by Penny Jordan
‘If you’ll just bide a while I’ll close up here and we’ll load your stuff into the Land Rover. Come well prepared have you?’ He peered into the Mini and grunted approval as he opened the boot. ‘Aye, it’s a good seven mile on foot down here to Mrs Mac’s shop, but I see you’ll not starve. A writer, you say… now there’s a coincidence.’ He didn’t say what the coincidence was, as he lifted one of the large cardboard boxes from the back seat of the Mini and deposited it in the battered Land Rover. ‘I’ll garage the Mini down here for you,’ he offered, ‘get someone to bring it up when the weather lifts. Who did you say your friend was?’ he added gently, but Heather wasn’t deceived and hid a small smile, knowing he was checking up on her, and why not? It was all part of the obvious neighbourliness of the villagers.
‘My cousin works with Terry Brady,’ Heather explained. ‘He and a friend own the cottage.’
‘Aye, that’s right. Comes up for fishing, does Terry. Nice laddie. Come on up with you,’ he added, hoisting Heather into the Land Rover and then slamming the door.
The battered vehicle was cold, and Heather shivered as he got in beside her, wishing she was wearing the thick padded jacket packed away in her case. ‘I had no idea the weather was going to be as bad as this,’ she told him. ‘I stopped in Cumbria and they told me a blizzard was forecast—for tomorrow.’
‘Aye, like as not,’ her companion agreed laconically, engaging four-wheel-drive as they chugged out of the forecourt.
The road to the cottage was steep and ankle deep in snow, deeper in parts, but the Land Rover, although sliding occasionally, causing her stomach muscles to tense made light of the hill in a way that was far beyond the capabilities of her poor aunt’s Mini. As they drove the snow started to come down more heavily, thickly covering the windscreen blotting out the landscape. The road dipped and then rose again and as the wipers cleared the window she had a glimpse of a sheet of water glittering under the stars. ‘Yon’s the loch,’ she was told impassively. ‘The cottage is only a step away now.’
The step was about a mile, and Heather gritted her teeth as they bumped down what could only have been a farm track and which Terry had failed to mention. In the headlights of the Land Rover the cottage huddled against the hillside, dark and unwelcoming. She opened her bag looking for her key as they came to a stop. Her companion, who had introduced himself as Fergus, was already lifting the boxes from the back of the Land Rover, shaking his head when she offered to help him, indicating that she go ahead and unlock the door.
Surprisingly the house felt quite warm, the door opening straight on to an old-fashioned kitchen, complete with a stone floor and large scrubbed table. ‘Oh, aye, that will be Mrs MacNeil from the farm,’ Fergus told her when she expressed surprise. ‘She’ll have sent someone down to switch on the heating, keep the place from freezing.’ He also told her that the cottage had once belonged to the MacNeils but that they had sold it. As soon as the weather clears I’ll tell them you’re here,’ he offered, adding doubtfully, ‘Are you sure you want to stay?’
Did she? For a moment Heather felt doubtful, and then she reminded herself that it was pointless coming all this way to back out at the last minute. The generator was obviously working. Fergus had switched on the lights. The house was warm and would undoubtedly get warmer if she turned up the thermostat. She had nothing to fear, unless it was her own company, whereas if she returned to London….
‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured him. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I don’t know where everything is yet. You must let me pay you for your petrol, though.’
Firmly refusing both offers, he brought in the rest of her belongings, and when the tail lights of the Land Rover finally disappeared into the swirling snow, Heather felt an acute sense of loneliness.
An hour later she had unpacked and explored. The cupboards were surprisingly well stocked; even down to half open packets of cereal and fresh food in the fridge. Perhaps the farmer’s wife kept it stocked for Terry and his co-owner, or perhaps Terry had telephoned and asked her to stock it for her. The living room was surprisingly large, furnished attractively in natural fabrics and furniture in soft greens and browns. An open staircase led up to the second floor; the bathroom, and the single bedroom Terry had described. Curiously for such an isolated and seldom used cottage, the rooms had a lived in air which was vaguely comforting.
Downstairs again, Heather made herself a drink and surveyed her cases. She would unpack those tomorrow. She was feeling acutely tired and suddenly longed to go to bed. Back in the living room she studied the table, wondering whether it would be best to work from here or from the kitchen. Her typewriter lay on the floor in its case, and she noticed an empty space on the bookshelves running along from the fire and decided she might as well store it there until the morning. A cupboard beneath the shelves was locked, and she wondered why as she placed her typewriter on the shelf. The shelves also housed an expensive hi-fi system; far too expensive to only be used on the odd weeks in the year when the cottage was lived in.
Heather went to the window and peered out. The snow was coming down very heavily, the wind picking up. Shivering, she checked that everything was put away and then picked up her cases, wondering if the heating also produced hot water. Right at this moment she could think of nothing more attractive than a hot bath, followed by a very long sleep.
Some time during the night she woke up, wondering what had disturbed her, and if she had really imagined the sound of a Land Rover engine. She must have done, she decided several minutes later, when the only sound to break the silence was her own heartbeat. She must have been dreaming about the drive up here.
Well, she had done it. She had escaped. Now she could put Race Williams well and truly behind her and concentrate on the job in hand. Her book.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT was the unusual clarity of the light that woke her, piercing her closed eyes, making her blink dopily as she stared towards the window. Last night she had forgotten to close the curtains. Pushing aside the comforting warmth of the duvet cover, she noticed that the pillow next to her own was also dented as though she had slept restlessly; as indeed she had done ever since she met Race Williams, but last night she thought she had slept unusually well; she even had a vague memory of feeling extraordinarily warm and safe. Leaving the bed, she padded to the window, lost in delight at the scene below. Everything was white; a deep dense white, not a thing moved. At first she was too entranced by the view to notice the menace of the snow clouds piled up on the horizon, shivering suddenly as she became aware of the biting cold outside the bed. Of the road she had travelled along last night there was no sign, and she caught her breath in the realisation that it was completely blocked, invisible under the deep cover of snow which had piled up round the house in huge drifts. Even as she watched fresh flakes started to fall from the sky, gathering in momentum, whirling and tumbling earthwards, tossed and tormented by the wind she could hear keening across the landscape.
A faint click behind her made her turn, her face as white as the scenery outside as she saw the man standing with his back to the door, bare, hair-darkened legs visible beneath the hem of a navy towelling robe, his hair damp as though he had recently showered, a tray with two mugs of coffee on it balanced on one hand.
‘So you’re awake, then. I thought you were going to sleep for ever.’
Against her will Heather’s eyes were drawn back to the bed; the intimacy of the thick duvet, the two pillows both dented; the discarded clothes on the chair she hadn’t noticed before. She took a deep breath, trying to force down the panic she could feel welling up inside her. For a moment she thought she must have been hallucinating, but no, he was here all right—very much in the flesh—watching her with those cool grey eyes that saw far too much.
‘Don’t I even get a “good morning”?’
Heather shivered, knowing he was mocking her, a thousand bitter questions clamouring for utterance, but the only words she found her tongue could form, a
whispered, ‘You tricked me!’
He was actually here in this room with her, the man she had run so far away from. His robe fell open as he leaned down to put the tray on a small table and she was burningly aware that beneath the terrycloth he was naked, and she knew he had intended her to be aware of it. The thought ran through her mind that Jennifer must have known about this, and not just known but actually abetted. Silly, romantic Jen, who probably thought she was doing her some sort of favour.
‘Your cousin seems to think we’re sort of star-crossed lovers,’ he mocked, shocking her with the clarity with which he read her mind.
‘Because you encouraged her to believe it,’ Heather said huskily. Her throat was dry with angry tension. How could she have been so stupid? There had been several signs that everything was not as it should be. Jen had asked her several times if she really wanted to come up here, suffering from the pangs of guilty conscience, no doubt, and giving her the opportunity to back out; and Terry, too, had been nervous, over-cheerful when he took them out to dinner.
‘Why?’ she demanded angrily at last. ‘Why go to all this trouble? There must be dozens of women who….’
‘I could take to bed?’ he supplied for her, patently completely unaffected by her rage. ‘Of course, but you see, I wanted you. From the first moment I saw you when your agent submitted your portfolio for the Rio contract. Terry and I have been friends for years, and when I found out about you and Jennifer I decided it would be better to organise an introduction through her rather than use my position with Rio. Why did you back out of the contract, by the way?’ he asked softly, watching her.
Dear God, he was always watching her following every movement of her body with those steel-grey eyes, making her acutely conscious of the thin fabric of her nightdress, and the vulnerability of her body beneath it.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t after you’d tried to bribe me?’ Heather demanded fiercely. ‘Do you honestly think I would want the contract on those terms? I’ve never used my body in that way, never… and I never will.’
‘But you’ve used it to drive men mad, haven’t you, Heather?’ he demanded softly. ‘You’ve used it to blind and bind them before you finally destroy their egos. It’s time someone taught you a lesson, showed you that there are times when you just can’t win; you just can’t give men the sort of come-on you deal in and then kick them in the face. It isn’t going to be like that with me. I’ve got you running scared, haven’t I? When Jennifer told me what you were going to do, that you wanted to leave London, to get away to “write”, I knew immediately what I was going to do.’
He was gloating over her, revelling in his underhand manoeuvring of her, and Heather felt anger pulse through her. ‘Is that the kind of man you are, a man who can only get what he wants by deceit and cheating? Terry lied to me—he told me he owned this cottage with a friend.’
‘Which he does,’ Race told her, ‘me, and if it makes you feel any better I had to work hard to persuade him to help me. He thinks I’m a fellow victim of cupid’s dart,’ he told her, smiling ferally, ‘and so, reluctantly, he gave in.’
‘And now you’ve got me here what do you plan to do with me?’ Heather asked, forcing down her hysteria. ‘Rape me?’
‘That’s what you’d like me to do, isn’t it?’ Race answered sardonically. ‘That way you get to reinforce your hatred of my sex; because you do hate us, don’t you, Heather? And you use your looks and your body to exact your own subtle revenge upon us. Why, I wonder?’
He was too astute; too able to see into her mind. She looked out of the window, her heart sinking when she saw the falling snow. She couldn’t stay here, not with this man; he would destroy her, she knew it, and it wasn’t merely physical capitulation that she feared, but something far, far more dangerous.
And he meant to break her, Heather knew that. Why else would he go to such lengths, even to the extent of making sure he wasn’t there last night when she arrived, so that she couldn’t leave? But she would leave. It was only a few miles to the village, she would do anything to get away from this man—anything.
‘I’m leaving,’ she told him huskily. ‘The moment I’m dressed I’m going.’
‘You can’t. The drifts are over twenty feet deep on the way down to the village, and there’s a blizzard forecast. You’d freeze before you got more than a mile. Try it if you like, but I’ll come after you, and of the two of us I have the greater stamina. At heart you’re just a coward, aren’t you?’ he taunted. ‘Why are you so frightened of me? I’m just another man, right? Just another victim to be tortured and tormented. Oh yes, I’ve heard all about it, about how you just love to emasculate your victims. What’s so different about me? Or are you scared I might break through to the real woman—that’s what you’re frightened of, isn’t it, Heather. Not me, but yourself. All those other men, none of them really touched you, not the real you. Oh, they might have possessed your body, but that was all, and you used it to lure them on to their own destruction, didn’t you?’
He was too astute, too frighteningly able to grasp all that she would rather keep hidden from him.
‘Yes,’ she admitted on a tortured breath. ‘Yes, yes, yes… but it won’t be any different with you, Race, no matter what you think. I didn’t run away from you,’ she lied. ‘I came up here because I wanted to work, because I was sick and tired of men who thought they could buy me—men like you,’ she told him dangerously. ‘You can keep me here by force, you can take my body by force, but I don’t want you and I’ll never want you.’
‘Then I’ll have to make you, won’t I?’ he said softly. His eyes dropped to her breasts and Heather had a momentary and completely unnerving recollection of how she had felt when he had touched them. Something seemed to melt and dissolve inside her and she knew she was trembling.
‘You’re going to come to me willingly, I promise you that now,’ she heard Race saying to her above the thunder of her heartbeat. He was breathing heavily, his features taut, the grey eyes burning feverishly as they moved across her body, and then, so suddenly that the release of pressure was almost tangible, he added, ‘Drink your coffee while it’s still hot, and I shouldn’t linger up here too long if I were you, this room isn’t centrally heated. In fact if the blizzard persists, I’m not too sure how long the generator will last out. We won’t freeze, though,’ he told her, ‘there’s a fire downstairs and we’ve got plenty of logs, and we can always keep one another warm in bed at night.’
Heather stared at the double bed, as she knew he had intended her to do. ‘I’m not sharing that bed with you!’
‘Perhaps not tonight,’ he agreed, ‘but I’m no gentleman, Heather, and I’m not giving it up for you. You’ll soon find out that when it’s a choice between freezing or being warm, you’ll opt for the latter, and that will be your choice.’
He left before she could say anything, and Heather heard the sound of water running in the bathroom. How could she have got herself in this situation? How could Jen have helped him? She sighed, already knowing the answer to that question. Poor, romantic, deluded Jennifer, she had no conception of what Race really wanted.
But did she? Heather frowned, absently picking up the mug of coffee and curling her fingers round it. It was almost diabolical how he had manoeuvred her into this situation, even the weather had worked against her. She glanced out into the snow. Twenty-foot drifts, he had said, and she suspected he hadn’t been lying. She couldn’t see the ground now for the dense snowflakes, and the thought of walking the seven miles to the village was, she knew, in her heart of hearts, suicide, but if she stayed….
It came to her that all she had to do was to tell him the truth, to admit that she wasn’t the woman of experience he thought and that she was, in fact, still a virgin. She was pretty sure if she did she would be safe, but her pride wouldn’t let her admit it to him; if she did he would know why she had run, he would know exactly why she feared him and the intensely sexual response of her senses to him.
; Her body wanted him as its lover. There! She had admitted it to herself at last, she had known it the first moment she saw him. Even while she loathed him mentally her body had responded to the lure of his, and he, damn him, had sensed it, and that was why he was so determined to pursue her, she was sure of it. That plus the challenge of making her give to him what he sensed she had not given to anyone else, a physical response. Race had said he wouldn’t force her, and Heather felt he had probably spoken the truth. He wanted her to go to him and was sure enough of his sexual power to believe she would do so. After all, as far as he knew she was a woman with considerable sexual experience, a woman who probably, to his male mind, would not miss the challenge of taking a new lover. And that being the case he would probably look to her to make the first overtures. Provided the snow went quickly she was probably perfectly safe. Provided the snow went and she could withstand the assault of his masculinity on her senses. She mustn’t delude herself. She was dangerously at risk where he was concerned, why else had she left London in the first place?
Heather heard the bathroom door open and tensed as Race walked into the bedroom.
‘I’d advise you to wear something warm,’ he warned her, walking over to a set of drawers and removing socks and underpants. ‘The heating is working, but not at full efficiency.’
Even when he was talking normally without the relentless sexual pressure she had grown used to, there was still a maleness about him that tormented her senses, and she was glad of the old camel dressing-gown which she had put on in his absence, glad that those too-knowing grey eyes couldn’t linger on her body. The dressing gown had once belonged to Rick, one of the twins, and she had brought it with her on impulse. Now she was glad she had done so, and trying to match his casual air she extracted clean clothes from her case and hurried into the bathroom, relieved to notice that it possessed a bolt.
She was too tense to linger under the shower, disturbed by the way her hands trembled as she pulled on her new cords and a toning fleecy jumper. As was her habit when she wasn’t working, she didn’t bother with any make-up, simply brushing her hair and securing it at her nape before returning to the bedroom, glad to find that it was empty. Neat and tidy by nature, she found herself smoothing the sheets and plumping up the pillows almost by habit, shaking the duvet before she returned it to the bed, some sixth sense warning her that Race had returned, even before she straightened and saw him.