An Innocent Affair (10 page)

‘You should have stayed in bed, Rebecca.'

Hope had a vivid mental picture of Alex slipping beneath the covers and pressing his cold body against a warm, soft, yielding feminine one. Masochistically she dwelt on the powerful image.

‘Don't be silly, Alex. I've made up a bed for—Hope, is it?' She smiled with what appeared to be genuine warmth in Hope's direction.

The attitude between them spoke of easy intimacy and long familiarity. The look, the casual touch of her hand on his arm. Jealousy located Hope's most vulnerable spots and stabbed repeatedly with a poison-tipped dart. Oh, God, she looks nice, Hope thought dismally. It would have been so much easier if she'd been unfriendly and hostile. Or at least an empty-headed bimbo. A horrifying truth suddenly presented itself to her.
I'm
the empty sexual experience, the light relief, the bimbo, and
she's
the real relationship. After years of refusing to be type-cast Hope had finally succumbed in a big way.

The attraction of the enormous room, with its lofty ceiling and large stone open grate, big enough to hold a
small tree, was lost on her. Hope wanted to be home—actually, she wanted to be anywhere but here.

Alex's wet boots had left, wet, snowy imprints on one of the rugs, which had all the faded splendour of an original Eastern work of art. Hope noticed that Rebecca's bare feet were silent on the polished wood boards and that her feet were long and narrow. It was easier to dwell on inconsequential details.

The sofa he placed her on was generously proportioned, as were most of the pieces of furniture in the sparingly furnished room. The rough-plastered walls were colour-washed a warm shade of burnt sienna, and plants were trained around what must once have been the original waterwheel, set in an alcove along one wall.

‘You both need a warm drink,' Rebecca said, glancing with some concern from Alex's expressionless features to Hope's pale, distraught face.

‘I could do with something stronger,' Hope said suddenly.

‘Will brandy do, or would you prefer—?'

‘Brandy's fine,' Hope interrupted abruptly.

The amber liquid burnt as it went down and pooled in her stomach, leaving a warm glow. A bleat suddenly reminded her of her charge.

‘A lamb! How delightful.'

‘An orphan born too early. She's hungry,' Hope said, digging into her pocket for a bottle. ‘Could you warm this a little, please?'

‘Oh, can I feed her?' Rebecca pleaded, with a childish delight that seemed out of step with her sophisticated aura.

Hope shrugged. ‘If you want to.' You've got everything else, why not her too? she thought dully. She gave over her charge reluctantly.

‘It's called Daphne,' Alex said drily.

‘Is that a classical allusion?' Rebecca asked, laughing as she held the lamb up to her face.

‘No, she looks like a girl I went to school with. People always wanted to cuddle and pet her too.'

‘What happened to your Daphne?' Alex asked as Rebecca disappeared from the room.

‘She has five children and three ex-husbands. I can't stay here, Alex!' she hissed, glancing furtively over her shoulder at the closed door.

‘Why not?'

‘Don't be obtuse! Don't you
care
if Rebecca's hurt?' It would be pretty pointless asking if he cared how she felt. The answer to that question was blindingly obvious.

‘Why should Rebecca be hurt?' He continued to loosen the laces on his boots.

‘Are you trying to tell me she doesn't mind if you sleep with other women? To think you had the gall to read me the riot act over Lloyd when all along you were coming back here to her. Double standards doesn't even
begin
to cover it!'

She might as well have been talking to the three-feet-thick stone wall behind him for all the impact her scornful words made. He kicked off his boots, and the wet socks followed them. One hand went up behind his head and he leant back into the deeply upholstered sofa—a twin to the one she lay on.

‘Don't compare my relationship with Rebecca to yours with Elliot.'

Ironically this was a fair comment—but not for the reason he implied. There
was
one big difference: Lloyd wasn't and never had been her lover. Right at this moment it helped her that Alex thought the opposite. She couldn't match his calculating attitude to sex, but he wasn't going to know that if he imagined she was as casual as him. If he knew I'd actually fallen in love…!
She shuddered. The humiliation didn't bear thinking about.

‘She knows that you spent last night in my bed, does she?' she challenged.

‘She doesn't, and she won't—unless you tell her.' His steady gaze openly challenged her.

‘Don't worry,' Hope choked. ‘It's not something I'm likely to boast about.'

‘I wasn't worried.' He yawned lazily.

‘My God, I pity her!' she said unsteadily

‘No, you don't,' he contradicted. ‘You're as jealous as hell of her. What's wrong, Hope? Don't you like the idea of my hands on her warm skin? My mouth—'

‘Shut up, shut up!' she yelled, placing her hands over her ears to shut out the slyly insidious sound of his voice. ‘You're disgusting,' she spat.

‘But you liked all the disgusting things I did, didn't you, Hope? Your body responds just thinking about them, doesn't it?' His cruel confidence made her grow pale. ‘Is that how you aroused yourself with Lloyd? Did you close your eyes and think of me?'

‘You're sick!' Had he just predicted her future? she wondered bleakly. Had he spoilt her for any other man? If it had been just sex, she could have lived with it, but it was her love she'd wasted on this man. What a fool I am, she despaired.

Alex rubbed his closed fist across his cheekbone. The gesture made her realise for the first time how tired he looked. ‘That possibility had occurred to me,' he agreed cryptically.

‘She fell asleep. So sweet. I've given her the cat basket and put it by the radiator.' Rebecca cinched the belt of the robe about her narrow middle and looked at Alex, a question in her eyes. A person would have needed to
be deaf and blind not to notice the atmosphere in the room. Alex just smiled sardonically in response.

‘What about the cat?' Hope asked. Rebecca's presence rescued her from any further displays of Alex's warped, but uncannily accurate perception.

‘It lost the last of its nine lives in the summer,' Rebecca explained. ‘I never did know what you saw in the creature, Alex. It was a horrid, bad-tempered beast.'

‘Cat lacked polish, but it had a lot of originality.'

‘It scratched me.'

‘It didn't like being stroked.'

Alex's eyes sought Hope's. His soft words had conjured up an image of his big hands moving down the curve of her arched spine. He couldn't know…it wasn't possible. She felt cold perspiration break out over her body.

‘Perhaps we should get some sleep for what's left of the night,' Alex said slowly as Hope licked her lips nervously.

‘Good idea,' Rebecca approved.

Hope nodded. She welcomed anything that gave her the opportunity to escape the scrutiny of those eyes.

The staircase was circular, with a wrought-iron balustrade. Even when she closed her eyes she could smell him and feel the warm strength of him as he carried her up.

Just when she needed them the breathing exercises she'd learnt in Yoga deserted her. Instead of having a calming and soothing effect, they alerted her to the fact that breathing wasn't the autonomic response people liked to believe. Her respirations were painfully laboured and erratic. At least suffocating should be diverting.

‘If you need anything just yell.'

She nodded faintly and wished he'd put her down.

‘Rebecca will see to the lamb.'

‘I couldn't possibly impose…' she began stiffly.

‘It'll be her pleasure. She'll dine out on the story for weeks whilst she regales her friends with tales of her bucolic adventures. Will you sleep?'

‘If I ever make it to my bed.' She turned her head to look pointedly at the neatly turned down twin divan beside the window.

‘Sleep well, Hope Lacey.' His throaty voice had a husky edge that felt like a caress to her body. Does he know I'm aching for him? she wondered dreamily. He adjusted the pillow before he relinquished his hold across her shoulders.

Lying supine, with Alex looming over her, she came close to total panic. She couldn't think; she forgot her own name for the space of several breaths. The divan was low and he was kneeling on the floor, his hands flat on either side of her head. She bit her lip to repress a groan when his hand stroked the hair fanned around her face. She
should
reject his touch, but she couldn't, by word or gesture. Her whole body was infused with a warm, weak longing. No matter how wrong it was, something inside her would always respond helplessly to him. This insight frightened her more than anything in her young life.

The sight of his predatory face, all sharp angles and hard planes, etched itself permanently in her mind before he pressed his mouth to hers with slow deliberation. The slick, silky thrust of his tongue into her open mouth made her moan.

‘Do you want me now?' The rasp of his erotic words sent shivers down to her toes. His mouth nuzzled against her earlobe.

Want! Want didn't begin to cover the hunger of her starving senses. ‘Why are you doing this to me?' she asked in a tortured whisper. ‘Do you hate me that much?
Your girlfriend—mistress—whatever, is only feet away, and you're… What sort of man are you, Alex?'

She felt the convulsive tremor that rippled through his big body. He stood up abruptly and stared down into her face.

‘If sin had a face…' he said harshly, then he shook his head, as if to dispel the image of her flushed, aroused features. ‘Goodnight.'

 

She might have managed to sleep for an hour at the most. Were they making love? Or was he sleeping in her arms? The torrid images persistently pervaded her mind. She didn't want to hear the sounds of their love-making, but her ears strained anyway, to catch a tell-tale creak or moan.

She didn't have any make-up in her bag to disguise the ravages of the night before, but fortunately she was blessed with the constitution of an ox. Her glow wasn't quite as luminous as usual, but only the harshest of critics would have noticed. She teamed a short black Lycra skirt with a deep blue cashmere tunic. No one looking at her would have guessed she'd just had the most traumatic twenty-four hours in her life.

‘I was going to bring you tea,' Rebecca exclaimed as Hope nimbly hopped into the kitchen. ‘How on earth did you get down the stairs?' she asked, looking from the crutches under Hope's arms to the plaster cast on her leg.

‘I shuffled on my behind,' Hope confessed. She knew Alex was watching her over the rim of his coffee cup and she refused to let him see how much it shook her just to be in the same room as him. ‘I've plenty of padding,' she joked with strained humour. She'd have flown if it meant she could avoid being held by Alex, and of course he'd known it.

‘Anxious to add your neck to the broken leg, are you?'

‘Worried about your insurance premiums again, Alex? I'm already suing him—did he tell you about that?'

‘I thought that was all settled.'

‘Maybe I want my day in court.' She didn't. She didn't want to pursue it at all. But when Alex had pointed out it was ‘just business' he hadn't left her much option. Jonathan would probably have a fit when she distributed the money to charity.

‘I'd have thought you'd have had enough bad publicity for one year.'

Hope smiled between set teeth. ‘I'm not sure my agent makes fine distinctions like that. Overexposure is something he dreams about.'

‘You're joking…right?' Rebecca waited with a bewildered expression for her anxious query to be settled.

‘Now that's an interesting question, Rebecca. Hope alternates between flinging my money back in my face and trying to screw me for all I've got.'

‘I'm feeling vindictive today.' She let her deliberately ambiguous words hang in the air.

Rebecca looked quite relieved when the doorbell rang. ‘That'll be my taxi. Goodbye, Hope, so nice to meet you. Thanks, Alex—and I do mean that,' she said with special emphasis as he picked up her cases. She shrugged on an ankle-length trenchcoat trimmed with fake fur over the black tailored trouser suit she wore. This morning the older woman's confidence was very apparent. There was nothing of the sentimental creature who'd begged to feed a baby lamb left today.

‘I'll take you to the station.'

‘Don't be silly, darling.'

‘Wasn't there something you wanted to say to Rebecca?'

Hope blinked and shot Alex a startled glance. She
hadn't expected him to call her bluff. It was ironic. Whereas her veiled threat had been meant to intimidate him, he looked to be the only really relaxed person in the room.

‘Thank you, Rebecca, for all your kindness. Could I share your taxi?' she added in a rush. ‘My sister lives the other side of the village.' Her brain had been a bit slow working out the three minus one equation, but now it had she was in a state of blind panic.

‘Rebecca is in a hurry—she'll miss her train,' Alex interjected smoothly before the other woman could speak. Hope glared at him in resentment as he ushered the older woman out of the room. He put his head back round the door. ‘I admire your restraint. And you'd only have embarrassed yourself if you'd told her.'

When he returned she had seated herself at the table and was sipping coffee with a casual nonchalance she wasn't feeling.

‘That was quite a display,' he observed. ‘Does frustration always make you so tetchy, or is this the real Hope?' Alex crammed some bread in the toaster. ‘You should eat.'