by Penny Jordan
‘There’s no need for you to go to so much trouble, Neil. You’ve already done more than enough.’
She started to shake suddenly as the full horror of what could have happened to her if he hadn’t intervened suddenly struck her. She heard Neil curse as she suddenly swayed on her feet.
‘What the hell are you trying to do to yourself?’ he demanded gruffly. ‘You don’t have to prove anything to me, Rue,’ he added with a savagery that dismayed her. ‘I know how much you value your independence, how much you hate and abhor the idea of having to depend on anyone, especially on me,’ he added angrily.
Rue had no idea what she had said or done to merit his anger, and as for her independence, she almost laughed aloud. She had lost that the day he had walked into her life.
CHAPTER TEN
IN THE event, it was three days before Rue’s doctor pronounced her fit enough to be allowed to visit the cottage, and then only under Neil’s supervision. She had apparently inhaled some smoke during her frantic attempts to rescue her stock, and this had resulted in a chest infection which made her lungs ache painfully and her body feel unfamiliarly weak.
So weak, in fact, that by the time she had walked round the house and seen for herself that it had not been touched by the fire she was more than glad of Neil’s arm to lean on as he escorted her back to his car. Her head was thumping painfully, and she saw the now-familiar frown on his forehead as he had to match his steps to the slower pace of hers.
No wonder he was impatient with her; he must be sick and tired of the responsibility of her…a responsibility which he should by rights in no way have to shoulder. It was true that he was her closest neighbour, and it was equally true that both her doctor and the police seemed to think it only right and natural that she should be staying with him. She felt increasingly uncomfortable about it, though; she had no right to impinge on his privacy…or on his time.
Since that first night she had had no more dreams about him holding her, and she had come to the conclusion that that dream had been caused by her drug-induced sleep.
If Hannah had not been in Spain she would have got in touch with her and begged for her help, and it struck Rue, as she sat in a wicker chair in the conservatory wondering what on earth had happened to her old strength and energy, that although she had many, many acquaintances, there was no one she could actually turn to for the kind of succour Neil had given her.
He had so many calls upon his time that she could only marvel at and rather envy his dynamism. She had discovered while staying at the house that he kept in daily contact with his factory in Cambridge, via the very advanced computer installed in one of the cellars.
She had also learned inadvertently, through happening to walk past his open study door while he was on the telephone, that in addition to lecturing on the subject of advanced computer science he also gave generously and anonymously to several charities, mainly those that helped the socially and financially deprived.
Once a week a team of contract cleaners came to go through the house and leave it immaculate, but apart from that he had no other help, no housekeeper as her own father had had. He cooked his own meals and presumably dealt with his own laundry, although Rue doubted that he was actually personally responsible for his immaculately starched and ironed shirts.
She had never known a man who was so self-sufficient; her father, excellent scientist though he was, could barely make a cup of tea, and Julian…well, Julian, as she had discovered once she married him, expected to be waited on virtually hand and foot by the women in his life.
Neil, on the other hand, not only didn’t need anyone to perform life’s more mundane chores for him, he actually actively prevented her from doing so. He must want to make it plain to her that there was no role for her in his life. He had given no indication at all that he still desired her and, struggling to control her ever-growing love for him, Rue knew that she must either find a way of excluding him from her life completely, or accept that his proximity meant she would almost certainly spend the rest of her life suffering the torment of unrequited love.
She had spent most of the morning at the house with the insurance assessor, who had reassured her that she was adequately covered for the fire. He had further informed her that, under the terms of her insurance policy for the business, it was the insurance company’s responsibility to provide someone to take charge of the day-to-day work with the flowers for the duration of her own incapacity.
Rue, who hadn’t been able to remember such a clause in the policy, frowned now as she thought about it. There was no doubt that it was a relief to have everything taken care of, every burden lifted from her shoulders. The fire had affected her more than she had at first thought, both emotionally as well as physically.
The knowledge that someone could have set out to deliberately intimidate her without her even suspecting what was going on had left her feeling very vulnerable. Although she wouldn’t for the world have admitted it to anyone, least of all Neil, she was growing increasingly reluctant to move back into the cottage. She was, for the first time since Julian’s death, frightened of living on her own.
She moved restlessly in the cane chair. Neil was in Cambridge on business and, as always when he was away, she missed him. Not that he spent much time with her, seeming actually to avoid her company whenever he could.
Perhaps the best thing she could do would be to sell the cottage and its land to Neil and make a fresh start somewhere else. Somewhere where she wouldn’t be constantly tormented by his presence. As Neil himself pointed out to her, with the money from the sale she could buy herself a small property and live quite comfortably on her investment. It would have to be in the country, of course. Horatio would never adopt to city living. She might even find a job.
Neil walked in while she was mulling over the wisest thing to do.
The sight of him, as always, had a very definite physical effect on her body, its reaction to him so immediate and strong that she still hadn’t found a way to control it. Instead she turned away from him, pretending to be absorbed in the view from the conservatory window. When her father had owned the Court, she had rarely used this room, but now she found it a relaxing and secure haven.
When she had herself sufficiently under control, she turned and looked warily at Neil. He looked drained and tired, tiny lines of exhaustion fanning out around his eyes.
‘Wouldn’t it make life much easier for you if you lived closer to the factory?’ she asked him impulsively, concerned for the strain he constantly put himself under.
Immediately he frowned angrily, and demanded, ‘Still trying to get rid of me, Rue? I’m sorry, but I’m not about to oblige you. I’ve had to work damned hard all my life. My father died when I was seven and I watched my mother struggle to find the money for us to live. I swore then that things were going to be different, and now that they are I sure as hell am not going to spend my precious free time cooped up in a high-rise apartment!
‘There comes a time in a man’s life…and a woman’s…when you have to decide what you want from life…what it is you’re striving for. More success…more money…more pressure to attain more and more power…or something else? My business is successful. I can make as much money as I need without pushing myself any harder.
‘Twelve months ago I came to a decision. I looked around myself and at my own life, and what I saw made me stop and take stock. I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve got a successful business and I’m a wealthy man. During the years I was building the business I deliberately avoided getting myself involved in any kind of committed relationship. There wasn’t time, it was too much of a risk…you name it, I used every excuse there was to keep myself from admitting the truth.’ He swung round and looked hard at her. ‘Shall I tell you what that truth is, Rue? Shall I tell you what I’ve had to learn about myself? You’d do well to listen, because there’s something you could learn from my mistakes…’
He had never spoken to her like this before…never told her so much about his
own background, his thoughts and feelings. Her mouth felt dry, and she touched her tongue-tip to her lips nervously, not sure if she was going to like what she was about to hear.
‘I looked around and saw that the majority of my peers had wives and families…they had homes and hobbies…they went on holidays… In short, they had and did all the things I had deliberately excluded from my life. I looked at them, and I looked at myself, and for the first time in my life I asked myself if the price I had decided to pay for my success had been worth while, and I made myself face up to the fact that it wasn’t because I was building up the business that I had refused to get involved in any kind of emotional commitment, it was because I was running scared. Scared not of commitment, but of loss…of loving someone and losing them, the way my mother had lost my father…’
Rue hesitated for a long time after listening to his impassioned speech, and then she asked him uncertainly, ‘And that’s why you bought this house?’
‘I bought this house as an act of faith…as a commitment to myself, if you like, that my life was going to change, that it was going to contain all the things it had previously lacked. Be careful you don’t make the same mistakes I made, Rue,’ he told her abruptly. ‘Be careful you don’t wake up at night and find out what it really means to be completely alone.’
She swallowed painfully, wondering what he would say if she told him she had already discovered that she knew the pain that came from such loneliness.
Instead she said brightly, ‘I suppose that, now you’ve got a house, the next thing you’ll be looking for will be a wife.’
Her heart started thumping as he gave her a cool look and then said quietly, ‘You suppose quite right.’
‘I don’t imagine you’ll have to look far,’ she told him, determined not to let him see the effect his announcement was having on her. ‘I’m sure there must be any number of women only too willing to marry you.’
She tried to make her voice sound mocking and faintly derisory, desperate to conceal her inner pain.
‘Unlike you… You’re not the marrying kind, are you, Rue?’ he said grimly. ‘You prefer your independence.’
He couldn’t have made it plainer that she was the last woman he would consider as a wife. She swallowed painfully and whispered, ‘Yes, that’s right. Marriage isn’t something I want. After all, I’m not like you, Neil; I’ve tried it once.’ She got up unsteadily. ‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go upstairs for a rest.’
She saw him frown. ‘Are your lungs still bothering you? The doctor…’
‘I’m tired, that’s all,’ she interrupted him bleakly, and then added bitterly, ‘You seem to forget that this isn’t my home, Neil. I’m not used to sharing my living space with someone else.’
He stood up too, giving her an angry look, his mouth set in a bitter line.
‘You don’t need to go on. I get the message,’ he told her grimly.
* * *
IN HER ROOM, Rue didn’t rest as she had told Neil she was going to do, but instead reached for the telephone he had considerately had installed for her, and dialled the number of her solicitor.
He seemed surprised when she gave him instructions, and no wonder, Rue reflected wryly as she hung up. After all, it wasn’t so very long ago that she had sworn that she would never, never sell her home, and yet here she was changing her mind, telling him to write to Neil’s solicitors and inform them that if Neil still wanted to buy the house and land she was prepared to sell them to him.
Knowing the laboriously slow way in which legal wheels turned, Rue guessed it would be several days before Neil learned of her change of heart, by which time she would have removed herself from his proximity permanently.
Now that the decision was made she would need to organise herself. She would need somewhere temporary to live…
Luckily it was almost the end of the summer. She ought to be able to rent a holiday cottage without too much difficulty. The local estate agent could probably help her with that, and once she was safely away from Neil she could start to make proper plans for what she was going to do with her future. A bleak and empty future without him, but, listening to his plans for his own life, it had become depressingly clear to her that there was no way she could remain living in the village watching him with his wife and family, slowly growing more and more embittered and alone.
There would be time enough tomorrow to start making formal plans. Now she felt as drained and in need of a rest as she had claimed. Her muscles ached with tension and she glanced towards the closed bathroom door. A warm bath to relax her, and then a brief sleep. She grimaced wryly to herself as she headed for the door. That was all she seemed to do these days, eat and sleep, and yet, strangely, she had not gained any weight…did not feel any real benefit from her relaxation. And, if anything, the tension inside her seemed to grow and go on growing.
* * *
SHE WAS IMMERSED IN THE WARM, soapy water when the communicating door to the other bedroom opened abruptly and Neil strode in.
He was half-way across the room, heading for the opposite door, when he stopped abruptly, realising she was in the bath.
Rue had never felt more self-conscious or more embarrassed in all her life.
As he stared at her she made instinctive and totally ineffective efforts to conceal her nudity, at the same time demanding breathlessly, ‘Go away!’
‘Not yet. Not until you’ve told me exactly what you’re playing at,’ Neil told her grimly.
‘Playing at?’ Rue stared at him in confusion. ‘I’m having a bath.’
His glance flickered from her face down to where the wet curves of her breasts rose above the foamy water. Her flesh tingled as she saw the sudden hard burn of colour darken his cheekbones.
And then he had himself under control and was looking back into her eyes, his own dark with anger.
‘That isn’t what I meant and you know it,’ he told her tersely. ‘My solicitor’s just been on the phone.’
Now it was Rue’s skin that burned, in a hot, betraying tide of colour that seemed to start at her toes and sweep all the way up her body, until there was no part of her that hadn’t pinkened under her guilty flush.
She had counted on Neil’s not finding out about her decision until she was too far away from him to question her, because if there was one thing she had learned about him it was that he was not the kind of man to take anything at face value, and she knew that he would question and delve into the reason for her abrupt change of mind until she was in danger of revealing the truth to him.
And that was the last thing she wanted to do.
He looked at her for so long that the pink flush darkened to bright scarlet and, although she longed passionately for him to go away, it was no longer because her nudity embarrassed her, but because she was afraid of what he might make her say.
‘Why the change of heart, Rue?’ he asked her quietly.
If only she had had the forethought to prepare herself for this interview. If only she had not rushed foolishly into action. If only she had waited until she had already left before getting in touch with her solicitor…
She fought to maintain some degree of self-possession and said huskily, ‘I know this is your home, Neil, but surely I’m entitled to some privacy? Can’t we discuss this later, when I’m dressed? The water’s getting cold,’ she added, giving a genuine shudder.
‘You’d better get out of the bath, then, hadn’t you?’ he told her unemotionally, adding, ‘I’m not a complete fool, Rue. If I give you the opportunity, you’ll disappear without telling me what the hell’s going on.’
Rue stared at him in disbelief. He didn’t expect her to get out of the bath with him standing there, did he? It seemed that he did, and when he saw her hesitation he looked at her grimly and said, ‘Don’t move.’
When he opened the door and walked into the other bedroom she was half tempted to get out the bath and make a dash for her own room, but she was glad she had resisted the urge when
he returned in less than two minutes carrying a thick towelling robe.
‘Here, put this on,’ he told her, handing it to her and then turning his back.
The water had gone cold and she shivered as she stepped out of it, her fingers clumsy as she pushed her arms into the robe, which was many sizes too big for her. The faint, elusive musk that clung to it was Neil’s, she recognised, her body reacting to the intimate scent of another human being.
‘This is your robe,’ she said almost accusingly as he turned to face her. ‘What was it doing in that room? Your bedroom is right down the end of the landing.’
‘Is it? What makes you think that?’ Neil asked her.
Uncertainly Rue looked at the half-open door.
‘I moved into this bedroom because Hannah said the decorators would probably want to start on the master suite first, and just as well I did, too. The first night you were here you had a nightmare, and you were screaming fit to raise the dead.’
Rue’s mouth went dry, her whole body suddenly tense, the question she had to ask trembling on her lips. She stared at him, her eyes enormous with despair and pain.
‘I tried to wake you up,’ Neil continued drily, ‘but you were too deeply under—not so deeply, though, that you were going to let me go.’
‘Let you go?’ Rue demanded chokily, her chest tight with anxiety. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Only that when I leaned over you to try to wake you up you put your arms around me and whispered that you wanted me to stay.’
‘No,’ Rue protested, but even as she made the denial she wasn’t sure of her ground. She had no recollection of that night at all, apart from those fragmented memories of a bad dream about the fire, followed by the blissful comfort of being held and comforted…
‘Yes!’ Neil insisted. ‘Yes! You opened your eyes and looked at me and told me that you wanted me to stay. You spent the whole night sleeping in my arms.’
‘I didn’t know what I was doing,’ she told him huskily. Suddenly it had become imperative that she convince him that her behaviour had meant nothing. ‘Anyway,’ she added wildly, ‘that isn’t important now. If you don’t want to buy my property, Neil, then all you have to do is to say so. No doubt I can find another buyer.’