Melting Fire

by Anne Mather

  ‘Maybe, maybe. But not me!’ Olivia glanced round apprehensively, half suspecting Eliza had returned and was listening. ‘Bella, you have no right to say these things to me. I’m not a child any longer. You can’t make me do what you say. I’ll choose my own boy-friends, my own husband! And when I do, I won’t ask your permission!’

  On shaking legs, Olivia marched to the door and swung it open, almost knocking Richard over as she did so. He was behind the door, obviously on his way to the kitchen, and she quivered a little as she confronted his set face, imagining his anger if he could have heard their conversation.

  ‘Richard,’ she murmured unevenly, and he inclined his head, but he said nothing. Instead, he continued through the door and it swung closed behind him, leaving Olivia felling more confused than she had ever done in her life before.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ON Monday morning, Richard and Alex Bishop had left for town before Olivia was even awake. She had had an almost sleepless night, and it was only in the early hours of the morning, when the sun had already risen, that she fell into a deep slumber. In consequence, she awakened feeling depressed and lethargic, in no way capable of meeting the demands of the day.

  The previous day had been upsetting, and not a little bewildering. Throughout lunch and the long afternoon that followed, she had expected something, some reaction from Richard—but there had been nothing. He had not even mentioned her phone call, and as if that was not enough, he had gone out of his way to be affable towards her, making no reference whatsoever to the remarks he had made to Shelley about his plans for the summer.

  Towards evening she had come to the conclusion that this was some clever game he was playing, that he was deliberately tormenting her by not mentioning her call, and that when he thought she was sufficiently off guard, like the predator he was aping, he would pounce. But she was wrong.

  When she came down to dinner, prepared to do battle once again, she found only Alex at the table, and his explanation that her stepbrother was dining with the Gerrards had the adverse effect of disappointing her. She had been sure Richard would be there, infuriatingly urbane, mocking her with his considered reticence, tantalisingly remote. She had determined to speak to him, to take the initiative herself, and win this war of nerves he was waging. Instead, she was left feeling curiously empty, no longer certain that what she had believed was true. The further information that Bella had retired to bed with another of her headaches was no more reassuring, and Alex was no panacea to the disordered turmoil of her thoughts.

  Now, reluctantly sliding her feet to the floor, Olivia saw the tray on the bedside table. Someone, probably Eliza, must have put it there earlier, but the toast was cold and the coffee was barely lukewarm when she tasted it. She wondered dryly whether Bella had told Eliza not to wake her for some nefarious reasons of her own, or whether indeed the girl had felt sorry for her and left her sleeping. Certainly, in oblivion, she could escape for a while the increasing weight of problems that were besetting her, but the longer she delayed their conclusion, the harder the solution became.

  It was another beautiful morning, and after a shower, Olivia dressed in a poplin shirt and trousers and went downstairs to tell the housekeeper she was going to Chelmsbury. It would do her good to get out of the house for a while, and a morning’s shopping was just what she needed.

  ‘How will you get there?’ enquired Bella, who was employed in making pastry in the kitchen. ‘Richard’s taken the Mercedes, and I don’t think he’d approve of you driving the Lamborghini.’

  She was quite amiable this morning, if a trifle tight about the lips, the girl thought, and not wanting to sustain any hostility Olivia said she would catch the bus.

  ‘There’s one in half an hour,’ observed Bella, flouring the board she was working on. ‘From the village, I mean. How will you get there? Walk?’

  Olivia shrugged. ‘Is there an alternative?’

  ‘Yes. You can borrow my bicycle and leave it at the vicarage. Mrs Morrison will be very glad to look after it for you,’ retorted Bella smoothly, and Olivia chided herself for not seeing the trap sooner.

  She hesitated a moment, just long enough to bring Bella’s head up, and then gave in. ‘Why not?’ she mumbled, half defeatedly, and saw the brief expression of satisfaction that crossed the older woman’s face. It was as if Bella saw this small victory as the thin edge of the wedge, she thought impatiently, and determined not to be so gullible again.

  Even so, riding down the country lanes on Bella’s cumbersome old machine was a pleasing experience, and she looked happily over the hedges, admiring the strong golden wheat which had not yet come under the blades of the combine harvester. She waved to some of the people she saw, recovering a little of that feeling of well-being she had had driving home with Alex from the airport, and decided she was over-reacting to circumstances. Nothing was ever as impossible as it seemed, and she was letting an old woman’s fancies create a breach between herself and reality. Richard wasn’t interested in her as anything more than a return on his investment, and even he had been obliged to accept that he could not order her about now, as he had done in the past. Why, he had even accepted her friendship with Jules without causing a fuss—although when she came to think about it, that was unusual. Still, she pushed such disquieting reflections aside, the fact remained that she had asserted her identity, and she would not go looking for trouble without cause.

  Amy Morrison was gushingly effusive when she asked if she might leave Bella’s bicycle for collection later. The vicar’s wife was a woman in her early fifties, small and tubby, with lots of greying mousy hair that she wore coiled into a bun at her nape. An active church councillor, and the leading light of the local amateur dramatic society, she enjoyed her position which ensured her participation in almost everything that happened hereabouts, and she was particularly interested in Olivia, because of her friendship with Miss Ponsonby.

  ‘Catching the bus into Chelmsbury, are you?’ she asked, after exhausting her repertoire of questions about Paris and St Helena’s and receiving only monosyllabic replies. ‘If you’d been here fifteen minutes earlier, John could have given you a lift.’

  John was her husband, the vicar, and from what Olivia had seen of him, he must be glad to have business that took him elsewhere. The opposite of his wife, so Olivia had always thought, tall and thin and balding, with a quiet personality, he seemed browbeaten by his wife’s belligerence, and spent long hours in his garden behind the vicarage, tending his roses and smoking his pipe among the tomato plants in his greenhouse.

  ‘I don’t mind getting the bus,’ Olivia assured her now, wishing it would appear and end this interrogation. ‘It will make a pleasant change.

  ‘Yes.’ Mrs Morrison didn’t sound convinced. ‘I expect you wish you had a car of your own. I don’t expect Mr Jenner allows you to drive his. Beautiful vehicles, they are, aren’t they? Big and powerful. Not for the likes of—of you and me.’

  ‘No.’

  In spite of her hesitation, Olivia simmered a little. It had been a bone of contention between herself and Richard the previous summer that he had insisted on selling the Triumph sports car he had bought her for her seventeenth birthday when she was leaving for Paris. He had said there was no point in hanging on to it, when it would be another year before she had much use for it, and his assertion that she would want something more powerful when she came home gave Mrs Morrison’s words an unknowing sting. She should have taken the Lamborghini, she thought irritably. At least she would have avoided this enforced encounter.

  To her relief, the bus rolled up the village street at that moment, and bidding the vicar’s wife a cursory farewell, Olivia ran quickly to board it. What a gossip! she thought, biting her lip as she took her seat. She would make sure Mrs Morrison was not about when she went to collect the bicycle, even if it meant walking all the way to Copley.

  The Mercedes was standing in the drive when she arrived home in the late afternoon. On impulse, she had rung Be
lla and told her she would have a sandwich in Chelmsbury as it was such a nice day, and she had eaten it by the river, watching the flies swooping across its placid surface.

  Even so, by the time she arrived back at Copley she was hot and tired. The sight of Mrs Morrison, standing in her front garden, watching the people disgorging from the bus, had sent Olivia back to her seat, and she had got off at the next stop and walked back, so avoiding the vicar’s wife. It had meant leaving Bella’s bicycle at the vicarage, but perhaps Thomas could collect that later, in the Land Rover.

  Seeing the sleek Mercedes resting opulently on its thick tyres before the porch was disgruntling, however. If she had suspected Richard might be home, she would have rung and asked either him or Alex to come and pick her up from Chelmsbury, but she had assumed they would be away all day. In consequence, she was footsore and weary, and uncaring that there were dust smudges on her pale blue pants or that her hair was damp and uncombed.

  She avoided the front entrance and walked round the side of the house. A paved footway led to the patio area, but before she reached it she could hear the inviting sound of water splashing and laughter from the pool. It wasn’t until she was actually standing beneath the yew arch that formed a gateway to the pool area that she realised all the laughter wasn’t masculine, and her eyes encountered those of the girl who was clambering out of the pool as she stood there. She was a small girl, slim and provocative, with a cap of chestnut hair that had been artificially darkened by the water. Her bikini was white and accentuated the gorgeous tan she possessed, a tan like Richard’s, unhampered by the sensitivity of skin too pale to tan without burning first.

  Realising she was staring, Olivia dragged her eyes away, and as she did so Richard pulled himself up out of the water and strolled lazily across to where she waited.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, his eyes narrowed and enigmatic. ‘Have a good day?’

  Unreasonably, Olivia was angry. First there had been Mrs Morrison and her sly comments, then the long hot day in Chelmsbury, followed by the necessity of lengthening her journey, and accomplishing the tiring walk home, and now, when she needed to relax, some strange female swimming in the pool she considered exclusively her own.

  ‘Do you care?’ she demanded, pushing back the heavy weight of her hair. ‘I see you haven’t been wasting any time in my absence!’

  Richard’s eyes hardened. ‘Don’t be offensive,’ he retorted, in a low tone. ‘Jill is the daughter of a colleague of mine, and if I choose to invite her to swim in our pool, that’s no reason for you to look so put out. There’s plenty of room for four.’

  Belatedly, Olivia saw Alex, seated at the far end of the pool, his face buried as usual in a file of documents, but it was too late to retract.

  ‘Bring who you like to use the pool!’ she declared tautly. ‘I don’t care. Just so long as I’m not expected to entertain them!’ And without giving him a chance to reply, she turned and stalked childishly through the garden room, and thence across the hall and up to her room.

  In the gold and green isolation of her room, however, her anger turned quickly to remorse. It wasn’t Richard’s fault that Mrs Morrison was such a gossip, or that Bella insisted on being friendly with her. And after what she had heard, she ought to be relieved that Richard was running true to form. She was used enough to seeing girls at Copley, and they had never troubled her before. So why should she feel offended now? It was like she had thought earlier. She was allowing Bella’s insinuations to influence her reasoning, and that was dangerous.

  Tearing off her shirt and trousers, she padded impatiently into her bathroom and turned on the shower while she stripped off the rest of her clothes. The sound of the running water was cooling in itself, but it was also deafening, and she heard nothing until Richard appeared in the doorway. He was still wearing the denim shorts he had worn to swim in, and they dripped moisture on to her carpet, but at least he was wearing something, which was more than could be said for her.

  Afterwards, she couldn’t decide who was the most shocked, herself or Richard, but in any case it was he who snatched the yellow towel from its rail and tossed it at her, turning aside moodily as she wrapped its enveloping folds about her.

  ‘Come out here, I want to talk to you,’ he snapped, indicating the bedroom, and shaken as she was, Olivia had no thought to disobey him. When she was standing just inside the bedroom clutching the bath towel about her, he spoke again.

  ‘What was the meaning of that scene downstairs?’ he asked, his expression cold and forbidding. ‘I understand you went to Chelmsbury of your own volition, and had lunch there for the same reasons.’

  ‘Yes.’ The word was choked. Olivia cleared her throat. ‘I went this morning.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  Richard nodded, and her eyes drifted from his, down the muscled length of his body. The denim shorts were clinging on his lean hips, and she wondered almost involuntarily how she would have felt if she had come upon him without his clothes. She had never seen Richard naked, and it was a curiously disturbing prospect. His skin was very dark, and she couldn’t help speculating whether his was an all-over tan. How did he relax aboard the Kuriakis yacht, for example? she wondered. How well did Stella Kuriakis really know him?

  ‘Olivia!’

  The harshness of his voice brought her head up with a start, and she realised suddenly that he had been aware of her appraisal. There was a faint flush of colour on his cheekbones, and she prayed he could not read minds as well as everything else.

  ‘Jill Norman is staying to dinner,’ he said expressionlessly. ‘I want you to be polite to her, if that’s not too much to ask. And next time you feel the need to embarrass me, do so when we’re alone, not in sight and hearing of a guest!’

  His coldness was worse than his heated anger would have been. He was controlling any natural emotion, she realised, using the technique he employed in the boardroom with such devastating effect. Her feelings of compunction fled in the face of his indifference. He wasn’t a human being, he was an automaton, she thought truculently, and her own anger bubbled to the surface once more.

  ‘This is my home, too,’ she declared, gathering the folds of the towel more closely about her. ‘As you’re so fond of telling me! So I don’t see why I should put myself out for your girl-friends! You don’t need me—you’re more than capable of handling one female. In any case, I’m surprised you limit yourself so severely. Surely two, or even three, would make it more exciting!’

  His taut face was frightening, but he did not explode as she expected him to. ‘Is that supposed to be clever?’ he enquired contemptuously. ‘I wonder where you heard that kind of talk. Not in school, I hope.’

  Olivia’s lips trembled. She had tried to provoke him, but she should have known she was no match for him in this mood. On the contrary, he had succeeded in making her feel small, and dirty, and it was not a pleasant sensation.

  ‘Will you please leave?’ she requested, falling back on the only escape she had, but Richard made no move towards the door. Instead, he crossed the space between them to stand looking down at her with a curiously frustrated expression on his lean features.

  ‘Why do you do it?’ he demanded. ‘Why do you make me so angry with you? You used not to dislike me so.’

  Olivia’s lips were dry, and her tongue felt swollen in her mouth. ‘I—don’t—dislike you, Rich,’ she whispered, half despising herself for her capitulation. ‘It’s just that—that——’

  ‘—I treat you like a child, is that it?’

  ‘M-maybe,’ she nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry!’

  She stared at him, wide-eyed, and he inclined his head, lifting one hand to trail his knuckles down her cheek. ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ he agreed, and his lips parted as he looked down at the creamy skin rising from the slipping thickness of the towel. ‘You were going to take a shower?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word came out on a gulp, her eyes hypnotised by his, aware
of him as she had never been aware of him before.

  ‘Let me help you,’ he said, and now his voice had thickened, and she could no longer question his capacity for emotion. It was there in his eyes, in his hands, in the taut muscles of his body that invited her exploration.

  ‘I—you can’t,’ she protested, but his hands were already separating the ends of the towel, exposing the warm contours of her body to his intense gaze, and she was making no move to stop him.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, and almost involuntarily she swayed towards him, wanting him to touch her as she had never wanted anything before.

  ‘Do you think so?’ she breathed, caught up in the moment, in the needs of her body, needs she had never even known she possessed.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he repeated huskily, bending his head, and she felt his lips moving against her breast.

  A tight pain flowered inside her, a pain that was as much ecstasy as torment, and her fingers slid over his smooth shoulders, her nails raking the hair at the nape of his neck. He lifted his head then, and his eyes were not cold, or appealing, but smouldering with emotion, frankly sensual as they dwelt on the sensitivity of her mouth. His hands slid from her waist to her hips as he pulled her towards him, and she was made unmistakably aware of the tautness of the muscles confined by his thin shorts. She knew she would regret what she was doing, but there was a disturbing delight in the thrusting urgency of his body, and she moved deliberately against him, inciting his moan of anguish as his mouth sought and found hers.

  He parted her lips without resistance, and his mouth plundered hers hungrily, demanding a response she found herself incapable of denying. Richard was no amateur when it came to making love to a woman, and she clung to him eagerly, her inflamed senses inspiring an instinctive sexuality in herself that found expression in the intimacy of their embrace. She loved the feel of his skin against hers, the hair on his chest roughly abusing her breasts, and the flatness of his stomach above the swollen muscles of his thighs.