Of course they were. And of course the meal stretched to four. And of course Guy was utterly charming and even managed to disengage himself from a lively discussion on modern micrometers to ask her mother about the garden. Jane sat quietly, feeling as if she were the only person in the whole world who’d not been invited to join in. You’d never have guessed it, though. She smiled brightly and relied on herself.
When he left he put his hand lightly on her elbow and said, ‘I’ll be in touch.’
The phone rang seven times the next day. None of the calls was for her.
When a fortnight had gone by she decided she had forgotten him almost completely, and was so eager to get away from the wretched phone that she was actually pleased when her poor mother bruised her toes with a spade and she had to accompany her father to some manufacturing industry function in Birmingham. But when she spotted Guy standing in a corner, talking intently to a bald man with side-whiskers, and looking taller and bigger than anybody else there, she remembered that she hadn’t forgotten him at all. His left side was on view. The side with the mole. And he was laughing now, that rich, melodic laugh which she couldn’t possibly be hearing across all the babble of voices. And yet she was sure she was.
She ignored him completely. Luckily her father’s golfing pal, William Gresham—big in plastics, as he liked reminding people—was standing near by and was only too delighted to have a young beauty in a flame-coloured dress start chattering animatedly to him. Jane knew him well enough to know that golf and plastics would keep him engaged in conversation for ages and ages. She had underestimated it. By the time he had finished describing his new flexible polymer, Jane was wishing she hadn’t accepted the third spritzer—and Guy Rexford was nowhere to be seen.
Good. She managed to excuse herself politely and bolted off in search of the ladies’. She was almost there when he reappeared.
‘Jane Garston…’ he said slowly. ‘Well, well…’
She turned her large, almost black eyes directly on his. Her heart was pounding with…with chemistry and all her brain cells seemed to have coalesced into a heavy lump. Only her bladder still seemed to be working properly. ‘Hello,’ she said coolly, letting her eyebrows lift with what she hoped was suitable disdain and crossing her legs.
He ran the tip of his tongue across his lips. His eyes were navy blue in the subdued lighting, his lashes short and black and dense. ‘I’ve been in Kuala Lumpur,’ he said briefly. ‘I flew back in this morning.’
‘Really?’ Actually, he was incredibly tanned. Much browner than he had been two weeks earlier. Her bladder practically fizzed at the sight. She pressed her knees together. ‘I can’t imagine what that’s got to do with me.’
‘Can’t you? Then you haven’t been wondering whether I’d call you and ask you out again? You don’t see it as some kind of explanation?’
‘No. Not at all.’
He looked down on her and his eyes seemed to be laughing, even though his mouth was enigmatically straight. ‘Is that so? Now run along, Jane Garston… quickly…Don’t let me keep you waiting…’ he said wryly, lifting one eyebrow, and then adding, ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Either his patent amusement or his final commentshe couldn’t be sure which—gave her such a jolt that she hardly dared uncross her legs. Certainly there was no question of her airily dismissing him and swanning off across the huge room, which was exactly what she wanted to do. Instead, she hurriedly took the few ignominious steps which separated her from the door to the powder room, her skin’ burning and tears of mortification stinging her eyes. Of course, as soon as the door closed behind her all the urgency disappeared, and she was left facing her own dismal reflection in the large mirror, and the discovery that this time, at least, her blush was very visible indeed despite the golden hue of her skin. She started to splash cold water on her face to make it subside, but the sound of running water proved too much for her automatic nervous system. She had to rush for the cubicle, still red in the face and still blinking away tears of mortification…
Back in front of the mirror she forced herself to face the fact that whether she liked it or not she was absolutely obsessed with the man. He’d promised to get in touch and he hadn’t, and it was no good him making excuses about being in Kuala Lumpur because they had telephones in Kuala Lumpur, didn’t they? He’d tried to use her. He was planning to take over Garston’s, and he was making a worried man of her darling father, and now he’d gone and said he’d get in touch again, and of course he wouldn’t and she’d waste another fortnight of her life jumping out of her skin every time the phone rang. Her blushes subsided to the point where she looked positively pale.
She clenched her fists. She had to do something. She had to do something which would ensure that she didn’t waste another hour of her life fancying him and fantasising about him, and which might also get him off her father’s back—if he had a shred of common decency in him, that was—which he didn’t, because no man who would let his eyes tell you that he knew you were bursting to go to the loo could be counted as the least bit decent. None the less she could try.
She walked out of the powder room in exactly the manner she wished she’d walked into it. Chin high, eyes flashing, she set off to find him and give him a piece of her mind.
CHAPTER FOUR
AT LAST she caught a glimpse of the back of his head. He was disappearing out of the hotel reception area and through the main door. Swept along by anger, she broke into a run, pushing her way through the sedate groups of people in her path. When she caught up with him he was striding across the car park towards the low, dark shape of his car.
‘Guy!’ she shouted, her voice sounding shrill and thin in the night air.
He stopped and turned to look at her. Then he stood still, and waited for her to approach. ‘I want a word with you,’ she continued breathlessly, anxious that he shouldn’t be the one to start talking and throw her off her stride.
‘Yes?’ His arms folded themselves slowly across the powerful expanse of his chest.
She gave a sudden shiver as she drew nearer. It was chilly out, and the short puff sleeves of her taffeta dress had brought goosebumps up on her arms. She crossed her own arms and hugged herself. ‘It’s about our firm,’ she said emphatically, fearful that if she didn’t spill the words out quickly her nerve would fail her. ‘I’ve come to tell you to leave it alone.’
‘Garston’s?’
‘The very one,’ she bit out sarcastically. ‘Look, it’s ours. Can you understand that? My grandfather’s grandfather or my father’s great-great-grandfather or…or someone like that founded it, and it’s gone from father to son ever since. I know that there are shares all over the place and there shouldn’t be. But that’s only because of Aunt Florrie and the cats’ home.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
Her anger flared anew. ‘Oh, don’t pretend to be so innocent! We know perfectly well that you’re planning to take it over.’
‘Am I?’
‘Of course you are. Do you think we’re stupid? We know someone’s trying to buy shares.’
‘That doesn’t mean that the firm’s about to be taken over. Simply that someone’s taking an interest.’
‘That someone being you.’
He didn’t respond directly. He simply said. ‘Garston’s are almost ready to market their new gearing system. Any one of a number of people could be very interested in having a stake in that.’
Jane looked at him blankly for a moment and then said in a low, fierce voice, ‘No. If that was what was going on, Dad would know. He knows everything about Garston’s. He loves that place, you know? He lives and breathes it. He’s devoted his life to it, and he’s always been contented and happy and now he’s worried to death and it’s all your fault. Why can’t you just leave the place alone? It’s profitable. Dad obviously manages it well. And before you say anything else, I know he should have bought Aunt Florrie’s shares himself but he’s always too busy reinvesting to s
pare money for himself…Mum even makes her own curtains.’ She took a deep gulp of the raw evening air. ‘It’s not fair,’ she finished, her voice cracking a little with emotion. ‘You’ve got everything. Why do you have to come along and take away everything we have, too?’
The car park was floodlit. Guy’s shirt-front looked very white as he unfolded his arms and took a few steps towards her. His eyes glittered and looked densely black and dangerous as he moved closer to her. Oh, lord— she’d really gone and torn it now. A man like him wouldn’t like being told what he could and couldn’t do with his business empire by a young woman like her. Wouldn’t like it one bit. Her eyes filled with tears of frustration.
And then, to her astonishment, his hands came out and bit into her shoulders, his head dropped swiftly towards hers and he began to kiss her. He kissed her with a ferocity which took her breath away. His mouth opened over hers determinedly, his tongue strong against her lips. He tasted salty and male. Shock-waves rocked her, but she didn’t pull away from him. She had watched his mouth, transfixed, when he had spoken to her, and somewhere—way beneath the lapping and splashing of her conscious mind—a dark curiosity had ducked and dived. She had wanted to know how it would be to be kissed by that mouth. Now she was finding out.
And the answer to her question was heady stuff indeed. It was like nothing else she had ever known. His mouth felt right against hers. It felt as if it belonged there, and had always done so and could never belong anywhere else. Slowly, fluttering a little, her eyes closed and she found herself sinking into the world of that kiss. And it wasn’t just her mouth that slipped so eagerly into this heaven, either; all her senses followed with alarming rapidity. Within short minutes she was kissing him back with a frantic urgency, crushing the taffeta of her bodice as she clung to him, moving and arching so that her breasts thrust against his crisp shirt-front, thrilling to the power of the lean male flesh beyond.
Arousal flamed inside her, scorching her nerveendings, forcing her even closer against him. Then Guy’s hand came down to find a breast, making her breath catch roughly in her throat. His fingers cupped the mass while his thumb tracked back and forth along the edge of her bodice, dusting the silken swell of her skin with prickling sensation. Unconsciously, she let out her breath so that her body hollowed a little, freeing fabric from flesh by a fraction, and seeming to beg his thumb to intrude between silk and skin and find the hot nub of her breast for itself. And eagerly his thumb took up the invitation. It travelled decisively inside her dress and burrowed beneath the lace of her bra, clambering tantalisingly over and around her hard, excited nipple.
Their mouths tore apart as Jane gasped aloud her astonished pleasure. Her eyes flew wide with delight as she greeted the needle-sharp darts of desire which assailed her. She could see nothing for a moment, and then her vision cleared and she saw, blurred and shadowy in the darkness, his white collar, the hard angular shape of his jaw, and above—darker and even more shadowy—the hollows of his eyes. Eyes which, although she couldn’t see them now, seemed eternally to be masking their disapproval of her. Eyes set in a face which had schooled itself to give nothing away. Suddenly Jane was frightened of this man. How on earth had he induced her to behave so shamelessly? What was it about him?
With a burst of panicky resolution Jane fought free of his arms. ‘What did you have to go and do that for?’ she muttered querulously. ‘I told you not to touch me. I thought you said you’d wait to be invited?’
He smiled, his teeth flashing white in the cold, blue light. ‘I figured you weren’t very likely to issue that invitation in the circumstances. So I decided to gatecrash.’
Jane had never felt so confused or humiliated in all her life. Her mouth still felt bruised and swollen from his embrace. She had given herself to it so wantonly, even though it had been no more than a display of raw, male power on his part. He had simply wanted to put her in her place—and what better way to emphasise the fact that he despised her than by kissing her? And she, fool that she was, had lapped it up. She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘I don’t know how you dared…’ she muttered.
‘It was easy, Jane. And anyway, you loved it. Where’s the problem?’
‘The problem is that I didn’t want you to. I told you not to touch me once before, and I thought you might respect that. But you’re not the type of man who bothers with little things like respect, are you? You’ve no respect for my father’s life—and even less for me. I’m just a woman. A young woman. I don’t count, do I?’
‘Jane, was that the first time you’d been kissed?’
She eyed him suspiciously, looking up through the dark shadow of her fringe, with eyes, which if she only knew it, were huge and lambent. ‘No. Of course not. But I’m not the sort of girl you seem to think I am.’ Her eyes took on a new defiance. ‘I’m a virgin, as it happens,’ she added grittily.
Still his features registered nothing. ‘Jane, I kissed you, that’s all. You liked it. I didn’t violate you. I did it on impulse—which was how I’d always assumed such things were meant to be done. I wasn’t even aware that it was possible to book kisses in advance—or were all your other kisses undertaken by appointment only?’
An image of the eager faces of Jane’s former boyfriends swam in front of her eyes. ‘The other men who kissed me weren’t like you,’ she complained. ‘They were a different type of man. It was…different.’
‘But not better,’ he said confidently, and suddenly his face broke into one of its unexpectedly broad smiles. With a flash of panic she realised that he was about to laugh.
She couldn’t bear to hear him laugh. His laughter made him whole. It made him real, and yet at the same time utterly alien. His eyes narrowed and sparkled. He was going to laugh…
She laid the palms of her hands against his broad chest and pushed hard. He didn’t budge, but he did start to laugh. Furious, charged with a mixture of desire and despair, she pushed harder, so that her arms straightened and her features crumpled with the effort. Apart from the rhythmic quaking of his chest he still didn’t move. Wild now with the power of her need, she dropped her head and pushed using every ounce of her strength. He remained as solid as a rock. Then all of a sudden he stopped laughing and caught hold of her around the waist and swung her up in the air, setting her down again, closer to him.
‘Why did you do that?’ she complained desperately.
His shoulders lifted slightly. ‘If I’d moved away you would have fallen flat on your face. It seemed the kinder option.’
She tugged away from him and took a few steps backwards. ‘Go away,’ she muttered shakily. ‘Just go away.’
His eyes shone. ‘Very well,’ he growled slowly. ‘But I’ll be in touch, Jane Garston. You can be sure of that.’
She stared at him in shock for a moment. She’d come out here to try to anger him. To irritate and annoy him. So that he’d never make any more of his empty promises to be in touch. So that she could kill her own obsession with him stone-dead. And yet she had achieved the complete opposite. He was still promising to be in touch, only now her body was craving his touch so powerfully that when the promise was broken, as it surely would be, it would be quite impossible for her to put him out of her mind. And no doubt he was more determined than ever to go ahead with the take-over.
He would do exactly as he pleased. That was the message the kiss had been intended to deliver. She turned on her heel and ran back to the golden rectangle of light beneath the striped awning. She ran up the steps and through the plate glass door and back into the hotel.
In the car on the way back she asked, ‘Why was Bill Gresham surprised to see Guy Rexford there, Dad?’
Her father shrugged his shoulders. ‘He doesn’t socialise much. In fact, everyone was speculating as to which firm in this area he was planning to buy. I didn’t confess that it was mine.’
‘Is he so predictable?’
‘Business-wise, yes. He bought up his first company when he was very young—twenty o
r so. And he’s just kept going ever since—always engineering firms—and always good ones. He certainly knew what he was up to from the start—and yet no one knows where he got his capital or his expertise. It’s rumoured that he came from a very modest background. Anyway, he’s made an international name for himself now. Whatever his background might once have been, he left it behind a long time ago. It certainly hasn’t done him any harm.’
Nothing, she thought, could harm him. He had violated her, no matter that he had only kissed her. And yet he himself was inviolable.
This time the fortnight seemed far longer. And this time Jane couldn’t fool herself that she didn’t care. The kiss would not let itself be forgotten. It drowned her dreams. It nudged at the edges of her mind all day long, no matter how busy she tried to keep herself. It swamped her as she sat in front of the television, watching actors and actresses pretend to kiss, and wondering how they could bear to tolerate the pretence when the reality could be so special.
Her father’s face was also a constant reminder of the power of Guy Rexford to disturb. Someone had bought the cats’ home shares. And a second cousin had sold out too—and why should he not have been tempted at prices like that? There was no pretending now that it might never happen. It was going to happen. The only question was when.
At six o’clock on a Thursday evening the telephone rang.
‘Jane?’
Her heart leapt. ‘Who is that speaking?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.’
‘No.’
‘Dress up. I’ll take you somewhere nice for a meal.’ And with that the phone went dead.
Jane dressed up. Her fingers shook as she applied her frugal dusting of make-up. Her stomach churned and knotted and her mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow. She was going. She was going because…because she might be able, even now at the eleventh hour, to persuade him not to continue with his take-over.
Forsaking All Reason Page 5
