by Penny Jordan
‘To what?’ she challenged him. ‘To arouse the desires of a man—?’
She stopped, biting her lip in vexation. What inner treachery had pushed her into making such a revealing comment? She paused, waiting for Gareth to pounce on it, to hold up to her her own admitted vulnerability, but to her confusion instead he said grittily, ‘All right, I suppose I deserved that comment.’ He gave a small shrug, the gesture so heart-stoppingly familiar that her reaction to it raced through her own flesh like an overdose of alcohol carried in the bloodstream. He was and always had been such a very male man, tall, powerfully built, with muscles honed from his love of being outside rather than developed in some arid expensive gym. She remembered once…she must have been about fourteen, or maybe even fifteen. She had gone round to the house and had found him bare-chested and knee-deep in the circular stone fishpond in the formal part of the Cedars’ garden, cleaning out the weed that had been threatening to choke the lilies.
She could recall today, as intensely and as vividly as though it had happened only hours ago and not years, the sensations of raw aching love and longing which had engulfed her as she’d watched him, his torso brown and hard with muscle, his jeans slipping low on his hips so that her shocked and fascinated gaze had been able to trace the dark line of hair disappearing beneath his belt.
A peculiar sensation of weakness had filled her then, a burning heat combined with suffocating breathlessness…faintness almost, and then Gareth had come wading towards her, chafing her teasingly, threatening to lift her into the water to join him if she had nothing better to do than to stand and watch him work.
His teasing had broken the spell engulfing her, and the moment had been forgotten, pushed to the back of her mind until the next time she had become aware of him in the same way.
And now he was a man, and without knowing how she knew she did know that, beneath the expensive casualness of his clothes, his body would be now as it had been then: hard with muscle, satin-fleshed, with that same arrowing of fine dark hair which her fingers had ached to reach out and touch.
She shuddered inwardly. His very presence here in the same room as her was a reminder of so many things she would rather forget, resurrecting so many emotions she had thought safely destroyed.
Where another woman might have rejoiced in this confirmation of her sexuality, she wanted to reject it; to deny not only that she had ever felt that way, but also that she was still capable of doing so.
‘Come back.’
The soft words startled Sybilla into focusing on his face. He was watching her with an oddly sombre expression in his eyes, his weight resting easily against the unit behind him as he leaned against it.
‘You always were a dreamer…idealistic.’ His mouth twisted suddenly. ‘Perhaps I should have remembered that instead of allowing myself—’ He stopped again and then said curtly, ‘I still haven’t apologised properly for the other night. You and I go back a long way, Sybilla. There was no reason why we shouldn’t…’
‘Be friends’ was what he’d been about to say. Pain pierced her with all the sharp agony of a knife-point. The very last thing she wanted was Gareth’s friendship. It would destroy her to be forced to accept that kind of role in his life when she wanted…
When she wanted what? His love? No, of course she didn’t. She didn’t want anything from him…anything at all, and as for his claim that he wanted to apologise, that he wanted them to be friends, well, no doubt now that he was moving back here he wanted his life to run on smooth, even lines.
Once she accepted his apology, once she allowed him back into her life… She gave a fine shudder. No, she could not do that…could not allow herself, betray herself into that sort of emotional danger. It would be far safer to keep up her barriers, to hold him at a distance.
Much as she hated to admit it, she was still far too vulnerable where he was concerned.
‘I don’t want your apology, Gareth,’ she told him stiffly. ‘In fact, I don’t want anything from you at all, other than that you stay out of my life.’
She couldn’t look at him, but she heard the savagery of his indrawn breath and trembled inwardly. This was so unlike her, so diametrically opposed to her real nature, her real desires. Inside she felt as though she was tearing herself apart, but what alternative did she have?
Once before she had suffered the pain and anguish of hearing him deride her for her love for him, of hearing him reject that love as unwanted and embarrassing. She was never going to allow him to humiliate her like that again.
Terrified that her resolution might desert her, that she might weaken and give in to the temptation to grasp the olive branch he was holding out to her, she repeated quickly, ‘I don’t want your apology, Gareth. I don’t want it and I don’t need it. You see…’ she took a deep breath and turned to face him, praying that her courage wouldn’t desert her ‘…you see, your opinion of me…of my…my morals and the way I live my life means nothing to me at all.’ You mean nothing to me at all, she wanted to add, but she simply could not get her lips to form the words, and, dismayingly, for some obscure reason she could actually feel the small scar on her bottom lip starting to throb, even though the pain of it had gone.
She held her breath, her body gripped by tension and pain, and then she heard Gareth saying coolly, ‘I see.’
She prayed that he did not; that he did not see through the barriers she was trying to put up to the real vulnerability she was trying to shield.
‘I think perhaps, then, that I’d better leave.’
‘Yes,’ Sybilla agreed tonelessly, not daring to look at him in case she gave in and begged him to stay.
Good manners forced her to accompany him to the door, but as he drew level with her she flinched back from him, freezing when, instead of politely responding to her desire to put more space between them, he came closer to her, his expression shadowed and unreadable.
‘I’ve made my fair share of mistakes in my time, but none that I regret more than…’
She couldn’t bear it…couldn’t endure him so close to her. She felt both unbearably nervous and sickly excited all at the same time, her stomach churning, her senses overwhelmed by the sight and scent of him. Giddily she closed her eyes, touching her tongue to her over-dry lips.
‘Sybilla.’
The rawness in his voice sent her pulse accelerating wildly out of control. She opened her eyes and discovered that he was staring at her mouth.
‘Does it still hurt?’
For a moment, for one wild anguished moment she thought he was referring to the past; that he had broken all the rules and was actually bringing out into the open his awareness of how she had felt about him; but then, as he reached out and touched her bottom lip with his thumb, she realised that he meant her mouth; that he was asking her if her mouth still hurt.
‘I never meant…’
His voice was rough and uneven, setting off a chain of reactions inside her body. Helplessly her lips started to part, her eyes huge and dark as they reflected the shock of what he was doing to her. His thumb brushed gently against the small scar, his throat suddenly ridged with tension as he swallowed.
‘Ten years ago you’d have wanted me to kiss it better for you.’
She stared at him in disbelief, unable to comprehend that he had actually spoken such words.
The huge aching ball of pain inside her splintered into a million diamond-sharp shards which tore into her nervous system, destroying her self-control, her defences, leaving her so emotionally vulnerable, so close to betraying tears that she could actually feel the hot sting of them in her throat and eyes.
His thumb was still resting against her mouth. Desperately she took a step back from him, bumping into the wall behind her, her face white with shock and distress, her voice croaky and unfamiliar as she told him huskily, ‘Ten years ago I was a child…a fool, but I’m neither of those things now, Gareth.’ And I don’t know why you’re trying to torment me like this, an inner voice cried out in angui
sh, but she refused to voice such words—to allow him to guess at the hurt she was trying to conceal.
Was this his way of punishing her for her refusal to accept his apology, by reminding her of how stupid she had once been?
‘Please leave,’ she demanded unevenly. ‘I’m sure your…girlfriend must be wondering what’s taking you so long.’
‘My girlfriend?’ Her heart sank as he picked up her words. Why on earth had she given in to that childish impulse to throw that at him? His private life…his personal relationships—these were nothing to do with her. Better by far for her to have preserved a dignified silence on the subject than to have descended to the level of throwing such a childish comment at him.
‘Oh, you mean Lois. Lois isn’t my girlfriend. She’s my American attorney,’ he told her crisply.
She could feel her skin burning with embarrassment and anger.
‘I don’t care what role she has in your life, Gareth,’ she told him untruthfully. ‘I merely assumed—’
‘That she and I were lovers. Just as I assumed that you and Lewis… Dangerous things, aren’t they, assumptions? Especially when they’re fuelled by…’ He paused and gave her a thoughtful look. ‘What exactly were yours fuelled by, Sybilla?’
‘Nothing,’ she lied, aware of how dangerously unstable her position was becoming. ‘As I’ve already told you, your private life is of no interest to me.’
‘Oh, yes, you’ve certainly made that fact clear enough,’ he muttered under his breath, much to her relief, as he turned towards the door.
He started to open it and then paused, turning back to her saying, ‘You’ll have heard, of course, that I’ve decided to move back here to take over the running of the business.’
Inwardly trembling, she still managed to give a very dismissive, casual shrug as she agreed as carelessly as she could, ‘Belinda did say something of the sort.’
‘But you weren’t in the least bit interested,’ Gareth broke in, his voice sharp with a bitterness she found impossible to understand. ‘Yes, I think I’ve got the message now, Sybilla. Don’t bother to walk me to my car. I’m sure you’ve a dozen or more far more important things to do,’ he told her sarcastically. ‘By the way, one final thing: the shaving-foam; since it obviously wasn’t, as I’d supposed, for your lover, then…?’
She was too astonished to lie.
‘It…it was for my neighbour’s husband. I was doing some shopping for them. They’re elderly and—’
She stopped. Why on earth was she explaining herself to him like this? And why on earth had he assumed the shaving-foam must mean that she had a lover, a relationship intimate enough to necessitate her purchase of such an item? But before she could ask him he was walking away from her. She told herself that she wasn’t interested in his reply anyway. He obviously liked jumping to the wrong conclusions about her. Because he wanted to believe that she had a lover and that he was safe from her unwanted love for him? Well, he need have no fears on that score. None at all.
* * *
An hour after he had gone Sybilla was still trembling in the after-shock of his visit. It was no use now telling herself that the sane and mature thing to do would have been to accept his apology, to be calm and businesslike with him, cool and distant, instead of allowing her emotions to run riot and cause her to behave so self-betrayingly and foolishly.
Fortunately he hadn’t seemed to realise that her rejection of his apology sprang more from fear, for a need to protect herself than from any desire to snub or reject him. But once he had calmed down…once he had had time to think over their interview, might he not realise the truth?
What made her think he would bother to spend time going over their conversation? she derided herself scornfully. Did she honestly believe that he was like her, that he would waste hours and hours obsessively examining every word she had spoken, every nuance of expression and emotion? No, of course he wouldn’t. He would simply shrug off her refusal to accept his apology, tell himself that he had done the right thing in tendering it and put her right out of his mind.
He didn’t really care whether they got on cordially together or not, and she certainly wasn’t going to allow him or anyone else to start remembering the past, to start remembering how she had once hung on his every word, gazed at him with adoration and love, and to start watching her reaction to him with amusement and contempt, looking for all those small signs of self-betrayal made by those who had the misfortune to fall desperately in love with someone who could not love them equally intensely in return.
No, better by far to hold him at a distance, to be cold and remote towards him, than to risk the kind of danger she knew instinctively would come from accepting his apology…his offer of ‘friendship’.
It was very much later that she realised that as a businesswoman her first thought ought not to have been for her own emotions but for the possible harm she might have done to the business by rejecting his apology, but it was too late now for second thoughts. He wouldn’t be coming back to apologise again. Not after the reception she had just given him.
She knew that knowledge ought to be reassuring and satisfying, but instead it made her feel unbearably unhappy and alone. She sneezed and then cursed under her breath. If only she felt better physically she was sure she would be in a much stronger position to deal with this unwanted emotional vulnerability which had surfaced to frighten and confuse her.
Was it really only a week or so ago that, if asked, she would have immediately and confidently stated that Gareth meant nothing whatsoever to her now?
Had it really only taken one meeting and one angry, intense kiss to show her just how she had been deceiving herself? Was she really such a fool?
It seemed that she must be, she admitted later, curled up in bed, acknowledging what she had been trying to deny to herself ever since she had looked up in the car park and seen him there. She still loved him.
She twisted restlessly in her bed, telling herself that it couldn’t be possible; that at fifteen, going on sixteen, she had been a child, capable not of love but only of adoration; of hero-worship; that she had seen Gareth as a god whom she had elevated to a pedestal far, far beyond her own reach.
Now she was an adult, and adult love involved emotions that meant meeting as two equals, emotions which allowed the other person to be human, to have faults; love meant accepting a person as he or she really was, not transforming them into someone superhuman, super-perfect, which was surely what she had done with Gareth. She had fallen in love, as teenagers did, with an ideal, an ideal created by her own mind, her own imagination, her own needs and longings. She had not known the real Gareth at all.
But no, that wasn’t true. She had known the real Gareth, and she had known him for far longer than she had been infatuated with him. She had known his kindness to her as a child, his compassion…his concern…his consideration. She had known the innate gentleness of his nature, the true kindness that extended to include everyone around him. He had teased her at times, it was true, but it had been a gentle, warm teasing, without malice or cruelty, and until she had overheard that betraying conversation and shut herself off from him, denying herself any kind of access to him, he had given her a great deal of his time…his attention.
All through her childhood she had treated the Cedars as a second home and Gareth himself as a cross between an older brother and a favourite cousin. No, she could hardly claim that she did not know him.
And yet he had changed, must have changed to have misjudged her so quickly and so angrily. The Gareth she had known would never have done that.
And these feelings she still had for him, feelings which, for lack of any other fitting description, she was forced to call love… How could she say with one breath that she loved him, and yet feel with another such a fierce anger and resentment towards him for all the havoc he was causing in her life?
So what was she saying? That, because she was angry, hurt, even bitter towards him, she could not love him? So what we
re her feelings, then…?
Were they merely physical…lustful…leftover embers of a teenage sexual curiosity which should have died out years ago, but which for some unfathomable reason his reappearance had fanned into white-hot life.
Because she did desire him; she couldn’t deny that. This evening, standing in her kitchen, watching him, she had been overwhelmed by feelings of such a physical intensity that the memory of them even now, when she was alone, made her tremble with a mixture of guilt and anger.
So was it just an inconvenient physical desire she felt for him, and, if her sexual feelings were so easily aroused, why was it that no other man had aroused them?
It was true that she had deliberately shielded her emotions, deliberately guarded her heart, afraid of allowing any man to get too close to her in case he, like Gareth, rejected her; and, because she was the person she was, she had always assumed that for her physical desire must go hand in hand with emotional desire, that she was not a woman who could ever separate the two. And if that was true then this unwanted, aching desire she felt right now must mean…
She rolled over, pulling her pillow over her head and groaning out load. Why was she tormenting herself like this, like a masochist, hooked on self-inflicted pain? Why didn’t she just admit the truth instead of torturing herself? She loved Gareth. She must do…otherwise why was she so desperately afraid…why was she so determined to remain cold and distant with him? He had wanted to apologise for misjudging her, but she had refused to let him. She had almost actively encouraged and fed his hostility towards her.
Why? Surely not merely out of stubborn pride, because she was determined that never again would he have a reason to deride her feelings for him.
If only he had stayed safely out of the way in America. If only he had not decided to return home.
She pushed away her pillow. She was aching all over with tension and fear. If only she could close her eyes, go to sleep and then wake up to find that the whole thing had been only a nightmare.