Rival Attractions & Innocent Secretary...Accidentally Pregnant

by Penny Jordan

  As she walked into the kitchen, the plumber, whom she had not seen before, looked up and grunted. ‘Your husband said to tell you he’d be back in half an hour, missus.’

  Her husband… Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside her. Laughter or tears—neither of them would really relieve the pain inside her.

  Ignoring the plumber and the other men, Charlotte opened the door and headed for her car. Heaven alone knew what Sheila must be thinking. She had already missed her first appointment this morning.

  It was only after she had narrowly avoided a collision with another motorist that she realised how recklessly she was driving. As recklessly as she had behaved last night. What was it…this unfamiliar recklessness tormenting her? Was it caused by the knowledge that her love for Oliver would never be reciprocated, that he could never feel for her what she felt for him?

  She wondered if, when she returned this evening, she would find that he had moved out, and laughed bitterly at her own thoughts. She was only surprised that he had still been there this morning.

  When she walked into her office half an hour later, her scalp was tight with tension; hyper-sensitively she wondered if Sheila would be as acutely aware of the changes within her as she was herself, but, apart from giving her a brief smile, Sheila seemed unaware of anything different about her.

  ‘Oliver rang to warn us you’d be late in,’ she said cheerfully, ‘so I sent Sophy over to show the Bramwells round number fourteen. She should be back soon.’

  Charlotte managed to conceal her shock. ‘What exactly did Oliver say?’ she asked cautiously, when she felt she could.

  ‘Oh, just that the two of you had celebrated something together last night and indulged rather too heavily in vintage champagne.’ Sheila grinned at her. ‘Don’t think I don’t sympathise. There’s nothing worse than a hangover. What were you celebrating, by the way?’ Sheila asked her speculatively. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’

  All too conscious of the hot tide of colour burning her skin, Charlotte dipped her head and said unevenly, ‘Nothing much. Oliver’s sold out his agency in London and decided to base himself permanently here.’

  ‘Mmm. Cause for celebration indeed,’ Sheila murmured thoughtfully, her glance resting for a moment on Charlotte’s downbent head, a small smile curving her mouth. ‘You’ve resigned yourself to it, then?’ she asked innocently.

  Immediately Charlotte’s head shot up. ‘To what?’

  ‘To Oliver’s being here,’ Sheila responded.

  ‘I don’t seem to have much option, do I?’ Charlotte told her grittily. For a moment, she had actually thought that Sheila must know—but how could she? She was allowing her own feelings of remorse and self-contempt to colour everything she heard.

  She was thankful to escape from the office and from Sheila’s searching gaze to keep her appointment with Dan Pearce, even though she was not really looking forward to dealing with him. She didn’t like the man at all. There was something about him…

  Telling herself not to be so stupid, Charlotte got in her car and drove out in the direction of the farm. She had arranged to meet Dan Pearce at the cottages he was hoping to sell, and when she drew up outside them to find his battered Land Rover already there she suppressed a pang of disquiet.

  There was no sign of the farmer outside the property, and so she opened the door to the first semi and walked in, calling his name. She could hear sounds of someone moving about upstairs and she put her hand on the worn handrail and went to investigate. She found the farmer in the first of the poky, stuffy bedrooms and realised as she approached the window that he must have watched her drive up. She frowned, recognising that he had made no attempt to come down and meet her, her unfamiliar feeling of disquiet growing as he turned round and leered at her.

  ‘Came, then, did you?’ he said to her. ‘That’s what you’re like, though, isn’t it, you women? Once you get a taste for it.’

  Alarm bells were ringing in Charlotte’s brain. Instinctively she stepped back towards the door, but he moved faster, trapping her in the room as he closed the door and stood in front of it.

  Fear knifed through her—the kind of fear she had never known could exist, the kind of fear she had deliberately closed her eyes to, just as she always preferred not to read about accounts of her sex being frightened and abused in the way that she now sensed this man wanted to frighten and abuse her.

  Rape. Such a short but ugly word. A word she had never really focused on.

  She tried to tell herself she was being foolish, over-imaginative, that she had misunderstood what he had said, and what he had left unsaid, but nothing could banish the panic now clawing inside her.

  She tried to think, to stay calm, to lift herself past the fear blocking her ability to think and reason.

  ‘You wanted to discuss selling the cottages as a single unit, Mr Pearce,’ she said as firmly as she could. ‘I think that’s a sensible decision. Of course, planning permission would have—’

  She heard him laugh and any hopes she might have had that she was mistaken, that he was not deliberately trying to intimidate her, that he had not brought her here for a purpose that had nothing to do with his property died.

  As she stared into his unpleasant, overconfident, leering face, a feeling of intense dread washed over her. She looked desperately at the door, wondering if she could risk running past him, if she could take him off guard sufficiently for her to pull open the door, and then she saw the way he was grinning at her and she knew he was waiting for her to do just that very thing, so that he could have the pleasure of punishing her for it, and she shuddered in open revulsion.

  Dear God, how had this happened? Why had she not realised? Sheila had warned her…or tried to…

  Fear twisted and coiled inside her like a live thing, writhing, burning, making her want to be sick, to scream, to beat her fists against the walls entrapping her, to plead and beg for her freedom.

  Fighting desperately not to give in to her panic, she said huskily, ‘Mr Pearce, it seems that we are both under a misapprehension. I thought you asked me here to discuss the sale of these houses.’

  He was laughing openly at her now. ‘No, you didn’t,’ he told her. ‘You know what I want from you. I told you last time you was here I wasn’t going to sell ’em together. Like I said, living with that Londoner’s given you a taste for it. All the same, your sort—all airs and graces outside, but inside you’re no better than whores, leading a man on. Just the same as that whore I married. She was like you.’

  He was mad, Charlotte thought frantically. He must be if he thought that she had actually encouraged him to believe… Where before it had been the sexual assault of her body she had feared, now she felt a sharp thrill of horror. He could rape and then murder her. No one would know. No one could help her.

  As she watched him watching her, anticipating her pain, enjoying her panic, she had a fierce sensation of triumph that she had had last night—that whatever happened she had at least those memories of her time with Oliver to use as a shield against whatever this man might try to do to her.

  She was afraid, yes—desperately so—but just thinking about Oliver, just remembering the pleasure he had given her, somehow steadied her and subdued her panic so that her brain started to work again, urging her to keep on talking to him, to try to distract him.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re trying to imply,’ she said as frigidly as she could, adding, ‘I don’t have a lot of time, Mr Pearce. I have another appointment in half an hour. In fact, my assistant will soon be wondering where I am, if I don’t return to the office.’

  It wasn’t entirely untrue. She did have another appointment, but not for an hour. And in an hour…

  ‘You’re lying,’ he told her savagely. ‘But it won’t work. You came here because you’re just like all the rest.’

  Charlotte tried desperately to blot out the words that spewed from his sick mind, to ignore and deny the horror of what he was threatening to do to her. He must
have been like this since his wife had left him, she recognised, wondering with another thrill of horror how many other women he might have subjected to the same ordeal he was now inflicting on her.

  The air in the small room was stale, putrid almost, or was that her imagination? His hands were filthy, his nails broken and black; she cringed visualising them on her skin. Nausea built up inside her. She couldn’t endure much more. Her self-control was cracking already.

  ‘If you’re not prepared to discuss the sale of these properties, then I’m afraid I must leave,’ she told him, trying to appear confident, as she stepped towards the door.

  For a moment she thought she had succeeded, and that he would simply let her go. He actually let her reach the door, stepping aside for her, and she was trembling as she touched the handle, relief flooding her. He had simply been testing her, frightening her. Her legs felt weak, her mouth dry.

  And then, just as she turned the handle, he grabbed hold of her, turning her round and slamming her back against the door. The pain winded her, depriving her of the ability to even scream in protest.

  She could feel his hot breath on her face, could feel the painful bite of his fingers through her clothes. Oh, God, why hadn’t she stayed where she was?

  ‘Like it a bit rough, do you?’ she heard him saying thickly. ‘Like being messed around a bit, like? My wife was like that. Oh, she used to scream and cry and pretend she hated it, but I knew different.’

  Charlotte shuddered as she listened to him, all too easily picturing the other woman’s agony. How on earth had she endured her marriage? No wonder she had left him.

  ‘Yes, she liked it so much she used to claw at my back and beg me.’

  Charlotte couldn’t help it. She covered her ears with her hands and screamed helplessly. ‘Stop it! Stop it!’

  It was a mistake. Her stomach lurched as she realised that her panic was only exciting him, inciting him to gaze boldly at her body, his eyes hot, his fingers kneading her flesh where he held her as he focused on her breasts…

  How long had she been here? How long would her ordeal last? She dared not even risk looking at her watch. Suddenly, terrifyingly, she wanted it to be over, and illuminatingly she could quite easily see why his wife had allowed him the possession of her body. It was simply easier not to fight, to allow him what he wanted and to get it over with.

  Shudder after shudder racked through her as he watched her gloatingly, telling her what he intended to do with her. With every word he was becoming more excited, more unrestrained.

  He was confusing her with his wife, Charlotte recognised sickly, as he called her ‘Marlene’ not once but twice.

  In another few minutes she would be unconscious. She could feel her strength ebbing, her body aching for the release from what was happening. Her head was spinning.

  And then unbelievably she heard Oliver calling her name, and thought dazedly that she had actually slipped over the edge and was unconscious until Dan Pearce suddenly clamped his filthy hand over her mouth and said, ‘Don’t try and say a word. He’ll not come up here. No once he realises you want to be with me.’

  Stupidly Charlotte stared at him, worn out with terror and pain, and then abruptly she realised that Oliver actually was there, that he actually had come looking for her, that he actually was calling her name, and with a strength she hadn’t known she had she struggled against her captor, sinking her teeth sharply into his palm, long enough to draw air into her lungs and to scream Oliver’s name before Dan Pearce grabbed hold of her hair and slammed her head back against the door, yelling out, ‘She wants me, not you. She’s nothing but a whore, who’ll open her legs for anyone. They’re all the same.’

  Charlotte heard the words, but only distantly. Her head hurt; she felt sick and dizzy. There was something warm and sticky running down her face and someone seemed to be kicking her back. The kicking ceased abruptly when the door flew open and she was thrown to the floor. She heard herself scream as she fell, and then everything went black, although she was dimly conscious of someone touching her, soothing her, speaking to her. Someone whom it was important she reached out to…only it was all too much of an effort.

  * * *

  She had been having a very bad dream, Charlotte recognised, opening her eyes. Her bedroom was in darkness, but its outline was familiar. So why had she confused it with somewhere else…a hospital? And why had she woken up so often crying for Oliver, wanting desperately to be held by him, to be safe with him?

  Her head was aching. She put up her hand to touch it, wincing at the pain in her shoulder and then frowning as her fingers touched the plaster she found.

  Confusing memories stirred sluggishly. Images that haunted her bad dreams…fragments of sensation…of fear… ‘No!’

  ‘Charlotte, it’s all right. You’re quite safe.’

  She lay still, her heart pounding frantically in the darkness. What was Oliver doing in bed with her? Had she gone completely crazy? Was she perhaps imagining…? But no. Impossible to imagine the tenderness of those hands touching her, turning her, drawing her into the warmth of his body, patting her back as though soothing a terrified child.

  ‘Oliver…what are you doing here?’ Her voice sounded rusty and strained.

  ‘You wanted me with you…remember?’

  She wrinkled her forehead. She did have an odd hazy memory of crying out for him. That had been when she was in the hospital, hadn’t it? And suddenly her body went hot as she realised she must actually have been there, that others must actually have heard her…

  ‘It’s all right,’ Oliver was reassuring her, as though he had read her mind. ‘No one was shocked or surprised. I told them you were my fiancée and in the circumstances they could quite understand why you should want to be with me. That was the only reason they let me bring you home.’

  ‘Because you said you’d sleep with me?’ she questioned warily. ‘But—’

  ‘Oh, Sheila and I practically came to blows over who should take charge of you,’ he told her. ‘In the end it was the way you clung to me that persuaded the hospital staff that you should come with me. You’ll be pleased to know that there’ll be no lasting damage—at least not of the physical variety. A very unpleasant-looking collection of bruises, and a nasty bash on the head, which was the reason they kept you in in the first place.’

  Abruptly she remembered. She trembled in his arms as she said stiltedly, ‘He didn’t touch me. Not…not in that way. He was going to. He thought I was his wife.’

  ‘Shush…we know all about it. He was a very dangerous man. A very sick man mentally.’

  ‘I should never have gone there. I knew inside that there was something about him.’ She twisted in his arms. ‘I wanted to sell those houses so that you wouldn’t get them. I never thought… It could have been Sophy!’ she burst out frantically. ‘I could have sent Sophy.’

  She started to cry. Deep, wrenching sobs that tore at his heart and made him wish he had had just half a dozen minutes alone with her attacker before the police had arrived.

  It had been Sheila who had alerted him to her potential danger. When he had discovered that she had gone to work without waiting to see him, he had driven in too and gone into the office, only to find Sheila already concerned. A chance call from someone who had already approached Dan Pearce with an offer to buy both semis from him at a fair market price and had been turned down flat had revealed to her that, whatever the farmer’s reason for luring Charlotte out to the deserted building, it could have had nothing to do with any change of heart about selling the two units as one.

  She had poured out her concern to Oliver, and he had promptly offered to drive over to the buildings to check that Charlotte was all right.

  Once he had gone, Sheila’s fears had increased and she had rung her husband, asking him to check as well, hence the police’s arrival within seconds of Oliver’s having broken down the door and discovered Charlotte unconscious on the floor, her blouse ripped, bruises already forming on her ba
re shoulders.

  For a moment he had suffered a blind, fierce need to destroy the man standing over her, to rip him limb from limb, but, just as sanity was reasserting itself and he was forcing himself to recognise that his first task must be to get Charlotte away to safety, the police had arrived and taken charge.

  He didn’t want to tell her yet about the gun that Dan Pearce had somehow or other got his hands on when the police had taken him back to the farmhouse, nor the fact that he had taken his own life with it. That could come later…

  It had torn him apart to learn from the hospital that she was crying for him in her sleep. And, indeed, the moment he had walked up to her bed and taken hold of her hand she had become calmer.

  Now she had been at home for almost forty-eight hours, although she had been so heavily sedated at first that she would have no memory of her return. Last night he had slept with her in his arms, soothing her nightmares, comforting and cherishing her, and he would continue to do so for the rest of his life if that was what she wanted.

  ‘You should have let me go with Sheila,’ she told him shakily. ‘Now the whole town will know we’re supposed to engaged, and when they learn that we aren’t—’

  ‘Need they?’

  His question stunned her. She tensed, and missed the warmth of his hands on her back as he removed them to frame her face so that she couldn’t avoid his searching study of her features.

  ‘Yes…unless you intend to carry this farce as far as marriage,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘Willingly. But to me it isn’t a farce, only the realisation of a need that was born in me the first time we met.’

  She stared at him in disbelief. ‘When Vanessa introduced us? You can’t mean that.’

  ‘I don’t. Our first meeting was in the car park, when you stole my parking spot. I saw you, watched you, knew that I should have been furious with you, and yet all I wanted to do was to get out of my car, take you in my arms and tell you that I’d fallen in love with you.’

  Charlotte looked at him, searching his face for some sign that he was making it all up, but there was none.