Rowena!
And she’d come to stay!
The warmth and excitement he’d been denying for months threatened to burn right through him, until another echo—this time of the final words—sounded in his head.
Come to stay?
When all he had were two habitable bedrooms and Sarah—soon to be Sarah and her family—would need more than that for themselves.
He strode towards the kitchen where both women were perched on the edge of the table, their legs stretched out towards the warmth of the Aga, seemingly at ease in spite of the threat of catastrophe hovering over all their heads.
‘You can’t stay here—there’s no room!’ he said to Rowena.
‘When I was growing up this house had eight bedrooms. What have you done with them all? Rented them out to ghosts? Turned them into dens for your animals?’
‘No, but they’ve not been opened for years. There are beds in most of them, but who knows what state they’re in? There’ll be inches of dust, ash from the fires and probably mice—certainly spiders…’
Rowena didn’t answer him, turning instead to Sarah and smiling as she said, ‘Do you think he’s trying to put me off?’
‘Sounds like it,’ Sarah responded, her lips twitching in enjoyment of this womanly conspiracy. ‘Mind you, there’s always David’s bed. I checked it out when he was leading me through the house earlier and it looked clean enough. It also seemed, in that quick glance, to be free of mice and spiders.’
At least Rowena had the grace to blush at Sarah’s suggestion, while David was choking on it—probably to death!
‘Will you keep your nose out of other people’s business?’ he yelled, then realised he’d missed the point and blundered on. ‘The last thing Rowena wants is to share my bed!’
Sarah grinned at his confusion.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that!’ she said, then added with infuriating composure, ‘Though who said anything about sharing your bed? Was it something you had on your mind, David, darling?’
She waltzed out of the room, pausing in the doorway long enough to offer some feeble excuse about phoning home.
‘I thought she phoned Tony earlier,’ David grumbled, when embarrassment forced him to break the silence Sarah had left in her wake.
‘I guess if she phones again now, she can say goodnight to James before he goes to bed.’
Rowena’s words made perfect sense but they meant nothing to David. He was too busy trying to sort out the bed situation—wondering what to say to Rowena, how to counteract Sarah’s ridiculous suggestion without hurting Rowena in the process.
The very last thing he wanted was for her to think he was rejecting her.
‘The potatoes must be nearly done,’ she said, and he was so grateful to her for taking the initiative to end the silence this time that he smiled at her.
‘I’ll set the table. And would you like a glass of wine? I opened a bottle for Sarah—you’ll share it?’
He muddled through the courtesies, his heart thudding with anxiety and his mouth as woolly as fleece, though it wasn’t the first time Rowena had eaten in this house. While the fires had been raging close by, they’d often popped in for a snack. But Sarah’s comment had shifted the parameters of their relationship.
No! Rowena’s arrival had shifted them.
What did it mean?
Was it simply, as she’d said, to provide local support?
In which case, Sarah’s foolish comments must have embarrassed her no end.
He walked back into the living room to fetch the wine, more confused than he’d been for years. The excitement he felt in Rowena’s presence was like his first adolescent longing for a shapely fellow high-school student—and his behaviour as blunderingly pathetic now as it had been then.
Perhaps if he sorted out priorities…
‘I would hate to see you hurt in any way!’ he said, returning to the kitchen a little later and handing Rowena a glass of wine. ‘You’ve already suffered more than your share of pain.’
Rowena raised her glass to him and smiled.
‘No pain without gain—isn’t that the saying?’
He felt himself choking—only this time with frustration as he realised here was the woman he desired above all others, in his kitchen, raising a glass to salute him and smiling at him.
It was an image he’d begun to see in his dreams, so why wasn’t he more pleased by the reality?
‘I think it goes, no gain without pain,’ he blustered as Rowena sipped at her wine then lowered the glass to the table, leaving her lips sheened with moisture.
‘Then I don’t believe it,’ she said stoutly. ‘There are plenty of things you can achieve without the slightest hint of pain. What about kissing?’
David glanced down at the glass to check how much wine she’d actually imbibed.
Very little!
‘What about kissing?’ he managed to ask, while the inner turmoil in his chest, to say nothing of an aching heaviness in his loins, threatened to overwhelm him.
‘There’s no pain in kissing,’ Rowena told him, lifting the glass again and taking another sip. Only this time she kept her eyes on him, watching, over the rim of the glass, for his reaction to her words. ‘But surely there’s a gain as far as moving a relationship along.’
‘I suppose so,’ he agreed reluctantly—extraordinarily disappointed to find she was merely using kissing as an example in her argument.
‘So?’ she asked, setting the glass down again.
‘So?’ he echoed, totally lost now.
‘So, after all the hints Sarah was dropping, aren’t you going to kiss me?’ his nurse-receptionist asked, then she smiled encouragingly at him while her eyes twinkled wickedly, probably with delight at his predicament.
‘Of course I’m not going to kiss you,’ he said crossly, because it was bad enough to be fighting the dictates of his body without having to battle her as well. ‘We don’t have a relationship. It’s just impossible, Rowena, you must see that!’
‘Why?’
He closed his eyes and took a very deep breath.
‘Why what?’
‘Why’s it impossible?’
She leaned closer as she asked the question and he could see down the front of her shirt to the deep cleft between her breasts. Desire tightened his body again, while frustration blew the lid off his temper.
‘Because there are too many question marks hanging over my head,’ he roared. ‘I thought I could sort it out—put it behind me. It’s why I wanted time off—to finalise things once and for all. To go into the legal ramifications of Sue-Ellen’s disappearance—whether divorce is possible, or if I have to have her declared dead, all that kind of thing. I have to move her things—her grandfather’s collection—from this property. I wanted to start again, Rowena, as a new man—or as new as a battered being like myself could ever be. Then I could…Perhaps we could…’
As his voice trailed away Rowena felt her heart jerk to a halt, then start beating again with all the verve and crazy rhythm of a tap-dancer. Was he saying he did feel something for her? That she hadn’t judged him wrongly, and made a total idiot of herself by suggesting the kiss?
‘So what’s different now?’ she asked, though she already knew the answer.
‘Mary-Ellen’s arrival!’ David replied. ‘That’s what’s different now. She hasn’t come to wish me well in my future, Rowena. She’s come to stir up trouble. I always felt she was the gentler of the two of them—the more sympathetic, if anyone brought up as indulgently as they were could be seen as sympathetic. But when Sue-Ellen disappeared, Mary-Ellen turned into an avenging fury, and I realised, familiar though she might have seemed, I hadn’t known her at all.’
He paused, and nodded to Sarah who had come back into the big room.
‘And unless I miss my guess, her “friend” is a detective, isn’t he, Sarah? Did you recognise the species?’
At Sarah’s answering nod, David touched Rowena on the arm, wanting
physical contact as he made the meaning of his reluctance plain.
‘She hasn’t brought a detective to help her go through old farm machinery. She accused me of murder once, now she’s after proof.’
‘Which she won’t find!’ Rowena said stoutly, but David had been there before and knew just how ugly the smallest incident could be made to look once suspicions were aroused.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ he murmured, then he shrugged his shoulders and added, ‘But isn’t there another saying about “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”? Let’s talk about something else or we won’t be able to enjoy whatever delicious concoction you’ve got simmering in that pot.’
Rowena turned away, lifting plates from the warming oven and setting them out on a cooler part of the stove while she served the meal. She’d been through hell when she’d lost Peter and Adrian, so much so the realisation that she might one day fall in love again had come as a shock to her.
At first she’d decided it was simply empathy she felt for David, born of the shared tragedies in their lives. But lately her body had got into the act, becoming heavy with longing when they were apart and unreliably skittish whenever they were together.
Behind her, Sarah had asked a question about a patient, diverting at least part of David’s mind from the arrival of trouble in the form of Mary-Ellen.
‘What about hepatitis?’ Sarah was saying, as Rowena set the plates down in front of the two doctors and turned her mind from fruitless conjecture about her future—about love—to medical matters. ‘Has the family been away anywhere?’
‘Are you talking about young Mick Alistair?’ Rowena asked, and, on Sarah’s nod, she added, ‘The Alistairs never go away. They settled here to escape the rat race, though what the kids will do when they grow up is anyone’s guess.’
‘We had another youngster—wasn’t it the Williams girl, Rowena? Anyway, she came in recently with similar symptoms of listlessness and general debility. I sent a blood test to the mainland and asked for liver function but it came back negative for any hepatitis.’
‘Did you retest? Or perhaps you’d missed the boat. Raised serum levels usually only show in the acute phase, which could have passed before the patient came to see you.’
‘What about appearance? Isn’t there a jaundiced look in hepatitis sufferers?’ Rowena asked, glad they had medicine to discuss.
‘End of summer—a lot of people look jaundiced as the summer tan wears off!’ David negated that suggestion.
‘Great!’ Rowena said. ‘The yellow look always did suit me.’
‘Dark urine and pale faeces are the best indicators,’ Sarah offered, and David chuckled.
‘Lovely topic for the dinner table,’ he said, but Rowena guessed they all preferred it to the one that hovered in their heads.
Sarah diverted the conversation to less medical topics by asking about sightseeing—and walks Lucy and Tony could do with a small boy in a backpack. Then David excused himself, promising to do the dishes the following night and muttering an excuse neither of the women could understand.
‘What’s the bet he’s cleaning out a room for me as far as possible from his?’ Rowena said to Sarah.
‘More fool he,’ Sarah responded, but she looked concerned enough to bother Rowena.
‘Have I done the wrong thing?’ she asked. ‘Coming out like this? Forcing myself on him?’
Sarah smiled at her.
‘I don’t think so, although you have to see it from his side as well. If he has any feelings at all for you—and he has a fondness, that much is obvious—then he’d want to protect you from whatever it is he fears.’
‘Protect me? That’s nonsense. What’s there to protect me from—apart from a little gossip? Anyway, what woman wants protection these days?’
‘All of us at times,’ Sarah replied, taking the teatowel from Rowena’s hand and waving her away. ‘Though it’s getting harder for us to admit it. And it’s even harder to convince a protective man of the times we don’t need it. Like now, in your case. If he’s off somewhere making up a bed, maybe you should join him—offer to help. Very seductive places, bedrooms.’
Sarah made it sound so easy, but as Rowena left the room she felt far from certain about this idea. First she’d forced her way into his house, now she was going to, well, seduce him, if she could.
If that was the only way she could make him see how she felt about him…
She found him in what was obviously the main bedroom, for it was big enough to have a couple of easy chairs grouped near a wide window which looked out over the dark fields and beyond them to the ever-present, but currently invisible sea.
‘I’m clearing my stuff out of here so Sarah can have this room—there’s more space for when her family comes and a small room off it for James.’
David had emerged from a walk-in wardrobe with his arms full of clothes, so the explanation was largely unnecessary. Except that he was probably feeling as awkward as she was.
‘Let me help,’ she suggested, stepping towards him and putting out her hands to take the clothes.
He passed them to her, but their arms became entangled so they were held close, but not too close, in the middle of the spacious room. David’s dark eyes scanned her face, slowly and deliberately, as if seeing her for the first time.
Or fixing an image in his mind? Something to keep?
‘You have to go,’ he said, his voice so husky with emotion it seemed to trail its threads against her skin.
‘No,’ she whispered, forcing the word through vocal cords tight with desire.
‘Please?’
This time she couldn’t speak at all, so she shook her head and moved her hands through the clothing until she could grip his forearms.
‘Rowena!’
He breathed her name so softly it was like an echo of a light summer breeze skimming across the sea.
‘David,’ she murmured back, leaning into the clothes to close the gap between them.
‘I can’t…’ he muttered, the sound strangled by emotion, but Rowena had committed herself to this action so she ignored the denial and took the initiative, pressing closer—close enough to stop any further protests with a kiss.
His response burned against her lips, starting a trembling deep inside her body and a hunger she knew no food would satisfy. Her hands still gripped his arms, and the wedge of clothing remained between them, but his kiss told her things he’d never mentioned—things she’d dared not hope he felt.
It filled her with a joy so wondrous her body felt light enough to float. It sought out the still bruised parts of her heart and eased the last vestiges of pain.
Pain!
Not all the pain.
She broke away.
‘Sorry! It was one of the coat-hangers,’ she explained apologetically as she lifted the clothes away from him and dumped them on the bed. ‘The wretched thing was digging into me in a very vulnerable place.’
She rubbed at the underside of her breast, making a joke of it, but if she’d hoped to see amusement in David’s dark eyes she was doomed to disappointment. He was staring at her as if he couldn’t remember who she was—his eyes glazed by what she guessed were memories.
Of Sue-Ellen kissing him in this same room?
Rowena turned and gathered up the discarded clothes, silently cursing herself for being all kinds of a fool.
‘Where do you want them? Have you cleaned out a room?’
David had watched her move away, dump the clothes, then regather them. Now he heard the words—his neurones were synapsing sufficiently well for his hearing to work—but he couldn’t rally enough brain-power to respond.
Not when his body was on fire from a single kiss, while his mind grappled with its implications. One thing was certain—he had to keep his hands off Rowena, at least until Mary-Ellen and her detective friend had left the island.
It was mention of the coat-hanger that had sent his mind spinning out of control, images from the past
appearing so vividly that the present seemed pale by comparison.
She’d stood in this room, Mary-Ellen, a small avenging fury with her arms full of her sister’s clothes and a single, padded, pale lilac coat-hanger held like a baton in her right hand.
‘You’ll never get over this!’ she’d told him, waving the coat-hanger to emphasise her words. ‘Never, never, never!’
Then, as he’d backed away from the lilac weapon, she’d stepped closer and poked the tip of the coat-hanger under his chin—a very vulnerable place.
‘Because I will never, never let you!’
And in that instant he’d realised she was as unstable as her sister had been. That Mary-Ellen, the twin he’d thought the rational one, was probably as crazy as his wife.
He blinked away the memory and rubbed his hands across his face, dry-washing it as if to remove something unsavoury.
Rowena had to go. Sarah had seen something in his behaviour to make her suspect his interest in his colleague, and he couldn’t risk Mary-Ellen guessing, or even suspecting, how he felt. For Mary-Ellen hadn’t made her threat lightly, and to expose his feelings for Rowena was to expose her to risk.
The thought started a clangour of fear along his nerves, while an icy coldness swept through his veins.
He followed her out of the room and across the hall to where he’d earlier flung open the windows on a musty, long-closed room and stripped the covers off the bed, preparatory to making it.
‘I’ve hung your things in the wardrobe. How about you shift the rest of your clothes while I make the bed?’ Rowena suggested, not even turning to look at him. ‘Sarah found the linen cupboard and she’s making up a bed for me in the small bedroom further down the hall. Actually, she was making it up for herself until I told her you were shifting out of yours, so—’
‘You can’t stay,’ he said harshly, cutting through the rush of explanation—aware he’d said the words before and been ignored.
‘Are you going to physically toss me out?’ she demanded, turning to face him.
He shrugged.
‘You know I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Good!’ A decisive nod, more like the Rowena he knew from work—the practical and sensible Rowena, not the one with kisses like liquid fire—accompanied the word. ‘Because I’m not going.’
Her Dr. Wright Page 3
