‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been in the water yet?’ Lucy said, ignoring Anthony completely and heading towards her mother. ‘What on earth have you been doing for the past hour? Soaking up the sun? You’ll get skin cancer. Especially with your complexion.’
‘Where’s Mark?’
‘In the car. We got to Stratford to find that I’d forgotten my bag. Not that it’s bulging with cash, but I couldn’t bear to walk around without it so we came back. You’re bursting out of that bikini, Mum. You need to go on a diet.’ She swung around airily and winked in an obvious manner.
‘Now, don’t you two oldies get up to anything!’ she said, which made Jessica want to find a nearby hole and scurry down it. When would her daughter ever learn the meaning of tact? Diplomacy? ‘Be back in time for tea.’
‘Tea is what children have at five-thirty, Mum. Fish fingers and baked beans. In these parts of the world—’ she shot her mother a wicked grin ‘—it’s served at eight and called dinner. With which she gave a shout of laughter, and Jessica, glaring and red-faced, dived cleanly into the pool.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JESSICA ignored Anthony when she finally emerged from the pool. She would have stayed there for ever, but Lucy had been right—she was prone to sunburn if she wasn’t careful, and swimming in blazing sunshine for hours on end would have sent her into bed with raw red skin.
He looked at her without saying anything as she stepped out of the water and wrapped herself in her towel. And she was at a loss for words. Events kept replaying themselves in her head. Of their own accord. To look at him would be to reinforce the images, but to ignore him would be to give importance to what had taken place between them, and it hadn’t been important. I’ve been reckless, she told herself, I’ve acted out of character. Maybe years of enforced celibacy are finally coming to a head, but then that could be explained away. Lucy was growing up, if not grown up already. Subconsciously, Jessica concluded, she was beginning to re-establish the need for a life of her own, and coincidentally—unfortunate coincidence that it was—Anthony Newman happened to be around just when this mental reawakening was taking place. He was attractive, charismatic, and perhaps his total unsuitability even went some way to giving him added appeal. She sneaked a quick glance at him and he said, without inflection in his voice, ‘Shall we just ignore what happened between us?’
Jessica shrugged and looked away, collecting her belongings and making a great performance of it as well. ‘These things happen. The change of scenery, the weather... it’s not important. I mean, it doesn’t mean anything. I’m going upstairs for a rest. What time do you expect me to be down for supper?’
‘Around seven-thirty.’
‘Right. See you then.’ She walked away, hoping that her air of self-confidence wouldn’t be ambushed by an inability to find her way back to her bedroom. She would, she knew, rather have wandered lost in the place for a fortnight than retrace her footsteps to the pool so that she could ask for directions. But she had no trouble in getting to her bedroom, where, away from the cool inspection of his eyes, she could relax and think about what had happened.
What had happened? Logic could explain away some of it, but where was logic when she needed it? She had led a restrained, reasonable life. She had learnt from bitter experience. Eric Dean had taken her innocence and girlish infatuation and used them against her, and she had resolved never to let anyone hurt her like that again.
So she had kept away from men. If she didn’t get involved with them, then how on earth could she be hurt? It had always made sense.
So how was it that Anthony Newman had been able to infiltrate her layers of self-protection?
Of all people, Anthony Newman, she realised, might well be the most magnetic, but he was, likewise, the least reliable. She stripped off and spent twenty-five minutes under the shower, washing him out of her mind—or at least attempting to.
When she stepped out of the shower and saw the bikini innocently hanging by the sink to dry, she remembered Fiona, and gave a start of dismay.
Only now had the other woman crossed her mind.
She wrapped the towel around her and stared at her reflection in the mirror.
What’s happened to my conscience? she wondered. All this time thinking about myself, trying to work out what all this means in connection with me, but what about Fiona’? ‘You poor child,’ she said to the mirror, but not so loudly that she felt a complete fool. This was quickly followed up by, ‘You sod,’ when she thought of Anthony and his complete lack of scruples. ‘You make a habit of this, do you?’ She reverted to speaking her thoughts to herself. You go around seducing every woman you happen to meet, regardless of whether you’re committed to one already or not, do you? The thought of that made her sick.
This was worse than her experience with Eric. Worse because she was older, wiser and presumably capable of knowing which paths to tread and which to avoid. Worse because Anthony was far more lethal than Eric could ever aspire to be. Poor Eric, in retrospect, had been nothing but a pathetic con man, the sort of man who really can only deceive someone as young and as naive as she had been. Whereas Anthony—Well, he had all the dangers of the inveterate charmer. His intelligence, his self-assurance, his powerful good looks, were all the more potent because they were not feigned. Every quality in him was inbred. Therein lay the danger.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, she didn’t at first see him because she had not been expecting to. In fact, she didn’t look in the direction of the bed at all, and she only realised that he was sitting in the armchair next to it when she sat down at the dressing table, glanced in the mirror and saw him in the reflection.
Seeing a ghost would have given her less of a shock. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, spinning around in the chair and dragging the towel tightly around her.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ There was an edge of shrill panic in her voice which she made no effort to conceal. ‘I did knock, but you didn’t answer.’
‘I was in the shower! Do you think I’ve got bionic hearing?’ She looked at him, acutely aware of her state of semi-undress. ‘Now, do you mind getting out of this room? Or do you make it a habit to barge in on your female guests whenever it suits you, simply because you own the house they’re staying in?’
‘I do not make it a habit to do anything of the sort,’ he ground out. ‘And, yes, I do mind getting out of this room. We need to talk about what happened, and talk we shall, whether you like it or not.’
‘I have no intention of having a conversation with you...here ...here in a bedroom, with me...like this!’ She stood up, still clutching the towel, and walked towards the door purposefully. Her legs, at least, appeared to be doing all right, which was more than could be said for the rest of her body. And what if Lucy returned back unexpectedly, and pranced into the bedroom to find them? Her daughter had a blind spot when it came to doors—she never seemed to knock on them. Jessica felt faint at the mere thought of it. Anthony walked towards her without saying a word, but, instead of leaving, he leant against the door, arms folded, and regarded her in silence.
‘I realise you want to pretend that nothing happened between us...’
‘I don’t want to do anything of the sort!’ Jessica answered quickly, refusing to step back and show just how terrified she was of her body betraying her again. She desperately wished that she had had the good sense to lock her bedroom door, but the thought that he might enter unexpectedly had been the furthest thing from her mind at the time. ‘What are you so afraid of?’
‘I’m not afraid of anything!’
‘You can relax. I have no intention of taking advantage of you, but I do think that we need to talk about what happened. I don’t want you to leave here with all this bottled up inside of you. Worse, under the misapprehension that what happened was somehow all my fault.’
‘I never said that it was your fault,’ Jessica told him quickly. ‘Just the opposite. Okay? Like I said, things happen unexpec
tedly; that’s life.’
‘But you don’t speak from experience.’
Jessica looked at him, willing him to leave her alone to get on with her thoughts and to sort things out internally. She wasn’t accustomed to pouring her feelings out to anyone. Circumstance had trained her to deal with her problems on her own. She had dealt with Eric on her own, she had dealt with her pregnancy on her own, and she had dealt with bringing up her daughter on her own. She could, she thought resentfully, take care of herself. She certainly didn’t need Anthony Newman trying to wheedle confidences out of her. ‘At the pool...’
‘At the pool, I lost control.’
‘And that terrifies you, doesn’t it?’
‘Doesn’t it you?’ She looked at him steadily, aware that she had to meet his eyes, keep him focused on looking at her face. If his eyes started drifting towards the rest of her body, she knew that she would feel even more vulnerable than she already did. ‘You’re in charge of a big company. You presumably bark out orders, take decisions, make targets. Are you telling me that you go around happily willing to let events dictate what you do with your life?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, you strike me as the last person in the world to lecture on the advantages of losing control.’
‘There’s control at work and control in one’s private life. The two don’t even breathe the same atmosphere.’
‘Could we finish this discussion some other time?’ Jessica asked politely. ‘Fascinating though it might be,’ she added sarcastically, and he frowned with impatience.
‘Sexual attraction has nothing to do with control,’ he told her, his grey eyes lazily raking over her body.
Sexual attraction. Why was it that those two little words seemed so extraordinarily seductive when they came out of his lips? The last man who had shown an interest in her, who had told her that he was attracted to her, had almost made her laugh. She didn’t feel like laughing now.
And sexual attraction, she wanted to tell him, could be controlled. Wasn’t that what separated man from beast? The ability to control their responses?
‘I’m not interested in playing games with you,’ Jessica said coldly, to mask the heat that was treacherously surging through her. ‘No doubt that’s the kind of lifestyle that you lead. Brief affairs with obliging women.’
His lips thinned. ‘You have an amazing capacity to jump to conclusions, do you know that? You did it when you assumed that Mark was some sort of subversive influence over your daughter before you’d even met him, and you’re doing it now.’ Jessica felt her cheeks burn at this, but she didn’t say a word. She just continued to watch him warily from under her lashes. ‘Go away,’ she muttered, after a while, half turning away, but he caught her by her shoulders before she could walk towards the bathroom and lock herself in.
She felt his hands on her shoulders, and instinctively she reached up to push them off.
Her brain had no time to warn her of the consequences of this simple action. She just knew that the feel of his skin on hers was unbearable, irresistible. A single touch and for some reason the issues in her brain became clouded, and she didn’t want to be reduced to this state of fuzzy-headedness. She wanted to be able to think clearly, to breathe clearly. She grabbed both his hands, panting as she did so, and in that split second the towel unravelled. She felt it slip off her, and the moment just seemed to go on for ever. She struggled to pick it up, but he held her, propelling her towards the door so that her back was towards it, holding her arms slightly away from her body.
Jessica didn’t dare look at him; she didn’t dare look down at her
state of nudity. She groaned in dismay and closed her eyes, sickly aware that his breathing had quickened. A body disclosed bit by bit in a moment of passion was one thing. But to stand there, naked, to feel her breasts heavy and aching, to feel the throb of excitement spreading between her legs, to know that he was looking and taking it all in, was quite another matter.
Mortification swept over her in a flood, leaving her weak. ‘You’re quite beautiful,’ he whispered huskily, and somehow the sound of his voice only made the situation worse. She half opened her eyes and glanced down. Her nipples had hardened, and her breasts, their heaviness free from any encumbrance, were like two ripe fruits, offering themselves to him, waiting to be caressed and sucked. She tried to think clearly, but her thoughts were foggy. She wasn’t so completely lost, however, that she didn’t realise that this was a nightmare, a madness that had to stop. The problem was that she seemed incapable of doing anything about it. It was as though rational thought was only possible if she wasn’t physically close to him.
She could rationalise her behaviour, excuse it, even, at a push, in the privacy of solitude. His presence seemed to paralyse her ability to reason, and his touch had the effect of a match being tossed onto a bundle of dry twigs.
She was no longer trying to escape. Her breathing had slowed, and when he released one hand she let it drop limply to her side.
She still didn’t open her eyes, though, not until she felt his mouth circle her nipple, then she stared down at the bent head, confused at her inability to do anything but submerge herself in the moment.
‘If you want me to stop, I’ll stop,’ he said, glancing up at her, his eyes dark, and she sighed.
‘That’s not good enough,’ he said huskily, standing up and looking down at her. He tilted her head, and she gazed at him in a bleary-eyed way. ‘The bed’s behind me, the door’s in front. Which direction do you want me to take?’
‘I want to make love to you,’ Jessica said. The bald simplicity of the statement was deafening. She heard it reverberate inside her head like a gong. She wrapped her arms around his head and pulled him towards her, kissing him fully on the mouth, a long, deep, hungry kiss that contained all the pent-up passion of a thousand years. She felt his tongue inside her mouth, and her decision not to allow her past to hold her back was like the sudden turning of a key and the opening of a door. There was no resistance as he lifted her off her feet and carried her towards the bed.
No thoughts of Lucy, no thoughts of Fiona, no memories founded in fear. No thoughts at all.
She feverishly watched him undress, abandoning herself to the full impact of physical yearning, and as soon as he lay next to her she turned to him, moaning as his hands found her breasts, and he caressed them, massaged them, kissing her on the face and the neck as he did so.
Earlier, at the pool, the suddenness of her feelings had surprised her. There had been just that little corner of doubt in her mind, even when his mouth had roused her body to heat. Now there was no such doubt.
She lay back flat on the bed, with her arms on either side, and yielded to ferocious passion. His tongue played with her nipples, licking, teasing, arousing, while his fingers gently stroked her thighs. Her legs parted wider as she waited for him to move lower. He was in no hurry. He wanted to enjoy her. He guided her hand to his throbbing maleness, and she felt its stiffness with delight and a certain amount of fascinated trepidation.
His mouth absorbed her nipples deeper as she caressed him with longer, faster strokes. He was suckling hard on her now, and little spasms of electricity seemed to flood through her body. She couldn’t keep still. What had started off at a leisurely pace picked up tempo, and she was groaning as his hands held her legs apart so that his mouth could explore between them. She realised how frustrated he must have been earlier, when Lucy’s interruption had summarily cut short their lovemaking. His desire must have been as great then as it clearly was now. He thrust into her and she was ready for him, though not prepared first for that short burst of pain followed swiftly by a deep explosion of pleasure. His movements in her felt wonderful—wonderful and entirely new. Their bodies were moving as one.
My God, Jessica thought in wonder as they lay, assuaged, on the bed, I really was a virgin.
‘Are you all right?’ Those were the first words he asked, and she smiled at him drowsily.
‘Ver
y all right.’ What happens now? The aftermath of lovemaking was not something she had experienced. In fact, lovemaking, she conceded, was not something she had ever experienced. She recoiled from the memory of Eric. ‘What time is it?’ she asked, and he smiled back at her.
‘We have a little time before the chaperons return home.’
‘I emphatically don’t want Lucy to walk in unannounced...’
‘She might get something of a shock,’ he agreed, stroking her hair away from her face.
‘That’s putting it mildly.’ Jessica relaxed, feeling his warmth against her like a comforting blanket. ‘She looks the part of the rebel, but I suspect she’s quite conventional under it all.’
‘And, besides, teenagers can be hugely embarrassed at the thought of their parents making love.’
Teenagers, teenagers, teenagers. There was another thought at the back of her mind, struggling to find a way out. She sat up abruptly and the colour drained from her face. ‘Fiona,’ she said, torn with conflicting emotions. ‘What about Fiona? I was so carried away...’
‘Relax.’
‘Relax?’ Jessica threw him a horrified, disbelieving look. ‘I’m afraid I do have principles. One of them is not ever to get involved with anyone who’s involved with someone else.’ She could, she knew, have been slightly more truthful and stated that her principles actually included not getting involved with anyone at all, but that would have opened a whole big can of worms.
Eric Dean had been involved with someone else. Indeed, Eric Dean had been married to someone else, a fact that had only emerged as a throwaway remark while he’d been on his way out of the door and out of her life for ever. She could still remember the shock she had felt at being so comprehensively duped, and the surge of sympathy she had felt for his poor wife, as much a victim as she had been. ‘I’m not married to Fiona,’ he said lazily, still not taking the conversation that seriously, still relaxed and soporific after their lovemaking.
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