A Little Seduction Omnibus (13 page)

Beth simply had no idea what on earth to say to her, much less how to tell her that she had got it all wrong, that Alex most certainly did not love her.

‘This is good,’ she informed the van driver, who had now brought in what Beth sincerely hoped was the last packing case. There were six of them in all, filling her small shop, and she dreaded to think what the cost of their contents must be. Quite definitely much, much more than she could afford, with her empty bank account and her burdensome overdraft.

‘I really don’t think...’ she began faintly. But trying to stop Alex’s aunt was like trying to stop the awesome magnificence of some grandly rolling river at full flood—impossible!

‘You will please remove the covering,’ Alex’s aunt was instructing the van driver, waving one elegantly manicured hand in the direction of the boxes.

Beth didn’t dare look at him. This was an egalitarian age, an age of equality in which, Beth suspected, the last time a man had removed something from its packing for
her
had been when her father had opened her last babyhood Easter egg. But to her astonishment, far from reacting with the surly resentment she had expected to Alex’s aunt’s request, the van driver immediately, enthusiastically complied. Beth acknowledged the uneasy suspicion crowding her already log-jammed thoughts: he must have been promised an extremely generous tip indeed.

‘No. No more,’ Alex’s aunt commanded, once the lids were removed and the van driver was about to delve into the polystyrene chips surrounding the contents.

‘First we must have champagne,’ she told Beth firmly. ‘I have brought some with me and we shall drink it from proper glasses. It is a small ritual I always insist on when we hand over a completed order...a superstition we have that it is bad luck not to do so.’

‘Er... I...’ Beth had some pretty champagne flutes made of the same glass and in the same style as her new window display. Quickly she went to get them, reflecting ruefully that it would be far more appropriate to be using Waterford crystal—only her personal finances did not run to such luxuries.

Although Alex’s aunt did raise her eyebrows a little at the glasses Beth produced, to Beth’s relief she did not raise any objections.

This whole situation was completely surreal, Beth decided dizzily as Alex’s aunt uncorked the champagne with a deftness that left Beth in awe. The van driver and the chauffeur had been dismissed, and only the two of them were left in the shop.

‘You will open this first box,’ Beth was instructed as Alex’s aunt removed the top package from the nearest packing case.

Obediently Beth did as she was told, her fingers trembling slightly as she eased the carefully wrapped glass out of a box of six.

The theatricality with which Alex’s aunt was surrounding the whole event was impossibly dramatic. Beth could just imagine the chaos it would cause if she were to react to every delivery they received like this. But once the glass was free of its covering, and she could see it properly, any irritation she had felt at Alex’s aunt’s high-handedness was banished.

A soft breath of pure, awed appreciation slid from Beth’s parted lips as she drank in the beauty of the glass she was cradling. The shop’s lighting made every cut facet sparkle and shimmer with the rich cranberry colour of the goblet-shaped bowl, its stem clear and pure and worked with the most intricate design of trailing ivy and grapes.

Here was a reproduction Venetian glass of truly outstanding authenticity, a fruitful marriage of ancient and modern. Wonderingly Beth ran her fingertips over it. It was, quite simply, one of the most beautiful glasses she had ever seen, if anything even better and richer than the original antique she had been shown by the gypsy.

‘It is good...yes?’ Alex’s aunt was saying, her voice softer and more gentle as she recognised what Beth was feeling.

Beth looked up at her and saw in her eyes the same love that she herself always felt for a thing of such outstanding beauty.

‘It is very good,’ she agreed simply, blinking back the emotional tears that had filled her eyes.

‘Ah, yes, now I see why Alex has chosen you,’ she heard his aunt telling her. ‘Now I see that you are one of us. This is my own design, adapted from an original, of course. I think that the vine and the grapes are a truly authentic touch for a glass designed for wine. My cousins feel it is perhaps a little too modern, but I have brought for you also some much more traditional baroque designs. You will love them all.’

‘I
will
love them all,’ Beth confirmed shakily, ‘but I cannot possibly keep them. I can’t afford...’

‘I have to go. I am to have dinner with Alex’s parents this evening...’

‘Please,’ Beth begged her. ‘I cannot accept this order. I must ask you to take it away.’ As she saw the look of incomprehension darken Alex’s aunt’s eyes, Beth spread her hands helplessly and told her shakily, ‘I would love to keep it, but I simply cannot afford to pay for such an order...’

‘Did I not explain?’ the older woman asked her, frowning. ‘There is to be no question of payment.’ She added firmly, ‘This is a gift.’

‘A gift!’ Beth stared at her, the colour leaving her face, her chin lifting as pride stiffened her body. ‘That is very generous of you but I simply could not accept. For you to give me such a gift is...’

‘Oh, but it is not from me. I am a businesswoman,’ she told Beth sturdily. ‘Not even to my own family would I make such a gesture. My finest glass—
and
my order books and workforce totally disrupted to do it. No...it is
Alex
who makes the gift to you. I told him that he must love you very much indeed. I know he is not poor—his grandfather was a wealthy man, who prospered here in his adoptive country—but Alex is an academic who will never earn himself a fortune. But who can set a price on love? Although at first I was inclined to tell him that what he asked for was impossible, when he explained to me that without this order you would lose your business, which you love so very much, I could see that your pain would be his and I gave in to the sentimental side of my nature. I am sorry, but I really must go. And remember, you are not to open my gift to you until you are together with Alex. You and he will know the right time...’

The glass was a gift from Alex.
Alex
had paid for all of this... As Alex’s aunt left the shop and headed for her Mercedes Beth stared around herself.

It was impossible for her to accept, of course. Even more so now that she knew Alex had paid for everything out of his own pocket.

Her heart started to race and thud erratically as she dwelt on the implications of what he had done.

His aunt had seemed to assume that their feelings for one another were an acknowledged and established thing. Had Alex told her that? ‘He loves you,’ she had told Beth. ‘It is very much a tradition that the men of our family fall in love at first sight.’

What if she was right? What if Alex
had
, as he had claimed, fallen in love with her...? She had been wrong about his motivation in trying to dissuade her from buying via the gypsies; she knew that now. What if she had been wrong in other ways as well? What if...?

The doorbell rang, alerting her to the fact that she was no longer alone. As she turned round she started to smile in welcome relief as she saw that her visitor was her godmother, Anna.

‘My goodness, this looks very exciting!’ Anna exclaimed curiously as she closed the shop door behind her. ‘Ward and I were just on our way back from Yorkshire and I saw that the shop lights were on so I got him to drop me off.’

Anna and her husband Ward were looking for a new house in the area, and in the meantime they were spending their time between Ward’s house in Yorkshire and Anna’s existing home in Rye-on-Averton.

‘Come and sit down,’ Beth advised her godmother affectionately as she saw the way Anna was rubbing her side. She and Ward were expecting their first baby and Beth looked a little enviously at her, noting how well pregnancy suited her. Of course, it helped having a husband who idolised and adored you, and who thought you were the cleverest person in the whole world simply because you were carrying his child.

‘That’s what happens when you get to be first-time parents at our age,’ Anna laughed whenever people remarked on how thrilled Ward was about their coming baby.

‘Of course I’m pleased,’ Ward had announced promptly once in Beth’s hearing when someone had raised the subject. ‘But no matter how much I shall love our daughter or our son, once he or she arrives, I couldn’t possibly love them anywhere near as much as I do Anna...’

For a normally slightly dour man it had been an extremely open and emotional thing to say, and at the time she had heard it Beth hadn’t been able to help reflecting on how wonderful it must be to know that one was so deeply and sincerely loved. She had gone home that night and had wept a little in the lonely secrecy of her bed, still denying to herself that Alex had meant anything to her.

‘Your order has arrived, then,’ Anna commented, and then caught her breath on a sharp exclamation of pleasure as she saw the glass that Beth had already unpacked.

‘Oh, Beth, it’s beautiful,’ she half whispered in awe. ‘I must confess when you told us about it I couldn’t imagine...I
didn’t
imagine just how wonderful it would actually be. This is exquisite...’

‘Exquisite, expensive and not actually my order,’ Beth told her ruefully.

‘Oh?’

‘It’s a long story,’ Beth protested, shaking her head a little in denial of the questioning look she could see in her godmother’s eyes.

‘I’ve got time—plenty of time,’ Anna assured her.

It would be a relief to tell someone exactly what had happened, Beth admitted, especially if that someone was her loving, gently non-judgemental godmother.

‘Well, it’s like this...’ she began.

* * *

‘And so you see,’ Beth concluded, when she had finished explaining to Anna just what had happened, ‘there’s no way I can keep the glass, nor accept such an expensive present...’

‘Not even from the man you love?’ Anna suggested gently.

Beth flushed, shaking her head.

‘
Especially
not from the man I love,’ she objected. ‘I just don’t know what I’m going to do, Anna, how I’m going to explain...’

‘Well, I can’t give you any advice other than to tell you to follow your heart, to listen
with
your heart and your emotions.’

‘But I can’t just tell him that I love him. I can’t say that I lied...that I want him...that I...’

‘Why not?’ Anna asked her mildly. ‘You’ve told
me
!’

CHAPTER TEN

W
HY
NOT
INDEED
?

Beth gnawed on her bottom lip. Anna had gone and she was on her own; the shop was locked and she had made herself a meal which she had been totally unable to eat. It was now just gone seven o’clock. She had Alex’s address and his telephone number because they were written on the delivery note that came with the glass. All she had to do was pick up the phone and dial.

And then what? Tell him, I love you, Alex. I was wrong about you, about everything, and now I can tell you that I’ve loved you all the time. Now I can allow myself to admit that I love you? Would he believe her? And even if he did how would he feel about the paucity of her gesture, her
love
, when compared with the rich generosity of his? It wasn’t that she loved him any less than he did her; that was impossible. Her love was just as deep, just as committed...just as intense. It was just that her previous experience had made her wary of giving too much too soon, and meeting him had in one sense come too soon on top of her realisation of Julian’s perfidy.

At least Alex would never be able to accuse her of using him as...

She started to dial his number and then stopped. Perhaps tomorrow, after she had had time to think properly, to rehearse what she needed to say...or maybe... She had taken the gift-wrapped box his aunt had given her upstairs, and her attention was caught by it. She went over to it and picked it up. It was heavy. ‘You will open it with Alex...when you are together,’ she had told Beth.

Suddenly a very daring and dangerous plan occurred to her. Without giving herself time to change her mind, Beth picked up the box and grabbed her coat and her car keys.

Lexminster wasn’t that far away—a two-hour drive, maybe even less at this time of night.

* * *

Alex picked up some papers he had brought home to work on. His mother had telephoned earlier, inviting him over for dinner.

‘Your aunt will be here, but only for the one night; she’s flying on to New York tomorrow...’

Alex had been tempted, but he had already endured one very stern lecture from her on his foolhardiness and stubborn persistence in persuading her to give priority to his order for Beth. When would she receive it? he wondered. His aunt had promised, albeit reluctantly, that she would have it in time for the Christmas market.

He wasn’t quite sure how Beth would react when she
did
receive it. It wasn’t entirely impossible that she would send it back to him in a million broken pieces, but he suspected that it might be that she couldn’t bring herself to destroy something which he knew already she would find irresistibly beautiful.

He had made himself a meal earlier but had not really felt like eating it. God, but he ached for Beth. Somehow, and he didn’t know quite how yet, he was going to find a way to convince her that he loved her, that he was genuine and that she loved him—because Alex was convinced that she did. She might claim that all they had shared had been sex, but Alex knew her, and she simply wasn’t that kind of woman. Her emotions ran too deep and too strong for her to divorce herself from them like that. She could not have responded to him the way she had without feeling something for him. He was convinced of it.

He frowned as he heard his doorbell ring. He wasn’t really in the mood for company. He got up and walked from his living room into the hallway and opened the front door.

‘Beth!’

Beth stood nervously in the doorway, her nervousness increased by the shock she could see in Alex’s eyes and hear in his voice.

‘I...’ She took a step backwards and looked wildly over her shoulder, as though about to flee.

Immediately Alex reached for her wrist, drawing her gently but firmly inside and closing the door behind her.

Beneath his grasp her wrist-bones felt heart-wrenchingly fragile. Under her free arm she was clutching a large rectangular parcel against her body.

‘A present...for me...?’ he asked teasingly, trying to lighten her tension.

‘No, actually it’s for me...from your aunt,’ Beth told him in a disjointed, almost staccato little burst of speech. ‘She said you would have one too and that we had to open them together. Alex, why did you do...why did you send me the glass? You must know that I can’t accept it...’

To her own consternation her eyes filled with tears. Whilst she was talking Alex had been urging her along his hallway and was now ushering her into a beautifully proportioned room which, in some obscure way, reminded her of the drawing room in the castle. Her face started to burn, her heart thumping at the memories she was evoking.

‘Come and sit down and we’ll talk about it,’ Alex suggested, relieving her of her coat and guiding her towards a softly upholstered and very deep sofa.

A little unsteadily Beth sank into it. In addition to relieving her of her coat Alex had also relieved her of the cumbersome parcel.

When he returned he was carrying two glasses.

‘It’s brandy,’ he told her. ‘Drink it; it will help you to relax a bit...’

Dutifully Beth took a sip and then pulled a face.

‘I’ve already had champagne with your aunt,’ she told him as she put her glass down. ‘Perhaps the two don’t mix. Alex...I can’t accept your gift. It’s wonderful...the glass is beautiful, even more beautiful than I could have imagined, but why...why did you do it?’ she asked him, abandoning the reasoned, rational argument she had prepared and doing instead what Anna had urged her to do and responding only to her emotions.

‘Didn’t my aunt tell you?’ Alex asked her ruefully. He hadn’t thought that his aunt would hand Beth’s glass over to her in person, but then realistically he should perhaps have guessed that it was the kind of thing she would do. She was extremely picky about whom she allowed to have her precious glass, and, of course, Alex’s own admissions to her had aroused her curiosity about Beth to an even greater intensity.

Beth hesitated, unable to look at him.

‘She said...she said it was because you loved me,’ she told him huskily. She could feel Alex looking at her, and her own gaze was drawn to his, her face flushing as she saw the look in his eyes.

‘And did you believe her?’ he asked her quietly.

Beth bit her lip.

‘I...’ She felt as though she was drowning, losing control, fighting to prevent herself from being swept under by the force of her own emotions, afraid of their power—and yet at the same time a part of her was longing to give in, to give up, to let someone else carry the burden of her loving for her.

‘I...I wanted to,’ she admitted truthfully.

‘Why...because you wanted to have more sex with me?’ Alex couldn’t resist probing, a little unkindly.

Beth reacted as though he had actually physically hurt her, her breath leaking from her lungs, her face draining of colour, even her hand going out as though to ward off an actual blow.

‘Oh, Beth...my love, my precious, precious love, I’m sorry,’ Alex apologised remorsefully. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘No. No...it’s all right. I know I deserved it,’ Beth interrupted him jerkily. ‘I shouldn’t have come here.’ She tried to get up, desperate to escape before she completed her own humiliation by bursting into tears. She had got it all wrong. Alex didn’t love her at all. His aunt had got it all wrong.

‘What you deserve is to be cherished and loved, adored, worshipped,’ Alex was telling her extravagantly.

‘Alex,’ she protested.

‘How could you
possibly
think I didn’t mean it?’ Alex overrode her protest tenderly. ‘Have you any idea how much I’ve missed you, how many times I’ve been tempted to come and find you, capture you, kidnap you, bear you off with me to my lair as one of my ancestors might have done?’

‘I can’t imagine you ever displaying such caveman-like tactics,’ Beth told him ruefully. ‘You...’

‘No? Watch me,’ Alex mock-threatened her, and then, before she could speak, he was reaching for her, wrapping her in his arms, kissing her with a passion that broke through all her resistance.

She tried to speak, to protest...plead for time and explanations, but her words were lost, silenced beneath the hungry pressure of his mouth that only relaxed when she made a tiny sound. Whilst he was kissing her he dropped his arms to his sides, sliding his fingers between hers so that they were standing body to body, arm to arm, only their heads, their lips moving. Her own body was trembling with increasing intensity as she reacted to his closeness. Her body was betraying her far more than any words, Beth knew.

‘“Just sex” could never feel like this,’ Alex whispered thickly against her mouth. ‘“Just sex” could never make me want you the way I do, and it could never make you respond to me the way you are.’

‘Alex, I got it all wrong,’ Beth told him guiltily. ‘I totally misjudged you and I misjudged my own feelings as well, totally and wilfully. I thought—’

‘I know what you
thought
,’ Alex interrupted her. ‘But what is more interesting right now is what you
felt
...what you are feeling... Or shall I discover for myself?’

She was wearing a soft buttoned cardigan, and as Alex started to trace the vee of flesh it exposed Beth’s whole body began to quiver. Her desire for him drenched her, flooded her, melted her; she was reaching eagerly for him long before he had finished unbuttoning her cardigan, and touching him long, long before his hands had started to cup her naked breasts, stroking them, his fingers plucking delicately at her tight nipples.

‘Tell me you love me,’ he demanded thickly against her breast as he slid to his knees in front of her.

‘I love you... I love you... I... Oh, Alex, Alex,’ Beth gasped, torn between shock and fierce arousal as he pulled off her skirt and slid his hands up under her briefs to cup the rounded shape of her buttocks whilst his tongue-tip rimmed her navel. She knew what would happen next, what she
wanted
to happen next. Just thinking about how it had felt to have his breath, his mouth, his tongue against that part of her body made her shudder from head to foot in explosive yearning.

They made love quickly and fiercely, like two starving people attacking a banquet, their appetites too hungry to be easily sated and yet their stomachs too shrunken by deprivation for the endurance required to eat their leisurely fill.

All they could manage was a taste here, a mouthful there, a gulp of love’s rich, raw wine before they were both crying out in their need for completion. It came swiftly, hotly, rawly almost, Beth acknowledged as she lay panting and light-headed in Alex’s arms.

Later, when he carried her to bed, she protested, ‘I can’t...I’ve got to go home. It’s late—the shop...’

‘You can. I am now your home. The shop can wait...we can’t...’

This time they did their personal sensual banquet full justice, eating appreciatively of every course, true connoisseurs of what was set before them.

‘What do you suppose is in the parcel?’ Beth asked Alex drowsily just before she finally fell asleep in his arms.

‘We shall have to wait and see. Remember we can’t open them until I have mine.’

‘Mmm... Alex, have I told you how much I love you?’

‘Many times,’ Alex assured her gently, knowing just why she asked.

‘I never really loved Julian Cox, you know,’ Beth assured him. ‘It was just... I wanted to be in love with him...I wanted to believe him...’

‘Forget him. He doesn’t matter to us,’ Alex told her.

Beth gave a soft sigh of contented pleasure. She loved it that Alex felt so secure with her, that he could accept her honest admission that she had made a mistake.

‘I always knew you were plotting to make me have your aunt’s glass,’ she teased him lovingly as she reached out to trace the shape of his mouth with her fingertip.

As he nipped and nibbled at her probing finger Alex replied. ‘No, you’re wrong,’ he denied, and then he said softly, ‘What I’ve been plotting ever since I first saw you is to get you so that I can do this...’

As he rolled her over on top of him Beth protested, torn between excitement and laughter.

‘Alex, we can’t...not again...’

‘Oh, yes, we can,’ he assured her. ‘Oh, yes, we can!’