by Penny Jordan
* * *
Linda had been right when she described her car as ‘ancient’, Sarah reflected, as the small vehicle ploughed through the dust of the main road, but at least with such a variety of odd sounds and rattles to choose from, she wasn’t going to worry about a particular one.
It took longer to reach the small town she had passed through with Dale than she expected, but then she had been travelling in the luxury of Dale’s expensive sports car. A small smile tugged at her lips. Dale had always had a little-boy need for the trappings of fame; unlike Ben who she remembered had driven an ordinary saloon car when they were filming Shakespeare, although she had to admit the BMW he had been driving the previous evening had been considerably more luxurious.
CHAPTER FIVE
PARKING her car under the shade of one of the trees in the town’s small, dusty square, Sarah climbed out and looked uncertainly around her. The square was empty and quiet—too quiet, she realised, noticing the shuttered and silent appearance of the buildings bordering it, and then it struck her! She was in Spain, not England, and it was siesta time! The headache which had been plaguing her all morning returned, the agonising throbbing in her temples increasing as she tried to think. It was barely gone lunchtime, which meant that it could be several hours before the shops reopened. What should she do? She couldn’t even see a café where she could sit and wait. This was no holiday town geared to the odd ways of turistas, she probably wouldn’t even be able to find a hat when the shops did open, she reflected forlornly, wishing she had given a little more thought to her mission before setting out. There wasn’t even a chemist’s shop open where she might have been able to buy something to relieve her headache and nausea.
She shivered suddenly. How silent the square was, the air oppressive, the sultry glare of the sun almost menacing. As she glanced at the horizon she saw the thick pall of cloud, presaging the storm Ben had mentioned. She had no alternative but to return to the site. At least if there was a storm, she comforted herself, it would negate the risk of her suffering from fresh sunstroke. She recollected that there had been a shop selling sunhats at the airport, and if the worst came to the worst she could always go there tomorrow; she wasn’t needed for filming for another day. Trying to uplift her depressed spirits by this reasoning, she headed back to the car. Nothing seemed to have gone right since she arrived in Spain, and she had been so looking forward to it; so excited when she saw Dale waiting for her outside the airport building. Dale… she bit her lip as she got into the car. How sweet and understanding he was! Never once had he taken her to task for lying to him about her divorce. She frowned a little, wondering why he had not mentioned it, especially as he must have found it embarrassing to learn the truth from Ben rather than from her. How Ben must have gloated to be able to throw that ‘ex-wife’ back in his face! She frowned, her hands stilling, the scene coming unbidden to the surface of her mind in a series of sharply clear pictures. Dale, tossing the casual words at Ben. Ben, grim-faced, relentless, Dale, smiling mockingly, Dale… gloating?
Sarah shied away from the image. How ridiculous she was being! Dale had had nothing to gloat about, the words had simply slipped from his tongue accidentally; meant at worst as a lightly teasing comment. She was letting her foolish love for Ben play on her imagination, she thought shakily as she started the car. Dale was the one who had protected her from Ben’s treachery, upholding her pride…
She realised as she drove out of the square that the sun had stopped shining and that the clouds no longer lay massed along the horizon, but instead were threateningly overhead, heavy and ominous. If anything the heat seemed to have increased; not a pleasant heat, but a damply oppressive one, her hands sticky where they clung to the steering-wheel, perspiration beading her temples, her head swimming with pain and nausea.
She heard the thunder as she left the town, the muted rumble in the distance making her automatically increase her speed. She was not particularly frightened of thunderstorms, but this one promised to be extraordinarily spectacular and the effects of the compressed electric energy were making themselves felt on her body. Her skin seemed to burn one minute and then turn to ice the next, her head throbbing agonisingly as she tried to concentrate on her driving. She had only gone half a dozen miles when she felt the small car begin to lose acceleration. Thinking that the loss of power was her own fault, she pressed instinctively on the accelerator, realising with apprehension that the car wasn’t responding.
She knew next to nothing about the mechanics of engines, and when the Mini finally coughed to a standstill, for several seconds she could do nothing but sit still in stunned disbelief. What on earth was she going to do? The most sensible course of action open to her was to return to the town. She couldn’t remember seeing a garage, but surely there must be one? And a telephone. She would have to phone the site to let them know what had happened to her, although she doubted that she would be missed until Ben returned to the trailer in the evening. But getting back to the town meant a walk of six miles. It was a daunting thought, especially as the first large drops of rain were already beginning to fall, darkening the road surface, and splattering noisily on the car’s metal roof.
Perhaps if she simply sat where she was? But she couldn’t help remembering that she had seen no traffic on the road during her outward journey. As she had realised when she was in the town, it was siesta-time, and besides, she wasn’t altogether sure it would be wise to simply hang around waiting for some knight of the road to offer her a lift.
Rather reluctantly she opened the car door and eased herself out. She hadn’t brought a coat, and before she had gone much more than a hundred yards, she was soaked by the heavy rain. The thunder was nearer now, sheet lightning splitting open the clouds, and it was still so oppressively hot! She wouldn’t have been entirely surprised to have seen steam coming off her clothes! Struck by a fit of giggles, she suddenly realised that she was feeling quite lightheaded, almost as though her feet weren’t touching the ground. It was an extraordinary sensation, and one that sent alarm bells ringing in that part of her brain that still held on to common sense. She was beginning to feel quite dizzy and faint, and she moistened her suddenly dry mouth, telling herself that she simply could not faint, here in the middle of the road during a thunderstorm. Her eyes felt oddly heavy, her legs suddenly dangerously wobbly. The road seemed to shimmer and shiver around her. The sound of a car, at first a distant hum, grew louder, and she started to shiver. Dared she risk trying to stop it? The decision was taken out of her hands when she realised it was coming towards her, travelling in the opposite direction from the town, a powerful maroon blur, which took up a good three-quarters of the narrow road, the front wheel hitting a pothole and sending a wave of water cascading over her jeans and thin tee-shirt. Drenched and furious, Sarah wasn’t aware that the car had stopped until she heard the faint slam of its door, followed by purposeful footsteps. She turned, her eyes widening in disbelief as she saw her husband coming towards her through the rain, black hair plastered wetly to his skull, the formal suit he was wearing turning him into an imposing stranger. But he was a stranger, she thought vaguely as he drew level with her and started to speak, his briefly furious questions reaching her through a barrier of protective fog, the only thing penetrating it his savage exclamation of anger as the drumming in her ears reached crescendo proportions and she slid helplessly to the ground.
When she came round she was sitting in his car. They were motionless on the side of the road, Ben’s face decidedly grim as she opened her eyes and found him watching her.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded bitingly. No words of comfort, no enquiries as to her state of health! Stifling the tears threatening to flow, Sarah tried to sit upright, shivering as she felt the clammy touch of her soaking clothes. ‘Well? I’m waiting?’
He could wait until hell froze over as far as she was concerned, Sarah decided crossly, and then seeing the look on his face changed her mind and said quickly, ‘I wanted to ge
t myself a hat. Linda, from Costumes, offered to lend me her Mini, but it broke down. I was just walking back to find a garage.’
‘You went to buy a hat in the middle of the siesta period? In a town where the women cover their heads with shawls, if they use anything? Have you run completely mad?’
Quivering with anger and humiliation, Sarah turned her head. She would not cry, she told herself, biting so hard on her bottom lip that she could taste her blood. She had started to shiver, suddenly desperately cold, unaware of how pale and fragile she looked, her eyes smudged pools of violet in the pallor of her face.
‘You were five miles away from the town. Have you any idea of the condition you’d have been in if I hadn’t come along when I did?’
Ben was seething, and although in some ways she could understand why her foolishness was infuriating him, she hated knowing that his concern was for the film and the effects any illness of hers might have upon it, rather than for her herself.
‘How lucky for me then that you did,’ she finally managed in a shakily defiant voice.
‘I had to go into Seville. I wanted to send off the rushes from yesterday for myself, and I had some other business to attend to. As you so rightly say, luckily for you. What’s the matter?’ Ben asked sharply as she shivered again. ‘You’re not ill, are you?’
If he thought she was ill, he might take her part away from her, and besides, she wasn’t really, Sarah thought hazily. She was just suffering from too much exposure to the sun, or was it too much exposure to Ben that made her feel so weak and trembly?
‘I’m wet and cold,’ she managed, trying to sound cool and in control. ‘I’ve also got the most dreadful headache.’ She saw his mouth compress and realised that she had been unwise, when he gritted, ‘You’re suffering from heat-stroke, you little fool, and by the looks of it you’re trying to compound it by contracting pneumonia as well! You’d better get those wet things off. Here, you can wear this,’ he told her carelessly, removing his jacket. ‘Once we get going the heater will soon warm the car, but it won’t dry out those soaking jeans.’
Even though she knew he was right, she felt a curious reluctance to do as he said. He had seen her in far less than her bra and briefs, she reminded herself as her fingers fumbled with her zip—and as recently as last night. She knew he didn’t care a damn about her, and yet she felt ridiculously shy at the thought of removing her clothes.
‘Come on, Sarah,’ he demanded impatiently. ‘I have seen it all before, you know.’
The contempt in his voice opened a still raw wound, reminding her of the look in his eyes, and the—as she had foolishly thought it—reverence in his voice, that night when he had made her his. But that had all been nothing more than a hateful sham.
Averting her head, she slid off her jeans, her fingers trembling as she tried to tug them free. At her side Ben made a small, explosive sound of impatience, the telling noise jerking her head up so that she could see the tautly implacable line of his jaw. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he muttered, a man goaded beyond the limits of his endurance. ‘What are you—a child? Here, let me.’ Before she could stop him his brown fingers curled round her ankle and then tugged remorselessly at the heavy, clinging denim. ‘And now this,’ he continued curtly when her jeans had been tossed into the back seat, and it was useless for her to protest that her tee-shirt was something she could manage quite adequately without his help. The heavy rain had soaked right through the thin fabric and through the soft silk of the bra she was wearing underneath, plastering it to the curves of her breasts, fuller now that she was a woman rather than a girl. For a few brief seconds as he tugged her tee shirt free of her arms, Ben’s gaze rested on those curves, and to her utter chagrin and humiliation, Sarah felt them swell and firm, her reaction clearly visible in the burgeoning outline of her nipples against the now taut fabric of her bra. Colour washed her skin in a hot tide, her hands shaking as she shrank back into her seat, pulling on Ben’s jacket, expecting with every tension-filled second that passed to hear him making some mocking comment. When he didn’t, she risked a glance upwards, feeling happier now that she had the protection of his jacket concealing her body. To her surprise he was staring rigidly out of the window, his skin drawn tightly against the harsh bones of his face, his flesh white where he had compressed his mouth.
‘Ready?’
He must have felt her move rather than seen her, because he hadn’t so much as spared her a glance. When she gave a rather croaky ‘yes’, he started the engine, the sound not quite enough to drown out a fresh clap of thunder.
Neither of them spoke, but the silence wasn’t an easy one. Sarah felt on edge with the tension of it, the comfort of Ben’s jacket fast turning to torture. The fine wool smelled faintly of his cologne, and being wrapped in it was heartbreakingly like being wrapped in Ben’s arms, especially when she closed her eyes. At least her headache seemed to have subsided, she thought numbly as they turned off the road and bumped down the track leading to the site.
‘I must tell Linda about her car,’ she mumbled as Ben drove past the compound and parked outside his trailer.
‘Leave it,’ he told her curtly. ‘I’ll see to it. There’s a garage in the town—I’ll get them to send someone out to it.’
Sarah reached for the door handle, biting back a startled gasp as Ben moved across her, and told her to wait. She closed her eyes as he slid out of the car and came round to her door, opening it quickly and bending to take her in his arms. She started to protest, but he silenced her with a frown, opening the trailer door and carrying her inside, and into her room.
‘Stay there,’ he commanded briefly as he turned back to the door. ‘How are you feeling now?’ he asked over his shoulder. ‘Faint? Sick?’
‘Not as bad as I did,’ Sarah responded. ‘My head still aches, but that’s all.’ Even as she spoke she started to shiver, not knowing whether it was reaction to being in Ben’s arms or the chilly atmosphere of the trailer. She was reaching up to turn off her air-conditioning unit when Ben came back. He had taken off his shirt and trousers which had got soaked in the short journey from the car to the trailer, and was wearing a towelling robe. Sarah felt her heart pound, her breath catching in her throat as he stood over her frowning. His hair was tousled as though he had been drying it.
‘Here, take these,’ he instructed her, handing her two capsules. ‘I’ll get you a glass of water to go with them.’
When he came back she was still shivering. Her whole body felt chilled and she longed for a hot bath, followed by a long sleep. She took the glass he proffered, puzzled but not alarmed when he sat down on the edge of her bed. When she had drunk the water he took the glass from her and picked up a towel. ‘Turn round,’ he told her coolly. When she looked hesitant, he told her coldly, ‘I’m going to dry your hair for you, not rape you. Although it wouldn’t be rape, would it, Sarah?’ She felt her skin burn at the mocking cynicism she heard in his voice, glad that she had her back to him and that he couldn’t see her face.
It was oddly soothing having him rub her hair, his movements brisk but gentle, and she felt as though she could sit there all day—no, not sit there, but lie in his arms, she admitted on a sudden rush of knowledge, her body aching with a sense of rejection as he got up.
When he left without a word she thought he wasn’t coming back, but she had just removed his jacket, unable to stop herself from pressing her face against its warmth, when he returned, a fresh towel in his hand, his eyes unreadable as she dropped the jacket as though it had been live coals. Had he seen? He couldn’t have done, otherwise surely he would have made some biting comment?
It wasn’t until he sat down beside her and calmly unfastened her bra, that Sarah realised he intended to stay. She opened her mouth to protest and found she was being enveloped in a thick, fluffy towel, Ben’s hands hard and firm as they rubbed warmth into her chilled skin.
‘Ben, I can manage,’ she stammered, terrified that he would guess the effect his ministrations were ha
ving on her foolishly responsive body, but all he did was raise his eyebrows and comment scathingly:
‘Sure you can—the way you were “managing” this afternoon, no doubt. Sit still, Sarah,’ he told her, adding drawlingly, ‘Who knows? Perhaps you might enjoy it?’
The trouble was she did know—that she would! And the knowledge was humiliating. Terrified that he would realise too, she forced herself to keep absolutely still, fighting down the weakly melting tide of desire running hotly through her body when his hand accidentally touched her breast.
‘For God’s sake relax,’ Ben told her. ‘What is it? The storm?’
The storm? Sarah had practically forgotten about it, until a particularly loud clap of thunder outside made her jump nervously. No, it was a storm of a different kind she feared—the storm of emotion Ben was arousing by touching her.