by Penny Jordan
‘No, I’m afraid we haven’t, sir; however, there is some news on the car. Apparently a lorry driver reported seeing a car that matches the description of yours being driven erratically on the motorway going north. We’ve alerted all the motorway units, but so far none of them have seen anything.
‘You mentioned in your statement that the car had an almost full tank of petrol,’ he added with a faint sigh that fell just short of being gently reproving.
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ Piers agreed, whilst Georgia, who had overheard everything the police officer had said, stood rigidly in the hallway, her face white and her heart thumping.
Piers hadn’t lied to her after all. He had told her the truth. His car had been stolen with Ben in it. She swallowed hard. She obviously owed him an apology.
‘We think we’ve got a pretty good idea of the identity of the pair who’ve taken the car,’ the police officer was continuing. ‘The lorry driver reported two occupants, both of them young males, and we established that two local youths who have a record for taking cars without the owners’ permission and using them for joyriding are missing from their usual haunts in the town. It’s a pity the car had a full tank of petrol; however, on the plus side, the fact that they’ve driven it on to the motorway suggests that they will simply use it for joyriding and then, once the tank is empty, dump it somewhere.’
‘Never mind about the car,’ Piers told him. ‘What about Ben, the dog? Did the lorry driver...?’
The policeman shook his head.
‘No. There was no report about any dog, but...’ He paused and looked uncertainly at Georgia, whose pale, set face gave away her anxiety. ‘The fact that there hasn’t been any sighting suggests...er...that the dog must still be in the car...’
He meant that the youths hadn’t opened the door and pushed Ben out onto the motorway, Georgia guessed, correctly interpreting his coded words. She was a vet, after all, and she had had experience of dogs being thus treated, sometimes by their owners, but that didn’t stop her eyes filling with panicky tears or her hand going up to her mouth to stifle the small sound of pain she could feel rising in her throat.
‘He’s a large, heavy dog,’ Piers said quickly. ‘I doubt he could be easily ejected from the car if he didn’t want to be.’
‘Try not to worry,’ the police officer told Georgia gruffly. ‘Sometimes these joyriders have radios that allow them to listen in to police frequencies, so we’re broadcasting a message that there’ll be a substantial reward for the return of the dog—just as you asked us to,’ he told Piers.
Piers had offered a reward for Ben’s safe return. Georgia could feel her face going scarlet with mortification.
‘You’ll let us know just as soon as you hear anything?’ Piers was requesting the police officer as he turned to leave.
Confirming that he would, he stepped out of the front door, leaving Piers to close it behind him.
As they stood together in the hallway Georgia took a deep breath and closed her eyes, opening them almost immediately as she tried to draw on her rapidly depleting store of inner strength.
‘I’m very sorry about what I said about you...about you hurting Ben and lying about what had happened to him,’ she said, starting her apologies with the words carefully spaced apart, but then rushing over them so that one virtually ran into the other as she finished quickly, ‘I owe you an apology and I...I shouldn’t have said what I did,’ she concluded huskily.
I only said it because it hurt so much that I loved you and that you didn’t love me back and that you couldn’t be the man I wanted you to be, Georgia could have further explained to him, but what was the point when to do so would only expose her to further pain? What mattered most right now was not her own feelings, her own anguished awareness of how much she loved Piers and how impossible it was that her love could ever be returned, but Ben.
‘No doubt you had your reasons for thinking as you did,’ Piers told her curtly. It still hurt that she could have thought him capable of something so cruel and cowardly. His pride still smarted from the blows she had dealt it, but what hurt him far more was knowing how low an opinion she had of him. He had been jealous of Ben, yes—jealous of the way she had taken the dog’s side against him, so to speak, when Ben had chewed his shoe. And, yes, perhaps it had been wrong of him to resent the love she seemed to lavish so tenderly on the dog, whilst treating him with such contempt and scorn, but...
‘I really am sorry,’ Georgia repeated dully, unable to bring herself to look into his eyes, already knowing the indifference she would no doubt see there. Why should Piers care how dreadful she felt? Her feelings were of no concern to him whatsoever!
CHAPTER SEVEN
CAUTIOUSLY Ben poked his nose up towards the half-open rear window of the car, carefully sniffing the air. Country air, he could tell, but not the type of country air that was familiar to him. This air had a different scent about it.
He had been deliberately keeping a low profile under the rug in the rear of the car where he had been asleep when the car had been stolen, controlling his initial reaction to bark warningly at the strangers who had driven off in Piers’s car—the car it was his duty to protect! Intuition had quickly told him that the two men were dangerous and should be left alone. Ben was no coward, but...!
Even more cautiously he looked towards the front of the car, where the two strangers who had driven him off were lolling, half asleep, in a drunken stupor. They had stopped several miles away, having chased a small sports car driven by a pretty girl off the motorway and down a series of narrow, twisting country lanes, hurling taunting comments to her as they did so. She had finally escaped them by driving in through some electronic gates to a large house where the two youths had appeared to decide not to follow.
They had then driven on until they had reached a small village, where they had driven on to the pavement outside a small store, leaving the car engine running whilst they went inside and threatened the shopkeeper, laughing at his distress whilst they took what they wanted from his shelves.
Drinking and swearing at any other unfortunate motorists they’d chanced to come across—fortunately only a few in this remote country area of the Yorkshire Dales—they had finally brought the car to a halt.
‘Better stop,’ one had told the other. ‘Not much petrol left. Need to find a garage...’
‘Won’t find one up here...’ the other had replied, before emptying the can he had been drinking from and throwing it out of the car window.
It was a warm night and they had opened all the electric windows. In the front seat the one doing the driving woke up now and said to the other, ‘Come on, we need petrol.’ He was just starting up the car engine when Ben saw his chance and seized it, jumping quickly through the open window.
‘What’s that?’ the other youth demanded, suddenly alert as he swivelled round in his seat, staring at where Ben was streaking away into the dusk-shrouded countryside.
‘Dunno; I didn’t see anything.’
‘It was a dog...there was a dog here in the car...’
‘No way,’ the driver scoffed. ‘You’ve had too much to drink...and I haven’t had enough. Come on, let’s go and find some more booze...’
‘And some girls...’ his companion suggested.
Booze, girls and petrol... ‘Yeah, cool,’ the driver agreed.
Ben watched from a safe distance as they turned the car round and drove off. The evening air was different from the air at home. There was no river smell for one thing. But he could smell something... On the hillside he heard the baaing of sheep followed by the cry of a fox. Foxes Ben knew...sheep he did not!
* * *
Georgia woke up abruptly. It had been gone midnight before she and Piers had acknowledged that there was no useful purpose to be served in either of them staying up any longer. Neither of them had been able to eat the supper which Piers had insisted on preparing—heaping coals of fire indeed on her guilty head, Georgia had acknowledged later in bed. Anxiet
y for Ben had given Piers’s face a rather distant and stern expression which had prevented her from trying to make conversation with him. Besides, what was the point? She had already said enough, hadn’t she? More than enough!
Wide awake now, she flung back the bedclothes and, reaching for her cotton robe, pulled it on. Her throat ached with suppressed tears and her mouth felt dry. Perhaps if she went downstairs and made herself a cup of tea it might help to soothe her back to sleep.
Where was Ben now? Was he still in the car or...? As she reached the kitchen she came to an abrupt halt. Piers was already there, standing in front of the window, watching the slow fingers of the false dawn stroking across the sky.
As she switched on the light he turned round, his mouth hardening when he saw her. Quite plainly her company wasn’t welcome to him, Georgia acknowledged, and she tried not to betray the fact that her senses were telling her that beneath the robe he had pulled on he was probably completely naked.
What on earth was she doing, thinking about something like that at such a time? The inappropriateness of her thoughts coupled with their sensuality made her face burn with shamed self-consciousness.
There was poor Ben, dognapped and in heaven alone knew what kind of danger and fear, and here she was thinking...longing...fantasising...
‘I just came down for a cup of tea,’ she told Piers jerkily. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ Involuntarily both of them looked towards Ben’s empty bed.
Piers could feel a raw, tight feeling at the back of his throat. This afternoon when he had been walking Ben they had chanced to cross the path of a very attractive brunette walking her dog. Ben had turned to Piers, and Piers could have sworn the look the dog gave him was totally that of one heterosexual male to another. Stupid, of course. A dog was just a dog, and there was no way he, Piers, had ever allowed himself to be sentimental about animals and certainly no way he had ever fallen into the trap of imbuing them with human characteristics.
Georgia could feel her eyes filling with tears.
‘Do you think the police will find him?’ she asked Piers eagerly, unable to keep the longing for reassurance out of her voice.
Piers swallowed and responded far too heartily.
‘Oh, yes, I’m sure they will. Sooner or later whoever has taken the car is either going to abandon it or drive into a garage to fill it with petrol, and when they do...’
Almost as though on cue the telephone suddenly rang, but for a moment neither of them made to answer it.
Piers didn’t believe a word of what he had just told her; Georgia could see it in his eyes. He was afraid of answering the phone, of hearing what might be said, as she was herself, but just as she thought he was going to let it ring without answering it Piers strode across the room and picked up the receiver.
‘Yes. I see,’ Georgia heard him saying grimly. ‘Well, yes, I’m sure it is, but right now I’m not so concerned about that. What about...?’
‘No...he wasn’t there; the garage owner didn’t see any sign of him,’ the police officer on the other end of the line told Piers.
‘Have you questioned the lads?’
‘No. Both of them are too drunk to question, but they’re in custody and once they’ve sobered up...’
As Piers hung up and turned to Georgia she guessed what he was going to say.
‘They’ve found the car,’ he told her gruffly. ‘They tried to fill it with petrol and then drive off without paying, but the garage owner called the police, who managed to catch up with them.’
‘Ben?’ Georgia asked anxiously, but she already knew the answer before she saw Piers shaking his head.
‘No sign of him,’ he told her heavily, avoiding looking at her as he advised her, ‘The police aren’t going to question the two youths who took the car until they’ve sobered up, so why don’t you go back to bed for what’s left of the night and try to get some sleep? You won’t be doing yourself any good, nor Ben either, by staying down here worrying,’ he pointed out gently.
And no doubt he didn’t want to have to cope with her misery or endure her company, Georgia guessed as she dutifully headed towards the stairs.
Five minutes later, though, back in her bed, she knew that sleep was going to be impossible. Ben... Where was he? What had happened to him? Just the thought of him being exposed to the busy traffic of a motorway made her heart stand still. She had taught him to sit and wait before they crossed any road, but... But a motorway wasn’t a road...
Only by gripping her bottom lip between her teeth was Georgia able to hold back the small cry of anguish bubbling in her throat, and she was still biting into it, trying to suppress her fear, when Piers rapped briefly on her bedroom door seconds later and then came in carrying a cup of tea.
‘Somehow I didn’t think you’d be asleep,’ he told her wryly as he indicated the tea he was carrying and told her, ‘Tea, the universal British panacea—so they say...’
Georgia released her bottom lip and tried to smile.
‘It’s kind of you to take the trouble—’ she began stiltedly, and then had to stop as a betraying sob choked off her voice and shook her body.
‘Oh, Georgia,’ she heard Piers groaning, and then he was sitting on the bed next to her, wrapping her comfortingly in his arms.
‘I keep thinking about poor Ben trying to cross the motorway,’ Georgia sobbed. ‘He doesn’t...he won’t...’
‘Don’t,’ Piers groaned. ‘If only I hadn’t put him in the car.’
‘You weren’t to know that it was going to be stolen,’ Georgia tried to protest, and then, as she saw the look of desolation in his eyes, her heart was rocked with tender compassion for him and she told him softly, ‘You mustn’t blame yourself; it isn’t your fault...’
‘Yes, it is,’ Piers insisted, ‘but I promise you, Georgia, I never meant him any harm. I was jealous of him when you insisted on defending him...protecting him from my anger,’ he admitted gruffly, drawing Georgia’s head down against his shoulder and leaning his chin on it so that she couldn’t see in his eyes the real reason for his jealousy, and so that he couldn’t see in hers her compassion and the knowledge that she didn’t return his love.
‘It seemed as though everything he did was right and everything I did was wrong. I could see in your eyes how much you despised me for complaining because he had chewed my shoe...’
‘No!’ Georgia protested quickly, lifting her head to look into his eyes before he could stop her. ‘I never despised you; I was just afraid...afraid that you might insist on sending Ben away.’ She bit her lip again. ‘You see, I knew...know, really...that you were—are right when you say that he isn’t really a suitable pet for your godmother. What he really needs is—’
She stopped as Piers supplied for her, ‘A family.’
Georgia swallowed hard as she nodded.
‘But your godmother loves him, and he’s already been rejected once.’
‘And your tender heart can’t bear to think of him being hurt again.’
‘I hate hurting anything...or...or anyone,’ Georgia admitted in a low voice.
‘Right now, I’m badly in need of some of that TLC of yours,’ Piers told her huskily, bending his head closer to hers.
Georgia took a deep breath and tried to keep still. If she so much as moved an inch...a centimetre...her lips would almost be touching Piers’s. Had what he had just said to her been the invitation it seemed, or did he just mean that he wanted her understanding? The cotton nightdress she was wearing was only thin with tiny shoestring straps but she felt unbearably hot in it, as though her whole body was on fire. Whatever she did, though, she must not give in to the temptation to look at Piers’s mouth, because if she did...
‘Nothing to say?’ Piers whispered, his words so faint that she had to lean closer just to catch them.
But leaning closer was a fatal mistake, and her glance was drawn helplessly from the deep open V of Piers’s robe all the way up the bronzed expanse of his naked chest, with its soft sprinkling of ri
chly silky body hair, up past his Adam’s apple, so tautly masculine in a throat that just begged to be touched and kissed, right to his mouth.
His mouth!
Georgia swallowed helplessly, totally unable to drag her transfixed gaze away from the tormenting temptation it was feasting on. Just looking at Piers’s mouth made her want to reach out and touch it, to trace its shape with her fingertip, memorising its shape and texture so that she could then re-draw it, sketching its every angle with soft butterfly kisses, before...
As though he was reading her thoughts as they formed, she heard Piers telling her urgently, ‘Do it, Georgia. Oh, God, yes...’ he breathed thickly as her wide-eyed, bemused gaze met the sensual intimacy of his. ‘Yes,’ he repeated rawly. ‘Kiss me...’
But as his mouth fastened over hers he was the one doing the kissing, his lips hungrily devouring hers, his arms tightening around her as he drew her closer.
Delicious tremors of excitement shivered down Georgia’s spine as her mouth, her body responded helplessly to him.
‘Piers... Piers...’ She could hear herself moaning his name against his mouth as she clung to him, her hands gripping the edges of his robe and then releasing it as her fingertips accidentally brushed against his hot skin and fiery darts of pleasure acted like magnets, fusing her fingertips and then the whole of her hands to his body as she slid them beneath his robe, exploring the hard breadth of his chest. Her whole body was burning with arousal and longing now, aching to be touched...caressed...possessed...
‘Piers!’ As she gasped his name, helpless to defend herself from what she was feeling, he seemed to sense her confusion, gentling his kiss.
He told her fiercely, ‘It’s all right...it’s all right. I feel the same way. I want you so much it hurts,’ he added, groaning out loud as he ran his hand down her nightdress-clad back and closed his eyes.