by Penny Jordan
‘The latest word processor,’ he told her, bending over the machine, to switch it on. ‘Let me show you how it works.’
Forced into such close proximity, Tamara could smell the clean fragrance of his cologne, her senses responding immediately to the heat she could feel coming off his body. He was dressed casually in jeans and a checked shirt, stretched across the hard muscles of his back, the sunlight streaming in through the window dancing on the polished bones of his face.
‘Something wrong?’
She tore her eyes away from the sensuously full curve of his lower lip, her heart racing like a trip hammer.
‘N-nothing.’
‘Good. Now, watch this.’ He gave her a brief demonstration of how to work the processor. ‘It’s very similar to a normal electric keyboard really, but this way we save time in the long run, because the processor can store everything you type and then when we want to alter something we can call it back and simply change whatever is necessary.’
‘And then the machine produces a perfectly typed altered copy,’ Tamara concluded.
‘You have had some experience of them, then?’
‘Yes, we have one at the office.’
‘Good,’ Zach said crisply. ‘That means we won’t have to waste time on you getting used to it. What I propose is that I dictate to you in the morning, and then leave you free to type in the afternoons. I’ll then check what you’ve done and if any alterations are necessary we’ll do them that evening. When is Mellors due back from New York?’ he added abruptly.
Tamara hadn’t the faintest idea, and lied vaguely, ‘I’m really not sure. It all depends on how fast he can complete his business.’
‘Does he know about your condition yet?’
Tamara lifted her chin.
‘Don’t you think that’s our business?’ she asked sweetly. ‘I’m here to work for you—that doesn’t entitle you to ask questions about my personal life.’
‘It does entitle me to ensure that I get value for money,’ Zach countered cruelly. ‘I don’t want you mooning all over the place because you’re missing your lover. It’s counter-productive.’
‘So what are you suggesting?’ Tamara stormed back, completely forgetting the danger. ‘That you take his place? You couldn’t.’
‘You’re right,’ Zach agreed curtly. ‘I wouldn’t have the stomach for it.’
It was only the shrill ring of the telephone that prevented Tamara from announcing there and then that she was leaving.
Zach picked up the receiver, his hard face relaxing into an amused smile as he listened.
‘I’ve missed you too, Julie,’ Tamara heard him say. She made to leave, but he waved her into a chair, his eyes on her face, his smile deepening as he listened intently to whoever was on the other end of the line.
‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t possibly come up to London at the moment. Look, why don’t you come down here?’
Tamara heard him laugh, and then he turned away from her and out of politeness she stared stolidly through the window, deliberately blotting out the sound of his voice, all the time wondering who this Julie was who could make him smile so easily.
‘Sorry about that,’ he apologised insincerely, when he had replaced the receiver. ‘An old friend. She’s coming down to spend a few days with me. Now where was I? Ah, yes, the word processor … Well, if you think you feel confident about using it I suggest you go and rest before dinner.’ A sneer curled his mouth. ‘In your condition you can’t afford to overdo things, can you?’
In the end Tamara pleaded tiredness and sent a message with Johnson excusing herself from dinner. To her surprise Mrs Wilkes arrived with a tempting tray half an hour later, her forehead creased with concern.
‘The Colonel says you’re not feeling too well. All that driving from London, I expect, takes it out of you. I’ve brought you a nice omelette and a pot of tea.’
Tamara thanked her, her guilt increasing when she thought of the extra work her cowardice had caused. It was true that the drive down had been tiring. It was a long time since she had driven so far and her small Mini was not built for long journeys. She would have to change it once the baby arrived. She fell into a daydream about the baby, her omelette growing cold on the plate.
* * *
Zach had not specified what time he wanted her to start work in the morning, but Tamara was down-stairs at eight, estimating that this would give her time to have her breakfast and present herself in the library for nine.
Mrs Wilkes looked shocked when she insisted that all she wanted was toast and coffee.
‘Bad as the Colonel,’ she grumbled. ‘Although at least he had some scrambled eggs.’
‘The Colonel’s had his breakfast, then, has he?’ Tamara questioned, feeling both relief and dismay. She didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot on her first day. Despite her personal feelings towards Zach, she was determined to remain as professional towards him as she could, and she prided herself on her efficiency as a secretary.
‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Wilkes confirmed. ‘Always has his breakfast at six-thirty, does the Colonel. Habit he got into in the Army, apparently. Johnson makes it for him. By the way,’ she added, ‘he asked me to tell you to go along to the library when you’re ready. Always goes for a walk about breakfast, he does, rain or shine, but he’ll be back by now.’
It was ten to nine when Tamara knocked on the library door and walked in. Zach was sitting behind the large desk, studying some papers. He looked up when Tamara walked in.
‘Good morning,’ she said formally, smoothing her navy skirt with nervous fingers, feeling selfconsciously formal when faced with Zach’s lean, jeans-clad figure. He got up and walked round the desk to come and stand in front of her.
‘Quite the perfect secretary, aren’t we?’ he jeered. ‘But I’m glad you remembered about the hair.’
‘If you’re ready to begin,’ Tamara said quietly, ignoring his taunts.
Two hours later, her fingers cramped from taking shorthand, she gave a mental sigh of relief when Mrs Wilkes appeared with a tray of coffee.
‘No sugar for me,’ Zach said laconically, indicating that Tamara should pour. ‘Would you like to break for half an hour? I don’t want to overtire you.’
His last words made her temper flare. She was tired, her body stiff, but she was damned if she would let him see it.
‘That’s hardly likely,’ she said crisply. ‘By all means let’s continue while the book’s flowing. That way we’ll finish all the sooner.’
For some obscure reason her words seemed to annoy him, and Tamara had increasing difficulty keeping up with his dictation during the second half of the morning; one half of her mind concentrating on what he was saying while the other marvelled at his ability to work without checking or hesitating.
‘I think we’ve got the bones of the first chapter there,’ he announced just after half past twelve. ‘Lunch is at one. How long do you think it will take you to type that lot back?’
Judging by the number of pages of shorthand in her book, Tamara estimated that it would take her all afternoon and the best part of the evening as well.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said icily, ‘but I won’t stop until it’s done.’
It was a vow she was to regret as the afternoon wore on and the ache low down in her back grew steadily worse, as her fingers flew over the keys, her forehead creased in concentration.
‘Not still at it, are you?’ Mrs Wilkes exclaimed in disapproval at six o’clock when she came in to remove the afternoon tea tray.
Tamara used the interruption to check on the number of pages still to type, her heart sinking as she realised she was barely halfway through.
‘I’ll have to give dinner a miss tonight, Mrs Wilkes,’ she apologised. ‘Would it be asking too much for me to have a glass of milk and some fruit instead?’
‘Not as far as I’m concerned,’ Mrs Wilkes told her, adding roundly, ‘But if you ask me, you’re asking too much of your body, working all throug
h the day and half the night besides with nothing inside you.’
Zach had gone out. Tamara had heard the car, and besides, he had told her he had to go in to Bath for some reference books he needed, and all the time she was working her ears were alert for sounds of his return.
At eight o’clock she flexed her stiff shoulders and paused to drink her milk, wondering where he was. Perhaps he’d gone to see some friends … Julie perhaps … Jealousy tore through her, followed by an irrational surge of anger that he should be out enjoying himself while she was exhausting her mind and body on his book.
It was just after eleven when she pulled the final page of typing out of the machine, too exhausted even to check it. Picking up her tray, she took it to the kitchen and then wearily climbed the stairs.
In her bedroom it was almost too much of an effort to undress, but her muscles were so stiff and tense that she felt she needed the luxurious warmth of a bath to help her relax.
She was just on the verge of falling asleep when she heard the Porsche returning. She had left the manuscript on Zach’s desk—all forty-five pages of it and smiled grimly with weary satisfaction, sure that he had not expected her to finish it and that he had dictated so much purely to punish her.
She was awake at six, her sleep disturbed by unfamiliar sounds. Her straining ears caught footsteps disappearing in the direction of the stairs and she glanced at her watch in weary disbelief, before remembering Mrs Wilkes saying that Zach breakfasted at six.
Well, let him, she thought crossly, punching her pillow, but did that mean that everyone else had to be woken at the same godforsaken hour?
It was with considerably less energy that she went down for breakfast. Her back was still stiff, her shoulder muscles aching with tension, a terrible tiredness enveloping her.
‘Decent food, that’s what you need,’ Mrs Wilkes told her sharply when she saw her pale face. ‘Beats me how you young things think a body keeps on going when you don’t feed it properly!’
She tried to persuade Tamara into something more substantial than toast and tea, but Tamara’s still delicate stomach revolted at the thought of anything less bland.
At nine o’clock on the dot she presented herself in the library, too weary to admire, as she had done the previous day, the beautiful Aubusson carpet and the fine veneered yew bookshelves that lined the walls.
Zach was standing by the window, frowning over the typed pages in his hand.
‘There are several mistakes in these last pages,’ he told her coldly. ‘I’ve marked the other alterations I want to make. If you’re ready I’ll dictate the new passages.’
His eyes, cold and impersonal, swept her trim figure in a dark blue skirt and a soft voile blouse in a pretty spotted fabric.
Tamara’s fingers were aching by the time he had finished. A glance at her watch confirmed that it was nearly eleven o’clock—with the alterations and corrections he had pointed out it would be late afternoon before she had finished work.
‘I’ve got to go and see a builder I’ve commissioned to work on the main house,’ Zach told her when he had finished. ‘I’ll be over there for most of the afternoon.’
Perhaps she ought to be thankful for small mercies, Tamara reflected tiredly when he had gone; at least with Zach out of sight she would be able to concentrate on her work without constantly being distracted by his proximity and her body’s treacherous reaction to it. Even when she was hating him for what he was doing to her, her body still melted yieldingly every time he came near her.
When Mrs Wilkes brought her a tray of tea at three o’clock she exclaimed over Tamara’s wan face and strained eyes.
‘Doing too much, that’s what you are,’ she told Tamara, ‘and you mark my words, no good will come of it!’
She came in half an hour later, greatly perturbed, to tell Tamara that her eldest daughter who was expecting her second child had gone into labour a month earlier than expected.
‘I’ll have to go, because there’s no one else to look after our Kevin—his dad’s at work, and besides, I promised our Susan I’d mind him, but I don’t like letting the Colonel down.’
‘I’m sure he’ll understand,’ Tamara assured her. ‘Don’t worry, you just go.’
‘I’ve made a casserole for dinner and there’s nothing to do except the potatoes and veg …’
When she had gone Tamara stretched wearily. She still had corrections to make and then she would have to process the new copy, but her back was aching so badly that she simply had to rest. She sat down in the comfortable leather chair—one of a pair either side of the fire—intending just to rest for ten minutes, but ten minutes stretched to twenty, her eyes closed, her breathing deepened and slowed.
Later, when the library door opened, she didn’t stir, and Zach checked a swift exclamation, his mouth tightening as he saw the pale mauve shadows of exhaustion beneath her eyes.
‘Looks like the lass has done too much,’ Johnson commented lugubriously. ‘And Mrs Wilkes isn’t here either, although there’s a casserole in the oven.’
‘You go and organise some food, I’ll take Miss Forbes upstairs,’ Zach instructed him. ‘There’s no point in waking her up now.’
* * *
It was dark when Tamara finally awoke from her deep sleep. It was several seconds before she realised that she wasn’t downstairs in the library but in bed, and that someone had undressed her.
A shadow moved by the door.
‘So, you’re awake. Are you hungry?’
She shook her head, sudenly dreadfully selfconscious as Zach detached himself from the wall and came towards her, her heart in her throat as he stood over her, piercing the darkness to find her pale face, as he waited for her to answer his question.
‘No,’ she told him huskily. ‘I’m sorry I fell asleep … I don’t seem to have as much energy since …’ Her face flamed under the protective cover of the darkened room, and she bit her lip, faltering into silence, feeling the tension emanating from the male body above her.
‘Damn you, Tamara,’ Zach muttered thickly, bending suddenly to capture her parted mouth with the warmth of his, and desire spread to every part of her body from the heated possession of his kiss, his fingers burning into her skin as he drew her upwards and held her against his body. She could feel the suddenly urgent thud of his heart, and knew that her own copied it, her pulses racing unevenly as he moved his lips from her mouth to the soft curve of her jaw, and from there to the vulnerable hollows behind her ears. As his hand sought and found the rounded curve of her breast warning bells rang in Tamara’s brain. She didn’t know what had sparked off Zach’s desire for her—but she did know that it spelled intense danger to her danger that she might betray herself to him, and for that reason she resisted the magnetic pull of his personality, and stiffened in his arms, forcing her lips into a firm line as she said coolly.
‘No, Zach. You seem to have forgotten, I’m engaged to Malcolm.’
She felt him tense, his eyes searching her face, boring into hers as though he intended to read all her most personal thoughts.
‘Maybe I ought to remind you how easily you forget that fact before,’ he said silkily. ‘Or don’t you think I can?’
When she didn’t speak, he lowered his head, trailing tormenting kisses against her throat, his voice rough with arousal as he said huskily, ‘Want me to prove it you?’
Her strangled ‘No!’ came a split second too late, and instead of stopping him, merely gave him access to the inner sweetness of her mouth, setting alight a thousand nerve endings as he delicately traced the shape of her mouth, the soft kisses he pressed upon it sending her into a mindless fever of desire. She moaned softly, her whole body trembling as she pressed her mouth to the skin exposed by the open neck of his shirt, all warnings forgotten as her fingers touched blindly over his body, his skin moist beneath her shaking mouth.
‘Tamara!’
Her name was a muffled groan, her own protest smothered beneath the demanding pressure of
his mouth. She never wanted the kiss to end; never wanted to let reality intrude on her perfect fairytale world where she could safely ignore the truth and pretend that Zachary felt for her what she felt for him.
She moaned in pleasure as he pushed aside her nightdress. ‘Have you any idea what undressing you did to me?’ he demanded hoarsely as his hand cupped her breast, his thumb stroking sensually over the already aroused peak. ‘Have you any idea what just having you here in this house does to me? I might despise myself for wanting you, but I still do. It’s like a sickness in my blood. God knows I loathe myself for it, but sometimes the sheer pleasure of giving in to one’s weaker impulses overrides the cautious voice warning of the self-disgust to be endured later. This is one of those moments, Tamara … and you want me too, for all that you’re engaged to Mellors. Your body wants me,’ he told her huskily.
Tamara was past responding coherently. Her hands locked behind his head, revelling in the silky feel of his dark hair, pleasure swelling in waves through her body as his mouth explored the shape of her breasts and the valley between them, his weight shifting to allow him to explore the trembling contours of her body.
‘It doesn’t feel any different,’ he told her in a drugged voice, ‘at least not outwardly. What’s it like, knowing his child is growing inside you?’ His mouth touched the vulnerable swell on her stomach and all Tamara’s muscles contracted in ecstasy and pain. If only she could tell him the truth and say that it was his child, and that she delighted in the knowledge of its being there. But these were words that could never be spoken. In a moment of weakness he might want her as he did now, but Tamara was in no doubts as to his real feelings for her.
Her sensitive flesh quivered as Zach’s mouth possessed each breast briefly before it returned to explore the sensitive curve of her throat, her own lips pressing feverishly hot kisses against his damp skin, her fingers tugging impatiently at his shirt buttons.
‘Are you like this with Mellors?’ Zach demanded hoarsely. ‘Are you, Tamara—tell me!’