'It was,' he smiled adoringly back. 'I'd just realised that I was in love with you, and then everything seemed to happen together. One moment I was in love and desiring you like crazy, and then the next something was telling me—no, not like this, not in a bunk that's barely big enough for one, let alone two—it just wasn't right for you. I got out as fast as I could, and spent the rest of that fateful night out in the corridor thinking about you, and how it had been. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realised that as I went to pull back from you, you had tried to push me away. It was a nightmare,' he ended, 'wondering, had I scared you half to death?'
'Oh, no,' she disclaimed promptly, and as Cheyne found a grin she smiled shyly at how forward that had sounded. Though she did feel bound to confess, 'I did panic a little, I admit, but that was only because—well, I'd had a bad experience when I was sixteen and...'
'Oh, dear lord!' Cheyne cut in, sounding utterly appalled. 'My poor darling!' he cried, and held her to him for several moments before he asked quietly, 'Can you tell me about it?'
'Oh, yes,' she told him, making her voice purposely light when Cheyne was looking as though her pain was his pain. 'My parents are super,' she prefixed what she was going to say, 'but, probably because I'm an only child, they brought me up in a very sheltered way. Anyhow,' she went on swiftly, 'I don't think I was a very clued-up sixteen-year-old, so that when the lustful shop owner at my Saturday job cornered me one Saturday and told me in a lewd way that he'd always fancied a virgin I just didn't have the nous to call his bluff, but was so terrified that I hit him with a brush I'd grabbed hold of, and then bolted.'
'My poor, poor sweetheart!' Cheyne cradled her to him, and was still holding her gently to him when a few minutes later, he probed tenderly, 'Has that experience frightened you from sharing yourself, dear love?'
Pulling a little away from him, Jolene shook her head. 'To be truthful, I did wonder once or twice when I couldn't—er—get very enthusiastic about any of the men I've dated. And then,' she said shyly, 'I met you.'
'And then...?' Cheyne probed further, but she could see that his mouth was starting to turn up encouragingly at the corners, and she knew that although there was seriousness behind his question in that he wanted no dark secrets between them, there was some teasing there too.
'And then,' she obliged, 'while I panicked briefly, feeling that you, like him, only wanted... well, anyway, I panicked and pushed at you. But as soon as that brief dart of panic had gone...' her eyes suddenly grew round and innocent, '... I wanted you back with me again. I,' she said, 'discovered that night that I'm just as normal as the next woman.'
It seemed natural then that they should kiss and cling to each other, and as Cheyne's arms tightened about her, Jolene held him closely to her.
'I love you, sweet love,' Cheyne said in a throaty, husky voice, when at last they broke apart, and tracing a forefinger over the line of her bottom lip, 'When did you know that you loved me?' he wanted to know.
'Remember "our" village?' she smiled.
'Since then?' he asked incredulously.
Happily Jolene nodded. 'Though, like you, I was aware before then.'
'What—even while I was being such a tight-lipped swine to you?'
'Both before and after,' she chuckled. 'Though...' she hesitated.
'What, my darling?' he asked. 'We belong to each other now,' he went on to thrill her to her very soul, 'there's nothing you can't ask me that I won't answer.'
'Oh, Cheyne!' she breathed, and, purely because she could not help it, she reached up and kissed him.
'I think I'm going to enjoy belonging to you,' he told her tenderly, and smiling, he asked, 'So what was the question?'
'Why…' she grinned, suddenly feeling that she really could ask him anything, '...why, when you knew, on the train, that you were in love with me, did you behave as if I didn't matter to you at all?'
'For another first, sweetheart,' he replied promptly, 'I discovered that I, who in my day have, without turning a hair, signed deals which have committed my company to spending millions, was suddenly knotted up with nerves because I didn't know what, if anything at all, you felt for me.'
'You—knotted up with nerves!' she exclaimed, thunderstruck.
'If you're surprised, imagine how I felt!' he responded. 'Suddenly I'm aware of an electric charge that happens whenever I touch you, so that when, the day before, while I found it quite pleasurable to hold your hand as I helped you from each coach to the train's restaurant coach, all at once I'm too nervous to so much as hold your hand in case I lose control again.'
'Good lord!' she gasped in astonishment.
'You can say that again,' he smiled lovingly. 'That morning on that train seemed to go on forever. I was never more glad than when it pulled into Novosibirsk.'
'Ah,' said Jolene, and when Cheyne looked enquiringly at her, she too did not want any dark secrets between them. 'That was where you went straight into the arms of Lyudmila Antipova and I,' she smiled, 'for the first time in my life, knew what jealousy feels like.'
'Seriously?' Cheyne exclaimed.
'Seriously,' she replied, and they both burst out laughing when she told him, 'There's no need to look so delighted!'
His delighted look had disappeared, however, when he went on to explain how, because of his love for her and the anxiety of not knowing if she felt anything for him, he had begun having trouble with his usual single-mindedness about his work.
'You're saying that I started to get in the way of your work?' Jolene queried.
'And how!' he replied. 'Which is why I had to make the decision to leave everything between you and me on hold until I'd got the work we were in Russia to do out of the way. I would by far have preferred to concentrate on finding out how things were with you,' he confided, 'but instead I had to put up with a strained relationship with you which seemed to be gouging an even wider gap between us. Though I came close to folding on Thursday, in Leningrad,' he revealed.
'When?' Jolene wanted to know, and learned that it had been when she had taken some typing to him. He had been fighting hard not to haul her into his room to talk to her, when she had asked him if he wanted her for anything, and he had replied, 'Nothing that I can think of.'
'I saw hurt in your eyes,' he went on, 'and called after you, but you weren't in any mood to hear, and I let you go because I was then unsure that you had looked hurt. But when I was aching like hell for some heart's ease, that stray belief that I'd seen hurt in your eyes gave me hope that perhaps you did care a little.'
'Oh, my love,' broke from Jolene, 'I didn't know it was as bad as that for you too!'
'Murder is understating it,' he replied, but he had a smile for her as he went on, 'Then, just as we're coming to the end of our work, what happens but that we're in Moscow again, and Shaw and Edwards are back on the scene.'
'And you're jealous again?' she guessed.
'Who wouldn't be?' he grumbled nicely. 'Although I'm trying to convince myself that I might have some faint chance with you, all I'm getting is a load of grief. Yet no sooner do you see that pair than it's all laughter and smiles—for them. Can you wonder that I lost no time in finding you some work when you couldn't wait to accept another of Shaw's invitations to look round Red Square with them?'
'You mean you deliberately - found me some unnecessary work to...'
'I'm sorry, sweetheart,' Cheyne took over when her voice faded in shock. 'If you want to see St Basil's Cathedral, or Gums, or anywhere else, I'll take you any time you say. But not then. Then, I confess, it was more than I could take to let you go...'
'You deliberately gave me that most boring, most horrendous, most...'
'Most foul piece of mind-blowing nonsense I've ever conceived,' admitted Cheyne freely. 'But only to be filled with such compunction, when, looking so adorable, so innocent, you brought that immaculately typed report back to me, that with my heart suddenly starting to hammer I came within an ace of telling you just how very much I loved you
.'
'Oh, Cheyne!' she sighed, and felt weak inside about him. 'What stopped you?' she asked.
'The floor attendant chose that moment to walk by,' he replied. 'It gave me pause to realise that if I was hoping to win you, now was not the time. In fact,' he went on, 'I was by that time getting so uptight about you that, having firmly come to the conclusion that our work must first be finished, immediately we landed in England—work at an end—the impulse not to let you out of my sight has me blurting out like some callow youth that I'll give you a lift home.'
'I'm sorry I refused,' Jolene smiled, but had to ask, 'Was it your intention to ask me to come and see you in your office today?'
'It was my intention, after all the time-switching we've been doing, to let you have a decent night's rest, and then to come and see you on Sunday,' he corrected her.
'Sunday—yesterday?' she exclaimed, and he nodded.
'The only trouble with that idea, my darling,' he told her ruefully, 'was that, to my astonishment, I discovered that I didn't know where you lived. Why aren't you in the phone book?' he demanded, and because she couldn't help it, Jolene just gurgled with laughter.
'Because my parents only finally gave me their blessing about my leaving home when I agreed to go ex-directory,' she told him happily, realising that if he could not find her number in the book, he would not be able to find her address either.
'Hmph,' he grunted. 'You do appreciate, I hope, that but for a last-minute moment of sanity returning, I very nearly got Raven into the office to open up his personnel files yesterday.'
'You didn't!' she exclaimed with saucer-wide eyes.
'It was a close call,' Cheyne smiled. 'See what you do to me, young woman!' he said mock-severely. 'I couldn't wait to get to the office this morning, I was so impatient to see you. I couldn't believe it when my enquiries revealed that you were nowhere in the building.'
'Oh, Cheyne!' she sighed, and just had to add, 'I do so love you.'
Firmly he gathered her into his arms and tenderly placed a kiss on her brow, then quietly he asked her, 'Do you have any more questions, my dear heart?'
As she stared up into the warm depths of his dark grey eyes, Jolene's heart gave a flutter of pure joy. 'No, Cheyne, I haven't,' she told him.
Gently he kissed her mouth. His eyes were adoring on her large green eyes. 'Then may I ask one?' he enquired.
'Of course,' she said softly, 'anything.'
'Then, my dear, since I love you to distraction and can't bear you out of my sight, when are you going to marry me?' he asked.
'Oh, Cheyne!' Jolene sighed, and just before their lips met, 'Quite soon, I hope,' she answered tremulously.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
Frozen Enchantment Page 16