by Penny Jordan
As he opened the bedroom door and headed for a spare room he was shaking his head, wondering how on earth she had the gall to do what she had done. To simply walk back into his life and behave as though nothing had happened…as though the intervening years had never been.
CHAPTER FOUR
IRRITABLY Dominic sat up in bed and reached for his watch. Four o’clock in the morning. There was no way he was going to be able to get back to sleep. He felt too on edge, too charged up, his mind too full of anger and memories.
He had scarcely been able to believe it when he had seen Annie in the restaurant where he was being wined and dined by the executives of Petrofiche, in celebration of his acceptance of the position they had offered him as consultant marine biologist, and then, when she had actually arrived at the house…
Had she known that he was coming back? He had never intended to keep the house, but his work in the Middle East had kept him out of the country and it had made sense for him to let the house rather than try to sell it at a time when property prices had been in steep decline. And then, when he had finally acknowledged that he would be an idiot to turn down what he knew would be a dream-come-true career opportunity simply because it would bring him back to the place where he had first met Annie, he had acknowledged that it made sense to move back into the house himself now that the tenants had left.
How on earth had she, Annie, been able to walk back into his life like that? And not just his life. His body started to heat as he remembered the intensity of their recent lovemaking. No, not lovemaking, he corrected himself sternly. What they had just shared…what they had just done…had simply been an act of release. Sex…that was all. Annie…He closed his eyes, his mouth sad.
She had behaved tonight, talked tonight, as though…As though what? He moved uncomfortably in the bed, the bedclothes an irritating reminder of the softness of her against his naked skin, an unwanted reminder…All that rubbish she had spoken about fate and loving him. She couldn’t possibly have expected him to believe…She couldn’t possibly have thought…
Throwing back the bedclothes, he swung his feet to the floor and then walked naked across to the window. Like those of the bedroom he had left Annie in, it looked out across land secluded enough for him not to need to worry about his nakedness.
Annie!
It was almost exactly five years since they had first met. She had been eighteen and he had been a decade older, but of the two he had been more vulnerable, the one who had fallen so deeply, so intensely in love with her, virtually at first sight, that he had followed her back to the cheap boarding house where she’d been staying.
She had been confused and wary when he had first approached her, trying to appear worldly and in control of the situation and yet in reality coming across as so adorably unsure of herself that he had ached to take hold of her and protect her, to warn her against the danger of allowing herself to be so attracted to a man like himself.
It had taken him several days of constant visits and patient cajoling to persuade her to go out with him, and then only to a coffee bar, where she had insisted on them sitting at a table in the window. He remembered that whilst a part of him had applauded her caution another, the more deeply male predatory part of him, had known that the place he really wanted to be with her was somewhere much more private. But, since he was not in reality a caveman, he had acceded to her uncertain nervous insistence that they stay somewhere public.
They had talked on that first date of a wide variety of different things, the single hour he had coaxed out of her stretching to nearly four, plus the long, long walk back to her boarding house, where he had extracted a promise from her that she would see him again.
Falling in love with any woman, never mind an eighteen-year-old just on the verge of her adult life and her first term at university, had been so very much not a part of his plans for his life that his feelings for Annie had totally confused and shocked him.
Prior to meeting her he had signed a contract committing him to work in the Middle East for the sultan of a small Arab state. In career terms it had been a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—and one he had eagerly accepted.
The few months he had had at his disposal before his departure for the Middle East he had intended to use dealing with the practicalities of letting out his Wryminster house during his absence and then visiting a few friends who lived in various parts of the country.
Logic had urged him to sell the house—it was far too large for one single man—but, like Annie, he had no close family. The house had come to him via an inheritance from an elderly great-aunt, and out of sentiment he’d felt that he wanted to keep it.
Grimly he turned away from the window.
He had known within a week of meeting Annie that he was recklessly and irreversibly in love with her, and within two that he had no option other than to marry her, much as his conscience had urged him not to do so.
She had been young…too young for the kind of commitment marriage entailed and too inexperienced to judge what kind of a man she really wanted to share her life with. But she had also been alone, and vulnerable, and he had ached with pain at the fear of rejection and aloneness he had seen in her eyes when he had gently told her that he was shortly to leave the country. And the truth was that he had wanted, needed, to commit himself to her just as much as she had seemed to want him to.
The love she had claimed to have for him had turned out to be nothing more than a teenager’s infatuation. Was she to blame for mistaking it for something more or was he?
Angrily he started to frown. What was he doing? Even now he was still looking for excuses for her…explanations…Why?
She might only have been a very young woman, but she must have known that he was not a young boy and that his feelings…his love…She had to have known—but that hadn’t stopped her walking out on him without any explanation, without giving him the opportunity to talk to her…to…To what…? To persuade her to stay?
He had been over and over this argument with himself so many, many times before, and he still wasn’t any closer to resolving it. If he had been at fault in rushing her into a marriage then surely she too had been at fault for not telling him that she had made a mistake and that she wanted it to end. That way…That way—what? That way he would have used the power of the sexual passion between them to persuade her to change her mind? Would he have done that? Or would he have been able to be strong enough to put her needs above his own and let her go?
He liked to believe he would have done the latter, but perhaps Annie had been afraid he would opt for the former and she would not be able to resist him or the intensity of their shared desire for one another.
And about that there had been no mistake, no error. He had never experienced anything like it before her and certainly never, ever after. But then after Annie he had never wanted to. After Annie that part of his life, that part of him…
Grittily he reminded himself as he recognised and redirected his thoughts. He had brought her back to this house for the first time after a long walk by the river. He had promised to take her back to her lodgings and had fully intended to keep that promise. But then it had started to rain heavily just as they were within yards of the house. Neither of them had had a coat and it had made sense for him to bring her here.
She had been open-mouthed with awe at the sight and size of the house, and he had seen the anxiety and defensiveness in her eyes as she had protested that her wet shoes would mark the polished floor. He had seen, too, and been hurt for her by her obvious feelings of inferiority. In order to try to relax her he had started to tell her something about the house’s history and its original owner.
He remembered how fascinated she had been by the dolphins, tracing their delicate carvings with one forefinger, her eyes shining with delight as she turned her face up to exclaim excitedly to him about their beauty.
That had been when he had given in to his feelings for her, totally unable to resist his longing t
o take her in his arms and love her.
She had been a virgin when he had first made love with her. A girl. But it hadn’t been a girl he had made love with earlier this evening. No, now she was a woman…all woman…He could feel his body starting to tense, to react. When she had buried her face against him and started to caress him…
Dominic made a savage low growl deep in his throat, but nothing could stem his memories now.
After their soaking during their walk he had insisted that she stay and have dinner with him.
‘What would you most like to have to eat?’ he asked her, and she went shy and self-conscious again, shaking her head and looking adorably uncertain.
He had noticed whenever he took her out for a meal that she always looked to him for guidance before choosing from the menu, but it wasn’t until he pressed her for a decision on what she would like on this occasion, explaining that they would need to go out and shop before he could cook for them, that she admitted that her upbringing had not prepared her for the kind of sophisticated lifestyle he enjoyed.
Previously she had talked briefly about her childhood, but that evening she was a good deal more forthcoming—due, he decided, to the potency of the very good wine he had bought to serve with the meal he intended to prepare for them.
His own parents had died when he was young, so their lack of a mother was something they shared. But his grandparents had been comparatively wealthy, and although he had found their care distant, and his life at boarding school formal and regimented, he had never, he recognised, been in the position that Annie was in, of having to be financially self-supporting.
After her admission that she wasn’t either familiar or entirely comfortable with the lifestyle he obviously took for granted he was tenderly protective of her when he took her round the up-market delicatessen he drove them to so that they could shop for their evening meal. It touched him to watch her eyes rounding in awe as he picked the ingredients for their evening meal.
It both amused him and brought out in him an almost paternal instinct he hadn’t known he possessed to watch her face as they toured the food store and he discreetly explained to her what the wide variety of cosmopolitan delicacies were and how they were cooked and eaten.
‘But who will cook it?’ she asked him uncertainly at one point.
Guessing what she was thinking, he quickly reassured her, ‘I shall.’
And so he did.
Prior to meeting Annie he had considered himself to be a confirmed bachelor, a man whose main attention, whose concentration, was focused on his career. It had been his dream from boyhood to be a marine biologist, and thus to follow in the footsteps of his parents, who had worked and died together in a freak accident off the coast of Mauritius.
He liked women. Of course he did. But he confined his activities to those members of the female sex sophisticated enough to understand that he simply wasn’t looking for a committed permanent relationship.
With Annie, though, his feelings had done a complete turnaround. He didn’t just want her in his bed, he wanted her permanently in his life.
They came back here with the food they had bought, and true to his promise he cooked for her, loving the way her eyes rounded with innocent delight when he spoon-fed her little tastes of what he was preparing.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ she asked him naïvely at one point.
‘Only for you,’ he returned, watching the way she had blushed, almost dizzy with the intensity of his own desire.
After dinner they went into the drawing room, where he coaxed her to talk about her hopes and her dreams in between feeding her sips of champagne and strawberries covered in rich dark chocolate.
When she had finished eating one, with tiny, delicate little bites, there was a small fleck of chocolate left on her deliciously full upper lip. Unable to resist, he leaned forward to brush it away, smoothing his thumb over her mouth and feeling his body throb deep down inside in reaction to every tiny little tremble of her mouth. When he had dropped his hands to her face, cupping it to hold her still whilst he lowered his head to kiss her, she focused on him with a wide-eyed stare mingled with longing and uncertainty.
‘It’s all right,’ he soothed her gently. ‘I’m not going to hurt you…’
Him hurt her! Now, Dominic grimaced. What a joke! But he had never dreamed then what was going to happen. She had seemed so naïve, so adorably sweet and loving.
He had taken her to bed for the first time a month after they had met, coaxing her to shed her inhibitions along with her clothes, but in the end he had been the one who had come closest to losing total control, unable to hold back what he was feeling as he touched her, unable to stop himself from smothering the delicate soft-fleshed curves of her body with hungry, passionate kisses.
Six weeks after he had first met her they were married, and two weeks after that she had left him.
He had been totally honest with her from the start about the fact that he was due to take up his new job in the Gulf within a few weeks, and he had told her too, when he had finally persuaded her to marry him, that there was no way he could possibly take her with him.
‘So…so how long will you be gone for?’ she asked him bravely.
‘Well, my contract is for three years. But,’ he hurried on quickly when he saw her expression, ‘I do get plenty of leave. For instance I will be home over Christmas for a month, and then again in the summer for two. After all, you’ve got your degree to get and the time will soon pass.’
‘Are you really sure you want to marry me?’ she asked him.
‘Of course I’m sure,’ he responded, not realising then that she was the one with the doubts.
‘Are you really, really sure you want to marry me?’ she pressed him urgently, on another occasion, and again he didn’t recognise the cue she was giving him, didn’t understand that she wanted him to ask if she really wanted to marry him.
Instead he told her firmly, ‘Of course I am. I love you.’
‘But we’re so different,’ she continued.
‘Yes,’ he agreed teasingly. ‘You’re a woman and I’m a man.’
‘No, you know what I mean,’ she insisted, flushing a little as she told him, ‘At the home they taught us that it’s the person you are that matters, and I know that that’s true, but other people still do judge and our backgrounds are so very different—I…I don’t even know who my parents were, and—’
He stopped her then, insisting, ‘None of that matters.’
‘Yes, it does,’ she contradicted him. ‘Your friends…your lifestyle…’
‘You will be my life from now on, Annie,’ he overruled her.
‘You say that, but you’re not going to be here,’ Annie reminded him bleakly.
‘I have to go. You know that,’ Dominic told her, his voice slightly harsh with his own awareness of how much he was going to miss her.
‘Yes,’ she agreed quietly, and Dominic cursed himself inwardly, firstly for being responsible for her pain and secondly for his own selfishness.
He had, after all, known right from the start of his own unbreakable commitment to his Middle Eastern contract.
He tried to console her. ‘It won’t be so bad. I know it’s going to be difficult for both of us, but other couples manage to survive such separations.’
‘Yes,’ Annie agreed, even more bleakly, before adding huskily, ‘Sometimes I wonder if I’m destined always to be alone.’
‘You aren’t going to be alone,’ Dominic instantly insisted, but her eyes remained shadowed.
‘Perhaps it’s easier not to have such strong feelings, not to love someone too much,’ she whispered to him sadly later on.
Had it been then that she had started to distance herself from him? But she had seemed so happy when they had married, so much in love with him. Or had he, unforgivably, somehow assumed that his ten years’ seniority over her had given him the right to know what was best for her?
The intervening years had changed him, he was
forced to concede, as had the emotional pain he had suffered. And, whilst he knew he could never understand how Annie had been able to walk out on him without any kind of explanation, the bitterness he had originally felt had changed to a more rational acceptance. But a part of him still needed to have answers to the question she had left in his life.
His thoughts switched back to the past. Annie had married him. There had been formalities that had had to be dealt with, of course—authorities to be notified of their marriage, that kind of thing, and even the rings he had bought for her had had to be sent away to be altered because her fingers were so delicate and narrow.
He had carried her up to bed the first night of their marriage and he had made love to her with the windows flung wide open so that they could hear the soft whisper of the night and the river.
Their loving had been so intense that she had cried out, a sharp, high keening sound of female pleasure which had echoed on the stillness of the night. And for a heartbeat of time, or so it had seemed to Dominic, time itself had seemed to stand still, as though in awed recognition of the intensity of their love.
Afterwards she had cried, and his own eyes had been damp with emotion as well. But the closer it had got to the date for his departure, the more sad-eyed and withdrawn she had become, and mingled with his own agony at the thought of leaving her had been his guilt at the knowledge that he was responsible for her pain, that he had been the one to persuade her into marriage. And then had come the night when they had had their first and fateful argument.
It had been a sultry day, and his own temper had been on a short fuse. He had been dreading leaving her, and the thought had even begun to cross his mind that he might have to break his contract with the Sultan and look for work closer to home. But where? One of the oil companies operating in the North Sea?
In the Gulf he would be in charge of a team of divers and biologists hired by the Sultan to check on the effect of pollution on the area’s seabed and life-forms. It was a golden, once-in-a-lifetime, opportunity to be part of the kind of research anyone in his position would have dreamed about. It was his intention to publish a paper on his discoveries once his work for the Sultan was completed, and he knew that if he turned his back on this opportunity he would never get another one like it.