Penny Jordan Collection: Just One Night (21 page)

Immediately Georgia gave an involuntary shiver of sensual reaction, her nipples thrusting eagerly into dark, excited peaks. Just the thought of Piers’s hands cupping her naked breasts made her shudder voluptuously, but when he did so the pleasure she had imagined came nowhere near matching the real thing, and Georgia made a small soft sound of pleasure as he started to caress her.

When he picked her up and laid her gently on the bed she watched him, liquid-eyed, whilst he leaned over her, silently spanning her small waist with his hands before lifting his head to look into her eyes.

He wanted to touch and memorise every delicious curve of her, Piers decided as he felt the tiny responsive nerves jumping beneath Georgia’s skin. Just the sight and scent of her aroused him to the point where... And as for that soft, liquid, melting look he could see in her eyes...

Reaching for her hand, he took hold of it in his and lifted it palm upwards to his mouth, slowly kissing the sensitive flesh of her palm and watching her reaction darken her eyes at the same time as he felt the responsive shudder go though her. And then, still holding her hand, he placed it on the fastening of his belt, holding it there as he leaned over and slowly kissed first her mouth, and then the dark points of each breast in turn, once, and then a second time and then a third.

As she felt Piers’s mouth caressing her nipples Georgia cried out softly, unable to control her response, her fingers curling into the buckle of his belt. His hand was caressing the bare flesh of her hip and Georgia could feel the tiny quivers of sensation running like quicksilver inside her body, starting to gather, to coalesce, into a torrent which she knew instinctively would totally sweep her away.

Piers was drawing her nipple deeper into his mouth, and the shivers of pleasure his caress was causing her were turning into deep, fierce shudders of female reaction.

As Piers released her nipple from the sensual captivity of his mouth and tongue, feeding its hunger with the pliant caress of his fingertips, he whispered thickly to her, ‘Undress me, Georgia. I want—’

‘Woof!’

Both of them froze as Ben suddenly came into the room and gave one firm bark.

Ben!

Guiltily Georgia pushed Piers away. How on earth could she have forgotten not just the dog but her entire sense of reality as well?

Equally swiftly Piers moved back from Georgia. Just what the hell was he doing? Every instinct he possessed told him that Georgia was quite definitely a serious commitment type of woman. Georgia had already managed to worm not just her way, but also that of that wretched dog as well, into his godmother’s affections, and now here she was, performing an equally dangerous trick on his own emotions.

‘Ben!’ Georgia exclaimed at the same time as Piers instructed sharply, ‘Downstairs...now...’

Placidly Ben wagged his tail and headed towards the open bedroom door, but once there he simply sat down and looked at Piers.

Angrily Piers glowered at him as he got up off the bed and picked up his shirt, pulling it on before walking towards Ben. If he hadn’t been far too sensible to think anything so foolish he might almost have imagined that the dog had come upstairs with the deliberate intention of interrupting them, and that he was making it equally plain that there was no way he was going to go back downstairs and leave Piers alone with Georgia.

Georgia, meanwhile, as soon as Piers had got up off the bed, had reached for her robe and pulled it on.

What on earth had come over her? There was no rational explanation for what she had done—or for what she had wanted to do.

* * *

Some hours later, on his way to bed, having checked that all the doors and windows were locked and the alarm was on, Piers paused outside Georgia’s bedroom door. It was all very well for her to have claimed earlier that she wasn’t suffering any after-effects from her wetting; he still...

His hand was on the door handle when Ben suddenly came padding upstairs and very determinedly lay down outside Georgia’s bedroom door.
Was
it just his imagination or was the dog really looking at him, not just reproachfully but almost a little reprovingly? It
was
his imagination, of course, Piers assured himself, just as the only logical reason that Ben had come upstairs was not really to guard Georgia but simply to try and get a more comfortable bed to sleep on than the one he was officially allocated downstairs in the kitchen.

Nevertheless, Piers didn’t make any attempt to return Ben to the kitchen—or to open Georgia’s bedroom door.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘B
EN
!’

Georgia tensed as she heard the wrathful warning in Piers’s voice as he called Ben’s name.

She had spent the whole of the previous day, her first day’s leave, working with the English setter, and she had been very pleased with the results.

Ben wanted to learn, to please, but he was an energetic dog who got easily bored. Now, as she saw the way his ears went down and he looked anxiously at her before going under the table to hide as he, like her, recognised the anger in Piers’s voice, all Georgia’s protective instincts came to the fore.

She had been keeping as much distance as she could between her and Piers since the night of her ignominious fall into the river. After Ben had interrupted them and Piers had gone to take him downstairs Georgia had forced herself to look closely and analytically at what had happened between them, and she hadn’t liked the conclusions she had had to reach.

Piers was a man, and men thought about, felt about, reacted differently to sexual intimacy than women did. Men’s sexual responses did not need to be touched, coloured or enhanced by their emotions. Men, by their very natures, tended to seize the sexual moment. Who knew
what
interpretation Piers had put on her own behaviour? Heavens, he might even have thought that she had deliberately allowed her towel to slip from her grasp—he was cynical enough, worldly enough; Georgia was sure of that.

It wasn’t that she felt that he had deliberately set out to seduce her; she wasn’t so naive nor so melodramatic. No, she felt sure his primary intention had simply been to bring her a hot drink and to check that she was all right. Maybe, too, he had welcomed the opportunity to reinforce to her his views on Ben’s behaviour; but that was all.

No, she couldn’t blame him. Not entirely.
She
could have resisted, protested, withdrawn from him, but instead she had—It had taken every ounce of courage she possessed for her to say to him the next day, ‘About last night... I...it... It was a mistake,’ she had told him firmly, unable to lift her gaze to meet his, as she’d walked into the kitchen and found him engaged in making his breakfast. ‘It shouldn’t have happened and I don’t—’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Piers had cut her off in a clipped voice.

As he’d leant across the table Georgia had been able to see where the sunlight left a soft gold trail on his bare forearm, and she’d had the most ridiculous urge to reach out and touch him there.

Speedily she had looked away from him, uncomfortably aware of how fast her heart was beating.

Nothing further had been said about the incident in her bedroom by either of them, and Georgia had told herself that she was glad. And certainly she was equally glad that Piers had neither said nor done anything that in any way remotely suggested it was an experience he wished to repeat.

Since then, though, she had taken great care to keep away from the kitchen when she knew that Piers was using it, and she suspected that he was doing the same thing. This morning, however, she had woken up earlier and had taken Ben for a short walk before returning to make her breakfast, only to find that Piers was in the kitchen making himself a cup of coffee, wearing only a towelling robe, his face unshaven and his hair ruffled. For some odd reason the knowledge that he had only just got out of bed had had a dangerous emotional effect on her.

She hadn’t realised how much her expression was giving away until she’d heard him saying ruefully as he stroked his hand across his unshaven jaw, ‘Yes, I do need a shave, but I was up half the night working.’

‘Mmm...I suppose if you were married you’d have to shave at night,’ she began absently, and then stopped as she realised the direction her thoughts were taking. But it was too late because Piers had already picked up on what she was thinking.

‘At night—and in the morning,’ he told her meaningfully, his gaze sliding from her eyes to her mouth and then back to her eyes again, so that he could enjoy the confusion he could see so clearly registered there. What
was
it about her, he wondered, that made it so impossible for him not to give in to the temptation to underline his male sexuality to her and to watch her own female reaction to his provocation?

‘Stop looking at me like that,’ Georgia was unable to stop herself from begging him huskily.

‘Like what?’ Piers teased, his gaze deliberately dropping from her mouth to her body.

‘Like...like that!’ Georgia protested, immediately refocusing Piers’s attention on her softly parted lips.

What would she do, he wondered, if he went to her now and took her in his arms? If he kissed her? She’d probably complain that his unshaven beard was scratching her tender skin, Piers told himself grittily, deliberately turning away from the temptation she represented and heading for the hallway.

That had been when Georgia had heard him call out angrily for Ben.

‘What’s wrong?’ she enquired now, following Piers into the hall and then stopping as she saw the shredded copy of his morning paper.

‘Oh!’

‘Oh, indeed,’ Piers agreed grimly.

‘It’s only a newspaper.’ Georgia defended the dog. ‘It won’t take two minutes for me to go out and get you another one.’

‘That’s not the point,’ Piers told her sharply. ‘Don’t think I don’t know why you’re so determined to keep him here,’ he told Georgia grimly. ‘After all,
you
were the one who pressurised my godmother into having him in the first place.’

‘I did no such thing,’ Georgia immediately retorted indignantly.

‘No? That’s not the way my godmother tells it,’ Piers contradicted her flatly. ‘According to her, it’s
you
she has to thank for having Ben.’

‘Oh, but that’s...’ Georgia began, intending to tell him that it was because of her absence from the waiting room that his previous owner had managed to persuade his godmother into becoming Ben’s new owner.

But Piers was in no mood to listen, overruling her before she had any chance to finish what she was saying, telling her curtly, ‘I should have thought that your professionalism alone would have made you think twice about putting emotional pressure on my godmother to take Ben on. Suggesting that he might have to be put to sleep if she didn’t have him was, in my view, a serious breach of professional conduct, and—’

‘I never told Mrs Latham any such thing,’ Georgia gasped.

‘Perhaps not in so many words,’ Piers allowed. ‘But you certainly gave her the impression that that’s what would have happened to him.’

As the sound of their raised voices reached Ben through the half-open kitchen door he put his nose on his paws and listened anxiously to them. Human beings! They could be so hard to understand at times.

* * *

Piers frowned as he pulled up in front of the house he had come to view. From the details he had received on it he had decided that it sounded ideal for his purposes. Modern, architect-designed, spacious, with a good-sized garden to ensure his privacy—it even had a room specifically designed to house computer equipment.

The selling agent who was due to meet him here had extolled its virtues to Piers when he had initially expressed an interest in it, adding helpfully that because the property was already empty Piers could move into it virtually as soon as he wished.

Yes, this property was almost perfectly suited to his needs, unlike the farmhouse which was the only other remotely suitable property the agent had had on his books.

As he had pondered before, there was no doubt whatsoever in his mind that Georgia would go for the farmhouse. She would probably insist on raising a brood of chickens, which she would want to have wandering about in the farmyard, and no doubt she would want to turn at least one of the outbuildings into temporary accommodation for all the animal waifs and strays she would insist on adopting. He would be lucky if he didn’t find himself financing a donkey sanctuary, as well as providing a refuge for wild, untrainable dogs, and their children would probably grow up to be as animal-mad as their mother, so that his would be the only lone voice of sanity and restraint in the entire household.

Not that both she and their children wouldn’t do their very best to subvert his desire to keep their lives as animal-free as possible. He could see it now: the lone school hamster who was brought home ‘for the holidays’ and who never went back; the stray cat who made her home with them and unexpectedly produced a litter of kittens; the pony his daughter would insist on having—and he would, of course, give in.

‘But she’ll have to clean it and feed it herself, I’m not getting up at the crack of dawn every day to do it...’

To his consternation Piers realised that he had not only spoken his thoughts out loud but that, for one moment, his imagination had produced such an intensely real mental picture for him that it was as though his imaginary daughter was actually here, standing in front of him, her mother’s dark red curls bouncing with determination as she besieged him with pleas and entreaties.

Her mother’s red hair... Georgia’s red hair... But he wasn’t...he didn’t... The clanking of the automatic wrought-iron gates opening alerted him to the estate agent’s arrival, bringing a thankful end to his disturbing thoughts.

* * *

‘It would be the perfect property for a man in your position,’ the agent enthused as they finished viewing the house and he locked the front door. ‘It fulfils all the criteria you gave us.’

‘Yes,’ Piers agreed unenthusiastically.

‘It’s got vacant possession, and I know that the owner is prepared to negotiate on price,’ the agent persevered.

‘Mmm... What time is my appointment to view the farmhouse?’ Piers asked him briefly.

‘The farmhouse?’ The agent’s smile turned to a small frown. ‘I have made an appointment for you to view it,’ he began cautiously, ‘but I must warn you, it is in need of some quite serious renovation.’

‘I imagine it must be,’ Piers agreed urbanely. ‘It is over two hundred years old.’

‘Well, yes, and if you were wanting a period family house then...’ He paused and shrugged. ‘I have to warn you, though, that we already have at least one seriously interested buyer, despite the fact that its survey showed the house could be subject to serious flooding if the river was ever to rise above its banks...and...’

‘Has it ever done so?’ Piers asked him quietly.

‘Well, no...at least not in the last hundred years,’ the agent conceded. ‘But, as I’m sure you’ll agree once you’ve viewed it, it comes nowhere as near to fulfilling your specifications in the way that this property does.’

It was quite plain to Piers that the agent was trying to push him into buying the house he had just viewed, and on the face of it he knew that he had to agree with everything that the other man was saying. After all, he hadn’t raised any points that Piers hadn’t already seen for himself. The farmhouse was a
family
home, and, to judge from the carefully worded estate agent’s blurb, in need of having a considerable amount of money spent on it, whereas the one he had just looked at needed nothing other than his own furniture. Even the floors were polished wood and didn’t need carpeting. It cried out for the kind of minimalistic décor that went perfectly with the kind of business image he
ought
to want to portray.

Crumbling plasterwork and an Aga were not the right backdrop for someone who was selling himself and his skills as an expert in the writing of the most technologically advanced computer software in the marketplace. He would have to have one of the outbuildings virtually rebuilt to house all his equipment, and even then...

Abruptly Piers dragged himself back to reality. In a bygone age a man suffering from what he was suffering from might genuinely have believed that Georgia had cast some kind of spell over him. But to think that was to believe that Georgia wanted him in her life, and she had made it more than evident that she had no such desire at all.

But she did desire
him
. Or at least she had done so when...

A small, discreet cough from the estate agent reminded Piers of where he was. He wasn’t going to put in an offer for the farmhouse—of course he wasn’t, he assured himself as he got into his car. It just made sense to view the only property locally that could provide him with a yardstick to measure the suitability of the house he had just viewed; that was all. Of course it was.

* * *

Georgia was feeling very pleased with herself,
and
with Ben. Shortly after Piers had left she had received a telephone call from the local paper asking if they could interview her that morning about the scheme she had originated for pets and their owners to visit the old people’s home. Even though Georgia had told the reporter that the idea wasn’t original, and that she was simply copying a scheme already in force in several other parts of the country, she had nevertheless agreed to be interviewed.

The reporter had arrived promptly half an hour later and the interview had gone very well. Rick Siddington was quite obviously an animal lover himself, and he had quickly endeared himself, to the owners whom he was also interviewing by making a big fuss of their pets.

Georgia had diplomatically left Ben behind on this occasion, sensing that he was all too likely to try to steal the other dogs’ thunder. Philip had actually come out of his office to speak with the reporter himself, and Georgia had been able to tell from the way he had smiled at her and patted her paternally on the arm that she had been forgiven her transgressions over the training class which Ben had disrupted—for the time being at least! Now, back home and having just finished grooming Ben, she sat back on her heels and surveyed his silky coat admiringly.

‘Good dog, Ben,’ she praised him repeatedly before giving him a small doggy treat for his good behaviour whilst she had been brushing him.

As Ben went to the door and asked to go out Georgia reflected modestly as she opened it for him that he really was making good progress, thanks just as much to his own canine intelligence as to her training skills—skills which, according to Piers, she simply did not possess. That jibe still had the power to hurt her, but nowhere near as much as the accusation he had thrown at her that she had deliberately encouraged his godmother to give Ben a home whilst knowing that he was a totally unsuitable dog for her. Those words had stung, all the more so because they simply weren’t true.