So Close and No Closer

by Penny Jordan

  ‘No, that doesn’t,’ he agreed sardonically, and the colour rushed up under her skin at the way he was looking at her.

  Foolishly, recklessly, heedlessly, she ignored the warning signal hammering from her brain and said desperately, ‘What exactly are you talking about, Neil?’

  ‘I’m talking about the way you make me feel, and then back off from me,’ he told her curtly. ‘I’m talking about the fact that you let me get so close and then no closer. I’m talking about the fact that you wilfully and crazily risked your own life rather than ask for help. Doesn’t that tell you anything about yourself, Rue?’

  She was quite proud of the steadiness of her voice when she answered him calmly, ‘Only that I like my independence, and I already knew that.’

  ‘You like your independence,’ he mimicked her almost savagely, half reaching out to her as though he meant to take hold of her and then wrenching himself away, pushing impatient fingers into his hair and turning to look at her, his face tight with anger and tiredness. ‘This isn’t getting either of us anywhere,’ he said grimly. ‘I think we’d both better try to get some sleep for what’s left of the night.’

  Rue glanced involuntarily towards the window. Dawn was already beginning to lighten the sky. A tremor shook her as she realised that, since arriving at the Court, she had hardly given her own home a thought. As though he read her mind, Neil said quietly, ‘As soon as the fire service have anything to tell us, they’ll be in touch. I’ve given them my number here.’

  Part of her told her that she ought to object to him taking charge in such a high-handed fashion, and yet part of her, the larger part, she recognised wearily, was only too relieved to have him do so. It had been a long time since she had had someone to lean on. Rue could deceive the rest of the world, but she couldn’t deceive herself. There was something within her, some flaw in her character perhaps, that had made her long to admit how willing she was for him to shoulder her problems, if only momentarily.

  ‘There’s no need to come upstairs with me,’ she said instead, ‘if you’d just tell me which room I’m to sleep in.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You can take your pick, they’re all furnished. I bought the house with its contents.’

  ‘Where are you sleeping?’ she asked him quickly, and then her face glazed with hot colour as she saw the amusement leap immediately to life in his eyes.

  ‘At last!’ he said teasingly. ‘Although I’m not sure if there’s enough left of either the night or my energy to do full justice to your invitation.’

  Rue didn’t know which was the greater, her fury or her embarrassment. He knew quite well that she had not asked which room was his because she wanted to share it with him; far from it. Mastering her anger as best she could, she said coldly, ‘If that was supposed to be a joke, I consider it to be in very poor taste.’

  Immediately she wished she hadn’t been so rash as he came towards her and said smoothly, ‘Who’s joking? I’ve been wanting to share my bed with you from the first moment I set eyes on you.’ His voice suddenly seemed far too close to the sensual purr of a hunting animal. It made tiny hairs at the nape of her neck stand up on end, and her skin tightened with tension.

  She fought desperately against the effect he was having on her and said shakily, ‘If I’m supposed to find that admission flattering, I’ve got news for you.’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ he broke in, taunting her. ‘You’d only be perjuring yourself.’

  As the hot, indignant words of denial leaped to her tongue, he added smoothly, ‘Your body’s giving you away, Rue, and body language speaks far louder than any amount of words.’

  She realised too late that what he said was true. Her nightshirt, plain serviceable cotton though it was, did very little to conceal her awareness of him as a man.

  ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed,’ she told him tersely, turning away from him and towards the door.

  She was half-way there before she remembered that he still hadn’t told her which was his room, and as she hesitated he seemed to read her mind, because he said softly, ‘Why don’t I just let you find out for yourself which one is mine?’

  She lost her temper then, her self-control already frayed not just by his presence but by the aftershock of the fire, and she turned on him and said fiercely, ‘The only reason I’d want to know which room is yours, Neil, is that so I can avoid going within half a mile of it.’

  She saw from his face that she had angered him, and, while the atmosphere between them tensed to the point of danger, she knew that it was too late to recall her hasty words.

  ‘That wasn’t how you felt the other morning,’ he reminded her. ‘You’d have been only too willing for me to take you where we stood.’

  Much as Rue longed to fling an icy retort at him, there was nothing that she could say, no defence she could make. That knowledge shone from her eyes as she turned to give him one last look, and unaware of what she was betraying to him, she saw his own eyes darken a little, and the anger ease out of them as he took a half-step towards her. But she had had enough trauma for one night, and before he could come within arm’s reach of her she was out of the room and half-way across the hall.

  She deliberately avoided the room which had once been hers, knowing that Neil intended to use it for his mother, and instead chose one of the other bedrooms, opening almost the first door she came to. Having reassured herself that it was unoccupied, she went over to close the curtains and then walked into the en-suite bathroom. It was only as she did so, and saw the door in the opposite wall of the bathroom, that she remembered that this was one of the rooms that shared a bathroom with its neighbour. Not that it mattered; after all, there was only Neil and herself in the house, and he was almost bound to be using the master bedroom, which she knew was down at the far end of the corridor.

  She bathed quickly, letting the hot water clean her skin and soothe her tense muscles. The thought of putting her grubby nightshirt back on was not a particularly pleasant one, but caution insisted that she did so. In the morning she would have to ask Neil to drive her over to her house and bring some clothes back for her, much as she hated the thought of being further indebted to him. And then, as she dried herself and pulled on her nightshirt over her head, it suddenly struck her that in the morning she might not have a home.

  She had just crawled under the blankets and turned off the light when she heard a brief tap on her bedroom door. Before she could say anything, it opened and Neil came in, carrying a glass of water.

  ‘I’ve brought you a sleeping tablet,’ he told her briefly, putting the glass of water down beside the bed. ‘No arguments,’ he insisted, when she opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t want it. ‘I need to get some sleep tonight, even if you don’t. I’m still feeling jet-lagged.’

  ‘Jet-lagged?’ Her eyebrows rose. ‘This is the first time I’ve heard of anyone suffering from jet-lag after a trip to London.’

  ‘I agree,’ he told her grimly, quite obviously disliking her sarcasm, ‘but as it happens the jet-lag I’m talking about was incurred on a flight back across the Atlantic from New York.’

  Numbly Rue swallowed the tablet and took several sips of water.

  ‘I had a business meeting there,’ he told her, almost savagely. ‘In fact, I should still be there.’ He was looking at her almost as though he disliked her, Rue realised on a sudden shock of pain. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I came back,’ he demanded rawly, ‘putting my system through hell, not to mention those of the executives that I took with me? They weren’t too pleased about a round trip to New York and back, which meant almost twenty-four hours in the air. You see,’ he added almost conversationally, ‘I had this odd idea that you might be missing me, that you might be eagerly waiting for me to come back so that we could pick up where we left off the other morning, instead of which…’ he went on, his voice grating harshly against her sensitive ears, ‘I find you on the point of getting yourself burnt alive.’

  Rue winced
at the picture his words drew.

  ‘But you don’t want me, do you, Rue? It was all just a game.’

  A game? If only he knew—but he couldn’t know. She mustn’t let him know. Tiredly she told him, ‘If I wanted you, I’d be sleeping in your room, wouldn’t I, instead of one as far away from yours as I could make it?’

  He gave her an odd look then and seemed about to say something, but at that moment Horatio came wandering into the room, demanding attention not from her, Rue recognised, but from Neil, to whom he suddenly seemed to have attached himself. Neil saw her look of surprise and said derisively, ‘Unlike his mistress, this dog seems to know who his real friends are. Goodnight, Rue,’ he added. ‘I won’t wish you sweet dreams.’

  After he had gone, her mind throbbed with a hundred unanswered questions. Why was he implying that he had rushed back from New York just to be with her, when they both knew that it couldn’t possibly be true? Why was he pretending that his desire for her was so strong that it intruded into his business life—or did he think that she was silly enough and vain enough to believe what he was saying to her? Did he think that he could flatter her into his bed? Didn’t he realise that he had no need to flatter or beguile her, that he simply had to touch her, to look at her? Her thoughts grew cloudy as the sleeping tablet took effect, her eyelids suddenly so heavy that she had to close her eyes.

  Rue opened her eyes slowly and reluctantly, stretching luxuriously as she did so, conscious of having slept deeply and very well. As she looked round the room for a clock, vague, unsettling memories of what must have been dreams made her forehead pucker in a small frown. She had dreamed that the fire was about to engulf her, and her terror had made her scream out sharply. In her dream, strong arms had lifted her out of the way of danger, cradling her against a hard male body, holding her safe, comforting her. As she sat up in the large double bed, she saw a neat pile of her clothes waiting for her in a chair.

  Neil must have been over to the house and brought them for her. She drew back the covers to get out of bed, and then stiffened as her glance fell on the pillow next to her own. It bore the imprint of someone’s head.

  Shock trembled through her. Had those arms that held her not been merely a figment of her imagination, after all? Had Neil actually dared to take advantage of her drug-induced sleep and share this bed with her? For what purpose? she derided herself as she got unsteadily to her feet. Neil was hardly so likely to be starved of female company that he needed to make love to a half-comatose woman, especially a woman who had already shown herself to be more than willing to have him as her lover.

  Had Neil slept there? She reached out and touched her fingers to the indented pillow, moving them gently over the shape of his head, tiny tremors of desire stirring her stomach. Dream or reality? She couldn’t deny the fact that those arms wrapped round her body had brought her comfort and warmth, soothing away all her fears. She trembled a little more as she wondered what it would be like to spend all her nights wrapped in Neil’s arms, and then told herself that she was being a fool to waste her time daydreaming about something that was never likely to happen.

  She walked over to the window and stared outside. To judge from the height of the sun, it must be almost lunchtime. She had slept away almost an entire morning, something totally unheard of, and yet she couldn’t deny that she felt rested and refreshed from her sleep.

  From the window she could see as far as her own cottage, its rooftop just about visible over the high wall which separated it from the field, and her stomach began to churn nervously. How much damage had the fire done? Had it reached as far as the cottage? Had it destroyed the barn completely, and what about her drying shed?

  Suddenly impatient to find out what was going on, she hurried into the bathroom, picking up the pile of clean clothes on her way. There was no one in sight as she went downstairs. She was dying for a cup of coffee, but the door to Neil’s study stood open and she could hear men’s voices coming from inside it.

  Rue walked into the study and then came to an abrupt halt as she saw the three uniformed men talking with Neil. Two of them were policemen, and the other one, she guessed, must be the fire officer.

  ‘Ah, here’s Rue, now,’ Neil told them, interrupting his conversation to turn towards her. He took hold of her arm and gently drew her into the room, pulling out a chair, and almost before she knew what she was doing Rue found that she was sitting down on it.

  ‘Sorry to have to spring these questions on you while you’re still suffering from the shock of last night,’ one of the police officers said to Rue, ‘but I’m afraid that there are certain questions that will have to be answered.’

  Rue looked away from him and said urgently to Neil, ‘The house, the barn…’

  ‘Your home’s quiet safe, Miss Livesey,’ the fire officer told her calmly, answering her question for her. ‘The barn, I’m afraid, has been virtually gutted, although we have managed to save the shell of it. The fire got as far as the drying shed and destroyed some of your stock, but the building itself is still standing.’

  Rue felt so weak that she was glad that she was sitting down. She turned towards Neil, and noticed as she did so a huge pot of coffee on the desk in front of her. Her mouth started to water, and without asking her if she wanted some Neil pulled the tray towards him and poured her a mugful.

  ‘We’ll be taking criminal proceedings, of course,’ one of the policemen announced, ‘but in the meantime I expect you will want to claim against your insurance for the damage.’

  ‘Criminal proceedings?’ Rue stared at him in blank shock.

  ‘Yes,’ the man answered her, apparently unaware of her astonishment. ‘It was very lucky for us that Mr Saxton cared enough about your situation to start making a few enquiries. Without the lead that he was able to give us, I doubt that we’d have been able to find the perpetrators as quickly.’

  Rue looked from the policeman to Neil, her thoughts in turmoil.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. The fire was an accident, wasn’t it?’

  She made two discoveries simultaneously: one was that she was trembling from head to foot, the other was that Neil had somehow taken hold of her hand and that the heat radiating out from that point of contact was having a very disturbing effect on her already overstrained nervous system.

  ‘Not exactly,’ the police officer told her gravely. ‘In fact, I’m afraid it looked very much as though the fire was started as a deliberate attempt to intimidate you. Mr Saxton has told us that this wasn’t the first attempt to do so and that your dog was shot quite recently. Thanks to the information he was able to give us, we were able to act very quickly. We caught the two men who started the fire last night. Petty criminals who are relatively well-known to us, and they’ve admitted that they were paid to do the job by David Jenson.’

  Rue stared at them. ‘The builder? But why?’ She looked helplessly at Neil. ‘I don’t understand any of this.’

  ‘It’s quite simple, really,’ Neil told her soothingly. ‘When Horatio had been shot, I made a few discreet enquiries of my own. No one from the village had been out shooting over my land, but someone did mention seeing a couple of strangers parking an old van well off the main road. He saw two men getting out of the van, one of them carrying a gun. What I couldn’t work out at first was who would have a motive for shooting Horatio, and then you yourself answered that question without even knowing you were doing so.’

  ‘How?’ Rue asked him in bewilderment.

  ‘You told me that the same builder who had wanted to buy your land and cottage had bought some farm land with no direct access to the main road, or to any road for that matter, and that the only way he could gain such access would be if he were somehow to gain possession of your land. Since I knew for myself how determined you were not to sell, when I discovered that Horatio had probably been deliberately shot I was immediately rather suspicious. Everyone knows how devoted you are to the dog, and it struck
me that the builder may well have decided to institute a campaign of harassment against you, designed to get you to sell to him. The fire served two purposes at once,’ he added grimly, ‘both frightening you and destroying your business. That was one of the reasons I went to London,’ he added obliquely. ‘I have contacts up there who were able to find out much more about Jenson’s way of doing business than I was able to do. When I learned that he didn’t have a particularly good reputation for the way he achieved his business deals, my concern grew.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’ Rue demanded shakily, completely forgetting their audience.

  Neil looked at her, his steady grey gaze making her flush slightly. ‘Would you have believed me?’ he asked her quietly.

  He had every right to make that quiet challenge. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It all sounds so very far-fetched.’

  ‘Does it?’ Neil asked her grimly. ‘There was nothing imaginary about that fire last night.’

  ‘If we could just ask you a few questions, Miss Livesey,’ the police officer put in calmly, ‘it won’t take very long.’

  It didn’t, and Rue answered them as best she could, too shocked and astounded by the revelations Neil had made to be able to pay very much attention to the more mundane questions of the police officer.

  An hour later, when the three of them had left, she turned to Neil and said shakily, ‘I really ought to go back to the cottage. I must see how much damage has been done. You’ve been very kind, but…’

  ‘I’ll drive you there after we’ve had something to eat,’ Neil told her tersely.

  Now, when she needed his tenderness and compassion the most, to help her cope with the shock of what she had learned, he seemed to be distancing himself from her, deliberately holding himself aloof. It was very hard now, looking into his withdrawn features, to believe for one moment that this man had held her all through the night. That must have been a dream, she told herself tiredly, and the imprint on the other pillow probably her own.