At last, feeling refreshed—and much cleaner—she headed back towards the small patch of beach. She was just about to leave the water and retrieve her clothes, when she saw Nathan walking down to the cove.
'Oh, no,' she groaned, and quickly backed out into deeper water again. With a bit of luck, he wouldn't even see her.
Nathan's gaze was already fixed on her, however, even though he was still some distance away. He sauntered down to the beach, and the only time he looked away from her was when his eyes moved thoughtfully to her pile of clothes sitting at the water's edge.
'You don't seem to have brought a towel with you,' he commented at last. Rose scowled at him as she bobbed up and down in the chilly water. 'I didn't bring a swimming costume, either.'
He began to look much more interested. 'How are you planning to get dry? Of course, you could always run around naked in the hot sun,' he suggested.
'While you stand there and watch me?' she shot back indignantly. Nathan gave one of his infrequent smiles. 'You don't strike me as a particularly shy girl.'
'I'm not an exhibitionist, either!' Rose was beginning to get distinctly cold and extremely irritable. 'Would you mind going away? Or at least turning your back?'
'I think I'd rather stay here and watch. I rather like watching you, Rose.'
She gazed at him warily. 'What exactly do you mean by that?'
'Quite often, I sit and watch you working in the garden. You move well—did you know that? For a tall girl, you're very graceful.'
For some reason, the thought of him sitting in the shadowed rooms of the house, watching her, made her feel more than a little uneasy. Then Rose shook her head. That wasn't a problem right now. It was getting out of the water and safely back into her clothes that was the problem!
Goose-pimples were beginning to run over her skin. Suddenly fed up with the entire situation, she lifted her head defiantly. She had had enough of this!
She tossed back her wet hair, and began to wade towards the beach. To begin with, she held her hands in front of her bare breasts. Then she gave a small grimace. What was the point of trying to hide behind her hands? There wasn't that much to cover!
She let her arms fall back to her sides, straightened her shoulders, and marched up the beach. When she reached her pile of clothes, she sat down beside them. She couldn't pull them back on while she was still wet. She would have to sit in the sun for a few minutes, until her skin had dried off. Nathan sat down beside her. Strangely enough, she didn't feel nearly as embarrassed as she had thought she would, even though he was still looking at her. For some reason, he made her feel comfortable with her own body, which was something that no other man had ever managed before.
'You're good to look at,' he remarked at last. 'And not an ounce of spare fat in sight.'
'Thin, you mean,' said Rose, pulling a face. 'My father's always telling me I look like a racehorse. Long-legged and lanky.'
'There's nothing wrong with being thin.'
'A lot of men think so,' she replied in a defensive tone. He was beginning to hit a rather raw nerve.
He looked at her a little sharply. 'One man in particular?'
His instant perceptiveness surprised her. 'Well—as a matter of fact, yes,' she admitted with some reluctance.
'Someone special?'
'I thought for a while that he might be.'
'Where did you meet him? Back in America?'
'He was attached to the embassy,' said Rose. 'We had a good thing going, and we began to get really close.'
Nathan frowned, as if he didn't like hearing about her relationships with other men. 'What went wrong?' he asked rather shortly.
'I didn't quite fit his picture of the ideal woman. He didn't like me the way I was.'
'What did he want you to do about it?'
'He wanted me to have cosmetic surgery to enlarge my breasts. Silicon implants!' Rose gave a snort of disgust. 'As if that would somehow make me more female!'
Nathan growled something under his breath, and it seemed to be a very explicit comment on the subject.
She looked at him a little anxiously. 'You don't think I was wrong to refuse, do you?'
'I think that anyone who wants to change one inch of you is completely insane,' he stated flatly.
She hadn't expected him to say anything quite like that. Then she looked down at herself rather ruefully. 'You have to admit that there isn't very much of me.'
'Small can still be beautiful,' Nathan said, in a tone that was beginning to change in timbre. 'And you're a lovely shape.'
A little heat was beginning to creep into Rose's face now—and it had nothing to do with the sunshine beating down on her skin.
'This conversation is starting to get very personal,' she said, with a faintly embarrassed laugh.
'There's nothing wrong with being personal,' replied Nathan. His voice had changed still further, and his eyes seemed to have become overbright. 'And I'd certainly like to stay on the subject of your breasts a little longer.' His hand moved towards her as he spoke, and by the time his voice had faded away his palm had gently cupped the slight underswell. 'Nice,' he murmured. 'I like touching you, as well as watching you.'
And Rose liked being touched. His fingers were warm and sure, moving over her with confidence, as if they knew exactly what they were about. She gave a brief, involuntary sigh as his fingertips lingered lightly over the small, tight, pink peaks. He heard it, and seemed pleased by her response. Then he bent his head, so that the moistness of his tongue licked gently over the same path.
Rose felt his dark, tousled hair brush against her skin. She looked down at him, and felt a sudden rush of feeling that had absolutely nothing to do with the vivid bursts of pleasure that his fingers and mouth were provoking. Careful! she warned herself shakily. This could get very complicated, unless you back off right now.
It took much more effort than she had expected to make herself draw back from him. Nathan didn't look particularly pleased at her obvious reluctance to let this go any further but, to her relief, he seemed to accept it. And he didn't make any more attempts to touch her.
Rather hurriedly, knowing that she ought to get away from him while she had the chance, Rose scrambled to her feet. 'I think I'll go back to the house now.'
'I'll come with you,' Nathan said, to her consternation.
'I'll be quite all right on my own,' she gabbled. 'Why don't you—er—stay here for a while?'
He gave her an odd smile. 'But I don't want to. Anyway, you go to many places on your own. That isn't always wise.'
Rose wasn't at all sure that it was very wise to be here on this deserted beach with this particular man.
She didn't think she had better say that out loud, though, Instead, she lifted her head a little defiantly.
'I came all the way to England on my own, and so far I haven't run into any trouble.' Discounting everything that had happened since she had met Nathan Hayward, of course.
He looked at her curiously. 'Why did you come by yourself? Surely you could have found a friend to come with you? Or did it have something to do with that man you were involved with in Washington?'
'Partly,' she admitted. 'He made me feel inadequate, and I didn't like that because I knew that I wasn't. Coming on this trip on my own was a way of proving that to myself. Of proving I could stand on my own two feet and cope with whatever problems I came up against.'
He suddenly smiled at her. It always threw her when he did that. Charm blazed out of him, along with that smile, and it really was a devastating combination.
'And am I turning out to be one of the problems that you're trying to prove you can cope with?'
Rose wasn't at all sure how to answer that. Whatever she said, she was sure it was going to sound wrong. In the end, she said nothing at all. Instead, she began to shake the sand out of her clothes. It really was time she got dressed.
'You can't put those on,' Nathan told her. 'They're too grubby and full of sand. Here, take my shirt.'
<
br /> He had slid out of it by the time he had finished speaking. Rose hesitated as he held it out to her. Wearing something that still held the warmth of his body—it was just a little too intimate for her liking.
'I don't have to get dressed at all,' she said, with much more bravado than she felt. 'I can walk back to the house just the way I am. If it doesn't bother you, of course,' she finished, in a tone that somehow came out a lot more challenging than she had intended.
'It bothers me in the very pleasantest way possible,' Nathan replied, his eyes bright again now. 'But I can't promise that we won't run into someone who won't be a little more shocked. The North Devon coastal path runs close by here. Plenty of walkers come this way. And then there are the rambling clubs—this cove is a place they often make for.'
Rose took the hint, and grabbed hold of his shirt. Wearing it was just as unsettling as she had suspected it might be. And as they walked back to Lyncombe Manor in the hot, bright sunshine, it occurred to her that this might be a'very good time to leave, before Nathan Hayward found a way of disturbing her even more deeply.
CHAPTER SIX
ROSE didn't leave, of course. She loved Lyncombe Manor too much. Every time she set foot inside the house, it wove its spell over her all over again. And Nathan Hayward? she asked herself uneasily. Was he beginning to weave a spell over her, as well?
Definitely not, she decided firmly. She was a little star-struck, that was all. She had never met anyone quite like him before.
She felt as if she needed to get away from both the house, and Nathan, for just a couple of hours, though. Some time on her own would help her to get things back into perspective again.
She didn't think Nathan could object if she took the afternoon off. During the last few days, she had worked almost non-stop. Anyway, she didn't really care if he did object. She was going out for a while, and that was that. Even though her car had been standing in the shade, the interior was stiflingly hot. The temperature seemed to be climbing a little higher each day, and she wondered how much longer this hot spell was going to last. She wound down the windows, and started up the engine. Then she drove away from Lyncombe Manor.
Rose had no clear idea where she was going. In the end, she simply headed towards the coast, hoping it might be fractionally cooler there. She ended up at a small seaside resort and managed to find somewhere to park the car. Then she strolled down towards the beach.
The wide stretch of golden sand was filled with children noisily making the most of the heatwave, rushing around in skimpy swimsuits, brandishing buckets and spades, and dripping ice-cream everywhere. In contrast, most of the adults were flopped out on the hot sand, too lethargic to move. Rose sunbathed for a while, finding a small patch of beach that was relatively empty, and stretching out in the heat. She felt too restless to lie still for long, though. With a small sigh, she scrambled back to her feet and gathered her things together. Then she headed towards the small high street. She might as well have a look around the shops, while she was here. Halfway up the high street was a record shop. Rose found herself pausing in front of it; then, acting on an impulse that she couldn't really explain, she pushed open the door and went inside.
The music cassettes were arranged alphabetically. It was all too easy to find the 'K's. Her eyes skimmed along the row, and then stopped halfway along. They had three tapes of songs by Jancis Kendall. Rose reached out, hesitated, and then more firmly picked out one of them.
A moment later, she wished she had resisted the temptation to walk into the shop. There was a depressingly good photo of Jancis Kendall on the front of the cassette. Rose found herself staring at a pair of cool blue eyes set in a perfectly shaped face, framed by a fall of blonde hair that was so pale that it was almost white.
Not the kind of face that anyone would easily forget. And Rose was quite sure that Nathan hadn't forgotten it. All the same, she walked over to the counter and bought the tape.
When she got back to her car, she took out the small card that listed the tracks on the tape. There, at the bottom, it said in very clear print, 'All songs by Nathan Hayward'.
Rose stared at that one short phrase for quite some time. Knowing that he had written all of Jancis Kendall's material was one thing. Seeing it set down in black and white like that was somehow quite different. It forced her to see him in a new light. Not just the man who had locked her in the cellar, argued with her, and then, astonishingly, decided that he liked kissing her. This Nathan Hayward was still a stranger; a man who had written songs that had sold all over the world; someone who had been obsessively involved with the person who had sung those songs.
Rose felt more disturbed than she cared to admit. It was as if she had managed to block out that part of Nathan's life, until now. Or at least pushed it to the very back of her mind, where she could fairly successfully ignore it. This tape was all too real, though. In an odd way, it represented the relationship that had existed between Nathan and Jancis Kendall. With a deep frown, she shoved the tape into the glove compartment, so that it was out of sight. But as she slowly drove back to Lyncombe Manor, she couldn't seem to stop herself from thinking about it. When she finally drew up in front of the house, she took the tape out of the compartment again, and slid it into the pocket of her jeans.
There was no sign of Nathan as she made her way to the kitchen, and she was rather glad of that. She made herself a salad, and sat and ate it. Then, after she had cleared away the dishes, she made her way slowly to the small sitting-room at the back of the manor. She remembered seeing a portable cassette player standing on top of the bureau in the corner. Rose walked through the doorway and found the cassette player standing just where she had expected it to be. She gave a small sigh. It looked as if she couldn't find any more excuses for not playing the tape. She slid it into the player, and switched it on. Then, because she couldn't sit still and listen to it, she wandered restlessly around the room as Jancis Kendall's deep, distinctive voice began to sing the slow, spine-tingling introduction to the first song.
By the time she had finished listening to the first side of the tape, Rose felt very funny inside. Some of the songs were familiar and a couple were new to her, but they all seemed to hit her in exactly the same way. She swallowed hard and told herself that music always seemed to find the vulnerable spots inside of you. All the same, her hand wasn't quite steady as she turned the tape over, and pressed the button to play the other side.
Jancis Kendall's voice filled the room again, and Rose found it all too easy to picture that flawless face and the shimmering pale hair. In fact, she seemed to have just about everything—except, perhaps, a soul. The second track began, and Rose briefly closed her eyes as Nathan's intricate phrases were flawlessly delivered by that low, perfectly pitched voice. She could feel -a tight lump growing in her throat, although she didn't have any idea why it was there. She also knew that, in a moment, she was going to have to switch the tape off. She just couldn't listen to any more of it right now.
As she began to move towards the cassette player, though, the door was suddenly flung open with such force that, afterwards, she was surprised it hadn't broken right off its hinges. Then Nathan roared into the room like an out-of-control cyclone.
His explosive entry made her literally jump into the air with fright. And when she saw the look on his face, her heart began to thump even more wildly and loudly.
'Where the hell did you get that tape from?' he bellowed at her. Rose's throat had gone so dry that she couldn't get out an answer. Instead, she just gave a hoarse croak, which seemed to make Nathan even more furious.
He seized hold of her shoulders and shook her quite savagely. 'Where did you get it?' he shouted at her again.
With a huge effort, she managed to find her voice. 'I—I b-bought it,' she stuttered.
He drew his hand back, as if her reply made him so angry that he wanted to hit her. At the last moment he lowered it again, and instead glared at her with such fierceness that his slate-grey eyes seemed to
be ablaze.
'Why did you do a damned stupid thing like that?' he demanded. Rose had shrunk back instinctively from that initial onslaught. Now, though, she was beginning to recover herself slightly, and she glowered back at him.
'I can spend my money on whatever I please! I don't have to ask your permission before I buy something.'
'No,' Nathan said grimly. 'But you do have to ask permission before you play that particular tape in this house.'
'And if I had asked?' Rose said with growing boldness.
'I'd have said no!'
'Why? Because you don't want to hear your own music? Or is it Jancis Kendall's voice that you can't stand listening to?'
Rose was amazed that she had found the courage to say such a thing. A moment later she wished she had kept her mouth shut. Nathan's mouth twisted with a fresh surge of anger, and his slate-grey eyes became almost black with the force of the emotions that shook him.
'I don't have to explain my reasons to you. And I don't have to listen to any more of this trash!'
With one swift movement, he picked up the cassette player, wrenching the plug out of the socket at the same time. Then he hurled it straight through the nearest window, the sound of shattering glass seeming to echo round and round the room. After the last piece of glass had crashed to the ground and splintered, the silence that filled the room somehow seemed almost as shocking as the violence that had whirled through it only moments before. Rose stood there and simply shook. All her courage, her defiance, had simply vanished.
Even Nathan seemed rather stunned by his own actions. He stared at the gaping hole in the window, at the jagged-shards of glass on the floor. Then he muttered something under his breath. Finally, he swung round and strode very swiftly out of the room.
Once he had gone, Rose let out a very shaky breath. A couple of times, she had thought that she was beginning to know this man. Now she realised that she didn't know him at all.
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