for both of them, for the future they would share together.
They drove back to The Last Retreat and made love again. It was immensely satisfying, yet as they lay entwined together afterwards there was a twinge of sadness in knowing that the quest was over. It brought to an end—had to—this idyllic existence. David’s real life was back in Sydney.
There was the Crawley patent infringement case coming up in court. That h
ad to be attended to. And won. Then there was David’s business. Although he had handed the reins of management to other people, he would have to keep an eye on it. No one knew it as well as he did. Last, but far from least, there was his mother.
David had called his mother to say he would be away for a few days, but he still had not talked about her to Caitlin. It was a gap in their togetherness that she desperately wanted filled. He had met her family, albeit not under the best of circumstances. Nevertheless, he had met them, and spoken of her father with liking and respect. Surely it was now time for her to meet his mother.
Caitlin lay with her head on his chest, her cheek over his heart. He must love her, she assured herself. He wouldn’t have done everything he had if he didn’t love her.
‘Caitlin...’
‘Mmh?’
‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ he said, his voice strained with a complex range of emotions. ‘And I don’t know how you’ll react.’
Caitlin’s mind instantly switched to red alert. This had to be important, possibly critically important. ‘Tell me,’ she invited, aware of the slight acceleration of his heartbeat. She lay very still, listening more for the feeling behind his reply than the words themselves.
There was a long pause. Her own heartbeat quickened. Her instincts told her this was something very serious, something that could affect them very deeply.
‘It’s not so much a matter of telling, but of seeing.’
Pain. Sadness. Uncertainty. She waited for him to go on. She knew intuitively he was feeling his way through uncharted territory, or territory that contained so many deadly pitfalls that to safely negotiate past them took enormous care.
‘My mother was very beautiful,’ he said softly, wistfully. ‘As beautiful as you are, Caitlin.’
She held her breath, acutely aware that he was approaching a highly sensitive area...Crawley’s weapon against him...
‘Her hair was thick and black and wavy. She always wore it long. She had smooth creamy skin. Thick eyelashes...’
Caitlin frowned. Why the past tense?
‘My father never had eyes for any other woman. He adored her. And she loved him very much. Sometimes it made me feel excluded.’