by Penny Jordan
‘A very low sex drive,’ he repeated musingly, ignoring the latter part of her speech. ‘Mm…or perhaps a father who made you feel so guilty and ashamed of your sexuality that you were emotionally coerced into suppressing it.’
‘Well it’s hardly of world-shattering importance now either way, is it?’ Hazel interrupted him. ‘After all, at thirty-six I’m hardly likely to—’
‘There you go again, Silas told her. ‘At thirty-six you’re hardly likely to what? Fall in love? Why on earth not? Thousands do…every day.’
‘Yes, teenagers. People in their twenties—’
‘No,’ Silas contradicted her ruthlessly. ‘Not just people under thirty. I have an uncle. He never married, never wanted to, and then when he was sixty-five he went on a cruise, met someone, fell in love and married her. They’ve just celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary and they’re as much in love now as they were when they first met, and before you ask, no, she isn’t some young girl, in fact Louise is actually three years older than Frank. Before they met she’d had a very hard life, a husband who treated her badly, and then left her with five children to bring up. Those hardships are reflected in her face and it was those, her vulnerabilities as much as her strengths, that drew my uncle to her.
‘Love isn’t restricted to the very young, Hazel, and why should it be? Isn’t it true after all that all too often it’s something they take for granted and frequently abuse? Older people can fall in love too, you know.’
‘Even those as old as thirty-six,’ she said shakily.
‘Even those as old as forty-one,’ he told her softly, startling her into looking directly into his eyes.
It was a mistake. Her heart missed a beat and then another. She suddenly discovered that it was hard to breathe.
Was Silas going to kiss her, and what if he did? she wondered in panic. Would she be able to stop herself from responding to him? Would she…?
As the frantic thoughts flooded through her head and she tensed her body against them, Silas smiled at her, and then turned the key in the ignition.
He wasn’t going to kiss her after all she realised indignantly, trying to tell herself that it wasn’t disappointment that she was feeling at all, and that she was glad…yes, glad that he had finally started the engine and put an end to the dangerous conversation they had been having.
As Silas drove out of the town and into the darkness of the surrounding countryside, Hazel yawned again. She felt desperately tired; a legacy from her sleepless nights and emotional turmoil. She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. Just for a few minutes. She wasn’t going to go to sleep. She was just going to relax, that was all.
* * *
SILAS GLANCED at the sleeping figure in the passenger seat, grimacing wryly to himself as he noted the way she had turned her body away from him. Even in her sleep she withdrew from him.
It had stunned him tonight to discover that she had thought he was sexually involved with Katie, but, unflattering though her assumptions had been, they did explain a great deal.
Was he being a complete fool? he wondered musingly, glancing back at her. She certainly wasn’t willing to admit him into her life, but she wasn’t totally indifferent to him either. Had her father repressed her basic femininity so much that she would never be able to overcome that repression? She had described herself as having a low sex drive. Her body had already given him a very, very different message.
But would she ever be able to accept that…that what? That he had virtually fallen in love with her from Katie’s description of her, and that his first sight of her had only confirmed what he had already felt? And even if she accepted it, would she care?
She had responded to him when he kissed her, but sexual response was not love. He reflected that it was just as well her father was dead. They could almost certainly never have been friends. He had damaged her too much, destroyed her self-esteem and hurt her, even if he had not done that damage maliciously or knowingly.
* * *
WHEN HE STOPPED the car in the drive, Hazel was still asleep. Getting out of the car, he found the set of keys she had given him and went to open the back door. Then, returning to the car, he opened the passenger door and said her name quietly.
She moved in her sleep, frowning as though she had heard him, but refusing to wake up.
Common sense told him that the sensible thing to do was to give her a little shake and speak more loudly, but when had a man in love ever behaved sensibly, even one of forty-one? Especially one of forty-one, he told himself with a wry smile, as he leaned into the car and released her seatbelt, before gently easing her out of the seat and into his arms.
She weighed less heavily than his teenage goddaughter, but then she was almost half a head shorter as well. His sisters were going to love her. They were always on at him to get married, chivvying him for being too fussy, telling him that he was in danger of turning into a fussy old bachelor.
As he carried her towards the house, she seemed to nestle into his arms, burrowing against his body, making a soft sound of pleasure as she turned her face into his throat.
The sensation of her warm breath against his skin paralysed him where he stood, a wave of intense longing and need sweeping over him, making him wryly aware that falling in love wasn’t the only thing that, supposedly reserved for the youthful, could overtake a man of forty-one—but the very worst thing he could do right now would be to sweep her off to bed and make love to her the way his body was so urgently demanding.
Before he even so much as kissed her again, he needed to build up her trust, her self-confidence…he needed to establish a bridge between them, a rapport; he needed to make her respond to him as a fellow human being before he could show her how much he wanted to respond to her as a woman.
Which was why the moment they were inside the kitchen he put her down rather urgently, causing her to wake up abruptly and stare bemusedly into his eyes.
What was happening? Hazel wondered sleepily. What was she doing in the kitchen, standing so close to Silas that she could actually feel his heartbeat, when the last thing she could remember was being in the passenger seat of his car?
She looked away from him to the still open kitchen door. Had she really walked through it without realising what she was doing?
‘I carried you in,’ Silas told her, answering her unspoken question. ‘I tried to wake you, but you were too deeply asleep.’
He had carried her in! She looked up at him, her eyes still dazed with sleep, as her body continued to absorb the warmth of his. She didn’t want to move away from him. She wanted to stay right where she was. She wanted…
She looked at his mouth, her own lips parting, unconsciously seeking his kiss. Silas looked back at her, knowing that if he touched her now…
Immediately he stepped back from her and just as immediately Hazel realised what she was doing, what she was inviting. She was practically begging him to kiss her. No wonder he was looking at her so grimly. What on earth must he think of her?
She stepped back from him instinctively, not trusting herself to be able to look at him.
‘I’m rather tired,’ she told him quickly. ‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll have an early night.’
* * *
IT WAS ONLY later, when she was just on the verge of sleep, that she realised that neither of them had really eaten. For herself the last thing she wanted was food, but Silas…
He was an intelligent adult, she reminded herself. If he wanted something to eat, presumably he would make himself a meal. As she fell asleep, she was smiling a little sadly to herself, remembering her father, who would have been shocked and confused by any suggestion that he might prepare his own meals, but then her father and Silas were two very, very different members of the male sex.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A WEEK passed and then another. Silas was so absorbed in the research on his book that Hazel only saw him in the evening when he joined her for a meal.
She had come to look forward to these shared meals, sometimes prepared by her, sometimes prepared by Silas and sometimes, now that she too was working on a new commission, by them both together. It had amazed her at first that a man could be so masculine and yet at the same time be so at home and at ease domestically. One cold evening when she had made a casserole which was one of Katie’s favourites, Silas had enthused over it and asked her for the recipe.
Sometimes he discussed his book with her, outlining to her what he was doing, giving her a fascinating glimpse into the construction based on hard facts that supported the fictional fabric of his work, and then there were other evenings when they barely spoke at all, but when their silences were comfortable and shared.
She had grown too used to having him around in far too short a space of time, she acknowledged one evening when he had telephoned her from Chester to say that he would be staying late at the library, checking up on some reference books he was unable to bring home.
That evening she ate alone and found that she had no appetite for the meal she had prepared; that she was too restless and lonely to settle…that the house felt empty without him in it and that she missed him in a way that she had not even missed Katie when she left for university.
He was becoming too important to her, she acknowledged, shivering a little in the chill of that knowledge.
* * *
AFTER SEVERAL DAYS of blustering winds and rain she woke up one morning to discover that the rain had stopped and that the sun was shining, revealing the untidiness of the garden, and pricking her conscience to do something about it.
Silas announced over breakfast that he intended to spend the day visiting several of the area’s older houses, in order to do some more research.
‘How is your work going?’ he asked her, reaching behind him for the coffee jug and filling both their mugs.
‘Quite well. I’ve finished the preliminary sketches. I sent them off yesterday and now I have to wait for the author’s reaction.’
‘Mm… Well, why don’t you have a day off and come out with me? I could do with a good navigator.’
She ached to be able to say yes. There was nothing she would enjoy more than spending the day in Silas’s company. Unless of course it was spending the night with him… She swallowed tensely. She was constantly having to battle against such wayward thoughts, against her growing desire to extend the intimacy of friendship which was growing between them to that of lovers, but since that one time when he had kissed her Silas had been scrupulous about maintaining a physical distance between them. There was nothing now in his manner towards her that suggested he found her remotely desirable as a woman. And that of course was what she wanted… Or at least it was what she had told herself she wanted.
She was not sure she could cope with several hours alone with him in the intimacy of his car. Her sleep last night had been disturbed by a particularly erotic and vivid dream in which he… She swallowed hard.
‘I’d love to,’ she told him honestly. ‘But I’ve promised myself that I’ll do some work in the garden while it’s dry.’
Silas looked towards the window.
‘The forecast is quite good for the next few days. Why not put it off until the weekend? I should be able to take a break then and we can do the gardening together.’
Together… What a wonderful word that was. She was desperately tempted to give in, to say yes, to ignore all those small warning voices clamouring so urgently inside her. What, after all, did it matter if Silas realised she wanted him?
It mattered a great deal, she told herself severely. He would find her desire for him embarrassing; it would spoil the friendship which was growing between them.
Regretfully she shook her head. ‘No. I really ought to make a start today.’
She waited, telling herself that if he pressed her…already half regretting having refused him, but he simply drank his coffee and said easily, ‘Well, if I can’t persuade you to join me I suppose I’d still better make a move.’
Half an hour later, as he left, he gave her another cheerful smile, leaving her with no idea that his whole purpose in asking her to join him had not been because of any research he wanted to do, but because he had hoped that the intimacy of being completely alone with her might allow him to take their relationship a step further.
Outside, away from the domestic setting of the house, there would have been far more opportunities to begin a subtle physical bonding with her. After all he could hardly put his arm around her to help her walk across the kitchen…at least not at this stage of their relationship.
And now he had condemned himself to spending a whole day away from her, supposedly doing some quite unnecessary research. So much for the table he had surreptitiously booked for lunch. So much for all the plans he had so carefully been laying. Wouldn’t it, he wondered wryly, be far easier and more adult to simply tell her how he felt and to invite her to either accept or reject him?
Easier perhaps, but he was not sure that she would take him seriously. It was true that she had ceased mentioning her age, as though it were some kind of barrier to her either feeling or engendering in someone else sexual desire, but he was still not sure if she would want to accept that he found her physically desirable to such an extent that there were times when it took every ounce of will-power he possessed to stop himself from reaching out and taking hold of her.
* * *
UNENTHUSIASTICALLY, Hazel went upstairs and changed into an old pair of jeans and a thick sweater.
In the kitchen she pulled on her wellingtons and a sleeveless jacket and, picking up her gardening gloves, opened the back door. The sun might be shining but the wind was cold, though digging over the vegetable patch ought to warm her up a bit.
Three hours later, her back aching and her energy flagging, she acknowledged that she had had enough. But it was still only lunchtime and Silas would be gone all day. She felt reluctant to go back into the empty house, but she was certainly not in the mood for any more gardening. Her muscles ached for the comfort of a hot bath, and then perhaps afterwards she could light the sitting-room fire and curl up in a chair there with a book.
Telling herself that what she was contemplating was the grossest self-indulgence, she cleared the clogging mud off her tools and returned them to the shed before walking tiredly towards the house.
Outside she removed her wellingtons and padded across the kitchen floor, stripping off her jeans and top where she stood, to stuff them into the washing machine with a grimace of distaste.
Upstairs in the bathroom, she ran a deep, hot bath, and added a liberal amount of the bath oil Katie had given her for her birthday, breathing in its heady fragrance with enjoyment.
Securing her curls on top of her head with an elasticated silky band which had originally belonged to Katie, she sank blissfully into the water.
Less than five miles away, Silas stared moodily into his driving mirror. What the hell was he doing driving around aimlessly like this when the only place he really wanted to be was at home with Hazel?
Stopping abruptly, and checking the empty road, he swung the car round. Hazel might not want to be with him, but he certainly wanted to be with her…needed to be with her.
* * *
DOWNSTAIRS the phone rang. Hazel heard it but ignored it, but when it continued to ring all her maternal instincts were activated and she clambered out of the bath, telling herself that it probably wasn’t Katie telephoning her at all, and that even if she was it didn’t necessarily mean that there was something wrong.
Nevertheless she reached for a towel, and then cursed mildly under her breath, remembering that she had left the clean towels neatly folded in the kitchen.
In her father’s day the very last thing she would have been able to do was what she was doing now, which was hurrying downstairs, naked and damp, grateful for the warmth of the house’s central heating and reflecting that there were after all some advantages to living on one’s own.
&nb
sp; As she picked up the receiver in the hallway, she told herself that one day soon she really must buy herself a modern remote control phone which she could take into the bathroom with her.
‘Ma.’
‘Katie, it is you. What’s wrong? Is—?’
‘Nothing’s wrong. Heavens, you do panic. I’ve got a free period and I thought I’d give you a ring. I haven’t disturbed anything important, have I?’
‘I was in the bath,’ Hazel told her, ‘and right now I’m standing in the hall, dripping water all over the place.’
‘Mm… I take it that you’re all alone then, and that there’s no Silas there to appreciate the view,’ Katie teased her.
‘Silas has gone out for the day,’ Hazel told her repressively. ‘Is everything all right, Katie?’
‘Everything’s fine. As a matter of fact, I rang because I was worried about you. Is everything OK with you and Silas? I mean, are the two of you getting on all right?’
‘Yes, yes we’re getting on fine,’ Hazel told her, frowning as she thought she heard the sound of a car drawing up outside.
‘Katie, I’m going to have to go. I think someone’s outside—’ she began. Before she could replace the receiver, Katie called out urgently, ‘Hang on a sec, Ma. I think I’ll be coming home for Christmas on about the twentieth.’
Hazel froze as she heard the kitchen door open. She had locked it when she came in, she knew she had, and besides she didn’t know anyone who would just walk in without knocking, apart from Silas, and he…and he…
Her jaw dropped as the hall door opened and Silas walked through it.
For the space of a heartbeat, they both stood looking at one another, and Hazel had never felt more vulnerable, nor more of a fool in her entire life. Humiliatingly, Silas seemed to be deliberately avoiding looking directly at her, and no wonder, she thought wretchedly, as she said jerkily to Katie, ‘Yes, yes, that’s fine, Katie. I must go. I…’