‘I…I thought we had arranged to meet up a bit later…’
‘We had but…’ James looked up into the cloudless blue sky and squinted. The hot summer agreed with him. Naturally inclined to swarthiness, he had been given by the sun a deep, bronzed colour that made most other people look anaemic in comparison. Especially her, with her ultra-fair skin that needed protecting. Not that he seemed to mind. In fact, she blushed as she remembered some of his more potent adulations of her body.
He glanced back down at her and grinned. ‘It was so bloody hot that I couldn’t resist driving over to see if I could catch you before you went out. Somehow,’ he leaned over, trapping her in her sun lounger, ‘Mama, wonderful company though she is, was not quite the woman I fancied spending my Saturday with.’
Sara licked her lips. ‘Actually, I was on my way out…’
‘In a pair of shorts and a cropped top that barely covers your breasts? Not if I have any say in that.’
‘I was going to change first!’
‘Out where?’
‘Out to the market, actually. I need to buy some vegetables, food for me to cook for us tonight.’
He hadn’t straightened up and the warm suggestiveness of his eyes as they roamed over her face and the upper part of her body made her nipples ache.
‘Good,’ he murmured, ‘I fancy a trip to the market. Always such an adventure, that market of ours. I can drive us there. We can have lunch somewhere.’
‘No!’
James frowned and pushed himself up. ‘No? Why not?’ He narrowed his eyes suspiciously on her face. Sometimes, not very often, he had the disconcerting feeling that the earth, on which his feet were very firmly planted, was shifting ever so slightly under him. This was one of those times. Shouldn’t matter a bean, of course, since sex was all there was between them, hot, vibrant, compulsive sex, but he didn’t like her immediate rejection of his company.
‘Because…then you’d see what I’m buying and the meal tonight wouldn’t be a surprise.’
‘Let me take you out. You know how much Mama enjoys coming here now to babysit Simon…’
Which was something else, Sara thought guiltily. She hadn’t planned it that way, but Simon and Maria seemed to have developed a natural bond and it had been easier to see him away from her own house. More often than not, they went back to his estate and he cooked for her, tempted her palate with delicacies he carried up with him in his helicopter, little morsels of paradise from Fortnum and Mason or Harrods.
Sometimes he would feed her some of the delicious treats, making her recline on one of the sofas in one of the sitting rooms, door firmly closed so that she could stretch out in naked abandonment and nibble what he presented to her. He would kneel by her side, every bit the adoring slave, and then his adoration would become physical, from her toes to the top of her head.
‘No, really, James, I’d rather I just went down to the market and got what I need to get.’ She reluctantly swung her legs over the side of the sun lounger so that she could make the point. ‘And I’ll get through it a lot quicker if it’s just me and Simon.’
‘I have two perfectly functioning legs,’ he said tautly, ‘I don’t think I’ll hold you up. If anything, I can help, take Simon for a milkshake, leave you to shop in peace for a couple of hours.’
‘No!’ Sara said sharply. Her eyes slid across to where her son was busily making an unholy mess of the flowers she had planted only days earlier. Obviously his designated spot had failed to yield the expected treasure. She would have to sort that out later.
‘What’s the problem, Sara?’ OK, so he was being high-handed and obstinate, but he didn’t like to think that his company was surplus to requirements, that she didn’t want him around whenever and wherever she could have him, because as far as he was concerned that was how it stood with him at this moment in time. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was the most severe case of lust he had ever experienced. And when they were together she was as fired-up as he was, so he couldn’t understand how she could draw lines around them the way that she did, the way she was doing now.
‘There is no problem.’ Their eyes met and she was the first to look away. ‘Come on, Simes, upstairs. You’ve got to change. We’re going into town to do some shopping.’
‘But I haven’t found any treasure,’ Simon wailed, not budging.
‘What you need is a metal detector,’ James said, strolling across and, to Sara’s dismay, reaching out one hand to take his. ‘Now, a metal detector will tell you where to find your buried treasure. It beeps whenever it senses something interesting in the ground.’
Simon was looking a little too enthralled by that for Sara’s comfort, and it was even more alarming when they both followed her inside the house with Simon willingly complying with James’s brisk assertion that he would change him so that his mother could get dressed.
‘There’s no need,’ she protested feebly, only to find herself staring into two pairs of implacable eyes.
Of course, James got his way, accompanying them to the market. This was just what she didn’t need, and as soon as she could she made her feelings absolutely clear.
‘This wasn’t part of the deal,’ she hissed as they ventured into the open-air food market and she could be assured that Simon was distracted enough not to overhear a word they were saying.
‘What deal?’
‘Me. You. Us. That deal.’
Since that was precisely the arrangement he had always enjoyed with every woman he had ever dated, he was surprised to find himself seething with anger at being informed that he was merely part of a deal.
‘I don’t know that I care for that expression.’
‘Why? It’s only a matter of vocabulary.’
‘Ha, ha. What was the real reason for not wanting me tagging along, Sara? Were you planning on meeting someone in town? A man?’ He struggled to hide the primitive stab of jealousy underneath a tone of amused cynicism.
Sara stopped to stare at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Is that what I’m being? You seemed pretty determined not to have me around and don’t think I haven’t noticed that it’s the same on all the weekends I’ve come up here. You’re free for the evening, but inexplicably occupied during the day. Wouldn’t you say that that was a little strange? A little revealing?’
Sara turned away and gave all her attention to the boy behind the stall and then surprised him by handing over the correct amount of money before he had time to consult his piece of paper, do his sums and tell her how much she owed.
‘Well?’ James pressed. ‘What do you do with yourself during the daylight hours? If there’s some man here you’ve been seeing, I’ll…’
‘What? Hound him out of town? String him up from the nearest lamppost?’
‘Both,’ he muttered, scowling, not that he believed that for a minute. He would have heard long before now.
‘There’s no man. How could I have the energy for anyone else?’ she asked truthfully, which went a little way to putting the shadow of a smile back on his face. He took the bags of fruit and vegetables from her.
‘We will have lunch together, the three of us,’ he stated flatly, and Sara raised her eyebrows at his peremptory tone of voice. ‘I know a very pleasant pub about twenty miles away.’
‘Twenty miles?’
‘No distance at all.’ He shrugged and gave her one of those familiar looks that never failed to make her go warm all over. Wicked, arrogant and searingly sexy all wrapped up in one. ‘And then I will deliver you and Simon back to the Rectory in one piece and leave you to get on with the absorbing task of cooking for your man.’
‘Cooking for my man. Hm. Aren’t you just the sort of sensitive, twenty-first-century guy that every liberated woman dreams of finding?’ It was so easy to drift into this kind of teasing banter with him and his sense of humour never let her down. He could make her giggle like a teenager. She was practically giggling now as he visibly puffed himself up and looked e
very inch the sexy caveman, even though he could cook like a dream when he put his mind to it.
‘Yes,’ he grinned back at her, ‘that would be me. The cap certainly fits so, if you don’t mind, I think I will wear it. Now, in a very sensitive manner, I will take these bags to the car and expect to see you what time…? In about half an hour?’
Sara sighed and gave up. ‘OK. A quick lunch and then you go home or I shall have your mother swearing at me for hogging you to myself whenever you come up.’
It was only hours later, after an extraordinarily good lunch at a pub in a small village that made their own town seem like a cosmopolitan city in comparison, that Sara took time out to sit down and think. She didn’t like where her thoughts went. Somewhere along the line, in that murky place between theory and practice, it had become just too damned comfortable being with James. If he had railed against her for shunning his company during the day, she could have told him that she yearned for him when he wasn’t with her. She had managed to hang on to that little piece of maternal protectiveness that made her shy away from encouraging contact between him and her son, but for how much longer?
Today had been something of a revelation. She had watched helplessly as James had bonded with Simon. She was his mum, who made sure that he washed his hands, brushed his teeth, didn’t eat too much of the wrong foods, read books with him and did puzzles, but James had talked to him in an amusing man-to-man way that had had Simon’s eyes dancing with delight. He had carried him from pub to car on his shoulders, bouncing him up and down until her son had laughed till tears had gathered in his eyes. He had seriously discussed the possibility of doing a spot of manly metal detecting together.
Now, as she prepared vegetables, she knew that she would have to do something about the situation.
She would have to break it off, show her hand, but when she thought of doing that, which was frankly what she had set out to do in the first place, her mind baulked.
Realising that she had peeled far too many carrots for two people, she switched to chopping onions, and when her eyes began to water firmly told herself that the onions were to blame.
Cool it down first. That was what she would do. Take her steps carefully because…because…
Because her heart had disobeyed every instruction her head had given it, she realised with panic. Her heart had boldly opened up and been swept away while all the time she had been kidding herself that she was pulling the strings and being the hard woman she never had been and certainly wasn’t now.
The Rectory was a place of seeming orderly control by the time seven-thirty rolled around.
Simon was comfortably tucked up in bed, fast asleep after being read his favourite book for five minutes. The kitchen smelled of garlic and herbs and the fragrant lamb she had spent the afternoon making, even though her mind had been miles away.
She was wearing a straight sleeveless dress, slightly fitted to the waist and then falling softly to mid-calf. Very old-fashioned, especially with her long hair falling in ripples down her back, very Victorian. Very un-sexy. Not an inch of unnecessary leg visible and no part of her body outlined. If she was going to stick to her guns and begin the painful process of phasing him out of her life, then she needed all the help she could get.
Nevertheless, she still felt her resolve wobble by the time the doorbell went and she pulled open the door to find him standing there, with an enormous bouquet of flowers in one hand.
It was the first time he had made any gesture like that and it took her aback. Flowers seemed to imply romance and romance wasn’t what he was about.
‘From the gardens,’ he said roughly, noting her reaction and registering grimly that flowers probably weren’t part of the ‘deal’ either. He thrust them at her and followed her into the kitchen, watching while she floated around, finding a vase, filling it with water, deftly arranging the flowers with an expertise that only his mother seemed to share.
What was she wearing? He hadn’t seen her in anything like that dress before, was surprised that she even possessed something as dreamily feminine as that, considering her wardrobe must still bear the imprint of her power outfits. It left an awful lot to the imagination and, on cue, his imagination began to run riot until he had firmly poured cold water over it.
‘Hand-picked?’
‘What?’
‘The flowers. Hand-picked, I presume?’
James shrugged carelessly. ‘Not too difficult, considering the profusion of them in the gardens. Smells good in here. Is Simon asleep?’
Sara didn’t want to discuss Simon, but mention of his name did remind her that her mission was to bring closure to this peculiar little relationship she and James were having, one which meant relatively little to him she was sure, but which meant far too much to her.
She would never tell him that she had found out about his little plan to use her to get the Rectory. It was humiliating enough now to think about that without bringing it out into the open and besides…she had played a tit-for-tat game that had massively backfired on her. The games were over, the only truth was that she had to get him out of her life because she was so hopelessly embroiled with him now.
‘Tell me what’s happening in London,’ she invited, steering the conversation into neutral waters. ‘What’s playing at the theatre? Are there any open-air proms happening? I used to go to the open-air proms every year when I was in London. There’s nothing quite like listening to good music outside, surrounded by people, with a picnic hamper by your side and friends around you.’
‘Any friends in particular?’ James took the proffered glass of wine and swallowed a mouthful.
Recently he seemed to have unearthed a distastefully possessive streak that he was finding difficult to control. What friends had she gone there with? He had gone to one open-air prom, last year in fact. He hadn’t seen her there then. Who had she been with? Her ex-boyfriend? Some other man? A whole tribe of them?
‘Friends from work.’ Sara went across to the Aga, opened the door and released a wonderful smell of cooking.
‘Do you keep in touch with them still?’
‘Of course I do!’ She had conversations down the end of the phone with some of them. They considered her something of a curiosity now that she had left the bright lights behind, and she considered them a little dysfunctional to be so wrapped up in making money, even though she could wryly admit that she had numbered one of them only a matter of a couple of months ago.
‘And these friends…are they male or female?’
‘Both,’ Sara said lightly. ‘A bit like yours, I expect.’
‘I don’t encourage female friendships.’ James rested the wine glass on the kitchen table so that he could link his fingers behind his head. From this angle, he could inspect her every movement with lazy, leisurely concentration. ‘I find even the most dispassionate female friend usually ends up wanting more than I can give.’
‘You’re not as irresistible as you think you are,’ Sara informed him. She hadn’t done a starter, favouring a pudding instead, and now she began bringing dishes to the table and telling him what he would be eating.
James listened politely, sat squarely in front of his plate, allowed her to dish out a little of everything for him.
‘Are you telling me that you don’t find me irresistible?’
‘I think we understand one another,’ Sara told him lightly. ‘We both know what we want out of this relationship.’ In his case, sex and her house, in her case love, marriage, babies, the whole fairy tale that experience should have warned her didn’t exist. Fortunately, he wasn’t going to find that out.
‘Which is?’
‘You know what. Fun.’
‘And your need to exorcise your demons.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Your ex-lover.’ It shouldn’t have bothered him. After all, wasn’t he getting what he wanted? To bed the woman sitting opposite him and eating with the composed air of a saint? It bothered him like hell.
Sar
a shrugged and let him assume.
‘Simon enjoyed today,’ she said, into the tense little silence that had greeted her non-answer.
‘So did I.’ He paused. ‘Do I hear a but coming…?’
‘But,’ Sara said obligingly, ‘I really don’t want a repeat performance.’
‘Meaning what exactly?’
‘Meaning that, while I appreciate your efforts, I don’t want you to get involved with my son.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Do you have to keep asking questions? Can’t you just accept what I tell you at face value?’ She closed her knife and fork. She had been able to eat only a fraction of what was on her plate. Her appetite seemed to have done a runner.
‘I’ve never been a great believer in accepting things at face value. There’s always a deeper agenda.’
Something, she thought, he would know a lot about, considering his agenda.
‘OK. The deeper agenda is that I don’t want Simon getting attached to someone who isn’t going to be around for very long.’
James wasn’t about to let that one go. ‘The dinner was delicious,’ he said carefully, sitting back and folding his arms with an expression that could stop a leopard at twelve paces. ‘I take it from your remark that you’ve already assigned a time limit to us?’
‘No, of course not…’
‘Simon benefits from having a man around occasionally. I’m not about to try and step into his father’s footsteps, although from what you tell me that wouldn’t be very difficult considering the kitchen table we’re sitting at is capable of more paternal feelings. But…’
‘There are no buts, James,’ Sara said sharply. ‘If you don’t like the situation then you can clear off.’ Every word was like having a knife dragged through her heart. She could feel her eyes beginning to water and hastily stood up so that she could focus on something other than his gimlet-like, narrowed stare.
‘This isn’t getting us anywhere.’ The low murmur came from closer to her than she had expected. With her back to him, belligerently attacking the plates into a state of cleanliness, she had been unaware of his approach.
His Convenient Mistress Page 13
