by Penny Jordan
An idiotic shyness swamped her, and it was as much as she could do to shake her head, her throat clogged with emotional tension.
‘There are so many things we still have to learn about one another…so many things we still don’t know or share, but there will be time for us to discover and learn all those things. For now shall we simply let it be enough that we’re here together at the beginning of a journey we both want to share?’
Gratefully Jessica nodded her head.
He was telling her that he wasn’t going to rush or pressure her. He seemed to know how unused she was to everything that was happening to her, how alarmed she was by it, at the same time as she thrilled to the knowledge that he shared her feeling; she who had never wanted this kind of involvement suddenly wanted it desperately.
As she looked at him, she wondered blindingly what it would be like when he kissed her, and as though he had read the question in her eyes his own suddenly darkened awesomely.
‘Don’t,’ he warned her huskily, and then added, ‘Once I start touching you I shan’t be able to stop.’
Shockingly, her body responded to his warning so intensely that for a moment she was almost tempted into reckless incitement of the desire she saw burning in his eyes. She looked at his mouth and felt her body tremble. She reached out to touch her fingers to the male texture of his lips, to explore their shape and form, and then sanity prevailed and she drew back, her face betraying her own bewilderment.
Fighting to master the temptation flooding her, she said unsteadily, ‘Tell me about your house. How did you find it? What do you plan to do with it?You’re our first really local migrant from London, you realise. There are others, but they live on the other side of Blanchester. What brought you out as far as this?’
She was desperately trying to distract herself, to bring herself back on an even keel, and so missed the sudden tension of his body, the brief hesitation as he replied, ‘Chance, really. I’d been looking for a house outside London for some time, and then someone mentioned this village.’
‘Someone mentioned it?’ Jessica looked at him, frowning, and then her frown cleared. ‘Oh, you mean your estate agents. Well, they must have been relieved to have sold the Court. It’s been empty for almost two years, and it’s been badly vandalised.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ Daniel told her wryly. ‘When you feel up to it, I’d like to have your views on how best to redesign the kitchen. My existing builder is a bit short on imagination, and I want to avoid the stereotyped blandness so prevalent among kitchen designers. It will be a good-sized room: two rooms, really, since I’m having the wall between it and what was at one time the housekeeper’s room knocked down.’
Gradually the sexual tension was easing from her body, to be replaced by a genuine interest in his plans for the house. When he glanced at his watch and informed her that it was almost seven o’clock she could hardly believe it.
‘Will you be OK if I leave you for long enough to go and collect a few things?’ he asked her. ‘I could ask Mrs G to sit with you…’
Jessica shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine. Really, you don’t need to stay overnight. I—’
‘I’m staying,’ he told her gently. ‘And don’t you dare move from that sofa until I get back. Remember what the doctor said about not straining the muscles.’
It wasn’t very difficult to obey him; in fact, it wasn’t any hardship at all to simply sit there and give in to the luxury of day-dreaming about the promises that had been implicit in almost everything he had said to her.
She had never believed this would happen to her—that she would meet someone and fall in love so quickly and intensely that within a few short hours it would be impossible to imagine her life without him—but it had happened, and not just to her, but to him as well.
She closed her eyes and gave in to the temptation of imagining what it would feel like to have his mouth moving on hers, his hands touching her skin, exploring her body with all the delicate skill his touch had already promised.
A rash of goose-bumps broke out under her skin, a tense, coiling sensation invading her lower stomach.
Physical desire…Up until now she had been a stranger to such feelings, so what was it about this particular man encountered in such harrowing circumstances that had led to its birth now?
Were the feelings, both emotional and physical, which she was experiencing genuine, or were they some kind of by-product of her fear?
Deep within her a part of herself recognised that alongside her burgeoning happiness ran a fine thread of cautious reluctance, as though that part of her was unwilling to allow itself to be committed to what she was feeling for Daniel.
She was too exhausted to dwell on the matter. Upstairs in her workroom, the phone rang. That was her business line, and by rights she ought to go up there and answer it. She was doing quite well now, but not so well that she could afford to turn down business.
Daniel had been so kind to her. So caring. Surely far more so than she, as a stranger to him, merited, and it struck her that he himself must be a very well-adjusted human being to be able to reach out so readily and warmly to a stranger, disregarding the possibility of their rejection. She realised that in similar circumstances she would most probably not have offered the same Good-Samaritan-inspired kindness, not because she would not have wanted to, but because she would have been afraid, as she suspected many people were afraid, of having her offer misconstrued or, even worse, resented. If she had spurned Daniel’s kindness and retreated into the prickly sharp shell she normally used to conceal her true self from strangers, she suspected that he would have treated her reaction with equally considerate and thoughtful kindness.
He was plainly a man of intense generosity of spirit, and it humbled her that he should choose to treat her as his equal when she knew that inwardly she was nothing of the sort. She tended to hold even people who knew her at a distance, deliberately refusing to let them trespass too far.
Daniel was the first person in a long time whom she had actually wanted to draw into her life.
After her ordeal her doctor had explained these negative feelings as resulting from the long years of self-induced pressure when she had forced herself to conform and to be the daughter her parents wanted her to be. That they were her own form of rebellion against that stifling pressure.
Now, in retrospect, she felt ashamed of the way she had panicked this morning. No one else had. Mrs G, older than her and a lot frailer, had managed to cope with the situation. Exhaustion was numbing her brain. She was too tired to think any longer. She looked at her watch. Daniel had been gone just over an hour. Where was he? Had he changed his mind, had second thoughts?
About what? she scoffed to herself. All he had offered to do was to stay the night with her on a purely altruistic and non-sexual basis. It was not as though, after all, he was about to move in with her as her lover.
But if he was—Abruptly she stifled the thought. It was too soon, much too soon for those kinds of thoughts.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN Daniel returned Jessica was asleep. He woke her gently, smiling down into her unmasked eyes as they opened and widened in pleased recognition.
‘Sorry it took so long, but I had to go to the pub to explain why I wouldn’t be in for my usual evening meal. Of course, they’d heard all about the raid and wanted to know if you were all right. Mrs Markham insisted on giving me a couple of cold chicken salads for tonight, and she said to tell you if there’s anything at all she can do, any shopping you want done…’
Stupidly, the thought of such kindness made her eyes fill with tears. She only knew the landlady of the local pub very casually, although she had heard that she was a highly organised and very capable woman under whose management the Bell had risen from a rather lacklustre village pub to a favourite eating place for locals in the know.
‘Hey, come on…What did I say?’ Daniel teased her gently, producing a clean handkerchief and mopping up her tears as eas
ily and casually as though he had been doing it for years; as though he had known for years of this idiotic weakness of hers for bursting into tears every time she saw a sad film or heard or read something that choked her with emotion.
‘I forgot to ask earlier,’ he added, ‘but is there anyone you want to get in touch with?’
‘Get in touch with?’ She stared at him.
‘Yes, you know…your family.’
‘My family?’ Her frown deepened, and then she said shortly, ‘No…No…’ Habit prevented her from lying, and forced her to say unevenly, ‘My parents…’ the words ‘wouldn’t be interested’ stuck in her throat because she knew they weren’t true. Her mother would be down here just as fast as her father’s chauffeur could bring her, but her mother fussing around her, rallying her, coaxing and persuading her to return to London was the last thing she wanted right now, and besides…besides…
Selfishly, all she wanted was to be with Daniel.
To ease her conscience she told him quickly, ‘My parents lead very busy lives. There’s no point in worrying them about this. After all, it’s only a bit of bruising.’
The look Daniel was giving her made her flush and feel oddly defensive. She had seen his hawk’s eyes warm with compassion and concern; she had seen them dark with the beginnings of passion, but now for the first time she was seeing them harden fractionally, as though accusing her. But of what…?
‘As you’re being kind enough to go to the trouble of staying here tonight to keep an eye on me, the least thing I can do is to provide you with a meal,’ she announced brightly, deliberately changing the subject and trying to get up.
‘Not tonight, I think,’ Daniel admonished her. ‘The doctor said you were to rest…remember?’
‘He said I was to rest my arm,’Jessica protested, smiling. ‘The rest of me is fully functional.’
He had been watching her as she spoke, and suddenly something vibrant and masculine flared in his eyes and his glance dropped quite deliberately to her body, making a caressing and lingering study of its curves and angles before he said softly, ‘It’s far more than merely functional.’ And then, while she was still flushing, he got up and asked, ‘Which room am I to sleep in? I’ll take this stuff up there out of the way, and then I suggest that for tonight at least we make do with Mrs Markham’s excellent chicken and even better apple pie.’
The heat was still coursing through her body in the aftermath of his deliberate erotic scrutiny of her, and it took her several seconds to pull herself together enough to say distractedly, ‘Which room? Oh, there are only two. The spare room faces the street.’
Her eyes focused betrayingly on him as he bent to remove his leather holdall from the floor.
The leather was soft and worn, the holdall unadorned with gimmicky logos, unostentatious and battered, but Jessica recognised its quality none the less. She suspected that had she looked inside it she would have seen tucked discreetly almost out of sight a name familiar to her from her father’s luggage. It was his proud boast that he had been given his cases second-hand by an uncle, when he first went up to Oxford, and that he still found them far superior to anything that modern science could produce.
Seeing the familiar brown leather reminded her sharply of her parents and of the gulf that lay between them; a gulf she felt it necessary to maintain to preserve her own independence.
Oh, there was no open rift. Whenever her mother could coax her home they welcomed her with open arms, and she knew quite well that nothing would delight her parents more than to have her living with them once more. Nothing…unless it was the news that she was married and pregnant with a grandson. A grandson who would take the place in the bank which she had rejected.
The last time she had been home her cousin had been visiting with her parents. Jessica wasn’t particularly fond of Emma. Her cousin was the only child of her mother’s sister and her husband.
Emma’s father was a country solicitor, and comfortably rather than well off. Jessica suspected that Emma had always resented the fact that her aunt and uncle were far more wealthy than her parents.
They had both attended the same private school. There were only a few months’ difference in their ages, and while they were at school Emma had often behaved towards her in a way that was spiteful and jealous.
Now they rarely saw one another. Emma worked in a very expensive and up-market Kensington boutique, and she had long ago announced that it was her sole ambition to find a man rich enough to support her in the same style that Jessica’s father supported his family.
‘But so many marriages end in divorce, and if you don’t love him in the first place…’ Jessica had objected sharply, shocked by Emma’s revelations.
‘Judgemental Jessica, all pi and prudery,’ Emma had taunted her. ‘So what if it does? You can be sure that I’ll make sure I don’t come out of any divorce without a substantial sum of money. It’s all right for you to look down and sneer. You don’t know what real life’s all about. Your father’s a millionaire.’
‘Money isn’t everything,’ Jessica had told her.
Emma had laughed shrilly. ‘Only you could come out with a statement like that. Of course it isn’t to you…’
That had been when they were both eighteen.
Later, after Jessica’s ordeal, Emma had come to see her at home. On the verge of getting engaged to an extremely wealthy minor baronet, she had been seething with resentment and anger because her quarry had been snatched out of her grasp at the last moment by his domineering and extremely protective mother. When she heard that Jessica didn’t intend returning to the bank, she had been derisive.
‘My God…if only I had your opportunities. You’re a fool, Jess. Turning your back on the bank and setting yourself up as some dreary little sewing woman. You’re a fool. Do you know that?’
Jessica had ignored her jibes about her embroidery skills and refused to rise to her bait, but since then the disaffection between them had grown.
Emma had married, divorced, and was now looking for husband number two, or so Jessica suspected.
‘Come back.’
The soft words made her realise that she had drifted off into her own thoughts.
Daniel smiled at her as he picked up his bag. Even beneath his thick sweater, she could discern the powerful play of his muscles.
A weakening sensation invaded her body as she stared at his supple back, imagining how it would look, how it would feel, to have that powerful, lean body close to her own. His skin would feel smooth and warm, like silk—no, not like silk, like the most expensive kind of satin. And beneath it she would be able to feel the hard, padded muscles and the long, male bones.
Her imagination conjured up pictures that made her face go hot. Guiltily she averted her eyes from his body, sternly lecturing herself on her wanton thoughts.
More for distraction than anything else, while he was upstairs she got up and walked over to the sink. She wasn’t an invalid, after all. She had simply bruised the muscles in her arm.
She could fill the kettle left-handedly, and set about the preparations for their evening meal.
Cluny came in through the cat flap, miaowing demandingly. Obligingly she went to get a tin of cat food, automatically reaching for it with her right hand, and then stifling a sharp gasp as her bruised muscles locked and went into a stabbing flash of pain. She dropped the tin of cat food, instinctively nursing her bruised shoulder.
When Daniel came quickly into the kitchen, alerted by her cry of distress, he found her kneeling on the floor trying to recover the tin, which had rolled under the table.
‘Leave it!’ he told her, his voice so sharp and steely that she obeyed it instinctively, her face flushing with mortification as she realised that his tone was more suitable for addressing a recalcitrant insubordinate than a woman who considered herself both mature and under no one’s authority other than her own, but before she could voice any protest he was at her side, tugging her to her feet with such concern that
she forgot her anger.
‘Why on earth didn’t you wait?’ he chided her when she explained what had happened.
‘It’s my arm that’s bruised, not my legs. And, besides, Cluny was hungry.’
‘Cluny?’ He looked down and saw the cat, who was fixing him with a basilisk-like stare.
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
‘Ah, yes. I see…Cluny…For the tapestries, of course.’
‘Yes,’ Jessica agreed, pleased that he had recognised the connection. Not many people who were not knowledgeable in her field realised that she had named her cat after the famous Cluny tapestries. She liked the idea that, economist though he was, Daniel had an obviously wide-ranging grasp of things outside his own field. It pointed to a mind quick and generous enough to acknowledge that monetary matters were not necessarily the focus of everyone’s life.
‘Well, I think that for tonight at least Cluny will have to rely on me for his food.’
‘But it seems all wrong, you waiting on me,’ she protested as he firmly led her back to the sofa.
‘Chauvinist,’ he teased, and then added, ‘I promise you I’m quite at home in the kitchen. My mother brought us all up to be self-sufficient.’
‘All?’ Jessica queried curiously.
‘Yes. I have two brothers and a sister.’
Her envy showed in her face. ‘How lucky you were. I’m an only child.’
‘Only child, lonely child?’ he hazarded as he opened the can and spooned out the contents into Cluny’s bowl.
‘Yes, I was. Oh, my mother did her best. She was forever dragging me off to parties, introducing me to the children of friends, but…’
‘But?’ Daniel queried, looking thoughtfully at her. ‘But what? You didn’t like them, you preferred your own company, or you wanted to punish your parents for not providing you with brothers and sisters?’
Jessica raised startled eyes to meet his. How had he known that? She had only recently discovered herself what had lain behind her stubborn refusal to break out of her loneliness, and then only by accident.