by Penny Jordan
She had believed Silas implicitly when he had told her that he loved her. Why should she not have done? He, after all, had been the one who had pursued her, courted her, laid seige to her heart and her emotions, her life.
That first summer had been a brilliant kaleidoscope of warmth, love and laughter, or so it seemed looking back on it. She had still been talking to Silas hours later when her uncle had returned home, her bags still standing on the drive where the taxi driver had dropped them and her off. She had been blissfully unaware of just how late it had been until she’d seen her uncle draw up.
‘Still here?’ he asked Silas curtly, nodding dismissively to him as he turned to Verity and demanded frowningly, ‘I should have thought you’d have too much studying to do to waste your time out here, Verity…’
Chastened, Verity bade Silas a mumbled ‘goodbye’ and turned to follow her uncle into the house. But when she went to pick up her bags, Silas had got there first, gathering up the two heaviest cases as though they weighed a mere nothing.
To Verity, used as she was to the far more frail frame of her elderly uncle, the sight of so much raw, sexual, male strength was dizzyingly exciting.
Her uncle lectured her over supper about the need for her to allocate time during her summer vacation for working hard at her studies.
‘Of course, you’ll come to the factory with me during the day,’ he informed her, and Verity did not attempt to argue. Every holiday since she had turned sixteen had been spent thus, with her learning every aspect of the business from the factory floor upwards, under her uncle’s critical eye.
But fate, it seemed, had had other plans for her. The following morning when she went downstairs—her uncle always insisted on leaving for the factory well before seven so that he could be there before the first workers arrived at eight—she learned that her uncle had received a telephone call late the previous evening informing him that the firm’s Sales Director had been taken to hospital with acute appendicitis, which meant that her uncle was going to have to step into his shoes and fly to the Middle East to head a sales delegation.
He would, he informed Verity, be gone for almost a month.
‘I shall have to leave you here to your own devices,’ he told her. ‘I can’t have you going into the factory without my supervision. Had this happened a little earlier I could have made arrangements for you to come with me. It would have been excellent experience for you but, unfortunately, it’s far too late now for you to have the necessary inoculations and for me to get a visa for you. Still, you must have brought work home with you from university.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed meekly, eyes downcast, her heart suddenly bounding so frantically fast against her chest wall that she felt positively lightheaded.
Even with her uncle gone she was still unable to acknowledge the real reason for her excitement and sense of freedom, nor for her sudden decision to work in the sitting room which overlooked the part of the garden which Silas had been working on the previous day and to wear a pair of cotton shorts which showed off her long slim legs.
Silas arrived within an hour of her uncle’s departure, and from her strategic position in the sitting room Verity was able to discreetly watch him as he worked. As the day grew hotter he stopped working and stood up, stretching his back before removing his soft cotton tee shirt.
Dry-mouthed, Verity watched him, her body shaking with the most disturbing sensation she had ever experienced.
‘Lust,’ she told herself angrily now as she folded the last few pairs of briefs and put them neatly into one of the wardrobe drawers.
Lust: she had been too naive to know just what that was or how powerful it could be then. All she had known was that, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on her work and the words on the paper in front of her, all that she could really see was Silas’ image imprinted on her eyeball.
At lunch time she had gone outside to offer him a cold drink and something to eat. Gravely he had accepted, following her into the kitchen, and it had only been later that he had admitted to her that he had brought his own refreshments with him but that the opportunity to spend some time with her had been too much of a temptation for him to resist.
Over the light salad lunch she had quickly and nervously prepared for him—Verity had possessed very few domestic skills in those days; her uncle had considered that learning them was a waste of time when she was going to take over his business and they had a housekeeper who lived in, but who fortuitously was away at that time taking her annual period of leave—Verity had listened wide-eyed whilst Silas had described to her his work and his plans.
‘That’s enough about me,’ he announced gruffly when they had both finished eating. ‘What about you? What do you intend to do with your life?’
‘Me? I’m going to take over my uncle’s business,’ Verity told him gravely. ‘That’s what he’s training me for. I’m the only person he’s got to inherit it, you see. It’s his life’s work and—’
‘His life’s work, but you have your own life and the right to make your own choices, surely?’ Silas interrupted her sharply, before telling her pointedly, ‘My parents originally wanted me to train as a doctor like my father, but they would never impose that kind of decision on me, nor would I allow them to…’
‘I…my uncle…My uncle took me in when my parents were killed,’ Verity explained low-voiced to him. ‘I’ve always known that he expects me…that he wants me…I’m very lucky, really, it’s a wonderful opportunity…’
‘It’s a wonderful opportunity if it’s what you really want,’ Silas agreed, ‘otherwise it’s…Is it what you want, Verity?’
‘I…I…It’s what’s expected of me,’ Verity told him a little unsteadily. It was proving virtually impossible to concentrate on what he was saying with him sitting so close to her—close enough for her to be intensely, embarrassingly aware of his body and its evident physical masculinity, its tantalising male scent. He had asked her permission to ‘clean up’ before sitting down to lunch with her and his discarded shirt was now back on.
Every time she dared to look at him she was swept with such an intense and heightened awareness of him that she could feel her face starting to flush with hot self-consciousness.
‘What’s expected of you? Listen,’ Silas commanded her, reaching out and taking hold of her hand, keeping it between his own with an open easiness which robbed her of the ability to object or protest. ‘No one has the right to expect anything of you. You have the right to choose for yourself what you do with your life. It is your life you’re living you know, and not your uncle’s…’
Verity bit her lip.
‘I…I know,’ she responded uncertainly, ‘but…’
‘I’m having a day off tomorrow,’ Silas told her, changing the subject. ‘There’s a garden that’s open to the public twenty miles away—I was planning to go and see it. Would you like to come with me?’
Shiny-eyed and flushed with delighted happiness, Verity nodded.
‘Good,’ he told her. ‘I’ll pick you up at nine, if that’s okay.’
Once again Verity nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Silas was still holding her hand and she had to tug it before he released it, giving her a rueful smile as he did so.
Of course, she didn’t do any work for the rest of the day, nor did she sleep that night.
Three outfits were tried on and discarded before Silas arrived to pick her up, and she blushed betrayingly at the appraising look he gave her as he studied her jeans-clad figure and the neat way the denim hugged her small firm bottom.
Jeans. How long had it been since she had worn a pair of those? Verity wondered grimly now, as the rest of her underwear joined the items she had already put away.
She had acquired a couple of pairs from Charlotte, designer labelled and immaculately tailored.
‘You could have taken these with you,’ Verity had protested when Charlotte had handed them over to her.
‘What? Wear Laur
en where we’re going? Do you mind? The jeans I’ll be wearing now are a pair of sturdy 501s,’ she had told Verity, her face breaking into a wide grin as she had caught sight of the raised-eyebrowed look her friend had been giving her.
‘Oh, 501s. Poor you,’ Verity had commented dryly.
‘Well, they might be “in” fashion-wise but they are also ideally designed for working in and, besides, the Lauren ones are too tight. I can barely move in them. They’ll fit you much better—you’re slimmer than I am right now.’
Jeans. Verity went to the wardrobe and pulled them out, touching the fabric exploratively, smoothing it beneath her fingertips.
The jeans she had worn on that first date with Silas had been a pair she had bought from her allowance. Thus far, she had not worn them in front of her uncle, knowing that he would not have approved. He had been a rather old-fashioned man who had not liked to see women wearing ‘trousers’—of any kind.
Courteously Silas had held the door open for her on the passenger side of his small pick-up. The inside of the vehicle had been spotlessly clean, Verity had noticed, just as she had noticed that Silas was a good and considerate driver.
The gardens they had gone to see had been spectacularly beautiful, she acknowledged, but she had to admit that she had not paid as much attention as she ought to have done to them, nor to Silas’ explanation of how the borders had been planted and the colour combinations in them constructed. She had been far too busy studying how he was constructed, far too busy noticing just how wonderfully dedicated to her task nature had been when she had put him together with such spectacular sensuality. Even the way he’d walked had made her heart lurch against her ribs, and just to look at his mouth, never mind imagining how it might feel to be kissed by it…by him…
‘What’s wrong? Are you feeling okay?’ Silas asked her at one point.
‘I’m fine,’ Verity managed to croak, petrified of him guessing what she was really feeling.
He had brought them both a packed lunch—far more tasty and enjoyable than the meal she had prepared for him the previous day, Verity acknowledged, assuming, until he told her otherwise, that his mother had prepared it for them.
‘Ma? No way,’ he told her. ‘She believes in us all being self-sufficient and, besides, she works—she’s a nurse. My two brothers are both married now and I’m the only one left at home, but Ma still insists on me making my own packed lunches. One thing she did teach us all as a nurse, though, was the importance of good nutrition. Take these sandwiches. They’re on wholemeal bread with a low-fat spread, the tuna provides very important nutrients and the salad I’ve put with it is good and healthy.’
‘Like these,’ Verity teased him, waving in front of him the two chocolate bars he had packed.
Silas laughed.
‘Chocolate is good for you,’ he told her solemnly, adding with a wicked smile, ‘It’s the food of love, did you know that…?’
‘Want me to prove it?’ he tempted when Verity shook her head.
He enjoyed teasing her, he admitted later, but what he enjoyed even more, he added, was the discovery that beneath her shyness she possessed not just intelligence but, even more importantly, a good sense of humour.
They certainly laughed a lot together that first summer; laughed a lot and loved a lot too.
She could still remember the first time he kissed her. It wasn’t sunny that day. There was thunder in the air, the sky brassy and overcast, and then late in the afternoon it suddenly came on to rain, huge, pelting drops, causing them to take refuge in the small summer house several yards away at the bottom of the garden.
They ran there, Silas holding her hand, both of them bursting into the small, stuffy room, out of breath and laughing.
As the door swung closed behind them, enclosing them in the half-light of the small, airless room, Silas turned towards her, brushing her hair off her face. His hands were cool and wet and, without thinking what she was doing, she turned her head to lick a raindrop off him, an instinctive, almost childish gesture, but one which marked the end of her childhood, turning her within the space of an afternoon from a child to a woman.
Even without closing her eyes she could still visualise the expression in Silas’ eyes, feel the tension that suddenly gripped his body. Outwardly, nothing had changed. He was still cupping her face, they were still standing with their bodies apart, but inwardly everything had changed, Verity acknowledged.
Looking into Silas’ eyes, she felt herself starting to tremble—not with cold and certainly not with fear.
‘Verity.’
Her name, which Silas started saying inches from her face, he finished mouthing with his lips against her own, his body against her own. And there was nothing remotely childish about the way she reached out to him—for him—Verity remembered; nothing remotely childish at all in the way she opened her mouth beneath his and deliberately invited him to explore its intimacy. They kissed frantically, feverishly, whispering incomprehensible words of love and praise to one another, she making small keening sounds of pleasure against Silas’ skin, he muttering rawly to her that he loved her, adored her, wanted her. Over and over again they kissed and touched and Verity felt incandescent with the joy of what she was experiencing; of being loved; of knowing that Silas loved her as much as she knew she loved him.
They weren’t lovers that day. She wanted to but Silas shook his head, telling her huskily, ‘We can’t…I can’t…I don’t have…I could make you pregnant,’ he explained to her, adding gruffly, ‘The truth is I would want to make you pregnant, Verity. That’s how much I love you and I know that once I had you in my arms, once my body was inside yours, there’s no way I could…I want to come inside you,’ he told her openly when she looked uncertainly at him, explaining in a low, emotional voice, ‘I want to have that kind of intimacy with you. It’s man’s most basic instinct to regenerate himself, to seed the fertility of his woman, especially when he loves her as much as I love you.’
‘I…I could go on the pill…’ Verity offered, but Silas shook his head.
‘No,’ he told her gently, ‘taking care of that side of things is my responsibility. And besides,’ he continued softly, looking around the cramped, stuffy summer house, ‘this isn’t really the right place. When you and I make love I want it to be…I want it to be special for you…perfect.’
Verity moistened her lips.
‘My uncle is still away,’ she offered awkwardly. ‘We could…’
‘No. Not here in another man’s house. Yes, I know that it’s your home, but no, not here,’ Silas said quietly.
‘Where, then?’ Verity breathed eagerly.
‘Leave it to me,’ Silas told her. ‘Leave everything to me…’
And like the dutiful person she had been raised to be she dipped her head and agreed.
CHAPTER THREE
THE doorbell rang just as Verity had finished her unpacking. Frowning, she went downstairs to answer it. Who on earth could that be? She certainly wasn’t expecting anyone.
She was still frowning when she opened the door, a small gasp of shock escaping her lips as she saw who was standing there and recognised him immediately.
‘Silas!’
Instinctively her hand went to her throat as she tried, too late, to suppress that betraying whisper of sound.
‘Verity,’ her visitor responded grimly. ‘May I come in?’
Without waiting for her assent he was shouldering his way into the hallway.
‘How…how did you know I was back?’ Verity managed to ask him huskily. Was it possible that he had actually grown taller and broader in the years they had been apart? Surely not, and yet she couldn’t remember him ever filling the space of the hallway quite so imposingly before. He might be over ten years older but he was still as magnetically male as she remembered, she recognised unwillingly, and perhaps even more so—as a young man he had worn his sexuality very carelessly, softening it with the tenderness and consideration he had shown her.
&nbs
p; Now…She took a deep breath and tried to steady her jittery nerves. Now there was nothing remotely soft nor tender about the way he was looking at her. Far from it.
‘I didn’t until I did a check at the hospital and found out that you had accompanied Honor there. What the hell kind of person are you, Verity? First you damn near run my daughter over and then you don’t even bother to let me know that she’s had an accident. What am I saying? I know exactly what kind of woman you are, don’t I? Why should I be surprised at anything you might choose to do, after all I know?’
Verity couldn’t utter a word. What was he saying? What was he trying to accuse her of doing? She…He made it sound as though she had deliberately tried to hit Honor, when the truth was…
‘I did what I thought was best,’ she told him coolly. There was no way she was going to let him see just how much he had caught her off guard, or how agitated and ill-equipped to deal with him she actually felt.
Thinking about him earlier had done nothing to prepare her for the reality of him. She had been thinking about, remembering, a young man in his twenties. This was a mature adult male in his late thirties and a man who…
‘What you thought was best?’ He gave her an incredulously angry look as he repeated her words. ‘Didn’t it strike you that as Honor’s father I had the right to know what had happened? Didn’t it cross that cold little mind of yours that you had a responsibility to let me know what had happened? After all, you used to be very big on responsibility, didn’t you? Oh, but I was forgetting, the kind of responsibility you favoured was the kind that meant—’
‘I didn’t get in touch with you because I had no idea that you were Honor’s father until we got to the hospital,’ Verity interrupted him quickly, ‘and by then…’
By then Honor had begged her not to let her father know what had happened and, additionally, untruthfully told both her and the nurse that Silas was unavailable and out of the country. But she certainly wasn’t going to tell Silas that. Against all the odds, and ridiculously, she felt a certain sense of kinship, of female bonding with Honor.