Reasons Of the Heart

by Susan Napier

  'Ah, but the lady doth protest too much, and any man worth his salt knows what that means!' The chauvinistic teasing made Fran struggle to break his implacable grip, but her struggles ceased abruptly as Ross bent his head to murmur throatily in her ear, 'You'd better stay put, Princess. If you move away from me now you're going to embarrass the hell out of both of us.' He eased his hips forward to show her why and Fran felt a slow, tingling blush sweep through her body as an unmistak­able hardness was cradled in the cleft of her buttocks. His arms tightened briefly, increasing her breathless-ness, before relaxing as he felt her lean obediently back against him.

  'Isn't he terrible?' Tessa shook her head cheerfully, embarking on what was obviously a well established family game. 'I mean, women flock to his practice be­cause he has this reputation for being empathetic as well as a damned good doctor. But it's all a sham. He only pretends to believe that women are real people with functioning brains as well as bodies, but underneath he harbours these savage sexist fantasies...'

  'Thank God you two are going to be married soon!' Ross muffled his laughter in the warm brown curls on Francesca's head. 'My professional advice, Jase, is barefoot and pregnant. It's the only way to control that beady-eyed obsession with dethroning the naturally dominant partner...'

  'But Ross, I thought you knew, men can't get pregnant,' Tess shot back. 'There has to be another way. Fran, you really must do something about this character masquerading as a doctor. He doesn't even know the facts of life, for heaven's sake.'

  'You mean about women being the naturally domi­nant partners? I know, I know. He really is incredibly thick,' said Fran, entering into the fray, only to be thoroughly trounced when Ross made a tiny rocking movement against her and said in a low voice, for her ears alone,

  'Why, thank you, darling, I'm glad you're impressed.'

  She was so flustered she missed the next few moments of lightly insulting banter, and yet it was a confusion she enjoyed. Wrapped in his arms, Fran felt warm and secure and very much at home, wryly aware of how drastically her opinion of him had changed in the short time she had known him. She guessed that women would indeed flock to his practice. Ross was a trifle arrogant, it was true, but it was an arrogance born of confidence in himself and his abilities, and tempered by a lazy charm that was a natural outgrowth of his warm and loving upbringing. It would be a point of pride with him to be the best at what he did, and to treat the whole woman rather than just her condition, Fran had known, and disliked, obstetricians and gynaecologists who used-aloofness and medical jargon as a subtle form of intimi­dation on their patients. But Ross, with his tolerance and humour, would put a woman at her ease, enable her to express her questions and fears about her treatment without being made to feel that she was imposing on a busy man's time. Ross would earn his patient's respect instead of demanding it by virtue of his position...

  Fran jumped as a reverberating boom from the barn was followed by a high-pitched electronic whine. Jason winced and said something that was drowned out by another ear-shattering sequence of chords.

  'What?' Ross raised his voice to a shout.

  'I said,' Jason yelled, 'why don't you invite Tess and I over for a spa this evening in your quiet haven? We'll bring the food if you provide the booze. How about it?'

  'Anything to escape the new wave of the future,' Tessa laughed, hands over her ears, nodding towards the barn.

  'Perhaps we can make a few waves of our own,' Jason leered, and was teasingly slapped for his pains. 'Shall we bring togs, Fran, or have you both carried on your skinny-dipping tradition?'

  'Togs, please,' said Fran primly, ignoring Ross's sen­suous chuckle, although she had a suspicion that even if she wore a suit of armour, one look from those sexy blue eyes and she would be naked before him, body and soul!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  'Beautiful, isn't she?'

  Faintly amused by Jason's proud parental air, Fran­cesca ran her hand along the stiffened fabric of the lower wing of the biplane and was dutifully admiring. 'Lovely. What is it?'

  'Tiger Moth—it was Dad's first plane. These things used to be the backbone of the aerial top-dressing indus­try in this country, before they started building planes specifically for the job, like the Fletcher there.' He jerked his head towards the corrugated iron hangar across the grassy strip of runway and the small, rather ugly plane they had inspected first residing therein. 'Of course, we don't use Gertie here on the job any more, so Dave took the hopper off. Except for the paint job this is exactly how it looked when it was built in '45.'

  Like the rest of the Tarrants, David was a multi-talent—musician, aircraft mechanic, mountain-climber. Naturally he was a flyer, too; even Beth could claim that distinction. Only Florence Tarrant preferred to keep her feet on solid ground, because, she confided to Fran with a twinkle, she suffered badly from motion sickness. She seemed to understand, though, what drove the rest of the family to seek adventure wherever they could find it. 'As long as they're happy' was her serene philosophy. Without it Fran didn't think she could have survived marriage to a man who, having retired early to let his sons run his business, had taken up stunt flying and heli­copter search-and-rescue work to 'keep him on his toes'.

  Fran couldn't help but wonder if there was a price for that outer serenity. How did she endure the waiting?

  As Jason guided Fran on a complete circuit of the little yellow and black striped biplane on the pocket-airfield, she couldn't help thinking that she was rather involved in a waiting game herself... thanks to the man sauntering along behind them, hands thrust into the pockets of his faded jeans, wire-rimmed aviator sun­glasses masking his expression. Why hadn't he followed through on that promise, that threat, to become her lover? Since Sunday lunch he had surrounded them with his family, and on the rare occasions that he and Fran were alone all he seemed to want to do was talk... long, lazy, rambling conversations that were fascinating, but pointless.

  They began with Ross doing most of the talking, obligingly filling in the blank years, the years of study and striving, of hardship and success, of the crises, big and small, that marked out the progression of his ma­turity. He even spoke, lightly and whimsically, of his search for love: 'the one area where I have a very con­sistent failure rate, perhaps because I was looking in all the wrong places', although, he admitted with a cro­codile grin, that failure had its compensations.

  'I'll bet it has,' Fran had said darkly.

  'Now, Fran, you've looked, too, and you should be grateful that I'm not a virgin, after your last experience with one...'

  She had blushed at his teasing. His disarming, some­times embarrassing, but always fascinating frankness had seduced Fran into a similar honesty. She had told him about her abortive affair with the medical student, but not that it had been her first and last experience. However, the wryness with which she had described her disillusionment told him far more than she knew. It had made him certain that, however many—or few—men she had been to bed with, none of them had been lovers in the true sense of the word. She had been no closer to love than he, and the passion in her nature was still largely untapped. Fran would need her emotions en­gaged, as well as her senses, before she gave herself fully to any man.

  Fran quite enjoyed the mutual exploration of charac­ter, except when Ross spoke with chilling passion of his exploits in competition sky-diving and his growing interest in hang-gliding and micro-lite planes. But each night she went to bed restless and unsatisfied, and amused by her own perversity. Here was a man showing an interest in her mind and all she wanted him to do was hustle her into bed!

  'Ready to go up?'

  'What? Oh, sure,' Francesca shook free of her inde­cisive thoughts. 'Which one are we going up in?' She looked back at the Fletcher and the small Cessna beside it.

  'Why, this one, of course!' Jason chuckled as he patted the wooden propellor of the biplane.

  Francesca blanched. 'You mean, it still flies?' Tessa and David, who had been standing to one side dis­cussin
g invoices—Tessa did the books for this, and other small companies—grinned. Were they all in on the joke?

  'Of course it does!' Jason looked mildly offended. 'This is a classic, you know. Dave will keep her flying as long as he can find parts to fit...or can jury-rig them. The RAF used to use these little babies as trainers, you know, because they're so sensitive. Put your hand out into the slipstream and you can make the thing yaw...'

  'Really?' Fran didn't know what a yaw was, but it sounded dangerous.

  'Waggle to you, darling,' Ross said with an aggravat-ingly kind smile of condescension. Fran glared at him. She could hardly back down now, with the other three watching expectantly. Turning coward now could cost her a tiny measure of their respect and, she realised, that mattered...

  Reluctantly she allowed the two men to help her into the front cockpit.

  Immediately she panicked. 'What are all these con­trols for? I don't have to do anything, do I?'

  'Not if you don't want to, Fran,' said Jason with a straight face that didn't hide his amusement. 'I don't think you're ready to go solo yet. Ross will do the flying from behind you.'

  'Ross will?' She squirmed round in the cramped seat to look at the rear cockpit. Sure enough, there was Ross, wearing an old-fashioned leather flying helmet and looking for all the world like a vintage fighter ace. Her stomach plunged. 'I thought you were taking me up!' she wailed to Jason.

  'Here, put these on. It can get cold up there, even on a nice day like this.' Jason thrust a warm hand-knitted hat and scarf into her shaky fingers. 'Now sit straight and I'll do your harness up for you. Don't fuss, Fran. Truth to tell, Ross is a better flyer than Dave or I put together, it just wasn't what he wanted to do for a living...'

  Francesca closed her eyes for the take-off. The plane was made of wood and wire and what felt like paper...it couldn't possibly fly! When she dared open her eyes her stomach rolled furiously at the angle of their ascent. Re­membering Jason's comment about the plane's sensi­tivity, she sat rigidly still, white-knuckled hands clenched around the safety harness, trying to regulate the great gulps of cold air which kept slipstreaming into her mouth. Gradually, as the engine continued to drone re­assuringly, and the wings stayed on, and her stomach adjusted to the sudden jolts of up and down draughts, she began to relax and look about her. After ten minutes she stopped thinking about how far down the ground was and started thinking about how artificial it looked, toy farms and clockwork animals on green-quilted squares. After another ten minutes she was actually en­joying herself and ready to admit that Ross might have done the right thing in tricking her into going up in this jaunty little plane.

  She was quite sorry when she saw the corrugated arch of the hangar with 'Tarrant' painted on it in large red letters appear below them. She turned gingerly in her seat and looked back. The ace in the pilot's seat gave her a cocky thumbs-up signal which she returned with a laugh that was snatched away by the wind. Ross made some more gestures with his hand, and thinking that he meant to tell her they were going to land she smiled and nodded and turned to brace herself, excitement and fear gripping her with equal strength.

  But instead of tilting down, the nose of the plane tilted up so that Francesca found herself staring straight into the muzzle of a blue sky. There was only one reason she could think of as to why they were going up rather than down, but Fran didn't believe that even Ross would do that to her.

  She was wrong.

  She screamed for the entire duration of the stunt. When they were upside down she closed her eyes and screamed. She screamed when the loop passed into a series of barrel rolls and the horizon spun dizzily on its axis. She screamed in fear and outrage and sheer, helpless fury. If she hadn't been too utterly terrified to move anything but her vocal chords, she would have climbed over into the rear cockpit and strangled the reckless idiot there before he could deny her the pleasure by killing them both.

  The landing was an anticlimax. Francesca climbed out of the tiny torture chamber and stood still for a moment until she was sure that all her parts were in working order. Then she turned to confront the brazen, laughing confi­dence of the man who had almost caused her heart failure.

  'Did you enjoy the roller-coaster ride? Sorry if you

  got a fright, but I knew that once—'

  Her working parts worked perfectly. Her slap nearly took his head off. Throat still raw from screaming, Fran didn't bother to say a single word, she let her back say it for her. She stormed over to Ross's pick-up, which was parked on the roadside next to the hangar, slammed into the driver's seat and took off in a whirlwind of dust along the unsealed road, ignoring the shouts behind her. Let Ross hitch a ride back with his brother. It would serve him right if she wiped this old rust-bucket out doing a few fancy driving 'stunts'!

  It wasn't until she was half-way back to the cabin that reaction overtook her and she began to shake, and to have difficulty keeping the car on the road. She almost went straight past the Tarrant driveway, but at the last minute turned in, not really knowing why. Ross's home should be the last place she should run to, but when she stumbled into the warm kitchen to find Florence Tarrant sitting down to a quiet cup of tea she knew why she had come. She might be Ross's mother, but she would understand...

  'I won't bother apologising for my son's behaviour, Fran,' the older woman said, plying Fran with a soothing brand of tea and sympathy after listening to her unex­pected visitor's disjointed tale of woe. 'He's quite capable of doing that for himself. A pity he's got too big to put over my knee.'

  'I took care of that,' Fran confessed, the slight sting in her hand recalling the slap. It probably hurt her more than it did him. 'He knew I'd never been up in a small plane before. He knew that I was nervous, that I thought Jason was going to take me up in something enclosed and modern and... and... then he leads me like a lamb to slaughter and does those awful things...' She shivered at the memory of the rushing wind, the wild, cart­wheeling world.

  'I know it's no consolation, dear, but Ross is so used to stunting that he probably doesn't think of it as fright­ening or dangerous. Perhaps he thought you would find it thrilling, perhaps he was just showing off, trying to impress you with his skill.'

  'He doesn't have to impress me! cried Fran furiously, not realising what she was revealing to his interested mother. Just having him kiss and touch her was breath­taking thrill enough...how much more impressive could he be? 'What would you have done, if he had done that to you?'

  Florence Tarrant sipped her tea thoughtfully. 'I would have been sick all over him,' she said drily.

  Suddenly they were laughing, Fran's high-pitched giggles semi-hysterical with relief. This mixture of sym­pathy and humour was just what she had needed to re­store her perspective. 'I suppose it was rather funny,' she chuckled grudgingly. 'Me, screaming like a banshee, hanging from my shoulder-straps. If I'd seen it in a movie I would have thought it great fun. And you should have seen his face when I took off in his car, leaving him choking in a cloud of dust in the middle of the road. Now that was like a movie, Keystone Cops variety. I half expected him to chase after me.' That set them off again, until Fran remembered that he might well be chasing after her. She felt too confused and angry to face him quite yet. She pushed her empty cup away and jumped nervously to her feet.

  'You won't tell him I laughed?' she said tentatively.

  'I think he deserves a good long bit of grovelling first, wouldn't you say?' Florence Tarrant asked, her eyes still filled with serene merriment at her son's expense.

  'More than a little,' growled Francesca darkly. 'And if he thinks he can just walk back into that cabin and jolly me into forgetting it, he's got another think coming!'

  'I'll make up his bed here,' his mother offered, per­fectly understanding, but privately doubting that the bed would be used. 'I take it that you won't stay on for dinner... Ross thought you might.'

  Another indication that he didn't want to be alone

  with her. Fran stiffened at the sharp disappoint
ment that knifed in her breast. 'No, thank you.' The thought of food at this particular time made her feel ill anyway, and the thought of facing Ross in her present state, without knowing what kind of mood he would be in, was enough to make her stutter, 'But.. .do you think.. .could you keep him—'

  'He invited himself for dinner, he can stay for dinner,' Mrs Tarrant said firmly. 'I'll tell him that you both need time to cool off. And if you take his car and I make sure that he can't get any transport from here, well...that should slow him down somewhat.' She gave Fran a gentle, warning smile. 'But, short of chaining him up, we can't stop him if he's determined. And Ross on a mission is a very determined man...'

  'No more determined than I can be.' The stubborn line to the young woman's chin reminded Florence so sharply of her eldest son that she had to hide another smile as she bid her farewell. The two of them made an interesting combination, and although Ross had always jealously guarded his bachelorhood a mother could always hope...

  The clouds building up in thick, dark columns in the western sky brought an early dusk which suited Fran-cesca's mood. She vented her initial wrath by packing up every stray possession of Ross's that she could find and dumping the lot out on the back porch. She had been right to have her doubts. It was lunacy to imagine that she and Ross could put aside their differences long enough to have any kind of amicable relationship. And to think that she had been on the verge of giving in to lust... no, actually mourning the fact that he seemed to be having second thoughts.

  Funny side or not, what he had done this afternoon was a gross violation of her trust, and she refused to become the lover of a man who threatened to give her a coronary every time she ventured outside with him. Lurking beneath the pleasant, teasing character of the past few days was a daredevil monster champing at the bit to fling himself into another terrifying endeavour. Talk about Jekyll and Hyde... Ross was positively schizophrenic! On the one hand he was a mature, re­sponsible doctor with an admirable reputation, on the other an incurable thrill-seeker. While Fran could imagine herself satisfying the one, she could never, in a million years of trying, satisfy the other. Cooped up here in convalescence, Ross had probably decided that he could 'make do' with Fran for feminine company, but out in the real world no doubt he required vibrant, excit­ing women, sophisticated and outgoing, the kind of women who make good race-track groupies or knife-thrower's assistants, Fran thought sourly. He was probably sitting at his parents' table right now, eating and drinking and laughing, relieved that he had escaped the toils of staid and boring Francesca Lewis. Perhaps it had been only pity in the first place, and he had merely pretended to want her because she had been so embarrassingly inept at hiding her inexplicable desire for this oh-so-desirable man! Fran cringed at the thought. She needed a drink—a large one. She was annoyed to find her hands shaking as she tried to extract the ice-cubes from the tray, dropping them all over the bench in the process. Perhaps that flight had been a deliberate attempt on Ross's part to frighten her off. Yes, that would appeal to his twisted mind! And now he was congratulating himself at having—