‘You are amazing, you really are,’ he crowed. Then his mouth swooped down to capture her own, his arms locking her own by her sides, holding her too close against him for her to follow the temptation to lift her knee into his groin.
Saunders struggled, but in vain. His lips ground harshly against hers, then softened and began to manipulate her mouth even as she tried not to respond. Her wriggling served only to emphasise their closeness, to fan the waves of heat that leapt from his body to her own.
And then, as abruptly as it had begun, the embrace was ended. He set her down, well away from him, and with a wary eye on the leg she swung with vicious intent. There was laughter in his eyes, laughter — but caution too.
‘I always seem to go too far too fast with you,’ he said. ‘You affect me in the most amazing ways, Saunders; it’s uncanny. But let’s get one thing straight. I did not go where you obviously think 1 went after we parted last Friday night. I went straight home to bed, to a very lonely bed, I might add, because you weren’t in it and I wanted you to be.’
Answer that one, my girl, she told herself silently, thankful that at least her mind was working that much, because her tongue certainly wasn’t. She couldn’t reply, didn’t dare. Didn’t really even want to, because it was just too dangerous. Ford stood there, looking down into her eyes, everything about him shouting out at her that he was being literally truthful, that he simply meant what he’d just said.
‘I … I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,’ she said after an aeon of silence.
‘Why not? It’s the truth. And you know it, what’s more. Don’t you want to know how I feel? Or is it your own feelings you’re so afraid of?’
It was too much, too fast, too … everything. Saunders could only look back into his eyes, tongue-tied, suddenly terrified by the intensity of the discussion. She hardly knew this man, yet she had already almost succumbed to his sexual magnetism, knew she would again if she didn’t break his control, knew she didn’t really want to break it, knew…
‘Well?’
‘Well—what?’ she replied, knowing how dumb that must sound, knowing exactly what, but simply incapable of allowing herself to respond.
‘Well … which? Or is it both?’ he asked, and there was a tinge of exasperation in his voice now, she thought. ‘It isn’t such a difficult question, Saunders.’
It is when I don’t even know how I feel, she thought, but couldn’t say that. Besides, she actually had a fair idea of her own feelings; that was half the problem. All of her training, all of her professional attitudes dictated against becoming involved, but she had started to do so anyway.
‘It’s unprofessional.’
The words were out even as she thought them, and uttered more to herself than to him. But they had an immediate impact; his eyes darkened, the intensity of his stare became almost overwhelming as he looked down at her.
‘Of course,’ he finally said, after what seemed an eternity. ‘It’s unprofessional. Now, why didn’t I think of that?’ And his voice had a curious flatness, as did his eyes.
‘Of course,’ he muttered, apparently speaking to himself, looking at her, through her, with eyes that might have been blind they were so expressionless, so utterly cold.
‘Of course,’ he said for a third time, ‘you realise that is utter and total rubbish, Saunders. Or at least I hope you do, because if you don’t, you’ve got yourself even more confused than you’ve got me. And that. Nurse, is very, very confused indeed!’
He folded powerful arms across his chest, then stood there in stubborn silence, running his eyes provocatively over Saunders from crown to toenails. And no longer were those eyes cold; even as she watched she could feel the heat of his gaze, could read the desire there, the naked, undisguised wanting. Just as he meant her to.
And all she could do was endure it, standing as if turned to stone, unable to speak, unable to fight back. And, worse, unable to control her body’s reaction to this visual plundering.
It was as if he was physically caressing her, tuning her like some living musical instrument. His gaze touched at her throat and slid lightly down the hollow of her shoulder. Her tummy turned over, feeling hollow as his eyes moved lower; her hips seemed to flex as if ready to dance to whatever tune he might order, although her legs felt like limp springs, barely able to hold her upright.
She endured, at first, then found herself drawn into the amazing aura he seemed to be projecting around them. She found her awareness heightening, becoming tight as a drawn bow. Her peripheral vision seemed to be expanded; without taking her eyes from his, she was none the less conscious of the faint movement of his chest as he breathed, could almost focus individually on the curling hairs revealed by the open-necked shirt, could feel the strength of him, the sheer, masculine, physical presence.
She could see his breathing quicken, along with her own. Could feel it, just as surely as if her fingers were touching that muscular chest. They might have been alone on the face of the earth, although somehow she still knew that they were standing on the front lawn of her unit, in full view of her neighbours, of anyone driving down the street. And she knew, too, that he had only to reach out and touch her, or speak to her, and he could take her inside — as she wanted him to do — and finish the lovemaking he had started the week before.
And suddenly she knew that he wouldn’t!
The perception came seemingly from nowhere. But it shattered the mood surrounding them as effectively as a scream.
She wanted him to. He knew it, had deliberately created that want in her, had done so without even touching her. And now?
Saunders closed her eyes momentarily, just long enough to be sure she had broken the spell. Then she opened them again in full expectation of seeing Ford Landell’s face as he savoured his triumph, in full expectation of hearing him voice his rejection in the most humiliating terms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Saunders frowned as she listened to the message from Reception, but it was less the message than the implications involved that forced the frown.
Damn Ford Landell anyway, she thought. He was playing at something, but either it was too simple or too complicated for her to understand it totally.
This was the third time in a week that he’d cancelled out on his scheduled appointment with her. The first, following their traumatic parting on her front lawn, had seemed reasonable enough, but now she was beginning to twig that things weren’t as simple as they might have seemed.
The second cancellation, also made through Reception and with quite reasonable notice, had offered no excuse — simply that he couldn’t make it. But this time?
‘I’m not sure what his problem is,’ her receptionist had told her. ‘Last time he cancelled he suggested he would be happy to see one of the other nurse-educators, but of course I said that if he’d begun with you he should probably continue. He didn’t object, or anything, but…’
‘And this time?’
‘Well … ’ The receptionist clearly wanted to avoid this, but her tone of voice was enough to alert Saunders.
‘Well?’
‘This time he … well … sort of insisted, I’m afraid. I tried to convince him otherwise, of course, but he seemed rather determined. And when I suggested he really ought to speak to you first, and said you were free just at the moment, well…’
‘Let me guess. He suddenly pleaded an emergency and got off the phone?’ Saunders suggested.
‘Not exactly.’ And now there was definite tones of alarm in the receptionist’s voice. Saunders didn’t know the woman’s previous work-history all that well, but was beginning to think it must include some classic examples of the messenger being shot for delivering bad news.
‘Well?’ she enquired, and didn’t bother to hide the tone of exasperation she could feel growing in her voice. ‘Look, I’m not going to come out there and beat you with a big stick just because some client has said something … well … less than complimentary. What did he say, for goodness’ sake
?’
‘Well, I didn’t really understand it, to be honest,’ replied the receptionist, who was unquestionably honest but occasionally not too awfully bright. ‘He said there was an issue of conflict of interest involved, and he didn’t want to be responsible for compromising your professional situation. Whatever that means…’
It means Mr Landell is being bloody-minded and extremely annoying, Saunders thought, but didn’t say so in quite those words. She simply suggested he was a ‘difficult person’ and left it at that, at least as far as her receptionist was concerned.
‘If he calls again, and I can only assume he will," she said, ‘then see if you can fit him in with one of the other girls.’
Then she sat staring at her crowded desk blotter, eyes not properly focusing on the masses of paperwork before her, mind sliding back to her last encounter with Ford, nearly two weeks ago, now…
She had been right in her realisation that he wasn’t going to push the advantage he’d so deliberately contrived. Rather than simply reach out and collect his prize, simply reach out and take her into her own home and make love to her in her own bed, he had conjured up a wall between them.
It had been no more tangible than the way he’d seduced her without touching her; she couldn’t see it, or touch it. but she knew it was there, had almost been able to see him building it, brick by invisible brick. He had done it with his eyes, with his body language, with his entire bearing; it couldn’t have been clearer if he’d been using real bricks and genuine mortar.
And when it was done, he had looked at her through those black, black, eyes, eyes bleak with some emotion or lack of it that she couldn’t quite define, and spoken in a voice so dispassionate it had cut like a knife cast from ice.
‘I’ve sort of lost my taste for coffee after all, Saunders, if you don’t mind,’ he’d said, obviously choosing to overlook the fact that she had never offered him coffee — that had been his own idea, all along. ‘I tend to look at it as a social drink; it doesn’t taste quite the same in a professional setting.’
And he’d shrugged, one edge of his mouth twisting in what could have been either a sneer or a quite disparaging grin.
‘So we’ll leave it, I guess. For now!’
And he had raised one eyebrow as he’d nodded that curt farewell, then turned on his heel and walked away. Before Saunders could even think of a reply, he had been in his vehicle and driving off.
Reflecting upon it now, she was surprised at how calmly she had taken his departure, considering how easily he had just managed to get her all stirred up by just a phone call to her office.
‘Well. I’ve got no time for this today,’ she said aloud.
‘There’s too much involved in getting this promotion organised, and I daren’t spare the time to worry about you and your strange little games, Mr Ford Landell.’
The promotion, which would take all of the following week, was in conjunction with a national diabetes awareness campaign, and would involve most of her staff setting up at a major regional shopping centre, where they would be offering free public glucose testing to all comers.
Saunders had done this sort of thing before; it was relatively simple, at least in concept, but when combined with trying to maintain the efforts of her office at the same time, the logistics sometimes became quite involved.
Which was exactly how it turned out. One of her nurse-educators took sick the first morning, several glucose monitoring machines that had been borrowed for the promotion failed to arrive on time, and the testing unit — for reasons never to be known — ended up at the exact opposite end of the shopping centre from where it was advertised to be.
By Tuesday morning, Saunders found herself abandoning the office to go and help out. By Wednesday morning she knew her own work at the office was going to have to be ignored for the rest of the week. By Thursday afternoon she’d had her foot run over by an erratic shopping trolley, had an ice-cream cone dumped in her lap and a glass of soft drink dumped all down the front of her, had been kicked in the shins by one of her far too many screaming brats, answered her millionth — with minor exaggeration — stupid question, turned up more than seventeen people who had had to be advised to seek further testing as suspected diabetics, and was thoroughly and totally fed up with the entire human race.
Whereupon Ford Landell showed up, Nadine Fitzmaurice clinging limpet-like to his arm, just to round out her day!
She had seen them perhaps an hour before, strolling, she had thought, with all the appearance of a long-married couple with time on their hands. Or tourists, perhaps. They had not seen her; she had made sure of that — she had thought! — by turning away and making a quick trip to the loo for whatever repairs could be made to her drink-stained appearance.
There hadn’t been many, and now she was supremely conscious of how totally dishevelled she must look, especially when compared to Nadine’s glossy, expensively dressed appearance. Ford was, as usual, in casual gear, but his boots gleamed and his trousers held a knife-edge crease that was almost as sharp as his eyes when he and Nadine paused before Saunders’ station.
‘Afternoon, Saunders. You look as if you’re having a busy day,’ Ford said, nodding graciously, courteously, and to Saunders’ eyes quite impersonally. Nadine Fitzmaurice said nothing, but her eyes took in Saunders’ appearance with a quite malicious pleasure.
Saunders hid behind the facade of her professional smile, but took a malicious pleasure of her own as she watched Nadine’s eyes cruising over the various posters and advertising bumph. and saw the visible change as the dark-haired woman’s comprehension altered.
It was like watching an old cartoon with light-bulb captions. She could almost see Nadine making the connection between Saunders’ presence here and their first meeting, with Ford’s ridiculous comments about Saunders being involved in the management side of the sugar industry. It would, she thought, have been quite hilarious, except that Ford saw it too, and shot her a warning glare which she blithely ignored.
Instead, Saunders launched into her professional spiel about the various symptoms of diabetes, the value of such a service as this free testing service, and all the rest. None of it did a thing to relieve Nadine’s curiosity, she noticed; throughout the spiel. Ford’s companion kept shooting speculative glances, both at him and at Saunders herself.
But when it was suggested they partake of the free testing offer — ‘You’re here, after all’ — Nadine’s attitude changed dramatically, and Saunders realised immediately that the other woman was almost terrified of submitting to the test procedure.
‘It’s all perfectly safe, I can assure you,’ she said then, in her best professional manner. ‘And it doesn’t hurt a bit; I’ve been doing all sorts of children throughout the week without so much as a tear.’
Then she looked at Ford, and with sudden inspiration suggested that he might like to go first. His immediate glare told her what she wanted to know. He was suspicious that she might be setting him up somehow! He should realise, of course, that if he was keeping to his proper regimen, his blood sugar at this time of day should register quite within normal limits.
But he might forget that if he was at all flustered, and if he’d been playing up…
‘Of course, although children are usually quite unafraid of the testing — it’s only a pin-prick, after all — I have found that some grown men aren’t quite so easy to deal with,’ Saunders said, mostly to Nadine, as she guided Ford to a seat and began laying out the lancet device, testing strips and glucometer.
‘You’re not one of those pseudo-macho types who faint at the sight of their own blood, I hope?’ she asked Ford, smiling sweetly and chortling inside at the scathing glance she received in reply. The problem with such stirring was that she knew — and he knew too — that she was at risk of her own hand trembling as she lifted his wrist and swabbed at the chosen finger with an alcohol wipe. She explained as she went along the need to ensure there was no contamination from sweet substances like jam or i
ce-cream, and was inordinately pleased to find her responses as steady as his own.
Nadine looked as if she was totally uninterested in the entire proceedings, and Saunders could sense that the other woman would never co-operate when it came to her turn to be tested. She couldn’t help wondering if it was simply a reaction not at all that unusual, despite her professional denials, or if Nadine knew something that Saunders did not. Or maybe was simply afraid of the sight of blood?
She kept up the professional patter as she pricked Ford’s finger, milked out a single drop of blood and continued through the process of running it through the glucometer, safe, now, within her sphere of expertise, her fingers steadier than her heart, but of course only she could know that.
It was difficult not to laugh at his self-satisfied smirk when the instrument registered his blood sugar at a comfortable five, especially when she could see, and both of them knew that there was a flickering concern behind his boldness that it might have turned out differently.
‘There now; that wasn’t so bad, was it?’
He shrugged. ‘Not so long as you’re quite satisfied, Nurse.’
And there was that damned unholy glee back in his eyes, Saunders saw. He’d drawn out that word ‘satisfied’ just enough to give her a message, without passing it on to an apparently still uninterested Nadine.
‘Oh, quite,’ Saunders replied, but didn’t dare to try and meet his eyes solidly; she knew he would be laughing at her still, and not bothering to hide it that well.
Besides, her attention was already shifting to where Nadine Fitzmaurice stood, visibly nervous beyond all logic, shifting from’ one expensively shod foot to the other and looking round with eyes that, to Saunders, revealed the other woman to be on the verge of outright panic. In her peripheral vision, Saunders had noticed that Nadine had turned away, so as not to look when she had pricked Ford’s finger, and had not turned back their way until the testing was clearly over. And, beneath the perfect make-up, that classic bone-structure was covered by skin as pale as chalk.
An Irresistible Flirtation Page 9