by Penny Jordan
All she knew was that the way he was kissing her, the way he was holding her, the response he was arousing within her were so very different from anything she had ever experienced before, so illuminatingly pleasurable, that she never wanted him to let her go.
And yet that was exactly what he did, gently easing his mouth away from hers, and then, although still holding her, slowly moved away from her body so that she shivered as she felt the chill of the night air touching her warmly aroused flesh.
Reluctantly she opened her eyes and focused on him. What had happened had been so unexpected, so uninvited. Could he, like her, have felt that same frisson of awareness, of desire when they had first met? Had for some reason her disclosures about the unwanted attention of Ralph Charlesworth compelled Ben to break all the rules of convention and take the risk of kissing her?But, even as these wild incoherent thoughts whirled through her mind, Ben had started to speak, apologising gravely as he told her, 'I'm sorry if I startled you, pouncing on you like that, but it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. After what you'd been telling me, I saw Charlesworth watching us ... well, as I said, I suspect he's the kind of man who, although he might not hesitate to try and bully a woman, will quickly back off if he thinks there's another man involved.'
That was why he had kissed her!
Reality, so very different from her foolish imaginings, was like a shock of cold water, not only immediately dousing the desire she had been feeling but also turning the soft warm feeling of well-being and happiness inside her to one of seething bitter resentment, as she reflected angrily on the humiliation she could well have suffered if she had been the one to speak first; if she had allowed him to see that the kiss, which he had instigated purely as a counter-measure to Ralph Charlesworth's desire for her, had been something which she had mistaken as physical evidence that he shared the attraction she had felt the first time she had seen him.
It was mortification and not embarrassment that turned her face red and made her step back from him, but fortunately he didn't seem to be aware of it, apologising briefly, 'I'm sorry... but there just wasn't any time to warn you. I saw Charlesworth watching us.'
'Yes,' Miranda intervened, now as eager to escape from him as she had been earlier from Ralph, although for very different reasons.
'Well, let's hope it does the trick,' Ben told her. 'I hadn't realised he was such an unsavoury character,' he added, frowning slightly. 'His wife is connected to Helen?'
'Yes, her niece. Yes,' Miranda agreed shortly. How could he stand there and calmly discuss something as mundane as Helen's relationship to Susan Charlesworth when she...? She gritted her teeth, acknowledging that she was still having trouble functioning on a normal plane. Her mind might have realised that there had been nothing personal in Ben's kiss, but her body, her senses... they were being extraordinarily recalcitrant and rebellious about doing so. They were still clinging dreamily to the pleasure he had given them.
'I think we'd better go and rejoin your father. He'll be wondering where we are.'
Privately Miranda doubted it, but she allowed Ben to head her back towards the others. He obviously didn't want to spend any more time alone with her than he had to.
As they re-entered the ballroom, the first person Miranda saw was Ralph Charlesworth. He was standing with a small group of people, and as she and Ben walked past them Miranda could feel him glowering at her. She couldn't bring herself to look at Ben, although she knew from the way he drew her imperceptibly closer to her side that he too was aware of him. As they headed for their table she wondered shakily how it was that her body should have become so aware of him in such a very short space of time that it had actually reacted to the closing of that small conventional gap between them—the gap that said they were acquaintances and not lovers—by becoming dangerously fluid and soft, as though her flesh actually yearned for physical contact with his.
All in all, Miranda was glad when the evening had finally come to an end, and she was free to escape to the solitary security of her own home, having firmly refused to join Helen, her father and Ben in a final cup of coffee before they finally declared the evening ended.
CHAPTER FOUR
MIRANDA woke up, tensing in the warm darkness of her bed, until she realised that the sound which had awakened her was just the wind. It was still dark, her alarm showing that it was just gone three in the morning.
She had been in bed for just over an hour, and now she moved restlessly beneath the bedclothes, reluctant to admit that it wasn't so much the sound of the wind which had woken her but the dream she had been having. She shivered a little, sitting up in bed and hugging her arms around her knees. Her dream had been so real that just for a moment when she had first opened her eyes she had been shocked to discover that Ben Frobisher wasn't actually with her.
Ben Frobisher. Drat the wretched man. Wasn't it enough that he had already invaded her conscious life without him invading her subconscious and her dreams as well?
And now, instead of closing her eyes and going back to sleep, she was sitting here half-afraid to do so just in case she started the dream again. The dream. She tensed and swallowed. It had been so real.. .so.. .so wantonly erotic, a small voice whispered tauntingly. Despite the fact that she was completely alone, she knew that she was blushing. With anger, not embarrassment, she told herself sharply, but it wasn't entirely true. If she closed her eyes, would she once again find herself in Ben Frobisher's arms, being kissed as he had kissed her in reality earlier in the evening, only this time...?
She tensed again but it was too late to head off her rebellious thoughts. Even without closing her eyes she could recall it all so vividly, the sensation of being held in Ben's arms; the heat and power of his body against hers, the delicious frisson of sensation that raced over her skin as her body yielded instinctively to the sensual demand of his.
The soft brush of his lips against hers, a tantalising preliminary to the pleasure she knew was to come, was teasingly provocative and yet held a promise that lured her deeper and deeper into the enmeshing need he was feeding inside her.
In her dream there had been no reason for her to resist the warm ardour of his mouth; no need to warn herself that it would be folly to allow herself to feel such intense desire.
In her dream it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to wind her arms around his neck; to slide her fingers into the thick darkness of his hair and to tighten them against his scalp in a reflex acknowledgement of the emotion gripping her as her touch caused him to deepen their kiss, to hold her so close to his body that she could actually feel the reverberation within her own flesh of his unsteady heartbeat.
In her dream—and this was what disturbed and alarmed her—the kiss had not finished as it had done in reality, with Ben stepping back from her and calmly explaining that he had kissed her, not because he desired her, but to help her evade Ralph Charlesworth's unwanted attention. Instead, Ben had continued to kiss her with increasing urgency; an urgency to which she had shamelessly and wantonly responded, allowing him to see how much he was arousing her.
In her dream, when he had reluctantly released her mouth, he had kissed the smooth line of her jaw and then the tender vulnerable spot behind her ear, slowly caressing the entire length of her throat so that she trembled violently against him, suppressing her soft moans of pleasure, twisting feverishly against him as his mouth caressed the soft skin of her shoulder, pushing aside the fabric of her dress as he kissed the hollow above her collarbone and then bit passionately, roughly almost, at her skin as though unable to control his need for her any longer.
It had been at that point that she had woken up with her heart beating frantically and her body soft and moist with desire for him. And now she was afraid to go back to sleep. Afraid in case she started dreaming about him again, but it was only three o'clock in the morning and she was desperately tired. Perhaps if she willed herself not to think about him, but to concentrate on something else instead... such as her work... such
as the coming wedding... anything... anything at all that would put her in touch with reality and keep at bay her wanton disruptive dreams.
* * *
'I'm sorry,' Miranda apologised, smothering a yawn as she listened to her father describing a new property he had taken on to their books. 'I didn't get much sleep last night.'
And whose fault had that been? Miranda reflected bitterly half an hour later as she started to clear her desk, ready for going home. Certainly not hers. If she had been afraid to let herself relax enough to sleep properly last night because she had been afraid of dreaming about Ben Frobisher again, it had been his fault and not hers. After all, she had not been the one who had instigated that kiss... .she had not invited it nor encouraged it. But she had enjoyed and totally misunderstood it, she reminded herself grimly as she left the office and got into her car.
Face it, she told herself bluntly, either you've got some kind of compulsion to start behaving like a teenager again, or you're seriously vulnerable to the man.
Of the two she thought she preferred the first option, but common sense told her that she was far more likely to be suffering from the latter. So, what was she trying to tell herself? she demanded mentally as she started her car and set it in motion.
That she had fallen in love with Ben Frobisher? Ridiculous. Impossible. Totally unthinkable. There must be some other, more logical and acceptable reason for her extraordinary reaction to him.
Yes, it was quite impossible for her to have fallen in love with Ben; for a start, it was simply not the sort of thing she did; she was far too sensible. All she needed to do was to find the reason, but not right now: for one thing, she was far too tired, and, for another, she already had far too many other things to do.
Reassuring herself that she wasn't being a coward and evading the issue, she reminded herself that tonight she was due to attend a meeting of the newly established preservation society, which meant that she was barely going to have time to get home, have something to eat, and get showered and changed again before it was time to go out.
As her father would no doubt have reminded her, had he been with her, if she had done the sensible thing and bought herself a comfortable small house close to the town, as he had wanted her to do, she would not have to waste so much time in travelling.
But then, she had fallen in love with the cottage the moment she had seen it. She put her foot on the brake so sharply that she jolted forward in her seat, and then realised as she stared in bewilderment at the empty road that her physical reaction had been caused by the subconscious danger of her thoughts. If she had fallen in love at first sight with the cottage, then... But that was something completely different, she told herself quickly as she drove homeward. She might have allowed herself the indulgence of buying the cottage for reasons which were emotionally based rather than practical, but that did not necessarily mean to say that she was... that she could... While her thoughts floundered into hopeless disorder she wondered a little wildly if it was being so close to the threshold of entering her thirties that was responsible for this apparent upheaval and complete turn-around in her emotions and convictions.
First she started going all broody and cooing over other people's babies, then...
Stop it, she warned herself. Stop it right now. Stop those thoughts right there before...
Before what? Before it was too late and she had allowed herself to commit the unutterable folly of actually allowing a bridge to connect her newly emergent desire for motherhood with her emotional and physical vulnerability to Ben Frobisher.
But of course she was not going to be stupid enough to allow that to happen. Of course she wasn't, a mocking inner voice taunted her. Of course she wasn't.
As she herself had predicted, she barely had time to snatch a quick snack before it was time to get ready to go out again.
As yet the newly formed society had no permanent home, but the wife of the landlord of the town's fifteenth-century coaching inn, who was one of their members, had offered the use of a room above the main bar as a temporary meeting place.
The coaching inn, like so many other buildings in the town, had come under threat from the new developments. The small brewery which owned it had recently been taken over by a large national group which specialised in turning the majority of their public houses into standardised steak houses of the cheap and cheerful controlled portions variety, which, while they might suit the needs and demands of the busy traveller and his family, had little aesthetic appeal.
As she drove into what had originally been the stable area and coaching yard, Miranda noticed that she was already five minutes late and cursed under her breath. The car park was almost full and it took her a further five minutes to park, and, when she eventually hurried up the stairs to the meeting room, she was hot and slightly breathless.
As she opened the door an expectant hush seized the people inside, causing her to pause for a moment, until the chairwoman greeted her, saying, 'Oh, Miranda, it's only you; for a moment we thought... You'll never guess what,'
she added, 'the most marvellous thing. You know the house that's being renovated in the High Street, the one we were all so concerned about when we heard it had been bought by a computer firm? Well, the person who's bought it—a Mr Frobisher—phoned me this afternoon. Apparently he had to get my number from the local library. We really must think about putting a notice in the local rag, you know. I mean it was obviously only by chance that he'd discovered we existed at all. Anyway, it turns out that he'd heard of our concern about what's happening to so many of our fine old buildings, and he wanted to reassure us that he had no intention of destroying the character of the house he's bought. In fact, he actually offered to come down here tonight to show us all the plans for the building. I was so thrilled...I mean, this shows how important our work is, doesn't it? And to have got such a good response... I must say, I felt really heartened. I've already told the others. We half expected when you walked in that you would be Mr Frobisher. If only others can be persuaded to follow his good example.'
'We don't know as yet that his will be a good example,' Miranda pointed out grimly.
She could tell that the others were surprised by her response and its lack of enthusiasm, but how could she tell them what she suspected—that a man like Ben Frobisher would simply use them, flattering them into acceptance of a design she was pretty sure would ruin the authenticity of the building? Oh, he would flatter them, charm them, use all the knowledge and sophistication at his command to ensure that he had their approval, and she knew already that there would be nothing she could do about it; but why was he bothering? He already had planning permission for the work he was having done. Or was he perhaps contemplating expanding... buying further properties?
The anger and apprehension she felt was intensified by a feeling almost of having been betrayed... a feeling that somehow or other he had gone behind her back, and yet in contacting the chairwoman of their committee he had behaved completely correctly.
But he could have told her what he intended to do... could have warned her... That way...
That way what? That way she would have found some way of avoiding attending the meeting... But then, he was hardly likely to know of any reason why she might wish to avoid him, was he? No doubt he probably even considered her indebted to him for rescuing her from Ralph. And perhaps in a way she was. She suspected that he had been quite correct in guessing that Ralph would cease pestering her if he thought that, instead of having to browbeat and bully a woman, he was going to have to confront another man. Ralph's attitude to women epitomised everything she most resented and disliked in the male sex, she acknowledged tiredly as she took her place at the large table around which they held their meetings.
'What time did he say he would be here?' she heard one of the others asking the chairwoman.
'Well, I suggested he leave it until a quarter to nine to give everyone time to arrive, so he should be here any minute now.' She glanced at her watch as she sp
oke, and, as though on cue, someone rapped firmly on the door and then opened it.
Since Miranda had been told of Ben's imminent arrival, it seemed scarcely necessary for her heart to start beating as frantically as though it had just received a sudden shock, she told herself irritably as she deliberately refused to do anything more than briefly acknowledge his presence with a small inclination of her head, leaving it to Alice Thornton, their chairwoman, to go forward and welcome him.
He was carrying a roll of paper: the much-vaunted plans, no doubt. Alice Thornton was in her early sixties, the old-fashioned, rather formal type who, as Miranda had known she would, insisted on making Ben personally known to all of them. Whether by accident or as a gentle reproof because she had been late, Miranda had no idea, but somehow or other she was the last to be introduced to him, but before she could say anything he was smiling at her and saying warmly, 'Oh, Miranda and I already know one another,' and, as they all sat down, Miranda was forced to make a response to her neighbour's excited questions.
'You know him? How did you meet? Is he married, do you know, or...?'
Reminding herself that this kind of direct questioning was one of the penalties one paid for living in a small town and for having a father who was known to almost every single one of its longstanding inhabitants, she answered her neighbour's questions as quickly as she could, explaining that they had met through her father, adding as coolly as she dared that as far as she knew Ben was not married.
'He's very good-looking,' her interrogator said wistfully. She was a small quiet woman in her late forties, who to Miranda's knowledge had been contentedly and happily married to her husband for twenty-odd years, and so this response caused Miranda to repeat to herself her own earlier warnings about the dangers of allowing herself to become vulnerable to the allure of surface looks and facile charm.