‘Are you afraid of sex?’ The question hung in the air and she didn’t know where to look. She knew, without doubt, that she would never be so mortified in her entire life. From thinking that she was a tease, which was bad enough, he now thought that she was a freak with deeprooted psychological problems.
‘I think I need to sit down,’ was all she said, and she didn’t wait for him to answer. She went across to the bed on legs that felt like pieces of wood, and sat down heavily.
‘I’ll understand if you no longer want me to work for you,’ she ventured into the silence.
‘Wouldn’t that be an easy way out for you?’ he said coolly. ‘If you don’t have to confront me on a daily basis, if you don’t have to face the fact that you’re attracted to me, then you could pretend that it was all some kind of aberration. Because that’s what you want, isn’t it? You don’t want to be confronted with anything that threatens to shake that aloof demeanour of yours.’
‘I don’t want to discuss this.’
He ignored that. ‘Life isn’t about avoiding strong emotions. And you still haven’t answered my question.’
‘Look, I’m not the sort who can make love to a man because my hormones are egging me on. I might be tempted, but in the end the temptation wouldn’t be worth the regret.’ She looked at him. ‘I know you probably wouldn’t understand, but that’s just how it is.’
He sighed and there was more impatience there than fury. The anger had abated.
‘You’re building castles in the sky,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘Over the years you’ve had it instilled in you that safety is the most important thing, but safety is dull, uninspiring.’
‘And danger isn’t for me.’
‘Not danger, excitement.’
‘I’ve had danger,’ she said bitterly, without thinking, ‘I’ve had damned excitement, and it was an experience I won’t ever repeat!’
‘Ah.’ He sat down next to her on the bed, and eventually she said in a stiff little voice,
‘And what does ah mean?’
Looking at him wasn’t a good idea, she decided, so she didn’t. But she couldn’t avoid seeing his hands, lightly clasped on his lap, with their dark fine hair and their graceful, powerful lines.
Every nerve in her body felt stretched with unbearable tension.
‘That man…’
‘Yes,’ she said rapidly, ‘that man.’ Suddenly her legs wanted to move and she stood up, hugging her arms around her, and paced across to the window to look down. Outside was the harbour, a dark black mass at this time of night.
He was waiting for her to carry on, and she did, in a voice that barely rose above a whisper.
‘You were right when you said that I left my last job because of an affair.’ She glanced at him with wary, antagonistic eyes. ‘Yes, I had an affair with Ellis Fitzmerton. I must have been out of my mind. We had been working closely for some time and one thing just seemed to lead to another.’ She gave him a defiant look but he remained silent. ‘I had never before done anything like that; in fact I had never before been attracted to a man like that.’
‘A man like what?’
‘He was charming, self-confident.’ She hesitated and thought that there were other, more appropriate adjectives she could find now to apply to him, but at the time she had been dazzled by the superficial. She had spent a lifetime being reminded of her limitations and Ellis had reached out and offered another glimpse of herself. The glimpse he had offered had looked bright and clever and attractive and it was only when reality had taken over that she had had the painful duty of seeing herself for what she was.
‘Empty,’ Ross said with an edge of acid scorn in his voice, and her head snapped up to look at him.
‘Yes, empty! I can see that now, but I was vulnerable then.’
‘And you’re not now?’ he enquired softly.
‘I’m not stupid. I was burnt once. I don’t intend to stray close to the fire again.’
‘So you got engaged to the first man who represented the opposite of that disaster of a man you got involved with.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’ He stood up and walked towards her and she held her ground. ‘Admit it, you never loved Martin Redman. He was an alternative that presented itself when you needed it.’
‘He is a very nice man.’
That had a familiar ring to it, she knew that she had defended him before in those same words, but Ross was staring at her, his mouth set, forcing admissions on to her.
‘You can’t judge the rest of the human race from one bad experience,’ he said, and that made her smile wryly.
‘No? Is that an order?’ She looked right into his eyes and felt a stabbing shiver of forbidden desire. It was almost a pleasure to fight it back. ‘I may not be a mental giant, but I’m not dimwitted enough not to realise that only a fool goes through life lurching from one experience to another, without learning lessons along the way.’ She looked at him steadily and when she spoke there was a hardness in her voice, ‘In other words, Mr Anderson, you may be an attractive man, but I am not going to sleep with you. You are not about to become mistake number two on my list of regrettable incidents.’
‘You can’t let the past control you, Abby,’ he said softly, ‘and you can’t escape from feeling, however much you’d like to.’ He reached out with one hand and stroked her arm, then the curve of her neck, then the soft swell of her breast.
‘I think it would be better if you left now,’ she said quietly. It was a tremendous effort to get the words out because her throat seemed to have seized up, but he had to go. That was all there was to it.
‘Because you’re afraid of me?’
‘Because I’m afraid that, if you don’t, I shall be forced to hand in my resignation immediately.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Watch me.’
His hand dropped and he said with low emphasis, ‘I am not Ellis Fitzmerton.’
‘No you’re not,’ Abigail agreed, ‘you’re probably far more unscrupulous.’
His lips tightened and she felt a flare of sudden triumph. He was nothing like Ellis Fitzmerton, she knew. Ellis had been self-serving and, in the end, cruel. He had laughed at her and her silly delusions, and Ross would never do that, but in the end she still stood to be desperately hurt by him if she made the mistake of giving in to temptation.
Cards were on the table, and as far as she was concerned she didn’t want him around. He saw too much and she didn’t care for the way he could read her feelings. The last thing she wanted was for him to read the guilty craving in her, the awful part of her that kept telling her how much she would have enjoyed the brand of excitement that Ross Anderson had been willing to offer, never mind lessons from the past, never mind the tightlipped admonishments from her mother which had followed her through the years.
‘You use women,’ she said, relentlessly carrying on because it was better to be hung for a sheep than a lamb. ‘You might tell yourself that you play fair with them and that you’re both aware of what you’re doing, but in the end you use them. I don’t know if curiosity about me changed things between us, but whatever it was, I don’t intend to be used.’
The contours of his face hardened. ‘No, you don’t intend to be hurt, Abby, except that when you think about it there’s no sure guarantee that you won’t be, in whatever relationship you find yourself in. You might find yourself getting involved with a man who’s up for a damned sainthood, but that still doesn’t mean that you might not end up being hurt. Do you think that you can control your life to that extent?’ There was mockery in his voice and in his eyes.
‘I could try.’
‘And what kind of life would that be? You might just as well never leave your flat in case one day you get run over by a bus. Life’s a gamble.’
‘But there are some gambles I’m not prepared to take. You’re quite right, I might step out into the road one day and get run over by a bus, but on the other hand there’s more chance
of that happening if the road is teeming with buses and I’m crossing it blindfold.’
He shrugged coldly and she could tell that he wasn’t about to prolong the conversation. A vague expression of boredom smoothed over the taut lines of his face.
‘Fine. I get your point. We need to leave here by eight-thirty at the latest,’ he said, turning away. He walked across to the door, then said over his shoulder, ‘I’ll meet you at Reception promptly.’ Then he was gone, and the silence in the room echoed around her.
She removed her clothes, then had a shower. A long shower. She wanted to wash away all that shameful lust that had consumed her earlier. She would have washed away her thoughts if she could.
The temptation to hand in her notice the minute she got back to England was very strong indeed. He had been spot-on when he had told her that she was terrified of having to face him on a daily basis. He had also been spot-on when he had said that that was the coward’s way out. If she left the company, she would be running away, and in the end running away didn’t solve any thing. You could flee to the ends of the earth, but your thoughts and feelings went with you and you would never be able to shift them.
Also, she thought with brutal honesty, she would never find another job like the one she had. For a start, the financial package which she was on was superb. Ross Anderson paid well, well enough for his employees to be reluctant to leave, but, more than that, he had gradually allowed her to take more and more initiative in her job and where else would she be able to find employment as satisfying?
She climbed into bed, but it was hours before she managed to fall asleep, and she awoke the following morning heavy-eyed and still tired.
There was no time for breakfast, so she telephoned for coffee and fresh bread to be sent up to her room, and she ate on the move, packing and dressing in between mouthfuls of bread and coffee.
He was waiting for her in the foyer when she arrived, casually dressed in grey trousers, thick ivory-coloured jumper, and his black coat.
Immediately she felt her stomach begin to go into knots, but when she finally approached him he was polite and distant, ushering her out to the limousine which had been ordered by the hotel.
Nothing had happened. The night before had been relegated to history. This was what his attitude told her and in a way she was greatly relieved.
The flight over seemed to take far less time than the flight across, and he worked through much of it, dictating letters to her, which she scribbled down in her folder.
The deal which he had just accomplished was going to involve quite a few changes in England. People would have to be transferred, at least temporarily, to America. Confidential information was discussed and the wrenching anxiety which she had felt the evening before began to ease away.
They landed seven hours later to bitter cold. There had been a light fall of snow in their absence and most of it still clung to the roofs of houses and unused cars.
‘I suggest,’ he said, once they were in their taxi, ‘that you take the rest of the day off work, and probably tomorrow as well.’
‘I don’t feel tired,’ Abigail said promptly, and he gave her a wry look.
‘It’ll hit you, believe me.’
‘Will you be going in to the office?’ she asked with curiosity, and he nodded.
‘What about the letters?’
‘I’ll get Angie to do them.’
‘No.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I’ll come in this afternoon, type them up so that they’re ready to go in the evening post. I know they’re important’ She glanced at him and tried not to betray the shiver of awareness that rippled through her. ‘But,’ she said, hitting on an idea which had only just occurred to her out of the blue, ‘if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a few days off work. I’ve still got quite a bit of holiday quota left from last summer.’
He looked at her, then said without emphasis, ‘Of course. Where do you intend to go?’
Polite question, but she knew what he was thinking and he was right. She needed to get away, she needed somewhere isolated where she could think without the interruptions of her daily life.
‘Just to the Lake District. My friend’s parents have a little cottage up there and she’s always told me that I could use it any time I wanted, and I never have.’
Emily, in fact, another childhood friend with whom she had remained close over the years, despite the physical distance between them and the contrasting life-styles, had had the cottage in mind as some kind of lovers’ haven. She lived in Wales with her husband and three children and had spent years trying to convince her friend that marriage was the only desirable course in life. She, Abigail and Alice had been a close-knit threesome for as long as she could remember and Emily, by far the most matronly of the three, had always seen it as her mission in life to settle them down. It irritated Alice and amused Abigail.
‘I know the Lake District quite well,’ Ross said blandly; ‘my uncle has a house there. Whereabouts is your friend’s cottage?’
Abigail told him and he recognised the area instantly. He chatted to her about it, with one eye on the time, and Abigail half listened while she mentally pictured what his uncle’s house looked like. A stately mansion, no doubt, as far removed from her friend’s cottage as Windsor Castle was from her one-bedroomed apartment. That only reinforced her own stupidity in allowing him to get as close to her as he had the night before. They were from different worlds, they breathed different air. She slid her eyes along to his face and watched him through lowered eyelashes, watched the firm curve of his jaw, the sensual moulding of his mouth, the dark, mesmeric eyes. Was it any wonder that he had not expected her to pull back when he had begun his advance? He hadn’t known about Ellis then.
She thought of the feel of his body under her fingers and the sensation was so immediate that she had to look away from him hurriedly.
Yes, she thought, she really needed some time to think. She had already broken off her engagement, but that had only put a part of her life back into perspective. There was another bit which was still full of shadowy misgivings, and she needed space and isolation to deal with those.
The taxi dropped her off first at her flat, where she quickly showered and changed into some clean clothes, then headed off to the office. As Ross had said, tiredness and jet-lag began to creep in as soon as she set foot in her flat. By the time she made it to the office she couldn’t wait to type her letters and then hurry back home to sleep.
She had expected to find Ross there, but he didn’t appear and she jealously wondered whether he had been sidetracked by more exciting prospects, namely Fiona, who must have been waiting with bated breath for him to return from America.
She decided that she didn’t care one way or another, and concentrated on working as quickly and efficiently as she could.
As soon as the batch of letters were in their envelopes, she grabbed her coat and headed for the lift. She had taken a taxi to the office because she had been in a hurry to get there, but she caught her usual bus back to her flat and arrived exhausted forty-five minutes later. The traffic had been slow to stop much of the way, and the weather outside was becoming colder if anything. People flew over the pavements, clutching their coats to stop them from billowing in the wind, their faces, illuminated by the street-lights, pinched and tight lipped.
The first person she called, as soon as she got into the apartment and had divested herself of her coat, was Emily, who happily agreed to lend her the cottage, giving her careful instructions as to where to find the key, which was under a mat in the log shed at the back, and which had always been kept there because of unexpected visitors. In return, she indulged in fifteen minutes of gleeful curiosity, only cutting it short when two of the three children became too unruly to be ignored.
‘Are you sure that married life with children is as tempting as you’ve always led me to believe?’ Abigail teased. ‘It just sounds very noisy to me.’
‘Give it time,’ Emily promised darkly. ‘Yo
u too will join the ranks of the blissful when you finally tie the knot.’ As yet she didn’t know that Martin was no longer in the picture, and Abigail omitted to mention it because she knew that that would have led to at least another twenty minutes of remonstration and sympathy, genuine enough, never mind the decibels of the screaming children.
The second call she made was to Martin. She didn’t know why but it was almost as though she needed to hear his unthreatening voice to shift her thoughts back into focus. Besides, she had promised to phone him on her return; he had reminded her that they were, after all, still friends.
When he finally answered the telephone he sounded cheery and vaguely guilty, and it was only when she questioned him that he let slip, bit by gradual bit, that actually he had been seeing something of Alice in her absence.
Well, he protested when she greeted this piece of reluctantly volunteered information with surprise, she had been the one to break off their engagement, hadn’t she? And Alice had been very sympathetic. And she had more or less made it perfectly clear to him that there was no point in pursuing their relationship. Her attitude had been, as far as he could read it, that he suddenly wasn’t quite good enough for her.
He hadn’t given her a chance to dispute any of these points, which he enumerated as though he had rehearsed them in advance. By the end of his monologue, the sheepishness had more or less vanished, replaced by accusation. I’m seeing Alice, his tone implied, and basically this is all your fault.
You’re a free man, she told him, you can do as you please, and there’s no need to find excuses, but by the end of the conversation she was feeling foolishly upset.
They said that women were unpredictable, but men were not nearly the straightforward creatures that women were led to assume. Martin had found solace with someone else with a rapidity that left her breathless, and Alice, in all honesty, was far more his cup of tea than she, Abigail, was. But he could hardly have been deeply in love with her if he had replaced her in a matter of days, could he?
Beyond All Reason Page 10