The Seduction Trap

by Sara Wood

  He looked at her then, long and hard and with such a yearning that her breath caught harshly in her throat. ‘I thought I was doing just that.’

  His voice was almost inaudible. When she scanned his face, she saw that it was tense to the point of rigidity and his hand now gripped hers tightly. He wanted something. So badly that it was taking every ounce of control for him to hide that desire from her.

  Me, she thought, and blinked open her eyes wide at the ridiculous notion that had leapt into her mind. Down! she ordered her hopelessly incompetent intuition. He wants those cottages, not you!

  ‘You...’ She reached for her glass of wine, needing something to clear her throat. ‘You haven’t mentioned a price,’ she said huskily.

  His mouth twisted and a darkness came into his eyes. ‘The price is probably unacceptable to both of us.’ She didn’t understand. It sounded as if he was talking about something else entirely. Did he mean that if she stayed he’d be uncomfortable with her around? And that she’d never be accepted in the village?

  Feeling wretched, she dragged her hand away, jumping up and going to stand by the conservatory in an effort to break the spell he’d cast on her. Guy came up behind her, his hands possessive on her gleaming bare shoulders, and she clenched her fists. Why didn’t he leave her alone? she thought, close to

  screaming with the strain.

  ‘Take my advice,’ he said, his gently moving palms sending her spinal cord into rigid spasm. A tremendous tension communicated itself to her. For a moment she thought he might crush her fragile bones, and then his hands fell to his sides. ‘Sell up. Get out of here,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve no idea what’ll happen if you don’t.’

  A direct threat. His meaning was clear. Go or expect trouble. That decided her. She shook off her lassitude and her stupid imaginings. Time to go into business mode. ‘OK,’ she said coolly, turning to face him. ‘Give me a price. Tell me what I’d have to do if we made a deal. I want to know everything that would be involved, from start to finish.’ To her surprise, he didn’t react with instant pleasure as she’d expected. He seemed to be struggling with conflicting emotions. But then he nodded curtly, walked to the table to fill his glass again and drained it dry. When he faced her, his expression seemed as detached as hers. Quietly he told her in clipped tones what she wanted to know, explaining the intricate details of the French housing market. Each of her questions he answered comprehensively. Now she could go it alone.

  When he’d finished, and she had nothing more to ask, he lifted a questioning eyebrow and said, ‘Well?’

  To her utter dismay, Tessa felt her throat constrict. She had all the information she needed and now she could say thanks and goodbye. But now that the time had come the words stuck in her craw. It didn’t matter how he’d behaved. Suddenly what she had done seemed both crude and cruel. He loved Turaine. He had wonderful plans for it. To him, her cottages were properly part of those plans. And she’d played a game with his emotions.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, feeling wretched. ‘I won’t be accepting your offer.’

  He stiffened warily. ‘Wrong price? You expect more?’

  ‘No, I expected less, to be honest. I can’t-’ She bit her lip, seeing the flash of black anger in his eyes, and she sought to explain, a sickening misery filling her whole body. Without thinking, desperate to show that she wasn’t entirely heartless, she opened her mouth and blurted out, ‘I’m sorry, Guy, I really am. But I promised Mother when she rang-’

  ‘What?’ Guy drew in a sharp breath, instantly incandescent

  with rage. She backed against the wall as he came over to her like a whirlwind, slamming his hands either side of her, offering no escape, his face a few seething inches away. ‘You’re telling me you’ve known all along where your mother is?’ he fumed. ‘Yes!’ she squeaked in alarm.

  ‘Then you never had any intention of selling to me!’ he snarled, terrifying the cringing Tessa with the ruthless glitter in his eyes. ‘You took me for a sucker. She put

  you up to this. That vindictive harridan told you to taunt me with what is rightfully my property. Mine, Tessa!’ he roared, grabbing her arms and hauling her up till she stood on tiptoe, her eyes blasted by his. ‘No! You’re wrong!’

  ‘You listened to me chuntering on about hi-tech communities and you offered platitudes about the state of this house-and all the time you were waiting to stab me in the back. I could kill you for leading me on!’ he raged. ‘God help me, I could!’

  ‘I couldn’t avoid it!’ she yelled in frustration. ‘I’m sorry!’

  ‘Sorry?’ He thrust his face right up to hers, his breath hot and fast on her tremulous mouth. ‘You’ll be that all right by the time I’ve finished with you,’ he growled. ‘I can’t sell to you!’ She winced, finding it hard to breathe. ‘Please, let me explain-’

  ‘I think I’ve given you enough rope,’ he said tightly. ‘Now it’s time for you to hang-and fall.’

  And he let go of her so suddenly that she staggered and slipped to the floor, her legs sprawling in a display of silky tanned flesh.

  It seemed safer there, so she stayed, hastily covering her thighs and adjusting her top where it had gaped to reveal rather a lot of cushiony bosom.

  ‘I need those cottages,’ she began grimly.

  ‘Then why lead me a dance? And do note that I remember your mother’s way of amusing herself with my father and that I use those words advisedly!’ he snarled.

  She winced again but thought better of trying to defend the indefensible. ‘I like what you’re planning for the village. But you must see, Guy, that you have a huge estate bringing in rents; I have nothing to call my own no income, no job. This is a golden opportunity for me to make a little money by the sweat of my brow. I want to make it work. It’s important to me-’

  ‘Then you should have said so straight away!’ he snapped. She hung her head. ‘Yes. I should.’ Her chin tipped up defiantly again. ‘But you started flinging bleach about and that made me mad! It was obvious you’d do anything to get what you wanted-even-even ...’ Her mouth tightened. ‘Yes?’ he drawled, his eyes ice-cold.

  ‘Even kiss me,’ she mumbled uncomfortably. ‘You don’t know how that makes me feel. One man has already used me.’ Her voice strengthened with determination. ‘I won’t let you try to wind me around your little finger! My mother said to beware of you,’ she said shortly, ‘and she was right. You accuse me of not being straight with you, but you’ve consistently concealed your real intentions from me, haven’t you?’ He was silent, his grim mouth and defensively folded arms telling her the answer to that question. Weary now, she felt her shoulders droop with fatigue. ‘It makes no difference what I want to do anyway,’ she said dully. ‘I can’t break my word.’

  ‘To Estelle?’ he scathed. ‘A woman who breaks her word twenty times before breakfast? Where is she?’ he demanded roughly.

  ‘I’m not prepared to tell you.’

  He pushed a hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration. ‘I thought I could trust you, but you’re as devious and as manipulative as your mother. Congratulations,’ he bit out, giving a mocking bow. ‘You fooled me for a short time into thinking you were rather innocent. You’ve played a blinder, Tessa. Your mother would be proud that you’re following in her footsteps.’

  Tessa’s mouth was trembling. She might have wormed all the information she needed out of him, but she wished with her whole heart that she hadn’t. ‘I’m sure it’s not true what you say about my mother!’ she said jerkily.

  ‘Careful,’ he warned, his eyes glittering and hard. ‘You know what happened the last time you were near to tears.’

  She scrambled awkwardly to her feet. ‘Yes!’ she blazed. ‘You embarrassed me! You made me feel that big!’ She showed him how big with her thumb and forefinger. ‘And you’ve been playing me along all this time, so I’m not taking all the blame. You pretended to be kind and helpful but you didn’t really feel like that, did you? You wanted to get your greedy hand
s on those cottages and enjoy a sweet revenge on my mother! Well, you won’t! And I don’t feel ashamed of what I’ve done! I’m glad. I’ve never hurt anyone before, but in your case I’m glad to make an exception!’

  Like a raging tornado, she turned and strode furiously to the door, hardly able to see for the angry tears. Every second she expected to hear him running to stop her. Or some scathing verbal attack. Nothing.

  She reached the door and paused, her nerves making her shake. An invisible force was making her look back, and when she did she knew it had been a mistake. There was angry pain in Guy’s dark eyes. The despair on his face lanced through her, causing her to let out a little groan. ‘Guy!’ she whispered brokenly, torn in two by his bleak expression. ‘I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Divided loyalties?’ he asked cuttingly. ‘I pity you, Tessa.’ Her mouth quivered. He’d do his best to ruin her plans. But it wasn’t that which made her body ache with misery. It was the fact that he looked like a wounded bull. Appalled, she clutched at the doorframe. She cared about him. Dear heaven, had she no sense at all?

  A week passed-a week of hot, sultry weather that made Tessa’s clothes stick to her perspiring body every time she did any physical work. Which was constantly. In that time she scrubbed right through both holiday lets till they gleamed and put little Oven Cottage up for sale in the town of Lalinde. Guy seemed to haunt the village-and her-in dreams and in reality, confronting her time and time again, hovering outside one village house after another as he discussed plans with his architect. Every time she saw him her stomach flipped. Well, she thought, when she opened her door one morning and found him standing there and her internal organs did their usual tricks, it’s cheaper than paying for a roller-coaster ride. ‘Yes?’ she asked imperiously, to try to counteract the scruffy look she was sporting that morning. With the immaculate, achingly handsome Guy before her very eyes, she felt horribly conscious of the plaster-dust whitening her entire face and clothes, the thin old shirt knotted under her breasts, her minimal shorts and the way her hair had been whisked back with a cotton scarf.

  Just as frosty but a million times cleaner, in a casual shirt and tight denim shorts which strained against strong, unnervingly strokable thighs, he gestured to a denimed and check-shirted man in his forties who stood glowering at her.

  ‘This is Yves Clemence. The mayor. He wants to inspect the holiday lets.’

  Her eyes whisked up from their appreciation of the rippling muscles in Guy’s legs and widened in dismay. ‘Oh!’ Flustered, she glanced at the mayor and then at Guy. ‘Come in a moment while I turn off the gas and get the keys.’ She hurried into The Old Bakery’s kitchen and removed the huge iron pot of farm chicken and vegetables from the stove. When she returned, she saw that the two men were inspecting the chaotic room critically.

  ‘I’m hacking off the damp plaster on the communicating wall,’ she explained unnecessarily, since the dust-filled air and wounded wall were quite obvious. But, anxious to fight her corner, she foraged for the keys to the lets in her bag and continued with proud authority,

  ‘I’ve repointed the stone inside and out and sealed anything else with mastic. The walls ate watertight. Something you’d approve of, I think, Guy.’

  ‘And the roof?’ he enquired, his gaze resting on her as she tried to brush plaster off her face and failed dismally. He looked so clean, so tidy, so darn perfect! Tessa yanked off her scarf and shook her hair vigorously, sending dust flying everywhere. Lord, she must look a sight! With a sigh of resignation, she gave up any thought of appealing to the sour mayor’s better nature and marched to the door, anxious to get this over with as soon as possible. ‘The roof’s next.’

  ‘Rain is threatened. You have several lauzes missing,’ said Guy. ‘I know,’ she said sharply, irritated that he did. Had he been counting? Thanks to the new lot of holidaymakers in the other two cottages, she’d been able to order some more. ‘I’m waiting for a delivery of replacement tiles.’

  ‘If it should rain-’

  ‘Yes,’ she interrupted impatiently, ‘I’m aware of what happens when you have a hole in the roof and rain falls. Let’s hope it doesn’t!’

  She challenged him to complain any more. She was doing her best, drat him! He captured her eyes, held her gaze effortlessly, driving the memory of their kiss back into her responsive body. Her curving lashes fluttered down to conceal the earthy thoughts clamouring in her brain. Coolly she said, ‘Shall we go?’

  They went. The mayor and Guy peered and probed and poked about in The Bakehouse while she fidgeted anxiously and tried to avert her eyes from Guy’s hard, tight rear when he went up the stairs in front of her. With all three of them squashed in the small bedroom,

  she felt his physical presence even more strongly, her skin touched with a tingling heat. When Guy brushed past her, on his way to the window, she jumped back, afraid of the dreadful, wickedly pleasurable fire in the core of her body.

  ‘You’ve made it very... comfortable in here,’ he murmured, looking back at her faintly stunned face.

  She swallowed as his eyes drifted over the bed and then back to her. And then to the bed again. It took several seconds before she dared trust herself to speak normally.

  ‘A slap of paint on the old furniture-flowers. It-i makes all the difference.’

  ‘And the perfume in here?’ he enquired softly.

  ‘I don’t think there is any-perhaps the couple who are staying here-aftershave- deodorant. ..’

  ‘I think it’s yours.’ He moved towards her. ‘Carbolic soap or turps,’ she said hastily, and walked out, dizzily wondering why he had such a disastrous

  effect on her. She hurried downstairs to escape him. ‘He thinks you’ve done a good job,’ Guy pronounced, when he and the mayor had finished their inspection. ‘Of course I have,’ she retorted, ignoring the spread of his chest and fixing her eyes somewhere to the right of his ear. ‘And if he’ll give me a month or so I’ll be able to sort out Oven Cottage too, but I can’t do much while it’s occupied.’

  ‘Perhaps we can see that for ourselves?’ he murmured. Heaving a sigh, she showed them next door and into the large living room, where once a team of bakers had laboured over the endlessly long table, kneading bread. In the corner, looking rather incongruous, stood the giant mixer, and still on their original wall-hooks were the two twelve-foot wooden paddles which had slid the loaves in and out of the oven. The two men homed in on these and chattered away. ‘What’s he saying?’ she asked defensively. ‘We were reminiscing.’

  Guy didn’t seem interested in telling her any more, so she asked, ‘What about?’

  ‘Coming in here as children and being given hot chunks of bread, straight from the oven.’ He slanted a glance at her rapt face. ‘Have you seen inside the oven?’

  She shook her head and he forced up the latch on the solid iron door. It was like a room inside. She would need a pneumatic drill if she demolished it, she thought apprehensively. ‘We think this ought to be preserved,’ he announced firmly, startling her. ‘Don’t do anything other than superficial decoration until you hear from us.’

  The mayor disappeared upstairs. Tessa felt the temperature in the room rise as if the oven was in operation. But it was only the heat from her body. Anxious not to reveal her agitation, she flung a quick excuse in Guy’s direction and hurried after the mayor.

  He ignored her and continued to make copious notes. He’d filled several pages by the time he’d finished his tour and she waited on pins for the verdict.

  ‘That’s all,’ Guy said coolly, after a hurried consultation. ‘Do I pass muster?’

  ‘We’ll let you know. He’s not too impressed with this one.’ Crossly she slapped at an insect dining on her thigh. Guy stretched forward and lazily flicked off the squashed remains with his thumb, which seemed to remain an interminably long time in contact with her soft skin.

  Somehow she directed her brain away from the resulting sensations and back to the problem in hand. She wasn’t going to let th
em leave without contributing to her own defence.

  ‘The new intake of holidaymakers are impressed,’ she said truculently. ‘Tell him that they’re perfectly happy. I did them a barbecue on their first night and they think Turaine is wonderful.’ Guy shrugged, as if that didn’t make any difference. She drew in an anxious breath and cried, ‘He can’t close me down! You can’t be so mean as to let him!’ Guy translated. The mayor gave a careless shrug-of his own, shook Guy’s hand, ignored her completely and walked out of the house. She stood on the worn doorstep and scowled at the mayor’s retreating back.

  ‘I can’t stand injustice!’ she muttered. ‘If he closes me down because he’s miffed with my mother, then that will be totally unfair.’

  ‘Standards must be maintained. You’d be foolish to pour any more money and effort into these cottages,’ warned Guy, close

  behind her.

  She whirled to confront him, her eyes blazing, and, seeing her clenched fists, he took a step back in surprise. ‘Let him take action-but only if he gets any complaints!’ she cried hotly. ‘All the time I can keep the visitors happy, it’s business for Turaine, and it wouldn’t make commercial sense to ignore that. Don’t you care about the small shopkeepers here?’

  ‘Oh, I care,’ he said insolently. ‘Did your mother?’ She winced. ‘Below the belt, Guy! I’m doing everything I can to show that I care about the community. Leave my mother out of it. The fact is that I have five people in this house alone, and they’re all eating like horses-to the delight of the baker, the butcher and the grocer! Please, Guy, use your influence-’

  ‘I can’t recall,’ he said with a frown, staring over her head at her cottage, ‘that you had any broken windows when we left.’

  ‘I-didn’t!’ Her head jerked around and she sucked in a sharp breath, hurrying over to stand in front of the cracked panes of glass, the anger rising to boiling point inside her at the wanton destruction. ‘How convenient,’ she snapped, rounding on Guy, ‘that I was occupied elsewhere!’