Lesson to Learn

by Penny Jordan

  He must have been exhausted to be able to sleep at all in that confined space, especially when he was sharing it with Robbie, Sarah reflected, stepping back towards the door, expecting at any moment that he would open his eyes, but instead he flung out his arm, and in doing so knocked over the covered glass of cordial and water she always left for Robbie.

  Sarah reacted instinctively, darting forward, too late to do anything other than rescue the glass from the damp carpet, but it was while she was kneeling on the floor beside the bed that she suddenly felt Gray’s hand touch her hair.

  The total unexpectedness of it turned her rigid, unable to move…unable to breathe…unable to do anything. His fingers moved slowly against her scalp. He made a deep, soft sound of pleasure, before coiling his hand round her hair and tugging it gently as he urged her down towards him.

  His eyes, she saw, were still closed, and he was in effect still fast asleep, totally unconscious of what he was doing. Which meant…which meant that she had to remove his hand from her hair right away and then wake him up. Heaven alone knew who he thought she was. Some unknown woman with whom he had had the kind of intimate relationship that…

  She swallowed hard. She was so close to him now that she could see the pores of his skin, the dark growth of his beard, the silky curl of his eyelashes. She could smell the warm male heat of his body, and instinctively, to prevent herself from overbalancing, she had unwittingly placed her hand on his chest so that beneath her palm she could feel the heavy, slightly uneven thud of his heartbeat.

  ‘Mm…’ Her own heart pounded as he nuzzled the soft skin of her throat, his thumb stroking rhythmically behind her ear. Her senses were overwhelmed by a fierce flood of sensation, her nipples tightening…swelling, her whole body shockingly responsive to his touch. His beard rasped roughly against her tender skin and yet the sensation was more erotic than unpleasant, sending tiny shivers of pleasure darting under her skin. Instinctively she moved closer to him, arching her throat so that his mouth could caress it. The hand she had placed on his chest tightened, her fingers curling. She could hear the sound of her own uneven breathing, could feel how her body trembled and ached.

  She was wearing a thin cotton top and a pair of shorts, and when Gray’s free hand cupped her breast she gave a small, startled gasp of shock, but he was oblivious to it, his eyes still closed, his mouth still nuzzling her throat, his tongue-tip stroking it, his teeth gently dragging exquisite trails of pleasure over it.

  Sarah trembled against him, knowing that she should pull away from him, and yet somehow or other the message she gave her body to do so became either confused or ignored, so that instead of pulling away she was doing exactly the opposite and was in fact pushing herself closer and closer into his intimate embrace…her body wantonly ignoring the frantic messages from her brain to move away from him before it was too late, before he woke up and realised what he was doing, what she was allowing him, encouraging him, almost, to do.

  She shivered as his thumb stroked slowly against her nipple, swallowing the small moan of pleasure that bubbled in her throat. His mouth dragged erotically against her skin, seeking her lips, and she couldn’t stop herself from turning her head so that he could find them.

  When he did so her heart jerked to a standstill, her senses sent into a dizzy frenzy by the urgent caress of his mouth against her lips.

  This was no tentative, seeking kiss, but the kind of kiss a man gave a woman whom he intimately and passionately desired.

  But who was that woman? Not her, Sarah acknowledged, going still in his hold, her desire suddenly chilled and cold, her body stiff with anguished shame and rejection.

  Gray was still kissing her, his teeth biting sharply into her bottom lip as he sensed her resistance.

  The unexpectedness of that sharp pain made her cry out and jerk back from him.

  Instantly his eyes opened, a frown drawing his eyebrows together as he stared at her.

  Frantically Sarah scrambled to her feet, stammering in panic, ‘You knocked over Robbie’s water glass. I’m sorry if I woke you.’

  He was still frowning, and she could almost feel him thinking…trying to catch hold of an elusive memory, a troublesome vague awareness.

  He was, she realised, focusing on her bottom lip. Instantly she caught hold of it between her teeth, trying not to wince as the broken skin stung, her heart pounding heavily in her ears. She felt sick…vulnerable…so afraid that he might remember and blame her…so afraid that he might think that she had been the one…that he might guess…but when he spoke he demanded irritably, ‘What the hell am I doing in here?’ making it clear that he had no memory of what had happened, and freeing her to say unsteadily,

  ‘Robbie said he had a bad dream and that you came up to him. You must have fallen asleep with him.’

  Gray gave a grunt, which might have been an assent or might not. He swung his legs on to the floor, cursing under his breath as he complained, ‘God, my back.’

  Sarah was already backing towards the door. His movements had dragged his shirt out of his trousers, revealing the taut male flesh of his abdomen and chest. He stretched and she heard his bones crack.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked her, cursing again when she told him. ‘Hell, I’ve got a meeting in half an hour. I’ll have to ring Mary and get it delayed.’

  He was still frowning, his thoughts quite obviously on his work, nothing in his manner to suggest that he was remotely aware of what had happened, and yet as she opened the bedroom door he looked straight at her, his gaze searching her face before dropping to her mouth.

  Inside she was trembling so violently that she was surprised he couldn’t see it. Her bottom lip was still clenched between her teeth, the pain from her torn flesh increasing with every second, but she dared not let him look at her bitten lip and remember.

  Opening the door, she turned round and hurried through it. Downstairs Robbie had helped himself to his cereal. There was a milk moustache around his mouth, and he looked up, giving Sarah a wide beaming smile as she walked into the kitchen.

  * * *

  SHE HAD HER back to the door half an hour later when Gray walked into the kitchen. Immediately she tensed, unable to turn round and look at him. Had he realised…remembered…or had he been so deeply asleep that he had no recollection of having touched her…kissed her?

  She heard him open the fridge door and she forced herself to turn round. Her heart was thumping violently with anxiety and pain; he looked so remote, so distant…looking at him now in all the formality of his dark-clothed suit, it was almost impossible to believe that he had…She swallowed, reminding herself that it had not been she he had been making love to; that it had not been she whom he had kissed and caressed.

  He had removed some orange juice from the fridge and was about to turn round. Immediately she busied herself, fussing over Robbie.

  ‘Are we going to have some more birthday cake today, Sarah?’ Robbie was asking her.

  Sarah knew that Gray was watching her, studying her, and, even though she could feel the slow crawl of hot colour seeping up over her throat and face, she refused to turn her own head and look at him. It was like having to resist an actual physical force, she recognised as she fought her own powerful desire to turn her head and see why he was watching her so closely.

  Ten minutes later, having finished his own breakfast, Gray picked up his briefcase and headed for the door, pausing only to say curtly to her, ‘If you’ve got a moment, please, Sarah.’

  Numbly she followed him out into the hall. He had remembered after all. And he was going to demand to know why she had not stopped him…why she had not woken him, why she—

  ‘I think it would be a good idea if Robbie was to abstain from eating any more birthday cake,’ he told her. ‘I suspect that was probably the cause of the bad dream that kept both him and me awake last night.’

  Sarah focused on him and heard him continuing critically, ‘I really would have thought you would have had more sense t
han to allow him to eat such stuff anyway…all that sugar and fat…’

  ‘I used a low-fat sugar-free recipe,’ Sarah informed him stiffly.

  How dared he imply that she was responsible for Robbie’s nightmare when he…? It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that, if he really was concerned about Robbie’s bad dreams, he could find the cause of them far closer to home than looking for it in her cooking, but the shock of his unfair criticism when she had been expecting him to raise a very different subject indeed was numbing her brain so much that she couldn’t get her tongue round the words she wanted to say.

  As he turned away from her she bit down hard on her bottom lip, forgetting how tender it was. The resultant pain made her cry out involuntarily, causing him to stop and turn back to look at her.

  The moment his glance focused on her swollen lip her skin burned with hot embarrassment and guilt.

  ‘If I were you I should tell your boyfriend to be a little less rough next time,’ he told her contemptuously as he opened the front door.

  He was halfway through the door when her temper got the better of her, her voice husky with anger as she told him shakily, ‘I don’t have a boyfriend, and for your information…’ She stopped abruptly, realising with shock what she had been about to say.

  ‘For my information what?’Gray prompted her.

  He was looking at her mouth again. With a sick surge of awareness Sarah realised just what she was doing. She pressed her trembling lips together and averted her head. Her whole body was shaking with shock and panic, her eyes huge and dark with the strain of her emotions.

  Involuntarily her tongue-tip touched her swollen lip, in a movement that was both explorative and soothing; a gesture that betrayed to the man watching her that she was completely unused to wearing such public evidence of a man’s urgent desire.

  Her lips were very soft and inviting, and now swollen and marked by that betraying bruise.

  His body tightened warningly, the ache that had been with him when he had woken up intensifying sharply. It had been a long, long time since he had experienced such an almost uncontrollable surge of desire.

  His sexual appetite had waned considerably during the last months of his marriage, and, unlike other men he knew, following his divorce he had not experienced any desire to go out and punish the rest of the female sex for his wife’s infidelity and betrayal by entering into as many casual sexual relationships as he could.

  It was true that there had been a couple of relationships, but both of them had initially been more cerebral than physical.

  It came as a shock to him now to realise that he was capable of such a gut-deep physical, aching, compulsive need, and even worse that that need…that ache should be directed at a woman whom he had determinedly and consciously held at a distance.

  It was only later in his car, driving towards the factory, that he allowed himself to question why he should have felt that almost instantaneous awareness that she was someone against whom he would have to erect barricades; that she was someone who could threaten the emotional and physical control he exerted over his life.

  He cursed himself, acknowledging that it had not been a good idea to employ her, but what alternative had he had? There was Robbie to consider. Robbie, who was his child…his son…Robbie, who, thanks to his mother’s teachings, was afraid of him. And yet last night, frightened by his bad dream, Robbie had clung to him…crying out to him, begging him to stay, and, holding the small and frighteningly fragile warmth of his small son in his arms, he had been overwhelmed by such a surge of love and pain…love for the child who was, after all, a part of himself, and pain for all the years they had been apart, for all the trauma and sorrow that had marked their relationship.

  He couldn’t understand what was happening to him. After cutting himself off from his emotions, after telling himself that it was safer not to feel…not to love, he suddenly felt as though all his protection had been ripped away from him, leaving him raw and bleeding; leaving him vulnerable and in pain…leaving him so confused and overwhelmed by his own feelings…so shocked by the knowledge of what was happening to him…He took a deep, steadying breath, shivering a little as he remembered how he had felt this morning looking at Sarah’s swollen mouth; how he had been angrily, almost savagely jealous of the man who had the right to kiss her so passionately that she neither noticed nor cared that he was hurting her.

  ‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ she had said. And yet someone had touched her, kissed her. God, if he closed his eyes he could almost feel how it would be to have her mouth under his, to hear her soft cries of mingled pleasure and panic filling his ears, to touch the feminine curves of her throat, her breasts…to feel her body beginning to respond to his and to know…

  He swore abruptly as the other driver sounded his horn at him and he realised that the lights had changed to green and that he had been sitting staring into space. This had got to stop. It was something there was no room for in his life…something far too dangerous to allow into his life.

  Once he had believed he was in love and that he was loved in return, and he had been wrong on both counts. He was never going to fall into that trap again. Never.

  Never.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GRAY puzzled her, Sarah acknowledged. He was a man of such contradictions; a man who one moment could be the most caring and loving father to his child and yet who the next could withdraw from him almost as though he was afraid.

  But afraid of what? Not, surely, of Robbie himself. Afraid of loving him, perhaps?

  She frowned as she mulled the thought round in her head. It was almost two weeks since that fateful morning when she had arrived and found Gray sleeping in Robbie’s bed, when he had in his sleep taken hold of her and caressed her and kissed her.

  But no, she must not allow herself to think…to remember. She had always told herself more times than she cared to dwell upon that that incident was something around which she must build a fortification strong enough to ensure that its memory remained sealed away, untouched, undisturbed, unthought of for the rest of her life. Because if it wasn’t…if she allowed it to dominate her thoughts and her feelings…She gave a deep shudder.

  There was no future in the way she felt about Gray, no hope of his ever returning her feelings, of his ever coming to love her; she knew that from the way he treated her; from the cool civility that sometimes did not quite mask his antagonism towards her. He employed her as Robbie’s nanny simply because he had not been able to find anyone else, but she knew now how much he resented her presence in his home, how much he resented her. She had seen the way he looked at her whenever Robbie ran to her for a cuddle, or whenever Robbie turned to her for something he wanted, and she knew that Gray disliked his son’s growing emotional dependence on her.

  She too was increasingly uneasy about it although, she suspected, for very different reasons. Robbie was a very vulnerable child. She had tried her best to widen his horizons, to introduce him to other children, and to some extent had been successful, but he still clung to her…still rushed quickly back to her side as though he was half afraid that she might have disappeared in his absence.

  All quite a natural reaction, given the trauma he had been through, of course, but what Robbie needed in his life was someone permanent to whom he could give his love and his dependence, not someone like her who would only be a part of his life for a relatively short time.

  It was true that Robbie was slowly becoming more responsive to his father, thanks to her own unceasing and gentle encouragement to him to see Gray as his friend rather than his enemy, and it was also true that Gray was becoming more responsive to him, showing a much gentler and more caring manner towards him than he had originally done, and yet sometimes, just as she was congratulating herself on having helped to forge a real bond between them, almost always—or so it seemed—when Gray was actually showing physical affection for Robbie he would draw back in some way from him, his body language clearly betraying his te
nsion and wariness. Almost as though he was afraid of allowing himself to love his son. But what kind of man would feel like that? What kind of man would be afraid of loving his own child?

  The kind who had once had that child taken from him and who perhaps in some illogical way feared that it might happen again? The kind who was afraid of allowing himself to love his child because, in his own deepest emotional awareness, love was so closely connected with pain that he could not differentiate between the two?

  Sarah wished it was possible for her to talk more freely to Gray about his feelings and about her own fears that he was hurting Robbie with his rejection of him; that he was teaching Robbie to mistrust his own natural feelings, to reject his own natural desire to show his father love and affection; but, even if Gray had been more approachable, she doubted if she could have overcome the barrier of her own love for him enough to discuss the subject with the frankness it needed.

  Because of that as much as because of her love for Gray she was beginning to seriously question if she was the right person to have charge of Robbie.

  She had tried once, very hesitantly, to voice her doubts, but Gray had immediately grown grim-faced and taut-mouthed, accusing her of wanting to break the contract they had signed, and she had been forced to withdraw, knowing that it was impossible for her to voice all her disquiet in a way that would carry weight and conviction.

  Gray mistrusted anything based on emotions, she had learned that much, and she reflected rather bitterly that he must once have loved Robbie’s mother very much indeed to be so damaged by the destruction of their relationship.

  And yet when she said as much at home to Sally, and Ross had overheard her, he had quickly shaken his head and told her, ‘That’s not what I’ve heard. By all accounts, the only reason they got married was because she was pregnant, and it seems he had to put pressure on her to go through with it. Apparently no one was really surprised when the marriage eventually failed, because it was common knowledge right from the start that whatever passion had led to Robbie’s conception had turned to dead ashes long before their marriage, never mind his eventual birth.’