by Penny Jordan
To have dinner alone with Ran like this would once have made her feel so excited, so...so thrilled because she had been so besottedly in love with him. Of course, she would hardly have been able to do justice to the meal because then her fevered imagination would have been thrilling her with images of the two of them together alone, after dinner, Ran taking her in his arms and...
‘I’ve asked Mrs Elliott to serve coffee in the library...’
The crisp, businesslike tone of Ran’s voice cut across her treacherous thoughts. Guiltily, Sylvie pushed them away, reminding herself severely of just why she was here.
* * *
‘Here is the separate estimate I asked for, for the work which needed doing here, and here is the receipt I obtained for that work.’
Her facial muscles rigid, Sylvie willed her hand not to tremble betrayingly as she took the papers from Ran and then looked at them. She was furious with herself for giving him the opportunity to put her in the wrong.
Her eyes strayed to the date at the top of the receipted invoice. She wasn’t going to give in yet. Standing up, she handed the papers back to Ran and told him dismissively, ‘What I can see is a signed and dated receipt, Ran.’
‘Showing that the invoice was settled several weeks ago...’
‘Purporting to show that it was settled several weeks ago,’ Sylvie pointed out stubbornly. ‘For all I know this date could have been written on the invoice last week...or...’ She paused meaningfully before adding with a triumphant smile, ‘Or even today...’
She had started to walk away when Ran stopped her, grabbing hold of her arm and swinging her round to face him as he exploded, ‘Are you really trying to accuse me of falsifying this receipt? For God’s sake, Sylvie, what the hell kind of man do you think I am?’
Pointedly Sylvie ignored his question and stared down at where he was still holding onto her arm instead as she demanded icily, ‘Let go of me, Ran.’
‘Let go of you...? Do you realise what you’re saying, what you’re accusing me of doing? You’re not a teenager any more, Sylvie, and if this is some kind of petty attempt to—’
‘No, I’m not.’ Sylvie interrupted him furiously. ‘I’m the Trust’s representative here at Haverton and as such it’s my job to protect the Trust’s interests and its investments... If I think that someone, anyone, is trying to cheat the Trust or misuse its funds, then it’s my job to—’
‘Your job...?’ Ran laughed savagely. ‘You sound very high-minded for someone who’s slept her way into her “job” via her boss’s bed.’
There was a second’s pause and then a white heat, a zigzag of pure fury and frustrated womanly pride, hit Sylvie like a bolt of lightning. Immediately she reacted in the only way her outraged female instincts knew, lifting her hand and slapping Ran’s face in furious rejection of his insult.
Sylvie didn’t know which of them was the more shocked—she who had delivered the blow or Ran who had received it. For a single beat of time they both stood completely still, staring at one another. Sylvie could feel her heart racing, she could see the white, slowly reddening imprint of her hand against Ran’s dark skin and she could see too the vengeful male fury darkening his eyes. Too late to regret her behaviour, or to turn and run; Ran was still holding onto her arm, and as she tried to pull away he dragged her towards him, his eyes glittering with fevered rage.
Sylvie knew, even before it happened, just what he was going to do. She was already closing her eyes and whispering helplessly, ‘No,’ as she felt the hard, bruising pressure of his mouth against her own.
To be kissed like this, in fury, in punishment, and with a blind, searing male desire to dominate, was something totally outside all her experience. Her body had no defences against it, no knowledge of how to deal with it. Panic and anger surged through her body. She was no helpless Victorian virgin, she was a modern woman, able to give as good as she got. Fiercely she returned the anger of Ran’s furious kiss. He was already prising apart her closed lips with his tongue, demanding entry to the intimacy of her mouth, not with the tender touch of a lover but with the forceful pressure of a warrior, a victor. Wildly Sylvie tried to evade him, but he was holding onto her too strongly and all her attempts to break free did was to bring her body into even closer contact with his. She still fought to break free, pummelling his chest with her fists and then, when that did no good and there was no longer any space between their bodies for her to do so, angrily raking her nails down his back.
Somewhere, deep down, in the murkiest of murky waters of her subconscious, lay the knowledge that this wasn’t just about the insult he had given her, nor her angry reaction to it; that this explosion of furious emotion this need to reach out and hurt him, to damage and destroy what was left of the love she had once felt for him, had its roots, its being, in something very, very different from mere insulted female pride.
‘Little vixen,’ she heard Ran muttering thickly against her mouth as he caught hold of her hand. ‘Your elderly lover might need the stimulus of having his back scratched raw when you make love but I certainly don’t.’
Shocked into awareness of what she was doing by his words, Sylvie went still.
Lloyd might not be her lover, but that didn’t really matter; it was the impact of what Ran had just said to her that hurt and wounded so badly, the fact that he was comparing the anger and mutual hatred they were both expressing with an act that, to Sylvie, was one which should be highlighted and hallmarked with tenderness and true emotional love. Suddenly all the anger drained out of her. She felt sickened, not just by Ran’s words but more importantly by what she herself had done. A vixen, Ran had called her, but when animals mated they did so for a specific purpose; their coming together was never an act of cruelty or cynical disregard for everything that sharing the intimacy of one’s body with another should be.
Sylvie could feel her eyes starting to fill with tears. Ran had pulled back from her to look at her, and, taking advantage of his slackened grip, she pulled herself free of him and started to walk quickly, if a little unsteadily, towards the library door.
Startled, Ran called out to her, following her out into the hallway, watching as she disappeared up the stairs. Should he go after her, apologise, explain...? That look he had just seen in her eyes had shocked him. It was more the look of a hurt child than a mature, experienced, worldly woman, and besides... There had been no call for him to make that remark to her about Lloyd. Her relationship with the other man was, after all, her own affair, even if he... God... For a moment there the feeling, the sharp dig of her nails into his skin through the fabric of his shirt, had made him ache so badly for the feel of her naked body beneath his own, the feel, the scent, the taste of her. And if he could have his time again... But what was the point in thinking about, reliving old memories, old mistakes?
He had done what he had thought was best at the time, the honourable thing to do...
CHAPTER SIX
WEARILY Sylvie looked at the luminous face of her watch. Half past one in the morning. She had been awake for the last hour, stubbornly courting sleep, angrily refusing to allow her thoughts to take control, to force her to remember.
She was too hyped up for sleep, too afraid to sleep just in case she... She what? Dreamed of Ran?
She looked across at the desk in front of the window. One of the small pleasures of living in the depths of the country was that one did not need to close the curtains at night. There was nothing Sylvie liked more than being able to see the night sky.
When her mother had first married Alex’s father and they had gone to live in his ancestral home, she had been overwhelmed at first by the darkness of the huge house. It had been Ran who had guessed her fears and apprehensions after he had found her sleepwalking that night. Ran who had been staying at the house instead of his cottage one weekend, ‘babysitting’ her in the absence of her mother, and who had taken her, not back to bed, but to his own room where he had made her a hot drink and talked to her, showing her the teles
cope he used to watch the night sky.
The binoculars beside it he had used for another, more mundane purpose. As the estate manager one of his jobs had been to keep a sharp look-out for poachers. The night had no fears for Ran, and through him she too had learned to appreciate its special beauties. It had been Ran who had taken her to watch the badger cubs at play, earning her mother’s anger. Sylvie quickly stopped that line of thought. Since she couldn’t sleep she might as well try to do some work; that at least would be a far more profitable way of spending her time than thinking about Ran.
Her mouth still felt slightly swollen and sensitive from the way he had kissed her earlier. Her face started to burn as she recalled again the comment he had made to her about her being a vixen—and about Lloyd being her lover.
What would he say if he knew that she had only had one lover and that lover had been a man who hadn’t really wanted her, a man she had had to coax and beg to take her to bed, a man who had told her that he felt no love for her, that what had happened between them had been a mistake, an error of judgement best forgotten?
No. No. No. Angrily, Sylvie buried her face in her hands, but it was too late; there was no pushing back the memories now, they were here, surrounding her, flooding out any kind of denial or rational thought.
She had been at university by then; had, in fact, gone there unwillingly. So intense and all-consuming had been the ferocity of her teenage love for Ran, so burningly immediate and sharp-fanged her desire for him, that she had not been able to bear the thought of putting any kind of distance between them. Every spare minute she had, every excuse she could use, she had used—to be with Ran. As Alex’s stepsister it had been easy enough for her to spend her free time at the estate, joining the group of local teenagers who were helping Ran with some of his environmental projects had given her even more opportunity to be with him. Not that Ran himself had seemed to be aware of her feelings, even though she had done everything she could to show him how she felt.
There had been that afternoon she had fallen into the muddy lake they had been cleaning. Ran had pulled her out, grinning at her mud-covered clothes and hair.
‘I need a bath,’ she had complained, grimacing.
‘A bath?’ Ran had laughed. ‘There’s no way Alex’s housekeeper is going to let you into the house like that. I’d better take you back to the cottage with me and hose you down outside before I let you go back, otherwise we’ll both be in real trouble.’
His cottage... How she had trembled at the thought, imagining not the prosaic cleaning-up operation Ran had so teasingly referred to but something far more intimate, her body soaking in a tub of blissfully hot water whilst Ran lovingly soaped her clean...
‘What’s wrong?’ he had asked her, frowning at her. ‘You’ve gone very red. Are you feeling ill?’
Ill... Sick with love, with longing for him, would have been the appropriate answer, but she had been too naive, too shy to make it. Instead she had shaken her head and dutifully climbed into his battered Land Rover for the drive back to his small estate cottage.
The sensual intimacy she had so dangerously imagined had proved to be just that—a fantasy.
Ran had made her remove her clothes in his small back porch, sternly admonishing her not to move off the old towel he had put down on the floor and to give him a shout once she was undressed and wrapped in the towel he had left her.
‘I’ll put your stuff in the washer—Alex’s housekeeper will kill me if she sees it—and then you can have a quick shower upstairs. You’ll have to go home in my stuff but at least it will be clean.’
‘These towels are awfully thin,’ she had remarked critically once she was standing wrapped in the protection of the largest of them, and Ran had returned to scoop up her filthy clothes.
‘Mmm... I use them to dry the dogs,’ Ran had told her unromantically, grinning at her when he saw her expression. ‘They’re the ones who should be pulling a face,’ he said. ‘When they come back covered in mud they get hosed down outside before they’re even allowed in.’
‘I’m not a dog, I’m a...’ A woman, she had been about to say, but then she had stopped as Ran had stooped to pick up her white briefs from the stone floor, her face turning an unsophisticated shade of pink when she saw how small they looked held in his strongly masculine hand.
The wet had seeped right through her jeans to her briefs, but Ran’s eyebrows had risen as he’d studied them and then her.
‘It’s all right... I can go home without them; it won’t matter under...my...your jeans,’ Sylvie had told him helpfully, far too innocent and young then to understand just how sensuously provocative it could be for a woman to go naked beneath her clothes—and even more so when the clothes, the jeans she was wearing, were his and not her own.
‘It’s okay; I think I’ve got something you can wear,’ Ran had told her laconically.
She had been young and naive but not so young nor so naive as not to be able to guess where the tiny pretty lacy briefs Ran had given her might have come from, and the knowledge that they must have belonged to another woman had cast a shadow not just over the whole day, but over everything.
She had once heard Alex joking with Ran about his taste for older women.
‘I’m not in the market for commitment or marriage,’ Ran had returned. ‘But I’m not about to turn myself into a monk either,’ he had admitted frankly. Neither of them had known that she was listening as she hesitated outside Alex’s library door on her way past.
‘So a woman who knows what life’s all about, who’s been married and decided that it isn’t for her, suits me fine.’
She hadn’t been able to hide her massive crush on Ran before she’d left for university, in fact had openly offered her love to him, but he had determinedly pushed it away—just as he had also determinedly pushed her away.
She had noticed it again at Alex’s annual Christmas party. Her mother had been there, turning her nose up at such little country pursuits, but Sylvie hadn’t cared. She’d been determined that Ran was going to dance with her and that she was going to claim a Christmas kiss from him.
She had been wearing a new dress and high heels. She had put her hair up and worn make-up. Alex had looked at her with tender amusement when she had come downstairs, but there had been no tenderness in Ran’s eyes later that evening when he had removed her arms from around his neck, refusing to give her the kiss she had begged him for. It had taken three glasses of wine before she had had the courage to approach him and, horrendously, she could feel her eyes starting to fill with tears as he’d unlocked her arms from around his neck and started to turn away from her.
‘Ran, please...’ she had pleaded, but he had ignored her, stony-faced and blank-eyed, as he’d walked away from her.
And, as though that hadn’t been bad enough, to compound the evening’s heartache and humiliation, she had seen him less than an hour later dancing with the newly divorced wife of one of Alex’s tenants, holding her tightly against his body as he caressed her under the dim lights, bending his head to kiss her with heart-shaking passion before leading her outside.
She had been so jealous, so burned up with pain that even her skin had felt raw and tender.
Later, naively, she’d told herself that Ran hadn’t meant to hurt her, that he probably still thought of her as a child and not a woman, and so she had gone on clinging to her self-created delusions.
All through her first year at university, as much as she had wanted to hate Ran, she had also yearned for him, dreaming of him, longing for him, promising herself that one day it would be different, one day he would look at her and love her.
She had refused dates from the boys she met on her courses and only attended the regulation student parties because the other girls had teased her into it. Naturally gregarious, although no one could ever come to mean to her what Ran meant, she had nevertheless made several platonic friendships with various boys she had met at university. One of them she had particularly taken to
; shy and self-effacing, David had only come to university because of family pressure. As the youngest of his family he’d been expected to follow in the footsteps of his elder sisters and brothers, all of whom had graduated with honours.
‘What did you really want to do?’ Sylvie had asked him.
‘Paint,’ he had told her simply.
Sylvie’s discovery that he was taking drugs had saddened but not particularly shocked her. They were, after all, a feature of university life, although she herself had stayed clear of them.
It had been David who had persuaded her to attend the rave party where he had introduced her to Wayne. She had guessed that Wayne was his supplier but had naively assumed then that Wayne was no more than a generous-minded individual who had the contacts to supply his friends with drugs, and that it was they who pressured him into obtaining them for them rather than the other way around. Without directly saying so, Wayne had implied that they were two of a kind, individuals who stood out from the crowd. His street-wise sophistication had reminded her in some odd way of Ran. Perhaps because, like Ran, Wayne was older than her and the friends she’d mixed with. She had listened half enviously when he had told her of his plans to spend the summer with a group of eco-warriors, travelling the country.
Sylvie had always been idealistic, and Wayne’s description of the way the group were dedicated to preventing the destruction of the countryside by greedy power barons had increased her sense of comradeship with him and with the group he was joining.
Just as importantly, Wayne had seemed to understand the problems she was having in convincing her mother that she was now an adult.
‘She’s such a snob,’ she had told Wayne ruefully, wrinkling her nose.