Sally Wentworth - A Typical Male (19 page)

She slept
late the next day but was woken by a ring on the doorbell down in the basement
area. Craning out of the front window to see who it was, she saw the local
florist's van outside and yelled down at the driver to leave what he'd brought
on the doorstep. When she finally went down, dressed for a day of first the
office and then tramping round London on an afternoon of research, Tasha found
a box on the doorstep. It contained two red roses: one in full bloom the other
still a bud. With it was a note from Brett. 'One for each of
you.'

Tasha stared at the note,
somehow more overcome with amazement and consternation now than by all Brett's
declarations of love last night. Squatting down on the doorstep, she gazed at
the flowers, then slowly lifted out the bud and touched the soft, furled petals
with her fingertip. How could a man who'd cheated her think to do something as
kind, as feeling, as this? It just didn't add up.

Sarah caught
her at the office later that morning. 'Why didn't you phone and let me know
what happened? You didn't chicken out, did you?'

'No. No, I
told him,' Tasha answered, but felt strangely reluctant to discuss it.

'So what
happened? Surely you didn't let him talk you round. Tasha, for heaven's sake!
You didn't let him stay the night?'

'No, of
course I didn't,' she said crossly. 'What do you take me for? Look, I can't
talk now. My boss is here,' she prevaricated. I’ll ring you tonight. Bye.'

Leaning her
elbow on her desk, Tasha looked at the two roses that she'd brought to work
with her and put into a vase that she'd pinched from the reception area. She
was trying to work but her eyes kept going to them, her mind to Brett. Suddenly
she came to a decision. Whatever Brett had done to her, she couldn't go on with
this pretence. It belittled her, took her down to his level. Picking up the
phone, she called his house.

The answering
machine came on but as soon as she said her name Brett switched the machine
over and said, 'Hello, Tasha. I've been hoping you'd call.'

'I want to
see you,' she said shortly. 'Can you come round to my place tonight?'

'Yes, of course. Shall I bring
a take-away for us?'

'No. What I want to say won't
take long. See you tonight, then.' And she replaced the receiver with a sigh of
relief. Explaining, and his reaction, definitely wasn't going to be pleasant,
but at least it would be off her conscience. And it would, of course, serve the
purpose of finally getting rid of him for ever.

When Brett arrived she was
waiting for him in the sitting-room, her arms crossed and a look of
determination in her face. Seeing it, Brett at once assumed that she'd decided
to have an abortion. A cold feeling stole across his heart, as if all the
warmth had suddenly gone from him. Before she could speak he held up his hand
and said, 'Look, I know I said that I'd abide by whatever you decided to do,
but I really would like you to think really hard about this, Tasha. It isn't
the end of the world. I know we're both as green as hell, but so are all
parents the first time round. We'll cope, I'm sure of it,' he finished
persuasively.

Tasha gave him an odd look.
'Parenthood isn't easy,' she said abruptly.

'No, I don't suppose it is. But
we're mature people. I'm sure we'll work it out together.' He smiled. 'Maybe we
can work together in other ways, too.'

Her eyes settled on his face.
'What had you in mind?'

'Well, with all those ideas you
have, and my experience as a writer, maybe we'd make a winning combination.'

She gave a small, slightly
crooked smile. 'My ideas—and your writing expertise?'

'Yes. In fact I—'

Her voice as cold and sharp as a
knife blade, Tasha cut through his words to say, 'You mean your expertise
gained in all the years you worked as a journalist?'

Brett's head came up sharply.
Seeing the rage in her eyes, he said slowly, 'How did you find out?'

'Oh, it was quite simple.'
Crossing to the shelf unit, she opened a box on one of the shelves and took the
newspaper clipping from it, then held it out to him. 'I just had to read this.'

Brett glanced at it but didn't
take it from her. Watching her warily, he said, 'That doesn't have my name on
it.'

'But you wrote it.' She said it
as a flat, definite statement, with no trace of a question in her voice.

He nodded, gave a slightly
crooked grin. 'Yes— but I'd like to know how you found out.'

Having no intention of revealing
her friend's part in this, Tasha said acidly, 'You made a mistake. You copied
my notes verbatim, and there were a couple of sentences I'd written at the
time, not things that Anne had told me. You really ought to check, you know,
before you plagiarise other people's work.'

'You've got it all wrong. As a
matter of fact this was the surprise I had for you. You see—'

But her incredulous laugh cut
him off. 'You steal my work and have the sheer audacity to have it printed in a
national newspaper, and then you tell me I've got it wrong! What the hell kind
of moron do you take me for? Or did you think that you'd undermined my
confidence enough for you to talk your way out of it?' Her face grew grim. 'Or
was it just that you were convinced that I was so besotted by you that I
wouldn't care?'

'If you'll just let me explain—'
He tried to take hold of her hand but she shook him off.

'And just what did you mean by
working together?' He hesitated and she laughed again. 'Oh, don't put yourself
to the trouble of trying to think up a he; I know darn well what your idea of
our working together means; you just want to use the rest of my notes to write
more articles like this. Well? Do you deny it?'

Brett looked at her for a long
moment then dropped his hand. 'No, I don't deny it. That was my intention.'

Despite her knowing all along
that she was right, Tasha gave an amazed gasp. 'You admit it, then?'

'Yes, because you couldn't go
ahead with the exploitation programme yourself, and you wanted—'

'No, because you'd talked me out
of it! God, what a fool I was to listen to you.' Tasha flung away from him, her
face furious, her body rigid with anger. 'What a
stupid, besotted fool!'

'Tasha, please listen to me.'
Brett took a purposeful step towards her.

'Listen to you—while you talk
your way out of it? Oh, no, not this time. Not now I know you for what you
are.'

He came to a halt as he stared
at her. His voice low, almost menacing, Brett said, 'And just what do you think
I am?'

'A liar.
A cheat. A plagiarist. Do you
want me to go on?'

'No.' His face grew very grim.
'I think I get the message. But you couldn't be more wrong, Tasha, and if you'd
just listen to me I'd prove it to you.'

Her eyes cold and contemptuous,
she said, 'I'm not interested in your lies.'

Brett drew in his breath with a
rasp, then said through gritted teeth, 'You don't have any choice but to be
interested in me. There's the little matter of your pregnancy still between
us.'

'Oh, that!' She threw him a
scornful glance. 'You didn't really think I'd have the child of a swine like you,
did you? No, I made that up. I wanted you to see what it was like to be on the
receiving end of a lie for once.'

Brett stared at her, unable to
believe his ears. For a moment he didn't believe her, thinking that she was so
angry she was saying it just to punish him. But then he saw the vindictive
triumph in her eyes and the dreams of the last twenty-four hours went crashing
round his feet. He realised that she had planned this, had been acting a part
all last night. A feeling of utter rage ran through him, an emotion more
intense than any he had ever known. Catching hold of Tasha's arm, he swung her
round to face him. 'I suppose you think you've been very clever. Duping me, using your cheap little trick to entrap me. And I
walked right into it, didn't I? I really fell for your lies. Well, you got what
you wanted. Spilling my heart out. Telling you how I
felt about you.'

'Rubbish! The only reason you
wanted to stay around was to persuade me to let you use the rest of my notes.
My ideas, your writing expertise; that's exactly what
you said.'

'And you thought I meant—' Brett
broke off, then laughed bitterly. 'Boy, have you got a
twisted mind.'

'Don't you dare denigrate me.' She glared at him, then said
forcefully, 'This isn't about lying or cheating. This is about power. Your power over me. You thought you'd undermined my
self-confidence, that you had me under your thumb and that I'd believe anything
you told me, would do anything you wanted.

Well,
I won't! I'm free. I'm my own person. You thought that telling me you loved me
would keep me sweet, would have me simpering and drooling over you. Huh! Fat chance.'

Brett's jaw grew rigid and his hands clenched into balled fists. 'Is
that right? It didn't mean anything to you?'

'Oh, it meant something all right—it gave me a good laugh.'

'Really?'

She was so angry that Tasha missed the silken menace in his voice.
'Yes. You think that sex can conquer any woman, but it damn well can't!'

'That's your considered opinion, is it?' He moved closer and, too late,
she saw her danger. Before she could do more than open her mouth to cry out a
protest, Brett said, 'Well, let's see if you're right, shall we?' And with a
quick, neat movement he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder as he
carried her into the bedroom and dropped her onto the bed.

Tasha tried to fight him, but his mouth was on hers while he was
pulling at her clothes. She made furious noises deep in her throat and tried to
bite him, but his strength was overpowering, she had never known that a man
could be that tough, that determined. She bucked and struggled but his weight
held her down. She swore at him and went to scratch his face, but when she
looked into his eyes Tasha became suddenly still. She had expected to see rage
and fury, but his face was very cold, detached even. It took her aback and she
stopped struggling, but then thought, if he can be
cold then so can I, and she held herself rigid in his hold.

Deeply
humiliated, Brett determined to teach her a lesson. Always
before his lovemaking had been deeply passionate, with a need to arouse her as
much as he himself was aroused, in a mutual search for excitement and the fulfilment of desire. But now it was different. He
didn't use words to tell her how beautiful she was as he had always done
before, and his kiss wasn't a means of getting close, wasn't a way of showing
his need for her. Instead he used his lips merely to arouse her sensuality, as
part of his insidious determination to unlock desire. Having made love to her
so many times before, he knew in intimate detail just what pleased her, what
excited her the most. Using that knowledge, and his own experience with women,
he touched, toyed, caressed, knowing that she was determined not to give in to
the deliciousness of what he was doing to her, but equally determined that she
should.

They were both strong-willed
people, and both were full of anger and bitterness. Tasha kept her eyes open,
defying him, daring him to do his worst. His breath was hot on her skin as his lips
left her mouth and moved to her neck. He found a particular spot at the base of
her ear. It was a sensitive area, a place that always made her squirm with
exquisite pleasure when he kissed her there, but now she resisted it. His mouth
moved to her earlobe and bit gently. Ordinarily she liked that, loved it, but
now she kept her head completely still, her eyes the blue of glacial ice. Brett
looked at her for a moment, smiled cynically, and let his hands and his mouth
move on down.

Then he was touching her skin,
letting his fingers trail over her, caressing her, and she was fighting the
tremors that threatened to run through her. His lips were hot, so hot, reaching
into her soul for the submission he craved. Even then she tried to withstand
her growing awareness, her own sensuality, but suddenly her body betrayed her.
The fire of awakened sexual desire took hold, engulfed her. With a moan she
stopped fighting and said, 'Yes. Oh, Brett, yes.' She
moved voluptuously under his hands, wanting more, never wanting him to stop. It
was exquisite, bewitching. Closing her eyes, Tasha let herself drown in the
overwhelming pleasure of it, smiling as she gasped and cried out.

But to take wasn't enough, she
wanted to share, and pushed aside his hand to open his shirt so that she could
caress him in return. Then her hands were at his belt, pulling at his clothes,
setting him free of them. She cried out with pleasure when she touched him,
stroked him, then put her arms round him to hold him closer and arched her body
to take him in. She was kissing his neck, had pulled off his shirt to kiss his
shoulder, to bite until he cried out. It seemed a century since they had last
made love. She couldn't get enough of him, couldn't get close enough, and she
moaned out his name over and over again.

When she had begun to respond,
when she had closed her eyes, Brett had been filled with triumph, knowing that
he had won. It had been his intention, when they both knew that she couldn't
resist him, to just get up and walk away, to leave her with the knowledge of
her own humiliation. To make her punishment complete it had to be all
one-sided, he must show no emotion at all, stay ruthlessly aloof from what he
was doing to her. No less than her complete submission, her utter surrender to
his caresses would do. When she reached out to touch him he tried to stop her,
took hold of her hand and held it still. But the backs of her fingers brushed
against his nipple, and before he knew it she had escaped him, was opening his
shirt. So what the hell? he thought. If I show her
that she can't reach me it will be an even bigger victory. There was still time
to walk away.