by Penny Jordan
He walked over to her ancient Mini and stood looking at it. He still moved with that same indolent masculinity that had had such an effect on her eight years ago, Kate acknowledged, but now she was not an impressionable twenty-year-old. So why was her stomach doing crazy, physically impossible stunts?
Not because she was attracted to him. No, it was more likely to be fear that was making her tummy loop the loop and then clench into tight knots.
‘It won’t start,’ she told him distractedly, dragging her gaze away from the amber scrutiny of his as he paused and then reached inside her car to release the bonnet mechanism.
She saw him frown as he looked inside, and it struck her that he might have thought that she was manufacturing her car’s ailment, although for what purpose… A slow burn of colour spread through her body as she realised he might think she was deliberately engineering a situation which would throw them together, but no… how could she have known that Vera had no car… or for that matter that he would appear just at the crucial moment. She was letting her imagination run away with her, she chided herself, but she still found herself letting her breath out in a silent easing of tension when he lifted his head from the engine inside the bonnet and said dryly, ‘The starter-motor seems to have packed in, and there seem to be several electrical faults as well.’ As he closed the bonnet and stood up he addressed Kate directly for the first time, saying mockingly, ‘Why on earth don’t you buy yourself a newer model?’
His very obvious contempt for her, his air of self-assurance, and the distinctly unpleasant manner in which he had treated her coalesced into a seething mass of resentment that caused her fingers to curl tightly into her palms, her voice curt and hostile as she snapped back, ‘Quite simply because I can’t afford to.’ Facing him directly, she added bitingly, ‘And please don’t worry about giving me a lift. If Vera would allow me to use her telephone…’
Behind her she heard the faint sound of distress made by her hostess. So she was being rude, so what? Kate thought on a sudden surge of adrenalin-induced feeling of bravery. She was not going to be browbeaten by anyone, least of all by Dominic Harland.
‘I’m not worried about it.’ The sudden sensation of his fingers closing round her upper arm caused Kate to whirl round in acute disbelief. It seemed incredible to her that he should actually touch her, and her eyes unknowingly betrayed that disbelief to him.
It was extremly disconcerting to see the run of dark colour spread under his skin, as his eyes shifted away from her own, his hand dropping away from her. Instinctively she stepped back, breathing deeply as though somehow having him so close to her had robbed the atmosphere of oxygen.
‘Get in the car,’ he told her quietly.
Suddenly she was too drained to argue, and what was she protesting about anyway? She could see Vera watching them curiously. The last thing she wanted to do was to promote any gossip about the past. There would be those in the village who would remember his visit all those years ago, and who could put two and two together and easily make five. The village thrived on gossip, and she had no wish to be the subject of it. There had been enough during the days when Ricky was still alive.
Dominic’s car was parked to one side of her own, a gold BMW that looked brand new, which she supposed it must be if he had only just come to this country from America.
The passenger door was unlocked and as she got inside she dismissed the idea that it might only be hired, and marvelled a little about the differences between the lifestyle of people like the Bensons and Dominic and herself. Unless of course he was planning to move back to England?
Telling herself that it was really of no interest to her what he did, she tensed instinctively as he got into the car beside her. Vera came to wave them off, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun.
The car was smooth and powerful. Strapped into her seat, Kate concentrated on looking out of the window, not once allowing her glance to be drawn to the man seated beside her.
She had nothing to say to him that could be said without her betraying her agony over the past, and she was glad that he too kept silent.
As they drove into the village and a group of the locals outside the post office broke off their conversation to admire the car, it struck her for the first time that with the Bensons living locally, Dominic might become more of a permanent fixture in the area than she had first supposed. The thought was distinctly unpalatable, causing her to blench slightly and curl protesting fingers into her palms.
At the garage Dominic took charge, explaining quickly and explicitly about her car. Resentment raged inside Kate as she listened to him. She was used to running her own life—taking charge of her own affairs—but it was pointless to give way to childish temper now… In another half an hour she would be rid of him. All she had to do was to concentrate on the landscape and pretend that it was someone else sitting there beside her.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE car tyres crunched steadily over the gravel drive as Dominic turned in through the gates to the house, the sound unnaturally loud in the thick silence inside the vehicle. He brought it to a standstill next to the front door. As she reached for the door handle, at the same time releasing her seatbelt, she felt his hand on her arm. Apprehension feathered coldly along her skin, but she didn’t look at him, or acknowledge his touch in any way.
‘I want to talk to you.’
So that was it. What did he want to say that hadn’t been said eight years ago?
Pain made her lash out with childish venom, her voice high and shaky as she threw back acidly, ‘Well, I didn’t suppose you were giving me a lift out of sheer human charity!’
‘Very wise of you. Shall we go inside?’
Kate didn’t want to invite him into the house…didn’t want to see him in those same surroundings…but something told her that he was not going to allow her to refuse.
Her whole body felt stiff and unfamiliar as she unlocked the door and walked into the hall. She paused by the drawing-room door, and saw his face darken slightly, as though he too were remembering. She shuddered slightly, and saw that his eyes had registered her faint movement. They glowed dark topaz, hot instead of cold, tracking her every movement…waiting for her to…to what?
Impatient of the theatrical direction of her thoughts, she pushed open the drawing-room door and walked inside.
Strategically she stood behind one of the chairs, holding on to the back as she turned to face him, and demanded coldly:
‘Now, what is it you wanted to say to me?’
It was disconcerting to find Dominic standing so close to her, close enough for her to see the faint lines raying out from his eyes that were new to her from eight years ago. Time had hardened him, it seemed, or at least, she amended mentally, it had stripped away the veneer of compassion she had once foolishly deceived herself he possessed, to reveal his true nature. There was certainly no warmth in the topaz eyes fixed on her own. Strange that such a warm colour as gold could look so cold.
Of course, if Vera was to be believed, and Kate had to admit she could see no reason for her to lie, Dominic did have some justification for mistrusting the female sex. However, mistrust was one thing, dislike to the point of wanting to hurt was another.
There was such an air of taut control about him that she badly wanted to step back, but pride compelled her to stay where she was, her chin tilting slightly as her eyes clashed with his. She was not twenty any more, looking hopelessly for the love she had been denied by her husband, desperate to prove her femininity.
‘I don’t know why you’re so anxious to cultivate Vera Benson,’ Dominic said harshly at last, ‘but if it’s Ian you’re after, you’re wasting your time. He’s devoted to Vera…far too much to be taken in by someone like you.’
Somehow Kate managed to contain her outrage long enough to say icily, ‘I am not cultivating Vera, as you put it, but I do have my living to earn, and…’
‘You expect me to believe that?’ His mouth curled unpleasantly as
he looked towards the gardens beyond the drawing-room’s french windows. ‘I doubt if what you earn brings in enough to keep so much as a gardener for this place!’
Once again Kate was amazed at her own self-control. It was almost as though she were standing outside herself in some way, more of an onlooker than a participant in what was going on.
‘You’re quite right,’ she told him coolly. ‘Which is why I’m putting the house up for sale. My father left me a small cottage a few miles away, and I intend to move into that. Not that it’s any business of yours.’ She gave him an icy smile and with regal disdain added, ‘Now, if you would kindly leave—’
‘My, my, how cool and controlled you’ve become!’ Dominic’s voice was light, tinged with mocking amusement, his expression deceptively relaxed, but Kate was not deceived. She had seen his eyes before he veiled them with the thickness of his lashes to hide the rage burning darkly there.
Against her will she experienced a tremor of fear, a nameless apprehension that touched some deeply feminine part of her.
‘But you weren’t so cool or indifferent eight years ago, were you, Kate? When you pleaded with me to make love to you…’
Her control snapping, Kate launched herself at him slapping his face so hard that her palm stung, shocking her out of her momentary madness to the disquieting realisation that what she had done in some way had pleased him. She could see it in the savage glitter of triumph in his eyes, and once more fear iced along her spine.
She wanted to turn and run; to hide herself away from him, and she wished she had given in to that impulse when suddenly he reached for her, lifting her off her feet, despite her height, carrying her through the door and up the stairs, in spite of her frenzied attempts to break free of him.
His fingers bit painfully into her skin as he used his foot to push open the door to the guest room.
Rage and something else, alien and disconcerting, glittered in his eyes as he dropped her on the bed so carelessly that momentarily she was too winded and shocked to do more than simply glare up at him, her body strangely weak.
Her weakness only lasted a second though before she was struggling to sit up, her sharp cry of fury muffled by the fierce pressure of Dominic’s mouth against her own, the weight of his body pressing her back against the mattress, his fingers locking like manacles round her slender wrists.
When he had kissed her before he had shocked and disillusioned her, hurt her badly, physically as well as mentally, and although she could sense that same savagery pent up inside him now, it was not fear, but a shocking, racing excitement that flooded through her body, holding her immobile beneath the bruising heat of his kiss.
Under her thin T-shirt and equally thin bra she could feel her breasts responding to the hardness of the muscled chest pressed against them, her nipples tingling, aching with an intensity she had never known as a naïve bride, but which she easily recognised now as the onset of overwhelming desire.
She could not want him…not this man… It was…it was sick, she told herself, hating what he was doing to her senses, hating the way she ached to fling off her clothes and his to have the male heat of his skin caressing her own.
‘Kate…’ Her name sounded unfamiliar to her as she caught the inarticulate mutter he made against her mouth, her throat aching in response to the raw need dammed up behind that single yearning sound.
She was going mad, she told herself bitterly as his mouth returned to hers, more delicately this time, probing, tasting, exploring… Dominic hated and despised her, she knew that.
So why was he kissing her? Why…?
‘Why are you doing this?’ She didn’t recognise the husky words as coming from her own throat until Dominic raised his head to look at her. She saw his mouth thin as he laughed bitterly, and knew she had been mad to think his feelings towards her might somehow have changed.
‘Why?’
He lifted his head to look down into her face and as she stared into his eyes Kate felt her heart contract painfully. Numbly she recognised that she had been a fool to think she could ignore this man or remain indifferent to him. He might not possess all the virtues with which she had invested him eight years ago, but he did possess something that drew her to him; something that made her ache and long to recklessly deny the question she had just asked; to blot out her knowledge of the truth and the burning self-disgust she could see quite plainly in his eyes and to think only instead of the desire that leaped tumultuously between them, but it was already too late…as he repeated with raw incredulity, ‘Why? Oh, come on, Kate, you aren’t that naïve! Far from it. I wanted you eight years ago, and I want you now.’
It was the last thing she had expected to hear and momentarily she was stunned by it, the protest rising to her lips, her instinctive denial silenced as he continued harshly,
‘I don’t make love to other men’s wives, Kate, no matter how tempted I am…and God knows I was.’
She saw the expression in his eyes and shrank from the pain of it, knowing now why his dislike and contempt of her was so intense. He might want her, but he resented that wanting, Kate could see that clearly.
‘For eight long years you’ve haunted me, Kate. You’ll never know how many nights I’ve lain alone in my bed cursing myself for being a fool to turn down what you offered.’ His mouth twisted in the way she was beginning to recognise. ‘At least I was an honourable fool, and I’ve no illusions about how quickly you found someone less…scrupulous…to take the place I refused.’
‘You want me?’ Her thoughts were a seething mass of contradictions, but the trite words were all she could think of to say.
‘Yes, much to my disgust. I shouldn’t be telling you this, should I? No doubt it gives you a great deal of amusement to know how much I desire you, totally against my will…’
‘If you’ve wanted me so much then why wait so long?’ she asked quietly, watching him. ‘Ricky’s been dead for over six years now.’
‘I didn’t know. I’ve been living and working in New York, don’t forget,’ he told her harshly. ‘What happened, Kate?’ He expelled his breath painfully, his chest expanding and contracting against the pressure of his almost physical anguish. ‘Did your faithlessness eventually kill him?’
It came to her then that far from pitying herself, all her pity ought to be reserved for Dominic. Almost gently she reached up, to smooth the thick damp hair back off his forehead. He was sweating heavily, like someone deep in the grip of a powerful fever, his eyes overbright and his skin hot. Almost as though she herself were somehow removed from their small personal drama, she found herself judicially assessing and weighing his emotions. Was it the torment of desiring her, a woman whom he felt he should despise, that had carved those lines on his face? That he was telling her the truth she did not for one moment doubt, but instead of feeling the sharp pleasure of revenge, all she could feel was a terrible, silencing pity.
Here was a man who through his own blindness had put himself on a rack of torture. A man who had misjudged her so badly that she still hurt from the wounds he had inflicted, and yet who in inflicting them had hurt himself far more.
The thought of telling him the truth never even crossed her mind. The desire for him that had burned through her so hotly only minutes ago had now cooled. He wanted her…but against his will…against everything he believed in, and his wanting for her was a sickness, a flaw in himself as far as he was concerned.
He wasn’t holding her as tightly as he had been and it was easy to wriggle out from beneath him and get off the bed.
‘Kate…’ Dominic reached out for her, but she evaded him, standing looking down into his face and reading the agony there. Part of her wanted to reach out to touch him; to stop his pain, but logic told her that that was impossible. Just as she had had to search inside herself for release from the misery he had caused her, so too must he find his own panacea for his ailment.
‘I think you’d better go, Dominic.’
She said it without emotion,
standing to one side as he rolled off the bed and stood up.
In silence they went downstairs together, stopping only in the hall when Dominic grabbed her arm, swinging her round to face him.
‘You wanted me,’ he told her rawly. ‘I don’t know why you changed your mind, Kate, but you wanted me and I could have made you go on wanting me.’
She didn’t deny it, but said instead with a faintly wintry smile, ‘Think of it as an act of contrition then on my part, Dominic. After all, I’ve just saved you from yourself, haven’t I? Some people enjoy wanting what hurts them most,’ she added softly.
She saw his face drain of colour, but suppressed her sympathy for him. Given what Vera had told her about his childhood wasn’t it possible that in some way he desired her because in his eyes she was the same sort of woman as the mother who had deserted his father, and moreover that he had felt bound to punish himself for that desire? Telling herself that she was venturing into extremely murky and unknown waters, Kate gently pulled her arm free and went to open the front door.
He walked through it without a word.
* * *
A full hour after he had left Kate was still sitting curled up in the chair in the library, gazing pensively into the unlit fire, trying to come to terms with what she had learned.
What Dominic had said to her put a completely different light on what had happened that fateful weekend when she had invited him to make love to her. The harsh rejection she had found so bitterly painful she now saw as a denial directed as much at himself as at her, and no doubt if she had been as experienced as he believed her to be, she would have realised the truth then. But what good would realising it have done?
It would have spared her years of torment, believing herself to be totally undesirable to the male sex. But it wasn’t only Dominic’s rejection of her that had made her so aloof and distant with men, she knew that. And the proof that Dominic had not destroyed her ability to respond sexually given the right incentive, lay in the way she had felt in his arms today. It was useless to hide from herself the fact that she had wanted him; that he aroused within her a deeply passionate response, so intense that it overruled everything else. But it was a desire that was best left unfulfilled, and it came to her as she sat there, that part of the reason she was not going to tell Dominic the truth about herself was because she saw his contempt of her and hatred of himself as a form of protection. She was frightened of how she might feel about him if that barrier was removed. Life with Ricky had destroyed her trust in men, her ability to believe she was worthy of their love, and that had not changed. Dominic might desire, but he did not and could not ever love her, while she… She froze back into the chair as the unpalatable, devastating truth slid into her mind. She was all too capable of loving him. Once acknowledged, such a truth could not be hidden away again. If she was honest she would have to admit that she had fallen in love with him eight years ago…hopelessly and painfully, without even knowing what sort of man he was. And that love would grow, she recognised that now, which was why it was imperative that she kept him at a distance.