by Kim Lawrence
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice sounded staccato and disconnected, as though the words held no meaning. ‘I mean, I never remember; it’s just the impression I’m left with. I’m fine now.’ She gave a nervous laugh which hit the high ceiling and disintegrated into a series of small half-echoes.
‘You look a little feverish.’
Her eyes, which had been skittering around the small room, avoiding his face, returned. He returned her suspicious glare with calm impassivity and she began to feel paranoid, reading innuendo in the simple statement. Did he know about the overheated core of irrational attraction she was futilely trying to subdue, trying to rationalise?
‘It’s a warm night,’ she responded gruffly, striving to sound prosaic and unaffected by the impact his physical presence was having on her body and mind. He continued to watch her silently, his brilliant eyes smiling in a way she found profoundly troubling. It was as if he knew exactly what thoughts were passing through her mind.
He stretched with casual elegance, the smooth motion making the robe gape even more, revealing a flat, muscled belly. Emily was mortified to find her eyes riveted on his body; her breath came in shallow gasps as she fought to combat a hectic, light-headed, drugged sensation that swept over her in waves.
What is happening to me? she wondered. She closed her eyes and tried to bring the turbulent, uncontrolled sensations under control. ‘You must be tired. I’m sorry I disturbed you, but I’m fine now.’ She was pleased at her pleasant, level tone, more polite than she habitually used with Luke but better than the semi-hysterical plea that had trembled on her tongue. Why didn’t he just go away, leave her in peace? she thought resentfully.
‘It would be no trouble to stay,’ he responded after a short pause.
Startled, her eyes shot to his face. He had imbued the offer with a wealth of meaning which was startlingly obvious. The cerulean gaze was brimming with mocking laughter and a speculative warmth that she chose to ignore, clinging instead to the mortification that stiffened her spine and made her quiver.
He knew exactly what effect his presence was having on her, and it was probably providing him with a wealth of malignant amusement. To imagine that he wasn’t accustomed to exploiting his spell-binding looks to his own advantage, for his own amusement, would have been unrealistic. She gave herself a fierce mental shake to stop the warm, sluggish feelings, and wrapped justified anger around her.
‘I don’t think even you would take a joke that far,’ she sneered. ‘Besides, I respect you far too much to allow you to be a substitute,’ she insinuated silkily. She met his glittering stare, her chin at a defiant angle. For a brief, painful second she indulgently allowed herself to recall the kiss earlier. It was something she had deliberately sealed away, refusing to acknowledge, and the lingering sense of intimacy, of things awoken and unfinished savagely kicked into life, made her sure she had to forget the incident.
‘Death before dishonour?’ he suggested softly, laughing as she flinched away from the casual touch of his thumb against her throat. ‘Or shall we say frustration?’ he suggested silkily.
‘I’m far too tired for riddles,’ she spat back. Inwardly his effortless perception appalled her.
‘I was merely offering the comfort of my presence should your night terrors return.’
‘I’d need to be seriously disturbed to accept comfort from someone incapable of distinguishing between affection and lust!’ she retorted, her anger equally dividing between herself for being receptive at the worst moment possible to Luke’s challenging sexuality, and him for enjoying it and not even having the common decency to disguise the fact.
‘At least I’ve never been prepared to accept the former as a basis for marriage,’ he responded with an edge of impatient contempt.
She went white and her fingers lost their grip on the sleeping-bag. ‘How dare you?’ she breathed wrathfully.
‘Easily,’ he replied casually. He reached out and hitched up the sleeping-bag to cover her half-exposed breasts. ‘You really shouldn’t flaunt the goods if they’re not on the market,’ he admonished crudely, with a scorn that made her flinch even more than the brief instant of contact as his knuckles had brushed her skin.
‘Now that I’m here—a purely temporary situation— I’d like to emphasise that this…arrangement is one of convenience only.’
His eyebrows shot up and he gave a mirthless grin. ‘How much more convenient could you require?’
‘If you think I could find it anything other than repugnant to sleep with you, you’re even more egotistically deluded than I had imagined!’ she snapped back. She couldn’t be sure whether he was pursuing this absurd avenue just to enjoy watching her squirm, or whether…and the idea made the pit of her belly disintegrate, leaving a warm, empty nothingness which ached dully. He wasn’t actually serious…he couldn’t be. Perhaps, she thought, her mind spinning, he was the sort of man who felt obliged to explore every avenue of conquest almost out of habit.
‘Is that a fact?’ he taunted, his eyes sardonic on her flushed face.
Emily felt as if guilt was written all over her face. She’d been engaged for over eight months to Gavin and never in all that time had she had any trouble resisting his attempts to become her lover. He’d seemed inclined to make a big thing of her desire to wait, not anticipate their marriage vows. If she could show restraint, she hadn’t understood why he couldn’t follow suit. She’d imagined their relationship had been based on more than a fleeting physical attraction, but then she’d thought a lot of things that had proved to be untrue.
Now here she was experiencing some sort of hormonal redress for her years of abstinence, and the catalyst was Luke, of all people. She could imagine the cynical amusement if he ever realised just how impoverished sexually her life had been. The feeling of horror eclipsed all other sensations as she dwelt on this prospect. No, she would preserve what little dignity she had—at least in front of her provoking saviour. After all, how hard could it be to subdue a bit of juvenile, sweaty-skinned pulse-racing? She had once before. She wasn’t the sort of person who was a victim of her appetites. More importantly, she was no longer a wide-eyed teenager; she was a mature, sensible woman.
Her satisfaction at this hasty conclusion was somewhat ambiguous. Her body felt too alive, too inflamed for her not to experience a certain perverse frustration which she steadfastly refused to acknowledge.
‘I realise I’m a convenient body, Luke,’ she said drily, only too well aware that this was the only reason he had even noticed she was female. ‘But it would take more than propinquity to induce me to seek dubious solace in your arms.’ She kept a firm gnp on the sleeping-bag to prevent it obeying gravity.
He listened to her with apparent interest. ‘Propinquity wasn’t doing badly a few moments ago, infant. I mean, I don’t precisely object to being ogled like a sex object…’ He watched the hot colour wash over her skin, his lips twisted into a sneer.
Emily was trying desperately to reconcile the truth in his cruel statement with the denial she longed to throw at him. ‘You have a lurid imagination,’ she said stiltedly. She knew all about imagination. There had been a time when it had been more real to her than reality.
He got up with a fluid movement that made her tense; it was impossible not to be aware of the innate grace that was impressive in such a large man. He exhibited such a harmony of controlled strength that it was difficult, in her state of heightened awareness, not to watch him covertly, almost angrily, from beneath her eyelashes.
‘I expect Gavin is finding comfort at this moment in the arms of the delectable Charlotte,’ he taunted, his voice apparently savouring the picture this observation conjured up, a picture which made Emily face once more the disaster of her failure…failure to hold the interest of the man she had been set to spend her entire life with. ‘If your taste runs to Barbie dolls, she must seem heaven-sent. I was just offering you the opportunity to enjoy the same solace.’
‘That’s incredibly chivalrous of y
ou, Luke, but I couldn’t impose on your good nature,’ she replied with savage irony.
He met her angry glare with infuriating blandness as he casually turned the door-handle. ‘One thing, Emily. I suggest you put something on—just in case you should happen to succumb to another nightmare.’ His eyes slid away from her face and she became aware of a sudden tension in him, in the harsh lines of his face, a raw flicker of blue fire that smouldered into life in his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t put too much faith in my good nature, if I were you.’
Shivering, Emily sat on the bed, assailed by a torrent of doubts. There had been a definite warning in that parting shot, a hint of the ruthlessness she knew Luke to possess. She was suddenly directly in the firing line in this war of attrition. In this small engagement she had almost become a symbol of overall victory. She was just beginning to appreciate the dangers inherent in such a position.
She might have outgrown childish infatuations, but she knew better than to underestimate youthful passion. To face up to the absurdity of her lurid imaginings had been the most painful experience of her life. What am I thinking? she reprimanded herself. Today is the worst day of my life—how can I possibly compare a humiliation four years old to the wholesale betrayal by the people closest to me?
It was sensible to put down her erratic and explosive awareness of Luke to her shattering discoveries, discoveries which had thrown her life off course. She rejected firmly any other possible explanation.
Comforting herself with this conclusion, she tried to drift back to sleep, her head buried in the sleeping-bag—but not before she’d extracted a nightshirt from her hastily packed case. Her thoughts touched on the moment she’d become aware of the skin-to-skin contact. Her mind soon blanked out the episode, but she had already recalled the texture…the imprint of a hard male body.
If Luke had been serious when he’d suggested they spend the night together, and she had been crazy enough to give in to some aberrant weakness, she doubted whether she’d have spared much time worrying over Gavin, she admitted to herself, unable to deny the fact that there was something about Luke that could make other aspects of life, even crucial ones, fade into insignificance. In the darkness her eyes shot open. She hadn’t, though, had she? Her muddled thoughts had been revolving around her disagreeable distant relation, not her former fiancé.
She closed her eyes and determinedly constructed a sensation of self-pity and betrayal, finding this pit of misery less menacing than her previous mental meanderings.
‘Tea, and toast.’
Emily blinked. The brief knock on the adjoining door had given her little time to gather her sleepy wits. Luke bore down upon ber, balancing a tray on one hand. His comprehensive glance made her conscious of her tousled hair and no doubt ravaged face. She hitched the loose nightshirt up over the shoulder it had slipped down and sat up self-consciously.
The tray was placed across her knees. ‘I’ve not laced anything with hallucinagenic drugs,’ he assured her drily as she stared suspiciously at the food. He lifted the lid on a pot. ‘Preserve, not arsenic.’
He picked up the bundle of clothes she’d laid across the one chair in the small room and put them on the floor. He proceeded to pick up the chair and straddle it, his hands on the wooden slatted back. He regarded her silent figure quizzically.
‘Thank you,’ she managed. His manner was amazingly commonplace considering the exchanges which had taken place in the early hours.
‘It was considerate of me, wasn’t it?’ he agreed with a complacent grin.
Her frown deepened. ‘I can do without an audience.’ It was considerate if you didn’t take into account the fact that he’d tricked her into being here, miles away from civilisation. The less her mind dwelt on his behaviour since they had arrived, the better for her composure; and as for the revelations about her own father’s part in his mother’s death…She sighed and sipped the tea. Any overtures of friendship had to be treated for what they would always be—a covert means to perpetuate the vendetta.
‘Are you always so ratty in the morning?’ he enquired with a humorous quirk to his lips. ‘Or does it all depend on the night before…? I can recommend a run for frustration. It does wonders.’
The casual reference, the implication that he was frustrated, made her relinquish the slender hold she had over her composure. She noticed the damp stain in the centre of his T-shirt where the material displayed the sculpted outline of his musculature, and she swallowed a stricture in her throat.
‘If it weren’t for you I’d be in a comfortable hotel bed, not on this thing,’ she said disparagingly. Attack seemed the easiest option at this point. ‘I hold you directly responsible for my lack of sleep.’
An expression flickered at the back of his eyes. ‘And I hold you directly responsible for mine,’ he said simply. He flexed his shoulders and rubbed his neck. ’my bed is far more commodious…Keep it in mind.’
He was totally outrageous, she decided, extricating her eyes from the subtly altered expression in his blue orbs. She tried to speak but all that emerged was a hoarse squeak.
‘Aren’t you going to eat? After all the trouble I went to.’
‘I seem to recall something about Greeks bearing gifts.’ The complacent grin at her inarticulate display made her bristle defensively. ‘Where did the food come from, anyway?’
‘A friend very kindly stocks up for me when I let her know I’m coming.’
‘Very neighbourly,’ she observed sourly. The gender of the neighbour came as no shock to her. ’the note on the table…’
‘Was from Beth. A very good-natured girl, Beth,’ he mused, his eyes on her face.
Did Beth rate breakfast in bed? she wondered cynically, relatively certain that she didn’t like this treasure.
‘You could have met if she hadn’t had to go to London. As you’re so interested.’
‘Devastating news,’ she muttered drily.
‘I expect you’re delighted at having me to yourself.’
She dropped the spoon of blackcurrant preserve and glared at him. ‘I don’t want you. In fact, I don’t even want to share you,’ she corrected him. ‘All I want is to get out of here,’ she informed him, giving a growl of fury as the only response to her insistence was one of amusement. ‘You don’t seem to take any of this seriously.’
‘On the contrary, Emmy, I take this very seriously. You, on the other hand, don’t appear to appreciate the unique honour of being here. I never bring women here,’ he told her blandly.
‘Of which there are many, no doubt,’ she said bitterly.
‘Do I detect a certain green tinge, infant?’ he drawled.
She felt the cursed colour stain her cheeks and took a deep, steadying breath. ’sympathy is all you’re likely to detect. The last four years, which, in case you’ve forgotten, have been Luke-free for me, have been blissful’ She conveniently forgot the time during that first year when she’d scoured the news items that evenly remotely concerned him. Not to mention being glued to the TV screen when he presented the award-winning report on the Kurdish refugees.
‘Yes, I noticed how ecstatically happy you were when the mascara was running in rivulets down your cheeks. Shame I had to breeze in and spoil all that undiluted hilarity.’
She averted her face, sharply inhaling and controlling an urge to lash out blindly. ’that was just in case I’d forgotten what a mess my life was in.’
‘Emily, tell me, have you thought of Gavin once today?’
Shock rippled deep inside her and gradually slid into her wide eyes. ‘Of course I have.’ He knew she was lying and so did she, but the pretence seemed important. She had to perpetuate it, delay the moment when she’d have to face up to things she was avoiding. ‘Anyway, I doubt if the sort of women you go around with would care for a place with no possibility of a photo opportunity,’ she said sarcastically, taking a sharp U-turn. ‘Being seen with you is probably just a smart career move for them. I had no idea you were such a compulsive property buyer anyway
. What do you need with—what is it?—four homes anyway?’
‘Could be I hate hotels; or maybe it’s a reaction to the days I didn’t have a roof.’
This statement made her frown in confusion, her guard dropping for a moment. ‘I don’t understand, Luke…How…when were you homeless?’
Luke’s face was very still, carved, beautiful but without life, almost like a statue, but his eyes were intensely alive, as if he could recall with clarity the days she was puzzling over. ‘I was put in a home when she died,’ he told her abruptly. His eyes flicked to her face, holding her gaze. The slow warmth of compassion that softened her wide eyes brought an angry sneer to his lips.
She lowered her eyelashes, strangely hurt by the rejection of her instinctive sympathy. She blinked back the burn of unshed tears and wondered whether they had been incited by pity or a genuine, unexpected concern she was experiencing for this abrasive, independent man. If the latter was true, she thought with confusion, she would do well to stifle such notions at birth because even the idea of Luke’s rebuffs at her anxiety for his welfare made her recoil.
‘I left before they traced your parents. I’d been on the street for a year before I was sucked back into the system and the loving bosom of your family.’
She digested this information and the bleakness behind the economic description. She was deeply horrified by the details she knew must lurk behind the succinct history. The air of barely supressed truculence she could vaguely remember about him seemed easier to understand; the defiance and sometimes calculated indifference which had managed to alienate the adults in her family—had that been a result of the early traumas, and not just his insurgent personality?
To the secure, middle-class world she had known he had been a threat, not accepting the concepts of authority which it had never occurred to her to question. She wondered how school had reacted to the blue-eyed belligerence he had carried with him. If her experience was anything to go by it wouldn’t have been favourable, but at least he had had an intellect which would, at least in academic circles, have excused his nonconformist attitudes.