The Innocent's Secret Temptation

by Penny Jordan

  ‘What time did he say he would be here?’ she heard one of the others asking the chairwoman.

  ‘Well, I suggested he leave it until a quarter to nine to give everyone time to arrive, so he should be here any minute now.’ She glanced at her watch as she spoke, and, as though on cue, someone rapped firmly on the door and then opened it.

  Since Miranda had been told of Ben’s imminent arrival, it seemed scarcely necessary for her heart to start beating as frantically as though it had just received a sudden shock, she told herself irritably as she deliberately refused to do anything more than briefly acknowledge his presence with a small inclination of her head, leaving it to Alice Thornton, their chairwoman, to go forward and welcome him.

  He was carrying a roll of paper: the much-vaunted plans, no doubt.

  Alice Thornton was in her early sixties, the old-fashioned, rather formal type who, as Miranda had known she would, insisted on making Ben personally known to all of them. Whether by accident or as a gentle reproof because she had been late, Miranda had no idea, but somehow or other she was the last to be introduced to him, but before she could say anything he was smiling at her and saying warmly, ‘Oh, Miranda and I already know one another,’ and, as they all sat down, Miranda was forced to make a response to her neighbour’s excited questions.

  ‘You know him? How did you meet? Is he married, do you know, or…?’

  Reminding herself that this kind of direct questioning was one of the penalties one paid for living in a small town and for having a father who was known to almost every single one of its longstanding inhabitants, she answered her neighbour’s questions as quickly as she could, explaining that they had met through her father, adding as coolly as she dared that as far as she knew Ben was not married.

  ‘He’s very good-looking,’ her interrogator said wistfully. She was a small quiet woman in her late forties, who to Miranda’s knowledge had been contentedly and happily married to her husband for twenty-odd years, and so this response caused Miranda to repeat to herself her own earlier warnings about the dangers of allowing herself to become vulnerable to the allure of surface looks and facile charm.

  The chairwoman was standing up, commanding their attention, announcing that Mr Frobisher had kindly suggested coming along to allay their fears about the conversion of the house he had bought in the High Street, and that for this purpose he had brought with him his plans.

  Though he thanked her with an ease that suggested that he was not unfamiliar with public speaking—even if the warmth in his voice did suggest that it was a special pleasure to be with them in a way that Miranda told herself she could only despise because it meant that he was deliberately trying to charm and befuddle them—no doubt while he was talking to them he would be secretly laughing at them, amused by their small-townness and amateurish approach. But at least they were genuine in their emotions and beliefs, she thought irefully, while he…

  He was spreading the plans out on the table, making it necessary for them to crowd closer together in order to see them.

  As she listened to him pointing out where special features were being retained, even at the expense of convenience and cost, she tried not to admit how much she enjoyed listening to his voice.

  ‘Miranda, you can’t possibly see from there,’ Bob Voysey, their treasurer, whispered fussily.

  Bob was a bachelor of around her father’s age, who, until her death three years ago, had lived with his mother. One of Miranda’s friends had gig-glingly suggested that she suspected he had a crush on Miranda and that she’d better watch out if she didn’t want to take his mother’s place in his life.

  Miranda hadn’t been amused. She liked Bob and felt a little sorry for him in his obvious loneliness, but ever since hearing that light-hearted comment she had taken good care to make sure that she treated him with a formal distance that made it plain that, while she respected and liked him, she considered him to be a member of an older generation in whom she had no romantic interest.

  Now as he whispered to her she flushed, more out of an awareness that Ben had focused on them and was watching them, his attention no doubt drawn to them by Bob’s whisper, than because she was embarrassed at not being able to see the plans.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Ben smiled. ‘I’ve already arranged to show Miranda the plans. In fact, that’s what gave me the idea of coming here to see you all tonight. When we were out the other night, Miranda made it so plain to me how much concern there is locally about the way in which so many of your older buildings are being destroyed that I wanted to come here myself to set your minds at rest where my building at least is concerned.’

  Furious with him for implying, even if unintentionally, that their relationship was far more intimate than it ever was or could be, and knowing how eagerly and enthusiastically this snippet of information would be passed around the town, duly garnished and embellished, Miranda gritted her teeth and all but snapped at him.

  ‘Yes, but isn’t it a fact that, where computers are concerned, equipment needs to be housed at certain static temperatures and in certain stable conditions which will mean that the interior of the building will virtually have to be ripped out?’

  ‘Yes, that is true,’ Ben agreed evenly. ‘But since we are concerned with producing and writing software, and not computers, the excellent cellars beneath the building are ideal for conversion for that purpose.’

  Miranda knew she was flushing again. This time with anger. He was making her look a complete fool, she thought bitterly.

  As though he had read her mind, Ben continued quietly, ‘I have to admit, though, that your point is a valid one, and that one of the reasons I bought that particular house was to overcome the problems of housing modern computer equipment in an old building.’

  ‘In that case, why not use a purpose-built complex somewhere outside the town?’ Miranda suggested grittily.

  The smile he gave her made her stomach muscles quiver. Sternly quelling such rebelliousness, she refused to respond to it, fixing her gaze on a point just over his shoulder, wishing desperately that she had never opened this argument, but stubbornly knowing that now that she had she wasn’t going to back down.

  ‘Computer programmers are human too, you know,’ Ben responded wryly. ‘They are as vulnerable as the rest of society to their surroundings. I’m afraid it is a myth that all of them want to live, eat, sleep and work in the kind of minimalistic and arid atmosphere beloved of certain glossy magazines.

  ‘In theory, no doubt, there are those who do actually enjoy living and working in a stark white room, broken up by two or three pieces of carefully chosen and very uncomfortable-looking black furniture, but I rather suspect that the majority of my employees would have something very unpleasant to say to me if I tried suggesting they work in that kind of hi-tech environment.

  ‘As a matter of fact, my secretary has already informed me that if a black leather settee or chair dares to put in an appearance anywhere in the building, she and the rest of the staff will go on strike.’

  There was a small pause while everyone laughed and the tension that had begun to grip them eased.

  When it came to gamesmanship, he was a master player, Miranda reflected sourly. He had the others eating out of the palm of his hand. Another half an hour or so of his skilled verbal manipulation and they would be praising him as the vanguard of a new kind of environmentally conscious and considerate businessman. They might even start proposing giving him a medal for it. Well she wasn’t going to be hoodwinked and soothed into complacency. She knew the kind of work Ralph Charlesworth did.

  Compressing her mouth, she lifted her chin and demanded coldly, ‘You state that you are anxious to conserve the character of the building, and yet the contractor undertaking the work for you is no-tor—well-known for his belief that anything over ten years old should be razed to the ground.’

  Miranda could hear the stunned gasps from the other members of the committee. No matter how much they all might disapprove
of what Ralph Charlesworth was doing, no matter how much they might carefully and in low whispers and only among themselves criticise him for it, it simply was not done to voice those views out loud, especially not in front of an outsider…an incomer. Ralph was after all one of their own.

  ‘Yes, I’m glad you raised that,’ Ben responded quietly, silencing not only the gasps of the others, but the impulsive torrent of words she had been about to utter as well.

  She stared at him, too taken aback to speak, thus giving him the advantage to continue.

  ‘I have, in fact, engaged another firm of contractors, one whose work is, shall we say, rather more in sympathy with my own ideas than those of Mr Charlesworth.’

  This time everyone was too shocked to gasp, and no wonder. Miranda could hardly believe it herself. He had actually changed contractors! Ralph wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t like it one bit, and, besides, who on earth had Ben found to take his place? Ralph was the largest and best-known local builder, and there were even occasionally rumours to the effect that he wasn’t too fussy about how he dealt with any potential competition.

  ‘But there isn’t anyone else,’ Bob was saying, certainly voicing all their thoughts.

  ‘Not locally, perhaps,’ Ben agreed. ‘But if one looks hard enough one can generally find what one is seeking.’

  He looked directly at Miranda when he spoke, and for some reason that look set off a chain of explosive physical reactions inside her body, making her long to be able to sit down so that he wouldn’t be able to see that she was actually almost visibly trembling from the effect he was having on her.

  ‘I contacted the Georgian Society,’ he added by way of explanation, ‘and they were able to put me in touch with a firm in Bath, who, as luck would have it, are just between contracts at the moment.

  ‘I’ve been to see them, and it’s arranged that they will take over the work with effect from tomorrow.’

  There was a small silence while they all assimilated what he had said, and Miranda suspected that she wasn’t the only one wondering how on earth Ralph had reacted to the news that he was being supplanted.

  Ben remained for another half an hour, patiently going over the plans with them. Miranda deliberately kept herself in the background, but all the time she was acutely conscious of him; of the way he moved, of the way he spoke, but most of all of the way he would occasionally search the table, as though deliberately looking for her.

  Which must be her imagination, because he could have no reason for wanting to seek her out, even if when he had walked in here earlier in the evening he had verbally implied that there was an intimacy between them…a relationship.

  Which was all nonsense. She was letting her small-town upbringing blot out reality. Ben was a big-city man; in the city a man could claim the acquaintance of a woman without anyone else in earshot immediately assuming that he was romantically interested in her.

  Not in this town he couldn’t, though. By tomorrow it would be all over the place…a juicy item of gossip to be relished over morning coffee.

  Quite deliberately, when Ben was taking his leave of the others Miranda escaped to the Ladies. She wasn’t going to be singled out by him again and add even further fuel to the gossip.

  As it was, when she returned she had to run the gauntlet of several curious and assessing looks, not to mention head off the questions of several of her co-committee members.

  When the meeting broke up at half-past ten, she was tired enough to be glad she was going straight home.

  As she edged her way through the now crowded bar, she heard Ralph Charlesworth’s raised voice from one of the tables.

  Ralph was a heavy drinker in addition to his other unpleasant traits. His voice sounded slurred and angry.

  As Miranda headed for the door she heard him saying viciously, ‘Well, if he thinks he can get away with this, I’ll soon show him different,’ and the shiver that struck her skin as she walked outside wasn’t entirely due to the cool night air.

  If, as she suspected, Ralph had been talking about Ben, then Ben had made a bad enemy. Ralph didn’t play by the rules, and if Ben had dismissed him and got in fresh contractors… Her conscience urged her that someone would have to warn Ben that Ralph could be out to make trouble for him, but she couldn’t face the thought of contacting him herself. Perhaps if she spoke with her father. She sighed faintly as she unlocked her car. It was unfortunate that Helen should be related to Ralph’s wife, but then this was the sort of thing that happened in a small town, and Helen herself made no bones about her dislike of her relative by marriage.

  Yes, in the morning she would have to have a word with her father. She ignored the small voice that warned her that she could save time and effort by getting in touch with Ben direct, thinking bitterly, So what if she was being a coward? Wasn’t it better to be a coward than to risk the pain of…?

  Of what? Of loving someone who didn’t return that love?

  Loving someone…

  This was ridiculous, she told herself grimly as she drove home. As far as she was concerned, love and Ben Frobisher were two completely opposing forces.

  But what if they weren’t…what if they could be combined…what if…?

  What if she stopped daydreaming and concentrated on reality for a change? she told herself sternly. What if she gave her time and attention not to daydreaming, but to working out how on earth she was going to find an effective counter to the rumours that would be running like summer weeds through the town by this time tomorrow?

  It was too late now to regret her outspoken and oft-voiced views on the idiocy of falling in love, on the repressive state of marriage, at least where a woman was concerned, and her belief that a career and the independence that went with it were far more fulfilling than marriage and children.

  All right, so maybe recently she had started to wonder if she hadn’t perhaps been a little too vehement in her outspokenness…if she perhaps hadn’t taken a long enough view and seen that maybe, just maybe, if a woman was determined and cool-headed enough, she could have it all—career, independence, marriage and children; but as yet this turn-around in her thinking was still her own secret.

  The news that she was apparently involved with a man like Ben Frobisher was bound to provoke a good deal of light-hearted, and some not so light-hearted amusement at her expense. And of course once they had actually seen him, none of her friends was ever going to believe that she hadn’t fallen head over heels in love with him.

  Damn, damn, damn, she swore crossly. Why did he have to decide to move here and cause me all this trouble? Well, there was one thing he most definitely was not going to do and that was spoil a second night’s sleep for her. Tonight there would be no dreams about intensely passionate kisses, no nocturnal yearnings for the kind of physical intimacy that surely belonged to one’s teenage years, and not to the maturity of one’s late twenties.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MIRANDA sighed as the telephone on her desk shrilled abruptly, breaking into her train of thought. She was still only halfway through the monthly piece on the housing market which she wrote for the local paper. Normally this was a task she thoroughly enjoyed, but today for some reason she was finding it difficult to focus her thoughts on her writing.

  She reached for the receiver automatically, stifling her irritation when she heard the excited voice of one of her friends.

  ‘Well, you are a dark horse, aren’t you?’ she was challenged. ‘You never said a word to us about Ben Frobisher when you had dinner with John and me last week—’

  ‘Because there wasn’t anything to tell you, and there still isn’t,’ Miranda interrupted her firmly.

  Obviously the town grapevine had got to work even more speedily than she had envisaged.

  ‘Oh, come on. It’s all over town, how he couldn’t take his eyes off you at last night’s meeting…’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Miranda told her curtly. ‘I barely know the man.’

  ‘You were with him at the golf
club do,’ her friend pointed out slyly. ‘Or is that just a rumour, too?’

  Miranda paused and then admitted wryly, ‘No, but I was partnering him simply because he’s a business associate. Nothing more.’

  ‘Uh-huh, so that passionate clinch the two of you were seen in was just—er—a business discussion, was it?’

  Miranda knew she was trapped. Jenny was a good friend whom she valued, but she wasn’t very good at keeping secrets and if Miranda told her the real reason Ben had been kissing her…well, it was impossible, she just couldn’t.

  ‘You could have a June wedding,’ Jenny was telling her excitedly. ‘There’s still time.’

  ‘Jenny!’ Miranda expostulated impatiently. ‘Ben Frobisher and I barely know one another, and as for our getting married…well, that’s impossible.’

  ‘Really? Does he know that? From what I’ve heard, he sounds like one very determined man. A very dishy man as well, by all accounts. Look, why don’t you bring him over to dinner one night? We’d love to meet him.’

  Miranda groaned.

  ‘Jenny for the last time, Ben Frobisher and I do not have the sort of relationship that extends to going out to dinner together.’

  ‘Mm. Still at the stage when you prefer to be alone together, is that it? I remember when I first met John…’

  Knowing how impossible it was to get her friend to change tack once she had set her mind in a certain groove, Miranda gave up. At least now Jenny had been distracted into talking about her own life, and as for the rumours and gossip which were obviously flying about the town…well, the proof of the pudding, as the saying went, was in the eating, and although she suspected she was going to be in for an uncomfortable month or so while everyone speculated on the outcome of her imagined relationship with Ben, once people realised that there simply was no relationship, the gossip would die down.