by Anne Mather
‘Go?’ he said, at last, his gaze returning to her flushed face, and she nodded. ‘Go—where?’
‘To—to a hotel, of course,’ she got out jerkily. ‘You—you surely didn’t expect to stay here? Not—not in the circumstances.’
Jake tucked his thumbs into the back of the low belt that encircled his hips. The action strained the buttons of his shirt across his chest, and Laura couldn’t help staring at the brown flesh, visible between the fastenings. She defended herself with the thought that, unlike Jake, she was not consciously looking at his body. He was simply drawing her attention to it, like the sexual animal he was.
‘What circumstances are we talking about?’ he asked now, and Laura had to think for a minute before she could remember what she had said.
‘The—er—circumstances of you and I—spending the night together,’ she declared at once. And then, realising how ambiguous her words had sounded, she hurried on, ‘I mean—spending the night here—alone—together. I—people in Burnfoot are rather—conservative.’
‘You’ll be telling me next that you have your reputation to think of,’ remarked Jake drily, and Laura’s face burned.
‘Hardly that,’ she retorted, twisting her hands together. ‘But someone might tell Julie that you spent the night in the village.’
‘So?’
Jake sounded indifferent, and Laura sighed. ‘I just think it would be—easier all round, if you stayed at a hotel,’ she said firmly. ‘There’s one on the Corbridge road. I think it’s called the Swan.’
‘And how am I to get there?’ enquired Jake, lifting his shoulders. ‘I hesitate to say it, but I don’t think I should drive.’
‘I’ll take you,’ declared Laura swiftly.
‘In my car?’
‘In your car—oh!’ Laura had forgotten about his car. Even if she took him to a hotel, his car was going to stand outside the cottage all night. ‘I—well, no. In mine.’
‘So, whatever happens, people are going to think I spent the night here.’
Laura pressed her lips together. ‘Perhaps.’
‘But you still want me to go?’
Her tongue circled her lips. ‘I—think you should,’ she agreed doggedly.
‘I guess you don’t trust me, then.’
‘It’s not that.’ Laura was dismayed at her own inability to control the conversation. ‘I just think—–’
‘Or perhaps you don’t trust yourself,’ he murmured provokingly, and Laura knew that she was beaten.
‘That would be foolish, wouldn’t it?’ she said, refusing to give him the satisfaction of admitting that possibility. She assumed what she hoped was a resigned expression, and steeled herself to meet his gaze. ‘All right,’ she said, as if it were of extreme indifference to her, ‘as you say, if your car is going to stand outside my house all night, it does seem rather pointless to turn you out.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
LAURA lay awake, in the familiar surrounds of her own bedroom, and wondered how she had got herself into such a mess.
It was all her fault. She admitted that freely. If she hadn’t been so desperate to uphold appearances, Jake would have left before dinner. He had expected to go. And after what had happened, she should have insisted upon it. But instead, she had carried on this stupid charade, of pretending his lovemaking had meant nothing to her—practically inviting him to stay here, and do it again.
Only it hadn’t been like that, she defended herself swiftly. At the time, all that had seemed important was restoring a sense of normality. She still hadn’t been prepared to believe that what had happened was anything more than a momentary infraction; a deviation from the rules, that he regretted as much as she did.
Of course, he had come here, uninvited and unannounced, bleeding from a wound he had received while dicing with his life, and perhaps she ought to have been more wary. But things like that didn’t happen to her, and the whole situation seemed totally unreal. But Jake was still here, that much was certain, and, although she hadn’t locked her door, she was undoubtedly uneasy.
Yet, since he had received her permission to stay, Jake had done nothing more to disturb her. Not consciously anyway, she conceded wearily. His just being there was disruptive enough. However, he had behaved with the utmost propriety, and the uneasy alliance had lasted until bedtime.
What Julie would think about it all, Laura didn’t dare to speculate. If she ever found out, she appended heavily. And these things had a habit of getting found out, she knew. It would probably be better if she tried to tell her. Whatever she had thought earlier, it was different now that Jake was spending the night.
But what could she say? ‘Oh, by the way, Julie, Jake slept at the cottage on Saturday night. Yes, I was surprised, too, but he’d had an accident, you see, and he wanted me to deal with it.’
No! Laura shifted restlessly. No, there was no way she could drop something like that into the conversation. She could tell her daughter the truth, of course. She could describe what had happened, and allow Julie to draw her own conclusions. But would she believe her? And if Jake chose to lie, whose story was Julie likely to accept?
The answer was obvious—Jake’s. ‘God,’ Laura groaned. Julie might even think she had instigated the whole affair. With Julie’s distorted image of her mother’s life, she might imagine Laura was jealous of her. That she had deliberately come on to Jake, to humiliate her daughter.
Laura rolled on to her stomach, and punched her pillow, wishing it were Jake’s head. It was all his fault, she decided, performing a complete about-face. If he hadn’t come here, none of this would have happened. She would be happily going on with her life, and the destructive emotions he had aroused would never have been brought to life. He was probably asleep now—sound asleep in the spare bed she had made up earlier in the evening. Were all Italians like him? Didn’t he have a conscience? What perverted streak of his character had inspired him to humiliate her?
And yet, when he wasn’t tying her up in knots, he could be so nice, she conceded, and then scorned herself for her own gullibility. He was only nice when he was getting his own way, she told herself grimly. Just because they had spent the rest of the evening in comparative harmony was no reason to pretend he wasn’t totally unscrupulous. He was hurting Julie. He had probably caused a rift between herself and Julie that would take years to heal. How could she let him stay here, when he cared about no one but himself?
She turned on to her back again, and stared up at the ceiling. Moonlight, through the cracks in the curtains, cast a shadowy patchwork above her head. Somewhere, the eerie sound of an owl, going about its nightly business, broke the silence, and the ivy outside her window rustled against the stone.
She had never been aware of the stillness before. Usually, when she went to bed, she was so tired that she never had a problem sleeping. Besides, she invariably read for a while, until her eyelids started drooping. But tonight, she had been eager to put out her light, and pretend to be asleep, just in case Jake went to the bathroom, and thought she was waiting for him. It had been a silly idea, particularly after she had spent the latter half of the evening marking exercise books, while Jake read a book he had borrowed from her shelves. Nothing less romantic could she have imagined. Except that it had crossed her mind how companionable it had been.
She turned over again, and picked up the clock from the table beside the bed. It was half-past one, she saw impatiently. For goodness’ sake, was she ever going to get to sleep? She was going to look absolutely haggard in the morning.
Unwillingly, her mind drifted to the man in the next room again. She couldn’t help wondering what would have happened, if she had let him make love to her. They would not now be sleeping in separate beds, she acknowledged. And sleep might be the last thing on her mind.
A wave of heat swept over her body at the thought. Her breasts, already sensitised by her constant tossing and turning, tightened in anticipation. The knowledge aggravated her, but there was nothing she could do ab
out it. She couldn’t help their reaction, any more than she could prevent the sudden moistness between her thighs. She might have thought she was past all that, but Jake was a very attractive man. And she was human, after all.
She sighed. It was so unlikely that, after all these years, she should find herself in such a dilemma. After the unhappy associations of her youth, she had begun to believe she was immune to any unwanted feelings. She had had friends, both at college, and since she’d started teaching—male, as well as female—good friends; but none of them had got close to her emotionally. Her experiences with Keith had left her unimpressed, and wary, and, although she was quite prepared to believe that other women might find happiness in marriage, she had felt no desire to try it.
Of course, she knew that her practical experience of sex was necessarily limited. If what she read in books was true, Keith had not been a very generous lover, but at the time she had been too immature to care. She had liked the way he’d kissed her; she had liked the way it had made her feel. And if the culmination of the feelings he had aroused inside her had been something of an anticlimax, she had had more immediate things to worry about.
Not least the fact that Keith had gone, and she had missed a period, she reflected, remembering how frightened she had been then. She had had no one to confide her troubles to. The idea of telling her parents had seemed an unacceptable alternative.
She knew better now, naturally. Without them, life would have been very bleak indeed. That was what was so sad about her relationship with Julie. She had wanted to be there for her, as her parents had been, when she’d needed them.
But now…
Laura combed restless hands through the tangled mass of her hair. What would her daughter think, if she could see her now? she wondered unhappily. Julie would find it hard to believe that her mother was lying awake, fretting over the man she intended to marry. She would never understand the circumstances that had led her to this, and, if Laura was to tell her, there would be the most almighty row. Justified, no doubt, Laura acknowledged tiredly. And Julie would know all the right words to put it in perspective.
Words like pathetic, or repulsive; vulgar, or detestable! Oh, Julie had cornered the market on ways to make her mother feel like a monster, and, with this kind of ammunition, she could destroy her self-esteem completely. The trouble was, when it came to confronting her daughter, Laura was halfway defeated before she began. She had never been allowed to forget that youthful indiscretion, and admitting she was attracted to a man who, in spite of everything else, was years younger than she was, would only reinforce Julie’s opinion that she was a fool.
Well, there’s no fool like an old fool, thought Laura wearily, resorting to platitudes. Her best hope was to put everything that had happened out of her mind. She couldn’t be sure, of course, but she didn’t think Jake would be telling his prospective fiancée that he had taken a fleeting fancy to her mother. However open their relationship might be, she didn’t think a casual fling of this kind allowed confession.
Laura eventually fell asleep as it was getting light. Exhaustion had at last taken its toll, and she sank into a dreamless slumber, just as the Graingers’ dairy herd was being guided into the sheds for the first milking of the day. With her hand cupped beneath her cheek, and the tumbled sheets wrapped about her, she finally found oblivion. She didn’t hear the bellows of protest from the milk-laden cows, or rouse to the birds’ morning chorus. She was dead to the world for a good four hours, and when she did open her eyes her room was flooded with sunlight.
She blinked unwillingly, a sense of something ominous hanging over her, causing a heavy weight of depression that gripped her as soon as she opened her eyes. It wasn’t until she turned her head, and looked at the clock, that comprehension dawned. It was nearly half-past nine!
She stilled the momentary panic, that made her think, just for a second, that it was a working day. It wasn’t. It was Sunday. And she had overslept. Or rather, she had slept late, she amended grudgingly, remembering the night she had spent. God, she felt as if she had been hauled through the mincer! Every nerve in her body felt raw and abused, and a slight ache in her head promised a migraine later.
Groaning, she rolled over on to her back, and confronted the problem that still plagued her. She assumed Jake was still there. She couldn’t imagine he would have made it easy for her, and left. Was he still in bed? she wondered apprehensively. It was still early by his standards, no doubt. Just because he had got up early last weekend was no reason to suppose he would repeat the exercise. She knew Julie didn’t like getting up early, and if they usually slept together…
But thoughts like that were not conducive to initiating a good start to the day. It was galling, but she couldn’t anticipate such a scenario without feeling slightly sick. The picture of Jake, sharing a bed with her daughter, caused an actual feeling of revulsion inside her. She didn’t want to think about it in those terms, but she couldn’t help it.
Something else she couldn’t help was her own memory of the sensuous warmth of his mouth on hers. She could still feel his tongue, pressing its way between her teeth, and the throbbing heat of his arousal, hard against her stomach. Damn, but she couldn’t help wondering how it would have been, if she had let him make love to her. Probably no different from when Keith had taken her innocence, she decided irritably. Men were impatient animals. They sought their own satisfaction first.
Her hand had stuck to her cheek as she’d slept, and although she had removed it now, she could feel the marks where it had been. Oh, great, she thought resignedly, pushing herself up on her elbows. As if she didn’t have enough lines already.
And then, she saw the tray of tea. It was residing on the bedside cabinet, nearest the door. Her teapot, a milk jug and sugar basin, and a cup and saucer. Someone must have placed it there, but how long ago?
She clenched her lips. Someone! she chided herself impatiently. There only was one person it could have been, and that was Jake. Dear God, he had come into the room as she’d slept. What must he have thought of her? Her hair every which way, and the bedclothes a clear indication of her disturbed night!
She put out a reluctant hand, and touched the side of the teapot. It was warm, but not hot. The tea must have been there for at least an hour, she surmised. Which meant Jake could be up and gone, without her prior knowledge.
She hesitated only a moment, before sliding out of bed. She had to know if he was still here. Padding barefoot across to the bedroom window, she squinted down into the garden. The Fiesta was still where she had left it, and she could just see the tail of the other car.
The breath left her lungs on a gulp. She told herself she was disappointed he was still here, but it wasn’t true. The fact was, if he had gone without telling her goodbye, she would have been shattered. So what price now her averred intention to get him out of her life?
Parting the curtains a few inches, she turned back to her dressing-table, and surveyed her appearance in the mirror. In spite of the troubled night she had spent, she didn’t look as bad as she had expected. Her hair was untidy, of course, but for the first time in ages she didn’t immediately reach for the brush. With her hair loose, and in the cotton nightshirt, that skimmed her hips, and exposed her slender legs, she looked amazingly young, and vulnerable. She didn’t look like a woman who had a twenty-one-year-old daughter. She looked like someone who had definite possibilities.
She lifted the weight of her hair, and swept it loosely towards her face. She had seen women who wore their hair this way, but she had never considered that she might be one of them. Because her hair was straight, she tended, always, to keep it tightly confined. But now she contemplated how it would look, if it were shorter, and cut to frame her face…
She was so intent on discovering what the possibilities might be that when the knock came at her bedroom door, she called ‘Come in,’ without thinking. Perhaps she had thought she was at school. It was only when Jake stepped into the room that she realised wha
t she had done.
‘What—what do you think you’re doing?’ she exclaimed, dry-mouthed, but her outburst was barely reasonable, and she knew it.
‘You invited me to come in,’ remarked Jake mildly, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and she was sure his studied evaluation missed no part of her anatomy. ‘Did you sleep well?’
Laura turned away from her dressing-table, allowing her hands to slide down from her hair, as if it was a perfectly natural thing for her to do. She kept telling herself that in Jake’s world it was no particular novelty to see a woman in her nightgown, and as her cotton shirt could hardly be considered provocative she mustn’t overreact.
‘I slept—very well,’ she lied, not prepared to discuss her restless night with him. ‘Um—thanks for the tea. I didn’t—hear you bring it in.’
‘No. No, I know.’ Jake’s acknowledgement was accompanied by a vaguely rueful smile. ‘No, you were sound asleep. It seemed a shame to wake you.’
‘How kind!’
The thread of sarcasm in Laura’s voice was not wholly intentional, but Jake’s response showed he had noticed. ‘It was,’ he said, his eyes darkening sensuously. ‘I might have decided to join you.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Laura met his challenging gaze with an effort. She was trying not to sound as uptight as she felt, but it wasn’t easy. ‘I’m not your type.’
‘You don’t know anything about my type,’ retorted Jake lazily, subjecting her to another thorough appraisal. ‘How do you know I don’t like tawny-haired women, with long legs and golden eyes, and the kind of body a man wants to bury himself in?’
