by Sara Wood
Smooth the mussed-up hair. How had that happened? Cold water on face. Done.
He was waiting outside. Took one look at her—clearly disapproving, from the quick frown—and opened the passenger door without a word.
Composed now, she climbed onto the high step, hampered by her skirt. Cassian gave a brief push on her bottom and she slid into the comfortable seat pink with embarrassment but determined to use her time usefully.
‘I have a proposition,’ she announced briskly as they pulled away.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You know all the reasons I want to stay.’
‘Yup.’
Her hands fidgeted nervously in her lap. Cassian reached over to her side and she flattened herself against the back of the seat. With a curious look at her, he turned on the radio and pushed in a cassette.
Laura groaned. Loin-stirring flamenco music.
‘Well,’ she said stiffly, ‘I’ve thought of a way to solve the problem.’
Cassian didn’t look too pleased about that. ‘Oh?’ he grunted.
‘You can live at Thrushton Hall.’
‘Thanks. I’m with you so far,’ he drawled.
She took a deep breath. The next bit was tricky.
‘I get a job, stay at Thrushton too—and pay rent, and I do all the housework and cooking and washing for you!’
She looked at him anxiously. The signs weren’t good. Beetled brows, furrowed brow, tight mouth.
‘One teeny flaw. I don’t need a housekeeper or a cook or someone to do my washing,’ he declared.
Her heart sank. She felt stupid for not realising. Cassian would bring over his woman to Thrushton. It was too painful to contemplate.
‘I’d forgotten. You’ve got your wife. Partner. Whatever,’ she floundered miserably.
‘No wife, partner or whatever. My wife died when Jai was born,’ he snapped.
Now she’d hurt him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘Laura, please try to tune in to the kind of man I am. I’ve always looked after myself. I need no woman for that.’ His glance seared into her. ‘I’ve never needed a woman for anything other than love.’
Love. He had sounded very sad as if he was remembering the woman he’d adored so much that he’d risked his love of freedom and gone willingly into marriage. And his wife had died tragically. How awful.
There was a long silence. Then timidly she ventured again.
‘You and Jai would be alone?’
‘It’s how we like it.’
‘But I could save you from doing domestic things. They’re boring. You’d have more freedom,’ she enlarged, ‘if you didn’t have to do chores—’
‘You’re very persistent.’
‘It’s very important!’ she replied. ‘Well?’
‘No.’
Her stomach lurched at the finality of his tone. ‘Why not? You hate restrictions! Shopping and cooking—’
‘I don’t shirk responsibility,’ he corrected. ‘I just don’t do things that are unnecessary.’
‘Please, think about it—’ she begged, horrified that her great plan had been so casually rejected.
‘No.’
She pressed her fist to her mouth and tried to stop the tears of disappointment. She’d really failed this time. For a moment she contemplated the abyss that was her future.
It would be terrible. She felt sick. Adam would be devastated. Her head jerked up. Adam!
‘In that case…’ She choked, swallowed, and tried to find her voice again. ‘In that case,’ she cried hotly, ‘if we’re out on our ears at the end of the week, then leave Adam alone! Don’t get close to him!’ The flamenco rose to a crescendo and she found herself shouting angrily over the fiery beat. ‘You’ll destroy him, Cassian! You’re not blind. You can see he thinks you’re Mr Wonderful. You sit there, telling him stories, behaving like—like a father to him, the father he’s always wanted, and yet in a few days’ time you’ll be rejecting him! You can’t do that!’ she stormed, beating her fists on her knees. ‘You can’t hurt him, I won’t let you…’ She broke off. He was pulling over, driving onto the verge. ‘What are you doing?’ she flared.
‘Out.’ He jerked his head at her.
Her mouth dropped open. ‘You don’t mean—?’
‘No, I’m not abandoning you,’ he said wearily. ‘But this is important and I can discuss this more easily when I don’t have to concentrate on the road.’
‘Discuss?’ she raged, half-falling out of the car in her eagerness to get out before he helped her. ‘There’s no point in talking! You won’t listen to me. You don’t care what happens to Adam and me. You have no heart! It doesn’t matter that he’ll be distraught because his god has turned out to have feet of clay and that—’
‘Laura!’ Cassian was shaking her, his grip firm on her arms. ‘Laura, I do care!’
CHAPTER SEVEN
HE COULDN’T believe he’d admitted that. He felt her freeze, every muscle, every breath in her body halted by his claim.
‘What?’ she whispered, searching his face.
‘I care about Adam,’ he said shortly, and released her. ‘Come and sit in the sun.’
‘I’m all right here!’ she yelled.
‘As you wish.’
Touched by her wonderful stubbornness, he settled himself on the low stone wall and stared out at the valley, hoping his inflamed senses would simmer down.
Laura had been more passionate than he could have believed possible. Yesterday he’d watched her responding to the music and enjoying the wine, an excitement surging within him as he saw her long overdue awakening to the pleasures in life.
His body had known little rest since. It demanded that he should introduce her to the greatest pleasure of all.
His eyes closed to the warmth of the sun, feeling his very bones melt at the thought of making love to Laura. Despite the terrible green suit.
‘Cassian.’
There was a lurch in his loins. She had come to sit near him.
‘Mmm?’ he grunted.
‘If you care—’
‘It’s because I care, because I see a child longing to be part of the hurly-burly of the world,’ he said grimly, determined to deny himself the pleasure he wanted, ‘that I’m determined to extract you both from your shell. He must take his life in his own hands. He’s desperate to be liked at school. I’ve never seen a kiddie so anxious to please—’
‘What do you mean?’ she demanded, suddenly alert. ‘Something happened, didn’t it? Tell me!’ she cried, grabbing his arm with both hands.
He glanced quickly at her fiery eyes and only just managed to drag his gaze away and fix it on a distant peak.
‘Oh, some kids making fun—’
‘Of Adam?’ she cried, aghast.
He sighed, and decided he’d better explain. ‘They were actually pointing at—and mocking—what they imagined to be my rucksack. It’s orange, you see. Day-Glo. So I got out and told them it was my paraglider and offered to show it to them.’
She frowned. ‘You mean those parachutes with a sort of strap seat thing beneath it? You fling yourself off mountains for fun?’
‘Something like that.’ He was amused by her description of one of the most exhilarating sports in the world. To fly. To soar into the sky, to stay airborne by reading the contours of the ground and assessing the thermals… Breathtaking. ‘It’s a little more complicated, but that’s the general idea,’ he acknowledged.
‘Then what happened?’ she asked curiously.
Bedlam. He grinned and played the whole thing down.
‘We got quite a crowd around us. I answered questions about it and then a woman with a letterbox mouth came over and told us all off for not hearing the bell.’
‘Miss Handley,’ Laura said, her mouth curving into a reluctant smile.
‘Yes. The Head. I apologised, said it was all my fault and why and before I knew what was happening, she had me in there giving a talk during her assembly.’
Cassi
an watched a sparrowhawk spill out the air from its wings, mastering thermals without knowing how.
‘I can imagine.’ To his relief, Laura sounded drily amused. Then she frowned. ‘I suppose Adam is madly impressed.’
And he sighed. Even now he felt upset by Adam’s pitiful delight to be associated with someone ‘cool’.
‘Adam helped me with my talk,’ he said in a low tone. ‘Unwrapping my wing. The parachute,’ he explained. ‘He sat in the seat while I held it.’
He didn’t want to say any more. He could see the child’s face, bright with joy to be regarded with such envy by the entire school while he talked of flying with black vultures over Spain and with the condors in South America. It hurt him to remember.
Laura was silent. He was glad, needing time to push some steel into his backbone because somewhere a little voice was becoming more insistent, saying that Laura’s solution was workable, that he could help them both.
Then common sense reasserted itself. He wasn’t God. Shouldn’t meddle. She had to find her own way. All he should do was to put her on the road.
Dippers bobbed about on the rocks in the turbulent river below. A heron flapped lazily across the meadow. Far in the distance he could see that a deer had become trapped in a field, enclosed by the high stone walls.
It ran up and down in panic, unsure how it had got there, incapable of finding its way back to safety. He realised that this was what he was doing to Laura and Adam: flinging them into an alien space where there were no recognisable landmarks. Yet, like the deer, they wanted to hide in safety—
‘There’s a deer trapped!’ she cried with concern. And she pointed.
‘I know.’
‘I forgot. You don’t miss a thing, do you?’ she said ruefully. ‘It’s scared, Cassian. Can’t we go down the valley and help it somehow?’
‘No.’
‘Surely we must—’
‘Laura, I hate to see it so frightened but we’d scare it even more if we started waving our arms and trying to get it back to the wood. It could hurt itself on the wall—break a leg, perhaps in its panic. Or get caught up in the barbed wire at the top end of the field.’
‘It looks so frightened,’ she said in a small voice.
He laid his hand on hers. ‘It must find its own way,’ he said gently.
And, extraordinarily, he wanted to keep Laura safe with him, and not send her out into the wide world. His jaw clenched. He was just missing Jai. Needed company. Someone to hold.
‘What is it?’ Laura asked softly.
‘Jai.’ His voice was choked with emotion.
He knew she nodded, though he kept staring straight ahead.
‘You’re a very caring man. Jai is very lucky to have you as a father.’
He sought her eyes then, almost faltering at the beauty of her misted blue gaze.
‘A callous brute like me?’ he joked.
She smiled wistfully. ‘I know you think you’re doing the right thing—that you believe it’s “good” for us,’ she breathed.
Her face lifted to his, the wind ruffling her hair. And he felt his heart lurch. She was entering his very bones. Shaking the cells in his body. It was purely a yearning for the softness of a woman, nothing to do with her personally.
Do it, a satanic voice urged. Wake her up. Kiss her.
‘I think we’d better go job-hunting,’ he said in strangled tones, his eyes hopelessly enmeshed with hers.
‘OK. But…about us staying on. Reconsider. A trial period. Please.’
Passion suffused her face. She looked radiant. And he could resist no longer. His mouth closed on hers and he groaned with hunger as she responded eagerly, inexpertly…but oh, so sweetly, the taste of her more succulent than the most exotic fruit, the pressure of her hand on his arm more welcome than he could ever have imagined.
Her hand slid to his neck. He drew her close, absorbing her into him, the needs of his mouth becoming more and more desperate as he sought to kiss life into every part of her.
To his astonishment, his neck was encircled in crushing arms, his head forced down till his mouth and thus his kisses became bruising. Laura had erupted. She was clamouring for him, moaning, crying, urging with a vehemence that startled and thrilled him to the core.
He lifted her onto him, her skirt riding up and her legs sliding around his waist. They clung in total abandon, not caring that anyone might drive by—although it was a rarely used road—oblivious to everything but the sensational release of long-held desires.
Her skin felt like velvet. Her hair tumbled over her forehead, silky and faintly perfumed of rosemary and he explored every inch of her face with impassioned delight.
He was weakening, kiss by kiss. Each wickedly innocent caress of her work-roughened hands aroused him more than any artful, silken finger. Laura was without artifice, her passion real and untaught.
That dazzled him, made his head spin with wonder. If he could have this glorious woman in his bed, he’d…
‘Cassian!’
She had tensed. But he hadn’t sated himself with her yet. So he continued to kiss her, to coax her now stubbornly closed mouth, sliding his tongue over it, enticing it open.
Except that it stayed resolutely closed, despite the sexual shudders which racked her body.
‘Laura,’ he murmured pleadingly.
‘No!’
Oh, God, he thought, seeing her stricken face. She regrets what she’s done. His arms fell away.
She looked down at her skirt, at the long lengths of slender tanned thigh which were making his loins liquid with their promise, and she gasped in horror then scrambled awkwardly away. With his reluctant help.
She turned her back, her face scarlet, eyes huge and glistening. Her skirt found its correct position. Her jacket was buttoned up, her hair hastily pressed smooth. And he saw with a wrench to his heart that her shoulders were shaking.
‘Laura,’ he ventured gently.
‘No! Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me!’ she squeaked.
‘We just kissed,’ he tried, playing it down.
Just! He’d seen stars. Been in heaven for a while. Dreamed impossible dreams.
Her head lifted and he dearly wanted to kiss the sweet nape of her neck.
‘You might be used to grabbing women and—and—’
‘Kissing them,’ he supplied, seeing that she was struggling.
‘Well,’ she demanded, whirling around, all fire and passion again. ‘Are you?’
How he wanted to take her in his arms again! That energy of hers needed an outlet—his, too.
‘Not with such spectacular results,’ he admitted, thinking how easily she’d aroused him.
She swallowed, as if horrified by his answer. And ran to the car. He didn’t help her to get in. He didn’t think she wanted to be touched.
He put his hands on the wall to steady himself because his legs seemed like water. His hands were shaking too.
Several deep breaths later, he’d come to the conclusion that he’d made things worse. Laura’s hidden depths had come to the surface but he’d been almost drowned in the process. Of course he’d known from the start that Laura wasn’t a run-of-the-mill woman. Whatever she felt, she felt fiercely.
So long as he realised that her uninhibited response hadn’t been to him, for him, but was a reaction to her stifled emotions, he’d be all right. She would never want sex without strings. Whereas that was all he’d allow himself.
He gave her a moment to compose herself. Below, he saw that the deer had gone. It had found sanctuary. Perhaps, he mused, some people thrived better in their own small worlds.
The thought hit him like a sledgehammer. He could be wrong about extending Laura’s field of vision, enlarging her horizons.
Yet now he’d kissed her, she could never remain at Thrushton—not if she wanted to stay out of his bed.
He muttered a low curse, went back to the car and settled himself in the driver’s seat without comment.
‘It nev
er happened!’ she whispered hoarsely.
He shot her a cynical look. If she thought he could ever forget that moment, she had another think coming.
The gears ground beneath his jerky grip. ‘Let’s concentrate on finding you employment, shall we?’ he suggested, grinding the words out through his teeth as harshly as he’d ground the gears.
The beautiful scenery was lost on him. He kept blaming himself, trying to understand why he’d acted so precipitously. The desire for pleasure, he supposed. And, for a short time, what pleasure!
Once in Harrogate, he marched her off to a boutique. And, ignoring all her bad-tempered protests, coldly persuaded her that she’d get a job a hell of a lot faster if she wasn’t wearing one of Aunt Enid’s ‘costumes’. If that’s what it was.
Sulkily she saw the sense of what he was saying and insisted on paying him back out of her future wages. The assistant whisked Laura off and he lounged in an armchair, being plied with coffee and biscuits by a pretty redhead. Her legs weren’t as good as Laura’s. Nor her cheekbones.
‘What do you think?’ trilled the assistant smugly.
He turned his head and gulped like a teenage boy faced with a nude woman for the first time. Only this one was far better than nude. Dressed, she was absolutely breathtaking.
Finding his mouth was open, he closed it and summoned up as near-normal a voice as he could.
‘Perfect.’
Laura’s eyes had deepened to a startling sky-blue, enhanced by the soft navy dress. It skimmed her body but any connoisseur of women could see that she had a fabulous figure and the unbroken length of the sleeveless dress, grazing her collarbone and falling smoothly to just below the knee, made her look taller and more imposing than before. Helped by the elegant high heels and…surely new, sheer stockings.
As she moved in response to the assistant’s instructions, he realised that Laura had incredible poise, her carriage as graceful as a model’s.
‘And there’s a jacket to go with it that matches Modom’s eyes,’ the assistant crowed, bustling to put it on the increasingly astonished ‘Modom’.
‘Do you like it, Laura?’ he asked dead-pan, entranced by her rapturous face.