CHAPTER TEN
WHEN had the term ‘friend’ ever had a more crushingly disappointing ring? His words floated over her head and then poured over her like a bucket of ice water, pulling her up short and banishing any cosy little assumptions she might have been forming.
Jessica looked at him, dry-mouthed and clear-eyed. On every level Anthony Newman was a man way out of her league, whatever minor indiscretions might have taken place between them in the past. A combination of fate and coincidence had thrown them together. Under normal circumstances they would never have met, not in a hundred years, and even if they had they would have met as the strangers that they were. Two people from two different worlds who only had the minimum in common.
Fiona might not quite have been his cup of tea, but she belonged to that particular genre of woman who was. He was wealthy, powerful, charismatic. Since when did his type fall in love with humble secretaries? If she’d worked in his office, he would probably have walked past her desk every day without noticing her.
Their one act of lovemaking had not, she saw now, been the result of any interested pursuit on his part. More a situation that had arisen through an extraordinary combination of circumstances. The very same way that people could sometimes meet on holiday, be violently attracted to someone to whom they normally wouldn’t have given a second glance had they been in their own surroundings. It made her feel almost worse to know that he liked her. He liked her. The way someone liked their kid sister’s best friend. No wonder he saw nothing unreasonable about his proposal. He was right—a week in Italy, with a friend, would be a very pleasant way of passing the time and de-stressing. And he probably felt that she needed it. Another charitable gesture. The man was full of them. Except charity from him was the one thing she didn’t need.
‘That’s a very kind suggestion,’ Jessica told him, leaning back in her chair so that the waiter could clear the table, and then shaking her head at the offer of dessert. Right now she just wanted to get back to the campus, find whatever room had been reserved for her, climb into bed, and hide her head under a pillow.
‘Kindness had nothing to do with it.’ His eyes took on a flinty look. ‘I’m not in the business of playing Father Christmas and dispensing favours.’
‘Well,’ Jessica said vaguely, ‘whatever...’
‘No, not ‘whatever’.’ He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, linking his fingers together, and although the table separated them she still had to fight the urge to cringe back, simply to escape the overpowering impact of his personality.
‘It’s that damn pig-headed pride of yours, isn’t it?’ His voice was low and cold and jabbed into her like a knife, prodding her into a reaction she didn’t want to give.
‘Thank you very much for that. Any more compliments from where that one came from?’
‘Oh, give me a minute; I could think of dozens.’ He leaned back in the chair and surveyed her with that unwavering, cold look that made her feel like a very small, very helpless animal cornered by something altogether bigger and more terrifying. ‘Come on, let’s head back to the campus, and on the way you can tell me in detail exactly why you find my proposition so unacceptable.’ He stood up and Jessica hurriedly followed suit. When she offered to settle half the bill he glared at her, which didn’t stop her from defiantly leaving a tip on the table. ‘I really can’t spare the time for days off from work,’ Jessica began, when they finally managed to locate a taxi driver and persuade him that driving them to the campus was a better deal than snoozing under a tree in the square. ‘I’ve been falling behind recently, and I can’t afford to let my standards begin to slip. Apart from anything else, I’ve worked there for a long time, and I wouldn’t like them to feel that I’m losing my touch.’ She hated herself for lying, but then it was so much easier than launching into the truth.
‘I’m touched by your zealous attitude towards your job,’ he told her sarcastically. ‘But you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t quite believe you.’
‘Fine.’ Jessica stared out of the window, conscious that her body language was saying a great deal about her frame of mind. Poised, stiff-backed, on the edge of the seat, her fists balled. ‘I forgive you.’
‘Dammit, Jessica, look at me.’
Jessica threw him a glance. ‘Or else what?’
‘Or else I’ll make this a very interesting ride for our taxi driver up front.’
Since the taxi driver already appeared to be very interested in what was going on in the back seat of his car, Jessica turned and faced Anthony.
‘By doing what’?’ she enquired politely. ‘Pinning me to the seat of the car until you get another answer out of me?’
‘If that’s what it takes.’
They stared at one another in silence. Over and above the sound of the car trudging along, Jessica could hear the blood rushing through her, the unsteady beat of her heart. When she swallowed, she could even hear the motion of her throat. ‘Why? Why does it matter one way or another? Can’t your pride suffer a little knock because I’ve turned your offer down?’
‘This isn’t a question of pride.’ He turned away from her in apparent frustration, and she resumed her mindless gazing at the scenery. Between them the air hung heavy with unspoken words, words which she tried to interpret, but couldn’t. She just knew that her nerves were jangling, and there wasn’t a part of her that didn’t want out of the taxi and away from the man sitting next to her. How could fate pull such a low trick on her? All these years she’d been so careful with her emotions, only to find that in the end it amounted to nothing. Love still came along and tripped her up when she was least expecting it. Also, he hadn’t answered her question, and that was niggling away at her, even though the greater part of her didn’t want it answered because she knew what he would say. That he liked her, that he found her pleasant, personable company. All those adjectives that basically meant the opposite of sexy, the opposite of attractive.
The taxi deposited them at the campus, and Jessica avoided the taxi driver’s eyes. They were too blatantly curious for her liking. He couldn’t have understood a word they had been saying, she thought, yet he looked as though he had caught on to the situation without too much difficulty and was intrigued. ‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll head up to my room now and wait for Luce.’ She didn’t give him time to answer. She collected the keys from Reception and somehow found her way to a spacious enough two-bed-room dormitory which, since it was empty of clothing, she assumed she would not be sharing with anyone. The place was not a hotel and she knew well enough that they could easily have placed her in a shared room, which was the last thing she wanted. Company she could do without. She now opened the holdall she had retrieved from Lucy’s room en route, and extracted some fresh clothes from it. Of course, the shower was shared, but the trip into the village had made her hot and sweaty, and traipsing along the corridor with only a towel for cover was a small price to pay for the feel of cool water splashing over her.
Besides; the place was more or less empty. Obviously this was peak time for classes. No doubt as evening approached the students would start returning. With a sudden, disorientating flash of insight, she realised what a good thing it was that her daughter had come to this place, had seen for herself the camaraderie and fun of this kind of university life. It would encourage her not to allow her chance of a university education to be still-born.
She stood outside the bedroom door, not wet but still damp from the shower, and listened to the silence, enjoying the feel of it, then she pushed open the bedroom door, stepped inside, and saw him immediately, sitting upright on the one and only chair in the room.
Her immediate thought was to run away. Except, with just a towel around her, it occurred to her that she would hardly get very far. At least, not without dying of embarrassment on the way. But she didn’t know what to do, so she hovered by the doorway, then finally pushed it shut behind her and said, leaning against it, ‘What are you doing in my room?’
‘Correction, our room.’ He made no move towards her, but his eyes were enough to throw her into a state of impotent panic. ‘This is my room. I got the key from the receptionist...’
‘Apparently the place is packed. Summer camp here is filled to capacity. In fact, we only got this room thanks to some clever rearranging of the girls who were in it.’ Jessica looked at him with mounting dismay. ‘Well, you’ll have to try and fix something else up.’
‘Why? There are two beds, aren’t there?’
‘I refuse to share a room with you.’
‘Because you think that I might jump on you? Which is the same reason that you refused my offer of a holiday?’
‘No!’
‘Then what’s the problem?’
‘The problem is...that I want some privacy...’
‘You can’t run away from me, Jessica.’ He stood up and lazily strolled towards her, hands in pockets, eyes firmly fixed on her face. He mesmerised her. She found that she couldn’t move, as though she’d been paralysed by a stun gun and could now only watch the impending threat approach with her heart in her mouth and absolutely no co-operation from her limbs. ‘I’m not doing anything of the sort...’ She heard the panic in her voice, but was incapable of doing anything about it. In desperation, she clutched the towel around her a little tighter. ‘I won’t let you go.’
She had drawn the curtains before she’d left, and the light filtering through gave the room a mellow golden hue. ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered. He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he took her by the arms, rubbing his thumbs against the softness of her flesh, a gesture which Jessica tried very hard not to notice. ‘What do you think I mean?’
‘I’m not on the lookout for friends,’ she told him in confusion. ‘I...’
‘Nor am I.’
‘But ...you said...’
‘I know what I said. I had my reasons.’
Now she was beginning to feel weak, but she couldn’t sit down. The short distance between the door and the chair would be her undoing. So she remained stock-still. ‘What reason? I need to sit down. No, I need to get dressed.’ He stepped aside and she waited for him to leave, but he didn’t, and rather than remain standing in a state of total indecision and confusion she made her way to the chair and sat down. A bit of a mistake as it turned out, since the towel now rode up, revealing so much of her thighs that she was forced into the embarrassing dilemma of keeping it over her breasts whilst tugging it down, so that she maintained some semblance of decorum.
And, worse, he followed her languidly to where she was sitting and squatted by the chair. She could feel her skin prickle from his proximity, and the line hairs on her legs stood on end, as though responding to electricity in his body. ‘Why do you think I came over here to Italy?’ he asked in a low, serious voice. ‘This is a ridiculously furnished room,’ he continued. ‘There aren’t sufficient chairs. In a minute my legs are going to go into severe cramp.’
‘Students probably just flop around on beds,’ Jessica replied in a dazed voice.
‘So, shall we?’
‘No!’
‘I thought you might say that. At least do me the favour of sitting on the ground so that we’re on the same level. What I have to say to you is difficult enough without the distraction of paralysis from the waist down.’
Jessica wriggled her way to the ground and sat with her legs sticking out straight in front of her, and regarded him solemnly as he sat next to her.
‘Why do you think I came to Italy with you?’ he repeated. ‘Because you felt responsible... Maybe you thought that Mark had somehow coerced Lucy...’
‘Not at all.’ He gave her a small, sardonic smile. ‘I doubt if Lucy could be coerced into anything. She strikes me as the sort of girl who’s as stubborn as they come and will do precisely as she sees fit. Like her bewitching mother.’
Jessica didn’t bother to analyse this description of her daughter. Her brain focused on the word ‘bewitching’ and held onto it, savouring it the way a man dying of thirst savours the first sip of water.
‘I came because I had to,’ he said bluntly. ‘I came because the last few weeks without you have been hell, and this opportunity came along and fell into my lap and I had to take advantage of it.’
Jessica’s mouth refused point-blank to make any response to this statement.
‘Frankly, if it hadn’t come up, I would have contacted you anyway. I would have used any excuse in the book, done anything to get back into your life.’
How can someone get back to a place they never left? she wanted to ask. But she didn’t dare phrase the question. She had misread signals in the past, and optimism, however alluring, was not an emotion she was about to give in to now. ‘I’ve never felt this way about anyone in my life before,’ he told her, and even without looking at him she could hear from the unsteady tenor of his voice that the admission did not come easily.
‘Felt what way?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘Felt involved. Felt as though what happened in your life was as important as what happened in my own. Felt as though you were somehow as much a part of me as the organs in my body.’
Jessica inclined her body slightly so that she was facing him now, her eyes wide with hope and an insatiable desire to hear more.
‘You have this effect on me,’ he told her with a short, bewildered laugh.
‘It’s mutual,’ she said in a low voice. Had she said too much? Was she misreading signals again? It didn’t seem so—at least not judging from the expression on his face. ‘I’m not talking about friendship.’
‘No.’
‘I want more than friendship, Jessica, I want...’ He hesitated, as though searching around for the right words. ‘I want everything. I want you to need me, to want me, to find life unliveable without me. I want you to feel all the things for me that I feel for you.’
Years of caution finally dropped off her shoulders. The past, which she had carried around with her like an invisible burden, no longer mattered. All that mattered was this man sitting right here on the ground next to her; he was the present and the future. He eclipsed all those things that had turned her into the wary, distrusting person she had been for such a long time. He liberated her, and it was a heady, wonderful feeling. She gave him a tremulous smile.
‘I never imagined...’ she said. Her hand moved of its own volition, reaching out to stroke the side of his face, and he took it in his hands and turned it over, palm upwards, smothering it with hungry little kisses.
‘I’m in love with you, Jessica.’ He raised his eyes to look at her. ‘I’ve laughed at the possibility, denied it vigorously, told myself that it was just a passing ailment, like swine fever, but it’s no good. I’m hopelessly in love with you, and I intend to pursue you until you feel exactly the same way about me. And I’ll warn you from now that I’ll resort to any tactics that I can.’
‘Okay.’ She gave a low, amazed laugh. ‘That sounds fine, but you might find that there’s no need.’ She was as unused to emotional declarations as he apparently was, but there was no need for her to declare anything. It was there in her eyes, and he bent his head towards her. She felt the touch of his mouth against hers and was instantly lost.
‘God knows,’ he groaned, ‘you’ve turned my life on its head. Since you came along, you’ve forced me to put my life into perspective...’
‘How terrible!’ She gave a low chuckle and eased her body back, pulling him towards her. The towel, which she had been holding in a precarious grip only minutes before, unraveled around her, and she watched with satisfaction as his eyes roamed hungrily over her nudity.
‘It serves you right,’ she told him, ‘because you’ve had the same effect on me. Like being caught up in a cyclone on an otherwise bright and sunny day.’
He laughed and kissed her neck as she blindly unfastened the buttons of his shirt and eased her hands against his chest, loving the strong, hard feel of his muscle against them. Her breasts, arching upwards, year
ned for the sensation of his mouth circling them, and, as though reading her thoughts, he trailed his lips along her collar-bone, finding his way to one nipple and sucking it deeply into his mouth, making her arch her body yet more so that she pressed hard against him. Whilst his hand sought the dampness between her legs that reflected her mounting passion, she rolled her other nipple in between her fingers, massaging her breast until his mouth replaced her hand.
He only paused in his lovemaking to remove his clothes, and this she watched with undisguised pleasure, delighting in the lines of his body.
Somewhere in the world there were better bodies, she supposed, but for the life of her it was a concept that she couldn’t quite take on board. He was perfection—body and mind in perfect harmony. Or was she being biased? She closed her eyes and breathed hotly as he trailed his tongue along the insides of her thighs, kneading them at the same time with his hands, then his probing tongue found her most intimate place, and she groaned with abandonment and pleasure as he tasted her. A slow, deliberate exploration. She could feel the tip of his tongue flicking, arousing, sending her into a frenzy of desire, then his mouth drawing the wetness out of her into him.
His hands found her breasts once again, and she was still throbbing between her legs as he held both breasts in his hands, pushing them up so that her engorged nipples were like two ripe, plump fruits waiting to be sampled. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, almost talking to himself, she felt, rather than her.
He nibbled her nipples, licked and teased them with his tongue and his teeth until she was squirming against him, and she felt his hardness against her and reached down to grip him, slowly massaging until the only sounds in the room were their breathing and the erotic movements of body against body. When he finally thrust into her, self-control was out of the question. They had gone too far to hold back. Jessica felt the electrifying sensation of climax, then the pleasurable ripples of its aftermath coursing through her veins, leaving her drowsy and satiated.
The Unmarried Husband Page 16
