by Penny Jordan
She wanted him to kiss her, ached for him to do so, and yet was terrified that if he did…once he did, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from begging him to make love to her.
When he released her she felt bereft…empty and aching inside.
‘If I don’t stop now, I won’t be able to.’
The words reached her from a distance and she clung to them, trying to remind herself that this was real…that Joss was real. She lifted her head and looked at him, aching to ask him why he was doing this to her, and yet unable to do so. Not really wanting to hear the answer, for there could be so many complex reasons…none of them having anything to do with love.
‘I think I’d better wait out here for you,’ he told her grimly. ‘It will be safer—for both of us.’
* * *
They stopped for lunch, just north of the Cotswolds, in a small, sleepy village of ancient stone houses, and it was just gone seven o’clock when Joss told Kate that they were approaching the outskirts of his home.
‘The village is only small, and thankfully too far from London for commuters. I only found it by chance. The house is tucked away down a lane behind the church. It was the original rectory. The Victorians built a new one.’
The lane was overgrown with summer hedgerows and wild flowers. Kate wound down the car window to breathe in the rich smell of growing things. A couple of rabbits were playing on the rutted road ahead of them, quickly disappearing when they heard the car.
‘Once I move here permanently I think I’ll get a dog,’ Joss told her, as they reached the end of the lane and he turned in through an open gateway without any gates. ‘You like dogs, don’t you, Kate?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, adding drily, ‘and so does Sophy.’
He shot her an enigmatic look. ‘Here we are,’ he announced.
The house was older and larger than she had imagined, set in a garden so wild and overgrown it was impossible to imagine what it had once been.
‘It was empty for a couple of years before I bought it. Come on. It’s a bit better inside than it looks.’
It was. Inside the Elizabethan faâde, work had already started on repairs and renovations.
‘I had all the plumbing and wiring stripped out and replaced,’ Joss told her, as they walked into a panelled hallway, ‘and the bathrooms and kitchen gutted and replaced—but that’s about as far as I’ve got. One of the sitting-rooms is fairly habitable. I’ll show you.’
It was, just, Kate agreed, grimacing at the dull parquet floor and uninspired décor, and yet it had the potential to be a lovely room. It overlooked a walled garden to the side of the house, which was just as wild as the main one, and even now in the early evening the garden was bathed in warmth and sunlight.
‘How many rooms are there?’ Kate asked curiously.
‘Seven bedrooms, four bathrooms; and downstairs, a drawing-room, dining-room, study, this room and a large kitchen. I’ll show you round in a second. I’d better just check the answering machine first, if you don’t mind.’
‘Perhaps I could make us a drink,’ Kate suggested, not wanting to be in the way.
‘Mm. You’ll find everything in the kitchen. Just help yourself.’
The kitchen had been fitted with natural oak units; a gleaming scarlet Aga stood in an alcove against soft reddish-pink bricks. The floor had been covered in muted terracotta tiles, and Kate fell in love with it instantly. She deliberately took her time, carrying through a tray of tea only when she judged that Joss had had sufficient time to play back his messages.
When she went into the sitting-room he was standing with his back to the window, frowning as he drummed his fingers against the back of a chair.
‘Something wrong?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Sophy and John won’t be able to make it.’
He saw her expression and said quickly, ‘No, nothing like that. They’re both fine, but John’s boss has asked them to help him entertain some American clients tomorrow evening.’ He spread his hands. ‘Naturally there was no way they could get out of it. He tried to reach me at the office, but I’d already left to pick you up.’
Kate’s body slumped at the thought of the long drive back. Summoning a bright smile, she said, ‘It’s just as well I haven’t unpacked isn’t it? I suppose if we don’t stop to eat, I could be back…’
‘Potentially,’ Joss agreed drily, and then added, ‘But it isn’t essential that you get back tonight, is it?’ He flexed his shoulders as he spoke, as though they ached from driving.
She was being selfish, Kate recognised. Another long drive was probably the last thing Joss felt like.
‘No, not really,’ she agreed.
‘Then let’s sit down and drink this tea and plan how we’re going to spend the weekend,’ Joss suggested easily.
‘The weekend? But Joss, I can’t stay here now.’
‘Why not?’
She looked at him, nonplussed.
‘Well…no reason…but you can’t want me to. I mean, the whole idea of my being here was because Sophy and John were going to be here.’
‘And now they’re not going to be here, but you are.’ He gave her a thoughtful look and then said, straight-faced, ‘We could always make a start on the garden. With your expertise with a mower…’
Kate laughed.
‘A mower? What you need is a combine harvester,’ she mocked. ‘How on earth did the garden get in such a state?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Joss told her drolly. ‘I think it’s something called Nature. I’ve got a firm coming in in the autumn to start clearing it.’
‘It’s a wonderful project,’ Kate murmured half wistfully. ‘What will you do? Restore it to its original Tudor design?’
‘I’d like to…perhaps you could help me. Gardening isn’t my forte.’
Flattered and pleased, Kate made a non-committal response. She mustn’t allow herself to get too involved…too close.
Joss glanced at his watch.
‘I’ve booked a table for us at a restaurant a couple of miles away. I said we’d be there about half-past eight.’
‘We could have eaten here,’ Kate protested.
‘Not unless all we have to eat is cold meat and salad,’ Joss told her forthrightly. ‘I’m too tired to start cooking, and I’m damn sure you feel the same way.’
She did, but she was surprised that he should have realised it and made provision for it. She wasn’t used to people doing things for her…considering her…caring for her, she recognised on a wistful pang of envy for the woman who might one day share Joss’s life. He combined the best of both worlds: he had strength without force; tenderness without weakness; maleness without aggression.
‘I’ll get my case in from the car and get changed.’
‘I’ll bring it in for you,’ he told her, pausing as he got up to add softly, ‘If you’ve got anything silky with you, Kate, wear it for me, will you?’
Silky…the only thing she had that fitted that description was a cream silk shirt. And wear it for him. A tiny shiver convulsed her. Why?
* * *
It didn’t take her long to change and she did wear the silk shirt, despite the fact that half of her hadn’t really wanted to do.
Joss was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up as she walked towards him and a delicious tingle of pleasure raced through her as he watched her.
‘Nice,’ he told her as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and his hand brushed lightly against her breast, so lightly that she might almost have imagined it.
‘But it would be even nicer if you weren’t wearing this,’ he added as his fingertip traced the strap of her bra. ‘Take it off, Kate.’
Take it off? She stared at him.
‘I can’t…’ she told him quickly. ‘I can’t go out like that.’
‘Yes, you can,’ he argued, and before she could stop him his fingers were deftly unfastening the buttons of her shirt and reaching behind her for the snap fastening o
f her bra.
Another moment and she’d be as exposed to him as she had been this afternoon, she realised, panicking, pushing him away quickly, saying huskily, ‘All right, all right. But I’ll do it myself…’
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to help?’ he teased as he stepped back from her, and as she escaped to her room to remove the scrap of underwear and hurriedly refasten her shirt Kate wondered what on earth was happening to her. This was so at odds with her normal staid, cautious approach to life. She stopped and frowned wistfully, wondering if over the years she had become so terrified of stepping out of the mould she had made for herself that she had forgotten the value of occasionally living spontaneously, and perhaps even a little dangerously.
Well, if so, she was certainly doing so, she acknowledged wryly as she gave herself a last half-worried look at her reflection.
It was true that her silk shirt was tailored and modest enough to prevent the casual observer being aware that she wore nothing beneath it, but Joss wasn’t a casual observer. And why had he made such an extraordinary request in the first place?
She paused, torn between an eager longing to walk through the door he seemed to be holding open for her, inviting her into a new and unfamiliar world, and an urge to firmly turn her back on that invitation.
It was impossible to pretend to herself any longer. Joss quite plainly wanted them to become lovers, but why, and for how long?
She suspected she knew the truth, and while had the circumstances been different, had she not still loved him, she could have merely basked in the flattery of knowing that he desired her…could even perhaps have quite easily and pleasurably made love with him in the knowledge that in doing so she was taking a light-hearted journey into nostalgia, knowing that she did love him made it impossible for her to respond to his flattery without risking betraying how she felt.
As for how long his desire might last… She was pretty sure that, like his nostalgia, it would disappear once she became a concrete reality in his life.
As she hesitated in the large, rather bare bedroom Joss had given her, she knew she had two choices in front of her. The most sensible thing she could do now was to tell Joss firmly and calmly that he was wasting his time and that she had no intention of allowing them to become lovers. For her own self-protection that was her safest course, but when she heard him demand from the bottom of the stairs, ‘Kate? Is anything wrong?’ she knew that she wasn’t going to be wise or sensible.
CHAPTER TEN
‘MM…that was heaven,’ Kate said appreciatively as she scooped up the last mouthful of soufflé.
The restaurant had provided them with a meal that made her glad that Joss had insisted on them eating out. Mouthwateringly luscious melon filled with crushed, flavoured crystals of ice; salmon in the lightest, most tempting of delicately flavoured sauces; tiny new potatoes, and vegetables which her palate recognised as locally grown, followed by the most delicious soufflé.
‘You always did have a sweet tooth,’ Joss said drily. He had opted for cheese and biscuits.
Defensively Kate pushed aside her empty dish and said crossly, ‘Yes, I know at my age I ought to have developed more sophisticated tastes, but I—’
The hand that reached across the table to grip her own made her tense with surprise. Joss shook her wrist reprovingly.
‘Kate, I am tired of hearing you mentioning your age. You are a very beautiful and desirable woman, who in my eyes at least has reached the perfect age.’
Flushing a little, Kate pulled her hand away. All through the meal their conversation had been general and absorbing, but without any hint of sexual innuendo, and she had allowed her defences to fall.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Joss said flatly, watching the shadows cross her face.
‘It’s only natural that a man should be more attracted to a girl in her twenties than a woman in…’
‘Her mid-thirties. Ridiculous,’ Joss told her roundly. ‘Sure there are men…men of my own age and older, who because of their own insecurities and immaturity feel the need to boost their own egos by becoming some kind of Svengali-cum-father-figure to a much younger woman, but I’d feel insulted to be classed with them, Kate. I consider myself far too well-adjusted to need that kind of bolster. The plain fact is that youth, while attractive in its own way, is often shallow and self-centred…which is as it should be. Every age has its own gifts, and to imply that I, at damn near forty-three, would prefer the company of the girl you were to the woman you are is as ridiculous as suggesting that you would find the company of the boy I was at twenty-one more stimulating than the man I am…or perhaps you would?’
Kate shook her head immediately, flushing.
‘Exactly,’ Joss told her wryly.
There was a small silence, while Kate hunted desperately for something to say.
‘Sophy told me that Lucille isn’t working for you any longer,’ she said at last.
Joss frowned. ‘No, that’s right.’ He lifted his head and looked directly at her. ‘I thought it best in the circumstances, for her sake. While we had an excellent business relationship, I became aware recently that she felt a certain degree of…personal attachment to me, which, since I could not return it, meant that for her own sake it was best that she left my employ.’
As she listened to him, Kate shivered a little. This was the other side of him, logical and ruthless almost. When he no longer desired her, was that how he would dismiss her from his life?
‘We were never lovers, Kate.’ He said it calmly, almost so quietly that she didn’t hear him.
‘You’ve said that before.’
‘And you don’t believe me.’
‘I do believe you, but I’m not really sure why you felt it necessary to tell me,’ she said incautiously.
There, it was out in the open between them. She had learned over the years not to avoid facing difficult or intimidating situations. Joss had made it clear that he desired her; now she was giving him the opportunity to quantify that desire, to tell her openly that he wanted them to be lovers.
He gave her a lightning, almost surprised glance, and then said quietly, ‘Kind Kate. And that’s another way in which we’ve changed. Then there was no need for explanations or reasons.’ He reached out across the table and took her left hand in his. ‘Then it was simply enough to look and touch and know…’ There was a brief, tense silence and then he said huskily, ‘Kate, I’d like you to marry me.’
It was the last thing she’d been expecting. Her mouth fell open and she gaped at him.
As he perceived her shock, he frowned. ‘I’m sorry…but I thought you’d guessed.’
‘I thought you wanted us to be lovers,’ Kate told him, too stunned to prevaricate. ‘I thought perhaps you were caught up in nostalgia for the past and that…’
‘I wanted to relive what we once shared.’ The smile he gave her was faintly acid. ‘You obviously don’t have a very high opinion of my intelligence. I’m a very successful, very lonely man, Kate. You are the mother of my only child. These past few weeks have shown us both, I think, that we get on well together. I think that between us we could build a very worthwhile and sustaining relationship, one that will bring us both pleasure and contentment and one that will last for the rest of our lives.’
‘“Grow old along with me!”’ Kate quoted wryly. How idiotically wrong she had been. It wasn’t as a desirable woman that he saw her at all, but rather as an insurance policy for their mutual old age.
It was idiotic to feel rebuffed and hurt that, instead of wanting her as his lover, he wanted her as his wife.
‘As I remember it, that quotation goes on, “The best is yet to be,”’ Joss reminded her, equally drily. ‘I think that’s how it could be for us, Kate. I think we could live here, you and I, and find joy and companionship in doing so. After all, we already have one very good reason for doing so. We have our daughter.’
‘Sophy is grown up, married with a life of her own,’ Kate protested, whi
le inside her heart bled a little that in all the sensible, admirable reasons he had given for their marriage he had never once mentioned the word love.
‘Think about it, Kate,’ he urged her. ‘I know I’ve rather sprung it on you, but to be honest I’ve been thinking about it since that weekend when I came to see you and I realised the truth…’
‘I thought you said that you didn’t want to marry again. That after your divorce…’
‘I think I said I didn’t want to make another mistake. Marrying you wouldn’t be a mistake. I’d give you a totally free hand with the garden,’ he tempted teasingly, ‘and a new lawnmower…’
It was hard not to smile.
‘I have a home…a career…’
‘Yes, I know. I realise how much you’d be giving up, don’t think I don’t.’
She knew already what her answer was going to be. She couldn’t marry him. No matter how eminently sensible and practical a course it might seem, she just could not do it. Better never to see him at all than to have the constant unremitting torment of living side by side with him in the calm, emotionless kind of relationship he had just described. Side by side…two people in reality going their separate ways through life…two people who merely appeared to be unified, but who in reality were not.
Before she could weaken she said quickly, ‘No, I’m sorry, Joss. I can’t marry you.’
She forced herself to look directly at him as she gave him her refusal.
The dimly lit room threw shadows across his face, but to her surprise she thought she saw a momentary bitter pain darkening his eyes.
Pain was the last thing she wanted to cause him, but even as she reached out to touch him he said crisply, ‘Perhaps you’re right.’
And she withdrew her hand, saying shakily, ‘Without love, a marriage is just an empty shell.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed grimly, and Kate sighed, wondering if her unwise heart had actually hoped that he would deny her assertion and claim that he did love her. But why should he? They were not teenagers any more, and a good many women of her age would have jumped at the kind of relationship he was proposing. Why did she have to cling to such ridiculous teenage ideals of loving and being loved? Love could die; respect, companionship…these were much more enduring foundations on which to build a relationship. But she was greedy, she acknowledged helplessly; she wanted those and she wanted love as well.