A Little Seduction Omnibus (16 page)

What had he seen in her to arouse that contempt? Did he perhaps think the length of her honey-blonde hair was too youthful for a woman in her thirties? Did he find her caramel-coloured trousers with their matching long coat dull and plain, perhaps, compared with the clothes of the no doubt very youthful and very attractive women
he
probably spent his time with? Did it amuse him to see the way the soft cream cashmere of her sweater discreetly concealed the soft swell of her breasts when he had good reason to know just how full and firm they actually were?

What did it matter
what
Hugo thought? Dee derided herself as he turned away from her and strode towards the door. After all, he had made it plain enough just how little he cared about
her
thoughts or her feelings. She shivered a little, as though the room had suddenly gone very cold.

Ten minutes after Hugo had left Dee heard Peter coughing upstairs. Anxiously she hurried up to his room, but to her relief as she opened his bedroom door she saw that he was sitting up in bed, smiling reassuringly at her, his colour much warmer and healthier than it had been when she had seen him earlier.

‘Where’s Hugo?’ he asked Dee as she returned his smile.

‘He’s gone to collect his things,’ she answered him. It hurt a little to recognise how eager he was to have the other man’s company—and, it seemed, in preference to her own.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked him. ‘Would you like a drink...or something to eat?’

‘I’m feeling fine, and, yes, a cup of tea would be very welcome, Dee.’ He thanked her.

It didn’t take her very long to make it, and she carried the tray upstairs to Peter. In addition to his tea she had made him some delicately cut little sandwiches, as well as buttering two of the home-made scones she had brought with her for him. She knew he had a weakness for them, and couldn’t help smiling at the enthusiasm he exhibited when he saw them.

‘I didn’t realise that you and Hugo had kept in touch,’ she commented carefully when she was pouring his tea. He had insisted that he didn’t either need or want to go back to sleep.

‘Mmm... Well, to be honest, we hadn’t...didn’t. But then I happened to run into him a few months ago quite by chance. He was here in Lexminster on business and we were both guests at the same drinks do. I wasn’t sure it was him at first...but then he came over and introduced himself.’

‘Mmm...he has changed,’ Dee agreed, bending her head over the teapot as she poured her own tea and hoping that her voice wasn’t giving her away.
She
would have recognised Hugo anywhere—there were some things that were just too personal ever to be changed. The aura that surrounded a person’s body, which one knew instinctively once one had been permitted within their most intimate personal space, their scent, as highly individual as their fingerprints, and even the way they breathed. These were things that could not be changed.

‘What’s he actually doing these days?’ she enquired as carelessly as she could.

‘Hasn’t he told you? He’s the chief executive in charge of a very special United Nations aid programme. As I understand it, from what he’s told me, their plan is to educate and help the people they’re dealing with to become self-sufficient and to combat the ravages of the years of drought their land has suffered. He’s very enthusiastic about a new crop they’re still working on, which, if it’s successful, will help to provide nearly forty per cent of the people’s protein requirements.’

‘That
is
ambitious,’ Dee acknowledged.

‘Ambitious and expensive,’ Peter agreed. ‘The crop is still very much in the early experimental stages. The whole scheme involves huge amounts of international funding and support, and one of Hugo’s responsibilities is to lobby politicians for those funds. He was saying that he’d much prefer to be working in the field, but as I reminded him he always did have a first-class brain. At one time I even thought he might continue with his studies and make a career in academics himself, but he was always such a firebrand...’

A firebrand. Dee had thought of him more as a knight in shining armour, rescuing not distressed damsels but others less fortunate than himself and with far more important needs. Being romantic and idealistic herself, it had seemed to her that Hugo had met every one of her impossibly high ideals and criteria, morally...emotionally...and sexually... Oh, yes, quite definitely sexually! Her virginal reluctance to commit herself physically to a man had been totally and completely swept away by the passion that Hugo had aroused in her. Utterly, totally and completely. She hadn’t so much as timidly crossed her virginal Rubicon as flung herself headlong and eagerly into its tumultuous erotic flood!

‘You should talk with him, Dee,’ Peter was continuing enthusiastically. ‘He’s got some very good ideas.’

‘Mmm... I hardly think learning to grow our own protein is a particularly urgent consideration for the residents of Rye,’ Dee couldn’t resist pointing out a little dryly.

It irked her a little to be told she should crouch eagerly at Hugo’s feet, as though he were some sort of master and she his pupil. In fact, it irked her rather more than just a little, she admitted. She might not have completed her degree course—her father’s death had put an end to that—and she had certainly not been able to go on to obtain her doctorate, but what she had learned both from her father and through her own ‘hands-on’ experience had more than equipped her to deal proficiently and, she believed, even creatively with the complexities and demands of her own work. So far as she was concerned she certainly did not need Hugo’s advice or instruction on how to manage her business.

‘You’ve got a definite flair for finance,’ her father had told her approvingly, and Dee knew without being immodest that he had been quite right.

She also knew she had a reputation locally for being not just astute but also extremely shrewd. Her father, on the other hand, had been almost too ready to trust in other people’s honesty, to believe that they were as genuine and philanthropic as he himself had been, which was why...

‘Dee, you aren’t listening to me,’ Peter was complaining tetchily.

‘Oh, Peter, I’m sorry,’ Dee apologised soothingly.

‘I was just saying about Hugo, and about how you would be well-advised to seek his advice. I know your father was very proud of you, Dee, and that he meant it for the best when he left you in charge of his business affairs, but personally I’ve always felt that it’s a very heavy burden for you to carry. If you’d married it might have been different. A woman needs a man to lean on,’ Peter opined.

Dee forced herself not to protest. Peter meant well, she reminded herself. It was just that he was so out of step with modern times. It didn’t help, of course, that he had never married, and so had never had a wife or daughter of his own.

‘By the way, did you ever find out what had happened to that Julian Cox character?’ Peter asked her.

Immediately Dee froze.

‘Julian Cox? No...why do you ask?’ Warily she waited for his response.

‘No reason; it was just that Hugo and I were talking over old times and I remembered how badly your father was taken in by Cox. That was before we knew the truth about him, of course. Your father confessed to me—’

‘My father barely knew Julian,’ Dee denied fiercely. ‘And he certainly had no need to confess anything to anyone!’

‘Maybe not, but they were on a couple of charity committees together. I remember your father being very impressed by some of Julian’s ideas for raising money,’ Peter insisted stubbornly. ‘It was such a tragedy, your father dying when he did. To lose his life like that, and in such a senseless accident...’

Dee’s mouth had gone dry. She always hated talking about her father’s death. As Peter was saying, it had been a tragic, senseless way to die.

‘Hugo said as much himself...’

Dee felt as though her heart might stop beating.

‘You were discussing my father’s death with Hugo?’

The sharp, shocked tone of her voice caused Peter to look uncertainly at her.

‘Hugo brought it up. We were talking about your father’s charity work.’

Dee tried to force herself to relax. Her heart was thudding heavily as anxiety-induced adrenalin was released into her bloodstream.

‘I’m a little bit concerned about this bee you’ve got in your bonnet about these young people, Dee,’ Peter was saying now, a little bit reprovingly. ‘I’m not sure that your father would have approved of what you’re trying to do. Being philanthropic is all very well, but these youngsters...’ He paused and cocked his head. ‘I applaud your concern for them, but, my dear, I really don’t think I can agree that we should fund the kind of thing you’ve got in mind.’

Dee’s heart started to sink. She had always known it would be difficult to convince Peter to support what she wanted to do, and the last thing she wanted to do now was to upset him by arguing with him. She had no idea how serious his condition might be, and she suspected that any attempt on her part to find out would be met with strong opposition from Dr Jane Harper. If it were Hugo, now, who wanted to know...! She was being unfair, Dee warned herself mentally—unfair and immature. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t right!

‘What exactly
is
Hugo doing in Lexminster?’ she asked Peter, trying to give his thoughts a new direction.

‘It’s business,’ Peter told her vaguely.

‘Business?’ Dee raised her eyebrows. ‘I thought you said his work involved lobbying politicians for international support for his aid programme.’

‘Yes. It does,’ Peter agreed. ‘But Lexminster University has access to certain foundation funds which have been donated over the years to be used as the university sees fit.’

‘For charitable causes,’ Dee agreed. She knew all about such foundations.

‘Hugo hopes to get the university to agree to donate all or part of them to his aid programme.’

‘But
I
thought they were supposed to be used to benefit university scholars’ projects.’

‘Hugo
was
a university scholar,’ Peter reminded her simply. Yes, he had been, and Peter was on the committee that dealt with the disbursement of those funds, as Dee already knew. She started to frown. Was Hugo’s desire to move in with Peter and take care of him as altruistic as it had initially seemed? The Hugo she had known would certainly never have stooped to such tactics. But then the Hugo she had known would never have worn a Savile Row suit, nor a subtly expensive and discreet cologne that smelled of fresh mountain air just warmed by a hint of citrus.

Dee was becoming increasingly alarmed at the thought of leaving Peter on his own with Hugo, but she sensed that it wouldn’t be wise to express her doubts. From what Peter had already said to her it was obvious that for him Hugo could do no wrong.

Dee was frowning over this unpalatable knowledge when she heard someone knocking on the front door.

‘That will be Hugo!’ Peter exclaimed with evident pleasure. ‘You’d better go and let him in.’

Yes, and no doubt lie prone in the hallway so that he could wipe his boots on her, Dee decided acidly as she got up off the bed.

CHAPTER THREE

‘H
OW
’
S
P
ETER
?’ H
UGO
asked Dee tersely as she opened the door to him.

‘He seems a lot better, although I’m sure that Dr Jane Harper would be delighted to give you a much more professional opinion if you wanted one,’ Dee responded wryly, forcing herself not to wince as Hugo’s glance swept her from head to foot with open dislike.

‘It’s odd how one’s memory can play tricks on one. I had a distinct memory of you being an intelligent woman, Dee.’

‘Well, I’m certainly intelligent enough to wonder what it is that makes
you
so anxious to help Peter.’

As Dee stressed the word ‘you’ she could see the anger flashing like lightning in Hugo’s eyes. It gave her an odd, sharp stab of pain-tipped pleasure to know that she had drawn such a reaction from him, even whilst she had to force herself to blot out of her memory the knowledge that once there had been a time when that lightning look had been born of the urgency of his desire
for
her, instead of the urgency of his ire
against
her.

‘I am anxious to help him, as you put it, because it concerns me that he should so obviously be on his own,’ Hugo replied pointedly.

‘He isn’t on his own; he’s got me,’ Dee protested fiercely.

Immediately Hugo’s eyebrows rose.

‘Oh...? He told me that the last time he had seen you was over two weeks ago.’

Angrily Dee frowned.

‘I try to see him as often as I can, but—’

‘Other people have a prior claim on your time?’ Hugo suggested. ‘Be honest, Dee,
you
couldn’t have moved in here to take care of him, could you?’

‘He could have come to Rye with me,’ Dee protested, without answering his question. ‘And if you hadn’t been here he would have.’

‘He would? Yes, I’m sure he would. But would that have been what he really wanted? He wants to stay here, Dee. This is his home. His books, his things, his memories...his
life
...are all here.’

‘Maybe, but you can’t stay with him for ever, can you, Hugo? And what’s going to happen to him once you’ve gone?’

‘Since, for the foreseeable future, I’m going to be based in the UK, there’s nothing to stop me from making my home here in Lexminster if I choose to do so. It’s convenient for the airport and—’

‘You’re planning to live
permanently
in Lexminster...?’

Dee couldn’t help her consternation from showing in her voice, and she knew that Hugo had recognised it from the look he gave her.

‘What’s wrong?’ he taunted her. ‘Don’t you
like
the thought of me living here?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Dee told him truthfully, too driven by the way he was goading her and the shock of what he had just told her to be cautious or careful. ‘I don’t like it at all.’

‘Oh, and why not, I wonder? Or can I guess? Could it have something to do with this...?’

And then, before she could guess what he intended to do, he had dropped the hold-all he was carrying and pinned her back against the wall, his hands hard and strong on her body as he held her arms, his body so close to her own that she could feel its fierce male heat engulfing her.

Once, being held like this by him would have thrilled and excited her, her awareness of the danger he was inciting only heightening her intense desire for him. The sex between them had been so passionately explosive that for years after he had gone she had still dreamed about it...and about him, waking up drenched in perspiration, longing for him, aching for him; and now, like a faint reflection of those feelings, she could feel her body starting to shudder and her nipples starting to harden beneath the practical protection of her jumper.

‘Cashmere... Do you know how many Third World people the cost of this would feed...?’ she heard Hugo murmuring contemptuously as his fingers touched the soft fabric of her sleeve. His mouth was only centimetres from her own, and Dee knew that merely to breathe would bring it even closer, but she still couldn’t resist the urge to verbally defend herself. After all, it wasn’t as if he was any less expensively dressed.

‘It was a present,’ she told him angrily. ‘From a friend.’

‘A friend...’ Hugo’s eyebrows rose. ‘A
friend
, and not your husband?’

‘I don’t
have
a husband,’ Dee gritted furiously.

‘No husband!’

Something hot and dangerous flared in his eyes and Dee started to panic, but it was too late. The damage had already been done, the tinder lit.

‘No husband,’ Hugo repeated thickly. ‘What did he do, Dee? Refuse to play the game your way...just like I did...?’

‘No. I—’

Dee gave a gasp and then made a small shocked sound as the pressure of Hugo’s mouth on her own prevented her from saying
anything
else.

It had been so long since she had been kissed like this. So long since she had been kissed at all. So long since she had felt... Hungrily her mouth opened under Hugo’s, and equally hungrily her hands reached for him.

She was reacting to him as though she was starving for him...dying for him, Dee recognised as she fought to control the primeval flood of her own desire. Her reaction to him must be something to do with all her dredging up of the past, she decided dizzily. It couldn’t be because she still wanted him, not after all these years... Years when she had been willingly and easily celibate...years when the
last
thing she had ever imagined herself doing was something like this. He was kissing her properly now, releasing her arms to cup her face.

Dee gave a gasping moan beneath her breath as his tongue traced the shape of her lips. If he kept on kissing her like this... Beneath her sweater she could feel the taut ache in her breasts—an ache that was already spreading wantonly even deeper through her body.

Against her mouth Hugo was saying tauntingly, ‘No husband, you say. Well, it certainly shows.’

Immediately Dee came to her senses. Angrily she pushed him away, managing to lever herself off the wall as she did so.

‘I’ve heard the rumours about women of a certain age, with their biological clocks ticking away, but...’

‘But you prefer them slightly younger...around Dr Jane’s age, no doubt,’ was the only reply that Dee’s shaking lips could frame.

She was totally stunned by her own behaviour, her own reaction, her own feelings. What on earth had she thought she was doing? She felt as though she had been subjected to a whirlwind which had sprung up out of nowhere, leaving her...devastated.

‘What I prefer is...my business,’ he told her quietly, and then, whilst she was still trying to pull herself together, he demanded curtly, ‘How long have you been divorced?’

‘Divorced!’ Dee stared at him. ‘I’m
not
divorced,’ she told him weakly. She saw the look on his face and then added angrily, ‘I’m not divorced because I have
never
been married.’

‘Not married? But I was told... I heard...’ He was frowning at her. ‘I heard that you’d married your cousin and that you had a daughter...’

Dee thought quickly. Two of her cousins
had
married, and they
did
have a daughter of nine now, but she didn’t tell Hugo so, simply shrugging instead, and informing him dismissively, ‘Well, I’m afraid you heard wrong. That’s what listening to gossip does for you,’ she added pointedly. ‘I’m not married, I don’t have a daughter, and I’m most certainly not a victim of my biological clock.’ Two truths—one fib. But she was determined that Hugo wasn’t going to know that!

‘You wanted children so much. I can remember that that was one of the things we used to argue about. I wanted us to wait until we’d had a few years together before we started a family, but you were insistent that you wanted a baby almost straight away, just as soon as we were married.’

As he spoke automatically Dee reached for the bare place on her ring finger which had once carried his special ring—a family heirloom he had given her to mark their commitment to one another.

‘So that’s two things we still have in common,’ she said. ‘Neither of us is married and neither of us has children.’

‘Three things, in fact, when you count...’ He was looking at her mouth, Dee recognised, and beneath her sweater the ache in her breasts became an open yearning pulse.

‘Three...?’ she managed to question croakily, ignoring the savage tug of her own newly awakened sexuality.

‘Mmm...both of us are involved in fundraising for charitable organisations. I’d better go up and see Peter,’ he added calmly.

‘Er, yes...I...’ She was behaving as foolishly as though she were still the teenage girl he had knocked off her bicycle as he’d come flying round the corner on his way to one of Peter’s meetings—a meeting he had never actually attended. By the time he had picked her up and carefully checked her over for bruises or any other damage, and then insisted on taking her for a restorative cup of coffee, Peter’s meeting had been over—but their love affair had just been beginning.

* * *

Half an hour later Dee had said goodbye to Peter and was on her way back home. The dazzling sun shining through her windscreen was making her head start to ache—or was her headache being caused by something far more personal?

She still couldn’t believe she had reacted the way she had to Hugo’s kiss. It was just so totally foreign to her nature to allow herself to get so out of control, never mind to exhibit such naked sexual hunger... How Hugo must have been laughing at her, enjoying her self-inflicted humiliation, enjoying her eager desire for him...her need...

Groaning under her breath, Dee suddenly realised that she was almost in danger of overtaking a car which was in the outside lane of the motorway whilst she was on the inside one, and quickly she took her foot off the accelerator.

She shouldn’t be thinking about Hugo. By rights what she ought to be concentrating on was the problems Peter’s continuing ill health could cause her professionally. Perhaps now was the time to tactfully find a way of persuading him to relinquish his role on the committee, but there was no way she would want to broach such a subject with him if it was going to adversely affect his health. Just exactly what
was
wrong with him she would have to find out, but she suspected that the only way she was going to be able to do that was through Hugo.

It galled her pride to even think of having to ask for Hugo’s assistance, but the work of the charity was far too important for her to let her own pride stand in its way—for her father’s sake.

Her father. Dee could feel her eyes start to sting with tears, hot and acid, too painful to be allowed to fall.

‘Oh, Dad,’ she whispered under her breath.

‘Accidental death,’ the coroner had pronounced gravely at the inquest, and even then Dee had not cried. She had wanted to...needed to...but she had been too afraid to do so, afraid that even now someone might still stand up and say the word she had so dreaded to hear—‘suicide.’ No one had said it openly to her, or even hinted at it in her presence, but she had heard it nonetheless in her nightmares, whispered malevolently on the fetid breath of envy that could so easily have destroyed her father’s reputation and everything he had worked so proudly for.

Suicide. The taking of his own life because he had been too afraid...too ashamed...

Suicide. But it had
not
been. He had
not
taken his own life...he had
not
destroyed his own reputation even if Julian Cox had. Julian Cox...

The floodgates were open now, and the memories could not be held back any longer. Impatiently Dee drove up the slip road and off the motorway, anxious to be safely at home before she was swept under in their powerful undertow.

Julian Cox, her father, and most of all Hugo; those were the ghosts who inhabited her past, the ghosts she had fought so strenuously to hold at bay. Julian Cox, her father, Hugo...and the saddest and most forlorn ghost of them all: the ghost of the love she and Hugo had once shared.

She could feel her tears now, as sharp and painful as splintered shards of glass, burning her eyes, but she must not let them fall yet, not until she was safely in the privacy of her own home.

Hugo... Hugo... Why...why had he come back...?

The sun was still shining, its evening rays casting a warm mellow golden glow over her driveway and home as Dee brought her car to a halt in front of the house where she had been brought up. But she was oblivious to the tranquil serenity of her surroundings as she got out of the car and headed for the house.

Once inside, she hurried into the elegant drawing room which she only really used when she was entertaining, tugging open the doors to the drinks cabinet and searching inside it for something—anything—that would help to blot out the emotional pain she was feeling. Something—
anything
—that would act as a protective buffer between her and the thoughts she did not want, the feelings she did not want, the
past
she didn’t want.

Her fingers curled round the cool glass of a bottle. Whisky. It had been her father’s favourite but very rare bedtime treat.

Through the tears still blurring her eyes Dee looked at the bottle, and then very carefully and very slowly she replaced it in the cabinet and closed the doors. Squaring her shoulders, she walked firmly out of the room and headed for the kitchen.

As she shrugged off her coat and reached for the kettle she closed her eyes. Her father had been a man of such strong principles and such great pride, and in no area of his life had he had more pride than in his love for his daughter. He had been a quiet, gentle man, reserved in many ways, but Dee had never, ever doubted that he loved her.

After the death of her mother, when she had been so very young, he had brought her up on his own, declining to take the advice of his many female relatives and either hire someone to look after her or, once she was old enough, send her away to boarding-school. Perhaps the way he had brought her up
had
been a little old fashioned, perhaps she
had
, as one of her aunts had once criticised, become a small adult whilst she was still a child, perhaps she
had
, through her father, developed too strong a sense of duty and too weak a capacity to have fun, but she had been a happy child, a much loved child; she had never doubted that.