Her voice sounded rough and unused as she forced herself to speak. ‘How did you get here?’ she asked, realising that it had been him she had seen in the village earlier.
Colin slipped his hands into his pockets, the smile fading to reveal a nasty edge. ‘I followed you, of course. You seemed to enjoy your meal. You were so busy, you never even noticed me tucked away in a corner.’
The knowledge that he had been there all the time, watching them, made her stomach heave. ‘That isn’t what I meant,’ she countered in a constricted tone. ‘How did you get to England? How did you...?’ The last question tailed off, because she was suddenly very afraid.
Colin had no trouble finishing for her. ‘Get out of prison? Easy, lovey, it’s called parole. Time off for good behaviour. You didn’t think about that, did you, when you conspired to put me away?’ he jeered.
She winced inwardly. No, she hadn’t thought of it. She’d been too glad to see him put inside, too relieved that her marriage was over. She hadn’t given a thought to parole, or what he might do if he gained it. She thought about it now, though, and it chilled her blood. She had to have time to think.
‘Listen, I’m not on my own. Kerr’s just down there.’ She nodded shorewards.
Colin laughed. ‘Oh, no, he isn’t, babe. He’s answering a call from a friend of mine. That should keep him busy for—oh, at least another five minutes.’
She shivered. Like the clever con artist he was, he had found a way to get her on her own. Which meant he had to have a reason to do so. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded thickly, recalling all the reasons why she had so disliked him. He wasn’t quite as handsome now, the years in prison taking their inevitable toll.
‘You’re too intelligent not to know. I want my revenge, sweetie. No one, but no one takes away six years from me without paying for it!’ he told her viciously. ‘I’ve been watching you, planning what I’d do to make you suffer the way I did. Which reminds me—your sister has grown into a beauty.’
The inherent threat returned movement to her feet, and she stepped forward in angry defence. ‘Stay away from her, do you hear me? Stay away from all my family!’
He laughed. ‘You always did come out of your corner fighting.’
Oh, yes, she’d fought him, only he had always hit harder. ‘I despise you!’
That only seemed to amuse him further. ‘You always did, that was half the pleasure. I bet this Kerr doesn’t have half the trouble getting you into bed that I did. In love with him, are you? That’s really funny, because he was interested in you, too, back in the old days. Couldn’t take his eyes off you. Of course, you were far too involved with pretending to be hot for me to see him pining for you!’ He laughed again, but it held a ring that brought the hairs up on her flesh.
To know he had seen more than she had brought her temper to the boil. Without volition her hand shot out, and would have dealt him a stinging slap if he hadn’t seen it coming and caught her wrist, twisting it punishingly until she gasped aloud.
‘Naughty, naughty! You don’t want to make me angry, love, you know that. You’d better remember that next time it might not be your brakes that fail,’ he warned chillingly, and she paled.
Not until that very moment had she even suspected anything so macabre. ‘You tampered with the brakes of my car?’
Colin shrugged. ‘I wanted to teach you a much needed lesson. I thought of nothing else all the time I was locked up.’ The memory was clearly far from pleasant, for his face turned to stone.
Maxi pulled her arm free with a jerk. ‘Don’t expect me to apologise!’
Colin swiftly closed the gap between them. ‘I don’t. I expect you to pay. So if you don’t want anything to happen to lover-boy, you’ll do exactly as I say!’ he ordered sharply.
Her chin jutted. ‘I’m not afraid of you! Now I know what you’ve done, I’ll go to the police!’
‘Do it, and your bloke will have an accident too,’ he warned, eyes glittering feverishly, so that she knew he was on something. ‘If you want your family safe, all you have to do is come back to me, Maxi.’
Her instinct was to give a scornful refusal, but she knew better than to be so rash. She needed to use caution in order to gain precious thinking time. ‘You’ve got to give me time. I can’t make a decision just like that.’
He didn’t like what she said, but as he was about to argue, his attention was caught by something he saw over her shoulder, and he stepped back, swearing. ‘OK, you’ve got until tomorrow. I’ll ring you at home at noon. This time I don’t want to get your mother when I ring,’ he advised, revealing that he had been the mysterious caller on Saturday. ‘Say yes at noon, Maxi, or all bets are off, and you can blame yourself for whatever happens to him.’ He nodded behind her, then crossed swiftly to the edge and the steps down to the lower level. In seconds he might never have been there.
Only Maxi knew he had, for every word he had spoken echoed in her brain. Uppermost was his threat to hurt Kerr. It was a knife in her heart. He’d do it, she knew that. He seemed unbalanced in a way he never had before. What he suggested was anathema to her, but the thought of anything happening to Kerr sent more daggers to wound her. There was no way she could ever go back to Colin, but what on earth could she do to prevent his reprisal? She had to think!
Approaching footsteps abruptly brought her out of her dark thoughts. She turned disjointedly to Kerr, glad of the darkness so that he couldn’t see the way her eyes ate him up. He was so full of life and energy. She had been lucky; her hip would heal. But to ignore Colin’s warning might be to see the life go out of this vital, handsome man.
‘Who was that?’ Kerr asked curtly as he reached her.
‘Oh, just someone chatting about the view,’ she lied, preparing to walk on, only Kerr had other ideas. His hand caught her already bruised wrist and she winced, coming to a halt.
‘If you listen very carefully, you can hear the bells on the other leg ringing. You were talking to Ellis, weren’t you?’ he charged tersely.
Maxi stared at him. How could he possibly know? ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she denied it with a laugh that was only a shade off key.
Kerr ground his teeth audibly. ‘I don’t call it being ridiculous to be suspicious when the emergency call I went back for turned out to be nothing of the sort. When it finally dawned on me that I was being kept talking, the question why was easily answered. To get you on your own. Who else could it be but Ellis? You thought you saw him today, and it would be too much of a coincidence for someone else to go to such lengths. I think it was Ellis, but if it wasn’t, why are you so nervous, Maxi?’
And there she had it. If she continued to lie, then he would only become more suspicious, and she didn’t need that. What she really needed was time to think, and nobody was giving it to her. ‘All right, so it was Colin,’ she admitted testily, getting her arm back and rubbing the bruised flesh gingerly. ‘I didn’t tell you because it seemed inappropriate.’
‘What did he want?’
Maxi looked away, staring up at the night sky as if in search of inspiration. Her laugh carried an underlying bitterness. ‘To talk over old times, of course.’
This time Kerr caught her by the shoulders and gave her a sharp shake. ‘No man goes to those lengths just to talk over old times. What else did he want?’ he demanded roughly, and she scowled at him, trying to think on her feet.
‘Me. He wanted me, of course,’ she goaded, shivering at the mere idea.
Kerr’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why now? Why after all this time?’
Oh, for goodness’ sake, why couldn’t he just drop it! ‘He missed me!’ she scoffed, and received another shake for her pains.
‘Stop being so damned facetious! Just what are you trying to hide, Maxi?’
She winced, cursing herself for forgetting his incisive lawyer’s brain. She knew she ought to tell him—after all, the main threat was against him—but until she had time to think, to consider all her options, she was reluctant to reveal the p
roducts of Colin’s warped mind. It wasn’t that she didn’t value Kerr enough, but that she valued him too much. It scared her to think he might go in search of Colin, and she feared for his safety. Colin had no scruples, and she doubted if he went anywhere unarmed. She had to divert Kerr away from the danger somehow.
‘Oh, Kerr, I’m not hiding anything,’ she declared with a despairing sigh. ‘Colin was just being himself, which is all the reason I need not to want to talk about him!’
A nerve began to jump in his jaw. ‘There isn’t much you do care to talk about, is there? Perhaps we should just stick to this!’ he growled, and brought his mouth down on hers in a punishing kiss.
Instinctively she resisted him, although it was proving harder every time, and when she did manage to pull her mouth free she found herself looking up into glittering eyes. ‘So, you don’t want to do this either?’ he scoffed, and about to agree, Maxi suddenly realised that here was her way, and one of his own instigation. She didn’t hesitate.
With a wobbly sigh, she relaxed, allowing herself to lean lightly against him. ‘You’re wrong, I do want to,’ she whispered huskily, tipping her head up, her bruised lips slightly parted invitingly.
The deep breath Kerr took was quite audible in the silent night. Maxi felt the tension in him as he brought his hands from her shoulders to rest lightly on her waist. ‘No more games, Maxi?’ he breathed against her lips, and she swallowed.
‘No more games,’ she agreed, although she had a sudden qualm that things might be going further than she had planned. Still she couldn’t afford to back off now. Which was why she pressed her lips to his, using seductive strokes of her tongue to invite him to join her. He did, quite breathtakingly, making her skin tingle as her blood rushed recklessly through her veins.
Kerr’s breath was moist and warm on her face when eventually they parted. ‘So, you’ve finally stopped fighting me tooth and claw. Why tonight?’
Heart beating raggedly, Maxi pressed home her advantage. ‘Because I’m so very tired of running. I changed my mind. That’s a woman’s prerogative. I can’t help the timing, I only know I don’t want to keep fighting you, Kerr. You said I’d come to you in the end, and I have. Isn’t that what you wanted to hear?’ she challenged, voice sounding teasingly husky. Surely, when she was finally giving in, he wasn’t going to refuse?
Kerr brought one hand up to lock in her hair, holding her face to what light came from the moon. ‘It was,’ he admitted slowly. ‘Hell, it still is.’
Maxi tangled her fingers in the thick waves of hair at his nape and kept her eyes locked on his. ‘I’ve always wanted you, you know that, Kerr. For once let’s just be together without thinking.’
For one moment longer she thought he would refuse, but then she caught the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. ‘Something tells me I should be arguing with you, but something stronger tells me to go for it before you change your mind again,’ Kerr declared with rueful humour.
Maxi reached up on tiptoe to brush her lips over his. ‘I won’t do that,’ she breathed.
Kerr’s eyes seemed to bore into hers. ‘No, I don’t believe you would,’ he agreed at last. ‘You’re a strong woman, Maxine Ambro, prepared to make decisions and keep to them. It would take a lot to make you change your mind, wouldn’t it?’
Confident that the dangerous moment had passed, she laughed huskily. ‘Is that a crime?’ she teased, and he shook his head.
‘No. But it does make what we’re about to do very interesting. Let’s go,’ he declared, and, slipping an arm about her shoulders, urged her back the way they had come.
As she went with him, Maxi couldn’t quite shake off the nagging feeling that command of the situation had somehow escaped her grasp. Yet he was only doing what she had wanted him to do. He had forgotten about Colin, at least temporarily, and she couldn’t be sorry that it had taken the abandonment of her stance to do it.
There was a strong smell of paint in the air as Kerr let them inside his house half an hour later. Fliss and Andy had come in their own car, so Kerr had taken the direct route home.
Going ahead of her, Kerr switched on the lounge light, then uncovered the cocktail trolley. ‘Would you like something to drink?’
Maxi shook her head, too nervous suddenly to want to add spirits to her bloodstream. ‘You have one if you like.’
He came back to her. ‘I’ll pass, too. There wouldn’t be any fun in either of us being in too much of an alcoholic mist to enjoy ourselves,’ he teased softly. Sliding his hands around her waist, he pulled her close, searching her face for any sign of wavering. ‘Still sure this is what you want?’
Maxi couldn’t blame him for being suspicious, when she had held out for so long. She knew her smile was tense, but it was a tension due to anticipation, not doubt. That indescribable chemistry was already beginning to set her pulses thrumming. Whatever the reason for her change of mind, she knew she had nothing to fear from him. ‘I’ve never been more sure. Make love to me, Kerr. I want you to.’
Was there a man alive who would need more urging than that? Certainly not Kerr. Her words had fanned a flame in his eye, and he brought his head down to hers with a throaty growl of triumph. ‘God, how I’ve hungered for you!’ he breathed against her lips, and then he was kissing her with a leashed passion that wiped her mind clean, leaving her only able to respond with an equal passion of her own.
To be free at last to abandon her defences sent a shivering wave of delight through her. This was everything and more than she had ever expected. Tiny little explosions of pleasure were going off inside her as the world shrank to encompass only the two of them. When he broke the kiss to sweep her up into his arms, they were both breathing erratically. The heat of passion lay on his cheekbones, telling her, had she not already known it, just how much he wanted her. The hot lance of his eyes turned her insides molten, and she knew that if he hadn’t been holding her she would have crumpled to the floor. She folded her arms about his neck, and her fingers locked into his hair as she closed her eyes and let him carry her up the stairs to his room.
Unlike all the others, the dust covers here had been removed, and the bed made. Setting her on her feet beside it, Kerr switched on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in a soft golden glow. He turned back to her then, framing her head in strong yet gentle hands. ‘I’ve dreamt of having you here,’ he growled with a husky laugh, taking her lips again, bruising them with nips of his teeth, then soothing the hurt with erotic strokes of his tongue.
Maxi tried to hang on to her spinning senses, reaching out to fumble with the buttons of his shirt. She wanted to touch him, had ached to do so for so long that she trembled, her body quickening with a hot rush of desire. Pushing the shirt from his shoulders, she groaned aloud as she allowed her hands to search out the planes of his hair-roughened chest. She had never known such pleasure could be possible from just touching a man’s body. Pleasure was an unknown quantity to her, and she had waited so long to experience it that she felt quite dizzy. Then Kerr caught his breath as her questing fingers found his flat male nipples, and brought his hands up to stay her.
‘You’re sending me up in flames, and I want this to last, to be special,’ he growled pushing her hands to her sides. ‘It’s my turn.’ Gently he eased open the buttons of her blouse, tossing it aside as he revealed the wisp of lacy bra beneath. Maxi held her breath as he deftly released the catch and freed her breasts to his burning gaze. They peaked, sending a frisson of pleasure along her nerves.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he declared throatily, unzipping her trousers and pushing them down over her hips so that they fell to the floor.
She stood revealed to him then, only a small wisp of lace remaining to cover her. To see the wanting in him, to know it was mirrored in herself, made her feel proud of her femininity. She felt fresh and clean, as if this was the first time. And truly it was, the first time with an equal desire, if not with an equal love. In that moment she didn’t care what her eyes revealed, only that he ma
de her feel beautiful, able to respond naturally, not with the pretence that Colin had forced upon her.
‘I knew you could make me feel this,’ she admitted honestly, and cast herself into his arms, clinging to him as she rained kisses over his face, caressing him boldly so that he moaned in her arms before lifting her on to the bed and coming down on top of her.
It was a weight she welcomed, until his angry voice growled in her ear. ‘And you knew you could make me feel the same, didn’t you? That’s what you were banking on.’ Coming up on his elbows, his grey eyes revealed the same anger as she reluctantly focused on him. ‘Damn you, Maxi, I never thought you’d really go this far just to stop me asking questions about Ellis!’
The heat died out of her rapidly as she realised she hadn’t fooled him at all. Throat working madly, she turned her head away. ‘Let me go!’ she ordered gruffly.
‘Not until you talk to me,’ Kerr countered swiftly. ‘What else happened out there on the Cobb? What was it he said that you’d go this far to stop me knowing?’
When she remained stubbornly mute, Kerr rolled off her, but only on to his knees, from where he dragged her up into a sitting position. Feeling more defeated than she ever had in her life before, she squeezed her eyes shut.
‘He threatened you,’ she finally answered in a tone barely above a whisper.
‘What was that?’ Kerr charged sharply, and, goaded by the knowledge of her own foolishness, her head came up, eyes flashing sparks at him.
‘He threatened you!’ she cried. ‘He wants me back, and he warned me not to go to the police! There, are you satisfied now?’
Sheer surprise made his hold slacken, and she took advantage of it to slide off the side of the bed, reaching for her blouse. Kerr recovered quickly, though, coming up beside her.
‘No, I’m damn well not satisfied. What do you mean, threatened me? How? With what?’ he barked the question at her.
An Old Enchantment (Harlequin Treasury 1990's) Page 14