by Lynne Graham
At the top of the stairs some ten minutes later, she snatched in a deep, steadying breath and threw back her shoulders. As she descended Sholto emerged from the sitting room. Molly fixed her attention rigidly to a point slightly to the left of him.
‘Would you like some breakfast?’ he enquired.
The offer was sufficiently startling to surprise her into looking directly at him. But the terribly tearing pain she had feared failed to materialise. She felt numb and empty, temporarily drained by the self-castigating and bitter regrets of the night.
‘We should talk, Molly.’
‘The one thing I will not do is talk to you,’ Molly said tightly, and stepped past him.
She hadn’t eaten since teatime the night before. It surprised her that in the midst of everything she could experience such fierce hunger pangs. In the kitchen, she put on the kettle. A packet of chocolate-filled croissants lay on the counter. Sholto adored chocolate. It was one of the little things about him that she had loved most. As she removed her strained gaze from the sight, she saw a glimmer of familiar red through the opaque glass pane in the back door.
The door open, she stared at her elderly hatchback. ‘How did my car get up here?’
‘The back wheels were bogged down in the mud,’ Sholto supplied. ‘I towed it out.’
‘What with?’
‘I came up here in a four-wheel drive. You didn’t see it because it was in the garage…and your car keys were in your jacket,’ Sholto reminded her.
Molly turned away again. She could not bear to thank him after what he had done to her. Their intimacy had not been accidental, had not been brought about by a sudden attack of lust or sentimentality on his part or even a loss of control. He had chosen his revenge with cruel deliberation. In silence, she ripped open the packet of croissants to put one into the oven to heat. Pride would not allow her to make a fleeing, craven retreat even if her car was conveniently waiting at the door. But no doubt he would be glad to see her go.
Lost in her own disjointed thoughts, she was staring blankly at the tiled wall when Sholto strode past her to take the kettle off the boil. He flipped the slightly singed croissant out of the oven with a deft hand. ‘You’re upset. Sit down. I’ll make the coffee.’
‘I am not upset.’ But she was shivering with cold and she wrapped her arms round herself tightly. In one lithe, disturbing movement, Sholto peeled off his sweater and extended it to her, brilliant dark eyes intent on her drawn profile. Molly surveyed the garment with revulsion and backed away into the sitting room to sink down at the table.
The croissant turned to dust in her mouth and she had to force it down. Her appetite had mysteriously vanished. She found herself stealing furtive, bewildered glances at Sholto. He had brought up her clothes, replaced her torn tights and retrieved her car. But then each and every one of those attentions would also speed her departure and the effortless good manners and the innate sophistication of a male who knew her sex were back in full play again. Last night might never have happened.
Yet last night Sholto had revealed more emotion than she had ever dreamt he might possess on the subject of their marriage. And there was a taut, gritty edge to his spectacular bone structure now, a tightness in the set of his hard mouth that betrayed his continuing tension. The silence smouldered and she was no more at ease with it than he was. Pushing back her plate, she stood up and stretched out her hand towards her jacket.
‘I wasn’t planning to touch you when I got into that bed,’ Sholto drawled softly.
Her hand fell back from her jacket, her face filling with mortified colour. ‘A wicked impulse, was it…a bit of a joke?’ she heard herself bite back with a bitterness that shook her. ‘As much of a sick joke as our marriage?’
Sholto stilled, briefly disconcerted by her sarcasm, and then he strode closer and Molly spread her arms wide in a gesture of angry warning. ‘Don’t you dare come near me!’
‘Hit me if it makes you feel better.’ Tawny eyes watched her with formidably controlled intensity.
Molly didn’t want to do anything that he wanted her to do. She wouldn’t let herself lash out and shatter the last, torturously thin shreds of her control. She drew her arms in again, tight to her sides like a little tin soldier who had broken the line and earned a reproof.
‘When I kissed you, it was a game…I didn’t intend to let it go so far,’ Sholto confessed with a grim edge to his deep, dark drawl, but Molly had already turned her back on him in self-defence.
A game? That precious, wonderful numbness was gone now when she most needed it. Trick or treat, tease and withdraw. Only Sholto had not withdrawn, Sholto had discovered that the response he could gain from his once reluctant bride was more than equal to anything he had been able to extract when she had been in love with him. Had that tantalised him, amused him into continuing his cruel and sadistic game?
‘Dio…’ he gritted, his accent an unbearably sexy purr round the syllables. ‘I really wanted you.’
‘I feel so much better knowing that.’ He had really wanted her. What did that mean and couldn’t he even have had the decency to conceal the vein of surprise that was audible in that admission?
And she wasn’t stupid. Did he have to talk to her as if she were? Sexual desire wasn’t an intellectual thing. Her abandoned response had aroused him and after that it had simply been a question of male lust. She didn’t need that reality spelt out. But Sholto had known exactly what he was doing. He hadn’t stopped because he hadn’t seen why he should. And she would be a very old lady before she forgot his look of savage satisfaction at the instant he had invaded her writhing body with his.
‘And you wanted me,’ Sholto stated with cool and complete conviction.
Molly froze, shock shilling through her.
‘Nor do I recall employing any undue persuasion,’ Sholto drawled in smoothly provocative continuance. ‘In fact if you hadn’t been with me every eager step of the way it would never have happened.’
Molly spun round so fast, she stumbled, but her open palm still cracked across one hard cheekbone with stinging force. Then she staggered back a step, devastated by the violence that had betrayed her and smashed her control.
‘I didn’t want you…and I want nothing more to do with you…ever!’ she stressed, clashing with glittering golden eyes that were as cold as ice. For a split second, she couldn’t break the compelling hold of that scrutiny and that panicked her even more. Then, snatching up her things, she headed for the back door at speed.
She was shaking like a leaf when she got behind the steering wheel but she drove off with exaggerated care, taking the hill which had caused her such grief the night before like a learner driver. Then she noticed the flowers still lying on the passenger seat, the bouquet for Freddy which she had intended to leave at the cemetery. The little church was only a couple of miles further down the road. She performed the task, indifferent to the rain that had come on again.
‘He’s too proud and too angry to chase after you,’ Freddy had written in an urgent letter to her after all that grotesque publicity about the marriage split. ‘If you want Sholto back, the first move will have to be yours…’
And she had responded to him with a whole tissue of face-saving lies. Freddy had deserved better. Weeks and weeks later, she had sat down and written again. It had been a kind of catharsis telling Freddy that love wasn’t always enough and that she could never, ever have lived with being second best.
‘It is a rather elegant shape,’ Donald conceded as he set the graceful, slender-necked vase back on the shelf. ‘But it’s a shame that it’s not that lovely shade of blue which the Chinese were so clever with. Do you think you ought to have it valued?’
‘No…I love it but I shouldn’t think it’s worth much. I admired it the first time I saw it and Freddy complained that his housekeeper wouldn’t let him get rid of it because it was the only ornament in the whole house!’ Molly’s rueful smile of recollection slid away again. It had been over a fortnig
A slightly stout man with greying hair and warm brown eyes, Donald settled himself down on the sofa in her tiny lounge and regarded her consideringly. ‘I really don’t like blundering in where I know I’m not wanted—’
‘Then don’t!’ Molly reddened and pushed an uneasy hand through her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not in the best of moods. My brother and his wife are living a nightmare right now and I feel so helpless!’
‘But that’s not the only reason you’re feeling like this.’ With instinctive tact, Donald averted his attention from her strained face. ‘I have no idea what passed between you and Sholto but obviously the encounter caused you a lot of distress.’
Molly studied him with growing discomfiture. Donald looked so mild and unassuming that people were invariably surprised by the forthright character and plain speech which were as much a part of him as his caring nature. He was immensely popular with his parishioners. Indeed, since her stepfather’s retirement and Donald’s subsequent appointment as rector, the congregation had increased in strength. ‘Donald—’
‘And I know you won’t be offended when I admit that after careful reflection I’m grateful you had the good sense to decide that we wouldn’t suit. I would still very much like to have a wife to come home to at night…I rattle like a pea round the vicarage and I am lonely,’ he admitted without sentimentality. ‘But you are too young to settle for that sort of marriage. I’m afraid it was wishful thinking on my part but please don’t let that proposal of mine make you feel uncomfortable with me now.’
Her eyes stung. His continuing friendship and understanding made her swallow hard and finally nod.
‘So I hope I may still speak as a friend,’ Donald continued wryly. ‘Molly…for your own sake, start living in the present and try to forget that Sholto ever existed. It’s the only way and I do know what I’m talking about.’
Both the reminder and the blunt advice made Molly bite painfully at her lower lip. The woman Donald had loved had returned his feelings but had shrunk from the prospect of becoming a clergyman’s wife. The relationship had trailed on unhappily for months before Donald had finally gathered the strength to cut his losses and end it.
‘I’m not still in love with Sholto, Donald.’ Molly lifted her chin with fierce pride. ‘In fact I dislike and despise him!’
‘Yet even now you change into a different person when you’ve been with him,’ Donald sighed. ‘He winds you up like a battery toy and then he leaves you flailing around like a lost soul.’
Molly shivered as if an icy hand had trailed down her spine. ‘That’s not a very comforting analogy.’
‘But it’s a true one. Don’t forget that I was a spectator to the after-effects of the first time around. I’ve seen you like this before…one day you loved him, the next you seemed to hate him with equal passion.’
Molly paled, her fingers curling on the chair-arm. She had no desire to recall those dark days following an even darker one four years ago, when the agony of betrayal and humiliation had almost ripped her apart.
‘Sadly nobody gave you impartial advice to begin with,’ Donald said regretfully. ‘People whom you trusted and who should’ve known better encouraged you to take a hostile, embittered stance for various reasons of their own. Your stepfather disliked Sholto and was delighted to stand in judgement. Your mother backed up your stepfather. And that girl, Jenna, your so-called best fnend…’ Donald pursed his lips expressively and continued, ‘Jenna was bitterly envious of you from the day you met Sholto and was scarcely an unprejudiced bystander.’
Molly had stiffened defensively. ‘I knew exactly what I was doing, Donald. Other people’s opinions didn’t influence me.’
‘Well…I’ve said enough for now and I do have another call to make this evening.’ Donald stood up unhurriedly. ‘But has it ever occurred to you that had you allowed Sholto the chance to tell you his side of the story then the whole miserable affair would have been considerably less acrimonious?’
With a slight squirming sensation, Molly recalled Donald’s unwelcome advice. He had urged her to seek such a meeting with Sholto but Molly had been deeply offended by a suggestion which had seemed to take no account of the fact that she was the injured party. It was only as she had got to know Donald better that she had learnt he could be a sincere and worthwhile friend.
She saw him out to his car. Donald was now talking cheerfully about his upcoming six-week vacation to visit relatives in New Zealand. He had been saving up for a long time to make the trip and was very much looking forward to it.
As Molly got ready for bed, she realised that Donald had made not one single reference to her brother Nigel’s plight. Yet his sympathy had been pronounced…until she’d told him what Sholto had told her at Freddy’s house. Perhaps Donald now thought that foolish Nigel was receiving his just deserts for playing Russian roulette with Sholto’s money. But Molly’s heart still ached for Nigel and his family.
Nigel didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body and he had all but cringed when she had confronted him with Sholto’s accusation of fraud. Yes, Sholto’s bankers had taken a similar stance, her brother had finally admitted, but he had sworn that he had had no intent to defraud anyone and had not even realised that the money was not entirely his to do with as he wished. But then he had not even studied the loan agreement, an admission which had made Molly, who was a legal secretary, grind her teeth in exasperation.
The next morning Molly felt even more exhausted than she had the day before. She drove the five miles to the small market town where she worked in a solicitor’s office and climbed the stairs with a heavy heart. Her boss, Mr Woods, who had little patience with mistakes, greeted her with a long legal brief which needed retyping because she had misspelt the name of the client concerned.
Shortly before one o’clock she heard steps on the stairs and glanced up with a frown, hoping it wasn’t a client because Mr Woods didn’t like her to take her lunch break while he still had someone in his office. On the other hand, regardless of how late she might leave, he would still expect her back at her desk by two.
The opaque glass door swung back, framing Sholto on the threshold. In shock, Molly’s heart leapt up into her throat, something akin to raw panic assailing her. He looked devastatingly handsome in a superbly cut dovegrey suit that smoothly outlined his broad shoulders, narrow hips and long, powerful legs. His thick black hair was brushed back off his brow, sleek stockbroker style, the gleam of a white silk shirt accentuating the exotic gold of his skin. Everything she had told herself she wouldn’t, couldn’t, mustn’t ever feel again hit her in a tidal wave.
CHAPTER FOUR
RIVETING dark eyes rested on her, whipping down to the left hand bare of rings which Molly had braced on the edge of her desk. A wolfish smile drove the impassivity from Sholto’s dark and vibrant features. ‘Are you free for lunch?’
‘L-lunch?’ Molly stammered incredulously, the tip of her tongue stealing out to moisten her dry lips as she struggled to suppress the most terrifying surge of soaring excitement.
‘What a drab and depressing working environment.’ Sholto scanned the small, shabby reception area with its line of battered filing cabinets and the single narrow window which overlooked the roof of a neighbouring building. ‘My employees would riot if I asked them to function in surroundings like these. I imagine you’re overworked and underpaid too. You probably think it’s better for your character.’
Still paralysed, Molly continued to stare at him, heart thundering, mouth dry as a bone. ‘How on earth did you find out where I worked?’
‘Freddy told me.’ Sholto gave her a glinting look that was utterly unreadable. ‘He had a habit of dropping little titbits unasked and I have a good memory.’
Molly flushed uneasily, wondering just how many ‘little titbits’ Freddy had passed on before her desultory correspondence with him had finally trailed to a halt. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve already covered that angle,’ Sholto reminded her gently.
But why on earth would he ask her to join him for lunch? Her fine brows pleated as she stood up, fighting her own drowning, desperate selfconsciousness with all her might. ‘Was there something you—?’
‘Did Donald take it badly?’
Registering the fact that he had noticed the missing engagement ring, Molly flung her head back, anger stirring. ‘That’s none of your business!’
‘Together we made it my business,’ Sholto countered softly. ‘I don’t make a habit of seducing women who have made promises to other men.’
Colour drenched her cheekbones. ‘Donald and I had a sensible talk and simply decided that we wouldn’t be suited,’ she said with taut discomfiture.
An air of grim amusement softened the bold lines of his strong, dark face. ‘I gather you didn’t tell him how very lacking in sense you had been with me.’
Molly quivered, outraged that he could make that point to her face. ‘I—’
‘I’m not gloating, cara. But I do value candour,’ Sholto told her drily. ‘And once you did too. Yet you slapped me in the face and told me that you didn’t want me when I know very well that you do.’
Completely disconcerted by that outspoken assurance, Molly was transfixed to the spot. Her rebellious memory chose that same moment to flash the image of that beautiful bronzed body of his against white linen sheets and the wild, exquisite torment of a lovemaking that had driven her out of her mind with excitement. Stunned by the intensity of that sexual imagery, she gazed blindly into shimmering golden eyes as compelling as the heart of a fire on an icy day, her legs trembling, her breasts rising and falling with the jerky rapidity of her breathing.
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