by Penny Jordan
He probably wouldn't even be there, she told herself briskly, as she told Liz where she was going and opened the office door.
It was a blustery March day, the wind soft and warm with the promise of spring, and the clouds high and white overhead in a vividly blue sky. She didn't even manage to get across the town square before she was stopped. Sighing, she smiled a greeting at Lillian Forsyth, the wife of the vicar.
'I've been hearing the good news about last night's committee meeting,'
Lillian told her. 'I'm sorry I missed it. It's wonderful news, though, isn't it? I mean, to have someone new coming into the town who's obviously as keen as us to preserve its character. Bob was saying that he thought it might be a good idea to invite him on to the committee. As he pointed out, having such a successful entrepreneur among our ranks is bound to add weight to our cause. Actually I suspect he's probably going to be in touch with you about it. I get the impression that the general feeling is that you be nominated to approach him to see how he feels about joining us officially.'
'Me?' Miranda questioned, her heart sinking.
'Well, yes. In view of your... your friendship with him.'
Her heart sank even further. Lillian Forsyth was beginning to look slightly embarrassed. Miranda knew she had caught the sharp edge in her voice, and told herself that it was hardly the vicar's wife's fault if her relationship with Frobisher had been exaggerated into something it was most definitely not.
'Well, I'll certainly ask my father to approach him if that's what the committee wants,' Miranda told her. 'He knows Ben—Mr Frobisher far better than I do. After all, he was the one who sold him the house and not me.'
If she had hoped by this statement to underline the fact that her acquaintance with Ben Frobisher was confined purely to business and existed only through her father, she soon realised that she had been over-optimistic, as Lillian Forsyth floundered and asked uncertainly, 'Oh, but I thought.. .that is... Well, I'd better get on. There's a WI meeting this evening.'
As she walked into the High Street, Miranda deliberately crossed over the road so that she was on the opposite side from the house Ben had bought, and as she drew level with it she deliberately increased her pace and avoided looking at it.
And yet traitorously her heart started to thump far more heavily than her brisk walking pace necessitated, and there was an unfamiliar tight sensation of apprehension-cum-excitment constricting her chest.
When she was several yards past the house she slackened her pace, crossly refusing to acknowledge that the feeling she was experiencing owed more to disappointment than relief.
To punish herself for this emotional treachery to her own best interests, once she had delivered her piece to the newspaper editor, she deliberately took a circuitous route back to the office.
'Any calls?' she asked Liz when she opened the door.
'Only one... from Ben Frobisher,' Liz told her, studiously keeping her voice blank of all expression. 'I told him you weren't available, so he said to tell you that he'd pick you up here at five-thirty.'
'He'd what?' Miranda could scarcely believe what she had just heard.
'He said to tell you he'd pick you up at five-thirty. Something about showing you the plans for the conversion. He said you hadn't had an opportunity to see them with the others last night. He said you'd know all about it and be expecting his call.'
'Did he leave a number?' Miranda asked her dangerously. She was seething with anger. What on earth did he think he was doing? Wasn't it enough that he had already stirred up all sorts of gossip about the pair of them, without adding this? But at least only Liz had heard him on this occasion. She worried at her bottom lip, and then asked unevenly, 'Liz, would you mind... could I ask you?'
The other girl waited, watching her a little uncertainly.
'I... that is, my relationship with Ben Frobisher... I'd rather no one else knew about his phone call,' she told her uncomfortably. 'If you wouldn't mind keeping it to yourself.'
Immediately Liz's face fell.
'Oh, I'm sorry, Miranda,' she apologised. 'Obviously I wouldn't tell a soul, but unfortunately Anne Soames was in here when he rang... and Mr Frobisher does have very good diction. You know what she's like... I'm afraid she must have heard virtually the whole conversation.'
Miranda's heart sank.
Anne Soames was one of the worst gossips in the area. Never maliciously so, and certain allowances had to be made for her as since she had been widowed three years earlier she had been very lonely, but, of all the people to have overheard Ben's telephone call, she was the one Miranda would have most wanted not to have done so.
'Look, I am sorry,' Liz told her gently. 'And I do understand what it's like when you first start a new relationship. You want to keep it to yourself... especially--'
Miranda suppressed a strong desire to scream and gritted her teeth to say bitterly, 'On, no, Liz, not you as well! Look, there is no relationship between Ben Frobisher and me, other than that he was a client of this firm, and as one of its partners I accompanied him to last week's golf club do to make up the numbers. As for all this extraordinary gossip that's flying around... Why on earth can't people learn to mind their own business?' She stopped, aware that she was probably a little unfair. 'I'm sorry,' she apologised, 'but there are times when living in a small town surrounded by people who've known you all your life can be very...
'Ben Frobisher is an acquaintance, nothing more. Can you imagine how I'm going to feel when all this gossip reaches his ears, as it must?'
'Perhaps if you explained to him,' Liz suggested.
'Explained what? That half the town has got the two of us paired up together and married off on the strength of last week's golf club do, an unwise comment he made at last night's committee meeting, and one telephone call? He'll think me certifiable. He's a Londoner. He won't understand. He'll think--'
She stopped abruptly. What was it she was afraid of him thinking? That she was trying to force some kind of intimacy between them by fostering the gossip, by allowing it to run unchecked? But the gossip wasn't her fault. She wasn't the one who had singled him out at last night's meeting... She wasn't the one who had telephoned him... she wasn't...
Oh, what was the use? Oh, what was the use in allowing herself to get all worked up about something over which she had absolutely no control? she reflected wearily; but as for tonight... well, she would soon make it plain to Ben that she wasn't remotely interested in seeing his precious plans and that she certainly did not welcome the kind of highhanded attitude he had engaged in today, ringing up like that and behaving as though he had every right to claim her time. It would serve him right if she decided to leave the office early and go straight home. But she knew she would not do that. For one thing they didn't normally close until five-thirty, and in her father's absence she would have to remain here until that time.
When Liz left at four-thirty for a dental appointment, Miranda struggled with a wilful impulse to close down the office early. In the end her conscience and training won, and she realised that she would have to stay until five-thirty.
However, what she could do was to make sure that she was ready to leave at five-thirty on the dot so that if Ben Frobisher was even a couple of minutes late he would have missed her.
As luck would have it, at twenty past five, just as she was getting ready to leave, the phone rang, and she was still dealing with the call when Ben walked into the office at five-thirty sharp.
When he saw that she was busy, he went and sat down discreetly out of earshot, picking up a magazine and studying it with apparent interest while she dealt with the caller's query.
He wasn't, she noticed darkly, carrying anything with him, and there was certainly no room in the soft leather blouson jacket he was wearing for him to conceal the large set of plans she had seen the previous night.
'I'm sorry about that,' she apologised in a clipped voice as she replaced the receiver. It was good manners rather than genuine regret that made
her apologise. In point of fact, she had been uncomfortably conscious as she'd replaced the receiver that the plastic had become rather damp where she had been holding it and that her fingers were stiff and tense. Why did he have to have this effect on her? she wondered bitterly as she kept her distance from him.
He had got to his feet as she replaced the receiver, and now he was walking towards her. Why was it that she was so aware of him, so conscious of his maleness, of his sexuality? She licked her lips nervously as she realised that she had been wondering what he would look like without his jacket and the shirt he was wearing beneath it, whether in fact his torso would be as firmly fleshed and tautly muscled as his lithe movements suggested, whether the thick dark hair on his head was mirrored on his body, and if so what it would be like to trace its path with her fingertips and with her lips. Aghast at the direction of her own thoughts, she turned her back on him and demanded shakily, 'The plans... Liz said you wanted to show them to me.'
'Yes, I do,' he agreed. 'I don't have them with me, though. They are over at my place. I thought perhaps we could have dinner together, go over the plans and then I could pick your brains a little. I still haven't found somewhere permanent to live and your father intimated to me that you're the expert on your more outlying properties.'
Her father. Miranda ground her teeth. Why on earth had she ever agreed to her father's request that she partner Ben at the golf club dance? She opened her mouth to tell him that it was impossible for her to have dinner with him, and that she had no desire whatsoever to see his plans, but just as she did so a movement outside in the square caught her eye, and as she focused on it she saw that Ralph Charlesworth was walking determinedly towards the office.
Her heart sank. This wouldn't be the first time that Ralph had used the excuse of wanting to discuss the purchase of a property with her to force her to endure his company. As a building contractor, he did occasionally buy property on a speculative basis, and she had felt obliged to deal as professionally with his spurious interest as she could, while ignoring the sexual innuendo of his conversation. Behind her she could hear Ben asking calmly, 'Are you ready to leave or... ?'
'Yes. Yes, I'm ready,' she told him quickly, grabbing her coat and bag. Much as her brain warned her that it was not in her own best interest for her to spend any time at all in Ben Frobisher's company and risk exposing herself to the emotional and physical impact he seemed to have on her, when it came to a choice between Ben and Ralph...
She gave a small shudder, as Ben opened the door for her and then waited while she locked it behind her.
As she fell into step beside Ben, she was acutely conscious of Ralph's silent presence behind them, watching them.
She had assumed that Ben hadn't seen Ralph, but as they crossed the square she realised she was wrong because he said quietly to her, 'Charlesworth hasn't been bothering you again, has he?'
She shook her head, and then remembered something she had forgotten in the busyness of the day. 'I don't think he's very pleased about losing the contract for your conversion.'
'He told you that, did he?' Ben queried, his voice suddenly a little harder than it had been.
Whether by accident of design, Miranda didn't know, but his car was parked next to her own, and as she removed her car keys from her handbag she told him truthfully, 'No. I just happened to overhear him saying something to somebody else as I left the meeting last night. He was in the bar; he'd obviously been drinking. He wasn't making any effort to keep his voice down and, while he didn't specifically mention your name, I had the feeling from the threats I overheard that he was determined to pay you out for taking him off the contract. I could be wrong.'
'Mm. Well, maybe ... maybe not. As it happens, on the advice of the new contractors I have already organised for the house to be guarded at night when it's empty. Apparently it isn't uncommon in and around Bath for houses under conversion and empty to be stripped of their period detailings. There's a thriving market in reclaimed authentic period fittings.
'You know the place I'm renting?' he queried as he turned to unlock his own car door.
Miranda nodded her head, and realised too late as he opened his car door and got inside that it was impossible now for her to tell him that she had changed her mind and didn't want to see the plans.
The cottage he was renting was on the opposite side of the town from her own, but just as remote.
As she followed Ben's car down the lane which led to it, she reflected that its vaguely shabby exterior betrayed the fact that it lacked a loving permanent inhabitant, and, once she had parked her car next to Ben's and followed him inside, this impression was borne out by the appearance of the kitchen. Like her own, it was a comfortably sized rectangular room, and also like her own it was warmed by a large Aga set in what must have been the original chimney breast, but there the similarities ended.
While her own kitchen had been lovingly planned to complement the building's ancient beams and low ceilings, this room had suffered the careless modernisation of an owner more intent on turning it into something that was strictly functional, rather than sympathetically taking into account the age and character of the building.
Stark white kitchen units, more suited to a modern streamlined flat, had been installed along two walls, and in the centre of the room, where Miranda had the heavy old scrubbed oak table she had lovingly rescued from a local sale-room, there was a glaringly out-of-place chrome and glass table and four equally unsuitable chairs.
Ben must have seen the expression on her face because he grimaced a little and agreed, 'Not exactly in character, is it?'
'Not really.'
'Fortunately the sitting-room's rather more pleasant and luckily there's a good-sized table in there so that we can eat '
He stopped as Miranda made a small sound in her throat.
'Something wrong?' he asked her.
'I... well... when you said we'd have dinner, I assumed you meant that we'd be eating out,' she was forced to admit.
The grin he gave her was almost boyish.
'Ah, I see, you don't trust my cooking, is that it? Well, you needn't worry. Ma made a point of ensuring that we could all cook. Not that I'm any expert.'
Miranda swallowed hard, unwilling to admit that it wasn't so much his cooking she feared as the thought of being totally alone with him, and even then it was not him she feared, but herself, or rather her reaction to him. Despairingly she wished that she had stood by her initial decision to tell him that she was too busy to see the plans, but it was too late for that now.
'What do you want to do? See the plans first and then eat, or...?'
She thought frantically and then realised that if she looked at the plans first she would be able to tell him that she didn't have time to stay for dinner and would be able to leave.
'Er—the plans first, I think.'
She cursed inwardly, wishing she could make her voice sound more forceful, more professional. As it was, it had all the uncertain, husky resonance of an adolescent trying not to betray herself to the object of her adoring crush.
She really had to pull herself together, she told herself severely, and yet, despite the fact that the kitchen was a good size and that they were virtually separated by the full width of it, she was still acutely conscious of Ben as a man.
'Right, then,' he agreed cheerfully. 'The plans it is.'
The sitting-room was, as he had said, far less aggressively modernised than the kitchen, but it was also rather over-full of furniture, which meant that, once he had unrolled the plans and spread them on the table, in order to be able to see them Miranda had to stand so close to him that their bodies were practically touching.
Thank goodness the town gossips could not see them now, she reflected idly as Ben leaned forward and started to point out details of the plan to her.
'And you can see how we intend to retain all the existing period features,' he was saying to her.
Unwisely she made the mistake of turning her head
to look at him. Unlike most men she knew, he didn't seem to favour the use of cologne or aftershave, but there was still a clean tangy scent clinging to his skin, a potent male scent that made her feel faintly dizzy and light-headed. Her gaze slid helplessly to his mouth. He was still speaking to her, but she no longer heard the words. Her heart had started to beat far too fast as she remembered her dream and how he had kissed her.
Her mouth had gone very dry, her body felt hot, her skin somehow extra sensitive, so that when he breathed out and she felt the warmth of that exhaled breath it immediately raised a rash of goosepimples against her flesh and made her shudder slightly as the sensation of his breath against her skin set off a chain of lightning reaction throughout her body. When she felt her nipples actually stiffen and start to swell, she was so shocked that she actually started to glance down at her own flesh, as though unable to believe the message it was giving her.
To her chagrin she could see quite clearly against the crisp outline of her shirt the unmistakable arousal of her body, and dark flags of mortification flamed in her face as she stood there prayingthat Ben hadn't noticed and wishing there was some way she could turn her back on him. When she heard him saying, 'It's rather cold in here. I ought to have lit the fire,' her embarrassment increased. Did he really think she was cold, or was he just trying to be polite? Or had he, please God, not even noticed the betraying evidence of those twin flaunting witnesses to her physical awareness of him? If only she hadn't left her jacket in her car... but it was too late to regret that now; the only thing she could do was to pick up the cue he had given her and agree unevenly that, yes, it was rather chilly.
'If you can hold on for a couple of minutes I'll get the fire going. It is laid,' he told her, smiling at her.
In other circumstances she would have been grateful to him for his circumspection and for the tactful way he avoided even giving the briefest glance in the direction of her body, but, as it was, all his tact did was to increase her own feeling of humiliation. It was all her own fault. If she hadn't started thinking about that damned dream.