by Penny Jordan
‘Do you know what what you’ve just said has done to me? Do you know how it makes me feel to hear you saying something like that? Do you know how much I’m aching for you right now…how easily I could push you up against this door and…?’
The small shocked sound she made stopped him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised, shaking his head. ‘It’s just…Well, last night I felt that I was the one doing all the wanting, all the feeling, all the needing. You seemed to have put up a barrier against me which I just couldn’t get through.’
‘I was afraid,’ Christa admitted. She had started to tremble so much that it was impossible for Daniel not to know…not the way he was holding her.
‘Oh, God,’ he groaned. ‘If you and I were alone right now…Perhaps it’s just as well we aren’t,’ he added rawly as he looked at her mouth and then into her eyes. ‘They serve a pretty good lunch at the Bell. Why don’t I take you there and then you can order lunch for both of us while I go and do some shopping?’
Christa couldn’t help it. Despite the fact that she was an adult woman who was well travelled and reasonably sophisticated, reasonably mature, she could feel her whole body flushing.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her gently. ‘Cold feet…?’
When she shook her head, his expression relaxed slightly.
‘Good, then I shan’t need to add bedsocks to my shopping-list, shall I?’ he teased her before brushing his mouth lightly over hers and stepping back from her.
* * *
‘I’ve ordered the beef in cider for both of us. Is that OK?’
‘Fine,’ Daniel confirmed as he joined Christa at the table where she had been waiting for him. He had been gone rather longer than she had expected.
‘Not going to ask me what I bought?’ he asked wickedly as he sat down.
Again Christa blushed.
‘I love it when you do that,’ he told her. ‘The greengrocer was out of cucumber, by the way…’
‘Stop it,’ Christa commanded, almost choking on the sip of water she had taken to cool her overheated skin.
It was all so new to her, this gentle teasing, this intimacy…this loving; but she could very, very quickly grow addicted to it. Addicted to him, she acknowledged, as Daniel’s hand reached for hers under the table.
‘Mmm…this is good,’ she commented when their food had been served.
‘Not bad,’ Daniel agreed, ‘but wait until you taste…’
He stopped and watched in fascination as Christa’s face suddenly turned a pretty shade of soft coral.
‘Now what,’ he asked her huskily wonder, calson that.
Christa shook her head, letting her hair slide forward to conceal her flushed face from him. She had no intention of telling him. At least not at this stage in their relationship.
Her thoughts, the images his words had conjured, the desire to slowly feast herself on the banquet of his naked body, were far too personal and far too betraying for that.
‘I didn’t realise you could cook,’ she said jerkily instead.
‘Only the basics,’ Daniel admitted ruefully. His eyes suddenly clouded. ‘And most of those are self-taught. After my father’s death…well, my mother lost interest in normal day-to-day life. Without my father there, she seemed to lose all motivation. He was very much the centre of her life and…’
‘I think most women feel like that about the men they love,’ Christa suggested gently. What was it about loving someone that made you want to protect them from even the smallest pain?
Loving someone. The words still frightened her a little and she pushed them quickly away, not wanting to dwell on what they meant.
‘Do they?’ Daniel shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Modern women have learned to be very wary of that kind of emotional dependency, to scorn it almost.’
‘If we don’t trust men enough to allow ourselves to be so vulnerable, perhaps that’s because we’ve too often seen, too often experienced, men’s betrayal of us…’
‘That works both ways, you know,’ Daniel told her, ‘and in the end it all comes down to the same thingtrust, and whether you stand in line with those who give it freely or those who believe it has to be earned.’
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Christa begged him. The seriousness of their conversation was beginning to cloud her earlier euphoric mood. There were still vast areas of such thin ice in her newly forming relationship with Daniel which she didn’t trust to bear the weight of too much intense scrutiny. Much better to skate lightly over them for now. She didn’t want to dissipate the sharp sense of anticipatory excitement and desire she had felt earlier; she didn’t want to risk spoiling things with too many questions. She had made her decision and now she wanted…
She wanted Daniel, she acknowledged shakily as she glanced quickly at him. She wanted him so much that she could feel the ache of her need pulsing fiercely within her body. She didn’t want to analyse the question, to wait for her doubts to return.
Totally unexpectedly, her eyes suddenly filmed with emotional tears. She put down her fork, unable to eat.
‘Christa, what is it?’ Daniel asked in concern. ‘Is it your food—is——?’
‘No,’ she told him huskily as she shook her head. It’s not the food…it’s you, she could have said, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do so. However, something in her expression must have given her away anyway, because when she added whisperingly, ‘Would you mind…? Could we…could we go…?’ the look Daniel gave her as he pushed his chair back and came over to her made her face burn with hot colour and her body start to shake all over.
He knew…Somehow, he knew what she was thinking…feeling.
Outside the pub she breathed in great lungfuls of the clean, cold air, trying to calm herself down. She was totally out of control, she recognised dizzily, her body, her emotions, even her thoughts no longer exclusively her own. Daniel dominated them.
He was standing next to her, watching her, his own expression sombre, but his eyes…His eyes…She closed her own, torn between shock and excitement at the message she could read in them.
Was her hunger for him as nakedly obvious in her eyes as his was for her?
The shock of recognising the intensity of his hunger-especially in a man who had previously seemed so laidback and in control—kept her silent as they walked back to the car. As he unlocked the passenger door of the Land Rover for her, Daniel moved forward to help her into it and then stopped.
‘I can’t,’ he told her huskily. ‘If I touch you now…’
Christa had no need to ask what he meant. She already knew. She felt the same way herself, as dangerously overcombustible as brittle, dried timber, knowing that all it would take to send her up in flames was the smallest spark.
Neither of them made any attempt at conversation on the drive back to the farm. The sun was already dropping quickly towards the horizon, the sharp clearness of the sky throwing the mountains into dark, brooding relief.
It seemed impossible to believe that tomorrow she would be walking them.
Tomorrow—her heartbeat quickened. Between now and tomorrow, the present and the future, lay…tonight.
She felt more nervous, more on edge, more…more virginal than she had done when she had actually been a virgin. Her muscles tensed as Daniel drove into the farmyard and stopped the Land Rover.
When he had switched off the ignition, instead of getting out he turned towards her.
‘It isn’t too late. If you want to change your mind,’ he told her quietly. ‘Not now…not ever,’ he reiterated firmly.
Christa knew what he was saying to her. Emotional tears filled her eyes.
‘I haven’t…I don’t want to change my mind,’ she assured him.
It was true, but it didn’t stop her from feeling slightly afraid. Not of Daniel, but of herself, her desire, her need…her love.
While Christa collected her own shopping from the back of the Land Rover, Daniel picked up a large box of g
roceries he had presumably bought while she was waiting for him. Her heart suddenly started to thump very heavily and very unevenly as she remembered the look he had given her when he said he had some shopping to do.
The icy chill in the wind as they crossed the yard made her shiver, and she was glad of the warmth of the kitchen as Daniel opened the door into it.
‘I’ll just go and take this stuff up to my room,’ she began, awkwardly, as Daniel put the groceries down on the kitchen table.
‘No, not yet,’ he told her quietly, taking her parcels from her and putting them down before turning back to her.
For a moment, his calm deliberateness confused her, but then he took a step towards her and opened his arms.
‘Come here,’ he demanded softly.
Her mouth had gone dry and her heart was somersaulting wildly.
Shakily she moved towards him, shivering with pleasure as she felt his arms close round her. As he bent his head to kiss her she could feel the fierce thud of his heartbeat. His mouth brushed hers, a fine tremor running through his body as he paused and then reluctantly lifted his mouth from hers.
‘It’s no good. I can’t…I daren’t,’ he told her with a groan. ‘I want to do this properly for you, Christa…I want to make it good for you…More than good,’ he told her thickly.
‘It will be,’ Christa assured him, her own apprehension soothed by his male vulnerability. It made her want to reach out to him, to hold him, to tell him that she already knew that what they were going to share together would be so special that it would change the whole focus of her life. A small smile curled her mouth. He had told her before she came here that that was what he would do, but neither of them had guessed then that it would be in this particular way.
‘Come and sit down,’ Daniel told her, pushing her gently towards one of the chairs. ‘I’m going to make us both a very special meal and then…’
‘A meal?’ Christa laughed. ‘But we’ve only just had lunch…’
‘A lunch which you didn’t eat,’ Daniel reminded her. ‘Besides, isn’t that what every woman wants: to be wined and dined before…?’
‘She’s seduced?’ Christa suggested wickedly. She was feeling more confident now—now with her awareness of his own vulnerability. ‘Is that what you’re planning to do, Daniel—seduce me?’
She was laughing as she said it, but the laughter died from her eyes as Daniel turned round to look at her, a sharp shock of excitement burning through her veins.
‘I don’t need wining or dining, Daniel,’ Christa told him tremulously. ‘Or seducing. All I need…and all I want is you.’
She could feel her throat starting to close up with emotion as she spoke. Did he know how out of character it was for her to express her feelings so openly? Normally she was far more guarded, far more self-protective, but the way she felt about him, the way she wanted him, overwhelmed her with its intensity.
He was already coming back towards her. She stood up shakily, holding on to the back of the chair for support, her gaze fixed on Daniel’s face, her heart pounding.
‘Christa, Christa…’ She trembled violently as he groaned her name between hungry kisses. He was holding her so tightly that she suspected she would be slightly bruised, but she didn’t care. She wanted him to hold her like that. To want her like that, with the same wild intensity that she wanted him.
He was kissing her as though he couldn’t get enough of her, his hands shaping her body, moulding it against his own.
‘Oh, God, I want you…I want you, Christa, I want you so much…’
His hands were on her hips. She could feel the hardness of his body as intimately as she could feel the eager swell of her own breasts, the sharp, intense ache low down in the pit of her stomach, the…
She could hear a noise somewhere outside the building. It sounded like…She tensed in shocked disbelief as she heard the sound of a car engine.
Daniel had obviously heard it too, because he was already releasing her, stepping back from her, his forehead drawn into a frown.
Through the kitchen window Christa could see a Land Rover nearly as battered as Daniel’s own. Its driver brought it to an abrupt, untidy halt, switching off the engine and then jumping out.
Christa recognised him immediately. It was the same man she had seen with Daniel that first evening outside the hotel.
Christa watched as he stumbled towards the door and banged urgently on it.
‘I’ll go…’ she began, but Daniel shook his head.
‘No, don’t…Stay here,’ he told her as he went to open the door.
Daniel’s visitor looked and smelled as though he had been drinking heavily, Christa recognised in distaste as the man stumbled into the kitchen, lurching from the door towards the table and leaning heavily on it as he stared frowningly at Christa, focusing on her face with evident difficulty.
That he hadn’t recognised her was obvious and Christa stiffened beneath the leering look he was giving her.
‘So you’re Daniel’s latest, are you?’ he commented drunkenly. ‘Always manages to get the pick of the bunch, does our Daniel. Perhaps I ought to trade places with you,’ he told Daniel, turning away from Christa. ‘Earn myself some nice fat fees and plenty of eager bedmates into the bargain. You’ve really got a set-up here, Daniel, my friend. As much sex as you want, when you want, and you’re getting paid into the bargain…God, it’s got to be an improvement on what I’m getting. No sex, and an ex-wife who’s doing her damnedest to screw me into the ground financially. Do you know what that bitch has done now? She’s claiming that I’ve deliberately let the farm get run-down and she says that she’s going to claim for fifty per cent of what it was worth. That was ten years ago, for God’s sake. Things were different then. I got more in subsidies then than I can earn from every damn thing put together now—a hell of a lot more. She’s trying to bankrupt me, the bitch. That’s what she’s trying to do…’ He stopped speaking and turned round to peer blearily at Christa.
‘What happened to that redhead you had here? She looked a real hot number…Mind you, I thought that about Alison once. She was all over me when we first met. God, she certainly had me fooled.
‘You’ve certainly got the right idea, Daniel. Keep it short and sweet and very, very temporary…Once they get their claws into you…They threw me out of the pub, do you know that? Said I’d had too much to drink. Liars…Anyway, I thought I’d drive over here and have a drink with you. You’ve always been a good friend to me, Daniel…Had some rare old times together, haven’t we?’
He swayed dangerously from side to side as he let go of the table and lurched across the room to where Daniel was standing.
Christa watched him with a mixture of shock and distaste, distaste for his drunken, out-of-control state, and shock because of his drunken revelations about Daniel.
Tears burned the backs of her eyes, hot and destructive as raw acid, but their pain was nothing to the pain she could feel in her heart.
It was no solace to know that she had learned the truth just in time to stop her from committing the ultimate folly, a folly which, by the sounds of it, countless numbers of other women must obviously have committed before her.
Her stomach churned nauseously as she remembered all the lies Daniel had told her, and she had been fool enough to believe him. She of all people…After all she had learned, or should have learned, from Laura’s relationship with Piers.
That kind of man always ran true to type, she told herself savagely. There were no exceptions.
‘I don’t want to go home, dammit,’ she heard the other man swearing angrily. ‘Damn place isn’t home any more…Not since that bitch left and took half the furniture with her. I want a drink…’
He was lurching towards the inner doorway, but Daniel caught hold of him and propelled him firmly towards the back door.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ he told Christa. ‘But it looks as though our plans will have to be put on hold—temporarily…very temporarily,’
he added meaningfully.
Oh, my God, how could he be so arrogantly blasé…? Didn’t he realise that this friend had given the game away completely? He must have heard what the other man had been saying—or did he believe that she was so deeply in love with him, so desperately, physically in need of him that she would just simply ignore what she had heard?
The nauseous feeling within her stomach increased. She wanted to scream and rage at him, to cry out her pain and anguish, but pride kept her silent.
‘Come on, Dai,’ Daniel was saying. ‘I’m going to drive you home…’
‘Don’t want to go home,’ the other man was repeating, but Daniel was already opening the back door and almost physically manhandling him out into the yard.
Christa waited stiff and motionless until she heard the Land Rover’s engine start. Even when the headlights had circled the yard then disappeared as Daniel drove away, she still didn’t move.
She now knew what it meant when someone said they had been turned to stone…No, not stone, icy cold marble, her whole body heavy and old, a terrible weight that burdened and overwhelmed her—like her pain and grief.
Why, oh, why hadn’t she listened to her logic…to her instincts? Why had she so stupidly given in to her emotions? The same emotions which cried out to her now to leave before they had to suffer any more pain.
Her emotions—she had made the mistake of listening to them once; she wasn’t going to do so again, and besides, her pride wouldn’t allow her to go. Not now.
‘You wouldn’t believe how long I’ve been celibate,’ he had told her, and she, like a fool, had believed him-because she’d wanted to believe him. Now his words, like her love, tasted sour and bitter.
How he must have been laughing at her, mocking her. She should have known, she derided herself angrily.
And he hadn’t even had the grace to look ashamed or embarrassed when his drunken friend had revealed the truth.
How long would he be gone? she wondered miserably as she glanced at the clock. Not that she cared, of course, she assured herself hastily. As far as she was concerned it would be a good thing if he never came back.