A Wicked Persuasion

by Catherine George

  Instead of the bath she longed for, Harriet stood under blessedly hot water in the shower for a short time, then pulled on her hooded towelling robe and went to the head of the stairs. ‘All yours,’ she yelled, and shut herself in her bedroom to work on her hair. When she finally emerged in jeans and white shirt, her damp curls tied up on top of her head, the bathroom was empty. Bracing herself for another confrontation, she went down to the sitting room.

  James looked at her in silence for a moment. Dressed like that, without a scrap of make-up, she looked so much like the girl he’d once been crazy about he felt a sudden urge to tear her clothes off. With his teeth. He took in a deep, unsteady breath and waved a hand at his own choice of clothes. ‘Snap!’

  Harriet forced a smile. The man had driven a long way. His life-saving act had been annoying and unnecessary but the fact remained that he’d charged straight into the sea to her rescue. ‘I’ve got some wine, if you’d care for a drink, or I could make you some tea. I need something to warm me up.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. That sea may look beautiful in the sun, but it’s really cold when you get in it! Tea would be good, Harriet. Then I’ll take you out for a meal.’ He ran his eyes over her. ‘You look as though you could do with one.’

  ‘I don’t want to go out.’

  His grin vanished. ‘You mean not with me.’

  ‘I mean I’m a bit tired after all the drama,’ she said impatiently.

  Her tone killed his sudden blaze of lust stone dead. ‘Don’t bother about the tea,’ James said crisply. ‘I’ll take myself off and go alone in search of dinner.’

  ‘I meant I can cook for us here—if you like.’

  ‘You said you were tired,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Not too tired to cook something simple. Give me twenty minutes or so and I’ll have a meal on the table,’ said Harriet. After all he had come a long way.

  ‘Then I accept. Give me something to do.’

  It felt odd to be scrubbing potatoes while James shelled broad beans, so much so that when he’d finished Harriet suggested he caught up with the television news in the other room while she got on with the meal. To offset the illicit feeling of intimacy, she busied herself with laying the table, cutting bread and hulling strawberries, then snipped rashers of locally cured bacon and put them under the grill.

  James joined her, sniffing hungrily. ‘Something smells good.’

  Harriet served the food straight on to warm plates and took them into the sitting room. ‘How are things with Live Wires?’ she asked politely as James drew out a chair for her.

  ‘Going from strength to strength now the new companies are incorporated.’ He sat down, eyeing the food in anticipation. ‘This looks delicious. I eat so much fancy stuff at dinners a simple meal like this is a treat.’

  ‘First of the Pembroke new potatoes, broad beans picked this morning, and locally reared bacon, all from the village shop up on the main road,’ she informed him.

  There was silence between them as they enjoyed the food. When James pushed his empty plate away he sat back, watching Harriet finish her meal. ‘I’ve never told Moira,’ he said abruptly.

  She looked up, startled. ‘Told her what, exactly? She knows we once knew each other.’

  ‘But not that you were the one who murdered my boyish illusions,’ he said, taking her breath away. ‘Not that I’m ungrateful; far from it. Your rejection spurred me on to make a success of my life.’

  Harriet put her half full plate on top of his empty one and got up. ‘Would you like some strawberries?’ she said steadily.

  He shook his head in sardonic wonder. ‘I bare my soul and all you can talk about is strawberries?’

  ‘I can’t rewrite the past, James. Obviously hiring River House wasn’t enough revenge for this soul of yours.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Did you come all this way just to heap more recriminations on my head?’

  He jumped up, towering over her angrily. ‘No. I came here to enjoy your company for a while in neutral surroundings, so we can talk like two civilised people. But obviously I’ve been a bloody fool. Again.’

  Harriet took the plates into the kitchen, and ran water into the sink and shut the door behind her so he wouldn’t hear her as she coughed up more salt water. Sheer iron will had prevented her from giving into it while he was shouting at her, but now the cough defeated her and she leaned over the sink, gasping helplessly after it was over. The door flew open and James filled a glass with water and held it to her mouth. Her mouth twisted. She really had to stop leaning over kitchen sinks with James.

  ‘Thank you,’ she managed at last, and drank the water.

  He took the glass from her, refilled it and turned off the tap, and then led her out of the kitchen into the sitting room. He put the glass on a small table alongside the sofa and told her to sit down. ‘Have you recovered completely from your migraine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you get them often?’

  ‘No, but when I do they’re so bad I hardly know what I’m doing.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  She glared at him. ‘What, exactly, do you mean by that?’

  ‘Your usual iron control was missing the other night. Otherwise, I doubt you’d have let me put you to bed. What if a migraine strikes again while you’re here on your own?’ he said, frowning.

  Harriet drank some water. ‘It won’t. Last time it was caused by an unusual combination of circumstances. I’d had a very worrying time with Annabel, hadn’t managed to eat all day—’

  ‘And to add to your joys I shocked the hell out of you by turning up at your sister’s house,’ he said grimly.

  ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.’

  ‘Can you deny that the sight of me added to your stress factor?’

  ‘No. Though I was grateful for the lift home. Then I had meetings with clients all next day, one of which required a long drive in an unfamiliar car.’ Harriet looked at him squarely. ‘Enough of my problems. Tell me the truth, James. Why are you here?’

  His eyes lit with a gleam, which made her deeply uneasy. ‘It seemed too good an opportunity to pass up when Moira told me you were coming here. I was sure that if we spent enough uninterrupted time together you would tell me the truth at last.’ His mouth compressed. ‘For years I thought I didn’t care a damn about it any more. Then I met you again and found it was vital to learn what turned you from a warm, loving girl into the wary professional woman I found in that office.’

  She eyed him in silence for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Life changed me, James, just as it changed you from the loving carefree man you used to be. So can’t we just call it quits? I’m sorry for the way it ended between us all those years ago, but I can’t keep on apologising, James. It’s time to move on.’ She paused, then when he made no response, shrugged, defeated. ‘If you feel you came all this way for nothing I’m sorry you’re disappointed, but now I suggest you drive to your hotel and let me get to bed.’

  James went on eyeing her in unsettling silence for a while, and then shook his head. ‘I don’t want to leave you alone here like this, Harriet. You go up to bed. I’ll stay here on the sofa.’

  She glared at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Neither of us would sleep.’

  ‘Possibly not, but at least I’d be here at hand if you needed me.’

  ‘Why should I need you? I’m absolutely fine.’ She closed her eyes in frustration. ‘James. Please. Just go.’

  He shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want I will eventually, but not yet. Now I’ve come all this way, we can at least talk for a while. I’ll make you some tea, or whatever.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ she said, resigned. ‘But I’d better do that.’

  ‘No need,’ he assured her. ‘I know where things are because Marcus gives me carte blanche to come here on my own whenever I need to get away, which isn’t often lately. When I’m not up to my ears in it at work I’m overseeing progress with my house. I won’t be long.’

  Harriet leaned
back, trying to relax, but it was hard with James on hand. Her wildest dreams hadn’t come up with this scenario for her holiday. She’d just wanted to enjoy her unexpected break, and get herself back to full strength to deal with whatever life had in store over the next few months. One thing she was sure of. Once the finances of River House were on an even keel again her father could take full responsibility for the house. Julia was right. Their mother would not have wanted her to devote her entire life to it.

  James came back with a tray and set it down beside her. ‘You used to like your tea strong with a dash of milk,’ he said, handing her a mug.

  ‘I still do. Thank you.’ Harriet smiled, secretly touched that he remembered.

  ‘I opted for coffee to keep me awake on the drive to the hotel.’ He looked at her in silence for a moment. ‘In jeans, and with your hair like that, you look very young tonight, Harriet.’

  ‘I’m twenty-nine, not Methuselah!’ she retorted, and he laughed.

  ‘I know exactly how old you are. By the way, did you think it was pure altruism that brought me to your sister’s house last Sunday?’

  Harriet stared. ‘It wasn’t?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s true that I gave your sister and her husband a lift when they were in a hurry to get home to their child. But I had been talking to Sophie on and off right through the lunch, and she was very forthcoming with her personal details. I learned that she was not only your sister, but that you were looking after her daughter.’ His eyes held hers. ‘I jumped at the offer when they invited me in for a drink when we arrived. But you were too taken up with your little niece to pay attention to me, or anyone else. Is she better now?’

  ‘Yes, she is.’ Harriet eyed him blankly. ‘Are you saying you drove Sophie and Gervase back just to see me?’

  ‘I like to think I would have done so anyway in the circumstances, but the prospect of seeing you was my main motivation. Is that so hard to believe?’

  ‘Yes. I thought you still felt hostile towards me.’

  ‘I did once.’ James shrugged. ‘But I won’t pretend I spent all those years thinking of ways to get back at you, or even thinking of you at all in time.’

  Harriet felt a sharp pang of pain. Of course he’d stopped thinking of her. She’d stopped thinking of him every minute of the day in time, too. Some days, anyway.

  ‘In fact,’ continued James, ‘until Marcus bought the Old Rectory in your neck of the woods, I’d been too busy building up Live Wires into a successful venture to have much time for regrets about the past.’

  ‘It must have felt like your lucky day finding out River House was for hire!’

  ‘It was certainly the perfect cure for the festering hurt I’d kept locked away at the back of my mind all those years.’ His smile set her teeth on edge.

  ‘So now you’re satisfied.’ Harriet shrugged. ‘But it rather backfired on you, James, because I’m satisfied too.’

  James looked at her in silence for so long Harriet was beginning to fidget by the time he spoke again. ‘So come clean at last—tell me what really happened all those years ago,’ he ordered, startling her. ‘One minute you were as happy as a lark about renting a house together, the next minute I was being relocated from my job and you were giving me my marching orders. I was so furious it was only later, when the red mist cleared from my brain, that I realised you were as miserable as hell that day too. Tell me the truth, Harriet. Your father didn’t approve of our plan, did he?’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘And you weren’t brave enough to defy him and take off with me.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Your father’s pretty hostile towards me now he’s found out who I am.’

  ‘Hardly surprising! He went up like a rocket when George Lassiter gave him the glad news. Father assumed that you and I were laughing together behind his back the night of the party until I told him you still felt hostile towards me. Which you do,’ she added.

  James’s smile raised the short curling hairs on the back of her neck. ‘Harriet, what I’m feeling right now has nothing to do with hostility.’ He moved nearer. ‘You owe me.’

  She backed away. ‘For what, exactly?’

  ‘I saved your life this afternoon.’ The look in his eyes rang Harriet’s alarm bells.

  ‘Except that my life was in no danger,’ she retorted and got up, but he tugged on her hand and pulled her down on his lap.

  ‘It’s the thought that counts, so I deserve at least one kiss,’ he said huskily, in the tone that had turned her to jelly when she was a teenager.

  Harriet wondered if he could hear her heart hammering in her chest, and put on a martyred expression as she held up her mouth. ‘Oh, all right.’

  James’s laugh set the alarm bells ringing even louder as he pulled her closer. ‘You look as though you’re making the supreme sacrifice. Is the thought of kissing me so repugnant, Harriet?’

  ‘No—’ She gasped as his mouth came down on hers with a kiss she felt right down to her toes. His arms tightened around her in a possession she surrendered to helplessly, her lips opening to his caressing tongue as he made love to her in the way which had left her crying into her pillow for too many nights all those years ago. And now it was happening again. The mere touch of his lips set her on fire, but when his urgent fingers went to work on her shirt buttons Harriet pushed him away.

  ‘More payback?’ she demanded raggedly. She struggled to get up, but he kept his arms around her, holding her fast until she gave up struggling and lay quiet against him.

  ‘I’m taking you to bed,’ he said in a tone which quelled all argument. Not that Harriet was about to argue. Bed with James at last would solve a lot of her problems. She stopped thinking as he kissed her with a heat that blotted out everything other than the joy of being held fast against his chest, feeling his heart thudding against hers.

  ‘I want this a damn sight more than any revenge,’ he muttered against her mouth.

  ‘Come to bed, then,’ she said recklessly.

  His smile turned her heart over. ‘I’ve waited ten long years to hear you say that. Up you come.’ He swung her up in his arms and made for the stairs. ‘Next time you walk up. Tonight I’ll do my Rhett Butler act.’

  ‘Lovely.’ Harriet smiled up at him in such invitation he kissed her fiercely as he took off her jeans and shirt, then laid her on the bed and threw off his clothes to slide in beside her. His eyes moved over her in slow, hot relish for a while before he ran a hand over her lacy tank and briefs. ‘These are pretty. Take them off.’

  ‘You want them off, you take them off,’ she responded, surprising herself and James by the way he laughed unsteadily before following orders.

  ‘At last,’ he breathed, as they came together skin to skin. ‘I never dared undress you all those years ago because you were so determined to wait until we lived together before sharing a bed. While I wanted to get you into mine the moment I first set eyes on you.’

  ‘Let’s not talk of years ago. This is now, James. Make love to me at last,’ she begged.

  ‘I will,’ he whispered, and kissed her mouth for a long, breathless interval, before going on to kiss every bare inch of her he could reach, some of which took her so much by surprise she moaned and shivered in the throes of guilty solo pleasure before James slid over her and inside her to take her with him on a wild, uninhibited climb to the orgasm he reached first and stayed locked within her until she gasped against him in the throes of her own delight.

  Expecting him to roll away, Harriet was utterly ravished when James held her tightly afterwards as though he couldn’t bear to let her go, and eventually, to her utter astonishment, she felt him harden again inside her as he turned her mouth up to his to kiss her and make love to her all over again, but more slowly the second time, with such tenderness she cried when it was over and he licked away her tears and smoothed the wild tangle of curls away from her forehead.

  ‘Are you crying for joy because I’m so good at thi
s?’ he asked smugly, and Harriet gave a gurgle of laughter as he rolled away, taking her with him to hold her in the crook of his arm.

  ‘Such hubris!’ She raised her head to look at him. ‘How about the hotel?’

  ‘I lied about booking there,’ he said, grinning shamelessly.

  ‘What if I’d shown you the door and hadn’t let you stay?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Plan A was battering the door until you gave in, the less popular plan B was sleeping in the car.’ James threaded his fingers through her unruly curls. ‘But you didn’t make me go. Why?’

  ‘Because I was nervous here on my own.’

  ‘Of course you were.’ He tucked her head into his shoulder. ‘Now go to sleep.’

  When Harriet woke up it was morning. She turned her head cautiously and met a pair of eyes gleaming like gold coins in the early sunlight.

  ‘Hello,’ said James softly.

  ‘Good morning.’ Harriet smiled and tried to sit up but a hard arm restrained her.

  ‘Not yet.’ He drew her close, the hunger of his kiss setting her on fire for him again as they united in the hot, earthy joy of wake up love. They were quiet in each other’s arms for a while afterwards, drowsy with content until he raised her face to his. ‘Now I have you at my mercy it’s confession time, Harriet. Tell me the truth at last. I know your father disapproved, but the girl I knew wanted to be with me too much to let that break us up. So talk. Tell me what happened to change your mind all those years ago.’

  She sat up, smiling bitterly. ‘Oh, I see. All this was Plan C, James Crawford!’ She stabbed a hand at the untidy bed. ‘Literally hands-on persuasion to get the truth out of me at last.’ She leapt from the bed to wrap herself in her dressing gown, utterly mortified that she’d been fool enough to believe he was desperate to make love to her, while all the time it was his way of slotting the last piece of the jigsaw into place.

  James pulled on his jeans and stalked towards her, a look in his eyes she disliked intensely. ‘Just to set the record straight, Harriet, there was no persuasion involved.

  Was there?’