Читать книгу Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 28
ОглавлениеTWO hours later, Bobbie broke off in mid-banter with Saul to whom she had been comfortably chatting very happily for the past twenty minutes or so, recognising guiltily that not only was it over half an hour since she had last seen Joss, but that she was also actually enjoying herself.
It had been Olivia who had introduced her to Saul and Saul himself who had explained ruefully to her that he was currently in Louise’s bad books. ‘She wanted me to partner her this evening, but as I told her, as a divorced man in my mid-thirties and her cousin to boot, I’m hardly the right partner for her.’
‘Which naturally makes you all the more attractive to her,’ Bobbie had agreed mock-gravely. ‘Come on, admit it,’ she had coaxed him humorously. ‘It must be quite some ego boost to have as stunningly pretty an eighteen-year-old as Louise crazily in love with you.’
‘Just occasionally, yes, it is,’ Saul had agreed openly, ‘but the rest of the time quite frankly it’s rather terrifying, which just goes to show how old I actually am getting.’
‘I really ought to go and find Joss,’ Bobbie now told Saul.
It was so frustrating having the opportunity to meet and mix with the family at such close hand and yet at the same time feeling restrained from asking what she really wanted to know just in case they should guess what she was up to.
‘The last time I saw him he was talking with Luke.’ He paused when he saw Bobbie’s expression. ‘You don’t like Luke? You’re in a minority,’ he assured her. ‘Most of your sex appear to find him extremely attractive.’
‘But I am not most women,’ Bobbie informed him firmly.
‘No, you aren’t, are you?’ Saul agreed softly.
Smiling at him, Bobbie shook her head and turned away. She had spotted Joss on the other side of the room, and as Saul had said, he was talking to Luke. Bobbie started to make her way towards them.
The evening had done nothing to improve Luke’s mood. Fenella had proved to be every bit as clingy and possessive as he had feared, subtly managing to create the impression amongst his family that they were something of an ‘item’ and making it impossible for him to refute her allusions without causing a public scene.
He had no intention of letting her get away with it, though. Before they parted company tonight, she was going to be left in no doubt whatsoever that the past was quite definitely over and there was no place for her in his present or his future, in any shape or form.
‘Oh, I’m staying at the Grosvenor,’ he heard her saying softly now to one of his aunts, giving him an adoring sideways look as she confided, ‘Luke thought it best in the circumstances. After all, officially I’m still married.’ She paused delicately whilst Luke watched his aunt’s head nodding sagely.
Ignoring Fenella, he turned towards Joss and joked, ‘So where did you find the quarterback, Joss?’
Bobbie, who was just within earshot, ground her teeth in silent outrage. She was used to comments about her height, of course, but there was nothing remotely unfeminine or gross about her—quite the opposite.
As he saw the look on Joss’s face, Luke cursed himself under his breath. It wasn’t fair of him to vent his irritation and fire at Fenella’s manipulative behaviour on Joss, even if there was something about the stately, almost queenly stunning beauty of the unknown woman he had brought into their midst that brought the tiny hairs on the back of his neck to prickle with atavistic awareness. Perhaps it was something about that thick, honey-coloured mass of glorious hair, or perhaps it was the way she carried her impressive height and her even more impressive body. Perhaps it was just something about her manner, or perhaps the reason lay much closer to home, within his own emotional consciousness that he couldn’t somehow dismiss.
She might not be the type to actively go looking for a fight, but she certainly wasn’t going to run from this particular one, Bobbie decided as she ignored the temptation in the face of Luke’s taunting overheard comment to pretend she hadn’t heard and simply walk away. Instead she stalked purposefully to where he and Joss were standing, bestowing on Joss the beneficence of a multi-watt smile whilst cleverly managing to angle her body so that she could also look Luke Crighton straight in the eye ... well, almost straight in the eye. Joss had not lied about his height and it was oddly disconcerting to be forced to tilt her chin upwards to meet his dispassionate gaze.
‘You must be Luke,’ Bobbie announced, taking the initiative before Joss could introduce them.
‘Must I?’ Luke asked her dryly. ‘Now why, I wonder, should you assume that?’
‘Oh, it wasn’t an assumption,’ Bobbie told him breezily. ‘I recognised you from Joss’s description...or rather his description of your addiction to a certain type of female accessory. I shouldn’t worry too much about it,’ she told him with a kind voice. ‘They do say it’s a phase that most men grow out of once they mature.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Bobbie could see Joss looking worriedly from Luke to herself. It wasn’t really fair of her to involve him, she acknowledged.
‘Come on, Joss,’ she invited him mischievously. ‘It looks like they’re serving the buffet and a girl my size needs one heck of a lot of feeding.’
Joss looked relieved as he heard the note of humour in her voice, but one glance at Luke’s steRN face warned Bobbie that he wasn’t deceived and that he certainly wasn’t about to overlook or ignore her comment about his girlfriend.
‘Well, I guess we can scratch Luke off our list,’ Bobbie told Joss ruefully as they headed for the buffet.
‘Fenella isn’t really his girlfriend,’ Joss informed her eagerly. ‘I heard James telling Dad that Luke was angry with him for letting Fenella trick him into bringing her. She and Luke used to go out with one another a long time ago, but she’s married to someone else now, although James says that she’s going to divorce him.’
Which would explain why Luke was so anxious to distance himself publicly from any kind of intimate relationship with her, at least until such time as the divorce was final, Bobbie realised. A man in his position would not want to have any hint, any breath of scandal affecting his reputation.
It had been immediately obvious to her that Luke had that particular brand of prideful male arrogance that she had always found aggravating and unappealing. Dominant Alpha-type men had never held any kind of attraction for her. She preferred men like those she had grown up closest to, gentle men whose strength lay in their ability to be kind and compassionate—to have emotions.
Katie and Louise had opted for an informal arrangement of round tables for eight for the buffet meal without any set table plan, and Joss and Bobbie had just settled themselves down at one of these, their plates satisfyingly heaped with a generous selection from the mouth-watering dishes being served, when they were joined by Olivia and Caspar.
Bobbie, who had been watching with amusement a small piece of byplay between Saul and Louise and mentally concluding that Saul was deceiving himself if he thought that Louise was going to give up on her determined pursuit of him, smiled warmly at them as they sat down.
Unlike Luke, these were two of Joss’s relatives she actively liked.
‘I hope you don’t mind our joining you,’ Olivia commented, ‘but hearing your voice has made Caspar feel positively homesick.’
‘No such thing,’ Caspar objected. ‘Not that it isn’t good to hear a familiar American accent,’ he added, turning to Bobbie.
‘He’s a typical Philadelphia lawyer,’ Olivia told Bobbie, pulling a wry face.
Caspar shook his head and informed them both that he was now a university lecturer and not a lawyer.
‘Technically maybe, but you did qualify in law and that’s the subject you lecture in,’ Olivia reminded him. ‘Honestly, you’d think that having come from a family that’s more or less obsessed by the law I’d have rebelled and picked a husband who did something else,’ Olivia mock complained to Bobbie, whilst Caspar laughed and tugged gently on her silky bob, teasing her. ‘Well, sharing a common career gives us something to talk about, and unlike other married couples, we’re never going to be able to complain that we find each other’s careers uninteresting.’
‘I would guess from your accent that you’re from New England,’ Caspar commented to Bobbie.
‘You guess right,’ Bobbie confirmed with a smile. ‘I was born and raised in a small town some ways north of Boston, but since my dad became involved in politics my folks spend a good part of their time in Washington.’
‘Do you come from a large family?’ Olivia asked her.
‘Some,’ Bobbie replied cautiously, ‘On Dad’s side...’
‘Do you mind if we join you?’
Bobbie tensed as she looked up and saw Luke and Fenella standing on the opposite side of the table.
‘No, of course not,’ Olivia answered when the small pause that followed Luke’s request had stretched just that little bit too far.
Deliberately avoiding any kind of eye contact with him, Bobbie turned to tell Joss approvingly how much she was enjoying the buffet.
‘This salmon is delicious,’ she told Olivia, forking up a second mouthful.
‘Salmon ...’ Fenella gave a fastidious shrug. ‘It’s terribly fatty. I only ever eat white fish and of course I always have it steamed. Some people just have absolutely no idea about the amount of calories they can add to their food by not cooking it the right way. You’ve put on weight recently, Olivia. You must be what...a good size twelve now?’ Fenella commented, eyeing Olivia assessingly.
‘Must I...? I have to confess I really don’t know,’ Olivia returned easily. ‘Since Amelia’s birth the last thing on my mind has been my weight although, if anything, before I became pregnant, I do feel I was a little underweight. However, if I’m honest, I have to admit that I’ve been taking full advantage of the fact that breast-feeding allows you to eat generously.’
‘Breast-feeding...?’ Fenella’s voice squeaked, her eyes almost popping. ‘Oh, but surely...’ Her eyes dropped betrayingly to the soft, womanly curves of Olivia’s body before she bit her lip and looked away again. ‘When I had Crispin I was adamant that I couldn’t possibly feed him myself. I’m afraid I’m just not the earth-mother type.’ She gave a small tinkly laugh, the expression in her eyes making Bobbie feel compassionately sorry for the unknown Crispin.
The easy atmosphere of friendly warmth had vanished from the table with the arrival of Luke and Fenella to be replaced by one that was guarded and slightly strained, and as she looked around the table, Bobbie knew that she wasn’t alone in feeling this. Caspar’s mouth had thinned as he listened to Fenella’s comments. Olivia looked as though she wanted to respond more forcefully than she had but was trying to restrain herself.
‘Oh, Luke, you know-I said I didn’t want any wine,’ Fenella protested, nonetheless taking a delicate sip from the glass she had picked up and giving Luke a flirtatious glance from beneath her lashes as she demanded coyly, ‘You wouldn’t be trying to get me tipsy, would you?’ then giving him a meaningful look.
Bobbie nearly choked on her food as she heard Caspar muttering exasperatedly under his breath, ‘Not if he’s got any sense,’ and then had to fight to restrain her mirth as she saw the acid look Luke was giving her.
‘It’s a pity Aunt Ruth isn’t here,’ Joss mourned, oblivious to the adult melodrama going on around him. ‘Salmon is her favourite, as well,’ he informed Bobbie.
Bobbie put down her fork, the food on it untouched.
‘Yes, you must meet Ruth before you leave the area,’ Olivia broke in warmly. ‘If you’re really interested in learning more about the family, then Ruth is the best person for you to talk to.’
Luke was frowning as he looked at her, Bobbie realised.
‘Is there any particular reason why you’re interested in our family?’ he asked Bobbie.
‘No particular reason,’ Bobbie countered calmly, unable to resist challenging him, ‘Is there any particular reason why I shouldn’t be?’
Fenella, obviously unwilling to share Luke’s attention with anyone, gave Bobbie a baleful look as she leaned across the table between them, putting her hand possessively on Luke’s arm and demanding, ‘Let’s dance, Luke. We used to dance so well together,’ she told him huskily.
‘Did we?’ Luke grimaced. ‘I must confess I don’t remember.’
‘Er...we really ought to go and talk to Saul and his parents, darling,’ Olivia intervened quickly, pushing back her chair as she spoke.
‘Yes. I shall have to be leaving soon,’ Bobbie told Joss. ‘But before I go, I must thank your parents.’
She, too, stood up, unwilling to witness the scene she could sense was about to follow as they all left Luke and Fenella at the table. Out of the comer of her eye, Bobbie could see Fenella pouting sulkily.
‘Phew, poor old Luke,’ Olivia commented once they were all out of earshot.
‘He obviously must have found her attractive once,’ Bobbie couldn’t resist pointing out coolly.
‘Well, yes,’ Olivia agreed, ‘but he was very, very young, only twenty-two, and I think he was disillusioned pretty quickly. You don’t seem to like Luke very much,’ Olivia stated with a lawyer’s directness.
‘Not much,’ Bobbie agreed cheerfully.
‘I’m sorry that Luke called you a quarterback,’ Joss told Bobbie softly five minutes later when Bobbie had said her goodbyes to Olivia and Caspar.
‘Well, I guess it’s a kind of compliment,’ Bobbie responded wryly. ‘I reckon a major league quarterback gets paid a heck of a lot more than I’m ever likely to earn.
‘Look, I can see your folks over there.’ She directed Joss’s attention to the gap in the dancers crowding the floor through which she could see his parents.
‘I wish you didn’t have to go,’ Joss mourned as she made her way determinedly towards Jenny and Jon. ‘But you’re still going to be here for a while yet, aren’t you?’ he asked her, brightening.
‘For a while,’ Bobbie agreed cautiously.
There were things she had to do, information she needed to gain, which would be better accomplished out of sight of Joss’s shrewd young eyes.
‘Thank you for allowing me to gatecrash your party,’ Bobbie said after reaching Joss’s parents.
‘You didn’t gatecrash it,’ Joss objected indignantly. ‘I invited you.’
Jenny laughed. ‘You’re more than welcome,’ she assured Bobbie warmly. ‘I just hope that Joss hasn’t taken up too much of your time or made a nuisance of himself,’ she said, ruffling Joss’s hair and smiling lovingly at him as she gave him a brief hug.
‘No way,’ Bobbie replied. ‘I’ve enjoyed talking with him and hearing all about the Crighton family.’
It had been a long night, Bobbie acknowledged tiredly as she reached the sanctuary of her hotel bedroom and locked the door. She made her way to the bathroom, then stripped off her clothes whilst she ran a bath.
Half an hour later, she decided regretfully that she had soaked in the deliciously deep and steamy depths of the huge Edwardian-style tub for long enough, and besides, there was one last thing she had to do before she could finally go to bed. She dialled the number and then waited until she heard the familiar voice so very like her own.
‘Can we talk? I couldn’t wait until Sunday to talk to you,’ she asked conspiratorially.
‘Just,’ came back the answer. ‘They’ve just gone out. Okay, give. What have you found out?’
‘Nothing much, other than the fact that certain members of the Crighton family are unbelievable, obnoxious and arrogant.’
‘You had to travel all the way to England to discover that?’ Samantha questioned cynically. ‘I thought we already—’
‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry,’ Bobbie apologised. ‘It’s just that...I’m not sure that what we’re planning is a good idea, Sam. Tonight, talking with Olivia and Caspar, I—’
‘Olivia and Caspar—who the heck are they?’
‘Joss’s cousin and her husband. He’s an American from Philly, and—’
‘Hey, have you any idea how much this call is costing? I knew I should have gone over there myself. The trouble with you is that you’re just so darned soft-hearted and sentimental you’d find excuses for the devil himself. Bobbie, you know what the doctor...what happened last year ... we may not have much time left and—’
‘Dr Fraser said that she was fully one hundred percent recovered,’ Bobbie protested, but underneath her fierce protestation she knew that her voice was betraying her anxiety and fear.
‘Yes, I know,’ Samantha agreed. ‘But...we’ve got to see this through, Bobbie. We’ve got to do it. I just wish that I could be over there....’
‘You can’t, not if you’re going to get your master’s and you are going to get it.’
‘I know... I know. So come on, what have you managed to find out?’
‘Nothing much. According to Joss and Olivia, Aunt Ruth is the person to talk to about the family’s history.’
‘Aunt Ruth?’ There was a long pause and then Samantha’s voice grew slightly fainter and huskier. ‘Aunt Ruth, eh. Well now... So are you going to talk to her?’
‘I don’t know, Sam.’ Bobbie’s voice took on a troubled tone. ‘To be honest, I just don’t think that she’d be the right person.’
There was a long pause before she heard Samantha saying, ‘Well, I guess you’re probably right.’
After she had finished her telephone call, Bobbie poured herself a glass of Perrier water from the minibar and padded barefoot across to the window. The hotel bathrobe unexpectedly was just a little too long for her and certainly far too wide and had, she suspected, been found from somewhere by the eagle-eyed maid, who must have noticed how much taller she was than their average female guest. Full marks to her for her observation. There was something very comforting about wearing something so obviously too big; it made her feel positively fragile and dainty, Bobbie reflected ruefully, frowning as she heard someone knocking on her door.
She went to open it, her mouth rounding into a startled ‘Oh’ of surprise as she saw Luke Crighton standing in the corridor, holding her wrap.
‘You left this downstairs,’ he informed her.
‘Yes...I did,’ Bobbie agreed distantly, giving him a frosty look as she added, ‘But there was no need for you to go to the trouble of returning it to me. I could have collected it in the morning.’
‘I’m sure, but Jenny was anxious to get it back to you,’ he told her smoothly.
He was standing well away from the door, too far away for her to reach out and take the wrap from him, forcing her to step out of the room and into the thankfully deserted corridor. She held out her hand for the wrap as she did so, having carefully made sure the door was on the latch beforehand. The last thing she wanted right now was to be locked out of her room wearing only a towelling robe, especially with someone like Luke Crighton to witness her potential embarrassment.
‘My wrap,’ she demanded crisply as she stepped towards him, but instead of handing it to her, to her astounded disbelief, Luke stepped up to her, catching her completely off guard as he skilfully caught up both her hands behind her back with one of his whilst using his free arm to force her into a parody of a lover’s intimate embrace.
Instinctively Bobbie tried to free herself, twisting her body against the dual constraint of his hard-packed muscular body and the tight grip of his hand on her wrists and at the same time trying to lever her leg free to bring her knee up against the most vulnerable part of his body.
It didn’t work; he let her work her leg free all right, but only so that he could take advantage of her accommodating movement by imprisoning her leg between both of his as he pushed her back against the wall of the corridor and bent his head purposefully towards her.
‘Don’t you dare... Oh, don’t you dare,’ Bobbie gasped indignantly, her own eyes blinking with fury as she saw the amused glint in his.
‘No?’ he mocked her, whispering the word against her mouth. ‘What are you going to do to stop me?’
‘This,’ she grated fiercely, baring her teeth as she prepared to take a sharp bite at the male mouth hovering so predatorily close to her own, but instead of the look of cold distaste she had expected to see in Luke’s eyes, he actually appeared to be laughing.
Bobbie glowered at him in indignation, but the furious tirade she had been about to deliver became a muffled choke of shocked astonishment as she saw him lift his hand, the one resting on the wall alongside her, towards her face and then slowly stroke her half-parted lips with the hard pad of his thumb before sliding one finger between her teeth until the tip of it made contact with her tongue.
His flesh tasted slightly salty—and wholly male. She shivered once in mute shock and then again in... in what? she tried to ask herself in the confusion that flooded her brain and her senses.
‘Suck it,’ she heard Luke whispering softly to her. ‘It’s sexy....’
‘Luke...’
Bobbie thought she recognised that high-pitched feminine whine, but as she tried to turn her head to look down the corridor, Luke stopped her, blocking out her view as he covered her mouth with his.
‘Luke.’
The voice was closer now and sharper. It was definitely Fenella’s. Bobbie tried again to jerk her body away from Luke’s.
He certainly knew how to kiss, she acknowledged dizzily. She hadn’t been so instantly and gloriously affected by a mere kiss since she had dated her first crush in high school...and maybe not even then, she admitted to herself.
‘Luke, how could you do this to me?’ Fenella was screeching at what felt like only inches away from Bobbie’s left ear. ‘You know how much I love you....’
‘I know nothing of the sort,’ Luke returned dauntingly, having finally lifted his mouth from Bobbie’s and turned his attention from her towards Fenella.
He still hadn’t released her, though, Bobbie realised, and if she was honest with herself, she wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to force herself away from him right now; her legs had become disconcertingly unsteady. And as for that look she had seen in Luke’s eyes when he had finally lifted his mouth from hers... Bobbie felt her stomach start to quiver.
‘You can’t possibly prefer her to me,’ Fenella protested in outrage.
‘I not only can...I do,’ Luke returned. Then ignoring Fenella, he turned back to Bobbie and said quite audibly in an amused voice, ‘I know you have this fantasy about making love somewhere public, but I do think we would be rather more comfortable in your room...in private....’
And before Bobbie could stop him, he had pushed open her door and whisked them both inside. He proceeded to close it firmly behind him and then lock it almost before Bobbie could find time to draw breath.
When she did she was so angry that she could hardly find the words. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded as she pulled herself free from his arms and faced him, praying that he would put the visible trembling of her body down to her anger and not the after-affects of his kiss.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he asked her with clinical detachment.
‘You used me to help you get rid of Fenella,’ Bobbie accused. She shook her head and then pushed the heavy weight of her hair off her face. ‘Why not simply tell her you didn’t want her if you don’t...? My God, what kind of man are you to deliberately come up here and use me, manipulate me, plan—’
‘I didn’t deliberately plan anything,’ Luke interrupted her suavely. ‘I simply seized the moment and took advantage of the opportunity the circumstances offered me when I saw Fenella coming down the corridor towards us.’
‘You decided to make a grab for me and make out like the two of us were involved in some kind of passionate clinch ... that we were... The moment wasn’t the only thing you seized,’ she berated him furiously, ‘and if you think—’
‘Calm down,’ he advised her.
‘Calm down! You grab hold of me, manhandle me...force me into my room and then you—’
‘You’re perfectly safe,’ he interrupted in an unruffled voice, adding almost disparagingly, ‘For a start, you’re not my type.’
Not his type! Bobbie’s eyes flashed warning signs of an impending major storm.
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ she told him through gritted teeth, finishing trenchantly, ‘because you most certainly are not mine.’
‘You’re overreacting,’ she heard Luke saying as he shrugged his shoulders dismissively.
Overreacting? Bobbie could hardly believe her ears.
‘You kissed me,’ she hissed.
To her chagrin, he actually laughed. ‘Oh, come on.’ he drawled when he had finished laughing. ‘I can’t possibly be the first to do that.’
‘No,’ Bobbie agreed crossly. She just did not believe this; his arrogance almost took her breath away. ‘But you’re certainly the first who’s done so against my will—and the last,’ she declared forcefully. For good measure, the memory of his amused laughter driving her on to open retaliation, she added, ‘I don’t enjoy being kissed by a man I don’t like.’
For a moment she finally thought she had got the upper hand, and at six foot plus, Bobbie had to acknowledge that not having it was something of a new experience for her and not one she suspected she could become particularly fond of, but then to her disbelief she heard him drawl, ‘No? You could have fooled me. So by whom would you have preferred to be kissed?’ he asked before she could react to the enormity of his deliberate insult. ‘Or can I guess?’ he asked her silkily. ‘I saw you watching Max earlier. He’s married, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know, thank you very much,’ Bobbie responded, not bothering to waste time denying his allegations, asking with acid sweetness instead, ‘Why, I wonder, is everyone so anxious for me to know that Max is married?’
‘You know perfectly well why,’ he told her brutally. ‘Max is an extremely predatory and highly sexed man, married to a woman who bores him and whom he quite obviously married for reasons that have nothing to do with any urgent need on his part to take her to bed.
‘You, on the other hand, possess that peculiar quality that quite obviously does incline Max to want to bed you, but bedding you is all he will do unless, of course, you happen to have a parcel of top-ranking judges, plus a peer and a couple of millionaires tucked away in your family tree.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Bobbie responded shortly, amending mentally for her own benefit, Well, at least I don’t have the hereditary peer, but she firmly resisted the temptation to give voice to such words. ‘I want you to leave,’ she told him quickly instead, looking pointedly towards the door.
‘Not yet,’ he returned mildly.
Bobbie was completely nonplussed. ‘I could ring down to reception and ask them to remove you—forcibly if necessary,’ she told him.
Once again he laughed. ‘I rather think that in this particular town and this particular hotel, my credit and reputation stand rather higher than yours.’ One dark brow rose. ‘What does anyone know about you after all, other than you appear to have made a rather unlikely friend in Joss?’
‘Fenella must be crazy to want to get involved with you,’ Bobbie breathed, unwittingly betraying the fact that his past history had been the subject of some of her conversation earlier in the evening. ‘And if she’s so desperate to get you,’ she said bluntly, ‘seeing you kissing me isn’t going to put her off.’
‘No,’ he agreed smoothly, ‘but hopefully hearing that I’ve spent the night with you will.’
Spent the night with her? Bobbie’s mouth opened and then closed again as she gulped in air and stared at him in a mixture of fury and fascination whilst he watched her back away, one of his eyebrows lifted ironically as though ... as though he was almost waiting ... enjoying the prospect of having her challenge him. Well, he wasn’t going to be disappointed.
‘You are not staying the night in this room, my room,’ she emphasised, spacing her words with care.
‘No? Then evict me,’ Luke responded with a bored shrug.
Evict him. She might be tall, but as she visually measured not just the length of his body, but compared it muscle for muscle, strength for strength, with her own, Bobbie knew that any attempt on her part to use force to remove him from the room would inevitably result in a humiliating failure on her part.
‘Very well, then,’ Bobbie answered coolly, changing tack. ‘If you won’t leave, then I shall simply book myself into another room.’
‘Impossible, I’m afraid,’ Luke told her, shaking his head. ‘The hotel is fully booked as I discovered when Fenella announced that she had booked us a double room, but by all means if you want to try...’
Bobbie thought quickly. She was well aware of the curiosity and interest it would arouse if she were to try to change her room, especially with Luke so very much in evidence in her present one.
‘This is ridiculous,’ she snapped finally. ‘If Fenella isn’t going to be put off by seeing you kiss me, then what makes you think she will be just because you’ve spent the night with me? After all, if she’s prepared to take on a man who kisses another woman in public, she would more than likely be prepared to take on one who...who’s been more intimate with...with her.’
Irritated with herself as she floundered a little, she had no idea why on earth she should feel so self-conscious about using the word ‘sex’ instead of the more coy and euphemistic ‘intimate’ in front of a man like Luke Crighton, a man she didn’t so much merely not like, but increasingly actively disliked.
‘Because,’ Luke explained patiently, ‘although she might be prepared to do so, she knows perfectly well that I’m not.’ When Bobbie looked perplexed, he explained matter-of-factly, ‘I do not sleep around, and as Fenella already knows, I do not and never have been “intimate”—’ he underlined the word, her word, mockingly ‘—with a woman with whom I am not either already involved or intending to become involved in a very serious relationship. In other words, my American friend, Fenella knows that if I spend the night with you, it is because I want to make you a serious and permanent part of my life.’
Bobbie swallowed hard as she stared at him. It wasn’t often that anyone caught her wrong-footed or off guard; that anything a member of the male sex said surprised her. But this time...this one...why...why in heaven’s name did he have to be the first, the only man she had ever met to echo her own views of the importance of respecting sexual intimacy, to want it to be part of a truly committed relationship?
She gave him a quick glance, half-inclined to suspect him of making fun of her, but one look at his face convinced her that he was totally serious.
‘I hope you aren’t trying to suggest that because you’ve forced your way into my room and declared your intention to spend the night with me that that means in the morning you’re going to expect me to make an honest man of you,’ she joked flippantly to cover what she was feeling.
‘Don’t you believe in marriage?’ he asked her unexpectedly. ‘Are you one of these modern young women who likes to think that men are superfluous to her requirements, even to the extent of forgoing the pleasure and the intimacy that creating a child together should bring in favour of a far more clinical and detached method of conception?’
There must be something wrong with her. She must be coming down with some kind of bug, Bobbie decided. There could be no other reason for the sudden flood of heat pouring through her body, the unnerving sensation of weakness and the spine-tingling thrill of shock that had just run through her.
‘My plans for the method of conception of my future children is none of your business,’ she managed to retort loftily as she fought to control her dizzying light-headedness. She had to get him out of her room and fast, she determined feverishly, but could think of nothing more compelling to say to him other than a decidedly panicky ‘You can’t sleep here.’
‘No,’ he agreed unexpectedly as he looked at the bed. ‘I can’t, and neither, I imagine, can you.’ He gave the standard-size hotel bed a disparaging glance. ‘If I had to sleep in that toy-box version of what a proper bed should be, I’d wake up with cramp and backache to say the least.’
Bobbie knew exactly what he meant. Back home they had proper beds, big wide long beds in which a person could stretch out luxuriously and still have plenty of room left over for...
A startled glance seized her face, widening her eyes as she absorbed the mental image that had materialised so dangerously out of nowhere—two bodies tangled lovingly together in the comfort of her generously proportioned bed, the fine cotton sheets she favoured wrapped loosely around them, her body snugly protected by the larger, heavier, bulkier form of the man who lay next to her on his side and half across her, one leg flung possessively over her, one arm wrapped securely around her. Little could be seen of his features, but she could visualize the broad, tanned sweep of his well-muscled back and just the beginning of the sensual curve where its line ran into his butt, the dark sleekness of the back of his head, but she knew totally, of course, just what his face looked like, just as she knew, too, how he felt, how he smelled and how he tasted...before love and after it...
She definitely must be ill, Bobbie decided as she finally managed to close her eyes and blink the awesomely realistic vision away. Why else would she be picturing herself in bed with Luke Crighton? And not just any bed, if you please, but her very own bed back home in her small, pretty clapboard house tucked away on one of the quieter streets of their little New England town.
‘You can’t stay here,’ she repeated. Her body trembled as she heard the rusty note of shock in her voice.
‘No, I don’t think I can,’ she heard Luke agreeing. There was an odd note in his voice, as well, but when she looked at him he was focusing on the bed. To her relief he started to walk towards the door, but before he opened it he stopped and turned round saying, ‘By the way, exactly how did you come to meet young Joss?’
‘I bumped into him by accident in Haslewich,’ Bobbie told him truthfully.
‘Mmm, so he said,’ Luke commented. ‘In the churchyard apparently. He said you were looking at the gravestones...?’
Bobbie could feel her heartbeat increasing, the adrenalin starting to pump through her veins as she reacted to her awareness of danger. ‘Yes, I was,’ she agreed carefully.
‘Looking for one in particular?’ Luke questioned.
‘Just looking,’ Bobbie answered. ‘As an American I find it’s still something of a novelty for me to see gravestones with such old dates on them.’
‘You were in the modeRN part of the graveyard when he saw you, according to Joss.’
‘Was I? I can’t remember,’ Bobbie lied disinterestedly, dropping her head so that her hair swung forward to conceal and protect her expression from him. ‘Have you finished your cross-examination?’ she asked him with acid sweetness. ‘I would like to get some sleep....’
‘In order for me to need to cross-question you, you would either have to be guilty of or a witness to some sort of crime,’ Luke told her silkily. ‘Which, I wonder, did you have in mind when you made that rather betraying statement, and why?’
‘Neither,’ Bobbie fibbed fiercely as he opened the door and walked through it, but despite the conviction she had injected into her denial, she somehow had the uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t believe her.
Oh, damn the man, he was the last complication she needed to have around now, the very last.
