‘Because…?’ he prompted, throwing his head back to swallow from his glass.
She watched him, fascinated by the strong, brown column of his throat, the long fingers, the forearm finely sprinkled with dark hair. She was still staring at him when his eyes met hers and she started guiltily.
‘Because,’ she said, trying to remember the question.
‘Because, perhaps, it’s a challenge?’ he drawled. ‘Come on, Claire, be honest with me. Is there some other reason for your working here?’ His green eyes were sharp on her face. ‘You seem honest enough, but who knows? Perhaps there’s a boyfriend lurking on the sidelines somewhere, and the two of you are simply biding your time until you decide which bits of silver you’re going to lift.’
She jumped to her feet angrily, her cheeks flaming red.
‘How can you even think such a thing?’ she asked fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t…I couldn’t…there’s no boyfriend lurking on the sidelines! I wouldn’t dream of…’ His implications were so staggering that she was finding it difficult to articulate, and she grabbed the glass from the table, swallowing the remainder of the drink in one long gulp. There was a rush of blood to her head and for a minute she thought that she was going to faint but she gritted her teeth together and looked at him straight in the eye.
‘It was merely a passing thought,’ he said, shrugging, ‘and I’m surprised you can’t understand my line of questioning. Why would a beautiful girl like you be willing to spend pretty much all day here,’ he gestured around him, ‘when there are far more exciting things happening in the big bad world outside?’
‘I am not a girl!’ she heard herself say in a loud voice, ‘I’m a woman!’ Had he called her beautiful? He had!
There was a long silence, during which she could hear her heart thumping in her chest, even if he couldn’t. She hardly dared breathe and she had the funny feeling that he was looking at her in a completely different way. Or was it just the gin and tonic going to her head? Two glasses of cider and she felt tipsy. Perhaps after one gin and tonic she was beginning to hallucinate.
‘Yes, I suppose you are,’ he said blandly.
‘But not like the sort of women that you’re accustomed to, is that it? Is that what you’re implying?’
‘I didn’t think that I was implying anything.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. Not the first bit of it, anyway.’ These were not at all the things she wanted to say, she realised, but for some reason they were spilling out of her mouth of their own accord and the brain seemed to have very little say in the matter.
Standing up as she was, she was on an eye-to-eye level with him. He was within touching distance, she thought.
‘All right,’ he said as though the matter was really of no great importance to him anyway, ‘if you really want to know, no, you’re nothing like the sort of women that I’m accustomed to. In fact, I can’t recall meeting anyone like you in a very long time. Are you usually so forthright?’
‘I don’t believe in playing games with people.’
‘We shouldn’t be having this conversation,’ he said heavily, and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask him why not when it struck her precisely why not.
Here they were, alone, in a semi-lit room which carried its own seductive atmosphere of intimacy, having a conversation about what was basically sex. It was a dangerous situation, but it was also an exciting one, one in which Claire had never before found herself.
Her emotional life, at the age of twenty, was as pristine as the driven snow. She had had boyfriends, that was inevitable, but they had all been passing interests, not one of them serious enough to make her lose any sleep.
‘I only wanted to find out a bit more about you,’ she said weakly.
‘About which aspect of my life in particular?’ he asked with a return to his normal dry tone of voice, although something in his manner wasn’t as relaxed as she knew he was trying to appear.
She looked at him vaguely and he said, raising his eyebrows in an amused question, ‘The sexual aspect?’
‘Sexual aspect?’ The frankness of the question horrified and excited her at the same time. Was this how the upper echelons communicated all the time? It wasn’t as if she didn’t know about sex, but it was the thought of him in a sexual situation that addled her. It wasn’t just that beneath those clothes it was easy to discern a physically powerful body. It was much more than that. It was his personality, the combination of ruthlessness and sensuality that made for such a heady mix.
She was certainly feeling very heady now. Doubtless the drink had something to do with it, but, she had to admit in all honesty, not really a great deal.
There was a thick silence, and then she said recklessly, ‘All right, yes, I can’t deny that I’m curious about the sexual aspect of your life. Have you slept with lots of women?’
‘What do you think?’
Claire stated at him nervously. ‘I don’t know. I suppose you have. I mean, you’re…’
‘What?’ he asked softly, and she bit down on her lower lip, wishing now that the conversation had never got started.
‘Attractive, I guess.’ Now that it was out, now that she had admitted that she was attracted to him, she began to feel considerably braver. Two months ago she would have run a mile at the thought of this type of conversation. She had always tended to shy away from anything that was provocative or blatant. It was a trait which her parents thought was charming, but which she personally considered an anachronism in this day and age when sexual liberation was so commonplace that it wasn’t even discussed.
Right now, though, her emotions were calling the tune and her mouth just seemed to be dancing to its music, uttering things that she would never have imagined herself saying to a man in a million years.
‘In fact, I’m very attracted to you,’ she said boldly.
He was staring at her and the intensity of his gaze brought a rush of colour to her cheeks.
‘That’s very flattering,’ he murmured, raking his fingers through his hair, ‘but you’d be better off confining your infatuations to someone nearer your age.’
‘Does that mean that you don’t find me attractive?’
‘You’re putting words into my mouth.’
She knew that he would have stood up and walked away, probably out of the room if not out of the house, but she was standing directly in front of him, blocking an easy exit.
‘I’m not attracted to boys nearer my age. They’re immature. They don’t do anything for me.’ She was breathing quickly now and the palms of her hands were damp with perspiration.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he said roughly. ‘That’s the drink talking.’
‘No, it’s not!’ She took the smallest of steps towards him and rested her hand against his neck, brushing it with her thumb.
His eyes darkened and she was pleased to see that he wasn’t in total control either.
Does that mean that he’s attracted to me? she wondered. He hadn’t said otherwise, had he? And he had invited her to have a drink with him. That hadn’t been necessary, had it? So what did that add up to? she wondered feverishly.
There seemed only one way to find out. With one impulsive movement she pressed her mouth against his, parting her lips to allow her questing tongue entry into his mouth, and with a groan he began kissing her, really kissing her.
It was like being lifted off her feet and transported into a completely new dimension. He raised his hands to cup her face, pulling her towards him, devouring her with a savagery which made her blood boil.
When he slipped his hand underneath her jumper to caress her breast through the shirt, she had an insane desire to rip her clothes off so that she could feel flesh against flesh. Her nipples were hard and aching and she begged in a high, pleading voice,
‘Make love to me. I want you. I need you, I love you.’
She was so consumed by the ferocity of her own wanting that it took a few seconds to realise that he had froz
en. She opened her eyes and looked at him in bewilderment.
‘What is it?’ she asked, reluctant to let go of the mood but knowing that she had no choice.
‘What the hell do you think?’ he grated, literally lifting her off her feet to move her aside. ‘I think it’s time that you left.’
‘Why? What have I done?’
‘There’s no room in my life for an infatuated child,’ he bit out grimly, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘This is all my fault. I’m completely to blame,’ he continued. ‘I’m just glad that I came to my senses before I ended up doing something that I would have lived to regret.’ He stood up and said dispassionately, ‘You can stay in here a couple of minutes, enough time to come to your senses, and then I suggest you leave.’
‘But you don’t understand! I love you!’
‘You don’t know the meaning of the word,’ he rasped harshly. ‘And in view of what’s happened here tonight, I think it might be a good idea if you didn’t return.’
‘No!’
She stared at him in mute silence and finally he said with a heavy sigh, ‘All right. You can stay, but keep out of my way. I shall be here for the next week and I don’t want to… Let’s just say that I’m only a man.’ He gave her a harsh, impatient look, then he was gone and she was left standing alone in the study and wondering what she would do now.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE couldn’t leave. Thinking back about it, and God knew she had thought about it all a million times over the past few months, she could see that she should have done. She should have nipped her growing love for him in the bud, and then she might have been able to retreat from the relationship with her dignity and emotional stability relatively intact.
But she stayed, and for a while things settled down into an uneasy pattern. James was hardly around, and when he was she knew that he was avoiding her. The few times they bumped into each other, he was scrupulously polite to her, and she in turn tried to hide the lovesick longing in her eyes.
She still hadn’t breathed a word of what was happening to either her parents, who would have been appalled by the whole thing, or to Jackie, who would have laughed and insisted that it was all a girlish crush, the result of having led such a retiring, introverted life as far as the opposite sex were concerned.
Then, the unthinkable happened. She went for an interview at a small but fast-expanding local advertising firm who were looking for someone to work in their creative department.
‘I expect you won’t have to give any notice at this cleaning job that you’re doing,’ her prospective boss said, reading through her application form and tapping his fingers on the desk as though he had more pressing things to do and really wanted the interview to conclude as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Claire looked at the downbent head miserably. She had already been shown around the company, met some of the people she would be working with, if she managed to land the job, and had been introduced to some of the types of work that she would be expected to do, and it was all exactly what she had had in mind when she had first moved to Reading from London.
So there was no way that she could blow her chances away by trying to juggle Frilton Manor and the job, and there was also no way that she could maintain any sort of part-time work at the Manor in the evenings because Tony, now looking at her impatiently and waiting for her answer, had told her from the start that overtime was unpaid and expected when the situation demanded, take it or leave it.
‘Well?’ he asked. He had a high, slightly effeminate voice and was good looking in a very blond, vaguely limpid way. He was her idea of what Adonis must have looked like. She had a suspicion that he probably never travelled without a comb in the breast pocket of his jacket and was addicted to looking at himself in mirrors. But she knew that all that concealed a fairly sharp brain because she had seen some examples of his work and they were brilliant.
‘Yes. I mean no. I mean,’ she said, gathering her thoughts together with effort, ‘I won’t have to give any notice. Perhaps a couple of days or so.’
‘Good.’ He looked at his watch and issued her with his first smile since she had arrived two hours ago. ‘In that case, you can start next Monday. Eight-thirty sharp. Sandra will take care of you until you find your feet, and Personnel will send you your contract through the post later today. You should have it by tomorrow, or day after latest.’
Claire’s mouth sagged open.
‘I can see you’re thrilled,’ Tony said smugly. ‘I needn’t tell you that you were one of thirty who applied for the job. We had a much bigger response than we had expected.’ He stood up and she followed suit hurriedly. ‘I must dash now,’ he said, moving or rather gliding towards the door and opening it for her. ‘Meetings call.’
She was still in a daze by the time she made it to Frilton Manor and she spent the remainder of the day viciously dusting and cleaning. She was wiping the row of books in the study when the door opened and she turned around to see James standing framed in the doorway, looking at her as though she had taken leave of her senses.
They stared at each other in silence for a while then he moved towards the desk and said drily,
‘You look murderous. I didn’t think that dusting a few books could do that to anyone.’ He began pressing buttons on the small computer on the desk, with his back to her, and she wondered whether he had forgotten about her being there at all.
‘I’ve got a job,’ she informed him bluntly, and he stopped what he was doing and turned around to face her.
It was obvious that he had just come from work, from the looks of it to continue working from the study. His jacket had been discarded, and the sleeves of his shirt were carelessly rolled back to the elbows, but he was still wearing his suit trousers, and his tie, deep burgundy silk, which had been tugged down so that the top button of his shirt could be undone. Did he know how devastatingly sexy he looked, standing there, watching her with those disconcerting green eyes?
‘Congratulations,’ he said politely. ‘Well done. Where is it?’
She told him, taking a masochistic delight in dwelling on the attractive package that had been offered her, even though she knew that her voice sounded far removed from enthusiastic.
‘I suppose you’re relieved,’ she finished, looking at him defiantly.
‘Why should I be?’
‘Because,’ Claire continued relentlessly, ‘you won’t have to dodge my childish infatuation with you any longer.’ What did she have to lose by saying all this? she asked herself fiercely. It made her feel good getting it all off her chest, anyway.
‘Your childish infatuation was very flattering to an old man like myself,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘For the first time I began to understand why some older men can’t resist the lure of a much younger woman.’
Ah. He had called her a woman. That felt good. She stood with her hands behind her back and lifted her chin.
‘You act as though you’re a hundred. How old are you?’
‘Do you have to be so outspoken?’ he asked with the ghost of a smile.
‘You know it’s the way I am,’ Claire said very coolly, considering her throat felt like sandpaper.
‘I’m thirty-four.’
‘Is that all?’
‘You mean I look older?’ He laughed. ‘Watch it, I might start getting a complex.’
This was the first time since their uneasy pact of silence that they were speaking to each other without reservation, and she felt herself relax and open up. He was the only man she had ever met who could do that to her, make her feel confident enough to speak her mind without thinking too much about the consequences.
‘I mean,’ she explained, ‘that’s awfully young to own all this.’ She made a broad sweeping gesture. ‘Did you inherit it?’
‘Not exactly. Would you like a drink? Anything but gin and tonic.’
Claire shook her head, blushing at the glint that flitted through his eyes when he said that.
He turned a
nd poured himself a drink from the bar and continued talking. ‘My uncle owned all this, and I suppose I had always loved the place ever since I had been a child. I expect I would have inherited it in due course—he was childless—but eight years ago he ran into some financial problems, coincidentally at a time when business was booming for me and I bought him out.’ He faced her and she could see pride in his expression when he looked around the room.
‘Where does he live now?’
‘He died two years ago,’ James said abruptly. ‘Penniless. It transpired that, over the course of time, he had gambled away a considerable amount of money.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Claire offered sympathetically, but it was beyond her comprehension how anyone could gamble away their money. She had spent a lifetime guided by parents who carefully conserved theirs, spending on essentials and saving up for the little luxuries. It was a trait which she, and Jackie to some extent, had inherited.
‘And what about you?’ he asked, watching her from under his lashes. ‘Are you as guileless as you seem or are there any skeletons in your closet?’
Skeletons? The thought was ludicrous. She smiled and chatted away happily about her parents, her sister, her childhood, and it was only when she happened to glance at her watch that she saw how much time had elapsed. If she didn’t hurry, she would miss her bus and then there would be another forty-minute wait for the next one, if indeed it had the decency to arrive on time, which was by no means guaranteed.
She laughed apologetically for her rambling reminiscences and said, tripping over her words, ‘I must go. I’ve bored you, I suppose, but once I start talking about my family I tend to get a bit carried away. I really came to tell you that as from Monday you’ll have to find someone else to clean.’
‘And what a pity that’s going to be,’ he said, looking at her steadily until her head began to throb.
The atmosphere became thicker and when he stepped towards her, she could feel every nerve in her body begin to go haywire.
‘You know I don’t want to go,’ she muttered breathlessly. ‘You know why. What I feel for you isn’t infatuation, I really am in love with you. I know it’s sudden, but I know my mind.’ Now, she thought, he’s going to send me on my way, and since I don’t want to go, I should have held my tongue and not said anything. But he didn’t say a word. Not at first, at any rate.
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