by Penny Jordan
She knew why this had happened, of course. It was Gideon Reynolds. Or rather it was her body’s sexual reaction to his touch. She trembled under the shudder of self-revulsion she could not control.
It had never happened like this before—no real-life man had ever caused her to relive that hot, acid outpouring of guilt and shame combined with an equally searing, aching need.
‘No.’
She said the word out loud, getting up and walking quickly over to the window. Hadn’t she already got enough problems, enough things to worry about without adding this?
She had been sixteen… Naive… Innocent… Never really intending to do anything wrong. But she had done wrong. Even though Gran had told her later, when she had finally coaxed her to unburden herself, that she was not really the one who was to blame.
Thank God for Gran. If she had not been there…had not realised that something was wrong… had not been concerned enough about her to persuade her mother to allow her to take her away… Courage shuddered again to think what fate might have ultimately befallen her if she had remained under her stepfather’s roof.
But she was not under his roof any longer, she was under Gideon Reynolds’, and she was supposed to be here to work. Determinedly she went back to the desk and reached again for the telephone.
She had already made herself known to all the other staff: the team of professional cleaners who came in daily to clean the house, the young mother who helped out in the kitchen, the gardeners and the men in charge of the golf course. From her conversations with them she had been able to build up a fairly clear picture of Gideon Reynolds’ mode of life, although that, no doubt, would change slightly once his business activities were based full-time here rather than in London, as he apparently intended.
She had also discovered that his PA was not very popular with the rest of the staff, either the men or the women.
His presence among them was, she was pleased to learn, only a temporary one, since once Gideon had transferred his business to the house Chris would return permanently to London, where he would be in charge of the office Gideon wished to retain there.
With the exception of the PA, all the other staff appeared to think very highly of Gideon.
Courage prided herself on her professionalism where her work was concerned, and by the time Gideon returned she intended to have familiarised herself thoroughly with the demands of her new role.
After working in a series of busy five-star hotel complexes running one house, however large, should not present too many problems to her. But having to please a variety of guests who, no matter how demanding, would inevitably move on, was not like having to please one individual man who would not.
A swift check of Gideon’s diary for the next month had shown her that in addition to the dinner party he had asked her to organise he would also be entertaining a small party of Japanese businessmen for four days, a group of officials from the Californian company who were consulting him about re-landscaping the large tracts of land devastated by fire, and a Kuwaiti prince and his entourage, as well as making several trips abroad himself.
This afternoon Courage planned to leave early, so that she could do some personal shopping before accompanying her grandmother on her first appointment with the heart specialist. They had both already been warned that before an operation could take place her grand-mother would have to undergo a series of exploratory tests.
‘All this fuss,’ her grandmother had grumbled, ‘and it’s not even as though there is anything seriously wrong with me. I just get a bit tired and dizzy sometimes, that’s all.’
‘Think how much better you’re going to feel afterwards,’ Courage had coaxed her, trying not to let her own real feelings show.
In the morning, Courage was going to London to interview the woman who she hoped would take Alphonse’s place, and then in the afternoon she and the woman in charge of the team of cleaners were going to go through the linen cupboards and allocate to each of the house’s ten bedrooms its own specific supply of bedlinen and towels.
Gideon had employed a firm of interior designers to redecorate and refurbish the house and they had done an excellent job but, as the cleaning team had complained to her, there were simply not enough changes of bedding and towels.
‘So far Mr Reynolds has only had a few guests staying here, but if the house was ever full…’
It was the same thing with the china cupboards. The interior designers had provided Gideon with an exquisite eighteenth-century dinner service, plus a good supply of basic, everyday crockery, but there were no individual breakfast sets, for instance, so guests could not be provided with breakfast in their bedrooms.
Since Gideon had given her carte blanche to purchase and order whatever she thought was necessary, Courage intended to take him at his word. There would be no point in telling him that his Japanese guests could not have breakfast in their rooms because they didn’t have sufficient china and she had not wanted to buy any without his approval—she could already imagine just what his reaction would be.
Not that Courage intended to spend his money rashly or extravagantly. Even if her own nature had not done so, the training she had received from her thrifty Swiss employers would have ensured her good husbandry. She had already crossed two of her potential suppliers off her list, having crisply informed them that the discounts they were prepared to offer her were simply not good enough.
One of the first purchases she had made with money from the account Gideon had given her authority to open was a sturdy set of account books, into which she would meticulously list every expenditure as well as inputting the same details into the computer terminal which sat on a corner of the desk in the room she was using as her office.
She was just about to leave the office when her telephone rang. Putting down her jacket, she went to answer it.
The unexpected sound of Gideon’s voice sent a sharp thrill of sensation shivering over her body. Swiftly she suppressed it, thankful that there was no one else in the room with her to see the betraying flush which had stained her skin.
‘I wanted to speak to Chris but he isn’t answering his phone,’ Gideon told her. ‘Is he there?’
‘No. He did say that he would be spending this afternoon in London,’ Courage informed him.
‘I’ve tried the London office. He isn’t there.’
Courage could hear the irritation in his voice. ‘Is it anything I could help with?’ she asked him, her training automatically coming to the fore.
‘I doubt it… I seem to have omitted to bring with me a list of worldwide growers of the specialist plants we need for the Californian replanting scheme.’
Courage frowned, suddenly remembering how the cleaning team had complained about the state of Chris’s desk and the general untidiness of the room he was using as an office. Courage had helped them to pick up some papers which had fallen off the desk in the draught from the open door. She was sure that one of them had been a list of specialist worldwide growers.
Quickly she explained the situation to Gideon, offering to ring him back when she had checked to see if the list was there.
‘No, I’ll hold,’ he told her.
Three minutes later Courage was back on the line supplying him with the names he wanted but, rather to her chagrin, when he thanked her for her assistance instead of sounding pleased with her his voice seemed to hold a distinct note of curtness… of anger, almost.
Anger. The small thread of recognition which had tugged so elusively at her memory before suddenly became a thick cord of garotting strength, whipping tightly around her, paralysing her vocal cords, making her shake with shock, the cold sweat of fear springing from her pores.
No. It was impossible. It just couldn’t be. She was imagining things. That voice—Gideon’s voice—was not…
She was still clutching the receiver, even though the line had gone dead. She was completely alone in the empty room, with only the echo of Gideon’s voice to remind her… Just as, al
l those years ago, she had also only been left with the echo of a bitterly angry and contemptuous male voice to remind her…
CHAPTER FOUR
COURAGE had been sixteen at the time, just sixteen, and very naive and unworldly for her age.
Freshly home from boarding-school for the summer holiday, she had very quickly discovered in the few days she had been living under her stepfather’s roof that nothing had changed; Laney was still out to make trouble for her, tormenting and persecuting her.
The older girl had come into her room late last night, laughing at her as she had started to flush with distaste and embarrassment when her stepsister had described to her, in intimate details, the evening she had just spent with her latest boyfriend.
‘Not that any man’s ever going to want someone as pathetic as you,’ she added, tossing her head. ‘I’ll bet you haven’t even been kissed properly yet, have you?’
Courage knew that her silence and her flushed face had given her away.
She might not have indulged in the kind of sexual intimacies Laney was so relishing describing to her, but that didn’t mean that she did not have her own special daydreams, her private romantic fantasies about the man who would one day hold her in his arms and tell her that he loved her; the man whose very look would be enough to make her heart beat faster. She had already imagined how it would feel when he kissed her, the pleasure so exquisite that it almost made her faint with desire, but these imaginings and daydreams had nothing to do with the distasteful disclosures her stepsister was bragging about, and she knew far, far better than to reveal them to her.
‘What are you blushing for?’ Laney demanded now, her eyes narrowing maliciously as she accused her, ‘I know what it is—you’ve got a boyfriend, haven’t you? Who is he? Tell me…’
‘Th-there isn’t anyone,’ Courage protested, stammering her denial painfully.
‘Liar,’ Laney taunted her. ‘Just wait until I tell Dad. He’ll soon drag it out of you who he is…’
‘No… No…you mustn’t say anything to your father,’ Courage pleaded, her fear of her stepfather overwhelming the inner voice that warned her to be more cautious.
‘So there is someone. I knew there was.’ Laney’s eyes were gleaming now, not with curiosity, Courage noticed, but with triumph. There was a sick feeling in the pit of her own stomach, an awareness that she had somehow allowed herself to be trapped and that she was now at her stepsister’s mercy.
‘All right, I won’t say anything. But there’s something you’ve got to do for me…’
Tensely Courage waited.
‘I’ve arranged to see this boy tomorrow night in the summer-house, but now I can’t go because I’m meeting someone else. I want you to go instead, and tell him that I can’t make it.’
‘Can’t you get in touch with him? Telephone him or something?’ Courage suggested.
‘Hardly. I don’t suppose he even knows how to use a telephone properly,’ Laney told her contemptuously. ‘He works for the gardeners. I don’t know why I agreed to see him at all, really. I suppose I just felt sorry for him. He’s been pestering me for weeks. It’s obvious that he’s totally besotted with me, but he’s a fool if he thinks I’d ever give someone like him a second glance. I mean…he’s a labourer, for God’s sake… His hands are filthy, his nails…’ She gave a small dismissive shrug.
‘So it’s arranged, then,’ Laney continued as she walked towards Courage’s bedroom door. ‘You’ve got to be there at nine o’clock, and just remember, Courage, if you’re not there, if you let me down, I’m going straight to Daddy to tell him what you’ve been doing.’
‘But I haven’t been doing anything,’ Courage protested, but she could see that it was too late. Laney was never going to believe her innocence now, and nor, she suspected, would Laney’s father.
Her stepfather might be materially generous, but emotionally and physically he was extremely possessive. Courage had seen the rages he could fly into even with Laney when he thought she had been seeing someone of whom he disapproved, and she had heard him cross-questioning her own mother about who she had seen when she was out without him.
The last thing Courage wanted to do was to incur his wrath, to have him question her, even though in reality she had absolutely nothing to hide—no meetings of even the very most innocent kind with any boy to conceal from him.
‘Just do as I’ve told you,’ Laney warned her. ‘Be at the summer-house for nine o’clock and tell him that I don’t want to see him.’
‘But it will be nearly dark by then,’ Courage protested miserably. The summer-house was right at the bottom of their large garden, on the far edge of the lawn and surrounded by mature trees. There was no light down there and Courage felt apprehensive about going there to meet someone she didn’t even know.
‘Oh, dear, is the poor little diddums scared of the dark then? Oh, what a shame… It’s your choice. Either you do as I’ve told you or I go to Daddy and tell him what you’ve been up to.’
Courage drew a shaky breath. ‘All right,’ she agreed helplessly, ‘I’ll do it.’
Courage shivered as she made her way down the dark path towards the summer-house. She was only wearing a thin, sleeveless cotton dress. Her stepfather had emerged from the bedroom he shared with her mother just as she had been on the point of going upstairs for her jacket, and rather than risk meeting him on the stairs she had come straight outside instead.
Since her return from school he had taken what was almost an oppressive interest in her; the criticisms which had preceded his announcement that she was to be sent away to school had been replaced by an even more uncomfortable over-solicitous concern, which made Courage reluctant to spend any more time than she needed to in his company.
Only the previous day he had announced that she was growing up and that it was time she had some new clothes. He would take her shopping, he had told her.
Courage had seen from the baleful look that Laney had given her how much she disliked this idea but had been unable to tell her stepsister that she disliked it just as much. Laney might be jealously possessive of her father’s time and attention, but as far as Courage was concerned she was welcome to them.
She shivered again as the darkness of the garden enveloped her, but not purely from cold this time. She wasn’t looking forward to having to tell Laney’s date that her stepsister had changed her mind, but she knew that Laney was more than capable of carrying out her threat if she refused to do so.
What did surprise Courage was that her stepsister had agreed to meet the boy in the first place. She normally never made any secret of the fact that in order to impress her a man had to be not just wealthy but well-connected as well.
Nervously Courage opened the summer-house door, tensing as it creaked slightly as she stepped inside. The small octagonal room smelt slightly musty. The building was very seldom used, although at one time, Courage suspected, it must have made a pretty venue for afternoon tea on a hot summer’s day.
The silence and darkness was such that it was hard to remember that the relative safety of her stepfather’s house was only a couple of hundred yards or so away.
As the seconds and then the minutes ticked away, without any sign of Laney’s ‘date’, Courage began to hope that like her stepsister he had changed his mind. But then, just as she was about to leave the summer-house, she heard someone on the path outside; the door was pushed open and a tall, broad-shouldered male frame was blocking the doorway.
She couldn’t see his face or distinguish his features-it was too dark for that—but she could smell the hot, male scent of him. Courage recognised that her own burgeoning sensuality and femininity were acutely aware of his maleness, of the sexual scent of him that was both far, far more subtle than any ordinary and more base body odour and yet, at the same time, so strongly, clam-ouringly intense that Courage automatically stepped back from him, out of range of its powerful spell.
‘So you did come… I knew you would.’
His
voice was slow and heavy, slightly slurred with something her shocked senses recognised as heavily aroused male desire.
‘I knew you would, because, despite all those grand airs and graces you give yourself, you want me just as much as I want you…’
Courage could hear him breathing as he moved sure-footedly towards her. Laney’s excuse, the message she had been sent here to deliver was silenced, smothered even before she had time to think of uttering it as he crossed the distance between them, following her as she backed away in to the darkest corner of the summer-house, his arms reaching for her, wrapping tightly around her, his body leaning into hers, imprisoning it against the wall as his head bent towards her.
‘Now, let’s see if you really can deliver all those things you’ve been promising me,’ Courage heard him mutter thickly, his hand against her throat. The rough pad of his thumb stroked against her tender skin as he whispered things to her that shocked her into speechless silence at the same time as they sent a dizzying thrill of unfamiliar feelings zigzagging through her body in a jolt of electric sensation and as his mouth tormented her over-sensitive skin with its biting kisses.
In the darkness, Courage tried to make out his features. His hair was dark, she could see that, and against the hands she had reached out in vain to hold him off she could feel the solid, powerful strength of his body.
His skin smelt clean and fresh, his breath slightly minty, and as she tried to turn her face away from him, panicking as she was hit by the realisation of what was happening, he cupped her face in one hand, preventing her doing so as he whispered rawly to her.
‘What is it? Afraid that I might be too rough for that tender skin of yours? You needn’t be… I’ve shaved… especially for you… Feel.’
And before Courage could stop him he had taken hold of her hand and pressed it against his jaw, gently dragging her fingertips up and down his skin.
In the darkness Courage could just see the flash of his eyes as he watched her, and saw as well as felt the way her whole body shuddered in uncontrollable reaction to what he had done.