Читать книгу Settling The Score - Шэрон Кендрик, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 8
ОглавлениеIT WAS the afternoon before her wedding, and Romy was feeling sick.
The make-up artist had just been through a trial run before tomorrow’s church service, and had put far more gunge on her face than she was used to. Romy peered in the mirror and frowned. The oodles of mascara and foundation might have made her eyes look bigger and her skin even smoother, but she looked much older. And harder, too.
So she went straight into the bathroom and scrubbed the whole lot off!
Her mother was lying on the bed in the hotel room, drinking unchilled white wine and stuffing cottonwool balls between her toes as she waited for the red varnish on her nails to dry.
She looked up as Romy entered the room, and frowned. ‘Put some make-up on!’ she ordered instantly. ‘Your face looks awful without it!’
Ignoring that, Romy sat down on the edge of her bed and studied her fingernails intently. ‘Do you—do you think every bride feels like this?’ she asked her mother tentatively.
Her mother took another swig of warm wine. ‘Like what?’
Romy swallowed as she struggled to explain her thoughts to her mother—although she supposed that there was absolutely no reason why she should suddenly succeed after all these years. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Excited, I suppose, and yet...well, afraid, too...’
Stella Salisbury, whose dissolute life was finally taking its toll on her once beautiful face, shot her daughter an acid look. ‘All I can remember is the feeling of being shackled,’ she drawled, and lit a cigarette. ‘But unfortunately there wasn’t a lot I could do about it—I was pregnant with you at the time.’
‘Mum...’ Romy sighed worriedly. ‘Do you really think you need any more to drink? There’ll be plenty at the party tonight. And you want to be sober for that, don’t you?’
‘Why?’ asked her mother, inhaling deeply on her cigarette. ‘It’s hardly likely to be the bash of the year, now, is it? Honestly, Romy, I didn’t spend all that money on your education for you to marry the first man who asked you! The Ackroyds may be a fine, old-established family—but they’re as dull as ditchwater!’
And that’s precisely why I’m marrying Mark, thought Romy as she helplessly watched her mother refilling her glass. Because he’s everything that you’re not and he wants to give me everything I’ve never had.
In a nutshell, Mark represented security. And Romy craved security with all the fervour of someone who had spent her formative years being bundled from pillar to post while her mother worked her way through a series of unsuitable boyfriends. Romy’s father had been killed in Africa when she was just a tiny baby, and she had never known a single, stabilising male influence.
‘Besides...’ Stella fixed her daughter with a sharp look ‘...there might not even be a wedding at this rate!’
Romy pushed a strand of blonde hair out of her eye. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked in alarm.
Stella shrugged. ‘Well, the best man still hasn’t arrived, has he? And it beats me why a man with Mark Ackroyd’s connections has chosen someone who nobody knows from Adam. Someone told me that he grew up on completely the wrong side of the tracks, so why on earth—’
‘Becàuse he saved Mark’s life when they were at Oxford,’ put in Romy patiently. ‘I thought I’d explained that’
‘Then why isn’t he here?’
‘He’s flying over from Hong Kong. He works there. He’ll arrive tomorrow morning. The wedding’s not until three, so there will be plenty of time.’
‘Cutting it a little fine, isn’t he? What if he’s delayed?’
Romy shrugged. ‘He won’t be.’
‘What do you mean, “He won’t be”?’
‘Just that Mark says that when Dominic says he’ll do something then we are to consider it done.’ She coughed, her nostrils filling with the smoke from her mother’s cigarette, which hung in a foul-smelling grey fog in the hotel room. ‘It’s so smoky in here!’ she spluttered, flapping her hand around in an effort to dispel it.
‘It’s a dump!’ retorted Stella, looking around the room with a grimace.
‘It is not a dump!’ protested Romy automatically.
‘Why we’re staying here I simply don’t know!’ shrilled Mrs Salisbury. ‘Not when your husband-to-be owns the biggest house in the entire county.’
Because Romy had put her foot down very firmly—that was why! She suppressed a shudder as she tried to imagine her mother and Mark’s mother sharing the same house, even for one night! ‘You get your freedom here,’ she said, looking meaningfully at the overflowing ashtray and the half-empty bottle of wine.
Though perhaps if Stella had been treated to the rather abstemious hospitality of the formidable Mrs Ackroyd, then she might have applied the brakes a bit. And subsequently have been in a better state for tonight’s party!
Romy sighed, wishing that the ceremony was already over, and it was just her and Mark.
And?
She swallowed.
It was normal to feel pre-wedding nerves, perfectly normal—she had to accept that. And Mark was so very proud of the fact that she was a virgin.
‘So many girls aren’t these days,’ he had told her fondly, planting a tender kiss on her long neck. ‘That’s why I want to keep you pure and innocent for as long as possible!’
Romy impatiently pushed another lock of hair off her suddenly hot face. ‘I’m going out for a while!’ she told her mother abruptly.
‘Out? Now? But you can’t! What about the party?’
‘The party isn’t for hours,’ answered Romy, with an oddly detached kind of calm. ‘And I’m afraid I’ll have little stomach for it if I sit around here watching you get steadily sozzled. So why don’t you order up some black coffee, Mum, and try to get a little sleep?’
Barely registering her mother’s amazement at the fact that she had answered her back, Romy left the hotel room without a backward glance.
She hesitated outside the door, not quite sure where she intended going. A walk, perhaps. Yes, that was it! A walk in the brilliant July sunshine—that might help her shake off this curiously unsettled mood. Besides, there was nothing else for her to do except fill in the empty hours.
Everything was ready and waiting for the Big Day. The white tulle dress was hanging in the wardrobe swathed in thick plastic. The white satin shoes were lined up neatly below, and frothy little flounces of white lace underwear lay in neat, snowy piles.
Romy automatically quickened her step as she walked towards the smaller lift at the end of the tenth-floor corridor, instinctively avoiding the main lift. Lots of the wedding guests were also staying at the hotel and she didn’t want to run into any of them. Because for some reason Romy couldn’t face talking, not to anyone, not just now...
She pressed the button and waited, and presently the lift doors jerked open and she stepped inside, pressed the button for the ground floor and it began its descent.
On the seventh floor the doors opened and a man entered, a man so drop-dead gorgeous that Romy actually blinked distractedly as she stared at him.
He stared right back—so intently and with such a piercing expression in a pair of exceptional silver-grey eyes that all Romy’s usual defences crumbled, and she was left feeling curiously exposed and vulnerable.
Hastily she started studying the carpet with the kind of avid interest she usually reserved for the gossip column in her favourite newspaper!
But, try as she might to concentrate on the swirly red and gold pattern, she found herself unable to stop observing him from out of the corner of her eye, even though she pretended not to.
He looked to be in his mid-twenties, and was impressively tall, with hair which was as dark as coal. He had powerfully built shoulders and his skin was lightly tanned, so that it made a flattering contrast against the pale linen suit he wore.
But it was his face which was truly remarkable—angular and hypnotic, its hard, flat planes casting intriguing shadows. The mouth was a contradiction, in that it had full, curved lines which hinted at an experience Romy did not dare dwell on, but already there was a hard, cynical twist in place. And that was surprising in one so young, she thought fleetingly.
He looked up and caught her peeping, and his grey eyes flicked over her with unashamed interest. He gave a brief, knowing smile, before turning his attention back to the folded-up copy of the financial paper he was carrying.
Romy couldn’t concentrate. Or, rather, she could—but on one thing and one thing alone.
That man!
As the lift continued its descent she found herself so acutely aware of his presence that it was almost painful. But then he was an exceptionally good-looking man, she reasoned, and her reaction was perfectly natural. Just because she was getting married the next day, that did not mean that she would never find another man attractive!
Nevertheless, she found herself praying that the lift would quickly reach its destination.
It did—but it was not the one she had been counting on! In between floors five and six it made a sickening kind of screeching noise and then juddered to a deafeningly silent halt.
Nervously, Romy lifted her hand and started jabbing at the button several times, but the lift remained stubbornly stuck, and when she dared to look up at the man it was to find him observing her, a wry smile on his lips making her quickly revise her earlier opinion of him. Not exceptionally good-looking, she concluded, but outrageously good-looking!
‘And you thought that this kind of thing only happened in films, didn’t you?’ he said.
Romy didn’t answer, just continued to punch away at the lift button with a desperation she did not quite like to analyse.
‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ he observed, in that same deep and drawling voice, ‘bashing the thing is likely to do more harm than good!’
‘Then what do you suggest I do?’ she snapped back.
He raised a lazy black brow. ‘You could try pressing the alarm button,’ he suggested.
Now why hadn’t she thought of that?
Feeling more than a bit of a fool, Romy did just that, disappointed and yet not surprised when nothing happened.
He moved forward and began studying the buttons, pressing each one experimentally at first and then trying different combinations, like someone struggling to find the right password on a strange computer. But, no matter what he did, the lift remained stubbornly still.
The man frowned. ‘Could be the electrics, I suppose, as the alarm isn’t working either,’ he commented thoughtfully. ‘Although we still have light, so maybe the mechanism is on a completely different circuit.’
For some reason, his calm assurance infuriated her. And so did the fact that she couldn’t understand a word he was saying!
‘Is that all you can say?’ she demanded, her voice rising with every word. ‘Standing there wittering on about electrics when we’re stuck in this lift--alone!’
‘Not alone. Together,’ he corrected her, and gave her a narrow-eyed look. ‘And if you continue to get hysterical—’
‘I am not getting hysterical!’
‘Yes, you are!’ he chided gently.
‘I’ll get hysterical if I want to!’ she yelled. ‘Who wouldn’t get hysterical if they were stuck in a lift with a complete stranger?’
He gave a lazy smile, the corners of his mouth turning up in a way which suddenly made Romy’s heart thunder as it had never thundered before. ‘Do I make you nervous, then?’ he queried wickedly.
‘Yes, you jolly well do! And I’m certainly not going to accept this false imprisonment lying down!’
It was the worst thing she could have said, and the answering glint of light in his grey eyes made her fervently wish that she could rephrase that last statement!
‘What a pity,’ he murmured.
‘In fact, I’m going to yell for help!’ she announced wildly, saying anything—anything—to stop him looking at her in that way... She glared at him challengingly.
‘Be my guest,’ he drawled, and carelessly loosened the tie of cornflower silk which was knotted around his throat. ‘Yell to your heart’s content, sweetheart!’
Sticking her mouth as close to the door as possible, Romy shouted, ‘Help!’ at the top of her voice, and listened as the word echoed its way down the silent lift shaft. She drew in a deep breath for another attempt. ‘Help!’ But again her shout simply echoed into nothingness, and the lack of response made Romy’s heart race with real fear.
‘Why don’t you yell for help?’ she challenged.
‘Because there’s no one out there to hear us,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘It’s a little-used lift. We would do much better to wait until we hear someone banging around, and then yell!’
‘And what if we never get out?’ she babbled, moving forward and clutching onto his lapels with white-knuckled fingers, her voice rising to a high, brittle note which threatened to crack. She buckled against him. ‘What if We die of thirst, or starve to death?’
‘We won’t,’ he soothed, and almost absently stroked the blonde hair which was now resting against his chest. ‘We’ll be just fine.’
She quickly dropped her hands from where they were busy creasing the linen of his lapels! ‘No, we won’t! We’ll be stuck here for ever! I just know we will! I—’
He lifted her chin with his forefinger so that she could not escape that blazing, stormy gaze. ‘The classic remedy for hysteria is a slap to the face.’ He cut across her words with a frown which gradually gave way to a slow, careful smile. ‘But I’m not inclined to do that. For a start, it’s such a beautiful face...’
The softness in his deep voice instantly and magically diffused all the terror she felt. A beautiful face? Romy went pink with pleasure at the compliment, and then immediately started thinking how pathetic she must look! And should he really be saying something like that to an engaged woman?
But when she threw a covert glance down at her left hand she discovered that she had left her engagement ring lying on the dressing table in the hotel room. There was no outward symbol to show the world she was spoken for. So she had better start acting like a mature woman who was about to be married!
Fixing her most intelligent look on her face, she drew a deep, calming breath and said steadily, ‘And how do you propose we get out of here?’
He stared down at her intently, his face and body suddenly tense. His eyes were cold and grey, Romy noted with a shiver—as hard and as glittering as a blade of steel.
Romy instantly became aware that all normal sounds had been deadened—muffled by the pulses which thundered in her head. Her line of vision had contracted to one small area, and she found that all she could see were the firm, sensual curves of his mouth.
He seemed to move fractionally towards her, and for one heart-stopping moment she actually thought that he was about to bend that dark, gorgeous head to kiss her—and found that she was holding her breath, waiting and anticipating his next move.
Then suddenly he laughed, and shifted his weight rather awkwardly, as though he was uncomfortable. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any immediate solution. So we’ll just have to wait. Sooner or later someone is bound to notice that one of us is missing or that the lift is firmly stuck between floors.’
‘Of course,’ she said stiffly, and deliberately turned her back on him, feeling absolutely mortified—aware that for a moment back then she had very much wanted him to kiss her. Had he been aware of her wish, too?
Was that another sign of pre-wedding nerves? she wondered worriedly. Wanting total strangers to pull you into their arms and to kiss you to within about an inch of your life? Tight-lipped, she stared at the blank wall, feeling disgusted with herself.
Dominic looked at the tense set of her shoulders, his mouth hardening as he recognised the hypnotic pull of sexual attraction which was building up in the confined space with all the speed of cells multiplying.
He tried to rationalise the situation. He had given little time or thought to pleasure over the past year, and this overwhelming need to crush her against him was probably just his body’s reaction to such self-imposed denial.
He had been working flat out for months and months, taking on a job in a law firm in Hong Kong for which he had been much too young and too unqualified, but in which he had absolutely triumphed—to everyone’s astonishment bar his own.
For Dominic was determined to succeed, to be the first member of his family who didn’t live in fear of the bailiffs.
He had grown up in poverty—real, abject poverty—with a mother who was proud and hard enough to let her only child go hungry. And Dominic had never forgotten hunger. Memories of that great aching emptiness gnawing away at the pit of his stomach had driven him on and on. He had vowed to stop only when he had made enough never to have to worry about hunger again.
The only trouble was that he had reached that stage a long time ago, but had blinded himself to the fact.
His whole life was work. Women did not feature in his grand scheme of things. Women distracted you with their beguiling eyes and their soft bodies. And women like this one—with her honey-blonde hair rippling like moonbeams over pert, high young breasts—well... Dominic could imagine never wanting to work again if he lost himself in her arms.
Oh, he dated occasionally—but in relationships he could control. Completely. And for this reason his affairs usually tended to be with older women.
Women who knew the score. Women in their early thirties, with established careers of their own, who were not looking for a permanent partner. Or, at least, that was what they always told him at the beginning. Three months down the line, when they started talking babies and houses, Dominic would be forced to end the relationship as gently as possible.
Settling down was simply not an option at this time in his life and he sometimes wondered whether it ever would be. For he had never known happiness or security in his own childhood and so had no idea how to create it.
He shifted his weight as he felt the uncomfortable heaviness of desire building up, but unfortunately there was nowhere to look at that moment, except at the source of that desire.
His eyes lingered reluctantly on the pure, clean sweep of her neck. Noted the way her simple blue T-shirt and denim mini-skirt flowed down over her slim, healthy curves. God, but she looked so young and so beautiful! And so impossibly innocent, too!
But innocent she could not be, he decided grimly—not from the way she had looked at him just now. He had surprised a wide-eyed look of pure invitation on her face. This happened to Dominic with such monotonous regularity that it usually left him cold, however beautiful the woman. And yet for some reason, with this woman, it was taking every bit of will-power he possessed not to succumb to it.
Romy had started to feel hot Tiny pinpricks of heat began to scratch irritatingly at her forehead, and surreptitiously she drew the back of her hand across it.
‘Perhaps we should sit down,’ he suggested.
She turned, suddenly aware of how close he was, the scent of him invading her nostrils like the sweetest perfume. ‘Wh-why?’
‘Because it’s hot and stressful in here.’ Very stressful, he thought ruefully as he watched the tiny pulse at her temple beat so frantically. ‘Confined space, and all that. Aren’t we supposed to conserve oxygen and energy in such a situation? I don’t want you fainting on me.’
Romy smiled. ‘Do I look like the fainting type?’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘You look...delicate, if you must know. Too pale with those shadows bruising your eyes—as if you haven’t been sleeping much lately.’
‘I’m sorry I asked!’ she joked, but she slid to the floor as he had suggested, and looked rather pointedly at the space beside her. ‘But if all you say is true, then shouldn’t you be joining me?’
As soon as Dominic saw her coltish young legs sprawled in front of her, he knew he had made a mistake. A big mistake. He tried to will the desire away, but by now it was in such an advanced state that it stubbornly refused to go.
And she was right; he really ought to join her. Standing was no help to his discomfort at all. From here he had a too tantalising view of what her breasts might be like if they were bare. Whenever she moved, the thin blue material of her T-shirt moved fractionally with her—so that he caught an occasional glimpse of the creamy flesh above the luscious swell of her breasts.
He reluctantly crouched down and arranged his long-legged frame in the cramped space with difficulty. And found that sitting beside her was the only sensibly way to stop him from staring at her more than was absolutely necessary.
‘Are you frightened?’ he asked her conversationally, in an effort to distract himself from the rapid rising and falling of her breasts as she tried her best to act unconcerned by his proximity.
‘I’m not sure,’ she hedged, because she found it difficult to lie, and in truth she was very frightened indeed—though more by the intensity of her body’s reaction to a man who was a complete stranger than by her entrapment.
She could feel the heat pricking her skin, the insistent peaking of her nipples beneath the gossamer-fine lace of the bra she wore. ‘Are you?’ she asked, more urgently than she had intended. ‘Frightened?’
He barely heard her. His thoughts were all taken up with the dewy appearance of her skin. He found himself mesmerised by the fine beads of sweat which were beginning to mist the magnolia-pale area beneath her neck. ‘Am I what?’ he asked her distractedly.
‘Frightened.’
He found himself mesmerised by her eyes now. Great big pixie eyes—as rich and dark as the most expensive chocolate. He leaned forward, unable to stop himself, and removed a non-existent speck of dust from her nose. He saw her begin to shiver violently, as though she was unable to control herself, and he was suddenly overwhelmed by a sensation of inevitability which was almost primitive in its intensity.
The air crackled; the silence was like thunder in their ears.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Fear is just about the last thing on my mind right now.’
’D-don’t.’ She stumbled over the word, even though he was no longer touching her, but the grey eyes were suddenly blazing into hers with a fervent silvery fire which thrilled her.
‘Don’t what?’ he queried, so neutrally that the question seemed to pose no threat. ‘Don’t marvel at your exquisite beauty—when not to do so would be a crime? Or don’t kiss you—when we both know that’s what you want more than anything else in the world right now?’ His voice deepened to a husky caress. ‘What we both want,’ he finished.
‘You—can’t,’ Romy breathed in thrilled disbelief.
‘You can’t just come out and say things like that!’
‘Oh, I think I can,’ he contradicted her, with a glittering and arrogant confidence which renewed the racing of her heart.
And then the lights went out.
Instinct made her leap into his arms, and instinct made him clasp her tightly against his chest. And when instinct had been replaced by reason, and Romy tried to move away from him, he refused to let her go, his mouth irresistibly drawn to the scented silk of her hair.
‘My prayers have just been answered,’ he murmured softly against a blonde satin strand.
Mine, too, thought Romy guiltily.
‘It’s all right,’ he murmured soothingly as he felt her heart beat out a loud tattoo which thudded intimately against his own chest. ‘They’ll come looking for us soon. They’re bound to find us.’
But she didn’t want them to find them; that was the trouble. She had discovered her own little piece of heaven on earth, as far removed from reality and understanding as heaven itself, and oh, nothing could have made Romy stop him from holding her the way he was holding her right then.
‘Now, what were we talking about when the lights went out?’ he whispered.
Afterwards Romy would attempt to justify what had happened next. She would tell herself that it had been her first close encounter with an experienced man who was able to seduce her with just the right mixture of desire and restraint.
She would also try to convince herself that it had been curiosity. And pre-wedding nerves. She had never kissed another man apart from her fiance and what harm would one kiss do? A brief moment of madness before the lifelong commitment which was marriage was perfectly natural.
In the strange, private world of the broken-down lift events took on an unreal quality. There in the warm darkness it was all too easy to give in to this elemental desire without any feeling of shame.
‘This,’ she whispered back, and raised her face to his.
Her mouth tasted of toothpaste, and a faint scent of rain-washed meadows clung to her skin and her hair. To Dominic, she tasted and smelt so clean and so pure and so fresh. She was like a long shower at the end of a grimy day’s work in the city. A refreshing drink after being parched for so long.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, he silently remonstrated with himself. Is it abstinence which is making you so fanciful? Because you haven’t had a woman for over a year? But then he felt her lips parting beneath his, and an overwhelming rush of desire made him give a small, tortured moan as he deepened the kiss.
Romy had meant only to kiss him, but a need far stronger than her good intentions soon had her threading her fingers luxuriously through his thick dark hair, gasping with a kind of compliant greed as his fingers drifted over the taut, straining mounds of her breasts.
‘You shouldn’t!’ she gasped, the words wrung reluctantly from her lips.
‘I know, but you’d kill me if I stopped, wouldn’t you?’
Say no, said some remote section of her mind which was still thinking logically. Go on, say it...say it! ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes, I would kill you!’
He laughed, but a little unsteadily, as though the strength of her desire had startled him. Her passion seemed so at odds with her blonde, scrubbed innocence. Unless the innocence was a sham, he thought reluctantly...
He let his mouth slowly drift along the gentle curve of her jaw, anointing her with tiny, feather-light kisses which seemed to incite her even more. Her head fell back helplessly, so that her breasts were offered up to his mouth with a kind of wanton abandon.
Romy was on fire as he peeled the T-shirt up her torso until her pert breasts in the lacy bra were revealed. She felt the cool rush of air to her heated skin as he freed the front fastening of the bra and impatiently pushed the filmy fabric aside.
And when he began to suckle her the pleasure was almost as unbearable as the frustration she felt, knowing that she must call a halt to this madness.
In a minute, she promised herself. I’ll stop him in a minute.
But he pulled her roughly against him and she felt her body writhing against the hard pressure of his. Frantically, their mouths collided, their kisses fiery and passionate as they both fruitlessly attempted to derive the ultimate satisfaction from kissing alone.
If there had been enough room to turn her over onto her back and take her right there and then, then Dominic suspected that he would have done. As it was, he knew that he must be the one to call a halt to things. And quickly.
He drew a long, shuddering breath. ‘If we don’t stop,’ he warned her huskily, ‘you know what’s going to happen?’
The sound of his voice should have brought Romy back to her senses, but it did no such thing. She felt as though she had wandered unawares into an enchanted place, which she had no desire to leave.
