So long? No man had ever made her feel quite like this, Saunders thought to herself. No man had ever even tried, much less with the heady success Ford Landell had managed.
‘We’ll just ignore the fact that nobody before ever had such overwhelming help from you,’ she muttered to the image in the mirror. ‘You’ve become dangerously wicked and wanton in your dotage, my girl."
Wanton. It was, she decided as she snuggled into her pillow, a deliciously descriptive word. But a very dangerous condition! The night’s adventure, she told herself, must be taken as a serious warning; she must at all costs keep Ford Landell at a healthy arm’s length, or suffer the consequences. Because she’d be hearing from him again, seeing him again — there was no doubt of that in her mind. Nor was there any real doubt that she wanted to hear from him again, although preferably at a time and place of her own choosing, and in circumstances a good deal safer than those just experienced.
Among her last thoughts as she finally drifted into sleep was the questionable blessing that he didn’t know where she lived and her telephone number was not listed, so she ought to be safe from his attentions until Monday morning, at least.
Strange, then, that one of her first thoughts upon waking was to wonder if Ford had returned to the party or gone on to his scheduled rendezvous with the stunning Nadine Fitzmaurice. Not, Saunders determined resolutely, that she was particularly interested, much less, as he had so graphically described it, green-eyed jealous.
She specifically said so to the creature in the mirror, who looked no better than the night before as she manoeuvred it into a tracksuit and forced it through a brutal exercise programme aimed at dissipating memory, seeking a return to physical and mental equilibrium. She felt considerably revitalised as she finally settled down to a breakfast of muesli and wholegrain toast.
The problem was, she found, as the day, then the weekend progressed, that her rejuvenation was more physical than mental. By Saturday night she was thinking, for the umpteenth time, that Ford could easily have got her number from the Mahoneys, could easily have telephoned, should have telephoned. Should, she decided firmly by Sunday noon, have attempted some gesture of reconciliation, or … well … something!
By Sunday night she had decided she didn’t care anyway, and Monday at work was spent snarling and snapping at everyone silly enough to get within reach, although she insisted to herself that Fordon Landell had nothing whatsoever to do with her foul temper.
~~~
You’re a fool!
Ford had told himself that as he watched Saunders drive away, then found himself repeating the exercise as he started his own vehicle and did the same. He was still repeating the accusation in a kind of distracted litany when he arrived at his own home, mysteriously having bypassed both the party and Nadine’s flat in the process.
This realisation left him staring at the telephone, almost angry at having let himself be manipulated into having to make a phone call he didn’t want to make, having to find excuses he didn’t want to find or manufacture.
‘Something I ate, either at the party or later, I don’t know which, but whatever it was, it’s playing havoc with my insides,’ he was saying a few moments later, uttering the words without conviction and really not caring if Nadine believed him or not. Likely she didn’t, but he wasn’t concerned with that. He merely wanted to get the duty over with so that he could concentrate his thoughts on Saunders White.
‘And I’m expecting a very early call that might have me on the road before daylight, so I’d best grab what sleep I can,’ he continued. Not quite a lie, although the call was more likely to come on Sunday night or early Monday morning. But it served.
Then he found himself prowling through his home, moving abstractedly, haphazardly about the place, seeing it almost from a stranger’s perspective as he wondered bow Saunders would react to it. He was tired, but not sleepy, unable to dispel from his mind the events of the evening.
He boiled the jug for coffee, then found himself sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine in his hand instead, and his mind filled with visions of flashing, passionate blue eyes. Having then remembered to do his bedtime blood test, he had to do it twice, because the first time he missed the time-count, distracted by tactile thoughts of Saunders, of how she had felt in his arms, the texture of her soft breasts beneath his fingers, of how her lips had moulded themselves to meet his kiss.
He woke several times during a restless, troubled sleep, certain he could detect the scent of her on his pillow, once even convinced she was there beside him, snuggled into his arms just as his erotic fancies stipulated.
There was no predawn telephone call in the morning, but he was up before the birds anyway, still restless, still moody and tense. An hour’s bicycle ride — carefully navigated to avoid the implausible risk of encountering Nadine — left him physically more settled but mentally as confounded as ever.
He simply could not remember being so singularly attracted to any woman, with neither rhyme nor reason, sense nor logic. Especially considering that he wanted children eventually; lots of them. And that was something he hadn’t actively considered until he’d found out about his diabetes, and about her diabetes! The hereditary consequences worried him, but even more bothersome were the risks he now knew to be involved for any diabetic woman contemplating having children. Millions of them did so, of course, but…
His mind ranged through the risks, trying dispassionately to find a clear path of thought, but it kept switching tack on him, returning to the night before and the woman he’d held in his arms, made love to, wanted, needed…
But to have resorted to such juvenile tactics as he had last night, necking in a car, on a public street, was … laughable, but somehow not quite funny. Not really. How long had it been since a woman had attracted him sufficiently for him to make such a complete and utter fool of himself? Memory, thankfully, failed him.
But you ought to have given up that kind of foolishness years ago, he told himself, then idly wondered why, considering how much he had enjoyed it. Then wondered less idly how Saunders was reacting in the cold grey light of dawn. She had responded to him, no question about that, but then, when they had been so rudely interrupted…
About the only saving grace was being able to laugh, now, at his fiery reaction to the cheering youths the night before. With the questionable benefit of hindsight, he could only be thankful for Saunders’ restraining influence.
‘They’d have ended up playing soccer with your head, mate, and serve you right,’ he muttered to himself, then laughed again, half wishing he could meet that same group of ruffians this morning.
He cycled past a telephone box, paused long enough to realise he didn’t know her number, rode another half-block before turning back to make a futile investigation of the bedraggled telephone book, then realised he had no change or telephone card with him anyway, and hadn’t the slightest idea of where she lived, or with whom.
That thought touched off a little mental landslide of speculation that occupied another kilometre or so. Did she live alone? Share, as many women did? Live at home? No, she had mentioned that her parents were dead. Or did she have, for instance a male flatmate? It wasn’t uncommon, but what bothered him most was the visceral discomfort he got just from the idea.
Was he going to see her again? Too right, he was! But except for doing so professionally, where he rather presumed she had little choice, would she want to see him again?
He cycled past a florist, not yet open, then halted outside a confectionery shop, and was eyeing a wondrous display of boxed chocolates when the sheer ludicrousness of that idea struck him.
Send chocolates to a girl who can’t eat them? You’ve really lost the plot, boy. He chuckled to himself. Ten more kilometres for penance, and then you want your brain checked — not just your blood!
He was well down the road when it also occurred to him that this shop, also, wasn’t going to be open for two hours more at the very least.
The confectioner still wasn’t open when he drove past, en route to the office and an attempt on some distasteful but necessary paperwork, but Ford rewarded his foolish earlier impulse with a shake of his head and a wry grin.
His work was continuously distracted and interrupted by random thoughts about what suitable gesture he might come up with to redeem himself for last night’s performance, but to little effect. He was inordinately pleased to be rescued by an unexpected phone call that sent him rushing to the airport; by mid-afternoon he was many metres underground, his attention so focused on the problems before him that even erotic thoughts of Saunders couldn’t intrude. At least not until that evening, and the next, and the next…
The week dragged for Saunders; her work, her lifestyle, all seemed normal, yet somehow her time sense had become warped. And, throughout, there was this strange perception that the very normality of everything was what was wrong.
She kept finding herself mentally drifting, her mind returning at the oddest times to the events of Friday night, to her own feelings and responses, to textural memories of Ford Landell’s kisses, his caresses. At work it was simply distracting; at home, in the unexpectedly lonely hours of late evening, these memories were distinctly disturbing. And in the dark hours, when she found herself waking without apparent reason, her skin tingling, her nipples turgid with the desire his touch had created, the memories were torture.
You’re mad, or getting that way, she thought. He doesn’t phone, he doesn’t write, or … or anything! And why should he, after all? Certainly you made it clear enough that you didn’t want him to.
She was able to keep from thinking too often or too clearly about how Friday night might have ended, but less able to keep from speculating about how it had ended — for him! Had he returned to the party, or gone on to his rendezvous with Nadine? She thought that logically he must have, but some small voice inside her kept telling her different. The voice of hope, or just wishful thinking? she wondered. If so, it was a voice to be rejected, a voice she ought not listen to. And yet…
She kept on hearing his voice, hearing the distinctness of specific things he’d said, and the way he’d said them.
‘I want to see you again, Saunders,’ he’d said. ‘This thing isn’t going to stop here; I won’t let it.’
‘There was too much between us back there just to … toss it all away.’
And, ‘You’re much too pretty to waste.’
There had been something something unique in his voice when he’d said that. Something, she kept thinking, quite different from the lust-induced rhetoric of his earlier statements.
‘Are you going to waste?’ she asked herself aloud at one point. And, having thought about it, decided to defer, ignore, avoid any detailed, honest answer. All she did know was that, until Ford Landell had stepped into her existence, she had been generally content and at peace; now she was confused, no longer sure of her place in the scheme of things.
How could he make such statements as he had? How could he touch her, reach out to her, and then simply disappear without a word? How could he kiss her the way he had, somehow reach inside and turn her inside-out? ‘How could I let him?’ she wondered aloud.
It distracted her the most that next Friday, made the drive home a hazard to everyone else on the road, and did absolutely nothing to prepare her for arriving home to find him sitting on the front steps, waiting for her.
‘You’re not to roust on poor old Peter; 1 threatened him with physical dismemberment if he didn’t give me your address and phone number,’ Ford said as he rose, cat-quick, to open the car door and hand her out.
He was dressed casually in a plaid shirt with rolled up sleeves, moleskins and the expectable gleaming boots, and the effect was to make him look younger, somehow, and marginally fitter than when she’d seen him only a week before.
‘I’m sure he was just terrified,’ Saunders replied tartly, trying as she spoke to pull her hand free from the grip into which she had so unthinkingly placed it when he’d opened the car door.
Ford blithely ignored the taunt, equally ignoring the lack of subtlety in her reply. He didn’t release her hand either.
‘I would have called sooner, but I was away,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t want to call you at work because I didn’t — don’t — know your policy about personal calls there.’
‘I can just imagine you worrying yourself to death about that. Will you let go!’ she retorted, again trying to yank free of his grasp, failing, then almost toppling backwards as he complied without warning. His fingers let go, but his eyes held her, she fancied, just enough to slow the momentum of her recoil.
Black, black eyes, eyes that seemed to see right into her, see past all her defences, while revealing nothing of the mind behind them, nothing of his reasoning, his logic, his true feelings. Eyes that said without speaking that he knew she was curious, but that he wasn’t going to discuss it, much less explain it — not without being asked.
Well, not by me, she thought, determination firming her stance as she stood there, forcing herself to meet his gaze without flinching, without revealing how those eyes made her insides melt, how his touch had done so even more.
‘Why are you here?’ she finally managed to ask, and almost cried out with frustration as her voice, in her own ears, sounded flat, totally lacking in authority. Damn him! He didn’t even have to speak to her to be in control. He just stood there, seducing her with his eyes, with his very attitude!
‘What are you afraid of?’ he countered, either ignoring her question or deliberately choosing to keep her on the defensive. ‘Or do you just enjoy complicating everything? Obviously, I’m here because you’re here; I came to see you, to talk to you.’
Then he grinned, as if he actually enjoyed the effect he was having on her. ‘Did you think I just dropped by so we could stand here like a matched set of garden gnomes, staring at each other and exchanging stupid questions?’
Saunders just looked at him. The mental image he’d created made her want to laugh, but if she did that he would win. Again! And she didn’t want that, couldn’t have that.
‘What makes you think I want to talk to you?’ she finally managed to reply. And her mind was thinking. What a stupid thing to say! Of course you want to talk to him, if only long enough for him to explain about Friday night. Which he isn’t going to do, not unless you ask. And you won’t!
‘But you have to,’ he replied, voice soft now, deceptively so.
‘I do not!’
‘But you are.’
‘Oh … This is childish,’ she snapped.
He merely elevated one dark eyebrow and grinned at her, a tiny, almost smirking little grin that was followed by an eloquent shrug.
‘We could always just stand here and watch the grass grow.’
‘ You can if you like; I have things to do.’
She lifted a foot, actually thought about stepping round him, just walking off and leaving him standing there. But the raised foot didn’t move; her muscles somehow refused to obey her. Or else he actually could hold her immobile with a single glance!
‘Name three,’ he replied, without seeming to notice her movement. And his voice was a growling purr, his eyes laughing at her now. ‘Apart from making us a coffee, which would go down rather well, I think.’
Saunders glared at him, hating him for his control, hating herself for her lack of it. But she didn’t reply, somehow just couldn’t make her mouth work around the words. Couldn’t even think of any words!
‘You have to wash your hair. You’ve got a heavy date. You’re expecting company any minute,’ he said, not bothering to hide the s
arcasm. ‘How’s that? Come on, Saunders… You can’t really still be shirty over what happened a week ago, surely?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ she retorted, unsure whether to laugh or get angry. ‘Did you expect me to have forgotten? You certainly haven’t.’
‘No,’ he replied, and now his voice, his eyes, his entire demeanour had changed, somehow. There was a sudden alertness, as if the very air around them had suddenly become charged.
‘No,’ he repeated. ‘I haven’t, and I’m not likely to, and I’m glad you haven’t, because you damned well shouldn’t. But are we going to keep up this juvenile squabbling forever? We aren’t teenagers, Saunders, regardless of how things … happened last Friday night. We’re adults, and what we were feeling were very adult feelings that aren’t just going to go away if we don’t talk about them or if we just stand here like a couple of teenaged kids and try to deny their existence.’
"Aren’t you making just a bit much of a little grope session?’ Saunders snapped. Knowing he wasn’t … or was … or she was. Damn him! he only had to look at her and she went weak at the knees, but she must keep him from being so sure of himself.
"I have been kissed before, you know’ she added spitefully, then let real bitterness creep in. ‘Although hopefully not just as the lead-up to a main event somewhere else.’
He should have had the grace to look embarrassed, or turn his damned black eyes away, or … or … something! But not Ford Landell. He just looked at her, raised one eyebrow, and then laughed!
It was the final straw. Saunders had no problem moving this time, and was halfway round him when one arm reached out to snag her, to draw her in against him, negating the wild swing of one hand aimed at his face.
An Irresistible Flirtation Page 8