And then his long, sensitive fingers began to caress her with the most exquisite skill, stirring rippling notes of response from her fine-drawn nerve-fibres. Her ivory skin burned in the flickering flames of the fire as his kisses joined the refrain in sweet harmony, and she heard her own unearthly voice gasping, ‘Please!’
He laughed, low in his throat, and his eyes smiled down into hers as his hand gently coaxed apart her slim thighs. She felt the caressing touch of his fingers, seeking the most intimate caresses, and a dart of pure pleasure shafted into her brain.
He took her tenderly, holding back the urgency that she sensed inside him. But as she moved beneath him in response he began to lose control, until she could
only submit to the fierce demand, abandoning herself to the frenzied swirl of sensation that swept her up in a last magnificent crescendo that reverberated through her like the final notes of a symphony.
It had all been a dream—she couldn’t really have done a thing like that. But then… this wasn’t her bed— she had plain white sheets, not this sophisticated dark grey. Very carefully she turned her head. She was alone in the wide bed, in the magnificent stone-walled room at the back of the house that Griff had chosen for his bedroom.
No, it couldn’t have been a dream—it had been a night beyond all her dreams. After they had made love in front of the fire, he had picked her up and carried her up to bed, and made love to her again. Then he had brought her coffee, but it had gone cold as they made love again, finally falling into blissful sleep, entwined in each other’s arms.
She lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes. She really ought to slip away now, discreetly. If Griff wanted her again, he would know where to find her. She didn’t want to make him feel that she was making any demands on him. She had promised him that she wanted nothing in return—she had no right to ask for a change in the rules now.
With a small sigh she rolled out of bed. Her clothes were still downstairs in the music-room, and she looked around for something to put on. There was a navy blue Japanese-style cotton kimono over the back of a chair, so she put that on, tying the belt around her waist. It was far too big for her, and she giggled at the thought of what she must look like.
It took her a while to find her way around the warren of corridors and stairs, but as she reached the ground floor she could distinctly hear the rippling notes of a piano. It could only be coming from the music-room. She approached quietly in her bare feet, and stood by the half-open door.
Griff seemed to be totally absorbed in his music. Ros watched him, fascinated. The music was Mozart—the Elvira Madigan theme—and his fingers seemed to float over the keys. All trace of cynicism had been erased from his face, and a slight smile curved his mouth.
Suddenly he sensed her presence, and turned his head, not faltering by even a quaver. ‘Hi,’ he smiled. ‘So you finally woke up?’
‘Yes. I… I just came to fetch my clothes.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ he enquired in a laconic drawl. ‘You look great in that.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come here.’
Uncertainly she crossed the room, and let him draw her down on to his lap.
‘And it has the added advantage,’ he murmured, his eyes glinting teasingly, ‘of not being too constricting.’
As his mouth claimed hers, his hand slid inside the neck of the kimono and his palm brushed over her breast. Already sensitively tuned to his touch, her body flooded with response, curving pliantly against him as he caressed her, surrendering without a murmur.
With a low groan he let her go. ‘Breakfast first,’ he decided, picking her up in his arms.
She gasped breathlessly. ‘I can walk!’
‘You haven’t got anything on your feet, and the corridors are cold,’ he pointed out. ‘Come on—I’ll give you a piggy-back to the kitchen.’
Laughing like an excited child, she climbed on to his broad back, and he carried her as if she weighed nothing at all, down the maze of corridors into the big kitchen, and sat her down on the big table.
‘OK now, what have we got?’ he enquired, inves¬tigating the fridge. ‘Waffles! How do you go on toasted waffles for breakfast?’
‘Sounds great!’ she agreed. ‘With oodles of butter.’
‘No—maple syrup,’ he insisted firmly. ‘Now, where does Juanita keep the maple syrup?’
She sat watching him, wriggling her toes, as he pat¬tered around the kitchen making breakfast. They ate in the kitchen, and afterwards they went back to bed again.
She never did get dressed, all that day or all the next. She kept thinking she really ought to go home, but it never seemed like quite the right moment—and be¬sides, all the time he wanted her there, she wanted to stay. She knew that the dream would come to an end soon enough—and then she would have to try somehow to put the pieces of herself back together again. But at least she would have these few days to remember, for the rest of her life.
The second-best moments were when he played the piano for her. She loved to close her eyes and let the music drift over her—Strauss waltzes and Beethoven sonatas, John Lennon ballads and glitzy Ragtime.
And some of his own music, too. ‘Remember this?’ he asked her.
‘Oh! That’s the one you played to me when I came here before. Have you finished it?’
‘No. I’ll finish it now—it’s for you. Let me see…’ His brow furrowed with deep concentration, and then he began to murmur some words to the melody.
‘When you’re down and lonely, and the nights are dark and cold,
You can be the richest man on earth, but what’s the use of gold?
Then you came out and found me, you didn’t know my name,
I touched your hand and watched you turn to flame.’
Ros blushed scarlet with pleasure. ‘It… it’s beauti¬ful,’ she whispered.
‘So are you—down deep, where it matters.’ He reached for her hand. ‘I’ll finish it tomorrow.’
But, by the next morning, the song was forgotten.
CHAPTER TEN
THE NEXT morning Griff brought her breakfast in bed, with the morning papers. ‘Here you are, sleepy-head,’ he announced. ‘Food for your tummy, and food for your brain. Let’s see what the world’s been getting up to behind our backs.’
With a yawn, she struggled up on the pillows. ‘Give me that one,’ she requested, holding out her hand for the tabloid. ‘I’m not ready for too much intellectual stimulation just yet.’
She needn’t have worried. Serious news hadn’t been allowed to intrude on the festive spirit—the whole paper seemed to be given over to what the Royal Family and the casts of the popular soap-operas had been doing for Christmas and planned to do for the New Year.
But then she turned a page, and a small gasp es¬caped her lips. Smiling dazzlingly up at her was Stevie—hand in hand with a very handsome man. Next to the photograph was the headline, ‘New Year Wedding for Star’. The story beneath it danced in front of her eyes.
Griff glanced at her enquiringly, and without a word she handed the paper to him. She couldn’t look at him, but she felt him tense, and then he muttered a vicious curse under his breath, tossing the paper aside. ‘I’m sorry, Ros. I have to go over to LA right away,’ 169
he said as he climbed out of bed. ‘I’ve got to put a stop to this, and fast.’
She held her head up, and even managed some sort of smile. ‘Of course.’
He hesitated in the doorway of the bathroom. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘There isn’t really time to talk right now…’
‘That’s all right—I understand,’ she assured him, struggling at least to retain some dignity. She had known this would come, sooner or later.
A shadow of concern crossed his face. ‘Will you be all right?’ he asked gently.
She forced a light laugh. ‘Of course I will. It’s time I got home, anyway. I don’t like leaving the cottage empty for too long in this cold weather—I don’t want the pipes freezing up again.’ There was a sl
ight catch in her voice as memories flooded back. She scrambled out of bed, and began to get dressed. ‘Besides, if any¬one’s been down there, they’ll be wondering where I am. I don’t want them sending t’search-party out over t’moors looking for me.’
He laughed at her playful assumption of a thick Yorkshire accent. ‘OK. I’ll see you when I get back.’
‘Sure.’
He reached for her hand and drew her into his arms, holding her close against him for a long moment. She rested her cheek against the hard wall of his chest, forcing back the tears, refusing to let herself cling to him or beg him to stay.
‘I’m glad you came,’ he said softly. ‘Mind how you drive home.’
She managed a brittle smile as she stepped back out of his arms. ‘I’ve only got to go a mile,’ she reminded him. ‘You mind how you go—half-way round the world! I… I hope everything turns out all right,’ she managed to add.
‘Thanks.’
He was in a hurry to be going, so with a last smile she turned and left the room. She knew her way around the house now, and found the front door, though the tears she could no longer hold back were flooding her eyes, half blinding her. She made it to her car, but she never knew how she managed to drive home.
The cottage felt cold and empty, without even the cat to welcome her. She went straight up to her room and took off the blue wool dress, hanging it up care¬fully in the wardrobe. Then she crept between the cold sheets, and drew the covers up over her head like some small animal hibernating through the bleakest of winter.
She cried for two days, until her eyes felt as if they had been drenched in acid and her body ached with dull weariness. One thing she knew for certain—she couldn’t be here when Griff and Stevie got back. She had no doubt at all that he would succeed in winning her back. Maybe he would even marry her—after all, if Tom was going to marry Thea, knowing what she could be like…
On the third day, she crept downstairs, wrapped in a blanket, and dialled Tom Osbourne’s number. As he answered the phone she forced a smile into her
voice. ‘Hi. Never say I don’t keep my promises,’ she began in a rush.
‘Ros? What is it?’ he enquired, bemused.
‘First refusal on my cottage—so long as you can get the contract drawn up today.’
‘ What? But… there are searches to do, papers…’
‘Come off it, Tom. You’ve got the deeds in your safe—you did the transfer into my name when my father died. You know where the drains are and who has easement or whatever they call it.’
‘Well, yes, of course, but… are you sure, Ros?’ he asked seriously. ‘I don’t want you to rush into this and then start regretting it afterwards.’
‘Oh, Tom, don’t be so solicitorishV she teased. ‘I’ve been thinking about it for ages, and now I’ve made up my mind. And you know me, once I’ve made up my mind to something, there’s no stopping me!’
There was a moment of silence, and then he said, ‘All right. If you’re absolutely certain this is what you want to do. I’ll draw up the papers, and bring them over this afternoon.’
‘Great!’
She hadn’t planned to tell Annie until it was all settled, but ten minutes after her call to Tom the phone rang. ‘Ros, what on earth’s going on?’ Annie de¬manded without preamble. ‘Tom said you’re going to sell him your cottage!’
‘That’s right.’
‘But what’s the rush? Where are you going?’
‘London.’
‘ What? When did you decide that?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I’ve finally decided to take the plunge,’ she explained, the carefully rehearsed speech tripping off her tongue. ‘Now I’ve made up my mind, I want to do it, before I chicken out and sink back into my comfortable old rut. It’s my New Year’s resolution!’
Her words had been well-chosen—they reflected what Annie had often said herself. ‘Well… 1 suppose… You weren’t going to leave without coming over to say goodbye, were you?’
She had been intending to do just that, but the wistful note in Annie’s voice twisted her heart. ‘Of course not,’ she promised.
‘Come to dinner?’
‘All right. And I’m not going to another planet, you know. It only takes a couple of hours to drive up from London—I’ll come and see you so often, you won’t even realise I’ve gone away!’
She left Arnby Bridge the next day. She didn’t have much to take with her—a suitcase full of clothes, a couple of boxes of odds and ends—books and papers, things like that—and her word-processor, loaded back into its original packaging. She had agreed a price for the contents of the cottage with Tom, and knew that she could trust him to settle the rest of the business honestly.
It was New Year’s Eve, and it was raining steadily as she drove out of the Dales. She had no clear idea where she was going to go, and the windscreen wipers beat a dismal rhythm all the long miles down the motorway.
She didn’t want to stay with Shelley. She wanted to be alone, an anonymous face in the crowded London streets. She found the perfect place—a bland guest¬house in a bland street off Kensington Church Street, with a dozen faceless residents and a polite but uninterested staff.
No one seemed to notice that the guest in room eight was a robot—a perfectly functioning red-haired robot, who got up every day at a reasonable time, ate the food that was set in front of her, and wandered along staring blankly into shop windows until she was lost and had to get a taxi back.
She barely noticed the passage of time. Every morning she would flick through the newspapers without reading so much as her horoscope, and then cast them aside, an odd expression in her eyes. Whatever it was she was looking for, she hadn’t found it.
There was a small lounge on the ground floor of the hotel, behind the dining-room, and it had a colour television. Every evening the robot would sit down in front of it, and watch right through to the epilogue. She seemed to be as interested in the international darts match as she was in the Hitchcock movie.
It was Friday evening—she must have been in London for about three weeks. The day had passed just like all the others, and now she was sitting in her usual armchair, staring dully at the television screen. It was one of those pop-music programmes, all laser lights and video technology.
Suddenly she froze as an all-too-familiar face ap¬peared on the screen. Those arrogant features, those
dark eyes… She stared at the screen, her heartbeat accelerating, her hands clenching tightly on the arms of her chair. The voice of the show’s presenter was saying, ‘Our next guest really needs no introduction. A comparatively recent exile to our shores, we’ve fi¬nally managed to persuade him to agree to an in¬terview. Jordan—welcome.’
He smiled in acknowledgement. He was sitting, very relaxed, in a studio armchair—this was his world, and he was supremely confident in it.
‘May I ask what is the position now regarding your former business partner, Bruce Nelson?’
Griff appeared to give his answer weighty consider¬ation. ‘I had suspected for some time that he had been resenting certain residual arrangements from the dis¬solution of our partnership,’ he explained. ‘The matter is now in the hands of my American lawyers. I deeply regret what has happened. Bruce was my friend for many years, and although we had some personal dif¬ferences that led to us going our separate ways, I bore him no ill will.’
He was as good as a politician. If Ros hadn’t known him so well, she would never have known he was lying, even though she could clearly remember the bitter things he had said about his ex-partner. Bruce Nelson… She frowned, trying to remember. That newspaper report—hadn’t it said that Bruce Nelson was the name of the man Stevie had been going to marry?
The presenter’s next words confirmed it. ‘Since Stevie Reeves called off her wedding plans and re¬turned from America…’
Ros felt the acid sting of tears behind her eyes. So she had called off her engagement—it had been inevitab
le.
‘… there has been considerable speculation.’
Griff lifted one eyebrow in cool enquiry.
‘It’s been rumoured that there may still be wedding bells in the offing,’ the presenter finished with a nervous laugh.
Griff conceded a faint smile, and shook his head. ‘Stevie and I have a very good working relationship, and I have a great deal of respect for her talent. But— to use a cliche that is frequently misinterpreted—we are just good friends.’
Of course he would lie about that—he had always fiercely guarded his privacy.
‘Do you have plans to make a second album with Stevie?’ was the next question.
‘Yes. Now that she has finished her exhausting tour, she is taking a short break, but we hope to begin laying down the first tracks within the next few weeks.’
‘And you’ll be recording in your own studio in Yorkshire?’
‘Of course.’
‘And what of your future plans? You’ve bought a house here in England now—will you be settling permanently?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I will. I like England very much, I’ve been fortunate to make some very good friends here. This Christmas was, I think, the best I’ve ever spent.’
Ros sat up sharply. What was he saying?
The presenter was smiling, drawing the interview to a close. ‘The song you’re going to do for us now, is that from the new Stevie Reeves album?’ he enquired.
‘No. I’m not planning to record this one.’ He smiled, stood up, and walked across the shadowed studio floor to sit down at a gleaming white grand piano, and looked straight into the camera. ‘This one hasn’t got a title,’ he told ten million viewers. ‘It didn’t seem to need one.’
As the second camera drew in for a close-up of his long fingers rippling over the keys, Ros’s heart almost stopped beating. He was playing the opening chords of the song he had said he had written for her. That smoky voice wove a spell into every word—the very words he had sung to her that evening in his music-room.
‘When you’re down and lonely, and the nights are dark and cold,
LOVE IS FOR THE LUCKY Page 14