by Penny Jordan
Swearing briefly, Jonas stood up and, fearing that he was going to pursue the child, Sara grabbed hold of his forearm, her eyes snapping with anger and disgust.
‘Don’t you dare go after him, you bully!’ she said fiercely. ‘I ought to report you to the police for what you were just doing.’
‘Go ahead,’ she was told bitingly, the grey eyes arrogantly disdainful where they should have been guilty. ‘I’m sure Sergeant Rowson would be most grateful to you.’
The sarcasm in his voice grated on her nerve endings. Staring up at him, Sara suddenly became aware of the fact that her fingers were still clenched round his arm. His skin felt warm and firm, the dark hairs sensually rough against her palm. She had the most extraordinary desire to let her fingertips stroke along his skin. Releasing him as though his flesh burned, she stepped back from him with flushed cheeks.
‘Why were you hitting that child?’ she demanded breathlessly, hearing the weak unsteadiness in her voice, and resenting him for causing it.
His mouth curled disdainfully as he drawled, ‘Firstly for trespassing on my land…’ He watched as the indignant colour burned her skin, and then stopped the impulsive protest trembling on her lips by adding, ‘but most importantly for this…’
He kneeled down again, his lean hands parting the thickly luscious grass with a gentleness that was oddly in contrast to the determined way he had been punishing the boy.
Puzzled and apprehensive, Sam looked down, her stomach tensing as she saw the small cluster of eggs lying on the grass.
‘Robbing birds’ nests isn’t something we approve of round here,’ he told her grimly. ‘That young lad just happens to be Sergeant Rowson’s nephew. His parents have recently been divorced, and the Sergeant and his wife are looking after the boy for a while. He’s been city born and bred, and naturally he’s having some trouble adjusting. This isn’t the first time I’ve caught him doing this. Last time I warned him what the punishment would be. I wasn’t doing it for the pleasure of it, you know,’ he told her with a grimace of disgust. ‘But the boy needs to know that rules have to be obeyed.’
‘I can understand that,’ agreed Sara stiffly. ‘But you’re not related to him; why not leave it to his uncle to punish him?’
‘Because by the time I’d found and told the Sergeant and he had got round to dealing with him, the boy would probably have forgotten what he was being punished for. I don’t believe in torturing kids with the threat of punishment to come,’ Jonas said bitingly, ‘whatever you might choose to think. Besides, punishment on the scene of the crime is invariably more effective. The first time I caught him stealing eggs I explained to him just exactly what he was doing, and I had hoped that would be enough. Obviously it wasn’t.’
He saw her face and smiled sardonically. ‘That doesn’t suit you at all, does it?’ he mocked. ‘You’d much rather see me as the villain of the piece, the sort of man who enjoys inflicting physical pain.’ He grimaced slightly and came towards her, saying softly, ‘I thought this morning that I detected a certain amount of animosity towards me, cerebrally, at least. Well you know what they say about giving a dog a bad name, don’t you?’
She was in his arms before she could move, her brain too dazed to comprehend what had happened. She shuddered as his hand cupped her jaw, tilting her face up to meet the hard pressure of his mouth, her body knowing that he was going to kiss her before her mind could assimilate the knowledge.
Shockingly, her pulses quivered frantically at the first touch of his mouth.
He was kissing her in anger, Sara recognised, making her take the place of the boy she had unwittingly helped to escape, but something was going wrong, because although his mouth was hot and hard, it wasn’t anger but passion that fuelled its aggressive demands on her own, and, horrifyingly, she was responding to it. A thick moan was stifled in her throat as his teeth bit sharply into the fullness of her lower lip, tugging on it so that his tongue could touch the inner softness of her mouth. He pushed past her firmly closed teeth as she was forced to draw breath, unleashing a dark need in her that couldn’t be controlled by reason.
Helplessly, Sara clung to him, shocked to discover that her arms were round his neck, her fingers clutching at his hair, her body pressed intimately along the length of his.
The kiss went on and on, her lips clinging hotly to his, her tongue powerless to resist the erotic sucking motion that drew it into the heat of his mouth.
A terrible weakness made her tremble against him, the sound he made deep in his throat as he tugged her shirt out of her jeans and slid his hands against the bare skin of her back distantly touching her consciousness.
His heart slammed erratically against his ribs, its unsteady beat driving into her own body, his legs parting so that he could cradle her against the aroused heat of his thighs as he leaned back against the bulk of the Land Rover.
His mouth left hers to explore the pale column of her throat, his fingers deftly unfastening the buttons of her shirt.
She knew she ought to stop him, but the effect he was having on her was too overwhelming, the shock of what was happening to her so immense that she couldn’t bring herself to believe it was real. This couldn’t really be her, standing in plain sight of anyone who happened to walk past, allowing a man she neither liked nor really knew to practically tear the clothes from her body with one hand while the other gripped her hip and crushed her possessively against the pulsing force of his body!
While Sara’s brain fought to comprehend what was happening to her, her treacherous body was awash with the erotic pleasure of Jonas’s hand against her breast as it slid inside her shirt and cupped her silk-covered fullness.
She gasped and shivered at the sensations his touch aroused, feeling her nipples tighten and thrust against the frail barrier of her bra. Her head fell back beneath the pressure of Jonas’s mouth on her throat, hot and demanding as it found her fluttering pulse.
His own shirt was half unbuttoned, and somehow her hands were inside it, feverishly stroking the moist heat of his skin. His mouth seemed to burn where it touched her, moving hotly along the line of her open shirt. A shudder of physical need convulsed her stomach as his thumb probed roughly at the edge of her bra. Her body’s fierce ache to experience the sensation of his mouth against her breast obliterated everything else.
When his impatient fingers finally freed the taut arousal of her nipple, exposing it to the hungry demand of his mouth, Sara wasn’t sure which of them made the hoarse cry of satisfaction that reached her shocked ears.
Her brain, trying to come to terms with what was happening, logged with shocked disbelief that the compulsive way in which Jonas’s mouth tugged on the swollen softness of her breast was not the sort of caress one would expect from a mere acquaintance. His hips moved rhythmically against hers, drowning out her brief moment of lucidity, and as his hands moved impatiently down her body, holding her fiercely against him, she experienced a shatteringly intense desire for much more than the frantic movement of his body against hers. She wanted him inside her, she acknowledged shakily. She wanted him deep within her with a primitive urgency she had never experienced with Rick.
Rick!
Reality splintered through her fog of physical desire, making her wrench away from Jonas’s hands and mouth with a shocked cry of outrage.
She could hear the harsh unsteadiness of his breathing as she fumbled with her shirt buttons, her face brilliantly flushed as the enormity of what she had been doing engulfed her. Totally unable to look at him, she hurried back to her car on dreadfully unsteady legs, disgusted and humiliated by her incomprehensible response to him.
She heard him call out to her, and panicked into turning round and cry out to him, ‘Keep away from me, do you hear? Just keep away from me!’
She got into her car without waiting for his response, reversing it awkwardly and driving away. She didn’t stop until she had driven through the village, drawing up then in a lay-by and stopping the car, burying her head against
the steering wheel as she fought for self-control. It was a good fifteen minutes before she could bring herself to turn round and drive home.
This time there was no sign of the Land Rover in the drive. Sam greeted her with a warm smile when she went inside, coming into the kitchen to help her unpack the food. She felt so jumpy and tense that she felt sure he must comment on it, but, to her relief, he said nothing.
He was putting the salmon in the fridge when he stunned her by saying, ‘Good, we can have this for dinner tonight. I’ve invited Jonas and Vanessa to join us, by the way.’
‘Vanessa?’
‘Yes. She’s Jonas’s sister—well stepsister really. I met her the first time I came down here. You’ll like her…’
Sara wasn’t listening. Jonas was coming to dinner. Jonas was coming here. She couldn’t stand it. She shuddered, remembering how he had touched her. How on earth could she face him?
How on earth could she not? her pride demanded. She had to face him, to let him see that what had happened between them meant absolutely nothing to her. Her almost frantic response to him was the response she had ached to give Rick in the long months since his death; it had nothing to do with Jonas as a person. She closed her eyes, her skin suffused with hot colour as she remembered the way he had touched her…the way she had responded.
His passion had been born of anger, hers… Hers had been born of anger too. Anger and loss. It had been no more personal than had his physical desire for her. Somehow telling herself that, made her feel better about the whole thing. It hadn’t been Jonas her body had responded to it, it had been Rick. That was the logical explanation. The only explanation, she told herself firmly.
It amazed her that she was still able to do such mundane things as prepare food and talk to Sam about the rival merits of the carpet samples she had brought home while ninety per cent of her brain was struggling to blot out completely what had happened earlier in the afternoon.
She tried to tell herself that Jonas had simply been using on her the same tactics he had no doubt employed successfully on numerous other women, but something refused to let her believe this comfortable fallacy. Oddly enough, it would have been more comforting to persuade herself that Jonas had kissed and touched her with a casual expertise that was wholly clinical and given over to nothing more than gaining another female conquest, but her intuitive feminine intelligence stubbornly refused to let her believe such a reassuring piece of fiction. There had been something about the way he held her; something about the almost compulsive need she had felt in him that frightened her much more than mere sexual domination. While logic struggled to deny it, she was conscious of a primitive thread of fear woven from a deeply instinctive belief that Jonas wanted much more from her than she was prepared or able to give.
She had seen and registered the stunned shock in his eyes when he kissed her this afternoon. He had been as caught off guard by the passion exploding between them as she had herself.
Telling herself she was being too imaginative, she went into the garden to look for Carly.
The brick patio just outside the French windows was overgrown and neglected, and she bent absently to pluck out some of the weeds. They came away easily, a satisfying sensation that she wanted to prolong.
A tiny pink flowering plant ran rampant over some of the bricks, and she hesitated as she looked at it. Weed or flower? She ought to have bought herself a gardening book this morning. She had fully intended to, but she had forgotten.
As silkily as a serpent, the thought slid into her mind that Jonas would know. Dismissing it, she got up and hurried across to the paddock where Carly was talking to the donkey. A placid, good-natured child, Carly made no demur when she was told that she would have to go to bed early as her father was expecting guests. Sam oversaw her bath and preparations for bed, while Sara got on with the meal.
The mahogany table and chairs which had initially belonged to their parents and which Sam and Holly had inherited looked at home in the beamed dining-room. Sara had managed to unearth an old lace tablecloth, dulled from its original white to a soft cream that matched the walls, which she remembered as belonging to her grandmother, and the delicate lace-edged linen set off the silver and china Sam and Holly had been given as wedding presents very well.
She had been rather dubious about using them, not wanting to hurt Sam by reminding him of Holly, but when she had tentatively started to get out their everyday crockery he had frowned and asked why she wasn’t using the Royal Doulton. She had to admit that the rich dark green and gold pattern looked lovely against the tablecloth; she only hoped that the meal lived up to the elegance of the plates. It was just as well she had brought the salmon, otherwise they would have been reduced to giving their guests beefburgers and salad.
Her mother had been an inventive cook, and she had passed on her love of cooking to Sara. She had made a special sauce for the salmon and a soufflé topping, adapting the ordinances of nouvelle cuisine cooking to provide a meal that would both look and taste good.
‘That looks lovely,’ Sam told her, wheeling his chair into the dining-room while she was putting the finishing touches to the table. Flowers from the garden had provided an attractive centrepiece, and Sara stood back to study her handiwork, frowning a little critically.
‘You’re a real old-fashioned girl at heart, aren’t you?’ Sam teased her with brotherly affection, waving his hand in the direction of the table. ‘You’ve inherited our mother’s gift for homemaking, Sara.’ His eyes held hers as he added sombrely, ‘At the moment you’re living in a vacuum, but one day I hope you’re going to find a man who can give you a home and children of your own.’
‘I have a home here with you,’ Sara reminded him tersely. ‘I don’t want another one.’
She looked away from him as she spoke, biting her lip as she recognised the bitter resentment in her voice.
‘I can’t replace Rick,’ she told Sam huskily, ‘and… I don’t want to.’
‘He wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life alone, Sara. You’re only twenty-five…’
‘You’re only thirty,’ she said coolly.
‘Yes, I know. But, unlike you, I haven’t cut myself off from the rest of the opposite sex because of what happened to Holly.’
Stunned by his statement, Sara looked at him with shocked eyes. She had thought that Sam felt as she did…that he could never ever feel for someone else what he had felt for Holly, and that, like her, he wanted nothing more than their fraternal relationship and the love they both shared for Carly.
‘You mean you would marry again?’ Her voice whispered past dry lips, her eyes huge with shock and disbelief.
‘If I found the right woman, yes, I would. I’m not a monk,’ he told her hardily, ‘and Holly wouldn’t want me to live as one. I can’t replace what I shared with her, and nor would I want to, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t love someone else—in a different way.’ He frowned and glanced at his watch. ‘Jonas and Vanessa will be here soon. I’ll finish off in here; you go upstairs and get changed.’
Get changed? Sara stared down at her jeans and shirt uncomprehendingly, her eyes swivelling unwillingly to her brother’s lean body. Sam had changed into a white shirt and a pair of black trousers. Suddenly she felt terribly alone, as though in some way he had abandoned her. Blinking away stinging tears, she went upstairs and opened her wardrobe doors. What on earth should she change into? She stared blankly at her clothes. It had been eighteen months since she bought anything new. The last semi-formal dress she had bought had been chosen with Rick in mind. She had bought it to go to his firm’s annual ‘do’, but he had been killed before it took place.
Her fingers felt stiff and clumsy as they touched the soft silk, jumping away from the disturbing contact with the sensual fabric. When she had bought this dress she had been a very different woman from the one she was now. It was a wrap-over style, stylish but unmistakably sexy—the sort of dress a woman bought to wear for a man.
S
huddering, she pushed it out of sight, dragging off its hanger a plain black linen dress. The same dress she had worn for Rick’s funeral, she recognised numbly, letting it fall to the floor.
She could remember buying it in minute detail, but up until this moment she had almost forgotten she had got it. It must surely be some macabre hitherto unrecognised tendency towards masochism that compelled her to put it on. She wasn’t going to listen to that distressingly uncompromising inner voice that said she was wearing it for protection against Jonas, that she was wearing Rick’s funeral black like a suit of armour. Zipping up the dress, she studied her reflection with detached interest. Black had always suited her, but since she had lost weight it made her look almost ethereal. She found a pair of court shoes at the bottom of her wardrobe and slipped them on, quickly applying fresh make-up. For some reason it seemed that Sam wanted her to dress up.
She couldn’t escape the suspicion that he was trying to do a little discreet matchmaking, hence the pep talk earlier about putting the past behind her. But she didn’t want to forget Rick, she thought fiercely; she had loved him. Had loved? Still loved, surely? Of course she did. Rick had been her whole life. All that had been left since his death was the shell of the woman she had once been. All? Hot colour crawled over her skin as she remembered the wild passion with which she had responded to Jonas’s touch. Shuddering, she put down her lipstick and went into Carly’s room to check on the little girl.
She was fast asleep, lying on her side, with one small starfish hand under her pink cheek. Her face softening, Sara bent to kiss the small forehead.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘THAT was the most delicious meal! You must let me help with the washing up.’
Vanessa Chesney was nothing like her brother. Petite and blonde, she exuded an air of willingness to please that had instantly made Sara feel protective towards her. It amazed her that a woman of her own age could remain so open and vulnerable to hurt. Vanessa had all the engaging warmth and genuineness of a small child, and like a small child she seemed almost achingly anxious to gain other people’s approval.