'But why stop me going out with Keith and Alec?' she said when she had some breath back. 'Oh!' she exclaimed as the reason came to her. 'You weren't sure that early on that I wasn't the marriage-breaker...'
'I gave myself all sorts of reasons but the right one,' Cheyne cut in quietly, and added, 'I buried my head in the sand for quite some time, I'm afraid.'
'Did you?' she queried, and was no longer wondering what Cheyne was doing there in her sitting-room, because she felt so surrounded in fog, suddenly, that she was more concerned with hoping he could clear some of that fog away.
'I did,' he said, and set her heart wildly racing when he smiled, and added, 'When your beauty started to get to me, I told myself that I'd seen beauty before. When a feeling of wanting to protect you came over me, I was able to rationalise that, as your employer, how else should I feel?'
'I—er—see,' she murmured, seeing nothing, the fog still as thick.
'Which is more than I could at the time,' he told her. 'For all I told myself that as I was your "protective" employer it was natural that I should be filled with rage when I saw Shaw coming out of your room in Irkutsk buttoning his shirt—that, I later realised, was not the true reason.'
'It—wasn't?' Jolene asked chokily, clearly remembering how Cheyne had looked on the morning when she had sewed a button on Keith's shirt, and they had left her room together.
'It was not,' he confirmed, and went on to make her heart race even more wildly when, looking into her eyes, he told her quietly, 'Something very serious was happening to me, Jolene Draper.'
'S-something—to do—w-with me?' she managed to get out jerkily, afraid to think, afraid to feel, and suddenly feeling too confused to do anything but keep her eyes fixed firmly on him.
'Everything to do with you,' he confirmed. 'There was I, all hard-headed businessman taking a tour round a Russian factory in connection with a joint venture which means a lot to me—then what happens?' Dumbly she looked at him and with a wry look Cheyne went on, 'You happen. There I am, thoroughly absorbed in the latest Russian technology, when suddenly I get a glimpse of you doing your damnedest not to yawn, and when a week earlier I'd have been furious with you, suddenly I'm finding I'm hard put to it not to grin stupidly at you.'
'I remember...' Jolene said dreamily, then she remembered something else. 'You weren't having any trouble later on that day,' she reminded him. 'You...' Her voice faded when Cheyne frowned, and it seemed that she had no need to remind him of anything.
'I should smile on pleasantly while at lunch you sit there enjoying Viktor Sekirkin making sheep's eyes at you?' he questioned, a harsh note coming to his voice for the first time in an age—quite clearly, he had forgotten nothing.
'That's a bit strong, isn't it?' she roused herself to argue. 'We were there to do business; I could hardly ignore the man!'
'I suppose not,' Cheyne conceded, and smiled slightly self-ashamedly as he said, 'See what you do to me? The man isn't even around, and still I'm jealous of him!'
'Jealous!' Jolene exclaimed, her heart thundering anew when, looking nowhere but at Cheyne, she saw from the expression on his face that the word jealous seemed to have slipped out without him even knowing it.
But he did not deny it, and suddenly her heart was thundering so loudly that she thought he must hear it when he asked, 'Haven't you been listening to a word I've been saying? What else could it be but jealousy, that not once but several times I invented work for you so you shouldn't spend your time with any man but me?'
'You made me work that night—simply because you'd overheard Viktor ask me to ring him if I was free?' she asked incredulously.
'Without thinking about it twice,' Cheyne admitted, entirely without shame, though he did qualify, 'Naturally I told myself at the time that I wanted that dictation out of my head so that I could get on with something else.'
'But it w-wasn't true?' she stammered, feeling suddenly so mixed up inside, so vulnerable, that she did not know whether she wanted Cheyne to stop before he said any more, or whether she wanted him to go on; or what she wanted to happen.
'It was not,' he answered her, then went on, 'Forgive the way I've been with you, but having gone to Russia with my thoughts meant to be solely on work, I was all too soon making new discoveries about myself—and about you—that in turn have given me one hell of a time.'
It was at that point that Jolene knew, although she had no idea where this conversation was leading, that she wanted to hear Cheyne out. He had turned her world on its head by stating, quite openly, that he had known jealousy over her, and, for good or ill, she then knew that she wanted to hear more about these new discoveries he had made.
'What sort—of discoveries?' she asked quietly, and was not left to wonder much longer when Cheyne replied,
'About you—that you were all that you outwardly appeared to be,' he said softly, with his dark grey eyes warm on the wide green eyes that stared at him. 'About myself...?' he shrugged, then said, 'So many firsts.'
'Firsts?' she queried, and Cheyne nodded.
'We were about to board a plane in Omsk when as I looked at you and your entranced expression as you stared at the superb sunset, for the first time in my life my breath suddenly felt strangled within me.'
'I remember,' Jolene said in a hushed kind of voice, 'That is...' she got herself a little together to explain '...I r-remember it being a—um—breathless kind of moment.'
'For you too?' he asked, but nerves were attacking her again, and she could not answer his question.
'You s-said there were many firsts,' she attempted to deflect his question instead, and Cheyne smiled an understanding smile which only served to make her more nervous because she was not certain that she wanted him understanding anything of why she would want to evade his questions.
She forgot some of her nervousness, however, when he surprised her by seeming ready to answer everything she wanted to know, and resumed, 'There are you, a young woman who I'd observed could look impudent without ever saying an impudent word. Here am I, too busy with my thoughts of work to wonder how I feel inside, when suddenly I discover that you have the ability to make me feel good inside.'
'I do?' Jolene could not prevent the question from escaping.
'You do,' he confirmed readily. 'You, I discovered, my dear, had the power to amuse me, when I was sure you shouldn't. You, sweet one, have the ability to make me laugh and to smile when only moments before I've seen nothing to laugh or to smile at.' She was still in a seventh heaven of wonder at his 'my dear' and at his 'sweet one', when Cheyne went on, 'Through you, and for the first time in my life, I've been aware of raw, naked jealousy.'
'Because of—Keith and Alec?' she questioned, and was not surprised that she had got it slightly wrong when Cheyne replied,
'Of course Keith and Alec. Though the main culprit was Sekirkin and the way you'd gone behind my back to phone him and tell him you'd returned to Irkutsk and had an afternoon free.'
'I didn't telephone him!' Jolene denied, and at Cheyne's straight look that said he had seen her with the Russian himself that afternoon, 'He must have been in the hotel on some business or other, and spotted me when I was at the Beriozka buying some gifts to bring home,' she explained. 'You'd said you didn't need me that afternoon, and...'
'I believe you, Joley,' Cheyne cut her off gently, and smiled as gently too he added. 'I had, as you say, told you that I didn't need you—but only to start to realise then that I was growing to need you very much.'
At his words, his gentleness, the almost tender expression on his face, Jolene's heart gave another erratic burst. 'You were—growing to need me—because of—work?' she asked in a fractured kind of voice, and was suddenly breathless again when, before replying, Cheyne gently took hold of both her hands in his.
'My need for you has nothing whatever to do with work,' he told her sincerely.
'It—hasn't?' she questioned, her question barely audible.
She was gripping his hands tightly when, tender
ly, he asked, 'Have you not seen how it is with me, my dear one?'
'Oh, Cheyne,' was wrenched from her nervously.
And it was as if he had observed her nervousness, for, 'Sweet love,' he breathed softly, 'I'm afraid you've captured my heart.'
'Oh—Cheyne!' she cried once more, and with her heart thundering against her ribs, she could only stare shiny-eyed at him.
'Does—that mean that you care for me in return?' he asked, and there was a trace of hesitation in his voice as though he was afraid to hope for too much. 'Have I misread the signs completely?' he asked, his voice taking on an urgency as he questioned quickly, 'Do you not feel anything for me?' And, when she had thought that he had forgotten about the painting which she had purchased in Leningrad, 'Was I totally wrong to gain encouragement when you tried to get me to take my mind off the fact that you've got a picture of "our place" on your wall?'
'Our place?' queried Jolene, selecting that question out of all he was asking.
'Can you deny that the painting puts you in mind of the village of St Nicholas—the place where I, and I think you, knew an hour of perfect happiness?'
'You felt it too?' she choked.
'Never in my life have I ever felt so at one with any person.'
Jolene very nearly breathed his name again. But suddenly, vividly, she was remembering that it had not taken him long to change into a surly brute who could barely spare a word for her.
'What happened?' she questioned, and when he looked a degree mystified by her question, 'At dinner that night, you...'
She did not have to go on. 'What a lot you have to forgive me for,' he stated. 'Will you try to understand if I tell you that nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I was there in the USSR to do business, not to feel like some weak-kneed out-of-control schoolkid because some beautiful, tantalising secretary is getting to me.'
Tantalising! Out of control! Jolene was so thrilled at the way in which Cheyne was opening up to her that she did not know which of the questions that queued up to ask first.
'You—out of control?' was the one that won.
'Believe it,' he smiled, and was still smiling as he reminisced, 'Never has any female made me so mad that I have to resort to physically laying my hands on her!'
'You're referring to that day in our hotel in Listvyanka when I hit you?' Jolene queried, feeling suddenly so at one with him that she immediately landed accurately, she saw as he nodded, on his wavelength.
'No way had it been in my mind to kiss you,' he confessed. 'But that was before I touched you. And, once I'd put my hands on your arms, and looked into your defiant eyes, something just came over me. I kissed you, felt you warm and lovely in my arms, and was just finding some trace of will-power to take my arms from around you when you began to push me away. I spent the afternoon alternately working on my speech for the Novosibirsk conference, and telling myself that this was no way for your employer to go on.'
'Yet the very next day, at the village of St Nicholas, you kissed me again.'
'And again, I hadn't meant to. You'd told me the previous evening at dinner that you'd got no reason to hurry back to England, and I, naturally without knowing it, translated that to mean that you weren't attached to any one male, and felt good about everything again. When down in our village you suddenly looked at me, all large eyes and adorable, I just had to know the taste of your sweet lips again.'
'Oh!' Jolene sighed, feeling that at last she was really getting to know something of the man she had given her heart to, and she smiled gently, and suggested, 'Which was why, of course, you were such an unbearable dinner companion that same evening.'
'Of course,' he replied, that slightly ashamed look which she was beginning to find endearing coming out again. 'Forces were at work within me, sweet Joley, about which I had no previous knowledge—can you wonder I was finding it difficult to cope? On the one hand I wanted you exclusively to myself, yet on the other I was pleased to be leaving Lake Baikal, and the peculiar influence it was having on me, to join Edwards and Shaw in Irkutsk. Then all at the same time, believe it or not, while I'm seriously considering cancelling our railway trip, those wanting-you-to-myself forces were at work staying my hand. I didn't like it in the least,' he confessed, 'when Sekirkin turned up at the railway station clutching a red rose in his amorous paw.'
'Mmm,' murmured Jolene as something occurred to her, 'it was you, wasn't it? You,' she went on to enlighten him, 'who took that rose from its...' she had no need to continue.
'I wasn't having that thing stuck under my nose all day,' Cheyne told her in no uncertain fashion. 'I told you,' he reminded her gently, 'that jealousy had got to me.'
'Did you know then that—you—er—I'd—er— c-captured your heart?'
'There's nothing so blind as a man who won't see, my dear,' he replied gently. 'All the signs were there, but when you're thirty-seven and have never felt that way before, a certain stubborn refusal to face facts suddenly gets in the way. So at that time all I was admitting to was that Viktor Sekirkin annoyed me intensely, but that so too did you when you kicked up a fuss about wanting a four-berth compartment all to yourself. Only for my annoyance to go flying, though, when after having totally disturbed my equilibrium, you suddenly smiled and I couldn't help thinking that your smile was like sunshine after rain.'
'We sat and just talked away the afternoon,' Jolene recalled quietly.
'We did,' Cheyne agreed. 'And, without putting it into words even to myself, I knew I was happy. The feeling, I knew,' he went on, 'had its roots in being in your company, and I knew that I didn't want to lose sight of you. Is it any wonder that while we were having dinner that night I should realise that I wanted to see you every day?'
'Really?' Jolene breathed, her heart pounding capriciously from all that he was saying.
'Depend on it,' he murmured, though he then owned, 'At that point I was still stubbornly holding out against admitting what had happened to me. In my superior wisdom I was telling myself that since I wanted to see you every day, it must be because I found your work so faultless that I instinctively knew that you'd be a fine replacement for Gillian.'
'Which is why you suggested I apply for her job,' Jolene put in.
'Exactly,' Cheyne confirmed, and smiled as he added, 'Little did I know that the truth was just around the corner waiting to deliver a sledgehammer blow!'
'After dinner?' she queried, her hands absently clutching at his hands.
'After you'd turned in for the night,' he told her, and that gentleness was there again when, moving one of his hands to cup the right side of her face, he told her, 'I'd discovered that you were, as you'd once angrily told me, a virgin, and while you were able to laugh, I was too stunned to laugh. Thoughts of you, though, kept me sleepless, and I was coming nearer and nearer to knowing what was in my heart when, as I stared unseeing out of the compartment's window, the train suddenly came to an abrupt and jerky halt, and...'
'And you fell on to my bed,' Jolene remembered.
'I did, and we touched, and having touched it was like a bolt of electricity going through me. Forgive me, my dear, but for some minutes I went totally out of control. You were in my arms, warm, wonderful, and responding. Then, as suddenly as it had stopped, the train was starting off again. And in between the stopping and the starting, I knew that I was in love with you.'
Jolene's breath caught in her throat. 'You—you're in love with me?' she questioned in a choked and croaky voice, only to have Cheyne move both his hands to place them on her shoulders.
'You really haven't been listening,' he scolded her gently. Then, with exquisite tenderness, he drew her that bit closer to him, then with a thistledown touch, he kissed both corners of her mouth. 'I love you dearly, sweet Joley,' he said in an emotion-filled voice, and, with his serious grey eyes deeply intent on hers, 'Am I completely wrong to hope that you have some feeling—for me?' he asked.
Before she could speak Jolene had to swallow hard to clear a sudden constriction in her
throat. 'No,' she managed to answer him huskily, 'You're—not wrong.'
'You—care for me a little?' Cheyne pressed.
'I care for you—a lot,' she replied, and while her heart was beating wildly from all she was hearing, those strong, firm hands on her shoulders hauled her right up against him.
'Oh, my dear, dear love,' he murmured in a low voice, as pulling back he again looked deeply into her eyes as if to convince himself that she was speaking the truth. 'You love me?' he insisted.
'Very much,' she told him shyly, and all was quiet in the room for some long minutes while Cheyne alternately held her fast to him, then put some space between them so that he could look into her eyes. And then at last, he kissed her.
But one kiss was not enough, and it was many kisses later that he pulled back to look into her love-filled eyes, and to smile gently at the warm pink in her cheeks from the emotion he had aroused in her.
'Dear love,' he breathed, his look almost reverent as, keeping an arm about her, he took hold of her hand with his free hand, and added, 'I want everything to be so right for you.'
'You do?' she smiled.
'I do,' he replied, and thrilled her to the core of her being when he went on to tell her, 'Can you wonder that I don't know what in thunder is happening to me when, as wide apart as a day, yet as close as the next second, I've in turn been furious with you, yet wanting to cut my tongue out if I've hurt your feelings. I've been admiring of your spirit, yet ready to take you to task for impertinence. I've known jealousy over you, and, to crown it all, when I've wanted most desperately to make love to you, I've discovered such a need in me to protect you that somehow I've managed to find the control to leave you.'
'Oh, Cheyne,' she said softly, and was gently kissed again. Just as gently, he broke his kiss, and as he looked at her and seemed in no hurry to look away, Jolene only then realised that, for all she had pushed him away from her on the train, had he refused to be pushed away, then most surely their lovemaking would have ended in a very different way. 'It was on the train, wasn't it?' she smiled.
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