‘You mean it’s not an option unless I offer you marriage. Because not even cohabitation would work for you, would it? Well, let me tell you straight away, that’s not on the cards and never will be.’ Blackmailed into marriage? No way! Was any addiction worth that? Addictions, like everything else, could be overcome; he just wasn’t used to having one. But no addiction would get the better of him. He was invulnerable, and if any little voice in his head dared to disagree then he would squash it.
But he couldn’t look at her. He would walk away. Because no one took control away from him, even a witch with eyes the colour of sunlit sea, hair that shimmered like burnished gold and a smile that could screw with his head like nothing he had ever experienced before…
CHAPTER TEN
ELIZABETH pulled the comb through her long hair, leant towards the mirror on her dressing table and glared. She had done quite a bit of that over the past ten days. In response to James’s relentless curiosity, she had finally confessed that she had had a bit of a minor contretemps with his godson—more a heated debate than a full-fledged argument, she had felt compelled to elaborate, with her fingers tightly crossed behind her back, and that Andreas was a louse. Beyond that she had not expanded, and in fact had managed to eventually steer the subject away by producing a replacement.
She had managed to find herself a job. It was only a temporary one, working at the local village school in the admin department, but she was hoping for an extension. That change of subject had had the desired effect of diverting James’s needling questions and speculations, some of which had landed with disturbing accuracy. He had moved on to the less-fraught topic of what she intended to do long-term, and then to his familiar lament that she would find life dull and boring in Somerset. That she would leave just when they were getting to know one another, and would return to London to lead a wildly glamorous life from which he would be excluded. Now if she met a nice, young local chap… Then he had inserted slyly, ‘Or there’s always my godson. No woman calls a man a louse without good reason, but I’m certain you two could patch up your differences—and how comforting for me if you and Andreas…’
At that point, Elizabeth had made a radical decision. It was no good harbouring silly fantasies that Andreas would ever be anything more than he was capable of being. What they had had was conclusively over because their long-term wants and needs were a million miles apart. She didn’t know if Andreas would ever settle down but she knew that when he did it certainly wouldn’t be with her. With a brutality which he had probably found necessary, just in case she was driven to harbour any unrealistic expectations, he had spelled that out for her in words of one syllable.
It had been the most humiliating moment in her life. It had also provoked some soul-searching truths which she had forced herself to acknowledge. Truth one was that an extraordinary circus of events had thrown them together, but that without those extenuating circumstances nothing would ever have happened between them. Even if their paths had crossed, and even if she had stared at him the way every single woman on the face of the planet seemed to stare at him, he would never have returned the look; in normal conditions, she just wouldn’t have been the type of woman to interest him. He wouldn’t have bothered getting to know her, because men like Andreas didn’t bother getting to know anyone who didn’t immediately grab their attention with flamboyant good looks that matched their own. In every area of his life, he was the most complicated man she had ever met, but when it came to the opposite sex he was as shallow as a puddle.
He had ended up in bed with her because he had been isolated from his usual routine and because, in that isolation, he had come to see her as a novelty. Like a fool, she had not similarly seen him as a novelty. Like a complete idiot, she had embraced him as the real thing, and compromised her common sense which had been vocal in telling her that she was being stupid. And, just in case she started getting the wrong ideas, he had felt the need to state the obvious. It had been the final, stinging reminder of why she needed to move on.
Never mind moving on with any of the guys she had met at the party; Toby had telephoned her the day after and she had been polite but evasive, and he had taken the hint. The truth was that she was still the same girl she had always been, and high fliers from a different walk of life were never going to be the sort of men she would find lifetime happiness with.
Hence her conflicted emotions as she stared at her disgruntled face in the mirror. She would braid her hair. It wasn’t the sexiest look on the face of the earth, but then she wasn’t sexy; forget how Andreas had once made her once feel. Nor was she looking for someone who wanted to get her into bed to pass the time of day—or night, for that matter. She was looking for kindness, consideration, a man who didn’t resent a few months of chaste kisses while they got to know one another.
Whether Tom Lloyd, one of the visiting teachers with whom she had been persuaded to have a cup of coffee, fitted the bill she had no idea. But he was young, affable and didn’t threaten. He had been forward enough to approach her as he had spotted her leaving after her interview, but not so forward that he had jumped in with a dinner invitation. That said something. He had asked her about herself, and had been interested but not over-impressed at her recent family connections. Another tick for him. In fact, they had chatted for over an hour, and now they were meeting for lunch.
It would be nice, Elizabeth thought despairingly. And what choice did she have? Retreating from the world so that she could nurse her wounds would make her even more vulnerable than she already was. After Andreas, Tom might prove just the calming tonic she needed, even if James had seen fit to disagree volubly.
‘Sounds a namby-pamby to me!’ he had barked, before she had even finished talking. The fact that Tom was reasonably local was a trump card that had been waved aside like an irritating wasp. However local he was, nothing had saved him from being ‘wishy washy’, ‘dull as dishwater’, ‘boring, and probably with a sackful of hang-ups and issues’ and what the hell damn woman would want to get involved with someone who needed sorting out, especially his daughter?
Worse than all that, he had asked her, eyes narrowing, ‘Fancy the man, do you, my girl?’ To which there had been no conceivable answer, and she had blushed wildly, much to her father’s glee. By the time she had got round to babbling something nonsensical about spiritual bonding being the most important thing in a relationship, he had been beside himself with laughter.
With one swift, angry movement, she ran her fingers through her braid, untangling it back into its normal, copper tumble. Then she did one final check in the mirror, grabbed her bag and popped in to see her father, who seemed inclined to carry on his in-depth analysis of a man he had never met in his life.
‘You’re making a big mistake!’ he carolled out to her departing back. She was smiling as she left the house because every word that left her father’s mouth showed her how much he cared, and that filled her up like nothing else could.
He had made all sorts of crazy assumptions about her and Andreas. She could see that he might have put two and two together when they had been working, sharing jokes, maybe even giving off that intangible intimacy that lovers could give off without even being aware of it. She had thought they had been very discreet at the time, but James had laser vision when it came to reading people. Well, all the more reason to prove to him once and for all that wherever his suspicions lay, they would have to continue to lie there. If not Tom, then she would bring some other chap home at some point. Someone nice. Someone James would quite probably dismiss with a wave of his hand and a disgruntled insult. Someone the complete opposite of Andreas, because she wanted to hang on to her sanity.
Tom was waiting for her in the restaurant, and Elizabeth plastered a warm smile on her face, because he really did look like the kind of guy she should be showing a keen interest in. Tallish, blondish, with brown, kind eyes and an ever so slightly
receding hairline. He wasn’t the sort of guy who had heads turning in his wake, but then neither was she the sort of girl who had that effect on the opposite sex. It would do her the world of good to get back down to planet Earth, where people didn’t have expectations about guys who were way out of their league.
From across the restaurant, Andreas watched with mounting outrage as Elizabeth settled into her chair and leant across the table, smiling at her date. It was filling out nicely, considering it was lunchtime; shouldn’t people be at work, for God’s sake? Elizabeth’s hands were primly on her lap at the moment, but how long before they reached across and invited contact?
His godfather had obviously not been lying when he had hot-footed it to the phone to tell him that she was seeing someone and it might be serious.
‘And what, exactly, am I supposed to do with that information?’ Andreas had duly queried.
‘Do what you like with it,’ James had said petulantly. ‘But I think I ought to tell you that I’ve done a few background checks and the guy’s not kosher. Put it this way—I wouldn’t want my daughter to become a target for gold-diggers and money grabbers.’
‘The man’s a gold-digger?’
‘Very well might be!’
‘You know that for a fact?’
‘Nothing in life is certain, but tongues wag, lad…if you know what I mean. Call me crazy, but I’d like you to check him out. Wouldn’t want the lass to come to any harm. I’m an old man, son…don’t think the ticker could take it. You want to put my mind at rest, don’t you? Here’s the name of the restaurant…just have a look. Must go now, Andreas, this whole thing has quite put me out of sorts. Think I need a lie down…’
Andreas knew his godfather like the back of his hand and he had been deeply suspicious of that wheedling, honeyed tone of voice, but he had shelved all thoughts of pressing for further explanation. Instead, he had leaned back in his leather chair and allowed his mind full rein to run wherever it wanted.
And for the second time in as many weeks he had abandoned the pretence of playing it cool and headed back down to Somerset. He was beginning to know the route like the back of his hand, whether by car, train or helicopter. This time, however, he would not be arriving with any illusions. He was obeying the demands of his gut instincts, and his godfather’s insubstantial, waffling concerns about gold-diggers and money grabbers had provided him with a thinly veiled excuse to do precisely what he wanted to do.
Andreas had no intention of walking away from the fortuitous opportunity that had presented itself to him. He was nobody’s fool, and indeed matters had resolved themselves in a very handy manner as far as he was concerned.
All meetings for the day had been cancelled within minutes.
He stood up now from where he had asked to be seated, at the back of the room, half-hidden by a pot plant that seemed to be aspiring for a part in Jack and The Beanstalk. He tossed his serviette on the table along with more than sufficient money to cover the cost of the salad he had half-eaten, and the two glasses of wine he had drunk with considerably more enthusiasm.
He noticed that no wine had been brought to their table. Mineral water all round. Normally, that would have been enough for him to make some healthy and instant character-assassination—because what kind of man took a woman out to lunch and indulged her with water? But a sudden, disconcerting feeling of uncertainty swept through his body like a virus.
He just wished that he could see Elizabeth’s face. Even when she was in the middle of pushing him away, he could always tell exactly what was going through her mind by her eyes. However, she was seated with her back to him, and it was only when he drew up at the table that her date eventually broke off his conversation to look up at him with a puzzled frown.
‘Yes? Can I help you?’
‘I think so,’ Andreas drawled, circling the table and positioning himself directly in front of Elizabeth, who looked at him with wide, startled eyes, her mouth half-open as though suddenly bereft of the power of speech. Which was precisely how Andreas had wanted to find her, hence the element of surprise. ‘I need to talk to your companion, so if you don’t mind…?’
Elizabeth recovered quickly, but her heart was thumping because Andreas was the last person in the world she had expected to see. James must have mentioned her lunch date to his godson, maybe implied that she was throwing herself into a mistake. Naturally that would have been manna from heaven for Andreas, who had already proved that he was willing to scare off the competition until he got what he wanted. No marriage, no commitment, but why should that halt him in his tracks? Was he so convinced that he could break down her defences? Had it become some kind of personal challenge to him, because she had been the one to turn him down? He had expected her to take him up on his generous offer to share his bed the second time around—did that mean that, in his eyes, the challenge had been doubled?
Anger spread like a red mist across her eyes and she swallowed hard, fighting it down, because there was no way that she was going to succumb to a screaming fit in public. Not only would it demean her but it would send poor Tom running for cover. Andreas, she imagined, would have a field day if that happened.
‘I mind.’ She rescued Tom from having to stumble his way through to an appropriate response. She gave Tom a reassuring smile. ‘Tom, this is Andreas, my father’s godson. I kind of inherited him along with my dad.’
Andreas didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he pulled out one of the spare chairs at the table and proceeded to sit down. He even called the waiter across and ordered them a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. ‘Teetotal?’
‘I never drink at lunchtime,’ Tom explained with a look of mild horror. ‘Gives me a terrible headache.’
‘What do you want, Andreas?’ Elizabeth interceded before the conversation could go totally off the rails. She didn’t want to, but her eyes were surreptitiously drawn to the impressive figure he cut in a pair of casual, olive-green trousers and hand-made loafers, and a cashmere jumper that screamed elegance. He would have looked amazing in anything, but he looked even more breathtaking than usual. Wasn’t this always going to be the problem? The minute she began to try and put her life back on track, he would show up, and suddenly there would be no space in her world for anyone but him. If she wasn’t careful, she would be caught in a never-ending stop-start cycle that would be the equivalent of a ball and chain round her ankles. She was suddenly overcome with a feeling of hopelessness.
‘In case you haven’t noticed, I’m here with a friend,’ she said with a bit more renewed vigour. ‘I can’t think of anything you might want to talk to me about, but if there is something then it can wait until I’m available. And I’m not available at the moment.’
‘Tom.’ Andreas poured himself a glass of wine. ‘It’s Tom, isn’t it? I really need to talk to Elizabeth in private.’ He shot her a look of brooding intensity, and then said something that halted her outburst in its tracks. ‘Please.’
Elizabeth picked up the shadow of hesitation in his voice, and it was almost shocking, because for Andreas hesitancy was an alien concept.
‘What is it?’ she asked urgently, when Tom had obediently taken his leave. ‘What’s the matter? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’ she continued as her mind frantically tried to contrive scenarios. ‘It’s not like you to…’
‘To what?’
‘To sound so uncertain. As though there’s something you need to say but you don’t want to say it.’ And that could only mean James, because he would always be the enduring link between them. He was the one person alive who could reduce Andreas to uncertainty. Spontaneously, Elizabeth reached out and threaded her fingers through his, barely aware of her gesture. But Andreas, feeling the warmth of her hand against his own, was rocked by the sensation of being a drowning man who’d been flung a life belt. He held her fingers in his hand with the fierceness of some
one needing to hold on tightly.
‘This isn’t where I would have chosen to have this conversation.’
‘Just tell me—is it my father? What’s wrong?’
‘It’s not James. Although he did send me…’ A man needed an excuse to traipse halfway round the country in pursuit of a woman. ‘He thought you might be in danger of becoming victim to a gold-digger.’
Relief was almost instantly overcome by the resurgence of her anger. She wriggled to get her hand free and his grip grew ever so slightly more vice-like.
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Just what I told him.’
‘I thought something was wrong! I don’t want you doing this,’ she stated baldly.
‘Doing what?’
‘Trying to ambush my efforts to settle down here. Tom’s not a gold-digger.’
‘Okay, maybe he’s not a gold-digger, but that doesn’t mean that he’s suitable. Being bored to death wouldn’t be a healthy alternative to me.’
‘That does it. That really does it!’ She snatched her hand away, cursing to herself; no matter how obnoxious he was, he could still bring her common sense crashing down around her like a fragile house of cards. She rummaged in her bag, fishing out some money for the bottle of water she and Tom had shared. They hadn’t even had the chance to glance at a menu! Suddenly he assumed the mantle of a lost opportunity. Her eyes flashed as she stood up, pushed her chair back and headed for the door, face burning with embarrassment as she felt the eyes of the other diners pinned with curiosity to the unfolding spectacle.
With one lithe, supple movement, Andreas was on his feet and in her wake, dimly aware that this wasn’t going as planned. He had lost his cool and was in danger of losing it further.
‘Who was that guy anyway?’ he heard himself demand as she left the restaurant at flying speed and took off down the street towards the car park.
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