Baxter saw a look of nervousness cross her face, and continued in a drawl, ‘Don’t worry. I still wasn’t planning a grand seduction scene. Here.’
He handed her his striped shirt, then very pointedly stood with his back to her while she sat up and dressed. It seemed he had no wish to see the rest of her naked.
‘I know that!’ Dee claimed when he eventually turned round again, and, in reckless mood, added, ‘Perhaps women really aren’t your thing.’
She said it as a half-jibe, half-joke. She didn’t expect him to take it seriously.
But Baxter did, and found he minded now; his voice hardened as he responded, ‘I thought we’d sorted that out. I am not homosexual. That was a complete misconception…yours!’
Dee knew that too, but wasn’t about to admit it. He was normally so cool it was enjoyable to see him riled.
There was a trace of a smile on her lips when she eventually answered, ‘If you say so.’
‘I do!’ The words were ground out between clenched teeth.
Perhaps she should have taken warning at that point, instead of smirking, ‘Fine.’
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ he challenged, provoked to anger by her baiting. ‘Or maybe you just want me to prove it… Is that it?’
Dee didn’t understand what the latter meant until it was too late. One moment he was standing over her, the next he was beside her on the bed, his hand on one of her arms, keeping her there.
In the first instant Dee froze, then he caught her other arm and brought her round to face him. She fought down panic, but still betrayed herself in the fine trembling of her body.
His brows drew together, questioning her reaction. ‘You’re not scared of me?’
He said it in disbelief, but then he imagined her to be brave to the point of foolishness. Mostly she was. It was just the man-woman thing that gave her problems.
‘No,’ she lied.
‘You don’t have to be. I would never do anything you didn’t want,’ he added in softer tones.
‘No,’ she repeated, unable to find another word.
Because she was scared. Not the way she had been with her stepfather—this time it was her emotions over which she had no control.
She just had to breathe Let go and he would, so why was she sitting there, her eyes holding his, her lips parted in appeal as a male hand smoothed up her arm to touch the bare curve of her shoulder?
‘Say no once more, that’s all,’ Baxter urged, giving her the script so they could stop this madness before it really began.
She tried, licking dry lips as she raised shaking hands to his chest. But speaking seemed pointless when her heart—or was it his?—was beating like thunder, above which no sound was likely to be heard. And how could she push him away when her hands were sliding over muscle and sinew, already damp with perspiration, and the warmth of him was seeping into her senses, making her weak?
He held her there with magnetic blue eyes, mirroring her awakened feelings. What was happening to them both?
He stroked her cheek with the palm of his hand, the gentlest of gestures, and she turned her head until her lips pressed on his skin. She didn’t know what to do next, but he did.
He moved his hand and traced the outline of her soft mouth.
She parted her lips and swallowed hard as his fingers slipped slowly inside, then out. It left her mouth moist, like a kiss, only more intimate, more sensual. No one had ever done such a thing to her before.
Her breath caught, and she stared at him with a mixture of pleasure and shock.
Baxter was left wondering if she was as experienced as she’d implied. His conscience told him to back off now, but her mouth told him something else as it came up to meet his, opening like a flower needing sun.
Dee barely understood what was happening. She had kissed boys, and been kissed by a man she’d grown to hate. But it had never been like this—a sweet drug rushing straight to the senses. Pure desire. Waves of it. Rising higher and higher, then falling—falling with him onto the bed, being held, stroked, pleasured. Holding close, closer, hands smoothing over his bare back, hard with muscle, sleek with sweat.
Hands pushing up her shirt, smoothing over her belly where desire kicked, spreading upwards. Hands on her breast, stroking, knowing—fingers, then mouth, suddenly on flesh that had never been kissed, tongue making sweet circles till it swelled for him and her body arched.
Baxter told himself she knew what she was doing, that she wanted him the way he wanted her—badly. He slid his hand down to the damp triangle between her thighs, but when he touched her there she suddenly went rigid.
He tried to ignore it, covering her mouth with his once more. She kissed him back, still warm and willing, but now those doubts wouldn’t go away. He took her hand and, testing her, guided her towards him.
Dee felt him through the cloth of his jeans, and was shocked by her own reaction. She’d read magazines and knew all the mechanics of sex, but the reality was turning out to be something else.
She realised he wanted her to touch him. Wasn’t that what couples did? Pleasure each other? Part of her wanted to do it. Part just couldn’t. She tried. She laid a nervous hand on his trousers and spread her fingers on his groin. It drew a strange, convulsive response from him, but not the desired one, and he suddenly stopped kissing her and, releasing her abruptly, sat up.
Dee lay where she was, coping with a confusion of emotions—longing, bewilderment, shame. What had she done wrong?
Baxter held her eyes for a brief moment, saw the truth in them and wondered at his own sanity. He reached down to pull the striped shirt past her hips, as if he could somehow undo the damage, but she rolled away, then edged to the far side of the bed.
Dee hoped he would just go.
Instead he appeared next to her, and laid a detaining hand on her arm when she would have run away again.
‘You haven’t done this before, have you?’
Dee’s face burned. Was it so obvious?
‘Who said I had?’ she muttered back.
‘I thought you and your stepfather…’ He saw her stiffen, and didn’t complete that particular sentence. ‘Obviously I was mistaken. You should have told me. If I’d not realised and just carried on—’
‘Well, you didn’t!’ Dee cut in, voice raw, her sense of rejection all too painfully transparent.
He understood only too well, replying softly, ‘I had to stop. It wasn’t personal to you…’
‘Right!’ A scathing glance from Dee told him she might be easy but she was nobody’s fool.
‘It wasn’t,’ he repeated. ‘In fact, if you knew anything about men, you’d know how hard it was for me to stop when I did… It’s just that deflowering virgins isn’t something with which I’m particularly comfortable,’ he admitted.
Dee felt herself blush to the roots of her hair. Did he have to be so blunt?
‘You’re a very bright, very pretty girl, and you deserve better than this,’ he went on, softening the message slightly. ‘Your first time should be special. With a boy of your own age, not a man a decade too old for you… You must see that?’
He was waiting for an answer so Dee nodded. She realised one thing at least. He wouldn’t leave her until he was sure she was all right about what had happened between them.
She nodded, though she wasn’t all right. She nodded so he would go before she broke down again.
But Baxter wasn’t so easily convinced. ‘You’re shaking.’
‘I’m cold.’ She wrapped her arms about her. She was suddenly chilled to the bone.
He stood and pulled loose the heavily patterned weave that covered the bed, revealing clean white sheets and a single blanket. He helped her between the sheets.
Dee lay there with her teeth chattering. She wondered if she was sick. She felt sick. As if she had the flu and wanted to die.
‘I’ll get some more covers.’ He fetched a quilt from the blanket box at the end of the bed and draped it over her, then he to
uched her forehead.
Dee revived sufficiently to mutter, ‘Leave me alone.’
‘You may have a temperature,’ he observed.
‘I don’t care; just stop playing doctor.’ She turned from him and drew the covers almost over her head.
Effectively excluded, Baxter knew there was little else he could do. In fact, hadn’t he done enough already? He’d taken in this damaged girl and then proceeded to damage her further. Some doctor he was. Just as well he wasn’t hers.
Dee shut her eyes tight, and longed for him to go. She heard him walk round the bed to switch off the lamp at her side. It plunged the room into darkness. He walked away, and she waited to hear the door click shut behind him. Instead she heard the creak of a chair.
She lay there, aware of him still in the room. She felt no fear, just frustration. She might have cried out her emotions, but she couldn’t now. Not while he was watching over her.
For how could she cry at his rejection when he had never really accepted her? He had made that so clear. His sexuality was no longer in doubt. The real problem lay with her. She was a girl, and he had wanted a woman.
That was what had saved her. Nothing else. There had been no protestations from her. No attempt to hold onto her innocence.
For Baxter Ross, she was a push-over. For Baxter Ross, she had no pride.
But why? He didn’t say nice things. He didn’t tell her she was beautiful as others had. He didn’t make promises. He hardly spoke at all.
Yet she had lain in his bed and let him hold her and touch her with his cool hands and his warm mouth, and she had wanted it all.
She shut her eyes, but she could still feel the touch of him, the glide of sweat and skin, the heat of their tangled bodies.
Absurd.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MOTES of dust hung in the shaft of sunlight that slashed a diagonal from the high tower window to Dee’s bed.
She blinked sleep out of her eyes, but it wasn’t the light that had roused her.
‘Sorry, did I wake you?’ A woman stood at the far end of the bed.
Dee studied her briefly. ‘You must be Baxter’s sister.’
‘Guilty as charged.’ A smile broke across a face that was a female version of his. ‘And you are?’
She waited expectantly, intrigued rather than critical.
‘A friend,’ Dee volunteered limply.
‘Yes, I guessed that.’ Amused eyes took in Dee’s scattered clothing and the man’s shirt she was using as night-wear. She added it to the fact that Dee was in her brother’s bed and asked, ‘Is he in the bathroom?’
Dee shook her head and glanced towards the chair by the wall. Of course he wasn’t there now, but he had been last night. He’d fallen asleep in the chair and she’d climbed out of bed to drape a blanket over him.
The blanket was still on the chair, but he must have woken and left some time in the night.
‘I think he’s upstairs,’ she informed his sister, ‘in the spare room.’
‘Oh, right.’ His sister seemed to be mentally reassessing the situation. ‘Sorry,’ she smiled.
Sorry for her thoughts? Sorry for imagining Dee and Baxter were lovers?
‘My name’s Catriona—Cat for short,’ she introduced herself.
‘I’m Dee—short for Deborah,’ Dee volunteered in reply.
‘Nice to meet you. Is that your dog, by the way? The one in the kitchen?’
‘Yes. Is he all right?’
‘Seems it. He is okay with children, I assume? I left my daughter stroking him while my husband takes things in from the car.’
‘Morag.’ Dee recalled the name.
‘Yes. Baxter’s told you about us?’
‘A little.’
‘Well, I can’t say he’s returned the compliment.’ Cat Macdonald pulled a slight face. ‘He can be singularly uncommunicative, my brother.’
Tell me about it, Dee could have said, but confined herself to a brief, polite smile.
‘Unless, of course…’ His sister clapped a surprised hand over her mouth. ‘Gracious, he hasn’t done it, has he? I don’t believe it!’
‘Done what?’ Dee was uncertain what she should admit to his sister.
Cat Macdonald became hesitant too, then switched to saying, ‘Do you know about Joseph, the African boy Baxter’s sponsoring?’
Dee answered with a nod, though she hadn’t known Joseph was African.
‘A bit.’ she replied circumspectly.
‘He’s only eighteen.’ Being in her late thirties, Cat obviously shared her brother’s view on age. Eighteen was still a boy to her. ‘How old are you?’
She studied Dee’s face and began to frown. Fresh from sleep, Dee had lost the dark circles round her eyes and some of her pallor, and there wasn’t a line on her face.
‘Almost eighteen,’ she replied defensively.
‘Oh, Lord!’ Cat Macdonald’s eyes went heavenward while she shook her head. ‘Well, I suppose you have to be young to be convincing, but I still think it’s crazy, and I’m going to tell him so.’
‘Him,’ of course, was Baxter, but what was ‘it’? Was Cat aware of his marriage plans?
‘I think he’s changed his mind,’ Dee volunteered, although she wasn’t altogether sure if they were talking about the same thing.
‘Well, thank God for that!’ his sister exclaimed with relief, which was short-lived as she questioned Dee’s presence. ‘But, if that’s the case, why bring you up here?’
Good question. Dee didn’t exactly have an answer.
‘I’ve injured my leg.’ It was the only reason Dee could come up with.
‘Right,’ Cat Macdonald said, but sounded equally unconvinced. ‘I think I’d better go up and talk to him… I’m sorry to have disturbed you, by the way,’ she added at the door. ‘We saw the car and assumed Baxter would be up and around.’
‘We arrived very late.’ And got to sleep even later, Dee recalled with a blush. ‘What time is it?’
‘Nearly twelve,’ his sister informed her as she left the room. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll make lunch for us all.’
Dee forced a smile in return, then dropped back on the bed and emitted a groan. After last night, she could barely face Baxter Ross again, far less his whole tribe. Not that his sister seemed unlikeable. In fact, she seemed a considerably warmer human being than her brother. But Dee really had no place in this family reunion.
She saw that she had two options. Either she feigned illness and remained in bed, or she got up and went out.
Up and out struck her as safer, so Dee shuffled to the edge of the bed and carefully tested her weight on her bad knee. It was sore, but bearable.
Her few belongings were in Baxter’s car, so she had no choice but to dress in yesterday’s clothes. Unwilling to use dirty underwear, she took a pair of boxer shorts from his drawer. They were huge on her, and in danger of falling down, but she zipped her jeans over them, then drew her belt tight round her small waist. She’d still been wearing his leather jacket last night, and she put it on now over her thin T-shirt.
She descended to the kitchen to find Henry. He was stretched out beside an Aga cooker, which was the only period feature in a modernised room with fitted units of plain wood and a long breakfast bar. At it, perched on a stool, sat a bright-eyed girl of about five years old.
‘Hi.’ Dee greeted the child and her parents. There was no sign of Baxter.
‘This is Dee.’ Cat introduced her to the man chopping vegetables at the sink. ‘Dee, this is Ewan, my husband.’
‘And slave,’ the man added wryly. ‘Pleased to meet you, Dee.’
Dee exchanged smiles with Ewan, and hid her surprise at his age. He looked many years older than his wife.
‘I’m Morag,’ a voice piped up, and, before Dee had a chance to say anything, then asked, ‘Why are you wearing Uncle Baxie’s jacket?’
A brief, embarrassed silence followed before her mother scolded, ‘Don’t be silly, darling. It just looks like his jacke
t.’
‘It is his jacket,’ this precocious infant insisted. ‘It’s the one he wore at Christmas time… Don’t you have one of your own?’ she directed at Dee with innocent curiosity.
‘Actually, no,’ Dee responded. ‘Mine was stolen. Your uncle’s let me borrow his till I get a new one.’
‘Like sharing,’ the girl nodded solemnly. ‘I don’t like sharing, but Mum says if I don’t learn to share I’ll grow up into a horrible girl that no one will play with… Will you play with me?’
‘I…um…have to walk the dog.’ Dee made up the excuse quickly.
‘Maybe later, darling.’ Her mother made an apologetic face at Dee.
‘But Uncle Baxie’ll be awake later, and I’ll be playing with him,’ the little girl reasoned, before her father offered a distraction by picking her up and tickling her.
‘Spoilt, that’s the trouble,’ Cat Macdonald confided to Dee. ‘Her father’s doing, of course.’
‘I can see that.’ Dee watched Ewan Macdonald swing his daughter into his arms, and she had a sudden, sharp recollection of another little girl being indulged by a loving older father.
She didn’t realise her sadness showed till Cat Macdonald asked, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, fine.’ She just needed to get away from this happy family scene. ‘Come on, Henry.’
She patted her leg and the dog reluctantly came to heel. She took hold of his collar and murmured a quick farewell.
Cat Macdonald followed her onto the landing, observing her limp. ‘Are you sure you’re fit enough?’
‘I’m fine. The knee’s just a little stiff.’ Dee minimised the injury.
The other woman still looked unsure. ‘How long will you be? Baxter may be concerned when he wakens.’
‘He won’t worry,’ Dee stated confidently. ‘He knows I can take care of myself.’
Cat Macdonald was left wondering what exactly that meant, but gave up arguing. ‘Yes, well, don’t go too far. There’s a path leading up the hill. You can let him run there.’
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