To Tame a Proud Heart

by Cathy Williams

  Their eyes met and, oddly, he was the first to look away. He stalked across to the window, then turned back to look at her.

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ she muttered, realising that she was shaking all over.

  ‘Good. Because if it does then you’re out, and so is he.’

  ‘You wouldn’t!’ She looked at him, appalled by the savagery of the threat. ‘He’s a good salesman. You said so yourself!’

  ‘You heard me.’ He turned away and stared out of the window, waiting for her to leave, and she did, after a moment’s silence.

  She had never seen him so furious. What had got into him? Had he exploded over that little incident because he was looking around for an excuse to get rid of her? she wondered. He might have told her that they could put her stupid, childish indiscretion behind them and continue working together, but had he really meant it?

  She was still frowning, turning over the problem in her mind as she let herself into her block of flats, and in the gloomy entrance hall she didn’t see the umbrella lying on the floor. One minute she was hurtling towards the staircase and the next minute she was on the floor. She stood up and then sat back down and began massaging her ankle.

  It hurt like mad, and she eyed the offending umbrella with loathing. Eventually she tentatively tried to stand up again and found that she could just hobble up to her flat, with much clinging to the banister, and only very slowly.

  The only bright spot was that her throbbing ankle did succeed in diverting her thoughts from Oliver slightly. She prepared herself a light supper, which turned out to be a one-hour job and left her feeling exhausted. At eight she telephoned her doctor, a family friend, who asked her a series of detailed questions on the phone, told her that she had just sprained the ankle, that the pain would subside but that she could take aspirin if she found it helped.

  ‘Thanks very much, Dr Wilkins,’ she said tartly. ‘I already feel a lot better.’ He laughed at that, told her that he would telephone her in the morning, and to have a good night’s sleep.

  It didn’t feel a whole lot better in the morning, and with a sigh of resignation she phoned through to the office and connected immediately with Oliver on his direct line.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t come in,’ she said, twisting the telephone cord and wondering how his presence could fill the flat when he wasn’t even in the room.

  ‘Why not?’ No words of concern, no sympathetic cluckings. Had she expected otherwise?

  ‘I’ve twisted my ankle,’ she admitted. ‘I can hardly walk.’

  ‘Careless,’ he said briefly. ‘Especially as I need to go over those pending files with you.’

  ‘I really do apologise, Mr Kemp,’ Francesca said in a syrupy voice, scowling down the line. ‘Next time I’ll try to plan my accidents for more opportune moments.’

  ‘That would be useful,’ he agreed, and she gritted her teeth together in frustration. ‘However, all’s not lost. I’ll drop by this evening after work, say about six-thirty.’

  ‘Drop by…?’ she asked, horrified at the prospect of that, but he had already hung up, and she heard the dead dialling sound of the phone in her ear with annoyance.

  She spent the remainder of the day in a state of tense anticipation. Rupert’s appearance at lunchtime was almost irritating. She hadn’t seen him for a while, and now she was beginning to find him trivial. He was amusing, but sometimes she didn’t want to be amused, and he would never understand that. For him life was one long, enjoyable, never-ending game, but that got tiring after a while.

  She found herself looking at her watch more than once, and when he stood up to leave he said, sharply for him, ‘Sorry I disturbed you by dropping by, Frankie. When I phoned your office and I was told about your ankle I thought you might appreciate the company.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Rupert,’ she said, meaning it. ‘But I’ve got a lot on my mind,’ she added, meaning that too. Rather fervently.

  ‘So have I,’ he surprised her by saying, and he hesitated. He was thinking about whether to confide in her, she realised. It was the first time she had ever seen so much as a frown cross his amiable face, and she immediately felt ashamed that she hadn’t been paying more attention to what he had been saying.

  ‘Anything you want to talk about?’ she asked, giving him her undivided attention, and he shrugged, with the same hesitation in his manner.

  ‘Not really,’ he finally said. ‘Usual woman troubles.’

  ‘Usual? Rupert, you never have woman troubles.’

  He laughed, and she realised what she hadn’t noticed before, that he had been worried when he had first arrived.

  ‘I know,’ he agreed, nodding. ‘Bit of a shame I’m having to find out about them now, at my ripe old age.’

  But that was as far as she got, because he left without really saying much more to her, and very soon she forgot all about the conversation.

  Of course, as she might have expected, Oliver didn’t arrive until after seven, by which time tension had given way to anger. Having decided, she thought mutinously, that he could invade her flat just because he needed some work doing, he now thought that he could walk in at whatever time he pleased.

  When she heard the sharp knock on the door she hobbled across and pulled it open, her mouth tightly set.

  He eyed her very slowly, from foot to head and back to swollen foot, then picked her up bodily, ignoring her protests.

  ‘There,’ he said, depositing her on the chair, then removing his coat. It was raining outside—a steady drumming beat against the window panes. ‘I’ve brought us food,’ he said, and she noticed the brown bag. ‘Chinese. I hope you like it.’

  Something in his manner alarmed her, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It was like trying to reach for a shadow—something elusive but disturbing all the same. She wondered whether she wasn’t imagining it because she had been living in a state of such heightened awareness recently.

  ‘That was very thoughtful of you,’ she said awkwardly, remembering how disastrous his last appearance at her flat had been.

  ‘I didn’t think that you’d get around to cooking in your state,’ he pointed out, vanishing into the kitchen and emerging a couple of minutes later with two plates and some cutlery.

  She watched, nervously silent, as he fished the little foil containers from the bag and undid lids.

  ‘Doesn’t look very appetising, does it?’ he asked, handing her the plate, and she smiled.

  ‘Smells good, though.’ She looked at him from under her lashes, feeding on his devastating male sexuality like a foodaholic greedily looking at a plate of food. It was a terrible, forbidden pleasure but she couldn’t resist it.

  Now that she had acknowledged her attraction to him everything about him was an impact on her senses—the strong lines of his face, the power of his body, the way his black hair curled against the nape of his neck. She took it all in, adding it to her little store of images which had swelled and multiplied over the months without her even realising it.

  She looked at him when she thought that her hunger would go unnoticed, but she felt like a thief in the night, stealing something that didn’t belong to her.

  ‘How are you settling in?’ he asked neutrally. ‘Any regrets?’

  In between mouthfuls of food she chatted to him, answered his questions, told herself that the only threat to her peace of mind was herself. And he was, not all that surprisingly, easy to talk to. He had the rare gift of being able to listen attentively, and after a while she found herself talking to him more freely than she would have expected.

  Why, though, was he being so nice, so charming? The little question kept floating into her head intermittently, but she chose to disregard it.

  ‘You know all about me, though,’ she said eventually, putting her plate on the table in front of her. ‘You know my background,’ she said, ‘and heaven only knows what else, thanks to my father.’

  ‘So I do,’ he agreed smoothly.

  ‘So why
don’t we get down to work? If you leave the dishes in the sink I can do them later.’

  He nodded, and for the next hour they went through files. She deciphered her shorthand jottings, made notes of things that she needed to do as soon as she got into the office, and when they were finished he sat back and said, ‘In case you’re wondering why I came over here, the reason is that I shall be abroad for the next three weeks. Urgent business.’

  ‘Ah.’ That made sense. He had needed to discuss work because he wouldn’t be around, and she didn’t know whether the news of his absence from the office filled her with relief or disappointment.

  ‘I’ll be in touch, of course, every day, but you’ll have to carry on without me. Can you manage?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I have no doubts that you can,’ he murmured, giving her a crooked smile that sent little shivers through her. ‘Does it feel good to you, knowing that I was wrong about you? I’m not usually wrong in my judgements of people, but I have to admit your work has been superb.’

  ‘Is that the sound of a man eating humble pie?’ she asked, and he laughed.

  ‘I think I’ll pass on that question. Humble pie tends to give me indigestion.’

  He stood up and she thought that he was going to leave, but he wasn’t. He went into the kitchen, fetched them both some coffee and handed a cup to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the cup, surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that you had a domesticated streak in you. First the food, now this.’

  ‘Making a cup of coffee isn’t quite beyond me,’ he replied drily, sitting back down and raking his fingers through his hair. ‘I can even do a halfway decent meal when pressed.’

  ‘I suppose you had to when you were at university,’ Francesca commented, not looking at him.

  ‘And before. My mother was quite ill before she died. I had to do all the household chores, in between studying like crazy. I became a dab hand at wielding a vacuum cleaner and revising statistics at the same time.’

  She laughed and wondered fleetingly how a man could be so hard, so aggressive and yet so witty when he chose to be.

  ‘It must have been hard,’ she said, ‘being on your own.’

  ‘I learnt pretty quickly how to stand on my own two feet.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s no bad lesson to learn.’

  Here we go, she thought. Here come the veiled criticisms.

  ‘I don’t suppose there are too many people who would disagree with that,’ she said lightly. ‘Not when they see what a success can be made from it.’

  ‘Success is a dubious beast,’ he murmured, and this time when he looked at her his eyes held hers for a fraction longer than was necessary. ‘Success, sadly, breeds suspicion. The more money you make, the narrower becomes the circle of people whom you can trust. You must have found that.’

  ‘Not really,’ she answered, thinking about it.

  ‘Because you lived in an exalted world far removed from reality.’ It was more a statement of fact rather than a question.

  ‘It wasn’t one I chose,’ she pointed out, not willing to spoil the pleasant atmosphere between them. She stood up to carry the cups into the kitchen and to stretch her muscles, which felt as though they were slowly seizing up on her, and as she bent down to retrieve his cup from the ground he reached out and caught her wrist in his hand.

  ‘You shouldn’t be moving about,’ he said softly.

  Her heart began to thud. She felt that familiar excitement course through her and she tried to look at him calmly, without letting her body dictate her responses.

  ‘M-my ankle feels m-much better already,’ she stammered, and he pulled her gently down onto the sofa next to him.

  ‘Let me have a look at it,’ he said, and she looked at him in panic.

  ‘There’s nothing to look at,’ she protested. ‘It’s just a bit bruised.’

  ‘How did you do it? I never asked.’

  He gently lifted her leg onto his lap and shoved up her long skirt so that her ankle was exposed. It was ridiculous but she felt as exposed and vulnerable as a Victorian lady being stripped. She also felt confused. Why was he doing this, behaving like this? She remembered his cold words of contempt when she had thrown herself at him, and she pulled her leg, but he held it firmly in place.

  ‘Well?’ he asked, looking up at her, and she had to think before she remembered what his question had been in the first place.

  ‘Oh, I tripped over an umbrella.’

  ‘Novel.’ He bent his head to inspect the ankle, and very carefully he stroked it with his hand.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Was that her voice? It sounded like a terrified squeak.

  He ignored that. ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘It should be better tomorrow, or else definitely by the day after.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He gave her a slow, lazy smile and she finally realised what her subconscious had been telling her all along. Oliver Kemp was flirting with her.

  It was so unexpected that it was almost shocking. She glanced down at her entwined fingers and felt rather than saw his eyes roaming over her.

  She felt oddly at sea with this frank appraisal from a man who had hardly so much as glanced in her direction in the past, and, when he had, had done so with the indifference of a man who saw no sexuality in the woman at whom he was looking.

  There was no rush of longing on her part, though. She had flung herself at him with the naïve optimism of inexperience, and now that same inexperience, when faced with this sophisticated game of seduction, was pulling her back. She felt bewildered and defensive.

  She gave another tug of her foot and he asked in a low, casual voice, ‘Do you want me to leave?’

  There was silence—a silence so profound that every little sound in the room was amplified a million times over. The gentle spitting of the rain against the window-pane became a drum roll; the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece sounded like a time bomb about to go off.

  ‘What time is it?’ she heard herself ask for want of anything better to say, and there was dry irony in his eyes when they rested on her.

  ‘Time to leave or time to stay. Tell me which.’

  ‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ she said evenly. ‘When you were last here—’

  ‘You had had too much to drink,’ he said, but she had the uneasy, fleeting feeling that he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  She lifted her leg from his lap and rested it gently on the ground, and then stared at it in apparent fascination.

  She was so aware of the man sitting next to her that she could hardly breathe. Her blonde hair hung across her face like a curtain, hiding her expression, for which she was glad because the last thing she needed was to have him read the thoughts flitting across her face.

  ‘Why,’ he asked, sweeping her hair back with his hand, ‘don’t you look at me?’

  He didn’t move his hand. He curled his fingers against the nape of her neck and she reluctantly faced him.

  ‘Is it a stupid question to ask whether you’ve been drinking?’ She attempted a light laugh which emerged as something of a choked noise.

  ‘Very stupid.’

  Now that she had her eyes firmly fixed on his face she found that she couldn’t drag her gaze away. ‘I’m afraid I’m missing something here,’ she whispered. ‘None of this makes any sense.’

  ‘Some things don’t,’ he murmured, and she had that feeling again, as though there was a thread of meaning behind his words which she couldn’t quite comprehend.

  ‘Are you scared?’ he asked, and she didn’t say anything. ‘Do you,’ he continued, ‘want me to make love to you, Francesca Wade?’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FRANCESCA wasn’t so green that she hadn’t understood the signals coming from Oliver, but now that the words were out of his mouth, now that he was staring at her with that glittering intensity in his eyes, she found that she couldn’t think at all.


  ‘W-what?’ she stammered.

  He didn’t repeat what he had said. He just continued looking at her and the blood rushed to her head with such force that she thought she was going to faint.

  ‘What about Imogen?’ she asked faintly, and that drew a short, humourless smile to his lips.

  ‘Imogen and I have decided that we need to think things over.’

  ‘You mean you’ve decided to split with her? Why?’

  ‘Why do people ever split up?’ he asked, with a hint of impatience in his voice now, as though they were drifting from the matter at hand into waters that were only marginally relevant and certainly did not warrant much explanation.

  ‘You and she were so well suited,’ Francesca said, frowning and trying to read all the meanings behind this revelation—meanings hidden underneath his silence.

  ‘I didn’t realise you knew me so well,’ he drawled with amused sarcasm.

  Know you well? she thought suddenly, looking across at him. I don’t know you at all.

  ‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ he said softly, but before she could say anything he raised his hand. ‘No, don’t answer. Not yet.’ Then he leaned across to her and she closed her eyes before his mouth touched hers. She felt the warmth of his lips as they took hers in a kiss that lingered persuasively, then, as her mouth parted, hungrily moved in a kiss that made her feel as if she was drowning.

  She groaned and tried to pull back.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, releasing her, but only slightly so that, although she could speak, the sheer power of his sexuality still kept her in its grip.

  ‘You don’t find me attractive,’ she said unsteadily. Her mouth obligingly said one thing, but her body said another, because she still grasped his shirt, and she knew that however many questions were unanswered, however many doubts she had that what she was doing was right the pull she felt for him was just too strong.