The Trouble with Trent!

by Jessica Steele

  Dared she believe that he loved her? He'd already admitted to telling one lie. She wasn't ready to answer. Far from being upset, or worried that her heart was going twenty to the dozen, she could not have been more ecstatic. But to answer would only confirm what she was beginning to be sure he must know: that she was in love with him

  She tried to sound off-hand. She didn't do a very good job of it. 'You've lied to me once,' she reminded him

  `From necessity,' he owned straight away. 'From a need to cover this love I have for you, I've lied. But I'll never again lie to you. Trust me,' he urged.

  Oh, she so wanted to, but she had to remind him, `You lied to me a week after we met. When I came here and you said your friends were fog-bound in Paris, you lied. Are you saying ...?'

  `That it was necessary because I was in love with you then?' Trent moved his hands down to her hands; he

  gave them a little shake. 'That, my very dear love, is what I'm saying.'

  He seemed sincere. 'Then?' she queried, unable to believe it.

  `Then. Before then,' he stated, and went on making her eyes shoot wide again, 'I couldn't stop looking at you at Hector's Silver Wedding celebrations. When I came over to you, our eyes met—and that was it.'

  `You L-loved me then!' She didn't believe it! How could she? Oh, Heavens, it would be all too wonderful if ... But, it couldn't be ...

  `From the very beginning,' Trent assured her. 'Though if it's any help to you, I didn't believe it myself. I'd spoken to you—and you had a magical voice. I'd danced with you—and was overwhelmed to have you in my arms. So much so, I feared that like some callow youth I might there and then blurt out that I loved you. I had to get out of there. I felt an urgent need for caution.'

  `That's why I didn't see you again that evening?' Somehow, what he was saying, even though she still dared not believe it, was starting to sound marginally credible.

  `I knew your name and where you worked. I knew I'd see you again—to find out where you lived and your phone number was the easy part.'

  `From what I've seen, and the way I contacted you over Keith Lawrence, I'd say everything fell into your lap.' Alethea started to cope with her shock. 'I even told you I intended moving out!'

  `You're wonderful.' He smiled, but, his smile fading, he went on to reveal, 'A week after we met—that first Saturday you came here—I knew, had accepted, that my feelings were no figment of my imagination. I wanted

  you with me—I hadn't wanted to part from you when we'd dined together on Tuesday, and ...'

  `And you invited me back here for coffee,' she recalled.

  `With no ulterior motive,' he assured her. 'While I was still cautious about this all-consuming emotion that had taken me, I just wanted to get to know you better. I was off to Italy in the morning, with no chance of seeing you again until Friday. I quite simply wanted to spend more time with you.'

  Alethea wanted to tell him she was sorry that she hadn't done as he asked. But, while her wariness of what he had told her was diminishing, and belief was starting to burgeon, shyness seemed to be taking over.

  `Instead you took me home.'

  `Looking at you, I wanted like crazy to hold you in my arms again, to kiss you.'

  `But you didn't.'

  He smiled a half-smile. 'You'd got to me in a big way, Miss Pemberton—I was scared even to so much as shake you by the hand, in case the touch of your skin against mine sent my self-control flying.'

  Alethea stared at him in amazement. He'd been feeling like that, and she'd never known! 'Heavens!' she mumbled.

  `So there was I, ringing you as soon as I got in on Friday, only to know, for the first time in my life, that sick, stomach-churning emotion of jealousy. You were dating someone else.'

  `I wasn't.' He'd been jealous! Trent had been jealous?

  `I didn't know that then. All I knew was that I wanted

  to see you, and that if I had to invite your man-friend

  along then I'd do it. My God, talk about punishment!' `I love you,' she said.

  He froze. 'What did you say?' he commanded hoarsely.

  `I d-don't believe I said it either!' she gasped. 'But `But?' he demanded urgently.

  She took a shaky breath. But, it's true,' she whispered shyly.

  `You love me?' he insisted.

  `I love you very much.'

  `Come here.' Too impatient to wait, Trent caught hold of her in his arms, pulled her as close to him as he could. `Never do I want to go through that again!' he breathed emphatically against her ear.

  `I'm sorry,' she murmured.

  `Say it again.'

  `I'm sorry.'

  `Not that.'

  She laughed, a light, relieved, wonderful laugh. 'I love you,' she obeyed, and as he pulled back from her to look into her face, into her eyes, to see the truth there for himself, she added shyly, `to distraction.'

  `Oh, my love!' He exhaled a shaky pent-up breath and kissed her. Alethea's eyes were shining when Trent pulled back. He studied her, and he just had to embrace her again. 'When did you know?' he asked, after breaking his kiss but keeping her in his arms.

  She was happy to be there. 'That I loved you?' `How marvellous that sounds,' he breathed. 'When?' he pressed.

  `It had been coming on for a long while.' She hesitated no longer in telling him. 'I knew I was affected by you that first time we met.'

  `Good. And?'

  `Well, I suppose there have been few times when we've been together when you haven't managed to make me thoroughly confused.'

  `You confessed that to me once—I found it most heartening,' he revealed, laying a tender kiss against her cheek.

  Her heart fluttered, but the way it had been cavorting this past hour she doubted it would ever be the same again. 'Then there was the jealousy..

  `My jealousy?'

  `Mine,' she said.

  He frowned. But I've never given you cause to be jealous. I haven't been remotely interested in any other woman since I met you. How could I be? I eat, drink and sleep you. You're everywhere in my head, night and day. Sometimes I've thought I'd go demented just—'

  `You say the most wonderful things,' Alethea interrupted him with a sigh.

  Trent placed another tender kiss on the corner of her mouth. 'So tell me, before I get totally sidetracked,' he insisted, placing yet one more kiss on the other corner of her mouth, 'what it was I did to cause you to feel jealous.'

  Her skin was tingling from his tender kisses. Sitting here with him like this, knowing that he loved her, feeling secure in that love, she knew she would deny him nothing. She knew that there was much unsaid, but with no secrets between them now, they should share everything with each other.

  `You didn't have to do very much for that dreadful green-eyed monster to take a grip on my imagination,' she admitted. 'In fact, you didn't have to do anything.' Trent sat quietly looking at her—she knew he was waiting

  for her to go on. 'Well, the first time—and I didn't know how I felt about you then—'

  `You loved me,' Trent interrupted, surprising her that he seemed to need to hear her say again that she loved him.

  `I loved you,' she obliged with a tender smile, and was allowed to go on. `That day, the day I—we'd arranged for me to—er—move in with you ...'

  `It was a Wednesday.' He had instant recall.

  `Well, I'd very mixed feelings about what I was doing.' `How you must have hated me.'

  `I tried,' she laughed. `Anyhow, that was the day Nick Saunders asked me out and—' She broke off. Trent wasn't smiling. 'Don't be upset—you've nothing to be...'

  `Jealous over?'

  `It's you I love.'

  Trent took a controlling breath. 'I can't think why you should—only—never stop.'

  She kissed him; he seemed to like it, and she had an uphill job to remember what she had been telling him. It was incredible just to be in his arms. `Anyhow, it was only then that it dawned on me that I was no longer free to go out with someone else if I wanted to.'


  `You turned him down?'

  `Of course, but then started to wonder if you were thinking the same way.'

  `If I'd given up dating other women while you were living with me?'

  Alethea nodded. `While I didn't recognise my jealousy then, I most definitely didn't care for the notion of you seeing other women.'

  `You were jealous,' Trent decided, and seemed quite pleased.

  `Wretch!' she called him lovingly. 'Nor was that the end of it.'

  `Tell me more,' he urged—and she just had to laugh.

  `There was I, reluctant to move in, in panic and delaying the evil moment. But, after delaying no longer, I arrived, and there are you about to go out!'

  Hmm. Want to hear about another lie?' he asked. `Another one?'

  `Originally I'd no intention of going out that evening. I'd come home early and very nearly wore a track in the carpet walking up and down waiting for you.'

  `Really!' she exclaimed.

  `Believe it. I'll never lie to you again,' he reiterated. `I'd planned a pleasant evening getting to know each other in a friendly way, building up your trust in me if I could. Whether you knew it or not you'd already started to trust me a little when the day before you'd phoned and asked, just that one small but magical heart-pounding word "when" in relation to moving in. I wanted so much from that first evening when you did move in. I wanted you to learn to like me—only—where were you?'

  `I'd no idea you wanted ...'

  `Of course you hadn't, sweet love. So there was I, getting disgruntled. So that, by the time you did turn up, I found I was excusing my initial grumpiness by telling you I had to go out. Following on from that, if I didn't want you to take me for a liar, I had to do just that.'

  `Heavens!' she gasped, and she thought she'd suffered! Alethea was still a little open-mouthed when she owned, 'I was both peeved and jealous that, on my first evening, you were probably going out with some woman.'

  `You're adorable,' he murmured, and her backbone wilted.

  `Oh, Trent,' she said shakily.

  `Are you having a hard time believing it too?' he asked.

  `It does seem fairly incredible,' she admitted, and they kissed, and it was incredible—to be in his arms, with all the barriers falling.

  `When I returned that night, I came to your room,' Trent confessed.

  `I know,' she replied dreamily.

  `You knew! I woke you? Oh, God—did I panic you?' `I think I was a bit worried, but ...'

  `Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought I was being quiet. I just couldn't believe you were here under my roof. I just had to check.'

  `I was already awake. But I slept like a log afterwards,' she smiled 'And I heard you go out the next morning,' she added impishly.

  Trent grinned. 'I came back. I had to. Love was ruling me. I'd only just gone when I realised I couldn't wait until evening to see you again. I thought that perhaps you'd need an alarm call!'

  `I was already up.'

  `And in your blue robe, looking positively adorable. Is it any wonder, so soon after you began living with me, I had to break all my good intentions and kiss you.'

  `Oh, that you did,' she smiled

  `And the bonus was, you took it at face value. Could I take it that you trusted me a little bit more?'

  `I remember being confused, but I wasn't scared,' she admitted.

  `I was,' he confessed. 'I reached my office realising that while I was going to protect you, who was going to

  protect me? I realised that I was in a more vulnerable position than I felt you were. All that day, my longing to see you grew and grew, so that, by the end of it, I'd reached such a pitch I feared I might give away how desperately I cared for you. It was I, my love, who delayed going home that night.'

  `You weren't working late?' she queried, wide-eyed. `I made myself work late. But there was no need, nor the next night either.'

  Slowly it was coming home to Alethea just how very deeply Trent did love her. All her feelings went out to him, and it seemed to her then that he must know she cared as much about him. 'I do love you, oh, so much,' she told him.

  `Keep telling me,' he urged, and they clung together and kissed tenderly, as though sealing their love.

  They stayed close against each other as uncounted minutes ticked by. Trent saluted her face, her eyes, with tiny kisses, touching her arms, her shoulders, her face and her hair as if he rejoiced to have her there, yet at the same time still feared she might disappear.

  Yet it was Alethea, as they drew back to look in each other's eyes, who asked, 'Am I dreaming?'

  `It's not a dream,' Trent murmured adoringly. 'It's a wonderful, heartfelt reality.' She kissed him and smiled as he returned the compliment, before he tucked her neatly into his shoulder where she made a perfect fit. `Although I thought I was dreaming that wonderful Saturday morning when you brought me a cup of tea in bed. You must have been starting to trust me.'

  `Oh, I must,' she smiled. After having endured so much tearing of her emotions, now at last, she was starting to feel her heart ease, a state that came from

  knowing, and believing, oneself to be loved in return. `I was beginning to love you then, I think.'

  `You were?' He moved her so he could see into her face again. Giving her a little shake, he pressed, 'You're not going to leave it there, are you?'

  She laughed. Oh, Heavens, how much she loved him! `I remember I didn't feel all that happy when you said you were going to be out of the country for three weeks,' she replied demurely, and received a tender squeeze for that admission.

  `We spent the day together,' he instantly recalled. 'And what a day it was.'

  ' You —er — enjoyed it?'

  `When I wasn't furious with you that you'd found yourself somewhere else to live! Not only did you have the nerve to tell me about it, but you had the gall to tell me that I knew our living together was not a permanent arrangement—when I knew nothing of the sort!'

  Alethea's heart took yet another leap. Was Trent saying he would like her to live with him permanently? Even while she was starting to become more and more secure in the love he had for her, she did not like to ask.

  `I —er— didn't think you'd mind '

  `Mind? I was incensed! Though—' he smiled ' —I tried to be rational. I almost offered to get the decorators in for you, I remember.'

  Did you?' she asked, surprised.

  `I said, almost,' he grinned. 'That was the instinctive part, the part that wanted to make things easy for you. That was before I quickly realised that, dammit, I didn't want you to have a flat ready to move into. I didn't want you to leave.'

  `I wasn't too much of a nuisance, then?' she teased, `Living in your house, I mean '

  `Nuisance?' he echoed. 'Bothersome, I'd say. It was like treading on eggs the whole time you were around.'

  Alethea was amazed. 'How?' she exclaimed.

  `My stars, do you have a lot to learn about the male of the species,' Trent murmured. 'Which, of course, I shall be only too pleased to teach you. But, for the moment, leave it that, having got you in my home and living under my roof, the patience I was trying to exercise almost straight away began to be irksome.'

  `Patience?'

  `Never my best quality,' he smiled. 'I hardly ever seemed to see you, and when I did—while all the time I was endeavouring to gain more and more of your trust—it was such a joy to have you here that I seemed to be spending most of my time fighting the compulsion to touch your hand in passing, to drop a light kiss in your hair.'

  `Oh, Trent,' she sighed blissfully, her confidence in his love for her growing with every wonderful word he spoke. 'You kissed me, that Saturday when we spent the day together.'

  `On the bridge over the brook.' He needed no reminding. 'And you kissed me back, and I had to consider, had I gone about everything in the wrong way?'

  `I'm not with you.'

  `We were away from the house. Away from anything threatening, when you returned my kisses. Was that why you seemed so relaxed? I couldn't
decide. All I knew was that if I was to earn the complete trust I needed from you, I was going to have to take the greatest care. Yet when we arrived back that night, my darling, I dis-

  covered, when I again kissed you, when it was I who wanted your trust—that I didn't trust myself! Only by the skin of my teeth did I manage to turn away from you.'

  Good Heavens! She remembered feeling a bit miffed about that. As Trent had said, it seemed she had a lot to learn. 'Er—you kissed me again the next morning,' she reminded him, though in view of the ardent way she had responded, somewhat shyly.

  `I couldn't go away without seeing you again, so I used bringing you a cup of tea as an excuse. I kissed you and you asked me to stop. The demands you've made on my self-control, woman,' he growled.

  `I didn't want you to—er—stop, not really,' she felt she should let him know.

  `My G—' He didn't finish. 'Come here,' he threatened, and kissed her breathless for her trouble.

  Alethea was pink-cheeked when Trent finally allowed a little daylight between their two bodies. `I—er—you phoned, while you were away,' she mentioned, in an effort to try and get her head back to somewhere near normal. 'You rang that first Monday you were away.'

  `I just had to give in to the need to hear your voice,' Trent revealed.

  `Oh,' she sighed. 'I left work on time on Tuesday, but you didn't phone.'

  `Oh, sweetheart.'

  `It's all right,' she said swiftly, when Trent seemed full of remorse. 'You rang Wednesday.'

  `Several times, before you finally answered.'

  `Was that why you bit my head off?' she teased, remembering their sharp exchange over the phone.

  `I was upset—and,' he admitted, 'as jealous as the devil. Where were you? Who with? You didn't make me any sweeter when, to my mind, your home was with me and you made no bones about telling me you'd been decorating your flat. The way I saw it then, if I didn't hurry up and finish my business in South America, you'd have moved out before I got home.'

  `Oh, darling,' she said softly, 'I didn't mean to upset you.'