‘Tell me about your job.’ The road straight ahead led almost directly to the village hall. James took the first left so that he could get there by the most circuitous route. ‘What did you do in London?’
‘I…I was a commodities trader.’ Sara could almost hear the silence of surprised disapproval ricocheting around the car. ‘And before you tell me that that was no kind of job for a woman, I might as well let you know that I was very good at it. More than that, it paid very well, which happens to be extremely handy when you’re bringing up a child.’
‘I can see why you needed a nanny,’ was all he said. ‘Commodity trading is an exhausting job. I don’t suppose you got to see your son as much as you would have liked.’
The gentle sympathy in his voice caught her unawares and she found herself floundering between resentment at his observations and an overpowering urge to pour out her feelings. She had become so accustomed to carrying the weight of single motherhood on her shoulders, to pushing on however tired or depressed or just plain fed up she might be, that confiding in other people was a talent she had lost a long time ago. Even her girlfriends had not been privy to her innermost thoughts. She’d met them whenever they could arrange to, which was infrequently because most of them worked in the same high-octane field as she had, and they chatted about bonuses, holidays, frustrations at work but seldom about how they really felt. They were all young, in enviably well-paid jobs, they had no time to be depressed. They laughed, ate at expensive restaurants and veered away from anything that might imply that their lifestyles were not all that they were cracked up to be.
‘I suppose you think that I was an irresponsible mother, bringing a child into the world and then not even spending any quality time with him, but I had no choice. Trading was the only thing I was good at. I didn’t go to university, I was a hopeless secretary. I would have been fired sooner or later if my boss didn’t happen to notice that I had an ability to predict market trends. And trading is a game you can’t slow down without getting left behind.’ She could hear the pitch of her voice rising in defensiveness and took a few deep, steadying breaths. ‘Are we nearly there?’
‘Nearly.’
She waited for him to continue trying to drag information out of her and was half hoping that he would because in the darkness of the car it felt good to talk, like being in a confessional, but he didn’t. He just pointed out one or two landmarks to her and then prosaically began to talk about places she could visit, things Simon might like to see when they got a chance.
Why wasn’t he talking about her? she wondered feverishly. For a minute there she had actually thought that he was genuinely interested, genuinely sympathetic to what she had gone through for the past five years, and there was a dam inside her waiting to burst. But suddenly he had stopped asking questions, lost all interest.
As soon as he had heard what she had done for a living, Sara thought slowly. She had been so right to bracket James Dalgleish and Phillip in the same category. Neither of them had really liked a woman who possessed an intellect that could threaten them. Phillip had slept with her because she had been a novelty for him and because he had liked the way she looked, but where was he now? Getting married and moving to Sydney. Getting married to a woman who was blonde, helpless and had never done a day’s hard work in her life. Getting married to a woman who was seven months pregnant. She herself had not seen her ex for nearly nine months and her friends had been all too willing to explain why. She suspected even he might have felt some twinge of feeling for her and the son he had never really acknowledged. In due course, a letter would arrive and there would be one line of regret for the way things turned out but rather more than one somehow laying the blame for everything at her door, and a good deal more devoted to how he had finally found what he had been looking for all his life. The letter would arrive to a flat occupied by tenants and she sincerely hoped that they would drop it in the nearest bin. She detested Phillip, but rejection still hurt and what hurt even more was knowing that her son had been rejected as well.
By the time they reached the village hall, her mood had sunk to rock-bottom. She could barely look at the man walking in with her, and when he brushed against her arm as they entered she visibly flinched.
Thankfully there was no need to stay glued to his side. Fiona had turned up and was waving at her from across the room, and the sea of hostility and suspicion she thought she would find was absent. Everyone was too busy having a good time. The music was loud and operated by an enthusiastic youth with shoulder-length hair and there was a long buffet table extending across one side of the hall, on which she assumed food would be laid out in due course.
It was as far removed from a fashionable London nightclub as it was possible to get.
‘I’ll get you a drink,’ James said into her ear. ‘Stay here.’ He moved away into the crowd, stopping every two feet to have a few words with someone, and Sara immediately headed towards Fiona.
Stay here? Did he imagine that he could issue imperatives and she would mindlessly obey? Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him still trying to get to the bar, where three middle-aged gentlemen were trying to keep up with the crowd of people putting in their orders, and she smirked with satisfaction at the thought of him returning to that spot by the door to find that she had disappeared into the crowd. Of course, it wouldn’t be long before he zeroed in on her, but by then she would have proved her point.
If this had been London, she thought with another of those pangs of regret, she could well and truly have lost herself. The crowds and the darkness of a nightclub would have easily swallowed her up. Not so here. They had dimmed the lights but dark it certainly was not and the crowds couldn’t hide a fly for more than twenty minutes.
And if she had been with her friends…but she wouldn’t have been with her friends at a nightclub. They would have been at a smart wine bar or an expensive restaurant, swapping anecdotes about who was doing what at work, and at the back of her mind guilt would have been nagging away that she had left Simon at night when she had been out all day. At least here she didn’t feel guilty about leaving him with Maria for a couple of hours. They had had a good day together, doing some weeding, baking some bread, taking time out to just sit in the garden where she had sleepily watched him play with his Lego on a rug while she read a magazine. Little, simple things that her friends would never have understood because they belonged to a fervently child-free culture and talk of children bored them.
Fiona and her three friends all had children and it was weird to discuss Simon openly without seeing only polite interest on their faces. It was even interesting to discuss schooling in the area when she knew full well that the chances of their staying put was only fifty-fifty, if that.
She felt his approach before she saw him. Even in a crowded room, with disco music rattling out in the background, she still felt his approach. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and she steeled herself for his inevitable remark about walking off when he had pointedly told her to stay put.
She was aggrieved to find that he was glaringly indifferent to whether she had walked off, stayed put or even headed back in the direction of home.
He handed her a glass of wine, which she drank with record speed, and then ignored her while he chatted amicably with her companions. Fiona tried to include her in the conversation while her bright eyes darted between the two of them, taking in their body language. But their histories went back a long way. Mutual friends were mentioned, incidents referred to, and after a while Sara excused herself to get some more wine. Two glasses and she was feeling much better.
‘Not running away from me by any chance?’ His velvety voice washed over her and she turned to him with a radiant smile.
‘Don’t look now but your ego’s showing,’ Sara said smugly, happily accepting her third glass of wine. A pleasant contentment washed over her. ‘Not surprising, though, considering that all the lassies are fluttering their eyelashes at you.’
‘Of course I haven’t been watching you.’
‘Well, I’ve been watching you,’ he said softly, ‘along with most of the other unattached males in this place. Would you like to dance?’
Before she could formulate an answer, he had circled her waist with his hands and was pulling her in the direction of the makeshift dance floor.
Her soft compliance as she leant into him made him tighten the muscles around his loins and a hot wave of unexpectedly primitive emotion flooded through him. He tightened his hold on her, pulling her closer into him so that he could feel the crush of her soft breasts against his chest and so that she could feel the hardness between his legs that would be telling her exactly what he wanted to do with her.
‘People will talk,’ Sara murmured, allowing her head to rest lightly on his shoulder.
‘Because we’re dancing?’ He knew exactly what she meant. It wasn’t that they were dancing, but how they were dancing. There was not a millimetre of space between them and she was gyrating slowly against his body, in time to the slow, steady beat of the love song.
Lord, but was this how she danced with other men? The thought sent a shard of searing jealousy straight through him and he curled his fingers into her long hair, tilting her face to his.
‘Do you go to a lot of nightclubs in London, Sara?’ he asked huskily and she gave a low-throated gurgle of laughter and shook her head.
‘I try and not go out at all. Or, at least, not very often. Sometimes on a Saturday evening, although Sundays were always the worst for me. Don’t you find Sundays the loneliest day of the week?’ She trailed her fingers from his shoulders to the back of his neck and he audibly caught his breath.
‘How much have you had to drink?’ he queried unsteadily.
‘Three glasses. And counting.’
‘Three glasses and full stop.’
‘I hope you’re not telling me how much I can drink, Mr Dalgleish, because if you are then I’m afraid you don’t know me at all.’
‘Because you don’t take orders from a man?’
‘That’s right.’ God, it had been a long time since she had danced like this with a man. Thinking about it, she didn’t remember ever dancing like this with a man, not even Phillip, who had hated dancing anyway and was scathing of anywhere that loud music was played and he might be obliged to get up and dance.
‘Now, that’s something that might come between us,’ he murmured lazily.
‘Because you like ordering people about?’
‘Because when I sleep with a woman I like to be in charge.’
His words floated over her and into her and then crashed through her consciousness, leaving behind a surge of excitement that made her nipples harden against the lacy covering of her bra.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Wh…what?’
‘Because I see they’re beginning to put out the food over there.’ The music came to an abrupt halt, someone announced that food was served and that everyone had to form an orderly queue, and he pulled away from her.
Something in her stomach. She needed something in her stomach. She could feel the alcohol, precious little but more than she was used to drinking, swishing around inside her. The barbecue smelled delicious.
‘It will sober you up,’ James said in an undertone and when she was beginning to wonder whether the postscript to that remark was that, sober, she wouldn’t carry on making a fool of herself, he continued with a lazy half-smile, ‘so that I cannot later be accused of having had my wicked way with someone under the influence of drink.’ His eyes tangled with hers.
‘You won’t be having your wicked way with me,’ Sara protested weakly.
‘Shall we join some of the others outside?’ He had to stop looking at those drowsy, beckoning eyes or he would have no choice but to abandon eating and drag her somewhere private, to hell with what the entire town had to say on the subject. Corporate businesswoman she might well have been, but when it came to emotions she was the most intriguing woman he had ever met and the complex combination of vulnerability and gutsy intelligence was driving him crazy.
Sara was barely aware of the conversation swirling around her as she munched her way through chicken, a sausage and some bits of salad and bread. The only thing she was aware of was the energy emanating from the man sitting alongside her on the bench, his thigh grazing hers every so often.
When the music started back, drifting through the open windows to where outside lights had been switched on to accommodate the gathering darkness, James stood up and announced that it was time for them to leave.
‘Sara wants to be back early as it’s the first time my mother is babysitting her son.’
Her chance was now, to agree with him and leave, but to go where and do what, or to disagree, stand her ground and put her provocative behaviour down to a little too much wine on an empty stomach. Right now, she felt as sober as a judge.
Wrong time, wrong place and definitely, she thought, wrong man. She was behaving like a teenager instead of the responsible mother that she was, flopping all over him like a wet rag and acting as though that husky voice of his and his body pressing against hers so that she could feel his arousal was because of her. When instead he was only a red-blooded male responding in typical fashion to a reasonably attractive woman who had too much wine inside her for her own good.
But she had been in a deep freeze for five years. Somewhere along the line she had forgotten that she was only twenty-six, hardly over the hill.
‘He can be a bit nervous with strangers, to start with,’ Sara said, clearing her throat and standing up. ‘I promised him that I wouldn’t be back late. Where shall I put my plate and glass?’
‘Leave it here,’ Fiona said, catching her eye and grinning broadly. ‘I’ll take it in. Some of us poor, hapless souls have been roped into doing all the clearing away, so we’ll be here until the break of dawn. Or at least until eleven-thirty when our resident DJ packs up and leaves.’
‘That would be my brother,’ Helen explained, smiling, ‘and he’ll pack up exactly when I tell him to.’
It was only when they were outside in the clear, cool air that a sickening rush of nerves washed over her, and when she stepped gingerly into his car it intensified to the point where she had to rest her head back and close her eyes.
He didn’t start the engine immediately. Instead, he turned in his seat and looked at her. ‘If you want to back out, tell me now.’
Sara slowly inclined her head so that she was looking straight into his glittering eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she answered truthfully.
‘I know what you want to do,’ he murmured, reaching out to slide his fingers along her cheek and into her hair, and Sara’s breath caught painfully in her throat.
‘Where will we go?’
‘To the Rectory.’ He gave her a killing smile that made her shiver with fear and searing anticipation. ‘And don’t worry,’ he dipped his fingers to her half-parted mouth and gently traced its outline, ‘I’m not a beast. If you change your mind along the way, I won’t take advantage of you.’ But she wouldn’t, he thought with a flare of triumph that made his loins physically ache. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her. He could feel it in the loaded atmosphere between them. The air was thick with unexpressed needs. He was not surprised when she gave him an imperceptible nod and only then did he turn away and fire the engine into life.
CHAPTER FIVE
EVEN to Sara’s racing
mind, the drive back seemed a lot shorter and was accomplished in silence. A silence pregnant with slick excitement.
‘Changed your mind yet?’ James asked softly, when they reached the Rectory and he had killed the engine.
‘Changed yours?’ She laughed a little wryly. ‘We’re behaving like teenagers. At least I am. It’s just that…’
‘Just that what…?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She shrugged and stared out of the window. Yes, she wanted to sleep with him. Badly. Too badly, and that was the problem, but how could she explain that to him? How could she tell him that she was frankly terrified of opening herself up to another man when her experiences with the last one had left her mortally wounded? He would roar with laughter. This wasn’t about having a relationship as far as James Dalgleish was concerned, it was about having sex, and having sex was not something he would associate with agonising.
‘Look, why don’t we go inside and we can…talk?’
‘Are you interested in talking?’ She looked at him and he felt a sharp tug somewhere inside at the worried expression on her face. ‘No, of course you’re not,’ she said on a little sigh. ‘Why should you be? What does sex have to do with talking?’
‘Come on.’ He slung open his car door and strode round so that he could pull hers open for her. ‘If you need to talk until this time next week, then I’m going to listen, so out you come and we’ll go inside and get ourselves some good, strong coffee.’
‘You don’t have to…I know the last thing you want to do is drink coffee at a kitchen table and chat, especially when…especially since…’
He didn’t answer. Instead he took her limp hand in his and gently pulled her out of the car.
‘Where are your keys?’
‘I can open the door.’ She detached her hand from his so that she could rummage around in her bag, and as soon as she had found the keys and opened the side-door immediately wanted to slip her hand back into his.
His Convenient Mistress Page 7