by Penny Jordan
She still couldn’t believe it had happened, that Gareth had walked in here and actually…
She shivered. No doubt if challenged he would claim that it was all her fault, that she had been responsible for his lack of control…that it was her apparent provocativeness, her refusal to back down beneath his accusations which had put the fatal spark to the dry kindling of his anger.
Wearily she went upstairs. Her whole body ached now and she was beginning to suffer the aftermath of her physical and emotional shock.
She would never in a thousand years have imagined Gareth accusing her of having an affair with a married man, of being interested enough in whatever she might be doing to be bitterly condemning and contemptuous of her behaviour, never mind to react to it with so much sexual aggression.
Bewildered and confused, she crawled into bed, hugging the bedclothes around her, curling her body into a small protective ball. Her lip was still sore and swollen, and yet when she remembered his kiss it wasn’t with the revulsion she knew she ought to feel.
Instead…instead… Her heart bounded with fright as she tried to deny the frisson of sensation that ran through her.
This was crazy…impossible. She couldn’t feel like that…mustn’t feel like that…dared not allow herself to feel so…so aware, so responsible, so dangerously and wantonly excited by the memory of Gareth’s intensity. What would he be like if that intensity was fuelled by desire…by love, and not by contempt and anger?
She had no right to indulge in such curiosity…no right and no sense either if she did. She was treading a path she already knew could lead only to heartache and pain.
Her head felt as though it were stuffed with cotton-wool; thinking was far too much of an effort. All she wanted to do right now was forget the whole thing…to close her eyes and go to sleep and pray that when she woke up again she would discover that the entire incident had been something dreamed up by her imagination and had not in reality happened at all.
She shivered, despite the warmth of her bed. Her throat felt so sore; her head ached unbearably. She remembered again Meg’s warnings about the flu virus, but told herself stubbornly that she was most definitely not going to succumb to it; that it was just a cold—just reaction!
CHAPTER FOUR
SYBILLA had to repeat this promise to herself a dozen or more times during the following day. Despite the fact that it was her day off and she had been looking forward to spending some time in her garden, she discovered that she was suffering from a lassitude, a vagueness, that prevented her from doing anything more energetic and profitable than wandering around the garden a few times, telling herself that she really must start pruning and tidying up but then finding that she lacked the resolve to do anything other than distantly notice that there was work to be done.
The trouble was that her mind was far too full of other things…too busy with other problems.
Gareth…who would ever have thought… imagined? She shivered convulsively, her skin burning. What would have happened if, instead of freezing and rejecting him, she had…?
Aghast at the direction of her own wilful thoughts, she stared fiercely at the forsythia in front of her. It had finished flowering now and was ready for pruning.
If she had any sense she would go back to the house, collect her gardening clothes and pruning knife and get to work. The fresh air would help clear her head, and, if her throat was aching and she felt slightly shivery and achy, then she ought to be concentrating on willing herself to fight off these symptoms instead of allowing herself to become so absorbed, so obsessed with Gareth Seymour and his inexplicable behaviour.
Listlessly she walked back to the house. A good brisk walk or some other form of strenuous exercise was probably what she needed.
A new country-club complex had opened just outside the town in what had originally been a large derelict Victorian mansion. This had now been converted into a small exclusive hotel, with a large extension added to it which contained conference facilities and a swimming-pool complex with its own bar, games-rooms, a gym, indoor squash and tennis courts and several other features.
It had been Belinda who had suggested that they become members, mainly for business reasons: she and her husband were both keen golfers and used the course attached to the complex, while Sybilla preferred to make use of the tennis courts and swimming pool.
She could drive over there, swim, have a light lunch, and with a bit of luck find that the exercise had restored her normal energy, but instead of going through with this plan she found her mind wandering dangerously and rebelliously in the direction of Gareth.
The woman who had been with him had been extremely glamorous, and yet Sybilla knew instinctively that, despite the fact that his grandfather had wanted him to get married and have children, Thomas would not have taken to her.
Why hadn’t Gareth married? she mused. She knew how hard he had worked to establish himself in America and how successful he had been. Perhaps that had meant that he had never had the opportunity to form a deep and committed relationship, or perhaps he had just not wanted the tie of that kind of commitment, or just not found the right person. His companion, the blonde…was she the right one?
The pain that knifed through her was so sharp, so acutely physical that it caused her arm to shake. Coffee slopped from her mug on to the table. She put down the mug, shocked by her own reaction, fiercely glad that there was no one else there to witness it.
Why, after all these years, was she reacting like this? Gareth meant nothing to her. She had got over that silly adolescent infatuation years ago.
Had she? If that was true, why had she felt such a physical awareness of him last night…why was she thinking about him now, why was she…?
She got up, pacing the kitchen impatiently. This was silly…and, worse, it was dangerous. Thank goodness Gareth would soon be gone and she could get back to normal, forget him, or at least push him to a dusty dark cupboard at the back of her mind and lock it securely, keeping him there.
Now, after all this time had elapsed, the last thing she wanted to do was let herself turn into a victim of her own emotions, trapped by the past, unable to let go of its pain, unable to learn from it and walk free into maturity.
So she had had a mammoth crush on Gareth, and he had known about it…had known about it and been angered by it. She wasn’t the only teenager in the world to have gone through such an experience.
All right, so it had made her cautious, overcautious, in fact, in her reactions to other men, but, given the new social awareness of the risk of promiscuity, hadn’t that perhaps been a good thing?
Not if it meant that she was so mortally afraid of loving a man who would reject her as Gareth had rejected her that she would not allow any man to get close enough to form any kind of relationship with her, she told herself grimly.
The remedy to that lay within her own psyche and was not something she could blame on Gareth. She already knew that.
Yes, she knew it, she agreed with herself restlessly, but somehow seeing him…having him here in her home had resurrected so many painful memories she had thought she had long ago overcome that she felt confused, frightened almost, unable to trust her own mind to guide her logically and safely through the minefield of her own emotions.
When Gareth had kissed her, for one wild, impossible heartbeat of time she had actually wanted to respond to him, to match his anger with her own, his violence, his passion. She touched her sore lip with her tongue, shuddering as she acknowledged that her own anger, her own resentment and bitterness had been such last night that she could have wantonly and willingly inflicted the same kind of physical punishment on him as he had done on her. And that shocked her.
The phone rang and, glad of the distraction, she went to answer it.
It was her mother, ringing to ask if she knew when she was going to be able to visit them. She had to admit that as yet she hadn’t been able to work out a timetable with Belinda, but promised to do so just as soon as
she could.
It was only half an hour later, when she had replaced the receiver after a long chat, that she realised uncomfortably that she had not told her mother that Gareth was home.
Irritably telling herself that she had wasted enough time for one day trying to untangle the confusion of her emotions, she was just about to force herself to go back outside and tackle the forsythia when the phone rang again.
She reached for the receiver, a tiny tremor of sensation spearing through her when a man’s voice spoke her name, but almost instantly she realised that the caller was not, as she had first believed, Gareth, but Ray Lewis.
She felt angry with herself both for that betraying flare of reaction and for being idiotic enough not to recognise Ray Lewis’s voice instantly. It was, after all, nothing like Gareth’s, being more sharply pitched, more abrasive and yet somehow at the same time less masculine. She responded in an unencouraging clipped voice.
When it transpired that he wanted to persuade her to have dinner with him, under the guise of needing to have further discussions with her about his new staffing needs, her anger got the better of her.
She couldn’t forget what Gareth had said to her last night, the assumption he had made about her relationship with Ray Lewis, and now she couldn’t help wondering if other people had leapt to the same erroneous conclusions; if others thought that their relationship was not confined to business. If so…if so, no matter how valuable the business he might put their way, that kind of gossip and allusion could only damage the firm’s reputation and the professionalism on which Sybilla prided herself.
Because of this she was shorter with Ray Lewis than she had been previously, pointing out to him that he was Belinda’s client and that as Belinda was now back in the office his best course of action would be to get in touch with her there.
When he repeated his invitation to have dinner with him she took a deep breath and told him coldly that since he was not her client she could see no reason for accepting his invitation.
When he laughed and said, ‘Who said anything about business?’ her anger increased. She was, she discovered, gripping the receiver so tightly that the bones in her hand actually hurt. She had no option but to tell him that she was neither interested in nor flattered by what he appeared to be suggesting. He was, she reminded him, a married man, and even if he weren’t… She took a deep breath, warning herself that she was over-reacting, that a simple but firm ‘No’ would probably have been enough, and, to make it worse, she could not honestly say that her over-reaction had nothing to do with Gareth’s accusations and assumptions.
She could tell from Ray Lewis’s angry and sarcastic response to her rejection that she had probably made an enemy of him.
‘You’re not the only pebble on the beach,’ he told her sneeringly. Then he added, ‘I’d be careful I didn’t price myself out of the market if I were you. You’re just like all the rest of your sex, holding out for marriage and a rich husband. You don’t fool me.
‘Well I’ve got news for you. If you really think that what you’ve got between your legs is worth—’
Sybilla replaced the receiver, her stomach churning sickly with shock and disgust.
She had always known somewhere in the back of her mind that Ray Lewis was the kind of man who disliked women and perhaps even secretly feared them, but this was the first time she had ever been subjected to that kind of male aggression. It left her feeling dirty…unclean…frightened and weak in a way that Gareth, for all his physical exhibition of anger towards her, had not. Gareth’s anger had been clean, untainted by emotions towards her sex that left her feeling nauseous and shadowed by unease.
At least she was now sure of one thing: Ray Lewis would stop pestering her to go out with him, and if people had been gossiping…had made ill-founded judgements, they would soon realise they were wrong.
What Belinda would say when she discovered that they were likely to lose his business was another matter. Sighing to herself, Sybilla acknowledged that she could have handled him more tactfully, would probably have handled him more tactfully if it hadn’t been for Gareth’s accusations.
But why on earth should it matter to her now what Gareth Seymour thought of it? If she had any sense…
But that was just it. At the moment she seemed to be displaying a dangerous lack of that commodity.
Her head was aching again. She was not, most definitely not going to give in and allow herself to succumb to this virus, she told herself grimly. She had already allowed herself more than enough self-indulgence for one day, and look how she was suffering for that! No. She was most definitely not going to be ill. Virus or no virus.
She was repeating this mantra to herself the next morning as she dressed for work, fiercely telling herself that all that was wrong with her was a bit of a sore throat and an aching head, and that once she was at her desk and busy she would soon forget the discomfort they were causing her.
Stubbornly resisting the inclination to crawl back into bed and stay there, she went downstairs and had her breakfast.
The sun was out, the sky clear and sharply blue, promising a beautiful spring day, but when she stepped outside there was a cruelly cold wind—or so it seemed to her as she huddled deeper into her jacket and hurried towards her car.
Belinda was already in the office, going through the post. She greeted her with a warm smile which turned to a concerned frown when she heard the huskiness in her voice.
‘Are you feeling OK?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Fine,’ Sybilla assured her. ‘But I do need to have a word with you. Have you got a minute?’
‘Well I’ve got an appointment at half-past…’
‘This will only take a few minutes,’ Sybilla assured her. She had been worrying all night about the potential repercussions from her rejection of Ray Lewis, and wanted to warn Belinda that they could well lose his business.
‘Let’s go into my office,’ Belinda suggested.
Sybilla followed her inside, leaving the door half open in her anxiety to tell her what had happened.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’Belinda asked her.
‘You know the problems I’ve been having with Ray Lewis?’
When Belinda nodded she continued.
‘I saw him while you were off. You know he wanted to discuss taking on more temporary staff?’
‘Yes. He discussed it with me. Did he say how many people he would need, and what skills they—?’
‘He did, but I don’t think we’re going to get the business, and it’s all my fault, I’m afraid. You see…it’s…it’s come to my notice that people, or at least some people, appear to believe that Ray Lewis and I are having an affair and—’
‘What? Oh, surely not!’ Belinda protested disbelievingly. ‘Anyone who knows you…. I know he’s been making a nuisance of himself—’
‘Rather more than a nuisance,’ Sybilla interrupted her feelingly. ‘When I had lunch with him the other day he virtually tried to blackmail me into sleeping with him. Of course I refused. Even if he weren’t married…well, let’s just say he most definitely isn’t my type—’
‘Is he anyone’s?’ Belinda interrupted her drily. ‘That poor wife of his—how on earth she puts up with him… He has to be one of the most obnoxious men I’ve ever come across. Every time I have to deal with him I thank my lucky stars that he considers me too ancient and past it to be worthy of his attention. But you didn’t mention this when we—’
‘No. Because it was only afterwards that I discovered that people were apparently jumping to the wrong conclusion about my supposed relationship with him. And to make matters worse he rang me at home yesterday. When I tackled him and pointed out to him that by rights he was your client he dropped all pretence of wanting to discuss business and…well, to cut a long story short, I had to tell him that he was wasting his time. He wasn’t pleased, and I’m afraid it will mean that we will lose his business. I wasn’t very tactful, and he… Well, let’s just say the way
he reacted made me even more determined to give him a wide berth in the future. I’m sorry, Belinda, but I’m very much afraid that we’ll lose the account.’
There was a pause, and then Belinda said firmly, ‘To hell with the account. I feel very guilty. I had no idea that things had got so bad that he was harassing you like that. I knew he fancied you of course, but you seemed to have things under control, and as long as I dealt with him… But for him to actually threaten you…’
‘I thought I had it under control as well,’ Sybilla admitted, ‘but, well, let’s just say he’s made it plain to me that I don’t have, and when it comes to other people gossiping about an affair between us which just does not exist and never could exist…’
All her distaste and horror was revealed in her voice, which shook slightly as Belinda reached out and covered her hand with her own. ‘I know how you must feel,’ she said softly, ‘and I promise you that no one who really knows you would believe for one moment—’
She stopped as Sybilla gave a bitter little laugh.
‘What’s wrong?’ Belinda asked her worriedly. ‘What have I said?’
‘It’s not you,’ Sybilla assured her, ‘it’s—’ She stopped as she heard the phone ring in the outer office.
‘I’d better go and answer that. Meg isn’t in yet.’
As she turned towards the door she almost collided with the man who was just about to rap on it, her face going parchment-pale as she stared at him in shocked dismay.
‘Gareth.’