A lot of girls her age had already taken a man as their lover. Even in her immaturity she had gotten around to thinking what it would be like. Special, because she couldn’t picture herself flitting from man to man like a bee going from flower to flower in search of nectar. Her body awakening to the topmost pinnacle of sensual delight, the ultimate physical pleasure. The man in her dreams had always had a virile body in peak condition but no face. Until now.
It was very strange, but she had never thought about what it would be like to go to bed with Jarvis. That had been something in the future that her mind had delicately drawn a blanket over. It came to her positively and clearly that she had never loved Jarvis. If she’d loved her ex-fiancé, the warmth and generosity of her heart wouldn’t have been able to deny him the fuller relationship he had wanted. And there was something else that struck her as odd. She had always assumed as a matter of course that her heart would need to be awakened before she could give her body to a man. She didn’t love Cliff. How could she? She had always held firm to the belief that love wasn’t instantaneous, say, like lightning. It evolved slowly from tender beginnings. It was impossible for her to be in love so quickly. All her preconceived notions couldn’t topple in one fell swoop. So, without any redeeming excuse, she felt deep humiliation and shame that she had just ‘raped’ Cliff in her thoughts.
He had dropped off to sleep again. She fastened the buttons on his pajama jacket, tucked the sheets back under his chin again and then, succumbing to dangerous impulse, bent down and brushed her lips across his forehead. He stirred, an unintelligible murmur escaping his lips, but he didn’t waken. Her heart was beating so wildly that it seemed as though it were trying to bang its way out of her rib cage. There was a lump in her throat the size of an ostrich egg, and her legs were so shaky it was a miracle that they supported her as she tiptoed out of his room.
The next morning, she woke to the realization that she had a whopping great bruise along the curve of her cheek where Cliff had struck her when he had lashed out with his hand while she was sponging his face. Her first awareness was a painful stiffness. When she looked in the mirror, she saw it in all its discolored glory. She tried a bit of repair work, but makeup wouldn’t disguise it, and it shone through regardless.
‘Good heavens!’ Cliff gasped when he saw it. ‘A fraction higher on the cheekbone and you would have had a humdinger of a black eye. How did you come by that?’
‘You should ask,’ she said weakly.
‘You mean I gave you that?’ he inquired, aghast.
She shrugged it off. ‘I bruise easily. It was my own fault. I didn’t get out of the way quickly enough.’
Actually, it wasn’t the only battle scar she carried. In the struggle to cool his fevered brow, her shoulder had also gotten it. They were seated across from one another at the breakfast table, and that bruise was discreetly hidden beneath her sweater, so she had no need to let on about that.
He leaned across, and with unbelievable gentleness his fingers ‘whispered’ over the bruise on her face in the manner of a caress. ‘I’m sorry.’ A cynical but tender haunting of a smile came to his mouth. ‘Believe me, when ladies creep into my bedroom at dead of night, that isn’t the kind of treatment they can expect. On the other hand, don’t believe me. Test my reactions for yourself by creeping in again tonight.’
She crunched a corner of toast between her teeth. It supplied a handy excuse for her not to speak straightaway because she didn’t trust her voice.
‘No, thank you. Anyway, last night my being here was a forced decision. By the time I found out that you were in residence, it was too late to seek other accommodation for myself. I don’t suppose I’ll be here tonight.’ Was there a plea, a hint of wistfulness in her voice?
‘Oh? Where will you be?’
‘I haven’t given it much thought as yet. The Gillybeck Arms, I suppose. I ought to stay in the area to get the mess sorted out about the repairs being done on the wrong cottage.’
‘You don’t have to stay in the area if you don’t want to. Any sorting out to be done, I can do. In any case, there is a perfectly simple solution to the problem. I will recompense you to the amount of the costs incurred in putting Holly Cottage in order. This will enable you to get Hawthorn Cottage done up.’
‘That’s very generous of you. You could, if you were so minded, make the firm, or whoever is responsible for the error, pay up.’
‘I hope you’re not suggesting that I would be contemptuous enough to seek personal gain from someone else’s misfortune?’ he inquired in frosty affront.
‘Of course not. Sorry.’
‘The repairs here needed doing. In getting them executed, someone has done me a favor.’
‘They haven’t done me much of a favor. I shall create merry hell.’
‘What would that achieve? The person or persons responsible would undoubtedly get the chop. Is that what you want?’
Bristling at his taunt as indignantly as he had to hers, then rising to even greater heights of anger when she realized that his remark—unlike hers, which had been more in the way of a conjectural thought—was intended as a deliberate insult, she said, ‘I hope you’re not suggesting that I would be vindictive enough to want to get anyone fired, even though it was an act of gross incompetence.’
His dark, enigmatic eyes narrowed on the green flecks animating hers. ‘Did you know that your eyes change color when you’re angry?’
‘I did,’ she replied caustically. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you would know. Anger seems to have been the only emotion I’ve shown in your presence, so my eyes should have been green all the time.’
‘Anger?’ The suave, taunting smile that looped his mouth lassoed her breath; contriving, and almost managing, to steal it completely away. ‘If that’s what you really think, that all you’ve shown is anger, then all I can say is that you’re not very good at self-analysis,’ he said, at the same time flicking a hand across his forehead. It could have been to put a stray hair back in place, but it uncomfortably traced the spot where she had deposited that silly, impulsive kiss on tucking him in the night before. There was a devilish quirk running rampant across his features that marred the action too precisely for it to be coincidence.
‘Aren’t we deviating from the point?’ Although valiantly attempting to taint her tone with cynicism, she revealed, in her sigh, her inability to get it as sharply honed as she would have wished.
The look he sent her had subtly seductive undertones that seemed to tug at her stomach muscles, drawing them in so much that once again her breathing was impaired. She really must take herself in hand. It was silly to let him affect her in that way.
‘Yes, I believe we are,’ he drawled. ‘To return to the issue in question, and particularly to your suggestion of booking in at the Gillybeck Arms, I wouldn’t if I were you. The bedrooms are immediately over the restaurant and public bar. Very noisy. Not a tranquil atmosphere at all. You’d hate it.’
Ros’s small nod acknowledged that he was right.
‘So let us consider the alternative. We have already agreed that I am here in the cottage by right of family ownership. Is that correct?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted.
‘But the new chimney stack, the electrical wiring, new damp course, fitted kitchen, et cetera, et cetera, are yours. Why don’t we settle for a compromise?’
‘What sort of compromise?’
‘Why don’t we both stay here?’
‘Mm,’ she contemplated doubtfully.
‘Unless that strikes you not so much as a compromise as a compromising situation?’ She didn’t much care for his play on words or his persuasiveness, for that matter, as he continued smoothly, ‘Joking aside, you’ve always been most welcome here. My grandmother would never forgive me if I turned you out. It’s not as if we are newly acquainted. The obviousness of sharing the cottage could also be described as a necessity that has been forced upon us. Perhaps your reluctance stems from last night’s unfortunate ha
ppening. I’m sorry that my malaria attack frightened you. I didn’t really need night nursing, so you don’t have to worry on that count. I would have been perfectly all right to sweat it out on my own and will be all right in the event of it happening again. Cotton wool stuffed in your ears should do the trick.’
‘I wasn’t frightened. Not knowing what was happening to you made me feel inadequate. It’s not that.’
‘In that case, it may be that now that you have someone on hand to look after your interests—I would, you know; I would never hear the last of it from my grandmother if I didn’t rise valiantly to that duty—you feel inclined to go back home. Perhaps you left things hanging fire there to be here? Work? A special man?’
She ought to have lied and said that was it. Now that she had someone reliable to leave in charge of her affairs, she could get back to the pressing needs that awaited her in both her business and personal life. Instead, she fingered her ringless engagement finger. It was a subconscious gesture she wasn’t aware of until his eyes caught the action; it spoke volumes and made it so that she couldn’t lie.
‘There’s no special man.’
‘Not anymore, you mean?’
‘Yes, that’s what I mean. I can do my work anywhere. And I haven’t a home to go to. When I burn my boats, I truly burn ’em.’
‘Like to talk about it?’
‘Nothing much to talk about. I had a fiancé and a friend with whom I shared a flat. I walked in too quietly on them and—’
‘Caught him with his pants down?’ he queried.
‘Not quite,’ she said, her mouth turning wry at that figurative expression. ‘Let’s say I might have if I’d timed my entrance about five minutes later.’
She was glad then that she’d told him the truth.
Things were better out in the open; it had been good to tell someone, and it had seemed the most natural thing in the world for that someone to be Cliff. Odd that, because she hadn’t been able to confide in Miles—whom she knew so well and trusted implicitly—the sordid details leading up to the split between her and Jarvis. At the same time, because she didn’t wholly trust Cliff, she was even more delighted still that she hadn’t elaborated on her truth, hadn’t revealed that far from grieving over the infidelity and loss of her fiancé, she was congratulating herself on a lucky escape, because she had since realized that she had never loved him in the way one should love one’s future husband. If Cliff thought she loved Jarvis and was deeply cut up about finding him in a passionate clinch with another woman, surely that would act as some kind of safeguard? A false one to be sure, but sufficient, she hoped, to protect her from the fire she would be jumping into if she agreed to share the cottage with a man she found too physically exciting, who seemed to have secured exclusive rights on her thoughts and who entranced her senses in a way no other man had ever done before.
‘So there’s nothing to go home to and no home to go to?’
‘No.’
‘You’ll stay here, then,’ he said, making the decision for her.
She couldn’t remember actually voicing the confirming yes, but she could feel the flames licking round her toes.
CHAPTER FOUR
He leaned forward suddenly, and the flames rose to her ankles. Her reaction—a tingling anticipation—was not lost on him, and his recognition showed in the look he then gave her—a look of sensual arrogance that knew her resistance and challenged it. He was altogether too aware of the effect he had on women, and that grated on her and steeled her determination to be the exception to the rule. In honesty, she amended her determination: to appear to be the exception to the rule, because she knew that deep down she was no different from the rest and that it would be all too easy to succumb to the dark enchantment of him that was holding her in thrall. She must not weaken in her resolve. She didn’t like men who thought they were God’s gift to women, and she wouldn’t be an easy conquest. She wouldn’t be a conquest at all!
‘What did you think I was going to do?’ he mocked softly, his eyes playing tantalizingly over her face and throat, which suddenly became constricted.
She must not swallow, because that would show how agitated she was.
‘I was merely going to request that you make a fresh pot of my coffee on your stove,’ he said. ‘It seems to be a very sophisticated model. I hope you’re worthy of it. Which is another way of instructing you that you take over that department.’
‘Haven’t you heard of Women’s Lib? Equal shares and all that,’ she demanded, piqued because he had deliberately led her to believe that he was going to do something when he had so suddenly leaned forward a moment ago.
‘Heard of it. Don’t much care for it. I’ve always regarded the kitchen as woman’s territory,’ he retorted indolently. ‘Not that I can’t turn my hand to that kind of thing in an emergency. And if I’m to base your culinary prowess on the breakfast you’ve just dished up, I might well consider this to be that kind of emergency and take over.’
If that wasn’t the height of injustice. So breakfast hadn’t been a runaway success, She had crisped the bacon too much and broken one out of three egg yolks, but not because she wasn’t a worthy cook. For heaven’s sake, cooking was her business! She was regarded as a magician in the kitchen. Her cool and efficient competence and her refusal to bow to stress were invaluable assets and the guarantee that she would never be out of a job. She had turned out perfect meals of elaborate proportions in impossible conditions. At chefs’ conventions, in view of the eagle eye of a rolling television camera, and at women’s institutes, which perhaps confronted her with her most critical audience, she had never once had a flop. To be defeated by a meal simple enough for a schoolgirl to tackle was too unfair to be believable. And it was all his fault. As she’d gone about the task, he’d sat at the kitchen table, his eyes never leaving her. Even with her back turned, she had been aware of his lecherous appraisal.
‘You were to blame for the breakfast. You shouldn’t have watched me.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought that of you, Rusty.’
‘What?’
‘Latching on to a scapegoat to excuse bad workmanship.’
‘That was a one-off. I’ll have you know that—’ No, damn him. She wouldn’t tell him. She’d show him. Would she make him eat his words before she was through!
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ she said sweetly, rising and walking nonchalantly over to the sink. ‘I’ll make that coffee you asked for. I could do with another cup myself.’ Giving the implication that that was the reason she had acceded to his request. The real reason was that she’d felt the need to put some distance between them.
‘Incidentally, I only brought sufficient provisions to start me off,’ he called after her. ‘We’ll need to stock up.’
Now that she had put half the room between them, she could turn to face him again. ‘You can leave that to me.’
‘I intend to,’ he said, his dry tone laced with derision. ‘Shopping, like cooking, is woman’s work.’
‘In your estimation of things, woman seems to do a lot of work. What’s man’s work, that’s what I’d like to know?’
For an answer, he took out his wallet, and from it he extracted a wad of notes that he put on the table next to her place setting. ‘Man’s work,’ he said. ‘Paying up.’
‘I have money.’
‘So?’
She couldn’t see him letting her pay. He wasn’t the type to let a woman pick up the tab. On the other hand, it wasn’t in her nature to let a man pay for her. It was bad enough to be under his roof. Even though, she thought, with a welcome return of her sense of the absurd, that roof did bear her chimney stack, she was certainly not going to let him keep her. Be a kept woman? Unthinkable!
Retracing her steps, she meticulously counted out the notes and handed half of them back to him. ‘I pay for my own corn. I’ll put pound for pound and keep an account of all I spend.’
‘You might have grown up, but you haven’t grown out
of your cussedness. Even as a tot you always stood your ground, squaring your chin at me. Just as you are doing now. You had a lot of fun at my expense.’
‘I did! That’s a laugh. You petrified me.’
‘Rubbish. You delighted in provoking me, knowing that I could only retaliate up to a point. Little did I know that my day would come.’
‘Huh! Your day hasn’t come,’ she scoffed in negation.
‘No? You’re not a defenseless little girl anymore. You’re a fully grown woman.’ His eyes glanced over her womanly virtues: the rich curve of her bosom, obvious despite the relatively loose fit of her sweater, the narrowness of her waist, the trim, very gentle curve from hip to thigh, shown off to exquisite advantage in her tight jeans. His eyes came up slowly, relishing the return journey with undiminished enthusiasm, and looked deeply and penetratingly into hers. ‘I trust that I have made my point. Now, if you get up to any provocative little tricks, you can look for a fast reprisal.’
Her breath jerked in and held an outrage. The nature of the reprisal was explicit in the smoldering, sensual promise in his eyes. Hot on the heels of that discovery came another. Why had she thought ‘promise’? The obvious choice of word would have been threat.
‘If you start any little tricks,’ she said, gritting her teeth at him, ‘you can anticipate a fast reprisal from me. I am not staying to be—’
‘To be what?’
‘Persecuted.’
‘By what manner of feminine logic can you find anything remotely appertaining to persecution in my manner? And that’s a misnomer if ever there was one. When applied to a woman, it would serve better under the heading of female folly of thinking. If there’s any persecution being done, you are the one who’s doing it.’
‘Now by what—what male folly of thinking do you arrive at that conclusion?’
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