To Tame a Proud Heart

by Cathy Williams

  He rubbed his thumb across her nipple and thousands of little electric currents seemed to fly through her. Through half-closed eyes she followed the progress of his dark head as his lips trailed downwards to her breasts, but she closed her eyes when his mouth encircled the swollen pink nipple and he began to suck it hard, pulling it into his mouth while his tongue licked the hardened tip.

  Her eyes were still closed when he lifted his head to look at her, and it took a moment or two before she realised that he had straightened and was sitting up on the bed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, suddenly feeling freezing in the room now that the savage heat of his body had been taken away.

  ‘You are,’ he said curtly. ‘Button up your shirt, for God’s sake!’

  She propelled herself into a sitting position and hurriedly pulled the gaping sides of her shirt together, hugging her arms around her.

  He had stood up, and now that reality was revealing her humiliation in slow motion before her she wished that he would leave, but he didn’t. He remained standing at the foot of the bed, staring down at her coldly.

  ‘Was that the drink just then, Francesca, or do you make a habit of throwing yourself at whatever man happens to be around at the right time?’

  His words cut into her like a whip and she raised her eyes to his. ‘I do not sleep around!’

  ‘Sure? That wasn’t the impression I got just then.’

  ‘I’ve never slept with a man in my life!’

  That was the first time she had admitted it to anyone. Her friends, she knew, had all been involved in physical relationships, and it felt slightly odd that she was still a virgin. But she had never been seriously tempted.

  Not, that was, until now, because she knew that if he had continued his love-making she would not have tried to stop him. She had wanted him with an intensity that was frightening, and, worse, she realised, with horrified mortification, she had wanted him for a long time now, and while the drink might have loosened her inhibitions it certainly hadn’t provided the motivation.

  He shook his head and raked his long fingers through his hair. ‘You’re looking at the wrong man if you want to broaden your experiences,’ he said, leaning forward and resting the palms of his hands on the foot-board at the bottom of the bed.

  She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t meet his eyes and she looked away in miserable confusion. Was that what she had wanted? No! Not in the way he had said. She hadn’t wanted a man to broaden her experiences; she had wanted him.

  ‘You’re a good-looking girl,’ he said tonelessly, ‘and I admit that I was tempted to take what was on offer, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. I might as well have this out with you once and for all. You aren’t my type. No more, I suspect, than I am yours.’

  ‘And what type do you see me with?’ she asked lightly, even though her mouth felt cold and stiff.

  ‘You’re a child, Francesca. I have no time for children.’

  They stared at each other in silence, then he spun round on his heels and walked out of the room. She heard the click of the outer door, and then she fell back on the bed and covered her face with a pillow.

  Her mind was alive with torturous thoughts of how she had thrown herself at him. What had she hoped to achieve? she wondered. She remembered the feel of his hands on her breasts with a shudder of hot embarrassment.

  When she had found out the real reason she had got the job with Oliver Kemp her pride had been crushed, but deep down, she realised, she had known that however she had managed to get the job she had succeeded in proving herself.

  Now his rejection of her had shattered that bit of her pride which was irreparable. She had never been rejected in her life before, and what she felt now was a mixture of bewilderment, anger and hurt.

  ‘I hate you,’ she said aloud, and her words reverberated in the silence and then in her head, over and over and over, until sleep caught up with her and pulled a dark blind over her emotions.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FRANCESCA felt tired and nervous on Monday morning when she walked into the office building. She had fallen asleep on Saturday with a gut-wrenching feeling of misery, and precisely the same feeling had stayed with her since.

  She had made a decision, though. She might have thrown herself at Oliver Kemp, and he could make of that what he wanted, but there was no way that she would make that mistake again. Every time her mind replayed the scene she wanted to close her eyes and find herself a dark little corner where she could hide until her embarrassment faded.

  And she didn’t care what interpretation he chose to put on what had taken place. Let him go ahead and think that she had succumbed to the influence of drink, or even that she had wanted to lose her virginity to him for no better reason than that she had selfishly wanted the one man she knew she couldn’t have, because she was little more than a spoiled, wilful child.

  Just so long as he never suspected, even for a minute, that she was devastatingly attracted to him and had been long before she had even begun to put words to how she felt in his presence. That, she knew, he would find uproariously amusing. He might even—and she winced at this—be tempted to confide all in Imogen.

  She met him, as luck would have it, in the lift, and as it slowly emptied he turned to her and said, his face unreadable, ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she answered, with a stiff smile. ‘Yesterday my head felt as though someone was having a fine time jumping around inside it, but I took two aspirins and it soon felt better.’

  He nodded, and as the lift stopped on their floor she said awkwardly, ‘I want to apologise for Saturday night.’

  He pushed open the office door to allow her past him, and even that brief brush by his body made her feel hot.

  ‘No point talking about it—’ he began in a cool voice.

  She cut in swiftly, ‘I think there is. I mean, I agree that there’s no point in dwelling on it, but I’d just like to clear the air.’

  ‘Go ahead, in that case.’

  He looked at her and she wondered whether he was seeing her with her blouse open, her breasts exposed, straining towards him for the feel of his wet mouth. It took a great deal of effort not to wilt at the thought of that.

  ‘I know you probably think the worst of me, but that sort of episode will never happen again. I can only think that the champagne must have gone to my head quicker than I thought, and I guess I was feeling a little maudlin, worrying about the way Dad and I parted company, wondering if I hadn’t acted too recklessly.’ It sounded the most rational excuse, and she made sure that her voice was very composed when she spoke.

  ‘We all make mistakes,’ he said, shrugging and turning away from her to riffle through the post on her desk.

  ‘I’d fully understand,’ she continued quietly, ‘if you wanted me to leave.’

  ‘Why should I?’ He raised his light eyes to hers. ‘I think the best thing is if we both relegate that unfortunate incident to the past, don’t you?’ He walked towards his office. ‘Did you manage,’ he asked, and she realised that he was already moving on, ‘to finish working on that Peterborough file?’

  She nodded and he said, taking it from her outstretched hand, ‘The damned man’s been on the phone again, wanting to know when we can complete our stock for him. I don’t think he understands that phoning on an hourly basis isn’t going to get things moving any quicker than they are already.’

  She laughed dutifully at that, but she knew that already there had been a shift in their relationship.

  Before the weekend they had been relaxed with one another. He had begun to take her competence for granted, which she had rather enjoyed, and although their private lives had remained huge, unspoken areas between them at least they had settled into a good working routine.

  Now everything had changed. She was blindingly aware of him, and she knew that even though he had resumed his polite, distant manner things had been said, things had been done which had altered the surface calm.
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  It was as though something dangerous had been thrown into a pond, and although calm stillness had resettled on the water you knew that there was something there—something in the depths which would change the way you looked at that pond for ever.

  He emerged at eleven o’clock to tell her that he would be out for the remainder of the day, and at twelve, when she was sitting in front of the computer, staring at the words on the screen, the telephone rang.

  It was Imogen.

  ‘I wonder if we can meet for lunch?’ she said, and Francesca paled. Had he said something to his fiancée? She had hardly thought of the other woman on Saturday. It had been as if something had possessed her, leaving no room at all for thoughts of anyone else, and certainly not for the fact that he was involved with someone. Her face reddened now in guilty shame.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, clearing her throat, and listening while Imogen made arrangements as to where they could meet.

  At five to one Francesca was waiting in anxious expectation at the wine bar which was only a stone’s throw from the office. If Oliver had told his fiancée about what had happened, then she knew that she would have no alternative but to stop working for him.

  She had been a thoughtless fool, she knew, and when Imogen finally arrived, ten minutes late, she was already feeling on the brink of confessing all and waiting for the axe to fall, knowing that it would be a well-deserved punishment.

  But Imogen, smartly dressed in a navy blue suit and carrying a tiny black bag just large enough to hold her wallet and chequebook, did not look like a woman with an axe behind her back.

  Francesca looked at the neat, intelligent figure and felt a sharp pang of bitter, unbridled jealousy, made all the worse by her knowledge that the qualities which Oliver saw in his fiancée were ones that she herself could never hope to achieve in a million years.

  Her life, she realised, had been so uncomplicated before she’d met Oliver Kemp. She had skimmed merrily along the surface, like a water-skier flying across the waves, happily unaware that there were dangers under the sea waiting to engulf her.

  After ten minutes her mouth ached from the strain of having to smile and chat, and she only surfaced into the conversation with any real interest when Imogen told her that she needed some advice.

  ‘What about?’ Francesca asked, surprised, and Imogen looked at her thoughtfully.

  ‘Clothes. I want to change my wardrobe a bit and I thought, Who better to ask than you? You’re such a gorgeous dresser.’

  ‘Why do you want to change your wardrobe?’ Francesca asked, bewildered. ‘In your position—’

  ‘Oh, I know that. Power-suits for work. The problem is I can’t seem to break out of the power-dressing ethos.’ She laughed, as if astonished at her desire to do so. ‘I need some bright colours, some variety.’

  ‘Why? Doesn’t Oliver love you the way you are?’ That took a great deal of effort, and she felt quite sick after she had said it.

  ‘Oh, a change is as good as a rest, don’t you think?’ Imogen answered ambiguously, smiling and sipping some of her orange juice.

  ‘He may not think so,’ Francesca said, with a tight little smile.

  ‘Then again,’ Imogen murmured, ‘he might be pleasantly surprised.’ But she had lowered her eyes and, with a little shrug, Francesca chatted briefly about where she shopped, giving her names of people who would happily kit her out in whatever she wanted.

  Her mind conjured up images of the other woman dressed seductively, images of Oliver finding that a pleasant surprise, images of them making love, and it was with relief when she parted company from Imogen outside the wine bar.

  Over the next two days Francesca kept her head down, barely glanced in the direction of Oliver, and tried desperately to reason with herself.

  What she felt for him, she told herself—this terrible pull—was foolish and pointless, and, having recognised that, she should be able to shrug it off to experience, but every time he came near her her body went into overdrive. When he leaned by her to show her something she had to keep her hands tightly clenched by her sides so that he couldn’t see how much they were trembling. When he spoke to her she had to make sure that her eyes didn’t meet his because she didn’t want him to read the message waiting there for him.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked on the Wednesday evening as she was about to leave. He had called her into his office to go through some files with her, and he sat back in his chair and looked at her carefully through narrowed eyes.

  ‘I feel a bit ill,’ she replied quickly. ‘I think I must be coming down with something. There’s a lot of flu going around.’

  ‘You’re working too hard,’ he said without emphasis. ‘Do you ever have a lunch break?’

  ‘Occasionally. I met your fiancée for lunch the other day. We went to the wine bar down the road.’

  ‘Yes. She told me.’ He didn’t appear to want to pursue that.

  ‘She wanted some advice on clothes, so she came to me. Who better? Anyone can see that my forte is knowing how to put an outfit together.’ She couldn’t help it. Her voice was laced with bitterness, and she could have kicked herself for the little slip in her well-maintained fade.

  He frowned. ‘If that’s what you think of yourself then it won’t be too difficult for the rest of the world to fall in with your opinion, will it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’ She laughed shortly and stood up. ‘If it’s all right, I think I’ll call it a day now. Unless you want these letters typed urgently?’

  ‘They can wait.’ His eyes were still on her and she nervously looked away and moved towards the door, half expecting him to call her back, half wanting it, in fact, but he didn’t, and when she looked back at him, his head was downbent reading reports.

  She felt so angrily miserable as she let herself out of his office that she was almost happy when she looked up and saw Brad Robinson by her desk.

  She had seen him often enough over the months, and she had become quite accustomed to his brand of outrageous flirtation. She still smilingly disregarded all of it, but she no longer found it as oppressive and disagreeable as she had done the very first time she had met him.

  It had helped, she supposed, that, contrary to her initial judgements, he wasn’t married. He still thought himself a creation handmade for the benefit of the opposite sex, but at least there wasn’t some poor woman in the background, building a life around him.

  ‘You look terrible,’ he said, his eyes sweeping over her appraisingly as they always did.

  ‘I feel terrible,’ she answered, clearing her desk and automatically pushing him off his perch by the computer terminal. ‘My head aches, my back aches, my eyes ache.’

  ‘Would an all-over body massage be the thing?’ He flexed his fingers and shot her a wolfish, enquiring look which brought a reluctant grin to her lips.

  ‘Well,’ she said, not looking at him but still grinning, ‘that certainly beats all the usual clichés I’ve heard from you in the past, Brad.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ he asked, giving that some thought. ‘Perhaps I could incorporate it in my repertoire.’

  Before she could comment on that one he had moved behind her, and she felt his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs pressing against her muscles.

  ‘Feel good?’ he asked in her ear, and she had to admit that it did.

  ‘Just so long as those hands of yours don’t develop any wanderlust,’ she said, tilting her head back and half closing her eyes.

  ‘I’ll try to keep them in check,’ he said, and she didn’t have to see him to know that he was grinning. ‘But they can sometimes be bad little boys when it comes to the opposite sex.’

  ‘Oh, good grief,’ she murmured, flexing her shoulders. Neither of them heard the connecting door open. When Oliver spoke his voice was like the crack of a whip, and they sprang apart.

  ‘Are you here for something in particular?’ he asked Brad, his mouth drawn into a tight line. He stood where he was and folded his arms
, and every muscle in his body was taut with suppressed aggression. ‘Because if you are then say so, and if you’re not you can get back to your office and do what you’re so lavishly paid to do.’

  ‘We were just on our way out,’ Francesca said, her colour high, and he rounded on her.

  ‘No. You’ve got it wrong. Mr Robinson here is on his way out, and you, my girl—in my office. Now!’

  He spun round on his heels, and she could feel her anger mounting as she followed him into the office and closed the door behind her. ‘That was unnecessary!’ she burst out, watching him angrily from a distance, alarmed by the black fury on his face.

  ‘Don’t you tell me what’s necessary and what’s unnecessary in my own damn company! Do you understand me?’

  ‘He only came for a chat before we left,’ she mumbled, and he strode towards her and took her by the shoulders. She felt the grip of his fingers and winced in pain.

  ‘This is not a playground,’ he muttered, his black brows drawn together in a harsh frown, ‘and I don’t pay my employees to cavort during office hours! Is that clear?’

  ‘Brad always flirts,’ she said, looking away guiltily because she knew that she should have discouraged him, and would have if she hadn’t been feeling so low. ‘You told me that yourself when I first joined.’

  ‘That’s no excuse to abuse my trust, is it?’ he snarled. ‘I don’t damned well expect to find you fornicating on the office floor just because you imagine that you can get away with it.’

  Her head shot up. ‘I’d hardly call it that!’ she snapped, her colour high. ‘And you’re hurting me!’

  He released her abruptly but he didn’t move. He remained where he was, his hands thrust into his pockets.

  ‘And you expect to be taken seriously?’ he asked, with a sneer in his voice. ‘If you insist on behaving like an adolescent, then please tell me, and I’ll gladly hand you back over to your father, and he can find himself another school of correction for you—debt or no debt.’