by Penny Jordan
However, having won her battle to pay for her goods, she made no demur when Luke offered to carry them to the car for her.
‘Lunch now,’ he suggested, once her purchases were safely stowed away, ‘and then back to your place to start work.’
‘This really is very kind of you,’ Melanie told him uncertainly. ‘It really isn’t…you don’t have to…’
‘I don’t have to what?’ he asked her as they got into the car. ‘I don’t have to spend my time with an extremely beautiful woman?’
Melanie flushed brilliantly, opening her mouth to protest that she wasn’t beautiful, and then closed it again.
‘That’s better,’ he approved as he set the car in motion. ‘I can see that your mother must have told you never to argue with a man when he’s driving.’
‘I don’t have a mother.’
The bleak statement was made before she could check it and, as the hot, shocked colour stormed her skin and then receded from it, she wondered what on earth had possessed her to make such an admission.
It was too late to call it back now. Even without turning her head to look at him, she knew that Luke was watching her. Another moment and he would be questioning her; then would come the shock, the surprise, the distaste.
Before she could stop herself, she said fiercely, ‘I don’t have a father, either; in fact I don’t have anyone—no parents, no siblings, no one.’
There, it was out…said, the dreaded fact falling into its usual abyss of shocked silence. She had learned a long time ago that to admit her orphaned state was tantamount to admitting to having a criminal record or an unspeakable social disease; as shocking to her onlookers as though she had stripped herself naked in front of them and then revelled in their embarrassment. And people were embarrassed by her revelations; she knew that; knew it from the way they looked at her; the way they backed off and then turned away from her.
There was no reason why Luke should be any different.
She heard him repeating her words, heard the shock in them; felt her heart sink, and the nausea begin to churn inside her; but then, shockingly, unexpectedly, the car stopped and his hand cupped her jaw, his fingers sliding into her hair as he turned her head round so that he could look at her.
This wasn’t what normally happened… This was confusing her…bemusing her, or was it the sensual heat of Luke’s hand against her skin, his fingers gently massaging the tense skin of her scalp?…a reflex and automatic action she was most sure he had no idea he was performing, because when her startled gaze met his he was watching her with a sombreness that was totally non-sexual.
‘No one,’ he repeated, frowning a little. ‘I hadn’t realised. I suppose that explains—’
He stopped abruptly, but Melanie could guess what he had been about to say.
‘Why I didn’t want to talk about my background when you asked me earlier. It’s very difficult to talk about something of which you have no knowledge whatsoever.’
She was starting to tremble; she could feel the old anguish, the old sickness rising up inside her. Another few seconds and she would be completely unable to control what she was feeling.
She forced herself to remember how tremulously she had confided to Paul about her past, how she had waited for his sympathy, his concern, how she had held her breath, aching for him to take her in his arms, to kiss her and tell her that it didn’t matter, that she had him to love her now; but instead he had turned away from her; instead he had been as shocked and filled with distaste as all the others.
‘Can we please go now?’
Her teeth were chattering and she was starting to shake. She felt Luke’s hand tighten against her skin as though he meant to refuse to let her go, and then almost immediately its grip was relaxed.
‘Yes,’ he agreed quietly. ‘This isn’t a subject to be discussed here. I’m sorry if I upset you. I do know what it’s like. At least, a little. For years I believed that in some way I was responsible for my father’s death; that it was because I was unsatisfactory as a son in some way that he had been killed. My mother was horrified when she eventually realised what I thought. I understand that children with parents who are divorcing suffer the same feeling, that somehow they are to blame for the break-up of their parents’ marriages.’
He was setting the car in motion again and as he did so he asked her quietly, ‘You say you have no other family. Are you sure—have you…?’
‘The authorities made all the usual enquiries. They couldn’t trace anyone. It isn’t as unusual a situation as you might think; children’s homes all over the country—’ She stopped abruptly, knowing that she was allowing her emotions to get out of hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised to him.
When he suggested briefly, ‘Would you prefer to give Chester a miss and go straight home?’ it was only her pride—plus the fact that she was practically biting through her bottom lip—that prevented her from allowing her tears to fall.
She said shakily, ‘Yes. I think that would be the best thing.’
So, despite his apparent sympathy, he was just like the others after all. What she had mistaken for concern, for sympathy, had probably only been professional curiosity, hence his question about whether or not she had tried to trace her family. Perhaps he had been hoping to pick up a new commission for his business, she reflected bitterly; he had probably realised by now that that would be a more profitable way of spending the next few days. Yes; she doubted that he would be as keen to pursue his flirtation with her now that he knew the truth.
People like her, people who had been deprived of love during their childhood, had such a dangerous need to be loved that the opposite sex tended to give them a wide berth, especially when a flirtation was all they had in mind. No; she suspected that the few days he had talked of would rapidly coalesce into this afternoon’s trip to the superstore and the consequent drive back to her cottage; that Luke would at some point on the return journey discover some vital and hitherto overlooked piece of business which would prevent him from spending the rest of the day with her. And after that…after that she would simply not see him again.
She told herself that it was all for the best; that she was far too vulnerable to share with him the kind of brief meaningless relationship she had no doubt he had originally had in mind; that to be rejected now, while humiliating, was in the long run safer.
It should have come as no real surprise therefore, when, after pulling up outside her cottage after an almost silent drive, Luke should say briefly, ‘Look, there’s something I’ve got to do. I’ll see you safely inside and then…’
No, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. It shouldn’t have hurt either, but it did.
All she wanted to do was to escape from him; to escape from everyone; to be on her own, somewhere safe, somewhere private; somewhere she could give vent to her pain, her anguish, without anyone else witnessing her lack of self-control.
‘There’s no need to come to the door with me,’ she told Luke tightly, keeping her face averted and her body tensely several feet away from his; but he still kept pace with her, still waiting with apparent courtesy and care while she fumbled for her keys and eventually managed to let herself inside the cottage.
She told herself that she was not going to watch while he drove away. After all, why should she? He was a stranger, anyway; a man she had known for less than twenty-four hours. Known? She smiled bitterly to herself. Was she really never going to learn the true lessons of the past?
Luke had been gone ten minutes before Melanie realised that he still had their afternoon’s purchases with him. Well, what did it matter? Without his help there was no way she could have fixed the dado rail in place anyway.
In the kitchen she stared dispiritedly at the wall, which slowly started to blur as tears filmed her eyes.
She bit down hard on her bottom lip, tightening her throat muscles against her urge to cry.
Crying didn’t help. She had learned that years ago, surely, the first time she realise
d that she wasn’t like other children; that she was different; that she was something called an orphan.
But then she had been a child and she wasn’t a child any longer. Now she was an adult; now she had taken control of her life, and it was up to her what she made of it.
All right, so she had found Luke Chalmers attractive; when he’d kissed her he had made her feel… She swallowed tautly. Best not to think about how Luke had made her feel when he’d kissed her; best to think instead about how he had made her feel less than half an hour ago, when he had walked her to the cottage door and then left her there, when he had changed his mind about wanting to spend time with her, when he had—
She stiffened suddenly as she heard the sound of a car drawing up outside, watching the window warily. When she saw Luke coming down the path towards the back door, her heart started to thump erratically.
She went to the door and opened it.
‘The wood—’ she began unceremoniously, but he stopped her, saying cheerfully,
‘Oh, that can stay where it is for now. I suddenly remembered when we were on the way back here that there’s a shop in the next village where they sell the most marvellous home-made bread and stuff, and I thought that, even though you hadn’t felt up to having lunch out, you might fancy afternoon tea. My domestic skills aren’t up to much but I am capable of brewing a respectable pot of tea and toasting a few crumpets. That’s what I’ve got here,’ he added, brandishing the paper carrier-bag he was holding. ‘That, plus some homemade scones and the requisite jam and butter and cream. I even got the tea—Queen Mary’s sort, one of my favourites; I hope you’ll like it…’
Melanie stared at him while her thoughts rushed dizzily through her head.
This couldn’t really be happening. She was imagining it…hallucinating… In real life one simply did not come knocking on her door, offering to make her afternoon tea. Things like this simply did not happen to her.
She closed her eyes and then opened them again very slowly.
Luke was still there, only now, instead of smiling at her, he was watching her with frowning anxiety. ‘Is something wrong?’
Wrong…wrong…
Her mouth had gone dry. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘No…no,’ she said huskily. ‘Nothing. Everything’s fine.’
And suddenly, gloriously, wonderfully, it was.
She had been wrong about him, wrong about him being just like all the others. Wrong about him rejecting her because of her background…wrong about him in every way—except one.
Her body shook as she saw the way he was looking at her, her eyes illuminating brilliantly.
Would he kiss her again…? Would he…?
She came out of her daydreams to hear him saying wistfully, ‘I don’t suppose that chimney on your roof means that this place still has a genuine, honest-to-goodness, proper fire, does it? There’s something about tea, crumpets and a good log fire…’
‘There is a fire,’ Melanie agreed shakily. ‘But as yet I haven’t tried to light it, although I know there are some logs in the garage.’
‘Great; leave everything to me.’
CHAPTER FOUR
LEAVE everything to him, Luke had said, and perhaps weakly—yes, certainly weakly for a very modern and independent-minded young woman—Melanie had done exactly that; and now here she was, sitting opposite him with the fire burning warmly between them, and the logs—apple logs, he had told her approvingly—crackling companionably.
It was still light outside but the sky was overcast, and without the lights on the fire gave the room a warm glow that softened the shabbiness of its décor and furnishings.
On the folding table that Melanie had found tucked away in the walk-in pantry was a tray of tea, made by Luke, and on the hearth a covered dish holding the toasted crumpets.
Her appetite, which had fled during those moments in the car when she had revealed to him her history, had suddenly returned, her mouth watering as Luke offered her the covered plate.
Oozing butter and jam, it was hardly the most healthy of foods, but it certainly tasted delicious, she admitted as she sank her teeth greedily into the crumpet and then closed her eyes as she savoured its taste.
When she opened them again, Luke was watching her. The amusement in his eyes made her flush like a schoolgirl.
‘I was hungry,’ she told him defensively.
He laughed at her, the sound of his laughter not mocking, but warm and tender. ‘Don’t apologise. It’s a pleasure to see a woman enjoying her food, especially these days. What do you think of the tea?’
She took a sip.
‘It’s good,’ she told him.
He laughed again. ‘Don’t sound so surprised. My mother is a lifelong tea-drinker. This is one of her favourites.’
An hour and two more crumpets later, Melanie felt as though she couldn’t possibly eat another thing.
‘Mmm. Me neither,’ Luke agreed.
She saw him glance at his watch and felt herself tense as she waited for him to say that he had to leave, but instead he told her, ‘We can still manage to put in a couple of hours’ work on the decorating if you feel up to it.’
‘Well, I can hardly let you start doing that now,’ she began to protest, but immediately he overruled her.
‘I’m looking forward to it.’
He was smiling at her so warmly that her body seemed to respond of its own accord to that warmth, a gentle tingling beginning at the base of her spine and spreading out to every part of her body.
She got up quickly. This was silly. She was overreacting, surely. All right, so he was an attractive man; a very attractive man; and so he seemed intent on making her aware that he found her attractive as a woman, but that didn’t mean…
She reached down to pick up the tray, and then tensed as Luke reached out and caught hold of her right hand. While she looked at him in confusion, he raised it to his mouth, and then, as her stomach muscles clenched and her whole body shuddered inwardly in shocked disbelief, he slowly started to lick her fingers, telling her softly, ‘Blackcurrant jam always was my favourite.’ And, while his tongue tip probed between her fingers, she looked down at her hand and realised, with a mind that suddenly seemed incapable of assimilating even the most basic of information, that there was indeed jam on her skin. But then, as Luke continued his cleansing operation, her ability to think disintegrated completely beneath the flood of sensation engulfing her like a landslide.
Common sense, caution and the instinct for self-preservation which her life had instilled in her—all of them warned her that she must stop what was happening to her before it was too late, but their urgent voices, even when they called out to her in unison, were not loud enough to drown out the siren song of her own desire.
Desire like this—so fierce, so strong, so urgent and inescapable that she could do nothing other than succumb to its fiery licking heat—was something she had never experienced before, something so new to her in fact that she wasn’t even aware of gazing at Luke with dazed, confused eyes, or of reaching out to him with her free hand, an instinctive imploring gesture, pleading cessation of the torment he was causing inside her.
Shudder after shudder trembled through her body; she was breathing unevenly, taking short gulps of air.
‘Melanie.’
She heard the raw, fierce note in Luke’s voice and focused muzzily on him. He looked different, somehow; the bones in his face seemed harder, sharper, the flesh along his cheekbones burning with heat. He was even looking at her differently. His eyes: she had never seen that look in a man’s eyes before; never realised that male desire could actually make the coolest of eyes burn so hot that she could almost see the hungry flames of desire that darkened them.
Even if she had been able to comprehend that he was going to kiss her, she doubted that she would have stopped him; but as it was it seemed to her confused brain that one moment he was releasing her hand and the next she was somehow or other not just in his arms, but loc
ked so tightly against his body that she could almost feel the fierce pulse of his blood through his veins.
This time there was no teasing preparation, no slow, almost careful seduction of her lips. This time his kiss had a hunger, an urgency that made her heart shake and her body yearn.
When he opened her mouth, parting her lips with the powerful thrust of his tongue, the involuntary convulsion of her body elicited a harsh sound of triumph from him that sent warning thrills skittering down her spine.
He made no attempt to touch her intimately, and yet somehow the very way he was kissing her was more of an intimacy than if he had physically caressed her body. Her breasts ached and so did her stomach. With each passionate thrust of his tongue within her mouth she felt a corresponding urge to press herself ever closer to his body, to mould herself to his flesh, his bones, until she was physically a part of him.
One of his hands supported the back of her head, his fingers splayed out against her skull, the other lay against the small of her back, pressing her into his body. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, her fingers curling into solid muscle and taut flesh.
Somewhere in the distance she could hear something, an annoying, intrusive sound, but it was only when Luke released her that she realised that it was her telephone ringing.
When she went to answer it she discovered that she could barely walk, that her whole body felt weak and empty. As she stepped out into the hallway the cool air there made her shiver slightly. She picked up the receiver and said her name. Her voice was croaky, unfamiliar.
‘Ah, good. It’s David Hewitson here. You may remember. We spoke this morning.’
David Hewitson. It was several seconds before she could pull herself together enough to place the name, and when she did she felt a tight knot of mingled anger and apprehension begin to form in the pit of her stomach.