Savage Courtship

by Susan Napier

  ‘But I don’t want to dance!’ she objected, unobtrusively trying to wrest herself out of his grasp, pushing against his shoulder with her free hand.

  ‘Would you rather I invited Richard to join our fascinating reminiscences about our activities in bed?’

  Vanessa slumped in his arms, her physical submission contradicting her defiant words. ‘You wouldn’t!’

  His feet slowed. ‘Is that a challenge?’

  She turned her head and looked grimly past his right ear, searching for retaliation. ‘Don’t you feel silly, dancing with a woman who’s taller than you?’ she said sullenly.

  ‘No. It just means I have a better view of your breasts.’

  Her head furiously jerked back and she flushed. He wasn’t even looking down into her open cleavage; he was mockingly enjoying the bristling outrage on her face.

  ‘Stop trying to make me feel small. Or rather—smaller than I already am,’ he added with rather enchanting diffidence. ‘I’m not going to let you dominate me mentally as well as physically. We move well together, don’t you think?’

  Vanessa’s wide mouth thinned stubbornly. ‘No.’

  His thigh slid between hers as he whirled her around. ‘Doesn’t this bring back delicious memories?’

  ‘Memories?’ she echoed hollowly.

  ‘Of the way we moved together in bed.’ The arm across her back tensed, drawing her torso closer so that the tips of her breasts brushed his snowy white chest with every step.

  ‘Stop it!’ She arched away and only succeeded in thrusting her hips against his in an even more evocative movement.

  ‘You don’t remember, do you?’ he taunted huskily, his words blending with the low, sexy throb of the music. He laughed, infuriating her with his perception. ‘That’s why you were so loath to confess...you didn’t know what you’d be confessing to. You don’t know what you did during your alcoholic blackout, do you, Vanessa?’

  ‘It wasn’t a blackout. I don’t know what you’re talking about—’ she ventured wildly.

  ‘I’m talking about your waking up and finding me naked on top of you...’

  Her fingernails dug involuntarily into his jacket. ‘You weren’t on top of me!’

  To her horror he grinned wickedly. ‘No, that’s right—you were on top most of the time, weren’t you? Hmm, so you do remember something?’

  He was enjoying himself hugely at her expense, extracting what, if Vanessa had been in a reasonable frame of mind, she might have acknowledged was a truly fitting revenge. But her frame of mind was anything but reasonable.

  ‘I don’t remember anything, damn you!’ She was driven to admit what he wanted to hear through clenched teeth. ‘Nor do I wish to!’

  ‘Liar.’ His voice was silky with laughter. ‘Don’t you want to know exactly how much you have to be embarrassed about? How wild and uninhibited you were in the seamless dark...?’

  ‘No,’ she lied fiercely. ‘As far as I’m concerned the whole thing was a ghastly mistake. OK, so it was me. I was there, I did whatever you say I did. Now you’ve got your damned confession we can consider it over and done with,’ she gritted.

  ‘Unless you’re pregnant.’

  ‘What?’ she screeched, stopping dead still in the middle of the dance-floor as if she had been pole-axed. She stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘You mean we didn’t—? You didn’t even—?’ Her mouth quivered with horror as she breathed, ‘Oh, God, I don’t believe this!’ It had never occurred to her that a cautious man like Benedict Savage would not have taken every precaution...and then some!

  ‘I take it this means you’re not on the Pill,’ he murmured gravely, nudging her back into motion.

  ‘Of course I’m not!’ She moaned softly, her body weakly moulding to his as she grappled with this utterly appalling new relevation.

  ‘No, “of course” about it. A lot of women prefer to take responsibility themselves—’

  ‘But I wasn’t responsible that night, was I?’ she said frantically. ‘You must have known I wasn’t!’

  ‘How? It was pitch-dark and what you whispered in my ear wasn’t exactly calculated to inspire reasoned conversation—’

  ‘Couldn’t you smell the wine on my breath?’ said Vanessa hurriedly, eager not to hear what she had said.

  ‘Smell, no—taste, yes. But then, you tasted equally intoxicating all over—by the time I got to linger in your mouth I was raging drunk myself...’

  Vanessa felt a blush sweep over her from head to toe and quickly got back to the main point. ‘How could you take such a risk, with someone you didn’t even know—?’

  ‘Oh, Dane assured me you had a certificate of health.’

  ‘He what?’ She trod on his toe and he winced.

  ‘It turned out he meant the car, remember? Only at the time I thought he was talking about you, you see, so...’

  ‘So you didn’t use anything! How could you? Didn’t you care that I might—might—?’

  ‘Have my baby? I’m afraid I was so stunned when I got into bed and found a warm, willing body waiting for me that I completely lost my head. And you certainly didn’t give me any opportunity to politely excuse myself...’

  ‘Oh—my—God!’ Her head bowed, sinking on to his shoulder. He tightened his grip still further, supporting her trembling body. Her only consolation was that it was unlikely that she would have fallen pregnant at what had been a low point in her monthly cycle. Still, she now faced weeks of horrible uncertainty.

  ‘If you are pregnant I suppose Wells will insist on your having tests—’

  ‘What?’ Her head jerked up again.

  Benedict smiled into her pale, frowning face. ‘To see whether the baby is his or mine. After all, I don’t suppose either of us would want to claim the other’s child. Shall we ask him for his opinion when we get back to the table?’

  Her nerveless feet tangled again with his and this time it was her foot that was momentarily crushed. Benedict came to a halt.

  ‘Sorry. Have you had enough of dancing? Shall we go back to Wells?’ He began to draw away from her politely and Vanessa reacted instinctively.

  ‘No!’ She practically flung herself against his lean strength, unconsciously leading as she forced him back into the safety of motion. She couldn’t face Richard yet, not after the way she had flirted madly with him earlier. The beautiful meal congealed like a block of concrete in her stomach at the very thought of him discovering that she had casually slept with someone else during the time she had been acting like a nervous virgin with Richard. ‘No...the music’s still playing...’

  He meekly followed her agitated footsteps, making no attempt to hide his amusement. ‘Poor Vanessa, torn between two lovers...’

  ‘We are not lovers!’ she denied automatically.

  ‘Then what would you call us?’

  ‘Not us!’ she blurted confusedly. Unfortunately his intelligence was equal to her confusion. He comprehended instantly what she hadn’t meant him to know.

  ‘My God, hasn’t the stud performed for you yet?’

  ‘He is not a stud!’ she bit out.

  ‘Apparently not.’ He sounded so smug that Vanessa wanted to hit him. ‘Who’s been holding back—you or he?’

  ‘Richard and I have had an excellent relationship for two years,’ she said sharply. ‘Just because it isn’t based on sex, it doesn’t mean it’s not intense—’

  ‘Mmm, it must be intensely unexciting,’ he agreed glibly and she struggled not to scream. She tried to ignore the slow slide of the hand between her shoulder-blades down the length of her tingling spine. It wasn’t until his hand stopped, his fingers splayed across her lower back, curving against the rise of her buttocks, that she found the breath to reply.

  ‘We’re both cautious people,’ she said blindly, and promptly threw caution to the winds. ‘In fact, we’re probably going to get married in the not-too-distant future!’

  They moved in silence for a few tense seconds. She could feel his eyes crawling o
ver her averted profile.

  ‘He’s asked you to be his wife?’

  She bit her lip. ‘No, not yet, but—’

  ‘But since you’ve slept with me you’ve been feeling so guilty about not sleeping with Richard that you’ve decided it’s time to spice up that “excellent relationship” and see if you’re sexually compatible enough to marry him when he does ask,’ he guessed with devastating accuracy. ‘Is that the reason for the sexy-looking dress you’re wearing tonight? A tacit signal that you’re on heat at last? And where does that leave me? In the role of a “teaser” I suppose, although I thought they were used to arouse hesitant stallions rather than reluctant mares.’

  ‘How dare you?’ she spluttered, hating him for reducing her uncertainties to barnyard analogies.

  ‘Very easily, my dear Flynn,’ he drawled. ‘Just think of me as saving you a lot of wasted energy. If there’s been no sign of spontaneous combustion between Richard and you so far, then no amount of desperate fanning is going to create the missing spark.’

  ‘You’re talking about sex, not love—’

  ‘You love him?’

  She refused to dignify his impertinent surprise with an answer and stared resolutely away from him.

  ‘Vanessa, look at me.’ His hand released hers to take her chin in an unpleasantly firm grasp. He turned her face so that she looked fully into his. ‘Do you love him?’ he demanded, his expression so intent with serious concern that she was momentarily stunned.

  ‘I—yes.’

  She was afraid her hesitation had betrayed her, and to cover it she said aggressively, ‘I suppose you’re going to say that if I loved him I never would have betrayed him by having sex with you, no matter how drunk I was?’

  The soft pad of his thumb stroked the corner of her mouth. ‘No, actually I wasn’t,’ he said gently. ‘I don’t think I have to tell you anything about your feelings for Wells that you don’t already know, deep down inside yourself. It’s the strength of your own doubts that’s the real betrayal, not anything you might or might not have done with me...’

  ‘Oh, and you think you know me that well, of course,’ she said with distinctly shaky sarcasm.

  ‘I know that you need to be loved with a reckless abandon and Wells isn’t a man prone to recklessness or, from what I’ve observed, abandon. He’s too tame for you. He’ll disappoint you, Vanessa, and not only in bed.’

  ‘Damn you, who in the hell do you think you are? I don’t have to take this from you!’ whispered Vanessa angrily, dismayed at the ease with which he rifled her private thoughts.

  ‘Thinking of quitting on me, Flynn?’ he said as the music died around them. ‘I wouldn’t advise it.’

  She flung back her head defiantly. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because if you do I’ll make damned sure that you don’t have your tame Richard to run to,’ he said with silky menace. ‘I think he’ll appreciate being made a fool of even less than I did.’

  Vanessa paled. ‘You mean you’d tell him?’

  ‘Not only him. You know what they say, my dear; a lie has no leg but a scandal has wings. I can just imagine the titillating headlines the tabloids could concoct if they got wind of the true identity of the lascivious ghost of Whitefield Inn. Why, we’d open to roaring trade and you’d be the media’s latest darling. Shall we return to your ardent swain? I see him looking rather anxiously this way and I wouldn’t like him to get the wrong idea, would you...?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BARELY fifteen minutes later Vanessa was numbly allowing herself to be put into the passenger seat of Benedict’s BMW.

  Even while a detached part of her brain despised herself for her meekness she seemed unable to fight the old sense of helplessness that had come flooding back at his final verbal thrust on the dance-floor.

  When he had taken her back to the table, propelling her blind progress with an iron hand in the middle of her back, Richard had instantly been concerned.

  ‘Vanessa? What is it? You look as white as a sheet!’

  ‘I feel ill,’ Vanessa had replied thickly, her dark eyes unconsciously pleading. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Of course; let me get the bill—’ Richard had risen to his feet, extending an anxious hand only to find her moved firmly beyond his grasp.

  ‘No need to rush, Wells. I’ll take her home with me. No sense in your making an unnecessary trip. Say goodnight to Richard, Vanessa.’

  Even through the veil of her shock Vanessa had sensed the deep satisfaction in the man beside her as he began to draw her away from the table. He was enjoying thwarting all Richard’s expectations of a romantic end to the evening.

  ‘Goodnight, Richard,’ she’d repeated mechanically.

  A scandal has wings... Vulture’s wings. She could feel them beating over her defenceless head.

  Only when they’d reached the BMW parked on the gravel by some huge pohutukawa trees did Vanessa summon the presence of mind to protest. ‘I had a coat—’

  ‘We’ll pick it up some other time. They’ll keep it safe. Here, take this if you’re cold.’ He shouldered out of his white jacket, placing it around her trembling shoulders, enveloping her in his warmth and male scent. He opened the door and tucked her fluid skirt over her thighs when it slipped sideways as she swung her legs inside.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked as he got in beside her and switched on the headlights.

  ‘Yes,’ she clipped, looking through the front windscreen at the way the lights were blurred by the faint mist that was drifting in from the Firth of Thames.

  He swore under his breath. ‘Damn it, stop looking like that. If he really means that much to you I’ll take you back inside!’

  The rawness in his tone pierced her numbness.

  ‘Who?’ She turned her head. His white shirt shimmered in dimness, the dark tie a slash across his throat; what she could see of his expression was tight and angry.

  He gave a coldly exultant laugh at her blank puzzlement. ‘No, he doesn’t, does he?’

  He leaned closer to her, so that she could see the fierce glitter in his eyes. ‘What is it you’re thinking about, then, Vanessa? Where’s all that glorious fight gone? What are you hiding? Or should I say, what is it you’re hiding from?’

  That jolted her. Fight? Dear God, she was just beginning to realise how weaponless she was where he was concerned. ‘I don’t know what you’re—’

  ‘Don’t! Don’t lie to me!’ he cut across her sharply. ‘I’ve had enough of it. You know, I always wondered what it was that made you bury your personality under all those layers of stifling pseudo-obedience...”Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir.” And don’t hand me that crap about being content with your job. Maybe you were once, but since the judge died you’ve enjoyed ruling the roost here by yourself too long and too much to relinquish your independence easily to me or to anyone else. I think you’re only just beginning to discover your potential. You want something more out of life, but for some reason you’re too afraid to reach out and take it—’

  She felt too battered to fend off his quiver of questions; she could only stonewall. ‘Not everyone has your single-minded ambition—’

  ‘Had,’ he corrected ominously. ‘You’ll be pleased to note I’m rapidly diversifying my interests. At least I look to the future rather than the past for my solutions. That’s why you prefer to steep yourself in history, because it’s safe, isn’t it, Vanessa? No surprises. History can’t hurt you. Only what happens in the present can do that.’

  She gave a short, painful laugh. What was in the past could very well hurt you, haunt you; she was living proof of the fact.

  Her hand crept to her throat, pressing there to halt the rise of burning bile.

  A scandal has wings... How aptly that described the way that lies flew from lip to lip, like the innocent childish whispering game, where the distortion of the original message as it progressed further from the source resulted in great amusement. Except that there had been nothing innocent or amusi
ng in the vicious distortions spread about Vanessa. They had had a very serious intent—to destroy her reputation and undermine her credibility.

  Unexpectedly his voice gentled. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you with that stupid threat. You must know that it was only my anger talking. I would never betray you like that. I don’t want a scandal any more than you do; I enjoy my privacy too much. You can tell me anything...anything at all. I won’t be shocked...’

  She almost responded to that soft, enticing invitation, almost weakened, almost trusted him, but then she looked into his eyes, saw the ruthless curiosity there, and instinctively shrank from it. For a moment, in his place, she saw other hungry eyes, avid for her version of ‘the truth’, promising justice but delivering whatever served them best.

  ‘I won’t be shocked’. No, given his worldly sophistication he probably wouldn’t be, but the sordid little story still had the power to shock Vanessa, to make her feel again that writhing self-contempt and crippling sense of vulnerability.

  ‘I feel ill,’ she said through stiff lips.

  ‘Vanessa—’

  ‘If you don’t get me home I’ll probably be sick in the car,’ she said with bitter relish and he hastily turned the keys in the ignition, expressing his frustration with a loud gunning of the engine as he pulled out into the road.

  ‘Don’t think this is the end of it, Flynn,’ he brooded as they surged forward into the darkness.

  ‘Make up your mind,’ she muttered sullenly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She risked a glance at his dark profile. His hearing was as acute as his perception. ‘You call me Vanessa when you want something and Flynn to threaten me. To put me in my place.’

  ‘I have yet to discover what your place is,’ he said cryptically. ‘Now, be a good girl and shut up while I concentrate. It’s been a bloody long night.’

  She remembered then where he had been and felt a small flicker of reviving malice. ‘Who beat you for the award?’