by Jessica Hart
‘That was quite a display down there,’ said Lorimer tightly, shattering the fraught silence as they stopped outside her door.
‘Wh-what do you mean?’
‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Skye,’ he said, his expression hard and contemptuous. ‘You certainly know how to play the warm, desirable woman—or is it that you get lots of practice?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t you? Clinging to me in that seductive nightdress, begging me to stay all night, and, just now, melting in my arms, so warm and so soft…and so determined to get another man! It’s just as well I know all about your obsession with Charles Ferrars or I might be starting to get the wrong ideas about you, Skye. What a pity for you that Charles wasn’t here last night to witness your display of helplessness! You must have been cursing the wasted opportunity when you had to spend the night in my arms instead of his!’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Skye coldly. Lorimer’s sneers had done more than anything else to drive all thought of desire from her mind and leave her icily angry and determined to hurt him as much as he was hurting her. ‘Anyone would have done. You just happened to be conveniently there.’
Lorimer’s eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘So I was convenient, was I? How handy for you to have a convenient man to practise you seduction technique on!’ His hands shot out and jerked her towards him. ‘Perhaps you’d like to practise some more?’
‘No!’ The key fell unheeded to the floor as Skye struggled against him but his arms were like steel bands around her.
‘No?’ he mocked. ‘That wasn’t the message I was getting on the dance-floor.’
‘Let me go!’
‘No, I don’t think I will.’ said Lorimer in a silky voice, tightening his grip. ‘I feel like a little practice myself.’ He took her chin in one hand and turned her stormy face up to his. ‘That’s only fair, isn’t it?’
The next instant his mouth came down on hers in a hard punishing kiss. Skye rammed her hands against his chest, but his only response was to gather her closer and all of sudden the whole quality of the kiss changed. The bitterness and the anger had dissolved imperceptibly into a sweetness that caught them both unawares, and swept the kiss beyond their control on a surging tide of intoxicating delight.
The hard, hurtful words they had flung at each other were forgotten. It was as if their bodies had a will of their own, succumbing to a much greater force as the sweetness exploded into a rocketing excitement and their mouths explored each other in deepening desire and acknowledgement of mutual need.
Skye’s arms slid around his neck and her fingers tangled in his hair, hardly noticing as they fell back against the wall, still kissing desperately. Lorimer’s hands were moving urgently over her body, beneath her dress, hard and demanding against the swell of her breast, the warmth of her thigh, sliding with tantalising assurance over her silken skin. Skye clung to him hungrily, her senses reeling, abandoned utterly to the electrifying delight of Lorimer’s touch and Lorimer’s taste and the hard, thrilling promise of Lorimer’s body.
When his mouth left hers, she moaned in protest, only to shudder as his lips travelled enticingly along her jaw. ‘How does it feel to be used?’ he murmured against her ear.
It took several seconds for Skye to absorb what he had said. She went absolutely cold. Jerking her arms down from around his neck, she would have recoiled, but he still held her in hands that were suddenly cruel.
‘That wasn’t fair,’ she whispered.
‘Now you know what it’s like.’ said Lorimer with a tight smile. ‘It’s not nice being used, is it?’
Skye fought her way free of him at last. ‘I haven’t used you!’
‘Oh, come on, Skye. You’ve made no secret of how you feel about Charles. I can remember reluctantly ad-miring your honesty—but that was before I knew that I was destined to act as a poor substitute!’
‘You, a substitute for Charles?’ How could he kiss her like that one moment and jeer at her so bitterly the next? ‘Don’t make me laugh!’ Skye lashed out, too hurt to know or care what she was saying. ‘You couldn’t begin to be an adequate substitute for him!’
‘Really?’ Lorimer was as angry as she was. ‘How does Charles kiss you, Skye? Like this?’ He pulled her back into his arms, tormenting her with searing kisses that left Skye trembling and helpless. ‘Or like this?’ His voice altered, and this time when his lips met hers they were gentle and persuasive and indescribably tender. He kissed her as if he loved her, as if she was a rare and precious thing, and Skye had no defences left to resist. She was bewitched, enchanted, leaning into him with a sigh and letting her hands creep up to hold his face as she felt herself dissolve in unimaginable sweetness.
The disappointment when he released her was so agonising that she had to bite back a cry of pain. She stared up at him, devastated, humiliated. He must know how utterly she had succumbed, fool that she was. He must realise how she had let herself believe that this time the kiss was for real. He must know now that her angry words had been no more than bluff and that she had nothing left to fight him with.
But Lorimer’s expression was unreadable. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s not quite the same as kissing someone you love, is it?’
Skye flinched. Had he been comparing her to Moira all the time? His callous words tore her heart slowly, deliberately, excruciatingly apart, and her knees trembled uncontrollably as she bent to pick up her key from the carpet. ‘No,’ she said shakily, wondering how long she could keep the bitter tears at bay. ‘I suppose it isn’t.’
They barely exchanged a word on the way back to Edinburgh the next morning. It was another beautiful day with a hard, glittering frost rimming the grass and lacing the stark outlines of the trees. Skye stared un-seeingly out of her window and wondered whether loving Lorimer would ever stop hurting. Would it recede to a dull, nagging ache in time, or would she always have to put up with this vicious, clawing pain whenever she thought of him? She felt raw and wretched, lacerated by memories of that last treacherous kiss. Did Lorimer realise how much he had hurt her by kissing her with such tenderness? Did he know how bitter her disillusion had been when she realised that it had meant nothing to him at all, nothing?
Vanessa took one look at Skye’s face when she came in the door and wisely said nothing. Skye was grateful for her understanding; she didn’t think she could have talked about Lorimer even if she had wanted to. Her throat felt too tight, her mind too numb. She sat in front of the television all afternoon, gazing blankly at the flickering screen without hearing a word, but doing nothing only gave her the opportunity to think, so she agreed when Vanessa suggested going out that evening. She was going to have to get on with her life some time; she might as well start now.
Skye sat in the crowded pub with Vanessa and her friends and made a heroic effort to look cheerful. She talked and laughed and whenever her mind veered towards Lorimer or the house waiting quietly between the sea and the hills she would resolutely push the image aside. Still, it was a relief to walk home through the dark streets with Vanessa and stop smiling.
They were walking up the High Street towards the castle when Skye saw Lorimer. He was standing on the kerb, hailing a taxi, and Moira was standing next to him, laughing up at something he had said. She looked happy, glowing, in love.
Skye’s heart twisted in pain and she stepped back into a dark doorway. Not that there was any fear that Lorimer would look across the road and see her. He was too preoccupied with the beautiful girl by his side, putting his hand out solicitously to see her into the taxi, smiling as he climbed in after her. The taxi switched off its light and rumbled off over the cobbles.
Her last hope, that Lorimer’s bitter words and furious kisses might have been born of jealousy, died on the dark pavement there. What reason would he have to be jealous when he had a girl like Moira, so radiantly in love? There was no mistaking her happiness, nor Lorimer’s smiles. He didn’t look bitter or cynical wi
th Moira. He didn’t look like a man who had shunned the very thought of marriage. He looked like a man who was well on his way to deciding that marriage was exactly what he wanted after all.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ asked Vanessa quietly.
‘No.’ Skye could hear her voice cracking. ‘I—I can’t. Not yet.’
From somewhere deep inside her, she dredged some vestige of pride. Lorimer didn’t love her, would never love her. She would just have to accept that, and get through the last three weeks before Christmas with as much dignity as she could. That meant not letting Lorimer guess for one moment just how much he had come to mean to her.
On Monday, she and Lorimer were meticulously polite to each other. The weekend wasn’t referred to once. It might never have happened at all, Skye thought, drawing her keyboard towards her and beginning on the huge pile of scribbled letters Lorimer had produced that morning. He must have spent all of yesterday afternoon writing them. She would have thought he’d have been so desperate to see Moira that he would have had no time for work.
She was typing out a letter to the solicitor about the proposed purchase of Duncan McPherson’s land when the door opened and Moira Lindsay came in. She was wearing a neat skirt and a grey round-necked jumper set off to perfection by the subtle tones of a silk scarf.
Skye recognised it at once. It was the scarf Lorimer had secreted in his car. Obviously the right moment had come last night.
Moira smiled at Skye who dully noted the glow of happiness the other girl carried with her. She would look happy too if Lorimer had given her such a carefully chosen present, had smiled at her so affectionately, had taken her home and shown her how much he loved her.
‘Hello, Skye.’ Skye could hardly bear the friendliness in Moira’s voice. ‘I told Lorimer I’d pop in this morning. Is he free?’
‘I’m always free for you, Moira, you know that.’ Lorimer had appeared in the doorway of his office. His gaze flickered to Skye who was staring at the word-processor screen, unable to watch the happiness in his face as he greeted Moira. ‘Come in, Moira…Skye, would you bring us some coffee, please?’
‘Of course.’ Skye was proud of her cool voice. She pushed back her chair and reached for the tray she always used now to carry the coffee up the stairs from the kitchen. As she stood up, she could hear Lorimer ushering Moira into his office.
‘I suppose we’d better put personal feelings aside and discuss how this is going to change things in the future.’
Moira laughed the happy laugh of a woman who knew herself to be loved. ‘I don’t think it need change things too much. I’d still like to carry on working for you…until we think about having children, of course.’
The door closed behind them. Automatically, Skye went down to the kitchen and poured the coffee. There was only one interpretation she could put on what she had overheard. Lorimer and Moira were going to get married. Why else would Lorimer talk about putting personal feelings aside to discuss business? After all that he had had to say about his disillusion, he was going to marry Moira and take her to live in the manse by the sea and she would be mother to his dark, blue-eyed sons.
What else had she expected?
Skye held herself together by sheer will-power, but she knew that the slightest touch would shatter her into a thousand agonising pieces. She forced herself upstairs and into the office, where Lorimer and Moira were laughing in the intimate way of people who knew each other very well. She set the tray on the desk, placed a cup near Moira, another by Lorimer. She didn’t think either of them noticed her go.
Skye sat down at her desk and looked down at her shaking hands. If Lorimer saw her like this, he would have no trouble seeing through her flimsy facade of control to the truth. Somehow she had to convince him that the kisses they had shared, the night she had spent in his arms, the easy friendship they had found walking along the beach…that all these meant no more to her than they did to him.
She felt gripped by a terrible numbness. She knew she should be working, doing something, anything, to take her mind off the thought of Lorimer and Moira together, but she could only stare wretchedly at her screen.
The phone shrilling abruptly beside her made her start violently. Taking several deep breaths, Skye waited until she was composed enough to answer, and then slowly picked up the receiver.
It was Charles, sounding urbane and assured, asking her out to dinner the following evening. He was the last person Skye wanted to see, and she was about to offer an excuse when she heard a burst of laughter from behind the closed door. What better way to convince Lorimer that she wasn’t about to sit around pining for him?
‘Thank you, Charles,’ she said steadily. ‘Tomorrow sounds fine.’
CHAPTER TEN
LORIMER was frowning down at the letters she had typed the following afternoon when Charles strolled into the office to pick her up. His expression grew black as he looked from Charles to Skye who had taken extra care with her appearance that day.
‘Are you going out?’
‘It is half-past five,’ Skye pointed out sweetly. She had made a great show of greeting Charles, glad that Lorimer was there to notice that she had no eyes for anyone else.
Yesterday’s misery had focused into a deep, comforting anger. She was furious with herself for falling in love with Lorimer at all. Why had she let it happen? It wasn’t as if he had encouraged her, quite the opposite. He had made a point of telling her how cynical he felt about marriage, so there had been no excuse for her to indulge in any hopes… and then he had turned around and got engaged to Moira! That made Skye even angrier. Why had he bothered to tell her about his parents’ separation at all? Whenever she thought about how sympathetic she had been, how understanding, she burned with humiliation. Lorimer hadn’t needed her sympathy or her understanding. He had Moira to console him for his past unhappiness. Skye was convinced that he must have guessed how she felt before she did, and had been simply trying to warn her off, and she squirmed at the thought. Had her feelings been that obvious? Were they still?
Her determined display of defiance was all that was keeping Skye going. It was the first day of December. She had three more weeks to get through and keeping her pride was the only way she was going to do it.
So she gave Lorimer the bright smile of a girl without a care in the world and let Charles help her into her coat.
Charles set himself out to be charming. He took Skye to an expensive restaurant and showered her with compliments which left her absolutely cold. She couldn’t understand why he was making such a fuss of her. The last time she had seen him, at Fleming’s ill-fated dinner party, he hadn’t bothered to hide his fastidious dislike of her behaviour, and now here he was, plying her with wine and apparently intent on whispering sweet nothings in her ear.
‘I hope we’ll be able to see more of each other back in London,’ said Charles, refilling her glass.
The thought of London, of anywhere without Lorimer, chilled Skye.
‘Are you leaving Edinburgh, then?’
‘As soon as I can.’ Charles leant forward confidentially. ‘The truth is, I’m thinking of moving on, but I need to make sure my reputation precedes me. That means setting up a really profitable deal that’ll get my name known in the right circles.’
‘I thought you liked working for Fleming?’
Charles shrugged. ‘He’s a nice chap, but too cautious. He’s lost the cutting edge and he knows it. That’s one of the reasons he brought me up here, to show the Scottish office how to make a killing.’
It was a horrible term, Skye reflected, unable to believe now that it was the cold, ruthless streak in Charles that she had once found so attractive. He leant forward solicitously and covered her hand with his own.
‘You seem different, Skye. Quieter.’ He dropped his voice meaningfully. ‘More appealing.’
Skye withdrew her hand. She couldn’t bear anyone but Lorimer to touch her. ‘I’m just a bit tired. I didn’t have much of a weekend.’
‘I tried to ring you on Saturday but your flatmate told me you were away with Lorimer.’ Charles’s voice was very casual. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘We went down to Galloway to look at the site of a new course and hotel…you must know it? It’s the one Carmichael and Co are backing.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Charles. ‘I haven’t had much to do with that deal after all. I was to have taken over the negotiations from Fleming, but I got the impression that Lorimer deliberately side-lined me. I was hoping it might lead on to other deals with him—golf is big business nowadays, and he’s the man to know. He’s staking a lot on this new hotel, but he’d be much better off sticking to where the real money is. I suggested some lucrative projects to him, but he didn’t want to know.’ He smiled suddenly at Skye and she decided she must have imagined the vengeful look in his eyes. ‘Still, it’s his loss! If he wants to risk everything for his pet project, that’s up to him. Fleming tells me he’s got a wonderful site in mind…what’s the name of the house again?’
‘Glendorie House.’
‘Ah, yes, that’s it. I gather everything’s going ahead as planned?’
Skye nodded. She was glad that he seemed willing to keep the conversation to business. ‘It is now. We’ve got the extra land for the golf course that Fleming was insisting on, and Lorimer’s about to close on the deal with the owners of the house. There shouldn’t be any more problems. The Buchanans are anxious to sell. They’re interested in a smaller house near by and they don’t want to lose it. They want to visit their daughter in Australia, too, but they can’t afford to go until the sale is completed. I think they feel that if it drags on too long their grandchildren will be grown up before they get there, so they’re very keen to get everything tied up.’
‘I see.’ Charles looked thoughtful, but after a moment he changed the subject to what he would do as soon as he got back to London.
Skye was relieved when the meal was over. Charles had been dropping increasingly suggestive comments as the evening progressed and she longed to be on her own. She tried to call a taxi, but Charles insisted on taking her home in his car and in the end she gave in. The sooner she got back to the flat, the sooner she could shut herself in her room and cry herself to sleep.