by Helen Brooks
Quite how she came to be telling Drew the whole story, Robyn didn’t know, but over the next ten minutes it all spilled out; from the time she was twelve years old and captivated by a dark, sleek Adonis, to the present day. Even the episode when she was sixteen didn’t seem so hard to talk about with Drew’s arm about her shoulders and her sympathy flowing in waves.
‘I knew there was someone.’ Drew gave her a big hug when she finished talking, passing her another tissue as she did so.
‘How?’ Robyn sniffed mournfully. ‘How did you know?’
‘Because when a woman looks like you do and gives the brush off to every man in sight, it has to mean someone in the past has done a good job on her heart,’ Drew said with all the wisdom of her twenty-eight years. ‘And he did, didn’t he?’
‘It…it was my fault.’ She didn’t know why she had to defend Clay but somehow she did. ‘I threw myself at him.’
‘Oh, come on, Robyn.’ Drew was scathing. ‘You were sweet sixteen and never been kissed, and he was twenty-three and pretty experienced, I bet. He was a rat!’
She didn’t want Drew to hate Clay, but it did feel good to have someone so totally on her side. Robyn found she felt a bit better.
‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’ Drew asked with a touch of amazement. ‘We’ve been friends for ever.’ And then she answered herself immediately with, ‘But you aren’t like me, are you? You’ve always been a deep one, Robyn, and never one to wear your heart on your sleeve.’
‘Oh, Drew.’ Robyn stared at the other girl forlornly.
‘Which means you’re playing with fire now.’ Drew looked at her unhappily. ‘I think I better make another cup of tea.’
They didn’t get much work done that morning but Robyn found that by telling someone the whole miserable story a great weight had lifted off her heart. It hadn’t changed her predicament, but in admitting her true feelings for Clay out loud to another human being some of the shame and humiliation of the past was gone. This was life—not always nice and certainly not always fair or tidy, but she was one of millions of mortals who made mistakes and loved where they should not.
As Drew had said, and with deep feeling, ‘Welcome to the human race, kiddo.’
Surprisingly that night Robyn slept like a baby and awoke on Tuesday morning feeling positive. She could handle this, she could. And once Clay realised that anything of a sexual nature was a no-go, he might even start to look at her as a friend. She was Cass’s sister after all so it was likely their paths might cross now and again.
She ignored the very pertinent fact that their paths hadn’t crossed in years, and also the stab in her heart at the thought of being on the perimeter of Clay’s life and hearing about—even maybe watching—his affairs with other women, and concentrated fiercely on work. She knew where she was with that.
By Friday evening Robyn was telling herself she had to psych herself up carefully for the following day. Clay hadn’t contacted her personally although mid-week a huge bunch of hot-house orchids had been delivered to the house, with a little note which had said, ‘Looking forward to Saturday, C.’ Drew had looked at the flowers and had exhaled long and loud.
‘They must have cost a small fortune, Robyn.’
‘At the risk of sounding cynical, he can afford the grand gestures, Drew,’ Robyn had said sadly.
‘Maybe.’ Drew had continued to look goggle-eyed at the magnificent plumes. ‘But considering the most my ex’s have trumped up is a bunch of off-the-peg chrysanthemums or freesias, he’s got style.’
‘I like freesias.’
‘Oh, Robyn!’
Drew left at just after half-past five and Robyn continued working at her desk until six, at which point she gazed at the piles of paperwork awaiting her attention and sighed. She had interviewed three prospective employees during the week and she and Drew had decided on the last one, an extremely capable, plump, bustling redhead who was thirty-three years old and had taken a few years out to be at home whilst her two children were tiny. Now the second child had started full-time nursery Fiona had decided she wanted to get back into the world of the big kids—as she’d put it. She was a little loud, a flamboyant dresser and her sense of humour had been infectious, and Robyn and Drew had felt she’d fit in very nicely.
However, due to a trip she and her husband had arranged to France she was unable to take up employment for another three weeks, so until then the mountain of paperwork and hectic, non-stop schedule wasn’t going to get any better.
She would be working half the night again. Robyn sighed once more and had just reached for one of the files when a knock at the front door brought her to her feet.
‘Clay!’ As she opened the front door her heart jolted up into her throat and almost stopped. She hadn’t expected this; he was supposed to be back in England tomorrow.
He was wearing black jeans and a black denim shirt—more like the young, university Clay than the immaculately designer-suited present-day one—and he took her breath away.
‘Hi.’ It was easy and relaxed and he smiled slowly, the devastating smile that always had the power to send her senses into hyperdrive, the silver eyes softening and crinkling at the corners.
‘This isn’t Saturday,’ she said stupidly.
‘No, it isn’t,’ he agreed softly, stepping forward and taking her in his arms. ‘It’s Friday, the most incredible, fantastic Friday ever.’ And he kissed her, long and hard right there on the doorstep. ‘Because,’ he added as he raised his mouth from hers, ‘I’m holding you, feeling you, tasting you.’
‘Clay, you should have phoned.’ She wriggled loose.
‘Have you missed me, Robyn?’ He stepped over the threshold into the house and she stared at his broad back for a moment before she shut the front door. Typical, she thought bewilderly. Not a thought in his head that she might be doing something else tonight, seeing someone else.
And then she had to rethink that thought when he swung round and said quietly, ‘Are you free tonight, Robyn?’
She stared at him, aware that that one kiss had brought her body alive in a way that was positively lascivious, and that despite every warning she had given herself over and over and over the last few days she was madly, wildly happy to see him.
‘Too late.’ His hands went round her slim waist and he was looking down into the velvet brown of her eyes as he said, a touch drily, ‘You hesitated a mite too long, sweetheart.’
‘I’m not really free,’ she objected quickly, the knowledge that he was railroading her again strong. ‘I’ve masses of work to do, some of it urgent.’
‘Sorry, as an excuse that one is just not good enough.’
‘It’s the truth!’ she protested indignantly.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ he murmured, kissing her again until she was gasping for breath. ‘But I’m not playing second fiddle to that—’ he indicated her paper-strewn desk with a wave of his hand ‘—or anything else,’ he added softly.
Her skin was hot, she was hot, deep inside in the core of her, and she was aware Clay knew exactly how his body was affecting her. It was there in the slight tilt to his hard firm mouth and the silver glint in his eyes.
‘What did you have in mind?’ she asked distractedly, and then blushed furiously when she read the wry expression on his handsome face. ‘I mean—’
‘I know what you meant, Robyn,’ he said soothingly, and she wondered why one man—this man—had been given so much of absolutely everything that made a male a male. ‘Dinner at my place?’ he suggested evenly ‘A thank you for the meal you rustled up for me at such short notice on Sunday.’
‘Your place?’ Alarm bells were ringing furiously. ‘I don’t think so.’ Talk about walking into the lion’s den!
‘Don’t you trust me?’ he asked sadly.
She looked him full in the face. ‘Not an inch.’
He grinned, his eyes stroking over her face. Unexpectedly his hand lifted and tilted her chin. ‘Wise girl.’ He let her go in the next
moment and ridiculously she felt bereft. ‘But in this instance you’ll be quite safe, my housekeeper will be around. Added to which—’ and now the piercing eyes became deadly serious ‘—you aren’t ready for me yet.’
Her heart was fluttering against her ribs like a captive bird at the look on his face, and in that moment all she wanted to do was to move into his arms again, to nestle close and slide her hands down the muscled column of his neck and inside his half-opened shirt. She wanted to feel his skin, tangle her fingers in the dark silky warmth of the body hair just visible in the V of the denim shirt, explore the hard, male chest.
She stepped back a pace sharply, wondering how she could ever have been so stupid as to think she was over Clay Lincoln. She had loved him all her life; she would die loving him. ‘I’ll have to change but it won’t take a minute.’
‘Fine.’ He walked over to the windows at the end of the room which looked out onto the paved garden. ‘I’ll wait here.’
Robyn took her cue from the way Clay was dressed and changed quickly into casual cream drawstring trousers and a short-sleeved, waist-length cotton top in pastel blue. She combed out her hair from the high knot on top of her head it had been in all day, and then hesitated as her hands went to draw it up again. Her scalp was aching slightly and she balked at the idea of further pressure. She’d leave it loose.
She was back downstairs again in under five minutes, and Clay was still standing where she’d left him looking out of the windows. He turned to face her as she reached the bottom step, his eyes flashing over her, their silver light very bright. ‘You look sixteen again with your hair like that,’ he said quietly, his face unreadable.
It startled her. He hadn’t made any reference to the past other than in a derogatory nature, and she found it acutely painful to be reminded that he’d thought she was a flirtatious little coquette then, a provocative tease who had been trying out her new-found femininity on any male within kissing distance.
She smiled stiffly. ‘Gallons of water have passed under the bridge since those days,’ she said tightly. He probably thought deep inside that if her behaviour with him on the night of Cass’s wedding was anything to go by she had got exactly what she’d asked for with this mysterious man from university, who according to her sister had broken her heart.
‘That’s for sure.’ For a second his eyes were as hard and clear and uncompromising as diamonds, a ruthless quality to his mouth that hadn’t been there a moment before. And then it was gone and he was walking towards her, smiling easily.
Robyn responded in a like manner, making small talk as they left the house and walked out to the car, but inside she was trembling slightly. What had happened, what had he been remembering to put that expression in his eyes? she asked herself silently. He was different to the Clay of old, but just how different she hadn’t realised until this very moment.
By the time they drove into Windsor the air was heavy with the lazy golden twilight that seemed to last endlessly in the summer. Shafts of sun were slanting through the trees of the road they were following, and then Clay drew up outside large wrought-iron gates set in an eight-feet-high stone wall which he opened automatically from the car window.
Once inside the wide drive was flanked by towering oaks, but within moments they emerged into a wide semi-circle leading to a beautiful, stone-built Victorian house surrounded on three sides by massive cypresses.
‘It’s wonderful, Clay.’ They had said very little on the drive to the house, but now Robyn turned to the big dark figure at the side of her, her voice warm. ‘What a gorgeous place to live.’ Gorgeous? It was like a mini paradise all of its own.
He watched her face for a moment and then he smiled slowly. ‘I bought it some years ago from a friend of a friend who was emigrating to Canada,’ he said quietly. ‘It’d been in his family from when it was built in 1870, and from the first moment I stepped in the door I knew I had to have it. It felt good, solid. Life has been happy within its walls, you can feel it.’
She stared at him, absolutely amazed by his sensitivity, and then flushed hotly when he said, his tone sardonic, ‘Surprised I’ve got a soul, Robyn?’
‘Not at all,’ she lied swiftly. ‘Don’t be silly.’
He continued to survey her for a moment more before cutting the engine, and then he said, his voice very even and cool, ‘I had a privileged upbringing by most standards. My mother was English and my father American, and both families were well-off, my father’s particularly so, but my maternal grandparents’ farm in Sussex was a haven for two small inquisitive boys with acres to roam about in. That was fortunate as we were often dumped there while my parents sorted out yet another quarrel.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t know what else to say.
He was looking through the windscreen now, his profile hard, as he continued, ‘The trouble was my mother’s inability to be faithful. She had scores of lovers by all accounts, but my father—who was twenty years older than her—loved her and turned a blind eye where he could. Unfortunately my mother sometimes made that impossible, and then we’d be shipped off to our grandparents from wherever we were in the world. Every time they resolved their differences we seemed to move to a new home, a new start—’ his voice was very cynical ‘—so Mitch and I never seemed able to make permanent friends or put down roots.’
‘Did…did you live in America?’ she asked softly, aware that it was anathema to him to talk like this, to reveal anything of himself.
‘All over the place,’ he answered shortly. ‘My father’s shipping empire, which he’d inherited from his father, made it possible for any location in the world to be within their price range. We hated it, Mitch and I. The only time we were happy was when we were on the farm in Sussex. That’s why I was determined to come to university in England, to be near my grandparents.’
‘And they had the potting shed?’ she asked lightly, aiming to bring him out of the past.
‘What?’ For a moment his face was blank, and then the darkness that had gripped it lifted and he smiled, nodding as he said, ‘Oh, yes, the potting shed. We had our first drink, our first stolen cigarette in its hallowed walls, watched only by the family of mice who lived there.’
He was opening his car door as he spoke; clearly the glimpse into his past had finished, Robyn acknowledged silently. But that was fine. Although she was burning with curiosity, another part of her brain was warning her very strongly that everything she learnt about him, every personal little detail, wasn’t going to make it any easier when this tenuous relationship finished. And it would finish. She would have known that even if he hadn’t spelled it out for her.
From the outside the house had appeared large but not excessively so; however once Clay opened the front door and Robyn stepped into the hall she realised the building was huge, even before Clay told her there were eight bedrooms all with ensuite.
The hall was vast and the staircase a thing of beauty all on its own, being of ornate iron drag-painted in gold, but Robyn had little time to take in the lush russet carpet and fine paintings on the walls before Clay was introducing her to his housekeeper. Mrs Jones was a tall, slim, attractive woman with a Welsh lilt to her voice who apparently lived with her husband—an invalid—in a bungalow annexe at the back of the house, and Robyn liked her on sight. She was friendly and warm but not gushing.
‘Come and have a quick look round and then we’ll have a drink before dinner,’ Clay said casually, as though he brought women into his house every day of the week. Which he probably did, Robyn reminded herself painfully.
He showed her the upstairs first which seemed to stretch for ever in pale cream carpets, bedroom after bedroom in different colour schemes of peach, lemon, strawberry and other soft shades, until they came to the master bedroom which was uncompromisingly Clay. Maple wood floor, a predominantly stark colour scheme of silver and black, and a huge four-poster bed was so him, Robyn thought tensely, as she gingerly poked her head round the door, refusing his invitation to
proceed further into the room. Silken curtains hung at the full length windows which were wide open and led onto a large stone balcony, and the enormous bed was draped with silk sheets and billowy pillows and cushions in abundance.
It was as different to the other rooms as chalk to cheese, and relentlessly masculine. Luxurious, but with a sensuality that was both spartan and hedonistic.
How many women had lounged on those wicked silken sheets and pillows? Robyn thought miserably, replete and satisfied after a long night of lovemaking. They would be glowing, purring like sleek, contented cats and—
‘Robyn?’
‘What?’ She blinked, realising Clay had been talking and she hadn’t heard a word.
‘I’ll show you downstairs and then we can have that drink,’ he repeated patiently, ‘if you’re ready?’
Ready? She didn’t know what she was! A candidate for the funny farm at this rate. Certainly she knew that her dreams would have an extra dimension now this room was in her subconscious.
Once downstairs she admired the long light kitchen, the breakfast room, Clay’s study, the dining room and the sitting room, and then they were in the high-vaulted drawing room which managed to be grandly impressive yet warm and welcoming at the same time.
Glass doors at the far end of the room led out onto a charming patio which afforded a view of the magnificent grounds, and it was on the table out here that Mrs Jones had placed an ice bucket complete with a bottle of champagne and two big fluted glasses. Robyn suddenly felt deliciously spoilt.
Clay poured them both a glass of the frothy, sparkling wine, his voice very deep and low as he said, ‘To us, to getting to know each other a little…better.’
‘Is this the line you use with all your women in the beginning?’ Robyn asked with a careful lack of expression.
‘What?’ The glass froze before it reached his lips.
She’d surprised him, annoyed him certainly, and it felt good considering he was tying her up in knots. ‘I said—’
‘I heard what you said,’ he ground out tightly.
