by Penny Jordan
‘I was staying in the village some years ago and heard that it was up for sale. I’ve always loved the Borders and buying it was certainly a hell of a lot less expensive than going for a Cotswold cottage.’
‘Just imagine the stories it could tell,’ Heaven breathed.
‘Mmm…’ Jon agreed. ‘It’s said locally that one misty November night a long time ago—ideal weather for stealing your neighbour’s sheep—the then owner of this tower decided to break the truce which existed between him and his neighbour and set off to reive his cattle. When he reached the farm he discovered that the only person there was the seventeen-year-old niece of the farmer who was visiting from Edinburgh, so as well as taking his cattle he also took his neighbour’s niece. However, apparently she was so beautiful and so good that our border reiver fell completely in love with her, and, much more unlikely, she with him, and rather than leading to another bloody feud his abduction of her led instead to a wedding.’
‘They lived happily ever after,’ Heaven laughed.
‘Can you doubt it?’ Jon laughed back as he opened his car door and went round to open Heaven’s door for her.
As she followed him towards the tower, Heaven found herself instinctively moving a little closer to him. It wasn’t that she was afraid of anything—no, of course not—but she still jumped and gave a small startled gasp as something rustled in the ivy that clothed the front wall of the tower.
‘It’s all right; it’s just an owl,’ Jon comforted her as he pushed open the door and switched on the lights, but he still took her hand in his, holding it comfortingly, and Heaven didn’t make any real attempt to pull away from him as they walked into the tower together.
As she stood with him in the hallway Heaven blinked in surprise.
‘Oh, but this is lovely,’ she enthused as she studied the plain soft cream plaster walls and the rustic iron wall sconces that held the lights. Plain coir matting covered the floor and the three doors which opened off the hallway were all of dark polished wood, like the stairs which led upwards.
‘That door leads into the kitchen,’ Jon informed her, indicating the door immediately in front of them. ‘The other two rooms are my study and a rather small, cold sitting room; the main living room is on the next floor. Come up and I’ll show you it and the bedrooms on the floor above that.’
The living room was huge.
‘This must take up the whole of this floor,’ Heaven guessed.
‘It does,’ Jon agreed. ‘The main drawback of this place so far as I’m concerned is having the kitchen and this room on separate floors, but it’s a drawback which is more than made up for by the panoramic views you get of the countryside from here. On a clear day you can virtually see as far as the coast.’
Heaven nodded sleepily as she tried and failed to stifle a yawn.
Like the hallway the living room was furnished simply with coir matting and three huge sofas covered in natural creamy white linen.
Heaven yawned again and immediately Jon frowned, exclaiming, ‘You’re tired! Come on; I’ll take you up and show you your room.’
As he guided her towards the stairs, Heaven reflected that just once in a while it felt surprisingly good to relax and let someone else take charge.
Two doors opened off the upper landing and Jon pushed open the right-hand one for her, switching on the light inside the room and then ushering her inside.
‘Both bedrooms have their own en suite bathroom,’ he told her as she blinked sleepily around the room, but it was the large and oh, so comfortable-looking bed with its traditional brass bedstead and its heavenly plain bedlinen that her gaze kept on returning to.
‘Look, why don’t I leave you to get ready for bed,’ Jon suggested gently, ‘whilst I go down and make us both a hot drink? You’ll find plenty of towels in the cupboard in your bathroom, along with a spare toothbrush and all the usual necessities. Mrs Frazer from the village, who comes in to go over the house for me and keep an eye on things, believes in being equipped for all emergencies.’
As soon as she heard the door close behind him Heaven walked over to the bed. She only intended to touch it, to test it, just to see if it was as deliciously comfortable as it looked, but for some inexplicable reason touching it became sitting on it, and sitting on it became lying on it, so that when Jon returned he found her curled up fast asleep on the edge of the bed still fully dressed.
Very gently he tried to wake her but when he realised how deeply asleep she was he hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to simply cover her with a spare duvet and leave her as she was. But he knew enough about women to recognise that when she woke up in the morning and discovered that she had slept in the only clothes she had to wear she would not be very happy and so, still frowning, he bent down and started to remove her shoes.
The bedroom light was still on, and he wasn’t sure if it was for her benefit or his own that he stopped what he was doing and went and switched it off before returning to complete his self-appointed task in the semidarkness, which, if he was honest, did little to conceal the feminine beauty and desirability of her naked body from him. In fact he could see far too much, arousing the urgency and intensity of his own male hunger and desire for her.
The temptation to remove his own clothes, to slide beneath the bedclothes with her, to hold her in his arms was so strong, so intense, so demanding that he felt himself literally grinding his teeth together as he fought to control it, bending instead to scoop up the clothes he’d removed, but as he straightened up his resolve wavered. She looked so adorable, so… kissable… so… so Heaven, lying there with only her face and her soft hair visible above the bedclothes, that he just had to bend down and kiss her very gently on the mouth.
In her sleep, Heaven smiled against his lips and her own clung softly, to him—softly, temptingly… Sternly Jon made himself withdraw from her.
If he couldn’t share the intimacy of her bed with her then at least his clothes could share the intimacy of the washing machine and dryer with hers, he told himself ruefully as he closed the door behind himself and went to strip off his own things before taking them down to the kitchen to put them in the washing machine.
At least she could have clean clothes in the morning even if they were the same ones she had worn the previous day. After he’d pushed everything into the machine and selected a suitable washing cycle he paused to scoop up the single small item which had fallen onto the floor, quickly picking up the tiny pair of pretty lacy knickers and pushing them hastily into the machine before closing the door on them and on his own tantalising erotic thoughts.
Eighteen months ago when he had first set eyes on Heaven he had been attracted to her. The evening he had taken her out he had known that that attraction was deepening into something more, something much stronger, and by the end of the evening he had known… sensed… But then had come all the trauma and tragedy of Harold’s cruel manipulation of her situation and he had forced himself to acknowledge that he was the last person Heaven would want in her life.
But now fate had thrown them together again and it hadn’t taken that intoxicating interlude in his car earlier on to make him realise that far from lessening his feelings towards her the intervening months had only strengthened them.
But what about her feelings for him? She had certainly been responsive to him earlier this evening; he knew she was not the kind of woman to indulge in casual sexual intimacy with anyone and the sexual and emotional chemistry they had generated between them certainly argued well for the future he hoped they would have together.
The future. The smile which had begun to curl his mouth suddenly disappeared. Before he could invite her to think about sharing that future with him there was the present to be dealt with—the present and his unpleasant ex-brother-in-law.
His mouth compressing grimly, Jon mentally reviewed the information Heaven had given him.
As he walked out into the hallway he glanced ruefully towards the stairs leading up to Heaven’s bedroom
, to Heaven, both literally and metaphorically, he acknowledged. He fought the temptation to ignore his responsibility towards his sister, sternly admonishing himself for the highly erotic and passionately emotional nature of his thoughts as he turned away from the stairs and headed instead for his study.
Once inside he firmly closed the door and then sat down at his desk and switched on his computer.
He had begun to think he would never find a lever with which to manoeuvre his ex-brother-in-law into giving his sister and their children a fairer financial settlement, but now, thanks to Heaven, he suspected that at last he had. And what a lever. A grim smile curled his mouth as he set to work.
CHAPTER FIVE
HEAVEN stretched sleepily and luxuriously and then opened her eyes. Abruptly she sat bolt upright in her bed—no, not her bed at all, she recognised as she snatched up the duvet which had fallen away from her body to cover her naked breasts and warily glanced around her unfamiliar surroundings.
She was not at home in London any more, she was in Scotland, in an ancient border fortress which had once been the home of wild border reivers, and which was now the home of Jon.
Jon. Just thinking about him made her toes start to curl and her tummy flutter in a way that had nothing to do with nervousness or apprehension.
If she sat right up in the high bed she could see through the window to the hills that lay beyond it—white with snow beneath a blue sky from which shone a brilliantly sharp winter sun.
In London it would no doubt be dull and grey and damp; in London she would have been waking up in her admittedly very warm and cosy Chelsea home, her haven—but how long would it have remained her haven once Harold had discovered her identity and tracked her down? And in London there would have been no Jon.
A rosy blush suffused her face. She only had a very vague memory of their arrival the previous evening, but one thing she was very clear about and that was that she had most certainly not undressed herself. Which meant… which meant…
Jon stretched his taut muscles under the sharp, hot sting of the shower. He had finally gone to bed at six o’clock in the morning, very pleased with what he had done. He smiled broadly to himself as he contemplated Harold’s reaction to the discovery of just how much Jon knew about his underhand, not to mention virtually fraudulent business dealings.
Of course he had already been aware of Harold’s dishonesty—after all, he had spent a large part of the last year investigating his affairs—but knowing it and proving it were two very different things, and now, thanks to Heaven, he was well on the way to having that proof. He knew about the trickery Harold had used to carefully conceal the money he had made via a complex network of interlinking off-shore companies—carefully, but not carefully enough, Jon acknowledged jubilantly.
Soon he would have written evidence of just where Harold’s assets were, evidence his sister could put before a judge, but Jon cynically acknowledged that once Harold knew just what they had discovered he would never allow Louisa’s maintenance petition to get to court. If he did then the whole of his business empire could be destroyed.
No, Louisa should find that she got a much fairer divorce settlement from her ex-husband now, and with it the return of her family furniture, Jon decided grimly as he reached for a towel and quickly dried off his body before pulling on a towelling robe.
Was Heaven awake yet? There was only one way to find out…
Jon! Where had he slept last night after he had undressed her? This bed, her bed, was certainly big enough for both of them. Heaven wriggled uncertainly beneath the duvet. Had they spent the night together? Had Jon…? She gave a small gasp as the bedroom door was pushed open and the subject of her wantonly sensual thoughts came in carrying a tray with two mugs of tea, and her clothes.
‘I put these in the washer for you last night,’ he began prosaically as he put her clothes down on a chair several yards away from the bed.
‘My clothes…?’
Hard though she tried to suppress it, Heaven could feel her blush starting to deepen, and then, unable to keep the suspicion to herself any longer, burst out, ‘Last night did we… did you…?’
The hot-faced look she cast in the direction of the opposite side of the double bed made Jon want to smile as he realised what was going through her mind.
She thought he might have done more than remove her clothing, did she? Well, in some respects he almost wished he had, although if he had…
‘Don’t you know… can’t you remember?’ he teased her, watching with enjoyment as her eyes rounded with uncertainty. In her consternation Heaven forgot to hang onto the duvet, which started to slither away from her body immediately she released it, causing Jon, who was just in the act of placing her mug of tea on the table at her side of the bed, to react swiftly and with gentlemanly concern to retrieve the errant duvet for her.
It was mere misfortune, of course, that he should fail in his mission to spare Heaven’s blushes and protect her modesty, missing the recalcitrant duvet by millimetres—so few millimetres, in fact, that the tips of his fingers actually brushed against the soft warmth of Heaven’s breast.
It was the effect of the cool air against her body that was causing her nipples to pout so provocatively, Heaven tried to reassure herself, and their wanton stiffness had nothing whatsoever—could have nothing whatsoever—to do with Jon’s proximity, nor his touch.
‘You can’t remember, can you?’ she heard him accusing her as he sat down on the bed next to her.
Heaven gave a small gulp, not so much because of her near-nakedness, or even because the towelling robe he was wearing was, so it seemed to her, very precariously tied at the waist—so precariously in fact that she suspected that all it would take for it to fall open completely would be for…
Hastily she averted her eyes and her hot face from the interesting darkly shadowed area just below his firmly flat belly. No, it was neither of those two things that was responsible for her agitation. What was causing it was her awareness that she could not remember whether or not she and Jon had spent the night together. What she did know, though, was that she did not find the idea that they might have unbelievable—or unappealing.
‘So you think I might have taken advantage of your sleeping state and spent the night here in bed with you, do you?’ he was asking her.
Heaven rallied enough to remind him, ‘You took my clothes off.’
‘Mmm… A purely altruistic action, I can assure you, and done merely so that you could have clean clothes to wear this morning.’
‘Oh…’
Jon cocked an eyebrow and smiled encouragingly at her.
‘Could that have been an “Oh” of apology… or even one of disappointment?’ he asked her teasingly.
Heaven gave him a wrathful look but before she could denounce him with the words clamouring for utterance on her tongue he neatly cut the ground away from her by telling her softly, ‘Not that I wasn’t tempted… very tempted. You’ve got a very sexy body… And a delicious little mole just here,’ he told her, finding with dismaying accuracy despite the duvet the spot on her hip bone where she did indeed have a small mole.
‘A very kissable mole,’ he whispered, leaning closer to her.
Heaven couldn’t help it. Instinctively, as he moved closer to her she moved closer to him. With his lips only a breath away from hers Jon told her huskily, ‘No, I didn’t sleep with you, and if I had… If I had, you may be sure that you most certainly would have remembered it…’
‘Remembered…’ Heaven whispered shakily.
‘Mmm…’ Jon agreed. ‘You would. Because I would have made love to you so thoroughly, so… so sensually… starting like this…’
Heaven had been about to speak but it was too late; Jon was already cupping her face with both hands, pressing slow, mouthwateringly delicious kisses against her mouth. The kind of kisses that made her reach out and wrap her own arms around him to hold him closer.
‘Mmm… and then what would you have done?�
� Heaven asked him dizzily.
‘Then I would have done this, and you’d certainly have remembered it,’ he told her, sweeping her hair to one side and stringing a line of toe-curling little nibbles all the way down her throat and along her shoulder, bringing her whole body out in a rash of responsive goosebumps as he did so.
Heaven gave a small moan of sheer delight, unwittingly digging her nails into the flesh of his arms, but he didn’t mind the pain.
‘Oh-h-h…’ she gasped as he trailed a row of kisses all the way down the inside of her arm to her wrist, planting one in her palm before he closed her fingers over it and carried that hand to his own body, placing it right where his heart was thumping with heavy irregularity.
‘And then… what would you have done?’ Heaven pressed him, opening eyes heavy with desire and arousal to focus on him.
Jon felt his heart skip a full half a dozen beats. Just that look in her eyes alone, never mind the softer tempting fullness of her naked breasts, was enough to make him want…
‘Then I’d have told you that this isn’t a game and I want you so much that I ache like hell for you,’ he told her rawly, the emotion in his voice and in his eyes making Heaven catch her breath…
‘I want you too,’ she admitted bravely as she held out her arms to him.
Very gently he reached out and cupped her breasts and then equally gently leaned forward and started to kiss her.
Heaven gave a soft moan low in her throat as she felt Jon rubbing the pads of his thumbs over and over her sensitive nipples, her whole body writhing in sensual pleasure as she opened her mouth to the deep, pulsing thrust of his tongue.
When he released her mouth to capture one of her nipples and draw it tenderly into his mouth she could feel the soft sensuality of his body hair and the sleek hardness of the muscles that lay beneath his skin.
She wanted to explore every inch of him, to touch and taste all of him, but she hadn’t realised she had said so out loud until Jon buried his face between her breasts and groaned, ‘Oh, God, Heaven, have you any idea just what you’re doing to me?’