A Different Kind of Love

by Jean Saunders

  “Haven’t you forgotten someone?” she heard Luke say.

  She looked at him, puzzled, until she saw him glance at her left hand, and the wedding ring Walter had bought her. In her embarrassment she felt as though her face was scorched with heat.

  “Mr Radcliffe is no longer with me,” she said, as evenly as she could. “And I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Besides, she had no intention of adding to her humiliation by telling a stranger that she’d been jilted on her wedding day. It was still too new and too painful for her to be over it yet. There were moments when the pain became almost physical, and she wondered how she was ever going to face the people she knew again, especially her workmates who didn’t even know that she wasn’t a married woman after all.

  Kate took a long drink of wine and felt her head spin as the cool taste of it ran down her throat.

  “Fair enough,” Luke said. “Then you must remain my mystery woman for the time begin. But am I not even permitted to know my lady’s name?”

  She wasn’t his woman, nor his lady, and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him so. But his eyes were frank and friendly and honest. She felt an unexpected little rush of gratitude that at least she wasn’t entirely alone any more, and she was only just beginning to accept what an ordeal self-enforced loneliness had been until now.

  “It’s Kate. Katherine, really, but I much prefer Kate. It’s what my parents and friends call me.”

  “Dare I be allowed to be included in that category?”

  She smiled naturally at last. Their meeting might not have happened in the most normal way, but since nothing about this week was normal to Kate, this brief acquaintance merely fitted into the general pattern of things.

  “If you like.”

  “And I’m Luke,” he said.

  He reached across the table, and his fingers enclosed hers for a moment. Kate felt the strength in them, and almost snatched her own away. The last time she had been enchanted by the touch of a man’s hand was when she had been wantonly seduced by Walter Radcliffe.

  She knew without being told that her face must have changed expression. From that small burst of pleasure at being in this man’s company, she felt as though the strain was showing all over again. She felt remote, detached…

  “I think the wine has gone to my head slightly,” she murmured, seeing the puzzled look in her companion’s eyes.

  “But you’ve hardly touched it. How long is it since you’ve eaten?” he asked, brisk and authoritative.

  Kate looked at him vaguely. “I’m not sure. I suppose it was this morning. Breakfast, I think.”

  The hotel didn’t provide midday meals, and guests were expected to eat out. Kate couldn’t remember eating anything, nor where she had been at midday, and she was suddenly alarmed at her own foolishness.

  “That’s far too long to go without food,” Luke said. “I hope you’re not one of these women who go in for this dieting fad.”

  Kate smiled faintly as he looked her over. No matter how hard she tried, and however bust-flattening the current fashion for frocks, she couldn’t hide her own curvaciousness.

  “You obviously need someone to look out for your interests,” Luke went on. “Where have you been all day?”

  “Oh – on the beach, I think. Walking. Thinking. Nothing very exciting.”

  She stopped. She was probably giving him the impression of a madwoman. He’d soon be sorry he asked her to sit at his table and dine with him. It would undoubtedly be the first and last time.

  “What do you say to coming for a drive with me tomorrow in my motor? I’ll show you some of the lovely countryside around here, and then we’ll have lunch at a country inn. You shouldn’t be half-starving yourself, no matter what it is you’re grieving about,” he said. “And I assure you I have no ulterior motives, other than friendship.”

  She blinked at him, knowing he was being kind to a stranger. He was one of those rare people who summed up a situation and acted on it, and would not give her the chance to mumble and back away, which she assuredly would have done if he hadn’t made it sound such a fait accompli. She bit her lip, remembering one of the silly French phrases Walter had brought back with him from France and tried to teach her.

  She deliberately blocked Walter out of her mind as she answered in a husky voice.

  “Well, what sort of car is it? I hope it’s not that fancy dark green thing at the front of the hotel that looks as if it cost the earth!”

  Luke laughed, and she could see how the little lights danced in his eyes at the simple remark.

  “Kate Radcliffe, you’re a sheer delight to know,” he said softly and for no apparent reason at all that Kate could think about. She immediately realised what a gaff she had just made.

  “It is the dark green one! Dear Lord, now you’ll think me insulting as well as a great simpleton—”

  “Why on earth should I think anything of the sort? Don’t you know I’m half in love with you already?” he asked.

  “Please don’t say that,” Kate said, tense at once. “You musn’t be in love with me, not even halfway.”

  Thankfully, the waiters brought their food then, and the awkward moment passed. It was a while before Luke picked up the thread of the conversation again.

  “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you earlier, Kate. Whatever happened between you and your husband, it’s obvious that you don’t want to talk about it, nor to become entangled with anyone else just yet. But you’re very beautiful, and I won’t be the only man to be captivated by you. You have only to look around this hotel to see how many people glance our way, and it’s certainly not on my account!”

  He might be complimenting her, but if her self-confidence had been battered by Walter’s betrayal, Kate was just as inhibited by these remarks. She didn’t want men looking at her. She didn’t want another Walter. She wasn’t ready to trust yet, if ever.

  “I had a bad experience recently,” she said quietly. “It’s left me feeling very fragile, if you must know, and that’s all I’m going to say.”

  “That’s fine by me,” Luke said. “But just remember I’ve got broad shoulders if you change your mind. Meanwhile, perhaps you’d care to give me a list of the taboo subjects, so that I don’t tread on your toes too often.”

  She looked at him sharply, aware that he was teasing, and then she looked away, unsure how to handle such quick and easy cameraderie. She almost snapped back a reply, but it wasn’t worth it. They’d never meet again after this week, and if she changed her mind about going out with him tomorrow, it would be easy enough to invent a migraine.

  Apart from this delicious dinner, she didn’t owe Luke Halliday a thing. And even the dinner was paid for by Walter, she remembered. She might just stay in her room tomorrow and read instead. Or watch out for the distinctive Bentley to leave the front of the hotel, and then resume her solitary walks. She was free to make whatever choice she liked.

  Kate declined to join Luke in the bar after dinner. She had no wish to extend this tête-à-tête any longer than necessary. She aknowledged that he was a very attractive man and that given other circumstances, perhaps … but then her insides seemed to clench together, remembering how attractive Walter had been, and how things had turned out.

  Since coming to the Charlton Hotel she had dreamed of Walter every night. She didn’t want to, but there was no way anybody could direct their dreams. They gave her pleasure, even though she despised herself in the morning for wanting the dreams to last just a little longer. She dreamed about him holding her, caressing her, whispering her name in her ear and against her heated flesh, and the longing for him then was still the same.

  He wasn’t hers to love, and never had been, but the dreams took no account of that. In them she was in his arms where she ached to be, so close to him that it was as if they shared the same skin, the same breath, the same heartbeat.

  “You’re the most beautiful thing in this world,” he said to her, in that husky, seductive voice that se
nt shivers down her spine. “I want to spend my whole life with you, Katie, and one day we’ll be wed, I promise you.”

  She moved restlessly in her bed as the traitorous lies fell so glibly from his tongue, but she didn’t want to listen to her conscience. She just wanted him to love her … love her…

  “Walter, I wish we could see one another more often.”

  “So do I, my pet, but you know it’s not possible. My job takes me all over the country. But I always come back to you, don’t I, sweetness?”

  And to her, Kate thought uncomfortably, half-awake. You always go back to her, the woman who rightfully wears your ring on her finger.

  She made herself relax fully, willing the dream to return, willing herself back in Walter’s arms, even though she knew she was only prolonging the agony. But dreams were all she had now, and she realised she wasn’t yet prepared to let them go completely. Even another man finding her attractive had stirred up thoughts of Walter.

  The dream took her over once more, and she was lying on Walter’s tartan car rug on the gentle hillside where they had so often made love. She was wrapped in the cocoon of his arms, and his fingers were tracing a line from her breasts down across her belly to where the triangle of fine golden hairs covered her modesty.

  She had been so embarrassed when Walter had first wanted to see her, and touch her … and then to do even more intimate things to her with his mouth and his tongue. In her innocence it was something she had never dreamed happened between a man and a woman, but when it had, she experienced the most glorious sensations of all, and felt closer to him in body and spirit than she had believed possible.

  Without knowing that it did so, her hand strayed down to where the heat of her body pulsed between her legs. She didn’t touch herself beneath her nightgown, but her eyes were damp, knowing how beautiful love between a man and woman could be, especially when you believed it was a love that was going to last for ever.

  “You are going to marry me, aren’t you, Walter? One day?” she had whispered to him more than once, the way she now did in the dream.

  “One day, sweetness, when you’re older. I doubt that your father would give his permission yet, and Donal’s aggressively protective of you as well. We have to take things slowly, lass, and you know how good it can be to take things slowly,” he said, suggestively, turning the conversation to his advantage as his fingers began to probe her inner softness, taking her breath away, and sending sensual spasms of love rippling through her.

  It was only later that she had realised why Donal was so aggressively protective of her when Walter was around. Donal would have seen him in action with the French mam’selles and wanted to keep his sister out of his seductive clutches – until Donal, like the rest of them, had been lulled by the persuasive art of the master-seducer.

  Kate stirred restlessly again, as the real circumstances mingled with the sweet dreams she wanted to keep close to her. She was so hot, and her mouth was so dry. She got up, and poured herself a glass of water from the en suite bathroom that she still found such a luxurious novelty. Then she stood by the French windows looking out at the night for a few minutes, willing her turbulent thoughts to calm down. She hadn’t drawn her curtains, and the night was still and beautiful, studded with a million stars.

  A small sound made her tense, and she caught the glow of a cigarette from the balcony next door. She could see the shadowy shape of Luke Halliday leaning over his railing, taking the night air, and she dodged back quickly, even though he wouldn’t be able to see her.

  It was such an intimately charged situation, to be so close to another person who was a stranger – and a stranger who had made it perfectly obvious that he didn’t intend to remain that way if she gave him the slightest encouragement. Kate resolved once again that she would invent a headache tomorrow morning.

  Chapter Four

  She was ready and waiting for him at the appointed time. Breakfast at the Charlton Hotel was taken between eight and ten o’clock, and Kate was thankful to see that she and Luke had obviously missed one another at the first meal of the day. She didn’t want it to appear that they had become fast friends too soon, or that this week had been some sort of pre-arranged meeting.

  After she had got back into bed last night, smoothing down her tangled sheets, she had slept reasonably well, with no more dreams, and she felt tolerably refreshed.

  A guilty thought had begun to run around her head. Luke Halliday had pursued her, not the other way around, but after her initial resistance, she knew she had put up very little more. The thought that disturbed her was whether she was just using him as some kind of therapy for her bruised feelings. It sounded so brutally callous. But even if that was the case, did it really matter? She just wasn’t sophisticated enough to know. Maybe smart London girls would have no qualms about a brief fling with a man in an hotel, but Kate Sullivan wasn’t a smart London girl, nor ever could be.

  She was still vaguely uneasy about taking a drive in a motor car with a man she barely knew. Her mother certainly wouldn’t like it, and her vitriolic father would roar that she was going the way of street women and should know better. As for Donal … she had seen the suffering in Donal’s eyes after the way Walter had treated her, and he’d be less than happy about her going off with a stranger. She acknowledged the fact that he was over-protective of her, but she had always found it more endearing than stifling. But the thought of her father and brother both ganging up on her to condemn her for being flighty was enough to make her squirm. So maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, and she could still back out.

  As she half-rose from the sofa in the hotel lounge she heard Luke’s voice beside her.

  “So you came. I wondered if you’d take fright after all.”

  Kate forced a small laugh, though her heart had begun to pound. She had left the means of escape far too late.

  “Why on earth should you think that?” she said, as coolly as she could.

  “Because, my dear Mrs Radcliffe, you sometimes remind me of a frightened bird with those huge eyes of yours. They’re very lovely, but a little bewildered too, as if you don’t quite know what you’re doing here.”

  Kate forced another laugh. “Maybe that’s because I don’t,” she retorted, knowing it was far nearer the truth than Luke could possibly imagine.

  What on earth was she doing here? She had asked herself the same question a hundred times already and there was no clear answer. The only sure thing was that soon she had to go back. Her parents, and Donal in particular, would be waiting and wondering just how their jilted girl was going to be when she returned home, and if her heart was truly broken. She would need watching, and they would watch her constantly to see if she was about to break.

  The breath caught in her throat, and she turned away, not wanting Luke to see the sheer panic in her face. She couldn’t bear the thought of facing everyone again, but there was nowhere else to go. Wherever you went, you always had to go back, and that was the truth of it. It was what her mother called facing your personal dragon.

  As she rose from the plush depths of the sofa, Luke offered her his arm. After the merest hesitation she took it, and couldn’t resist the pleasant feeling that this was like being real gentry as they walked out of the foyer, and into the morning sunlight.

  “I though we’d take a drive along the coast to Poole,” Luke said. “And since it’s such a lovely day, instead of taking an indoor lunch I persuaded the hotel to pack us some sandwiches and a flask of lemonade for a picnic.”

  Kate looked at him in astonishment. That anyone dared to ask the hotel establishment to supply anything other than their ritual menus, was impressive indeed. But she sensed that Luke Halliday was a man who would dare anything, and she realised anew how insular was her own small world if she could be amazed by such a thing. She would never have his kind of sophistication, nor that of the other guests here. The longer she stayed there, the more Kate knew it. She had been brought up in a modest home, and told never
to try to be something she was not. Walter had made her feel glamorous and special, but the feeling had vanished like a light being turned off when he had walked out on her. But for a brief, heady while she had been something other than ordinary Kate Sullivan. She had been Somebody, because somebody else had made her so, and she would dearly like to get the feeling back, but without all the additional traumas of forbidden love, thank you very much, she thought.

  “Why so pensive all of a sudden? Doesn’t the idea of a picnic please you?” Luke said, when she didn’t comment.

  She spoke in a rush. “Oh, yes it does! It’s a wonderful idea. I just wondered how you ever managed to arrange it with those hotel people. They seem so stuffy.”

  “They’re only people, Kate. If you find it difficult to remember that, try to imagine them in their underwear – or is that too risqué a suggestion?”

  “It’s too risqué for you to be saying it to me when I hardly know you!” she said smartly.

  But the laughter bubbled up inside her, unable to resist imaging the impeccable maître d’ marching across the dining-room, penguin-stiff in red flannel underwear.

  “Thank God. A genuine laugh at last,” Luke said lightly. “It’s good to see that you’re human after all.”

  “Did you think I wasn’t?”

  “I think something has hurt you very badly to put such a barrier between yourself and the rest of the world. And I can feel the icy blast coming at me again now that I’ve tried to penetrate it.”

  She couldn’t find a ready answer. He didn’t know the true circumstances of her life, but he saw too much, and she didn’t want anyone intruding on her private grief. She was calm on the surface – most of the time – but there were still moments when Walter’s betrayal tore her apart. He had promised her everything, and it had all been lies, every word of it. How could she forget all of that in a few short days?

  Luke said nothing for a while, and then, “Look ahead of you,” he said.

  Kate caught her breath. She had been gazing unseeingly at nothing in particular for the last few minutes, and now she saw the broad expanse of a bay that sparkled blue and silver in the sunlight. Small fishing boats bobbed up and down on its surface, and a few sleeker yachts and motor boats belonging to the rich were moored in the harbour.