Vacation with a Commanding Stranger

by Penny Jordan

  ‘I get on very well with her,’ he told her, but his tone had become slightly brusque. Sensitively, Livvy recognised it and stopped herself from asking any more questions.

  Instead she said as lightly as she could, ‘Computer games… Thanks for the tip. I suspect you’re probably right. I would never have thought of it myself. They aren’t something that appeals to me…my brain just doesn’t work in that kind of way.’

  She looked up and caught the fleeting look of surprise in his eyes.

  ‘It’s very honest of you to admit it.’

  It was Livvy’s turn to look surprised. ‘We all have our vulnerabilities and weaknesses,’ she told him. ‘I’ve never seen any point in trying to deny mine. I have a gift for languages which in its way involves a form of logic, but it isn’t the same kind of logic needed to work out mathematical sequences or become computer-adept, and besides…’

  ‘It’s not very feminine. Like knowing how to change a tyre. Very flattering to the male ego.’

  His voice had hardened again and Livvy gritted her teeth. Why on earth was it that, every time they seemed to be talking to one another as normal human beings, he had to spoil everything by reverting to challenging her…accusing her…

  Perhaps because it was his only way of protecting and defending himself. From her? Why should he need to? She didn’t pose any threat to him, did she?

  He placed her papers on the table and turned away from her, walking over to the fridge.

  Livvy tried to recapture her interest in her work, to concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing, but somehow her attention kept drifting away from the papers in front of her and in the direction of the man working quietly and determinedly in the corner of the room. He had his back to her and she could see the muscles moving in his back as he applied the wrench to the rusty connections of the existing gas container. He was wearing a shirt, but the pressure needed to loosen the connections was pulling it taut against his flesh.

  A tiny feather-light sigh of sensation brushed against her skin, making her stomach muscles quiver and then tense.

  She could feel her body getting hot, her mouth going dry. What would have happened this afternoon if she hadn’t pulled away when she had?

  She closed her eyes briefly, mentally imagining him without his shirt, his skin sleek and smooth, clinging supplely to his muscles.

  She heard the small grunt of satisfaction he made as the first connection came free and her eyes opened.

  This afternoon, standing close to him, she had caught the hot, musky scent of his sweat. And had been aroused by it? Just as she was now being aroused by her own thoughts. No! How ridiculous. Only infatuated teenagers or women in love reacted like that to such small stimuli.

  Women in love!

  She could feel the small hairs on the nape of her neck standing on end as the shock engulfed her in an ice-cold frisson of fear.

  In love with Richard Field? Impossible… How could she be?

  Blindly she tried to focus on her work, to ignore his presence at the other end of the room.

  Why on earth had George behaved so irrationally, allowing Richard Field to come down here, not telling Gale what he was doing? And how could she, even in her wildest imagination, allow herself to fall in love with a man who could behave as callously and uncaringly towards her sex as Richard Field did?

  All right, so maybe this evening she had had a brief glimpse into his past, had sensed the pain he must have suffered when his mother left him and when his marriage broke up, but none of that altered the fact that he had been openly contemptuous and wrong about her.

  Any woman falling in love with that kind of man was just asking to be hurt.

  ‘There, that should do it.’

  At any other time the male satisfaction in his voice would have made her smile; as it was, instead she tensed, refusing to look up from her work.

  What was he doing, hovering over her? Why didn’t he go away and leave her alone? He was standing behind her now, close enough for her to sense his presence, so much so that she could feel her body trembling in response to it.

  ‘I ought to ring Gale… She’ll want a full report on how I got on with the plumber…’

  She was talking quickly, wildly almost, desperate to fill the dangerously intense silence between them, to defend herself against the miasma of awareness that threatened her. Would her cousin still want to go ahead with her plans if George was trying to sell the farmhouse?

  ‘The plumber?’ Richard Field was questioning her.

  ‘Yes…I went to see him this morning. Gale wants—’

  ‘Was that the plumber I saw you speaking with in Beaulieu?’

  Livvy tensed. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it was,’ she agreed.

  Inadvertently she turned round, her stomach lurching. He was standing even closer to her than she had imagined. She could see the faint beginnings of the new beard growing along his jaw. There was a smudge of oil on his cheek; it made him look younger, more approachable, very human and in some odd way almost vulnerable. She had to stop herself from reaching up and smoothing it away.

  The cat too was affected by his closeness. It uncurled itself and stood up, arching its back and then rubbed itself against his legs, purring loudly.

  Almost absently, he bent down and picked it up, stroking it.

  ‘You should be outside, not in here,’ he told it. He was frowning again, Livvy recognised. Not at the cat, but at her.

  ‘This is still Gale’s home,’ she told him defensively. ‘She has every right—’

  ‘As I understand it, it belongs to both Gale and George,’ Richard Field interrupted her curtly. ‘Does George know, I wonder, how Gale plans to spend his money? Or will she just present him with a fait accompli just as she always does? She treats him like an extra child, not a man. No wonder…’

  The cat made a small squark of protest as he put it down.

  ‘I need a shower,’ he told her, then added curtly, ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that I might be allowed just some small space on the table on which to eat my meal?’

  ‘I’ll be finished before you come back down,’ Livvy assured him, equally curtly.

  He was so changeable, so unfathomable, almost human one minute and then the next almost aggressively unpleasant and cold towards her.

  She bent her head back over her work and didn’t raise it again until she had heard the door close behind him. A shower, he had said.

  She shivered beneath the thrill of wanton fire that ran through her as she pictured his naked body and then hastily denied the image and its potent effect on her.

  ‘And as for you, you traitress,’ she accused the cat, as it leapt on to her lap, ‘you have absolutely no taste, do you know that? No sense of female solidarity; if you did, you’d have scratched him, not fawned all over him in that foolish, adoring manner.’

  ‘I forgot my jacket.’

  Livvy flushed beetroot-red as she realised that Richard was standing right behind her and that he must have overheard every word she had just said. She hadn’t even heard him come back into the kitchen, and she certainly could not turn round now and give him the satisfaction of seeing her scarlet face.

  It was enough that she had heard the amusement in his voice.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘AND you can see from the formation of them where over thousands of years the pressure of the water has worn away the softer rock to form these caves.’

  ‘Have they ever been inhabited?’ Livvy asked the guide curiously, as he paused to allow the tour to pause and acknowledge with awe the cavern that nature had created.

  It was icy cold down here beneath the surface, especially after the heat of the summer sun outside, but Livvy had paid attention to the warnings in her guidebook and had dressed appropriately for her visit to the caves. Her question had been prompted by her awareness that, in other parts of France, along the Loire valley for instance and at other ancient sites, the caves there had been inhabited until quite rec
ently.

  Waiting now for the guide to answer her, she remembered too reading that in the pitifully war-torn country which had been Yugoslavia refugees were having to resort to making their homes in the same caves which their parents and grandparents had inhabited during the Second World War. Now, glancing around the icy coldness of the cavern, she tried to envisage how it would feel to have to make such a place one’s home.

  Several tunnels lay off the main gallery and she could well imagine the warren of passageways and caves which must honeycomb this subterranean world.

  Like Theseus, though, in his quest to vanquish the Minotaur, one would need to be very sure of knowing one’s way around such a very complicated maze.

  Such places had always both fascinated and repelled her. She could still vividly remember her first visit to the caves at Inglewhite at home; the shock of the icy cold air; the awe at the size of the huge stalagmites and stalactites. Stalactites hung on tight to the ceiling, stalagmites grew upwards from the floor with all their might, the guide there had told her informatively.

  She smiled ruefully to herself now while she listened to the guide responding to her question.

  When she had taken her own class on a similar trip, they had scorned such homely explanations, although she had recognised that same look of awe and fascination in their eyes as even the ‘coolest’ members of 5V witnessed the effect of the relentless power of nature.

  ‘That’s nothing,’ one of the boys had derided when they had entered the largest cavern, its ceiling so high above them that it was almost impossible to see it. ‘A semtex bomb could make a hole twice this size in seconds…this took nature millions of years.’

  ‘It takes man to detonate a bomb,’ Livvy had told him. ‘And man can always be stopped. Nature can’t…’

  It had been the lake which had impressed them all the most, though; so deep that no one had even truly plumbed its depths, and so cold that it was unsafe for even the strongest diver to stay below the surface for very long.

  Their guide was directing them down a narrow passageway. Livvy had been lucky; there were only half a dozen other people on this afternoon tour. Their guide was a young geology student, a trifle earnest perhaps, but interesting none the less.

  ‘I shouldn’t like to be down here if there was a flood,’ someone commented.

  Livvy felt the brief frisson of fear that ran through the small group.

  ‘We are safe enough here,’ the guide assured them with a smile, ‘but there are other parts…other passageways and caves.’ He gave a brief shrug. ‘We do not allow the public to endanger themselves in them, though.’

  As he painstakingly explained the safety precautions they used, Livvy found her attention drifting slightly.

  There had been no sign of Richard Field when she’d left this morning. Not that she minded, of course. The less they saw of one another, the better, as far as she was concerned.

  It was just as well he possessed that blind prejudiced view of her and that he so patently disapproved of and disliked her, otherwise…

  Otherwise what? Just because his kisses had made her feel…

  They made her feel nothing, she told herself firmly. Nothing at all.

  While their guide was explaining the geological make-up of the cave system, another tour group arrived in the cavern; schoolchildren, noisy and excited as they discovered the possibilities of the cavern’s echo effect. They were younger than her own class. Livvy sympathised with the slightly tense-looking young woman who was obviously their teacher.

  One of the boys, his face turned upwards to stare at the ceiling, backed accidentally into Livvy.

  When the teacher hurried across to remonstrate with him and apologise, Livvy smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she told her. ‘I’ve been there myself…’

  ‘You’re a teacher?’ the other girl queried.

  She was about Livvy’s own age, small and very French-looking, with her immaculate bobbed shiny dark hair, pristine shirt and jeans and soft Gucci loafers.

  The same clothes worn by her would never have managed to look quite as chic as they did on this girl, Livvy reflected, and then acknowledged wryly to herself that a British schoolteacher’s salary was hardly likely to stretch to what looked like a genuine pair of Gucci shoes.

  ‘Yes, although my class is slightly older.’

  They chatted for several seconds, but it wasn’t until the other girl introduced herself and asked what subject Livvy specialised in that she realised that Livvy herself was not actually French.

  Her astonishment when she discovered her nationality was rather flattering, Livvy acknowledged, although she was quick to explain that one of the reasons her French was so good was due to the holidays she had spent with her French relatives.

  ‘Oui, that is the very best way to become fluent in another language,’ the other girl agreed.

  Her name was Marie-Louise Fernier and she had returned to teaching part-time following the birth of her son, she explained to Livvy as they chatted. When she learned that Livvy was staying locally, she immediately suggested that Livvy might like to look round the school.

  ‘Perhaps we could have lunch together,’ Marie-Louise added, ‘I should enjoy that.’

  ‘Lunch would be lovely,’ Livvy agreed. It would also be interesting to get an informal look at close hand at a French school.

  ‘Would tomorrow be too soon?’ Marie-Louise asked her. ‘Only, after tomorrow I do not work again until next week.’

  ‘Tomorrow will be fine,’ Livvy assured her. ‘Where shall I meet you?’

  ‘If you would like to come direct to the school,’ Marie-Louise suggested. ‘It is quite easy to find, a kilometre outside Beaulieu. If you could be there for twelve, we could have lunch and then in the afternoon I could show you over the school.’

  After she had made a note of Marie-Louise’s directions, Livvy realised that the rest of her tour had moved on. Excusing herself, she hurried to join them.

  She would enjoy having lunch with the Frenchwoman, she acknowledged; it would be interesting to talk to her as a colleague and to compare the methods they used. Despite the fact that she had come to the Dordogne for solitude, she was already looking forward to seeing Marie-Louise again.

  It would do her good to have something else to think about, something to take her mind off Richard Field and all the confusing and dangerous emotions he managed to arouse in her.

  ‘You are here alone?’ Marie-Louise had asked her, and she had been very quick to confirm that this was the case.

  But it was the truth, after all. All right, so technically Richard Field was sharing the house with her, and the farmer seemed to have leapt to the conclusion because of that fact that they were together, a pair…lovers.

  Lovers… A fine frisson of sensation, which had nothing to do with the fact that she had just emerged into the warm sunlight from the coldness of the caves, ran tauntingly over her skin.

  * * *

  ‘Had a good day?’

  Livvy couldn’t conceal her astonishment. She paused in the act of pouring herself a cup of coffee and turned to look at Richard Field.

  He had walked into the kitchen a few minutes ago and, although she had pretended not to notice him, irritatingly, physically and mentally as well, she seemed to be extra-sensitive to his presence, her nerves on edge, her muscles tight and tense, and even her skin extraordinarily sensitive…so sensitive in fact that she could almost feel the eddies in the air made by his movements.

  If he’d actually physically touched her, she couldn’t have reacted more, she recognised edgily. It was ridiculous that he should have this effect on her, especially in view of what she knew about him and his opinions of her.

  ‘Yes, fine. Have you?’ she responded tersely without looking at him.

  ‘Mmm…I went fishing…’

  Livvy could feel her skin starting to burn. Fishing. It was hardly the most erotic of words and yet, as she heard him say it, a most extraordinary feeling o
f physically sensual awareness came over her.

  For a moment she actually felt as she had done when they had stood together by the river, her heart pounding, her senses aware of everything about him, but most especially the fact that he was standing so close to her, holding her, touching her, his mouth only inches away from her own.

  ‘Where have you been…?’

  ‘I—er—’ She felt dazed, giddy, foolishly, dangerously light-headed. Pull yourself together, she warned herself fiercely. Just because for once his voice had sounded soft, gentle, almost provocatively teasing, as though he too was remembering…

  ‘I visited the caves,’ she told him huskily.

  ‘I thought tomorrow I might visit Cahors,’ he told her, adding astoundingly, ‘Perhaps you’d like to come with me. We could have lunch somewhere together, maybe…’

  Livvy stared at him in shock. ‘No…no, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ve already made arrangements… I’m having lunch with someone else…’

  She was gabbling, she recognised shakily, but then she would defy anyone not to betray their feelings if they were in her shoes. The shock of hearing Richard actually suggest that they spend some time together, actually ask her to have lunch with him after the way he had behaved towards her, was enough to send anyone off balance.

  As she looked into his face and saw the way it was closing, hardening, she had to suppress a wild urge to cry out in protest, to say that he had got it all wrong…that it was not that she didn’t want to accept his invitation, to explain that it had come as such a shock.

  ‘I see…’

  His voice was cold and hard. As cold and hard as his face.

  He was turning away from her, walking away from her. Livvy bit down hard on her lip to stop herself from calling him back. It was obvious what he was thinking, but what was the point in trying to explain? He obviously thought she had picked up some man and arranged to see him again.