by Susan Napier
'You might not, but I would,' he murmured, his hand gently shackling her wrist as he removed her hand. 'I refuse to be seduced by brandy and shock.' He kissed her hand and smiled with wry self-derision. 'Perhaps if it was one or the other, but not both! Ask me again in the morning when you're in full possession of all your senses and I'll be delighted to respond.'
While she absorbed his rejection he wrestled her, with some difficulty, into her gown and robe, roughly tightening the belt as if it would provide more than a flimsy protection against their desires, should they get out of hand.
'A pity you weren't always so scr—scrup ' she hic-
cuped and abandoned the elusive word, '—didn't always have such scruples.'
'What do you mean?' He cupped her head with one hand while he rubbed her hair with a towel, then combed his fingers through the damp curls.
'You were quite happy to seduce an innocent----- ' the
word tangled on her tongue, '—girl for a bet.'
His hands stilled in her hair, then slowly lowered to tilt her flushed face to his. 'You knew about that?'
His shock briefly penetrated her protective haze. Oops, she hadn't meant to tell him that. 'Knew about what?' she asked with what she thought was extreme cunning, unaware that her eyes were grey with guilty knowledge. Ross sighed and reached back for the half-empty brandy glass he had put on the coffee table. He held it to her lips, which she pressed together with a lop-sided frown.
'Are you trying to get me drunk?'
'You're already drunk, Princess. A little more isn't going to make much difference.' But it might loosen her unwary tongue.
It sounded supremely logical. 'I've never had a hangover before,' she confided proudly and wondered why his mouth tugged down at the corners in that funny, kind of sad way as she sipped. Tenderly he fed her the rest of the glass and between sips softly kissed and coaxed her into rambling honesty. He was behaving like an unprincipled bastard, but dammit, he needed to know.
When she told him, half-way between a giggle and a sob, that she had overheard the settling-up of his bet about their date that fateful Monday morning in the bike shed, he groaned and closed his eyes, tilting his lovely shaggy head back. 'Oh, God...'
When he looked at her again, nestled against his side, his eyes were deep blue with regret. 'I'm sorry, Fran, but if you heard everything, surely—'
'I didn't stay to hear all the gory details,' she interrupted him with a tipsy attempt at haughty dignity. She had rushed away and hidden in the girls' toilet, feeling ugly and soiled and utterly humiliated.
A few more sips and she let it all spill out... how she had been too shy to actively seek him out in the school grounds, but had hovered near the bike sheds where the boys gathered, hoping to 'accidentally' run into him and defy her grandparents' strictures by cementing the friendship that he had proposed on Saturday night.
'Did you get her blouse open? I'm not paying up on this bet until you give us the brand of her bra. I bet it was an armoured one, with a royal crest on it: Princess Pudge.' The snickering adolescent voice had hit Francesca like a blow.
'I guess you really earned your dough, huh, Ross? We should have offered you danger money on top of the bet... you could have been suffocated just trying to find first base, let alone touching it!'
Francesca hadn't waited for the raucous young laughter to die so that she could hear Ross besmirch the lovely memory of their hours together. Princess Pudge! The tender shoots of womanhood had shrivelled before the vision of him parading her loving vulnerability for his friends to paw over and laugh at. Later, when Ross had asked her to sit with him at lunch, she had lashed out at him with all her pain, grinding his pride into the dust as he had hers.
'Ah, Princess, if only I'd known,' Ross sighed, rocking her gently in his arms, finally solving the puzzle of how the shyly passionate girl who had touched his arrogant young heart had turned into the cool, disdainful princess his wounded ego demanded he dislike and avoid. 'No wonder you attacked me with those painful truths...you must have hated me...'
Fran twisted her head to peer up at him, wondering why he was suddenly receding like that, going furry around the edges. And he looked so serious, so regretful. She wanted to make him smile, make him feel all warm and deliciously woozy, the way she felt...
'Don' hate you, Ross...' Her tongue got tangled up as she tried to screw her eyes into focus, 'Only you...' Her words sank into a drowsy slur,'... was lies, 'nyway. No boys...' She smiled dreamily. 'Only you...'
'Francesca? What do you mean, lies? Francesca, wake up!' Ross looked in exasperation at the sleeping woman curled so trustingly in his arms. He didn't have the heart to wake her up; their unfinished business would have to be settled in the morning. His mouth curved wryly. In the morning she would be bolting for her high horse again, and he welcomed the notion of being there when she found the stable empty!
CHAPTER SIX
'Francesca, wake up!'
Francesca surfaced reluctantly, a suffering husk of nauseous vibrations. She groaned as sunlight pierced her aching eyeballs. The act of lifting her head prompted an excruciating pain in her skull that screamed for relief. Her mouth tasted so vile that every time she swallowed her stomach tightened ominously. She groaned again, softly, as she became aware of someone perching on the edge of her bed, causing dangerous fluctuations in the mattress.
'Go 'way,' she slurred, wanting to be left alone in her misery.
'I've brought you some coffee, and this...' The monster of callousness waved a plate with a piece of thin, scarcely buttered toast on it, across her bleary vision.
'Oh, God—' She clapped a hand to her mouth.
Ross grinned an offensively healthy grin and put the coffee and plate down on the chair beside her bed. He hauled her protesting body up against her pillow and held her there with one large hand braced on her shoulder.
'Part of the problem is that you haven't eaten anything for nearly twenty-four hours—it's nearly eleven am, you know—and you're probably suffering a bit of dehydration as well. Come on, it's only weak, but it's liquid.'
He held up the coffee cup to her lips and tilted it so that she had to sip, or have it poured down the neck of her nightdress. It hit her stomach, warm and wet, but before she could moan again a piece of toast was inserted into her unwary mouth. 'Nibble.'
Fran chewed and swallowed cautiously. This time when Ross put the cup to her lips she removed it from his hand and drank. He watched approvingly, his blue eyes clear and sparkling with life, his skin smooth-shaven and glossy, his chestnut hair combed damply into unaccustomed style. Fran closed her eyes to shut out the vision of physical well-being, grateful and annoyed to find his simple remedy working. She felt marginally better.
'You got me drunk,' she accused.
'You got drunk, I only provided the bottle.'
Fran opened her eyes with a suddenness that hurt. 'I
distinctly remember------ ' she began as aggressively as her condition would allow. Then she distinctly remembered...
'What?' Ross looked interested, his mouth a give-away straight line as he watched her face change from a sickly shade of green to a delicate rose.
'Nothing.' She buried her nose hurriedly in her cup.
'Nothing? You mean, you don't remember.'
She scowled. 'I remember what we didn't do.'
'Only because I was too much of a gentleman to take advantage of your kind offer,' he said smugly.
'You, a gentleman!' Her snicker hurt the back of her eyes and she rested her head momentarily on her shoulder, unaware that the hunching movement made her neckline dip alarmingly, enticingly.
'Darling,' came the purring answer, 'you batted your eyelashes at me, and draped and nestled and nudged like a little kitten wanting to be petted. And I said, ask me again in the morning. Are you going to follow through, Princess, and bless me with your royal favours?'
'Go to hell,' she snarled wretchedly, not wanting to dwell on her brandy-induced w
antonness of the night before. He was taking shameless advantage of her hangover and if she weren't so weak she would make him regret it.
'I can't do that, I'm afraid, Frankie. Not until we've finished our little talk. You passed out on me last night just as things were getting interesting.'
Fran's stomach somersaulted. Her memory was fragmentary, but she had a sinking feeling she had really let it all hang out. 'Please, can't we leave it until later? I'm really feeling pretty rotten.' She nibbled forlornly on another triangle of toast, making her eyes as big and as shamelessly mournful as she could manage.
He grinned. 'No dice, Frankie.' He folded his arms across his chest, swivelling sideways on the bed so that he loomed over her shrinking Figure. 'You were saying something about lying about the boys... about there being only me. Were you, by any chance, referring to those classy dates of yours that you compared me so unfavourably with?'
He waited patiently until she had finished all the toast and let her fiddle with her coffee cup for a long minute before he demonstrated his determination. 'Francesca,' he said silkily, 'shall I fetch the brandy?'
The very thought made her pale.
'You're not in the best physical condition at the moment and it wouldn't take much effort to hold you down while I pour the stuff down your throat,' he said with cruel relish. 'When you're drunk you're very suggestible, and it doesn't seem to take much to turn you on your ear. In fact, I think I like you tipsy, Princess, falling all over me, trying to pull off my clothes...'
'I didn't!'
He grinned at her, and took the cup from her nerveless fingers.
'Beast,' she protested half-heartedly as he bent to put the cup on the floor.
His grin faded. 'Frankie, it started out as a bet, but I really liked you...'
'Sure. Look, Ross, it was a long time ago, I don't see that it needs dragging up again. For God's sake, we were children!' she burst out. Humiliations, like fears, were best forgotten.
'You were a child. I was everything you accused me of being,' he astounded her by saying. 'An arrogant young punk without the guts to apologise for doing something that I knew was wrong.'
Was her hangover causing her brain to mistranslate what her ears were hearing? Francesca stared at his expression of wry self-derision, slightly open-mouthed, and highly suspicious of his motives.
Ross lent over and gently pushed her lower jaw closed. 'I'm telling you this because then we can wipe the slate clean of any old grievances that might be cluttering up our subconscious. If only you had thrown that bet in my face at the time, or if you had hung around the bike shed a bit longer: I paid up, Frankie.'
'You...?'
'I paid up.'
She believed him. Why did she believe him? Francesca was shaken by the tiny bud of delight in her breast. What on earth did it matter, after all this time? But it did, and she was acutely conscious of it as Ross continued his wry confession.
'I told the guys that I had lost the bet. That you'd come out with me, but that you'd refused to fool around. They gave me hell, but I thought it was worth it. I liked you. Why do you think that no one taunted you about it? Because I'd threatened to punch the lights out of any guy who breathed a word outside the gang... they thought it was because I didn't want anyone to know how much I'd bombed out, but it was really because I didn't want it to get in the way of our friendship... not until I'd confessed to you, although I do admit there was a large chunk of ego involved, too.' He looked at her surprise-softened grey-blue eyes and his mouth pulled down. 'Then, when you gave me that haughty put-down in front of them all and I thought that you were just a clever tease who had gone slumming for a night, I wished like hell that I hadn't made the big sacrifice, but I couldn't recant without looking more of a fool than I already did. So I pretended that I didn't care.'
'I...you did a good job,' said Francesca shakily. When he had shrugged off her insults that day she had thought it merely confirmed his shallowness. In the intensity of her hurt she had never permitted him a point of view. As far as she was concerned, he hadn't deserved one.
'So did you,' he said with a pointed smile. 'On that date you were so serious to begin with, and so shy, and then you began to open up and I had flattered myself it was because of me. And when I touched you, you were so warm and soft and shyly generous that I was touched, macho jerk that I was. You came across as innocent and yet quietly mature, and so different from the general run of girls that I dated that I felt ashamed of what I had set out to do... see how far I could go with you just for the sake of impressing a bunch of guys. I realised that it was demeaning to both of us. I wanted to stand up to your grandfather for you, but you wouldn't let me and that made me feel even worse. And then, when Monday came around, I felt incredibly betrayed—hoist with my own petard. I couldn't stomach the thought that you were laughing up your sleeve at this crude jerk who had actually presumed that you'd want to get to know him better.'
'And I thought that you and your friends were all laughing behind my back at me,' said Fran ruefully, remembering the adolescent misery of that last term with an almost affectionate nostalgia.
'I never meant to hurt you, Frankie. I guess I got my just desserts.' He smoothed a curl back from her flushed cheek. 'I had some brutal thoughts about teaching you the dangers of putting on that act of sexy, eager innocence with guys with no claim to class. But it wasn't an act, was it, Frankie?'
'I—' She knew that his belated honesty begged honesty in return, but she was beginning to panic, wondering where all this was going to lead.
'There weren't any other boys, were there? Classier or otherwise. No sneaking out from boarding school?'
Francesca shrugged and picked at her nails to avoid his gaze, mumbling her reply into the neckline of her gown.
'What?' Ross ducked his head closer and she caught the spicy-clean male scent of him. It had almost the same effect as brandy. She jerked her head back against the pillows to try and preserve her ragged composure.
'I said no,' she muttered grudgingly.
'That was just wounded pride talking?'
'Yes.' She sighed, it was ridiculous to feel resentful after he had just delivered such a handsome apology.
'And you didn't really find me crude and clumsy, that was pride, too, mmm?' He was walking two fingers up her arm and Fran watched them approach the vulnerable scoop of her bare collarbone with bated breath.
'I... I suppose...'
'What do you suppose?' he asked, finding her warm, rapid pulse with one finger while the other stroked the fine soft skin of her throat. 'Did you mean it last night when you said there was only me? Was I the first boy to touch you? Was I the one who taught you how to french kiss?'
He watched the colour flow up under his fingers and his eyes deepened to a potent azure as he studied her blush. 'You're not still shy, are you, Frankie? I may have been the first, but I wasn't the last, was I?'
Her eyes flew open to deny him that arrogant satisfaction. 'Certainly not!' Though he wasn't going to force her to admit that he had been the yardstick beside which she had measured physical attraction ever since...and no one, not even the man she had eventually gone to bed with, had aroused her as strongly and easily as Ross did... had! 'You didn't blight my life, you know, Ross. I haven't been a languishing case of arrested virginity—'
'Waiting for Prince Charming to come along and reawaken you,' he finished when she paused to wonder where that sentence was taking her.
'Precisely,' she said, brushing his unsettling touch away and adjusting the bedclothes primly across her breasts. 'I'm a normal, mature woman, quite comfort-able with my.. .my...'
'Sexuality?' he supplied helpfully.
'Yes.' She glared at him and he laughed.
'Good. Then you're not going to get all uptight when I tell you that last night we slept together.'
'What?' Her shriek only made him laugh harder. Her blush deepened as she suddenly noticed the extra pillow that lay on the floor beside the bed. A vague r
emembrance stirred in the back of her mind, of a delicious warmth that she had clung to. Oh, God, had she actually let him... ?
'When I tried to tuck you in you wouldn't let me. You kept saying that I was rocking the boat. You wouldn't quieten down until I got in beside you and anchored you in my arms.'
Francesca groaned and closed her eyes. 'We slept together?' Why couldn't she remember the details? She didn't imagine that making love with Ross Tarrant would be a forgettable experience. Perhaps he had been so fantastic that her mind was in a state of shock. Yes, that was far more likely!
'"Slept" being the operative word,' he said with a humorous gravity that jerked her eyes open. 'We were
both too tired to do anything else. Besides—' his mouth indented wryly, '—the bed is a bit narrow to do much else... I like a bit of space when I exercise my desires, and my women willing, if not actually conscious...'
Fran opened her mouth to make a stinging reply, but closed it again when she realised that she had nothing to reproach him with. Whatever his motives, he had looked after her yesterday, in spite of their earlier row, and he hadn't taken advantage of her with anything other than words. Worse luck, whispered a voice from her heart which she drowned out by asking, 'How are you? Is your shoulder all right?'
He moved it experimentally. 'A little stiff. But stop trying to change the subject. I think your behaviour last night acknowledges an important truth, don't you?'
'Oh?' She looked at him warily. Was he going to accuse her of being a frustrated spinster... or a wanton?
'That it's still there.'
'W-what is?' she asked huskily, transfixed by the sapphire eyes.
'Whatever chemistry that was at work between us when we were too young to appreciate its potent rarity.'
'I...I don't know what you're talking about,' she denied hollowly.
'Frankie...' He shook his head in amused reproof, reading the feminine panic in the flickering grey eyes as an invitation to seduction. 'I considered myself pretty blasé at seventeen. I thought I knew it all... particularly where girls were concerned. You taught me differently. You taught me that sex is the greatest and most unknowable mystery of all... that it has as much to do with the mind as with the body. You can't force an attraction to someone, it's either there or it's not, and the chemistry is in the brain rather than the loins. You may see no rhyme nor reason for it, but it's there... as it is for us, as it was then, and now...'