by Kim Lawrence
‘It’s traditional to offer tradesmen a cup of tea before they actually commence work,’ he remonstrated mockingly. ‘Don’t you know anything?’
‘Apparently not,’ she responded drily. The kitchen was too small to contain such a large man without inducing a strong feeling of claustrophobia. She wiped her damp palms along the sides of her wrap. ‘Any other rules I should know?’
‘The tea should be supplied at regular intervals throughout the working day.’ He bent his head and she felt the warm brush of his breath against her earlobe. ‘The next is just a little personal foible of mine…’ His intimate husky whisper trickled over her like warm honey.
Weak-kneed, her body swayed slightly and he stepped forward to provide the support she needed. The fit was remarkably snug, she decided as their respective curves and angles slotted neatly together. She couldn’t help imagining how it would feel if they got even closer. Her aching breasts felt heavy and swollen as they chafed against the thin fabric of her nightdress.
‘What would that foible be?’ she enquired huskily. Actually, she thought maybe she knew; standing this close it was impossible not to notice that he was in an aroused state. A bone-deep excitement rose up from some secret, previously untapped reservoir within her. The ferocity of her response to his arousal was almost frightening. Her busy hands slowly stilled; the sexual tension in the air around them was so thick she could have taken a knife and still had trouble slicing through it.
Turning around might constitute encouragement, but what the hell? she decided recklessly! There was only just so much a woman could take!
Josh looked down into her expectant, delicately flushed face; there was nothing coy about the way she was looking at him. There was no banner saying, ‘Take me!’ but that slumbrously sexy invitation was just as explicit. She was quite simply breathtaking in her tousled, not-long-out-of-bed state. Thinking of her in bed set off a train of thought that exacerbated the persistent ache in his groin.
His throat muscles visibly worked overtime as he swallowed hard. ‘Biscuits,’ he told her flatly. ‘Preferably chocolate. If the old blood sugar takes a nosedive I’m worse than useless.’
One second she could almost taste the kiss, the next all she could taste was the bitter bile of humiliation. One shocked blink and the sexual glaze cleared from Flora’s eyes. She gave a tiny gasp and, cheeks burning with mortification, tried to turn away.
‘Whoa!’ Josh soothed. Taking her by the elbow, he restrained her bid for escape. ‘I was joking.’
And since when couldn’t I take a joke or rejection? she asked herself. Maybe since the joke included not being kissed by Josh—is that desperate or what? Tiny pinpricks of blood dotted her lower lip as she released the pressure of her teeth. Her hectic breathing gradually slowed. Soothed slightly, and feeling deeply embarrassed, she stopped struggling and stood passively.
‘Poor joke?’ he suggested woodenly.
Either he had got cold feet at the last minute or he got his kicks from seeing women squirm; if so he must be a very happy man… A quick upwards glance told her he didn’t look happy.
‘I think maybe I’m the joke. I came onto you like a…’ She found there was a limit to how far she could take the brutal honesty route, even though it seemed a bit late to act as if nothing had happened, but if she was being strictly accurate she supposed nothing had. Perhaps that was why she was hurting so much…? She cleared her throat. ‘But you did do your share of encouragement.’
‘Did you come here to torment me or decorate the nursery?’ she wondered bluntly.
A maverick nerve leapt in his cheek. ‘The torment is a two-way thing,’ he responded with equal candour.
Her expression softened. His shadowed eyes suggested he had an inner conflict at least as great as her own, and small wonder! She was so caught up in what she was feeling, she hadn’t really paused to look at it from his point of view.
Did he feel he was betraying the memory of his wife by wanting another woman? This was what you got for getting involved with a man with emotional baggage.
‘Call me shallow, but part of me is glad to hear you say that,’ she confessed. ‘It’s nice to have company when you’re suffering.’ The self-mocking smile died from her lips and her forehead pleated in an earnest frown. She didn’t want to come over as some sort of bleeding heart, but she felt she had to let him know she understood, as much as anyone who hadn’t been in his shoes could, that was…
‘But you mustn’t feel bad about…about…’ She struggled to find a word which covered the almost kiss and the high-voltage sexually charged atmosphere. She gave up. ‘Sexual feelings are perfectly normal.’
Josh looked startled by her solemn announcement. The hand that had been raking his dark hair fell away.
‘You really ought to talk about these things, you know,’ she told him kindly, ‘not bottle them up. We all have needs; it was bound to happen some time.’
Josh had been clinically pondering her sexuality since he’d met her. Well, he’d been able to fool himself it was clinical interest—at least up until this point. There was nothing intellectual about the savage impulse that made him contemplate discovering Miss Flora Graham’s needs—he’d like a leisurely day or so to explore all the possibilities of that particular subject.
The savage feelings he was fighting to control seemed all the more crude because she appeared to ooze sensitivity. It was getting harder by the second to reject the possibility that she actually was sensitive, compassionate—you got exactly what you saw!
Not that he’d be getting anything if that was the case, he reminded himself heavily. The ‘sins of the father’ line only worked up to a point, and not at all when the son in question was a beautiful daughter who had eyes that shone with integrity, when they weren’t shining with lust for him! Not just lust, there was warmth and affection there too. God, what a mess!
‘Perhaps you’re just not ready…emotionally speaking, for…’ Hell! He’d felt pretty ready in every other way.
Thinking about the imprint of his big, sexually primed body up against her sent a gentle wave of carnation pink over her fair skin. It occurred to her that being plagued with lustful thoughts as she was made her unbiased advice a bit suspect.
‘Or maybe I’m not the right person to…’ she suggested bravely. ‘Is it long since your wife…?’ she fished delicately.
‘Three years.’
‘Three!’ She was startled. ‘But Liam must have been…’
‘Bridie died during the birth, some sort of embolism.’ His face could have been carved from granite as he provided the basic details.
Flora didn’t wonder at the dark anger in his eyes; there was no way to rationalise such a cruel twist of fate. She thought of Liam and swallowed the emotional lump in her throat. Silently she pushed Josh down towards a kitchen chair. He co-operated and folded his big body into the inadequate seat. Flora shuffled her bottom onto the table beside him; she maintained the physical contact of her hand on his shoulder.
‘That’s very rare. My father’s a doctor,’ she added to explain the depth of her lay person’s knowledge. She could feel the tension that tied his muscles in knots through her fingertips.
‘I was told that it’s uncommon.’
‘You’ve brought Liam up since he was a baby?’
‘We’ve spent one night apart. I decided on that occasion that he’d be better off without me. I ran away.’ The self-recrimination in his voice was vicious. ‘I sometimes think that he’d have been better off in the long run if I’d left him with Jake, he’d have a more normal family life…siblings…two parents…’ In his blackest moments he still occasionally wondered if he was just being selfish…if he wasn’t putting his needs ahead of Liam’s.
An instinctive sound of protest escaped Flora’s throat. Hadn’t she seen with her own eyes what a great father Josh was? She decided she didn’t like the sound of this perfect architect brother one bit. He probably never lost an opportunity to remind Josh how s
uccessful he was, she decided, endowing this unseen figure with an ego to match his insensitivity.
‘That’s rubbish!’ she suddenly announced. Her outraged tone drew Josh’s startled attention to her indignant pink-cheeked face. ‘If it was only one night you couldn’t have run far,’ she concluded logically. ‘Nobody expects you to behave sensibly when your world has just fallen apart!’ She clasped his hand and firmly pulled it onto her lap.
‘Just because your brother has a well-paid job and nice house, it doesn’t mean Liam would be better off with him, so don’t even think like that. You’re a great father!’
Josh could have mentioned that his twin would have been the first to agree with her. ‘You think so?’ What the hell? Jake’s reputation could take the odd knock or two; besides, it was rather enjoyable to have Flora defending him.
‘You and your wife were obviously very…I’ve never had that with someone,’ she told him awkwardly. ‘I don’t know whether that makes me lucky or unlucky,’ she reflected in a soft undertone. ‘But I do know someone who lost his wife and he…’ Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard.
Josh stared at her fingers wrapped around his and then lifted his gaze to look long and deep into her blue eyes. They were soft and misty with compassion.
‘Your parents?’
She nodded. ‘Mum was such a quiet person, you wouldn’t think someone like that could leave such a great gaping hole in your life… I felt it, but not like Dad did. He’s the strong, reliable sort, who always copes. I suppose that was the problem: everyone thought he was coping—but he wasn’t. If only I’d been…’
Suddenly aware that his attention matched the intensity of her outpouring, Flora made a self-conscious meal of clearing her throat. Her eyelashes flickered downwards to shield her eyes from him.
‘The point is, Josh, that he didn’t cope—you have and you’ve brought up a beautiful boy.’ There was no mistaking the depth of her admiration. ‘You shouldn’t knock yourself if you make mistakes, or have doubts.’
‘I can’t do this!’ he ground out abruptly as he surged to his feet.
Flora was bewildered by the strength of his unexpected and mystifying declaration. ‘What…?’
‘You’re definitely not the right person,’ he explained harshly.
It gave Flora a brutal jolt to recognise her own words. ‘Oh!’ Well, she had asked. Hell! She’d even put the idea into his head to begin with. ‘Well, that simplifies matters, doesn’t it?’ She felt physically sick with the suddenness and finality of the rejection.
A rational part of her knew she should be glad he’d saved her from making a bad mistake. How could you feel you’d lost something that had never been yours to begin with? she wondered. Ironically, she hadn’t felt anything approaching this awful when Paul had announced he couldn’t marry her.
Josh gave a terse nod. ‘Where’s the room?’
‘You’re still taking on the job, then?’
‘Do you want me to?’
Having him around would be a kind of refined torture, but she must have some hidden masochistic streak—it was the only explanation, she concluded miserably as she found herself nodding. ‘I’ve told Claire I found somebody and she was delighted.’ Flora continued to look at some point over his left shoulder.
‘Lead on, then.’
Flora gestured towards the door that concealed the narrow stairway. ‘I’ll leave you to it, if you don’t mind. There’s only two bedrooms; you want the one at the back.’
She waited until she heard his footsteps on the wooden boards above her head before she permitted the tears to seep from beneath her eyelids. Silently she allowed them to stream down her cheeks for a couple of minutes before she dashed her hand angrily across her damp cheeks. She splashed water from a cold-running tap over her no doubt blotchy face, then for good measure ducked her head under the cold stream.
She was giving a good impression of a wet dog shaking the moisture from her dripping head of hair when she became aware that Josh was standing there watching her. His quiet, still presence sent a shiver up her spine. His expression was sombre.
‘In lieu of a cold shower.’
Her bluntness made him blink. ‘I upset you.’
‘Something like that,’ Flora confirmed wryly. She wiped the excess moisture from her face with a slightly unsteady hand. ‘A bit of sexual frustration never did anyone permanent damage,’ she announced briskly. ‘Don’t look so shocked,’ she snapped. ‘It’s not as if we both don’t know what just happened.’ He’d said thanks, but no, thanks, that was what had just happened and she felt a lot more than humiliation. She felt…bereft, she acknowledged wonderingly. Why…?
‘That can’t happen to you very often…you’re a very desirable woman,’ he added gruffly, by way of explanation.
So desirable he’d had no trouble saying no. ‘I think you made the right decision,’ she told him with serenity she was far from feeling. ‘You’ve obviously got a lot of unresolved emotional issues to deal with before you take the plunge, so to speak.’
Plunge. Josh had an intense mental flash of himself plunging deeply into her receptive body. His body responded vigorously to the erotic image. His breath expelled in an audible hiss as he dragged his eyes away from her face.
Her ablutions had left a pool of water on the flagstoned floor and dotted her nightgear with dark damp patches. Josh’s roving gaze was drawn irresistibly to one prominent patch which covered the uptilted peak of her left breast.
Responding belatedly, Flora wrapped a protective arm across her chest. ‘This isn’t a wet tee shirt competition,’ she informed him icily.
A laugh was wrenched from him. ‘Do you always say things like that?’
‘I can’t say I’ve ever had the occasion to make that particular accusation before.’ She sniffed. ‘Actually,’ she conceded, ‘Paul did make a passing reference to my indelicate mind when he asked for his ring back…’
‘He asked for…?’ Josh’s expression grew openly contemptuous. ‘What a…’
‘Prat?’ she suggested with a half-smile and a sniff. ‘Paul’s a politician, so he’s not big on straight talking. Actually, I can be circumspect with the best of them when the occasion warrants it.’ She knew she was good at keeping people at a distance and she was slow to make friends, but those she had she valued. ‘But not with my friends. Not,’ she added hastily, ‘that you’re…’ She broke off, colouring uncomfortably.
‘A friend?’
‘I really wouldn’t have made a very good politician’s wife, would I?’
‘Did you want to be one?’
Her shoulders lifted. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘In other circumstances I think we might have been friends…’ He sounded as though he’d made an amazing discovery. ‘Maybe more,’ he continued in the same dazed tone. His expression hardened. ‘But the circumstances…’ With a snarl of frustration he turned away, giving her a fine view of his magnificent profile.
‘You don’t have to explain, Josh.’
Which was just as well because he couldn’t. ‘Believe you me, Flora, you’re better off without me.’
Flora would have liked to dispute this, but that just might have constituted grovelling and so far she’d stopped short of that—just. She’d like it to stay that way. She had never chased a man in her life. What was it, she wondered as he closed the door firmly behind him, that made her want to alter the habit of a lifetime for this one? If there was a remote possibility he could make it any clearer that he didn’t want her, she didn’t think she was up to hearing it!
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS after three in the morning before Flora finally reached the cottage. She’d taken at least three wrong turnings on her journey back from the Holyhead ferry, which at a conservative estimate had probably added a good forty miles to her trip.
Well, at least she could be sure she wasn’t going to stumble across Josh and that, after all, had been the idea behind her day trip to Dubli
n. He’d worked on the nursery for several hours the day before, but all they’d exchanged before she’d taken herself off to walk the rain-soaked hills had been a few polite nothings. She hadn’t returned until he’d been safely off the premises.
Her crop of blisters—curse the expensive new boots—had made a similar retreat today a painful prospect, though not as painful as being in close proximity to Josh all day! The day trip to Ireland had been the perfect solution, and Dublin always had been one of her favourite cities, though she’d not really been in an appreciative mood today. Hopefully Josh would have almost completed his task now and soon there would be no reason in the future for their paths to cross, she concluded. The thought failed to produce the philosophical smile she’d been working towards.
She kicked off her shoes as soon as she got through the cheery brick-red front door of the cottage. She dropped her purchases on the floor—for once retail therapy had failed to produce its usual soothing effect—and wearily began to climb the narrow stairs. Halfway up she turned back and, searching through the pile of bags she’d dropped, she extracted a large plush teddy bear with a particularly appealing face. She hugged him to her chest as she retraced her steps. She’d thought of Liam the instant she’d seen him. She just hoped Josh wouldn’t read anything untoward into this spontaneous gesture—untoward such as she was being nice to the son because she wanted the father—and how she wanted the father! She noticed a light still shone from under the nursery door; Josh must have forgotten to switch it off.
‘Oh my!’ she breathed as she glanced around the door. The bare electric lightbulb revealed the most extraordinary transformation. An entranced expression on her face, she entered the room fully. The dark, poky little space had been transformed into a magical place by a series of stunning murals. Even she, a cynical twenty-seven-year-old, could almost believe she were under the water. The creatures peering out from behind rocks, emerging from sea-shells and peeping out of a wrecked galleon were all so vivid and real. It would give any child hours of delight just discovering all the hidden surprises in the vividly depicted underwater scenes.