by Penny Jordan
Sue was right, Kate reflected when her friend had gone. She did need to get away—from Dominic. Perhaps if she went to stay with Harry and Liz for a few days? She had a standing invitation to visit them…
She would see how she felt tomorrow, she told herself as she walked out into the garden. Some weeding might help to take her mind off Dominic. She was still outside when the phone rang.
It was the receptionist from the estate agent’s office calling to ask if it would be convenient to send someone round to view the property that afternoon.
‘Unfortunately all the partners have appointments,’ she told Kate. ‘Would you be able to show the people round yourself?’
Confirming that she would, Kate made a note of the time they were expected and replaced the receiver.
It was just after half-past two when Kate heard the doorbell. She was in the kitchen, arranging some flowers she had brought in from the garden, and she wiped her hands on a towel before hurrying to the door, cursing herself as she realised she had neglected to ask the receptionist the name of the prospective purchasers.
She opened the door with what she hoped was a cool smile, her facial muscles stiffening as she saw Dominic standing outside.
‘I told you I didn’t want to see you again!’ The words sounded more like a cry of anguish than the cold remonstrance she had intended them to be.
Mouth grim, Dominic stepped past her, cold topaz eyes meeting her own with derisory mockery as he told her, ‘It isn’t you I’ve come to see. It’s the house.’
It took a few seconds for his meaning to seep in. Mouth agape, Kate stared at him.
‘You mean you’ve come to view the house?’
‘Full marks, you’ve got it in one.’
The taunt was cold and hostile, but Kate ignored it as anger boiled up inside her.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Dominic,’ she raged at him. ‘But if you think that by pretending you want to buy this house—’
‘Who says I’m pretending?’ He had been studying the gallery and swung round now, to look at her coolly. ‘I need a base in England now that I’m going into partnership with Ian, and where better to live than in the same locality?’ His mouth twisted and he added softly, ‘Or were you flattering yourself that the house was just a pretext—an excuse to come and see you?’
Her face burned with humiliated embarrassment, her voice and movements stiff as she ignored his question to ask curtly instead, ‘Where would you like to start? Upstairs or down?’
‘Oh, down, I think,’ he said softly. ‘Then we can finish up upstairs.’
There was nothing in his eyes other than a certain flat hardness, but Kate was convinced she had not imagined the taunting hint of sexual innuendo behind his words. He was deliberately trying to ruffle her, she realised. No doubt his pride was suffering because she had been the first to say that there was no future for them. Obviously he had wanted to be the one to say that to her.
She showed him round the ground floor of the house, gritting her teeth every time she felt him brush past her, or stand close to her. She was so sensitive to him that it almost hurt to breathe. She wanted to hate and resent him, but her weak, traitorous body yearned for him to hold and caress it.
He followed her upstairs, waiting while she opened each bedroom door, a malicious smile darkening his eyes as she stood on one side on the landing in an attitude of frozen rigidity.
‘Not going to come in with me, Kate?’ he asked, when he walked into the room where they had made love. ‘Why not, I wonder? Are you frightened that—’
It was too much for her. Trembling violently, she interrupted him, ‘I’m not in the least frightened of you, Dominic!’
He turned his head and she caught the glint of pure mockery in his eyes as he drawled, ‘Of course not, I never thought for one moment that you were. Why should you be? You shouldn’t anticipate, Kate. What I was going to say was, are you perhaps frightened of what being in this bedroom with me might do to that icy self-control you’ve wrapped yourself in?’
Some instinct for self-protection made her retaliate sharply, her body tensing as she said coolly, ‘Now you’re leaping to conclusions, Dominic.’
He swung round, pinning her with narrowed eyes. Fear touched her like someone touching an exposed nerve, making her jump and then start shaking inwardly.
‘Meaning?’ he demanded softly.
She couldn’t speak. Her tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth. He was coming towards her, advancing with almost menacing intent, and although she longed to turn and run she simply could not move.
‘Kate?’
The total unexpectedness of Martin Allwood’s voice in the hall below shocked her out of her fear. Both she and Dominic stared towards the stairs. They had been so engrossed in their mutual battling that neither of them had heard him arrive.
‘So…’ She saw Dominic’s eyes harden and flinched beneath the contempt in them. ‘He won’t make you happy, Kate,’ he told her harshly. ‘He simply isn’t man enough for you.’
‘While you, I suppose, are!’ she managed to hiss back in a furious whisper as Martin came upstairs.
‘My secretary told me she’d sent someone round to see the house.’ He did a double-take as he saw Dominic, and then frowned.
‘Kate has just about finished showing me round,’ Dominic told him smoothly, instantly regaining control of himself, the savagery he had shown her completely gone, Kate noted shakenly. His glance encompassed them both, but it was Martin he spoke to as he said urbanely, ‘I’m very interested in the property, but perhaps we might discuss it in your office, Allwood.’
The miraculous speed with which Martin’s manner towards him changed totally amazed Kate. Before she knew what was happening both Dominic and Martin were leaving—together.
It wasn’t because Dominic had gone that she felt so bereft, Kate told herself forlornly as she went back to the kitchen and her flowers. It was simply… With a brief gesture of disgust she pushed the flowers away. What was the point of lying to herself? She loved him, she knew she did, and that was why she had been fighting so hard against any involvement with him. But she was already involved on the very deepest level that there was. She shivered suddenly, rubbing the gooseflesh prickling her arms. What did it matter how she felt about Dominic, he cared nothing for her?
Was he serious about buying the house? She thought about how she would feel having him as her closest neighbour, and her whole body shook. Suddenly she had to get out of the house, to escape from the place where she had been most intimate with him.
She would go down to the cottage; that held no memories of Dominic at all. She had made a start on cleaning it, but there was still a lot left to do.
She worked well into the evening, giving the largest bedroom, which she had decided would be her own, a thorough cleaning. The old-fashioned high mahogany bed which had been her grandparents’ she rather liked and had decided to keep. The room faced north, and was decorated in a depressing browny-orange. When she had finished cleaning the paintwork Kate sat back on her heels and studied it, mentally substituting the old-fashioned wallpaper with something more in keeping…something traditional, perhaps tiny pink rosebuds on a white background. She could have a soft pink carpet and heavily starched old-fashioned white cotton bedlinen lavishly trimmed with lace. There was a rocking chair in one of the rooms that could be re-polished. She had already stripped the bed on her previous visit, and now on an impulse she hurried into one of the other rooms where a bedding chest contained the bedlinen which had once been her grandmother’s. Her father had been the type of person who never threw anything out. One of her mother’s many grievances about him had been that he forced her to live with his parents’ old-fashioned cast-off furniture, but now it, and the linen that went with it, was coming back into fashion again.
Amazingly as Kate opened the chest the scent of lavender filled the air, and she wondered wryly if her father had actually ever opened the chest.
She took out clean white sheets and carried them into the other room, spreading one on the bed and then standing back to judge the effect, but it was impossible to gain an impression of exactly how the room would look redecorated. It was a large bed, meant to hold two people, not one, and unnervingly as she stared at it, she could almost see Dominic’s lean tanned body tangled in the white sheets, his dark head on the pillow.
Stop it…stop it! she warned herself angrily, tensing as she heard a car. She went to the window, stunned to see Dominic getting out of the parked BMW.
For a moment she was almost tempted to hide…to pretend that she was not there. She frowned… How had he known where to find her…and more important, why had he wanted to find her?
By the time she had got downstairs she thought she had come up with the answer. Opening the door to him, she said curtly, ‘If it’s about the house, then please discuss it with my estate agent…’
She was about to close the door again when he wrested it from her and stepped determinedly inside.
‘It isn’t about the house,’ he told her bluntly.
For a moment a wild hope flared inside her, but there was nothing even remotely lover-like in the way he was looking at her. Quenching her disappointment, she looked at him.
‘What are you doing here, then?’
‘I’ve come to warn you that two men have broken out of the high security prison. It was on the news when I was in the car. I went to your place and found you gone…then as I was driving past, I saw your car parked here.’
‘Two men…’ Kate’s forehead creased in a frown. It was of course a very serious matter, but hardly important enough for him to have delivered the news in person.
‘The police don’t think they’ve gone very far. In fact they suspect they’re probably keeping under cover at the moment—they’re both armed, but they’re still in prison uniform. The first thing they’re going to want is a change of clothes, food, money, and possibly some form of security.’
‘Security…?’ Kate was baffled until Dominic exclaimed harshly, ‘Hostages, Kate…bargaining counters so that the police are forced to let them go free.’
‘Hostages… You mean…?’ She looked at him and read the truth in his grim face. ‘You think they might…?’ Her voice tailed away faintly as she remembered how close the cottage and her house were to the prison, and how remote from anything else, and she shivered slightly. ‘I…’
‘You’re coming back to the house with me, now,’ Dominic told her curtly, ‘and I’m staying the night. And before you start making any objections, my motives are entirely altruistic. Tomorrow we’ll make other arrangements. You can stay with Vera and Ian, or your friend Sue, but it’s too late for any of that tonight.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s gone ten now. In another half an hour it will be dark.’
Kate shivered beneath the grimness of his voice, her mind conjuring up unpleasant pictures of the loneliness of the landscape around the cottage.
‘Nothing to say?’
Her mouth had gone dry and she touched her lips tentatively with the tip of her tongue.
‘I’m very grateful to you for your concern,’ she said woodenly at last, ‘but…’
‘Well, you are the widow of an old friend,’ Dominic said derisively. ‘Oh, it’s all right, Kate,’ he added curtly, completely misreading the haunted expression that crossed her face, ‘I’ve no intention of usurping Allwood’s role in your life.’ His mouth curled a little as he asked her tauntingly, ‘Does he know yet that you and I have been lovers?’
This was getting ridiculously out of hand. She ought to tell Dominic that Martin Allwood meant absolutely nothing to her, but somehow she could not.
‘Aren’t you frightened I might not be able to resist the temptation to tell him?’ he demanded savagely, watching her recoil from the cruelty of his words with something almost approaching pleasure.
Kate felt as though she was being torn apart. Why was he torturing her like this?
‘Why… why should you do that?’ she managed unevenly at last.
‘Why?’ He looked both incredulous and furious. He moved and for one moment Kate thought he actually meant to shake her, then he stepped back again, cursing softly under his breath.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he told her flatly, propelling her towards the door with a hand on the flat of her back.
Kate let him move her, protesting only when she reached her car that she could not leave it there and travel back with him. He let her get in it and waited for her to start it up, following her all the way back to the house, and parking his BMW next to her Mini so that she was blocked in.
Although she didn’t want him staying with her, he was right about it being too late for her to foist herself off on either Vera or Sue tonight, and she certainly did not relish the prospect of being alone in the house with two dangerous criminals on the loose.
Dominic followed her inside the house, carefully locking the door behind him. It had bolts as well as a lock, although Kate rarely used them. It gave her a strange feeling as she watched Dominic slide them into place, almost as though suddenly they were separated from the rest of the world.
‘I’ll go round and check all the windows and doors.’
Kate made a small sound of protest in her throat and watched him turn to look at her. As he stood in the shadows his face took on a closed, almost remote, look as though he was suffering from intense pain.
‘Surely that isn’t necessary?’ she began, only to fall silent when he said quietly, ‘You read the papers, don’t you, Kate? You must surely remember what happened the other summer?’
Her mind prodded by his words suddenly flung up memories of the dreadful ordeals endured by the inhabitants of a small village which had been terrorised by an escaped gunman. Several women had been raped and… Kate shuddered, and Dominic said quietly, ‘Yes… exactly.’
‘I… I’ll go and make us something to eat,’ she offered uncertainly. ‘Have you…are you…?’
‘No, I haven’t eaten, and yes, I am hungry,’ Dominic told her, but Kate had the impression that he knew how desperately she wanted to get her mind off what she had just remembered and that he was saying he was hungry more for her sake than his own. But why should he show her such compassionate caring? It was completely foreign to his nature—at least where she was concerned. She had seen him being charming enough to other people.
Luckily the house insurers had insisted the previous year that Kate have window locks fitted, and while Dominic went round checking that all these were in place and securing them Kate busied herself in the kitchen.
She was acutely conscious of the silence outside in a way that she had never been before, jumping at every tiny sound, the hairs prickling nervously at the back of her neck as she tried to concentrate on making them a simple supper.
The phone rang, but before she could get to it it stopped. Frowning, she went into the drawing-room, to discover Dominic just replacing the receiver.
‘That was Sue,’ he told her laconically. ‘She was worried about you, but I told her I was staying here.’
Kate could feel the colour rising up under her skin. What on earth must Sue be thinking?
‘We are living in the twentieth century, you know,’ he drawled, watching her. ‘It’s quite permissible for a woman to have a lover.’
‘You’re not my lover!’ Kate said it more violently than she had intended, her eyes widening as the amusement left his face to be replaced by anger.
‘But I have been,’ he reminded her softly. ‘What is it that frightens you so much that you can’t admit the pleasure we gave one another, Kate?’ he asked her soberly, reaching out to hold her lightly, his fingers encircling her wrists.
This complete change of tack bemused her, and her eyes lifted to his, her breath coming sharply as she recognised the glitter in his. He still wanted her. Instinctively she moved towards him, checking suddenly. What was she doing?
Quickly she pulled away from him, mutteri
ng that she had to make the supper. He let her go, but Kate was conscious of him watching her and her body shook so much she could hardly stand up.
She made them both an omelette and served it with a crisp salad, but it seemed neither of them had much appetite. She watched Dominic covertly while pushing her food round her plate. He was making a pretence of eating, but he was no more enthusiastic than she was herself.
‘I’d better ring Vera,’ he said abruptly at last. ‘I told her I was coming over here and that I intended to stay the night, but I’d better just confirm it.’
While he made his call Kate cleared away their plates and started to make some coffee, which she carried through into the drawing-room. Dominic was standing in the middle of the room, frowning as he listened to a news bulletin on the television.
Kate froze as she heard their village mentioned.
‘The police are warning everyone to stay inside,’ he told her unnecessarily when the bulletin was over. ‘It seems the men are armed and they don’t want any members of the public taking chances.’
She shivered, folding her arms protectively around her body. How would she be feeling now if Dominic was not with her? She would have returned from the cottage totally unprepared for the news bulletin, and although she would not have described herself as particularly nervous, even with Dominic here she was having great difficulty in suppressing her memories of the newspaper reports of the incident Dominic had referred to earlier.
‘Cold?’
She watched Dominic frown and shook her head, admitting huskily, ‘No—scared, but not half as much as I would be if you weren’t here.’
Dominic raised his head and looked at her, his gold eyes suddenly gleaming.
‘Do you realise that’s the first compliment you’ve ever paid me?’ he asked silkily.
He was still watching her, his eyes narrowed, his face a mask of tension.
Inside her something kicked sharply to life, an intense pulsing heat burning through her body. He was wrong. She had already complimented him in the most intimate way possible in abandoning herself to his lovemaking. He was watching her face and she felt as though her thoughts had suddenly become printed on her forehead for him to read. She saw his eyes glitter as he studied the slow crawl of colour up over her skin, his mouth stretching tightly into a mockery of a smile as he asked,