‘Kate Althorp told me there were a lot of fathers of teenage girls in the district who would be very glad he was out of the way. You could easily be one of them, irrespective of your standing in the community.’
‘Those are very serious accusations,’ he said. ‘If I were you, I would be very careful who I voiced them to, otherwise you could find yourself in very deep water.’
Her eyes glinted challengingly as she held his heated gaze. ‘Interesting choice of words, Chief Inspector, don’t you think?’
His mouth flattened into a thin white line. A little flutter of alarm disturbed the lining of Eloise’s stomach as he stepped towards her. She made to move backwards but came up against the pantry door, the small round knob of the handle digging into the middle of her back.
Then his eyes locked down on hers, glittering with sparks of anger, but there was something else that was far more dangerous.
Male desire…
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘W-WHAT are you doing?’ Eloise croaked as his body loomed closer.
‘What do you think I’m doing?’ he asked.
She swallowed and her wobbly belly did another little tumble turn as his chest almost but not quite brushed against hers. ‘Stop it immediately.’
He raised his hands in the air. ‘I’m not even touching you.’
She ran her tongue over the dryness of her lips. ‘I can feel your body heat…That’s…that’s touching in my book.’
‘I haven’t read that particular book,’ he said, his warm breath caressing her face as his hands came to rest either side of her head on the pantry door. ‘Is it worth reading?’
Eloise was having trouble keeping focused on what he was saying. In fact, she was having trouble stringing two thoughts together in her head. All she could focus on was his mouth—his beautifully shaped mouth with its fuller bottom lip that she knew would be nothing short of sensual heaven pressing against hers. This close she could see each masculine pinpoint of dark stubble over his top lip, and the skin of her face began to tingle in anticipation of feeling its abrasiveness against the softness of her face. Her breasts felt tight and tender at the same time, their nipples suddenly aching for the press of his hands, the exploration of his fingers, the heat and fire of his tongue, and the primitive and enthralling scrape of his teeth.
She felt like her body was on fire. Flames were leaping between her legs, sending spot fires to every part of her body. Her brain was zinging with images of their bodies locked together in passion, his hard maleness buried in her feminine softness, the rocking motion of their sexual union making her femininity weep with desire to feel it for real instead of just imagining it.
She arched her back away from the pantry doorknob and her whole body jolted with sensual shock as her body came into full contact with his, from chest to pelvis.
His eyes fastened on hers.
Her heart came to a shuddering halt before kick-starting again with a series of out-of-beat heavy thuds.
Her mouth went dry.
His mouth was close, so close she could feel his breath moving over the achingly sensitive surface of her lips like an invisible feather being brushed along them.
‘You’re touching me,’ he said, his voice sounding as if it had been scraped over a rough surface.
‘It’s the doorknob…’ She hitched in a jagged breath. ‘It was digging a hole in my back.’
He smiled crookedly. ‘And here I was thinking you were coming onto me.’
‘I wasn’t coming onto you,’ she said, knowing it was nothing but a bare-faced lie. She had never wanted a man to kiss her more in her entire life. Her lips burned with the need to feel the hard searching pressure of his. Surely he could see it? How could she hide her longing? It thrummed in her veins like a fast-flowing river of need, the pulse of it so strong it threatened to break through the tender barrier of her skin.
His eyes went to her mouth. ‘Are you sure?’
She moistened her lips again. ‘P-pretty sure…’
His smile widened. ‘So you’re in two minds about taking this one step further, are you, Dr Hayden from Australia?’
Eloise swallowed again, her throat feeling far too narrow and dry. ‘You know what they say about mixing business and pleasure, Chief Inspector D’Ancey,’ she said in a breathless whisper.
‘What do they say?’ he asked, bringing his mouth to just above hers.
‘It’s…it’s dangerous…’
He cocked one brow. ‘Dangerous? How so?’
‘It makes things hazy…you know…it colours your judgement until you can’t think straight. It’s not very…er…professional…’
He very slowly reached to brush a wayward strand of her hair back from her mouth, and gently tucked it behind her ear. ‘So you don’t think we should continue with this?’ he asked.
She compressed her lips just once to see if the tingling sensation would go away, but if anything it made it even worse. ‘Um…’ Oh, God, why did he have to have such a kissable mouth? she thought. It was so strong and yet so soft and so very close to hers.
Way too close.
And his hands were so long fingered and masculine and yet gentle at the same time. She could almost imagine them skating over her naked skin, touching her, shaping her until she was a mindless pool of need.
‘Are you usually so indecisive, Dr Hayden?’ he asked with another bone-melting smile.
‘I’m not sure…’
He laughed and stepped back from her. ‘I promised you dinner. I’d better get on with it. What do you fancy? I have some fresh fish Timmy Ennor dropped in earlier or I can rustle up an omelette.’
Eloise blinked once or twice to reorient herself. He was talking about food at a time like this? Wasn’t he the least bit affected by that little interlude? Her heart was still doing star-jumps in her chest while he was preparing to toss a salad.
Men!
Who could make them out? They must have some sort of on-off switch when it came to desire. Hers was still silently smouldering, threatening to blow the circuit board of her body every time he looked her way.
‘Um…whatever is fine…’ she mumbled.
She watched as he began assembling ingredients on the kitchen counter, her heart rate still struggling to find its normal rhythm.
She had never met anyone like Lachlan D’Ancey before. He made her feel like an incompetent junior colleague one minute and a melting female wanton the next. She wondered if he was leading her on deliberately, toying with her to see how far he could go. She knew plenty of men who were like that. They saw female colleagues as easy targets, someone to pass the time with, a supposedly harmless affair to break the boredom of routine investigations. It wouldn’t be the first time two colleagues thrown together on a case ended up intimately involved with each other. Emotions ran high during certain investigations. Life-and-death situations often triggered the most primal of all responses which later on, when things cooled down, were nearly always seriously regretted. She knew of at least three marriages that had broken up as a result of such affairs that on a different day might not have occurred.
Her life was complicated enough as it was. She had plans for her future that held little room for intimate attachments. And even though a secret part deep inside of her longed for the security of a loving long-term relationship, the thought of bringing a child or two into the world that held so many dangers terrified her. What if she had a little Jessica, for instance?
A vision of Jessica’s mother’s grief-stricken face swam before her eyes.
Lachlan turned around from the refrigerator to see Eloise looking vacantly into space, her expression haunted with shadows he could see reflected in her china-blue eyes.
‘So why did you take on this particular case?’ he asked, handing her the glass of wine she’d abandoned earlier. ‘It wasn’t just about the prospects of a promotion, was it?’
She appeared to give herself a mental shake as she took the wine from him. She looked into the contents
of the glass for a moment before answering in a soft tone. ‘No, not really, although I do want to move up the career ladder. I had a tough case I had to deal with some months ago. I haven’t found it easy to move on.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
She gave him a rueful smile. ‘If I thought talking would bring back to life a not quite two-year-old girl and hand her back to her totally devastated mother then, yes, I’d talk until the cows came home, but it won’t, will it?’
Lachlan placed a bowl of salad to the table. ‘I had to head the investigation of a case of two missing twelve-year-old boys a few years back. It was the biggest search with over four hundred officers involved. It went on for over a month and covered several counties.’
‘Did you find them?’
He gave her a grim look. ‘A junior officer eventually found them inside a concrete bridge pylon. They had obviously fallen in the day they were reported missing. No one heard their cries for help.’
‘Oh, God…’
He blew out a ragged sigh. ‘The forensics team had a hard time of it. The younger one working on the case later committed suicide. He couldn’t handle the images in his head from being at the scene.’
Eloise gulped back a swallow. ‘How do you handle it? The images of what you have to see and do?’
He pulled out a chair for her to sit down. ‘I do what most other police officers do. We have a drink and a debriefing chat that at some point usually involves some sort of black humour before returning home to our homes and pretending everything’s normal.’
‘But it isn’t, is it?’ she asked softly. ‘It can never be normal.’
‘No, but if we allow it to invade our every waking moment, we’d all end up like that young forensics guy. We have a job to do and, yes, it’s not always pretty or even very rewarding at times, but it has to be done.’
Eloise sat on the chair and laid her serviette across her lap. ‘Did you ever consider any other career?’ she asked.
He smiled as he placed a salad on the table. ‘I think for a time my parents hoped I’d follow in my father’s footsteps but I was never really interested in becoming a doctor.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I had a slight run-in with a cop when I was fifteen,’ he said. ‘It was nothing serious—it was just a bit of a lark on my part. He could have hauled me over the coals for it but instead he sat me down at the station and talked to me about choices, how the choices we make in our youth seal our fate in adulthood. It really made an impression on me. If he’d ranted and raved and threatened jail, it wouldn’t have been half as effective.’
‘Is that why you have a reputation for being fairly easygoing?’ she asked. ‘Kate Althorp said you were greatly admired in the community.’
‘I uphold the law but I don’t hit people over the head with it unless it’s warranted,’ he said. ‘Brian, for instance, the kid who was in the alley with Robert? He’s not a bad kid. He’s got a rough sort of background. His father’s a drunk who comes and goes when he feels like it and his mother struggles periodically with depression. Brian doesn’t need detention, he needs attention, he’s crying out for it. That’s why he hangs around with Gary Lovelace’s gang of youths. He longs to belong somewhere to someone, even if they’re less than desirable.’
Eloise couldn’t help feeling impressed with his take on things. So many of her male colleagues relished in brandishing the power their position afforded them. Lachlan, however, seemed to really understand the issues in young people’s lives, perhaps because he was the father of a teenager himself.
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Do you have a sure-fire way of dealing with things?’
She toyed with her wineglass as she thought about it. ‘I exercise a bit, walking mostly. I’ve never been much of a gym bunny, I’m afraid. I like to be alone to process things.’
‘Sounds good to me. I do the same. There are some great walks through the farming districts. The roads are narrow but there’s not much traffic.’
She gave him another wry smile. ‘I don’t suppose your daughter has a pair of walking shoes in my size she could lend me till my luggage arrives?’
He smiled back. ‘My daughter’s idea of sport is lying on the beach, looking at the surfers. I’m not even sure if she owns a pair of trainers. If she does, I can assure you they’ve never been used.’
‘She’s very beautiful.’
‘She takes after her mother.’
A pang of something that felt like jealousy suddenly stabbed at Eloise’s insides. She knew she wasn’t exactly in danger of stopping any clocks or anything but neither did she consider herself model material. Her figure was trim and her features classical enough to be considered attractive, but she never felt comfortable without a bit of make-up on. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way. Her foster-mother thought it was vain and frowned in disapproval at the very hint of lip-gloss but Eloise had stuck to her guns and used both make-up and perfume to remind herself she was still a woman, even if she was working in what was still considered predominately a man’s world.
‘Would you like more wine?’ Lachlan asked, holding up the bottle.
Eloise twisted her mouth. ‘You know what they say about wine, Chief Inspector D’Ancey.’
He grinned at her. ‘I do, actually. Erasmus said it. “In vino veritas”—in wine there is truth.’
She smiled. ‘I’m impressed. I didn’t know you were a Latin scholar.’
‘I studied it at school,’ he said. ‘You mentioned you went to a convent school. What was that like?’
‘It was strict but the nuns were generally very nice. I had a favourite, Sister Patricia. She was younger than the others and, while not exactly progressive, she always made me feel as if I was special in some way.’
‘I am sure you were and still are special.’
Eloise felt her cheeks grow warm. ‘She also warned me about men like you,’ she said, looking at him from beneath her lashes.
He lifted his eyebrows in a guileless manner. ‘Moi?’
‘You’re a natural flirt, Chief Inspector D’Ancey and I’m not going to fall for it,’ she said primly.
‘You think I’m flirting with you?’
She tried her best to frown at him. ‘Aren’t you?’
He smiled that boyish smile again. ‘I’m probably horribly out of practice but, yes, I am and I’m enjoying it immensely. You blush like a schoolgirl every time I look at you.’
She looked down at her plate rather than meet his eyes. ‘I’m a bit out of practice, too,’ she admitted. ‘I really don’t mean to give you the wrong impression. I told you before, I’m not here to have a quick fling.’
‘If you change your mind, put me at the top of the list of potential candidates.’
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘You really need to work on your pick-up lines,’ she said. ‘That was totally pathetic.’
‘Was it?’ He chuckled as he handed her the salad dressing. ‘I thought that was going to have you fall for me before dessert for sure.’
‘Dessert?’ Her blue eyes began to sparkle. ‘Now, that is a pick-up line. What did you have in mind?’
‘I’m not sure if I should tell you,’ he said. ‘You might think I was coming onto to you.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘What do you think?’
That was the whole trouble, Eloise thought. She didn’t know what to think. Her normally rational-do-it-by-the-book mind had been scrambled ever since she’d set eyes on Chief Inspector Lachlan D’Ancey. He rattled her in every way possible. She had never experienced anything like it before in her life. Her brief encounter with Bill had been nothing compared to this. Bill had not moved her quite the way Lachlan’s smiles had done.
And even though she kept telling herself Lachlan was divorced with a teenage daughter who, according to Eloise’s gut feeling, was somehow involved in the case she was supposed to be investigating, all that seemed to be secondary to what was going on between them now.
Attraction.
Male and female.
Uncontrollable.
Forbidden and dangerous.
Irresistible.
‘I have some raspberries from Rona Troon’s farm,’ he said breaking the tension. ‘And some wickedly sinful clotted cream from the Hendry dairy farm. Are you tempted?’
‘I’m seriously tempted,’ Eloise said, but somehow she felt sure that Chief Inspector D’Ancey knew she wasn’t talking about raspberries and cream.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘WOULD YOU LIKE a coffee, Dr Hayden?’ Lachlan asked as he began to clear their dessert plates from the table.
‘No, thank you, and, please, call me Eloise,’ she said.
‘But not Ellie, right?’
She frowned and rose to help him with clearing the table. ‘No…’
‘Is that what your mother called you?’
Her hand froze on the glass she had reached to lift from the table. She took a steadying breath and lifted her eyes back to his. ‘I just prefer Eloise.’
‘Too many bad memories?’
‘Now who’s playing detective?’ she asked with a sharp edge to her tone.
His eyes met hers in a challenge. ‘You’re a closed book, Eloise Hayden, and I don’t like closed books.’
‘Tough,’ she said with a toss of her head. ‘I’m not here to tell you my life story. I’m here to investigate Ethan Jenson’s death.’ She reached for her purse and key to Trevallyn House. ‘Thank you for dinner. I think it’s probably time for me to get back to the guest-house.’
‘I’ll walk you back and don’t waste your breath arguing with me.’
‘I don’t need an escort,’ she threw back. ‘It’s barely four blocks from here.’
‘It might only be four streets away but you are a single woman in a village you don’t know.’
‘I’m trained in self-defence.’
His mouth tilted mockingly. ‘You’re what? Five foot six and weigh about a hundred and ten pounds, if that. You wouldn’t have a hope of fending off an attacker bigger than you.’
Brides of Penhally Bay - Vol 2 Page 39