Stranger from the Past & Proof of Their Sin

by Penny Jordan

  Even so, at eight o’clock, when her headache still hadn’t gone away and her sore throat persisted, she found herself giving in to the desire to go upstairs and soak in the luxury of a long hot bath, prior to indulging in an early night.

  Wearily she finished her coffee and headed for the stairs.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE bath might have eased the tension of the day from Sybilla’s muscles, but it had done nothing to alleviate either the pain in her head or her sore throat, she admitted as she climbed out of the steaming scented water and wrapped herself in a large dry towel, frowning as she suddenly heard someone ringing her doorbell.

  She paused, hoping that whoever it was might go away, but she had always been one of those people who found it impossible to ignore either a ringing telephone or a doorbell, and whenever she’d tried the anxiety and guilt she’d experienced had been so acute that she had learned it was far easier to give in and to acknowledge their summons no matter how inconvenient it might be.

  It would probably only be Emily, her neighbour, anyway, calling round to thank her for getting their shopping this morning and hopeful for a bit of a chat.

  She hurried downstairs, her feet still bare, her body damp beneath her towel, apologising as she started to open the door.

  ‘Sorry to take so long, I was just having a bath—’

  And then abruptly she fell silent as she realised that it wasn’t her next-door neighbour who was standing there.

  ‘Gareth,’ she proclaimed weakly. ‘What on earth…? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Thanks for the warm welcome.’

  He was over the threshold and standing in the hall beside her before she could stop him, tall, broad-shouldered, filling the small space, making her realise how small and vulnerable she was in comparison. Without her shoes she barely stood much higher than his shoulder.

  She felt a rash of gooseflesh break out on her skin, and a reaction burning deep within her body that made her feel a helpless surge of anger and fear.

  It wasn’t right that he should affect her like this…it wasn’t fair. She was over him completely and absolutely. Or so she had believed.

  How could he stand there like that, challenging her shock at seeing him, when he must know? She shivered suddenly, sending a small shower of water droplets from her damp hair on to her bare shoulders.

  She watched as Gareth homed in on her tiny betraying shudder, grey eyes narrowing as he focused on her.

  Her mouth felt unbearably dry. She had to fight an overpowering impulse to flick her tongue over her dry lips to moisten them. As though he knew somehow what she was feeling, he looked at her mouth.

  ‘You know, you hardly look a day older than you did at fifteen.’

  The flat hard words jolted through her, hurting her.

  What was he trying to say? That, to him, she was as sexually unappealing now as she had been then? Well she hardly needed him to tell her that.

  The arrogance of the man! Did he really think…? Resolutely ignoring that sharply painful frisson of sensation she had experienced earlier, that brief moment of self-awareness when she had realised that, somehow, some part of her was still physically capable of reacting to him, she responded curtly, ‘Really? It must be the poor light in here.’

  No doubt he was comparing her make-up-less, shiny face to the soignée elegance of his woman friend’s sophistication. Well she didn’t care what he thought of her, she told herself recklessly. He wasn’t the only man in the world, and his opinion wasn’t important to her any more. He could think what he wished of her.

  ‘What is it you want, Gareth?’ she demanded, refusing to give in to the weakening sensations beginning to spread through her body.

  He was standing much, much too close to her. She could smell the cold crisp scent of the night on his skin and clothes. If she touched his face it would feel cool, the bones hard beneath his skin, and if he touched her…

  She swallowed nervously, her eyes darkening betrayingly as they mirrored her confusion and apprehension.

  As she grappled mentally with the appalling unwantedness of what she was feeling, she heard Gareth saying drily, ‘Now that might be construed as a very leading question, or an extremely naïve one, only I don’t think naïveté is quite your style any more, is it?’

  She stared at him, unable to comprehend the implications of his soft-voiced words. In another man she might have judged them sexually provocative, but, coming from Gareth…

  His manner towards her held a mixture of contempt, disdain, and a quality which was almost a controlled anger, and none of that added up to the kind of response to her which might have led to his making a sexually provocative remark.

  She looked past him at the closed front door, reflecting grimly that ten years ago she would have given her very soul for this degree of intimacy with him, whereas now…whereas now all she wanted him to do was to go and leave her alone. His presence here in her hallway was too overpowering…too…too emotionally dangerous, so much so that she could almost feel the air between them crackling with hostility and anger.

  And yet why on earth should he be hostile towards her? Surely not because Thomas had left her the Dresden?

  Gareth had never been avaricious. Thomas had been a wealthy man, but she knew that Gareth had always insisted on making his own way through life. When he was at university he had taken holiday jobs, refusing to allow Thomas to increase his allowance, determined to stand on his own two feet.

  So why should Gareth be hostile towards her? From the moment she had overheard that conversation, had realised that he knew of her feelings for him and deplored them, she had avoided him, refusing to return to the Cedars until she’d known he wouldn’t be there. A year’s sabbatical after he had finished university and then the fact that he had opted to work in America meant that in the two years before he had left university and taken up his post in Boston she had barely seen him at all, so surely he could hardly still be angry with her because at fifteen she had dared to fall in love with him? Nor, logically, could his anger come from a misplaced belief that just because he was spending a few days back in town she was going to start mooning over him the way she had done as a teenager. She had surely already proved to him that she knew quite well that her feelings were not reciprocated, and that the last thing she wanted was to open herself up to any further humiliation and pain.

  So why the anger?

  ‘You’ve turned into quite some woman, Sybilla.’

  Quite some woman. The way he said it wasn’t a compliment. She could almost taste the distaste in his voice, and she was sure she could see it quite definitely in his eyes.

  As always when she felt herself under attack she responded with the protective flippancy she had developed over the years to hide her sensitivity and vulnerability, shrugging her shoulders as she told him lightly, ‘So they tell me.’

  ‘“They”?’ His mouth curled in a cynical smile. ‘Ten years ago if you’d understood what I meant, which I doubt, you’d have gone bright red and been as embarrassed as hell.’

  She was so angry that she could barely draw breath. How dared he allude so casually to the past…to her foolishness, the anguish she had suffered, the anguish she still suffered? All right, so he obviously didn’t like her…thoroughly disapproved of…felt anger and contempt towards her, but that was no reason for him to refer to something which he must know had caused her a great deal of pain.

  ‘Ten years ago I was fifteen,’ she reminded him bitterly. ‘A child. Now I’m a w—an adult.’

  ‘A woman, were you going to say?’ he challenged her. ‘Yes, you’re certainly that.’ He was looking at her almost broodingly, the grey eyes surely darker, more intense, the muscles in his throat oddly taut.

  She shivered again and realised that she was getting cold. A sneeze gathered in the back of her nose. She tried to fight it off, demanding again, ‘What are you doing here, Gareth?’

  She sneezed as she spoke, making a quick grab for a tissue
from the box on the hall table and blowing her nose both loudly and defiantly. In her daydreams she might once have imagined impressing Gareth with the way she had changed, matured…with her cool businesslike demeanour, with her carefully chosen business-like clothes, with her success…but after this morning’s episode and now this…

  ‘I came to return this to you,’ she heard him saying, and as she looked at him she saw that he was removing a tube of toothpaste from his jacket pocket.

  He was dressed casually tonight: dark-coloured trousers, a shirt with a fine green stripe running through its white background, a green cotton jumper with a dark blouson jacket over the top of it.

  As she focused on his hand, he carried on, ‘You let if behind this morning. At the supermarket.’

  She stared uncomprehendingly at the toothpaste. He had come here, overriding his obvious dislike of her, merely to return a tube of toothpaste. Her lips parted. She stared at him in puzzled confusion.

  ‘You haven’t missed it?’

  ‘Er—no…I—’ she swallowed ‘—er—’ She stopped as she sneezed again.

  ‘You’re cold.’ He made the words sound almost accusing. ‘You shouldn’t be standing here like this…’

  ‘If you hadn’t rung the doorbell I wouldn’t be,’ Sybilla returned defensively.

  His eyebrows rose. ‘No. You seemed to be expecting someone.’

  The way he said the word ‘someone’ made it plain that he meant a male someone…a lover, in fact. Sybilla opened her mouth to tell him that he was wrong and that actually it had been her neighbour she had expected to find on her doorstep, but then some perverse streak within her made her change her mind and shrug dismissively instead. ‘And if I was—’

  ‘It’s no business of mine,’ he finished for her. ‘Maybe not, but, from what I know of your parents, they wouldn’t be too happy knowing that their daughter is having an affair with a married man, and, so it seems, not even bothering to attempt to conceal what she’s doing.’

  Sybilla couldn’t believe what she was hearing. To say that she was stunned was most definitely understating her feelings.

  She could have denied it, of course, could have told him just how wrong he was, but for some perverse reason she did not do so, reminding him almost aggressively, ‘I’m an adult, not a child, Gareth. How I choose to live my life is my concern and mine alone.’

  ‘Is it? What about your lover’s wife? But then, I suppose to you her feelings simply don’t matter.’

  That he should have misjudged her so unfairly filled her with anger and resentment, making it impossible for her to speak.

  ‘Nothing to say? How you’ve changed. According to my grandfather you’re the epitome of all that a woman should be. He sung your praises unceasingly, but he didn’t really know you, did he, Sybilla? He couldn’t have known you. You publicly flaunt your affair with a married man—’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Sybilla interrupted him furiously. ‘For your information—’ She stopped. Why on earth should she even try to defend herself to him? Let him believe what he liked!

  ‘Did you really come here to bring back the toothpaste,’ she challenged him angrily, ‘or was that just an excuse to—?’ She stopped, amazed to see the dull burn of colour rise up under his skin. She was right, she realised. She had unwittingly hit on the truth. The return of the toothpaste had simply been an excuse to come here and berate her. But why? Why on earth should it matter to him how she lived her life? ‘Well you’ve had your say, made your views quite clear, and now I’d like you to leave.’

  ‘Before your lover arrives.’

  Sybilla glared at him, and told him frostily, ‘As a matter of fact, I was on my way to bed.’

  ‘So?’

  For a moment she didn’t understand, and then, when she did, her face went bright red and she stared at him in bitter resentment, striding past him towards the front door, intending to open it and repeat her request to him to leave.

  However, as she side-stepped him in the narrow hallway, keeping as much physical distance between them as she could, he moved too, as though to block her path. Furious with him, she stepped back, inadvertently getting her feet tangled in the trailing hem of her towel.

  She felt the fabric pull against her breasts, realised what had happened, and made a frantic grab for the towel, clutching it protectively against her breasts at the same moment as Gareth moved towards her.

  His eyes had been focused on her face, but disconcertingly his attention was now concentrated on her body, on where the full swell of her breasts was now far too clearly revealed above the edge of her towel.

  He took a step nearer to her, and instinctively she reached out one hand to ward him off. There was nowhere for her to go, her back was already against the wall, but the sharp darts of sensation piercing her had nothing to do with fear.

  He had no right to make her feel like this, no right at all, she told herself with feverish anxiety as she tried to avoid him.

  But it was already too late: his hands were closing on her bare shoulders, his fingers hard and warm.

  ‘Sybilla.’ His voice was rough and angry. He said her name almost as though he hated her.

  ‘Gareth…no…’

  It should have been a protest, but even to her own ears it sounded more like a plea.

  She shuddered in his arms as she felt the warm rasp of his breath against her ear. ‘Damn you, Sybilla,’ she heard him curse just before he kissed her. ‘Damn you for making me want this.’

  Making him want… While her thoughts spun dizzily through her head she tried to cling on to reality, to ignore the physical sensations engendered by his touch, his proximity. She couldn’t let him kiss her, couldn’t let him see how vulnerable to him she still was…how…

  Later she swore to herself that she had only opened her mouth to tell him to let her go…that it wasn’t her fault that he had mistaken her intent, that it wasn’t her fault that he had mistaken her parted lips, her swift indrawn breath for an indication that she’d wanted his kiss; and then, once his mouth was actually on hers, it was too late for denials, for logic, for reason.

  She was lost in a sea of sensation, swept back in the mists of time, a girl again, desperately, madly in love with an idol so far out of reach that even to dream of an intimacy such as this made her young innocent body tremble with shocked excitement.

  This was the first time she had ever been kissed in anger, in a fury of bitterness and contempt that made the pressure of Gareth’s mouth on hers hard and almost painful, just as the heat and weight of his body was like an impenetrable wall past which she could not push to free herself not so much from him, she recognised numbly, but from the vulnerability within herself, a vulnerability that recognised that, no matter how lacking in tenderness, in care, in all the emotions she had naïvely thought necessary before she could ever respond to a man with desire, there was deep within her a spark that was all too dangerously easily kindled by this unexpected, almost savage intimacy.

  As she fought down the fiercely responsive surge of the reaction she could feel threatening her she made a taut sound of protest beneath Gareth’s mouth, tensing in his arms, trying to force some space between their bodies, forgetting, as she pushed against his chest with her hands, the fragility of her towel, forgetting everything but her need to stop what was happening to her before he realised how immediately and overwhelmingly she was responding to him.

  In retaliation to her attempt to break free, instead of releasing her as she wanted, Gareth bit sharply on her bottom lip. The shock of his action drew a sharp cry of pain from her that startled them both into frozen immobility.

  She was shaking now, trembling with reaction. She heard Gareth say her name in a dazed, disbelieving way. His tongue touched her lip where he had broken the skin, but immediately she pulled away.

  ‘Sybilla…’

  ‘Let go of me.’

  She pulled back again, this time relieved to feel his grip of her slacken, but her relief tu
rned to embarrassment as he stepped away from her and the towel, which had only been held against her body by the pressure of his against it, slipped downwards before she could stop it, revealing her breasts fully to him, her nipples swollen and hard, her normally pale skin flushed with desire.

  For a moment neither of them moved, and then, with a small cry of anguish, Sybilla gathered up the towel, her hands trembling as she hugged it against he body.

  ‘Sybilla—’

  ‘Get out,’ she told him in a choked voice. She couldn’t endure listening to any more insults right now. All she wanted was to be left alone…to forget the extraordinary and humiliating events which had just taken place.

  She turned her back on him, her body clenched tight with tension as she waited for him to go. She heard the door open, felt the cold chill of the evening air…felt him pause as though willing her to turn round, but she refused to do so, only allowing her tense muscles to relax once the door had closed behind him and she was sure he had gone.

  When she did relax she was trembling so much that she couldn’t move. She had to lean against the wall for support while she tried to control the involuntary reaction of her body.

  Her whole mouth felt swollen, her bottom lip was sore where he had bitten it, her breasts ached, and there was a sensation low down in her body…an awareness…a need…a conscious memory of how it had felt to have the hard male weight of him pressed against her.

  She gave a violent shudder, trying to free herself from the trap yawning in front of her. This wasn’t right…it was stupid, sick almost, to be forced to confront the fact that she had actually been physically turned on by him, that she had actually wanted…

  She swallowed, her throat so sore that the action made her wince. She felt peculiarly light-headed, oddly vague, as though she was suddenly incapable of formulating any kind of logical thought.

  Sybilla couldn’t wholly come to terms with what had happened…that he had actually…

  She swallowed again. She knew that men could react like that to anger, but in Gareth it seemed so out of character, so unexpected…so shocking, somehow. She had never imagined… never envisaged… In her teenage daydreams she had yearned for kisses that were tender…innocently, idiotically chaste…for caresses based on a childish view of what desire must be. She had never, ever imagined being kissed the way Gareth had just kissed her, and she had certainly never, not even in her adult years, imagined that she would actually respond to that blending of male desire and male anger. Her body tensed again. She made a small keening sound of despair deep in her throat, ignoring the pain it caused.