What was needed now, she thought, was banality. She should say something, anything, to break the intense erotic atmosphere between them, but she couldn’t get a word out.
She found herself straining towards him, wanting him with a depth of desire that knocked the breath out of her body.
She wanted his mouth to cover hers, she wanted his hands to explore her body, she wanted to feel the burning, sensual passion which she had known with him years before, in that age of innocence.
‘Damn you, Isobel,’ he said fiercely. His hand dropped and he pulled open the door.
He had wanted her, she thought numbly, following him out into the corridor. He had wanted her as badly just then as she had wanted him, but the past had come between them, that terrible secret which was like a chasm stretching into infinity.
They drove to her mother’s house in a tense silence. Mrs Chandler was waiting for them. She had cooked, Isobel thought sourly, probably something special. The aroma wafted from the kitchen, and Lorenzo, she jealously noticed, switched automatically into charming mode, delighting her mother. Naturally.
‘Such a wet night,’ Mrs Chandler was saying. ‘I thought a lovely hotpot. Though not for me. I have a taxi booked to take me to the station shortly.’
‘I would have dropped you,’ Lorenzo said quickly, frowning, and Mrs Chandler waved aside his protest. ‘You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble,’ he murmured, smiling, and Isobel chipped in acidly,
‘No. You shouldn’t.’
Her mother pretended not to notice. She glanced down at Lorenzo’s suitcases and began chatting to him about the lack of luggage.
‘If you had been a woman,’ she mused, walking into the hall, which was beautifully warm after the damp cold of the hotel room, ‘you would have come with several trunks! Isn’t that so, darling?’ She looked at Isobel, who stretched her lips into a stony smile.
‘I think I’ll go and have a bath,’ she said by way of response.
‘Oh, yes. You’re both rather like drowned rats!’
Isobel scowled and wished that her mother wouldn’t address them both as though they were a couple of delightful children.
‘Darling,’ she turned to her daughter, ‘do show Lorenzo up to his room. You know which one he’s having.’
‘Yes.’ And if I forget, she told herself, I can always follow the scent of the freshly picked flowers.
She led the way, not looking back to see if he was following her, hoping that he would perhaps trip over one of his suitcases and find himself another landlady courtesy of the local hospital, but naturally he didn’t. He was too strong and too graceful a mover for any such clumsy misadventure.
‘Here you go.’ She pushed open the bedroom door and turned to go, but his hand snapped out, curling around hers, and he said to her half-averted face,
‘Watch it, Isobel. Think about your mother and not yourself.’ He let her go and she fled to her own bedroom, which was just along the corridor.
Once inside the room, she leaned back against the closed door and made an effort to think calm, peaceful thoughts. If she was going to react like this, she would be a wreck inside a week. She would have to grin and bear his presence and do her damnedest to make sure that he didn’t get an inkling as to what was going on inside her.
She had a quick bath, and emerged feeling not much more refreshed than before she went in.
She had wrapped her towel around her and she absentmindedly began flicking through her wardrobe, her thoughts elsewhere.
She would have to find a house for him to live in as soon as possible. She was due some holiday and she would take it and spend the time narrowing down the possibilities. She wondered whether it could all be accomplished in the space of a day.
Nine a.m.: go to estate agents. Ten a.m.: start looking. Five p.m.: finish looking. Six p.m.: inform him that she had found something suitable. Goodbye.
She didn’t hear the door being pushed open. She was too furiously concentrating on her plan of action, so when she looked into the mirror and saw his reflection staring back at her she almost hit the ceiling.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked breathlessly, clutching the towel around her.
‘No towel.’
‘Airing cupboard.’ Her feet were glued to the ground and a feeling of panic rose into her throat as he closed the door quietly behind him and took a few steps towards her.
‘Out!’
He was standing right in front of her and she wished that she had had the forethought to put on her bathrobe instead of this ineffectual little towel which barely covered her body. But then she hadn’t expected him to barge into her bedroom, had she?
‘I don’t want you here!’ she said, looking up at him.
‘Do you think I want to be here?’ he grated.
Her mouth parted, and he lowered his head. She knew what his intentions were even before he kissed her, but she was still shocked when she felt his lips crush hers. His tongue invaded the inside of her mouth with hunger and a little groan escaped from her throat.
His hands moved to the small of her back, pressing her against him.
She could feel the urgency of his arousal, hard against her, and her limbs began to melt.
‘No!’ Her voice was muffled against his mouth.
‘Yes! Damn you!’ He pulled her head back and kissed her throat, then lifted her and carried her across to the bed.
There was nothing gentle about him. The lines of his face were hard, aggressive, but his eyes were on fire.
She was still clutching the towel, and he pulled her hands away, pinning them above her head.
‘Lorenzo!’ She said his name in a shaking, husky voice, with her eyes closed. It seemed like a million years ago that she had felt this wild, reckless passion soaring through her, and as the towel fell open she arched her body up, so that her breasts could receive the moist exploration of his mouth.
She wanted him so badly that she was aching all over, so badly that she couldn’t think at all, never mind think straight.
His tongue flicked over one hardened nipple and she shuddered. He took her breasts in his hands and she pressed his dark head against her, watching him as he suckled her nipples.
When he shifted to trail his tongue along her stomach she moaned, and writhed against him.
This was what she had been so afraid of. This awful, compulsive reaction, this desperate needing that had never left her. All through her long marriage to Jeremy she had kept on wanting Lorenzo. It had been a steady beat drumming at the back of her mind.
His tongue found the moist centre between her legs, and as it darted into the sweet core of her being she had to stop herself from whimpering aloud.
‘Make love to me, Lorenzo,’ she groaned, and he raised his head to look at her. Their eyes tangled, and with a sharp movement he stood up. It was like being cocooned under a warm blanket, only to find it snatched away from you. Isobel sat up and looked at him with bewildered eyes.
Reality hadn’t quite hit her as yet. Her body was still throbbing.
‘Get up,’ he said shortly, and that was when reality struck her in the face. She pulled the towel around her and struggled to her feet, because lying there on the bed made her feel intensely vulnerable.
‘Lorenzo…!’ she began, and his voice was like a whiplash.
‘When I take you, Isobel—and I will—it will be in our house. You will be mine, not on temporary loan but with a ring on your finger. You made love with me once and then married another man. Damn you, Isobel Chandler, the next time I will have you, and there will be no running away!’ There was angry intent on his face and she wished that the ground would open up and swallow her whole. She couldn’t find a thing to say.
He spun around on his heel and she watched in silence as he left the bedroom, quietly shutting the door behind him. Then she collapsed on to the bed, shaking.
So this was how their story ended. Anger where love should have been. She began to cry, steadily and silently, un
til she felt too weary to shed any more tears. Then she washed her face and applied her make-up carefully. She didn’t want her mother to see that she had been crying. She didn’t want Lorenzo to see that she had been crying. She would let him believe that she was fine, hunky-dory, that she too could put the whole thing down to experience, a regrettable incident.
She felt wooden as she made her way downstairs, and it was with deep relief that she was granted a temporary reprieve from him. He was still upstairs. That gave her time to get herself together.
Her mother was in the kitchen. She had made some home-made bread to take with her. Did that seem a good idea? She had also bought some smoked salmon. She was sure that Aunt Dora would love that. Was that all right? She thought it nicer than flowers.
Isobel nodded and answered and wondered miserably where all those silver linings on those clouds had gone.
She didn’t look around when Lorenzo walked in, although she felt a chill run down her spine. Her mother was glancing at her watch and chatting, but with one ear open for the sound of the doorbell.
Lorenzo regarded her expressionlessly, and she looked back at him in like manner. Two ships that had once crossed in the night, but were now on impossibly parallel paths.
‘I thought that I might start looking at houses for you tomorrow,’ she said politely. ‘Lorenzo has asked me to help him house-hunt,’ she explained, turning to her mother.
‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ Mrs Chandler said. ‘What sort of place are you looking for?’
‘Old,’ Lorenzo said, turning away from Isobel. If body language said something, she thought, then it was speaking volumes right now, because the twist of his body was telling her as clearly as if he had written the message in neon lettering on the table that although he might want her, beyond that there was nothing but scathing dislike. ‘I rather like Tudor-style houses, and my mother absolutely insists on a garden.’
Mrs Chandler nodded approvingly. ‘I see her point. There’s Bearwood Cottage up for sale. I know that through Emily. Mrs Jenkins is moving down to Surrey to live with one of her daughters.’
Mrs Chandler carried on talking, discussing properties, and the words washed over her head like waves over a beach. She heard but had stopped listening. This was what it was like, she thought, when your world caved in. Even when she had married Jeremy, she had not felt quite so desolate. Perhaps at the back of her mind there had always burnt a tiny, flickering flame of hope that one day things would work out. Now the hope had been extinguished, and she felt as if she were staring into one long, dark tunnel which stretched into eternity.
She resurfaced when the doorbell went, and her mother left in a cloud of hugs and promises to call every night.
Then there were just the two of them. She couldn’t begin to think how they could break the silence between them, but when Lorenzo did speak, it was in a cool, controlled voice.
He politely asked her what she intended doing about her own house, and she replied, with equal politeness, that she would be selling it.
‘It’s much too big for one,’ she said, looking more or less through him. ‘Besides, it was never much to my liking.’
The market was not good for selling houses. They discussed this for some time, and when that conversation tapered off Lorenzo told her what he thought of property in Chicago.
Was this how he imagined them together? she wondered. A life of being eaten away by love, love which she would have to keep to herself, while he treated their relationship as an ownership long awaited, a passion for revenge at last fulfilled? While his blonde amused him on the side?
They ate in silence but then, as Isobel laid down her knife and fork, she said, without looking at him, ‘I just can’t do it, Lorenzo. I just can’t marry you, I couldn’t bear it.’
He sat back and regarded her calmly, folding his arms.
‘Why not, Isobel?’
‘I can’t marry you when there’s nothing between us now but dislike. I would keep remembering the good times.’
There was a dull flush on his cheeks. ‘Why would you do that? I doubt you remembered them for four years when you were with Jeremy.’ His mouth twisted and she flinched.
‘You’ll never let me forget that, will you?’ she asked, and his face hardened.
‘What you did to me stayed with me for four years. Why should I let you forget anything?’ He banged his fist on the table, then raked his fingers through his hair.
‘It would be better if you left, if you carried on with your life in America…’
‘Don’t tell me what I would be better off doing!’ He stood up, his eyes angry, then he stalked off and she followed towards the sitting-room, just as the telephone began to ring.
She spoke briefly, but her heart had turned to ice and she felt quite sick and disorientated. ‘It’s for you,’ she said, her hand rigid as she held out the telephone.
‘For me?’
‘Yes. Jessica Tate. Apparently she phoned through to the Edwardian and was given your number here. Lucky we aren’t ex-directory, wouldn’t you say?’
I hate you, she thought as she handed him the telephone and heard his husky, velvety voice address the woman on the other end. I hate you for coming back into my life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ISOBEL stood inside the beamed Tudor house and decided that, like it or not, this was going to be the house. The house which she had been looking for for the past two weeks. The house which would put an end to Lorenzo’s presence under her mother’s roof.
She looked around her and thought that it was in a somewhat sad state of disrepair, but there was nothing that could not be mended with enough money, and there was no shortage of that.
Mr Evans had lent her the keys so that she could look around herself, and had devoutly informed her that the only reason that it was still on the market was because most people were unwilling to move into a place which needed some work done on it.
‘Some work’, she quickly realised as she went from room to room, was estate agent’s jargon for ‘total overhaul’, but it was, she had to admit, a delightful property. Large, without being sprawling, with the required picture-book garden, or at least the makings of one once the general wilderness had been cleared.
The owners, he had told her, shaking his head ruefully, had sadly been forced to sell.
‘Family problems,’ he had said enigmatically, and she nodded. She could sympathise with family problems. She had a very active ongoing one at the moment.
The past fortnight had been miserable. True, she had not seen a great deal of Lorenzo, but his presence had invaded every nook and cranny of the house. Every waking moment had been spent in a state of nervous tension in case he walked into the room, or worse in case she found herself alone in a room with him and had to make polite conversation.
What were his plans now? There had been no more dark threats about marriage, no more harsh demands to be told the reasons for her marriage, but the silence still unsettled her. Had the appearance of his lover made him reconsider his twisted desires for revenge? He had said nothing further after her insistence that she could never marry him, and she suspected that the quiet desperation of her words had done what no heated outburst in the past had achieved, but he didn’t say and she didn’t ask.
Lorenzo, when he addressed her, did so with the distance of a stranger, and that cut her to the quick. When he had returned he had made his hatred of her quite clear, but at least, in retrospect, it had indicated feeling of sorts. Now there was cool indifference in his voice when he spoke to her.
She walked up the narrow staircase into the myriad bedrooms with their curious, charming eccentricities and stood for a while at the window of the master bedroom, gazing down at the untamed garden below.
She didn’t want to think about Jessica Tate but she couldn’t help herself.
Two days after her telephone call, she had arrived. Lorenzo had rented a flat for her-on the outskirts of the town, but that had scarcely minimised her
uninvited appearances at the house.
She was keeping tabs on him. Isobel had recognised that from the moment she had first walked through the front door, full of shallow charm and even more full of significant little gestures towards Lorenzo, making it quite clear that he was her property.
Isobel looked around the room and thought that the house was perfect, in fact it was so perfect it was almost a shame to hand it over lock, stock and barrel to Lorenzo, but she was quietly going crazy with him living under the same roof.
She inspected the rest of the bedrooms at a leisurely pace. The windows all needed work doing on them, the walls were in dire need of repainting, and the carpets looked as though their sell-by date had been decades back.
She began drifting back downstairs and told herself sternly to concentrate on the house and not on Jessica, but she couldn’t. Was that why Lorenzo had been around so little? Because all his spare time was eaten up sleeping with his mistress? She tried hard not to care but the question plagued her. She had found herself thinking about them together, making love, at the most inappropriate moments. At the frozen foods section in the supermarket, in the middle of conversations with people, and of course late at night, when everything seemed so much worse anyway.
Jessica Tate, viewed objectively, unemotionally, was the sort of woman guaranteed to put off most of her female counterparts. She exuded an aura of intelligent competence which, in combination with her impeccably groomed blonde good looks, induced an immediate reaction of wariness.
She was tall, though not as tall as Isobel, with closely cropped blonde hair and cool blue eyes which assessed everyone and everything. They had instantly assessed her and had seemed to decide, after some internal debate, that Isobel was not an ongoing threat.
You may have looks, those hard eyes said, but as far as intelligence goes, you’re nothing compared to me.
Consequently the majority of her small talk, when it was directed towards Isobel, had been condescending and Isobel, with barely forced politeness, saw no reason to try and justify her existence in the eyes of a woman who looked as though she didn’t make a habit of smiling.
Vengeful Seduction (Mills & Boon Vintage 90s Modern) Page 12
