by Penny Jordan
When he released her, her mouth was still trembling. He brushed it with his fingers and then couldn’t resist touching it again, stroking it first with his fingertips and then with his tongue, and finally, when she made no protest, with his mouth, this time tempering his need, coaxing her into opening her mouth so that he could taste her with his tongue.
His hands found the hem of her sweatshirt and slid up inside it, stroking the narrow curve of her waist, smoothing over the soft skin of her back.
He felt her shiver when his fingertips traced her spine. He knew he ought to stop, but he couldn’t. His fingers found the fastening of her bra and unclipped it. He felt the small, shocked sound she made against his mouth and stopped kissing her long enough to whisper, ‘It’s all right, Beth, I won’t hurt you… I just want to touch you… to hold you,’ and then, before he could check the words, he added rawly, ‘You know I’m in love with you, don’t you?’
Her eyes mirrored her shock and disbelief.
‘You’re lying to me… You can’t be in love with me…’
‘Why not? Because your damned mother wouldn’t approve?’
His hands left her body and he moved away from her, but the small stifled sound she made made him turn back. She was crying, and it tore at his heart.
‘Don’t,’ he protested thickly. ‘I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have said anything…’
‘I know you’re only trying to be kind, but you don’t have to lie to me… That’s what men always say, isn’t it, when they want—–?’ She broke off and looked embarrassed, and he suddenly realised what she was thinking.
He laughed with relief and instantly felt her withdrawal. She thought he was laughing at her.
‘So that’s what you think of me, is it?’ he teased her. ‘That I’m lying to you so that I can have my wicked way with you. Well, I’ve got news for you.’ He reached out and touched her face, sliding his fingers along her jaw, his thumb probing the soft outline of her mouth. ‘I wasn’t lying. I am in love with you. I also want to make love with you, but that can wait. This can’t…’
He bent his head and kissed her slowly, whispering against her mouth, ‘I love you, Beth, I love you,’ until she smothered the sound with her own untutored response to him.
They spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool, talking, kissing occasionally when he felt he had enough control of himself not to frighten her with all that he wanted to show her… teach her. Because by now he had learned that he would be her first lover. Her only lover, he had mentally decided.
She had admitted to him that she was as attracted to him as he was to her, but her fear of her mother, her dread that somehow Gloria would find a way of coming between them, made her beg him to promise her that they could keep their relationship a secret.
‘Just until Christmas,’ he warned her. ‘When I come to Fitton Park in the New Year—–’
She had kissed him into silence, moaning his name softly when he slid his hands under her sweatshirt and stroked the smooth firmness of her bare breasts. He had wanted to take her sweatshirt off, so that he could see and taste the hard little nipples he could feel pressing into his palms, but he was frightened of rushing her.
She left just after three o’clock, promising to return at eight.
And it was only after she had gone that he wondered what on earth he was going to give her for dinner.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘I REALLY must go.’
It was just gone midnight. Jake and Beth were sitting in front of the fire he had lit, both of them sharing the one chair.
She had come out dressed in the same clothes she had worn during the day, and this time when he questioned her she had told him simply that her mother did not believe in wasting money on clothes for her.
‘She prefers to keep me looking like a schoolgirl,’ she told him quietly. ‘She hates people knowing that I’m eighteen. I have got clothes… the things chosen for me when I was at finishing school; it’s part of the deal. A suitable wardrobe for a young woman of bon ton… very comme il faut and totally ridiculous. Mother told me she’d bought me some new clothes, and until I put them on I didn’t realise she’d chosen everything at least a couple of sizes too big.’
And in colours totally unflattering to her daughter’s pale, delicate complexion, Jake reflected.
‘Never mind,’ he said softly. ‘Personally I prefer you wearing nothing but your skin anyway.’
He laughed at the way she coloured, because in the firelight he could see the soft run of colour spread from her forehead downwards over her entire body, as she lay in his arms, wearing only the plain white briefs she had firmly refused to remove.
He didn’t mind; or at least he was trying not to. He wanted to let her set the pace of their intimacy. The firelight played over her skin, warming its paleness to gold, darkening the flushed and swollen areolas of her nipples.
He touched one gently, remembering the heady pleasure of taking it into his mouth and sucking gently on it until she moaned and arched under his hands, whimpering deep in her throat as sensation quivered visibly through her body.
He gazed possessively at her love-flushed body, now swollen from his lovemaking and sensitive to his touch.
She made a sound in her throat, feral and female, and he had to quell a sudden savage impulse to take hold of her and bite urgently at her with his teeth until her whole body vibrated with the same fierce pulse he could feel dominating his own.
‘Stay with me.’ He whispered the words against her throat, moving her underneath him so that he could ease the ache a little against the softness of her flesh.
He knew, of course, that it was impossible, that she was far too terrified of her mother to contemplate what he was suggesting, and when he saw the way her face clouded he instantly regretted the words.
‘It’s all right,’ he reassured her. ‘I know you can’t…’
‘What time will you have to leave… tomorrow…?’
She was close to tears, and he felt his heart wrench with the welling, protective love she aroused in him.
‘I’d planned to go just as soon as completion takes place. You are going to write to me, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. The New Year seems such a long time away…’
‘It will soon pass.’
‘I wish you lived closer… That you didn’t have to go away.’
‘I have to earn my living,’ he told her, ‘the only way I have of building a future for us.’
He frowned, wondering what she would say when he told her how he actually did earn his living. She was not the kind of woman who would find the admission sexually exciting, unlike her mother, he thought grimly.
He had seen too many of his fellow agents form relationships with women who were turned on by the thrill of danger, even when that danger was only at second hand. Ultimately such relationships were destructive and painful.
Relationships… He had prided himself on being far too sensible to get himself permanently involved… after all, what did he really have to offer a woman? Ostensibly he might be Sir Jake Fitton of Fitton Park, but in reality he was a man who risked death every day of his life, whose income was adequate rather than generous, and who could not even offer a woman any kind of emotional security, for herself or for their children.
By rights he ought to be distancing himself from Beth as quickly and painlessly as he could, for her sake as well as his own, and it amazed him that he couldn’t do so. He, who had always been so in control of his emotions, who after witnessing the destruction they had brought to his brother had vowed that he himself would never admit them to his life.
What also amazed him was his instinctive, immediate knowledge that he loved Beth… that he did not simply want her, physically and briefly.
He wished he had more time, time to talk to her about his life, about the way he lived.
He thought briefly of leaving the agency. There were other careers, safe, profitable careers using his expertise and knowledge in
other ways; but they were already so hard-pressed, so very short of manpower… He only had to look into the vacant, possessed eyes of the ever-growing number of young addicts to know that his job was worthwhile. Worthwhile but dangerous. And there would be periods of weeks, even months at a time when he would have to leave Beth on her own, when she wouldn’t be able to contact him no matter what might go wrong. Did he have the right to subject her to that kind of life?
Did he have a right to keep the truth from her?
He took a deep breath and said huskily, ‘I want to marry you, Beth.’ He cupped her face in his hands, unable to resist the temptation of her half-parted lips. This time she responded with a frantic eagerness that threatened to destroy his self-control.
‘I want to marry you,’ he repeated softly as he released her, ‘but there’s something I have to tell you first.’
He couldn’t allow her to become any more deeply involved with him without telling her the truth. If he lost her for doing so…
As clinically and succinctly as he could, he told her, watching her face intently.
She was shocked by his disclosures… shocked but unafraid. His heart lifted a little.
‘I’m not going to make any false promises to you, Beth,’ he told her gently. ‘My work is very important to me. Not more important to me than you, just important in a different way. I love you and I always shall, but our marriage won’t be easy. There’ll be times when I shall be away for long periods… times when we can’t communicate… you’ll have to make all kinds of sacrifices I have no right to ask you to make,’ he added bitterly, but she stopped him, placing trembling fingers against his lips.
‘It’s no sacrifice,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I love you the way you are… I don’t want to change you… I’m not a child, Jake. I’ll miss you when you’re gone, but the times we’re apart will make those we can spend together all the more precious.’
‘I’m not a child,’ she’d said, and yet in so many ways, despite her age, she was.
Despairingly Jake wished he wasn’t committed to going to South America, but there was no one to take his place. Already this year they had lost two good agents.
The drug barons were ruthless… all-powerful within their own operations. The huge sums of money the business generated ensured that there was nothing they could not do… no one they could not buy.
‘I want to take you with me now,’ Jake told her huskily, ‘but I know I can’t do that… Will you wait for me, Beth? Until New Year? If you haven’t changed your mind, then we can discuss the future more rationally. Tell your mother—–’
‘I don’t need my mother’s permission to love you,’ she told him fiercely. ‘Nor to be your wife…’
‘No,’ he agreed soberly. ‘But you are afraid of her…’
‘Not afraid,’ she countered, flushing a little, ‘At least, not afraid of her. Just afraid that somehow or other she’ll spoil things… damage our love the way she damages everything she touches. I don’t want her to know about us, Jake… Not yet…’
‘Not yet,’ he agreed. ‘But when I come back we’ll have to tell her. I realise I’m not likely to be someone she wants for her son-in-law. Materially speaking I’ve nothing to offer you, Beth. The money I’m getting from the sale of Fitton Park will be swallowed up by outstanding bills.’
‘I don’t want money,’ she told him swiftly. ‘I just want you.’
When she left he walked with her to her car. He hated letting her go, but couldn’t pressure her to stay. There were only nine years between them, but to him she seemed so young, so vulnerable and in need of careful cherishing.
She had been gone just over twenty minutes when he heard the sound of a car coming back up the drive.
He went to the front door, frowning as he saw the now familiar outline of her Mercedes.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her tersely as she stopped the engine and got out.
Her mouth was set with determination, her head held high.
‘Nothing,’ she told him, and then added huskily, ‘I’ve changed my mind… I want to stay with you tonight, Jake. That’s if you still want me to…’
‘Want you to…?’ He didn’t know how he stopped himself from picking her up and carrying her straight upstairs to his room. Some final flicker of sanity and responsibility, he supposed.
‘You know I do,’ he told her, tempering the emotion burning inside him. He could guess how much it had cost her to turn back and make this offer. ‘But it wouldn’t be fair to let you do it,’ he told her softly. ‘And not just because you know damn well you’ll be terrified of facing your mother in the morning… of explaining where you’ve been, and with whom…’
He saw her face and said grimly, ‘And don’t tell me you were going to lie… Neither of us is going to lie about our relationship… about our love.
‘I want you to stay with me tonight more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, my darling, but I can’t let you do it… and not just because of your mother.’
He saw her hurt and bewilderment… her hesitation and loss of self-confidence, the lovely, glowing happiness dying out of her face.
‘No, not because I don’t want you,’ he groaned, taking hold of her and pulling her against his body so that she could feel the hard evidence of just how much he did want her. ‘I’m not prepared…’ he said against her hair. ‘I can’t protect you… I can’t take the risk of leaving you pregnant…’
He felt her tension and released her so that he could look down into her face.
‘I never thought,’ she whispered dazedly. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘No, and half of me wishes I hadn’t either,’ he told her wryly. ‘Don’t tempt me into begging you to stay, Beth. I don’t want to be like your mother… pressuring you… frightening you into believing you have to please me by doing what I want rather than what you want yourself. We love one another, and we’re equal partners in that love.’
He kissed her again, briefly, with hard passion, aching to take what she was offering him, but knowing that for her sake he dared not.
It would kill her if he left her pregnant and she had to face her mother with that knowledge. He couldn’t do that to her.
‘I love you.’ She whispered the words brokenly against his mouth over and over again, until he had to put her from him and still himself against the bright shimmer of her tears.
He was awake virtually all night, aching with need for her, and stubbornly refusing to give in to that need and afford his body release. It was as though by suffering himself he was protecting her… offering up an ancient sacrifice against her pain… her hurt.
‘I’d like to ask you a favour.’
The solicitor frowned. Other clients frequently asked for favours, but not this one… not this stubborn young man whom he had come to respect so much even while he didn’t totally understand him.
‘It’s a personal matter… I… I wish to correspond with someone… It’s not possible for her to receive my letters personally… I was wondering if I directed them here to your office…’
‘Who is she?’ the man asked, too stunned to be discreet.
‘Gloria Pilling’s daughter.’
Jake inclined his head while the solicitor’s frown deepened.
‘She’s frightened that her mother won’t approve of our relationship. I have to go away on business; when I come back I intend to talk to Gloria Pilling and tell her that I want to marry Beth.’
‘You want to marry the girl?’ The solicitor’s astonishment grew. It was already being rumoured around Chester that Gloria Pilling was on the look-out for a husband for her daughter. He had seen the girl once when he’d called at Gloria Pilling’s suite, a plain, dull-looking young woman, who had struck him as very ordinary and uninteresting… Certainly not the type to attract someone like Jake Fitton.
Despite his lack of wealth, he was well born, and well connected… Physically he was the type of man that women found very attractive; he knew that
from his own wife’s observations. Privately he had half suspected that Gloria Pilling herself might have had an ulterior motive in buying Fitton Park. He wasn’t so behind the times that he was unaware of the current trend for older wealthy women to take as a lover men younger than themselves.
‘But—–’
The intercom on his desk buzzed and he broke off to listen to his secretary announcing that his next client was waiting.
‘Will you do it?’ Jake asked him.
There was no reason why he shouldn’t, although normally he deplored anything underhand. It wasn’t as though the young woman was being wantonly seduced or dishonoured in any way. Jake had spoken of marriage, and he knew him well enough to know that he was in earnest.
‘Yes,’ he agreed unwillingly, and Jake, knowing that time was running out, pressed urgently,
‘And if anything should happen… If she should ever come to you, you have my full authority to use the spare monies from the sale of Fitton Park for whatever she might need…’
That sounded ominous; he wanted to question Jake further, but it was too late.
Jake’s last act before he drove south was to visit the small churchyard that housed the Fitton family crypt. He stood there for so long that the woman arranging the flowers inside the church began to worry about him. She was just wondering if she ought to go and call the vicar when he suddenly lifted his head and gave her his brilliant, tender smile.
‘Ever so touching, it was,’ she told her married daughter later as they shared a pot of tea and her grandchildren played at her feet. ‘Just like he was saying goodbye to them. Awful sad it must be for him, them having lived there for so long…’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE months Jake spent in South America were the most difficult he had ever experienced. His work required one hundred and twenty per cent concentration. He was working alone in the field on this occasion, posing as a slightly shady businessman, and using the various contacts he had established, hoping to infiltrate a ring of drug producers and suppliers so sophisticatedly organised that, despite the fact that the CIA and the British government knew of their existence, they were unable to find out just how they were managing to get their large supplies of drugs into both countries.