Читать книгу Sharon Kendrick Collection - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

BY FOUR O’CLOCK the following afternoon, as Lola drove her zippy little yellow car through the impressive navy and golden gates of St Fiacre’s, Geraint Howell-Williams had been consigned to his proper place in her memory.

Nowhere!

OK, she wasn’t denying that there was definitely some sort of powerful sexual chemistry between the two of them—because only a fool would deny that!—but clearly there was no future for them.

They didn’t seem to actually like one another very much—and just because their bodies went into overdrive whenever they were near each other that certainly was not a secure basis on which to begin a relationship!

The yellow car turned into the driveway of Marchwood House with an exuberant little spray of gravel as Lola put her foot defiantly down on the accelerator. She had been looking forward to these days off and she was not going to let her chance meeting with an insufferable Welshman spoil her hard-earned rest!

As the car stopped Lola experienced the by now familiar little sensation of awe as she stared up at the elegant, three-storeyed white house, with its impressive porticos and the two boxed bay trees which stood on either side of the shiny black front door. She still couldn’t quite believe that she owned this magnificent pile!

After managing to unlock the front door—which was a feat comparable to breaking into Fort Knox—Lola dumped her suitcases in the utility room and went off to see if there was any post, shrugging off her jacket as she went and impatiently unbuttoning her blue uniform shirt.

The house was much too hot, she decided, and turned the thermostat right down. She had been advised to leave the central heating on whenever she was away on a trip, especially in winter when there was a very real risk of the pipes freezing over. And although it was March the weather had been unsettled enough for her to continue doing just that.

However, the atmosphere was sultry enough for the house to be mistaken for a greenhouse at the moment! Lola wiped her damp brow with the back of her hand and bent down to pick up the post.

As well as the usual sundry bills and an invitation to the Dream-makers ball in May there was a letter from her mother, declining Lola’s invitation to come and spend Easter at Marchwood and telling her she had decided to spend the holiday weekend quietly on her own.

Lola sighed, disappointed but not surprised. As Marnie had pointed out, her mother’s visits had been infrequent enough when she had lived in her scruffy little flat, yet in all the six months that she had been living at Marchwood her mother had not visited once.

When she had first discovered that Peter had left her the house, Lola had worried that June Hennessy might be suspicious of her daughter’s relationship with Peter Featherstone. So Lola had told her mother outright that there had been nothing of a sexual nature between her and her benefactor, and Mrs Hennessy had, to her credit, sighed with slightly over-the-top relief and believed her.

So why was her mother still being so cagey about coming here?

Lola sighed.

Unless she was challenged directly, as she had been by Geraint in the restaurant last night, she tried her hardest to play down her inheritance. She disliked being envied and envy was usually the overriding emotion experienced by people when they discovered that she had been bequeathed a million-pound house for basically having a friendly smile and soft heart.

But what those people failed to realise was just how much it cost to actually run a house this size, particularly on an estate with the prestige of St Fiacre’s, which had such strict regulations governing the appearance of all its houses and gardens.

Lola did as much gardening as she could, but she did work full-time, and just keeping the extensive grounds in order was costing her an absolute fortune in help.

And sooner or later, she recognised as the sharp peal of the front doorbell penetrated her thoughts, she was going to have to think about selling up.

She had completely forgotten to put the safety chain on the door, and her mind was distracted as she absently pulled the door open, to find Geraint standing there, his legs slightly apart and his hands on his hips.

He looked like a cowboy, she thought, with that aggressively masculine stance which immediately made her feel all small and weak and feminine. And smitten.

Which was not the way she wanted to feel at all! She opened her mouth to lambast him, but he beat her to it.

‘Are you completely mad?’ he demanded, without any kind of preamble.

His clipped query took the wind right out of her sails, and Lola just stood there, too flabbergasted to respond—and, if she was perfectly honest, too overwhelmed by the sight of him to have the will to do anything other than gaze at him hungrily.

In daylight he looked even better than he had done in the restaurant last night. He wore a cream-coloured silk sweater which provided the perfect foil for the thick, dark hair which curled so invitingly around the tanned column of his neck, and an old pair of jeans.

Lola had once thought that she could not imagine him wearing jeans but now she recognised that that might just have been her mind protecting her from the prospect of actually seeing him in close-fitting, faded denim which clung indecently to every contour.

Because the pale blue material emphasised every centimetre of those thighs—and Geraint had the most magnificent thighs imaginable, she thought lustfully. In fact, he had the finest physique Lola had ever seen. Finer than that of the movie star she had spotted jogging around St Fiacre’s the other morning. And finer even than that of the international tennis star she had served cocktails to on a flight out of Florence last month.

His grey eyes narrowed. ‘Are you?’ he demanded curtly.

Lola blinked, still too shaken by the mesmerizing effect of the stormy grey fire which blazed from his eyes to be able to think straight. ‘Am I what?’ she queried stupidly.

He gave an impatient little snort. ‘Aren’t you at all concerned for your own safety?’ And then, when he saw her look of bemusement, his face darkened even more as he continued his tirade. ‘I could have been anyone!’ he declared. ‘Anyone! Imagine living in a place like this and being stupid enough to answer the door without even using the safety catch!’

Lola’s heart rate had slowed down enough for her to feel able to speak. ‘But it was you!’ she pointed out. ‘Wasn’t it?’

‘You didn’t know it was me!’ he shot back immediately. ‘You didn’t bother using the spyhole, did you?’

Lola raised a belligerent chin. ‘So?’

‘So I could have hit you over the head by now,’ he ground out. ‘And while you were lying unconscious I could have been in the process of ransacking your house—’

‘But the security at St Fiacre’s is reputed to be the best in the country!’ she informed him with a triumphant sweetness. ‘Besides which I haven’t anything of value to steal!’

‘You don’t think so?’ He stepped over the threshold uninvited, his cold grey eyes taking in a large Chinese vase which stood in the corner of the hall, and which Lola had been using to house her small collection of umbrellas.

‘That vase on its own would net you a small fortune,’ he informed her, with a curt nod in its direction. ‘The sketch above the fireplace is an early Waterman and those two candlesticks on the man-telpiece are made of solid silver—late Victorian, and rather rare.’

Lola blinked, far too interested in what he was saying to register the fact that he had entered her home uninvited. And he certainly seemed to know what he was talking about where antiques were concerned—which was more than she did.

Peter had left her the entire contents of the house, in addition to the building itself, but so far she just hadn’t got around to having anything valued.

Oh, her solicitor had suggested it, but Lola had automatically shied away from the idea. She had already been overwhelmed by Peter’s generosity, and to then arrange to have the house contents assessed. . . well, that had seemed like an almost greedy, grasping thing to do.

‘But far worse than theft is what else could befall you, if you continue to be so cavalier about your security arrangements!’ Geraint continued relentlessly.

He met her questioning gaze with a bleak, candid look and Lola sucked in a shocked breath as she realised just what he was getting at.

‘No!’ she breathed.

‘Oh, yes!’ he contradicted her cruelly. ‘Intruders have been known to show no conscience if they are disturbed by a spectacular-looking woman. If someone is stealing from your house, you can bet your life they don’t possess much in the way of morals. If I were a burglar, I could be raping you, Lola—right now,’ he ground out brutally.

There was a short, shocked silence as Lola absorbed what he had said, and it was a horrified and white face which she eventually turned in Geraint’s direction. ‘How c-could you?’ came her squeaky protest. ‘How could you say something so crude—?’

‘But couldn’t I?’ he intoned remorselessly, and the sombre expression in the slate-grey eyes made it impossible for Lola to look away. ‘Couldn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Especially if you happened to be in the kind of provocative state of undress you seem to be in at the moment,’ he continued, a feral gleam lighting his eyes, and Lola stared at him in genuine confusion.

‘In my uniform?’ she clarified rather shakily. ‘Hardly provocative!’

‘We’ve already discussed the indecent length of your skirt,’ he retorted, and his mouth hardened. ‘And don’t you know that a lot of men are turned on by women in uniform?’

Lola wondered briefly if he was among them, but that was something she did not trust herself to ask him. ‘I’ve never seen any statistics to that effect,’ she responded drily. ‘And I really can’t do anything about men’s bizarre little fantasies—’

‘You think male fantasies are bizarre?’ he interrupted harshly.

‘Some of them—and particularly the ones about air stewardesses! I find them insulting to women in general!’ Lola snapped back. ‘Uniforms serve a useful purpose in making everyone look the same—and I fail to see how a blouse and skirt could in any way be described as provocative!’

His eyes began a slow, cool appraisal of what she was wearing. ‘You don’t think so?’ he murmured huskily.

‘No, I jolly well don’t!’ Deciding that she would not be intimidated by such a blatantly sexual look, Lola resisted the urge to pull the skirt down over her bottom.

‘Not even when the shirt is undone—only by two buttons, but nonetheless exposing most men’s fantasies come to life?’

Her gaze followed the direction of his eyes and she saw, to her horror, exactly what he meant. The two buttons she had released earlier in an effort to counteract the sweltering heat had made her whole blouse seem to gape open, revealing the lush and creamy swell of her cleavage.

Perhaps it was the excessive heat in the house, or just a reaction to being in such close proximity to Geraint, but her breasts seemed to have swollen to twice their normal size and were spilling out over the tiny lace bra which now felt uncomfortably tight.

Colour flooded hotly into Lola’s cheeks and she saw the grey glint of devilment in his eyes as he noted the blush.

‘See what I mean?’ he mocked.

‘Oh!’ she fumed furiously, and did the buttons back up with difficulty over her straining breasts. ‘You’re impossible!’

‘Put on weight recently, have you?’ he quizzed sardonically.

Lola met his mocking gaze and wondered just why she was being forced into feeling that she had to defend herself. She didn’t want him here! He was just too big and too vital and too sexy for his own good!

Logic told her to ask him to leave; curiosity prevented her from doing so. ‘Just what are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘Come to apologise, have you?’

‘For what?’

‘For your rudeness in the restaurant last night!’ she told him tartly.

‘Or for my refreshing honesty? Depends how you look at it, surely? As for why I’m here—well, I wanted to see you, of course, Lola.’ His grey eyes glittered. ‘To talk to you.’

Lola shook her head. Her hair was still in its ‘flying’ style, with all the curls scraped back into a constricting bun, but by now most of them were threatening to escape. ‘I thought that we had said all there was to say last night!’

Now, why had she brought up last night? she asked herself crossly. For she had caused the enigmatic grey eyes to light up with that stormy potency which made her heart thunder. . .

‘Did you? I thought that talking had very little to do with what happened last night,’ he murmured.

‘As opposed to fighting, you mean?’ she retaliated unsteadily.

‘I was thinking more of the kiss which followed that fight,’ he said with a slow smile which, when combined with the memory of that kiss, had precisely the wrong effect on Lola.

The druggingly sweet, aching awareness of him returned, and with it her brain went to mush. And perhaps he was perceptive enough to realise it, for he moved closer. . .close enough for Lola to be able to see the faint, dark shadow around his chin which made him look so unashamedly masculine. . . and she found herself wondering whether or not he had shaved that morning.

‘Weren’t you?’ he prompted softly. ‘Remembering that kiss, too?’

’N-no, I wasn’t,’ she stumbled, furious with herself for feeling so powerless. ‘I’ve been doing my best to forget all about it, if you must know.’

He nodded. ‘Me too,’ he murmured. ‘But that’s the trouble with making something forbidden—it makes it so much more exciting, wouldn’t you agree, Lola?’

‘You mean that there is nothing quite so irresistible as temptation?’ she returned.

‘Not quite,’ he returned, with surprisingly gentle mockery. ‘I can think of something far more irresistible! But temptation comes a close second.’

Lola knew that she was in danger, a danger she was at a loss to define—even to herself. She heard herself clearing her throat like a nervous politician. ‘Geraint—’

‘I like the way you say my name,’ he told her softly. ‘With that quiet, almost sing-song little Cornish burr—’

‘I need to shower,’ she cut in rather desperately. ‘And to change. And I need to shop.’ She hoped that she sounded more authoritative than she felt.

‘Of course you do,’ he agreed, and Lola was horrified to discover her heart sinking with disappointment at his easy agreement. Did that mean he was going now?

What had she been hoping for? That he would haul her into his arms and tell her that she was perfect as she was and that the shower and the shopping could wait?

‘I need to shop too,’ he said. ‘So we’ll go together.’

Lola stared at him. ‘Geraint—’

‘Lola?’

‘I mean, there must be millions of girls—’

‘In the world?’ he queried with a wry smile, deliberately misunderstanding her.

‘Who would be falling over themselves to go out with you!’ she snapped back at him, and tossed her dark head like an excitable filly.

‘Yes,’ he answered quietly, and without conceit. ‘And?’

‘So why me?’

He gave her a cool smile. ‘You aren’t being very honest with yourself, are you, Lola? You are as fascinated by me as I am by you—and it’s no good opening those pretty lips to ask me for an explanation why, because I can’t give you one.’ He shrugged with an impatient little movement. ‘I dislike clichés, but for once, here, their use seems to be appropriate. Something happened when we saw one another across that crowded room, didn’t it? Something powerful—’

‘Something disturbing,’ Lola put in, almost absently giving voice to her confused thoughts.

He stilled, his whole stance suddenly alert and watchful. ‘So it disturbs you too, does it? This feeling? He gave a short laugh. ‘Because I don’t like it very much myself.’

‘You d-don’t?’ she echoed, aware of the heavy weight of disappointment which had settled like a heavy meal in her stomach.

‘Of course I don’t like it!’ he almost snarled. ‘Do you think it gave me pleasure to make an exhibition of myself in the centre of a restaurant in which I have dined happily and without incident for over ten years? Do you think I enjoyed kissing you in public like a seventeen-year-old who had just discovered sex for the first time?’

Lola’s eyes widened into sapphire saucers. ‘Then why don’t you just leave well alone?’

His mouth thinned into a self-deprecating line. ‘Do you know nothing of human nature?’ he demanded.

She gave him a steady look which told him in no uncertain terms that she would not be patronised! ‘A little,’ she answered wryly. ‘Working with the general public day in and day out gives you some inkling of what makes people tick!’

‘So who buys more champagne?’ he queried. ‘The passengers in First Class or the passengers in Economy?’

Lola gave him a bemused look. ‘The passengers in First Class don’t pay for champagne—’

‘And yet they don’t drink so much of it as you might expect?’

‘I guess not.’

‘Exactly!’ His grey eyes gleamed with a steely fire. ‘If something is free it’s acceptable—and therefore less exciting. Put something out of bounds by either making it prohibitively expensive or banning it altogether and your appetite for it increases —that’s human nature!’

Lola hadn’t really thought about it in those terms before. ‘I don’t quite see how champagne consumption on the airline relates to—’

‘Us?’ he supplied acidly.

Lola clamped her lips tightly shut, worried that he would see the vulnerable tremor which hovered around her mouth and threatened to blow her cover. ‘But there is no us, Geraint,’ she told him tartly, because in spite of everything she derived no pleasure from saying it.

‘But that’s just where you’re wrong,’ he breathed, his grey eyes narrowing to flinty chips. ‘There is something between us. You know there is. Have you no sense of adventure in your soul, Lola? Don’t t you think we ought to explore all the infinite possibilities?’

‘No,’ Lola answered repressively. ‘I don’t.

‘But if you make something forbidden, then it becomes an obsession,’ he told her. ‘Doesn’t it?’ he persisted, with a wry elevation of one dark eyebrow. ‘And obsession is not just hard to live with, it’s downright impossible. Instead of concentrating on the day-to-day pattern of life, your thoughts become one-track, so that you can spend hours reflecting on the pleasing curve of a jawline, or how sunlight can turn hair into satin ribbons.’

His gaze ran swiftly over her face before he concluded, ‘Obsession makes life take a back seat, and that’s no good to anyone.’

Lola surveyed him steadily, unwillingly caught off guard by his frankness, his lack of game-playing. ‘You sound as though you have a lot of experience of being obsessed,’ she commented in surprise.

‘Thankfully not.’ He shook his dark head. ‘Any knowledge I may have of the subject I have gained through observation, not experience.’ He glanced down at the pale gold watch which gleamed on his wrist. ‘Now, why don’t I wait here while you get changed, and then we’ll go shopping together?’

‘Shopping together?’ Lola found herself smiling at his audacity. ‘Because I—’

‘Because unless you go upstairs and take off that ridiculous uniform,’ he interrupted in an urgent, smoky whisper, ‘I might just do something as uncharacteristic as I did last night.’

Afterwards she would hate herself for asking the question, but for now she seemed to have no control over the words she heard herself using. ‘And what’s that?’

Had he imagined her to be coy? He must have done, for a cool, almost calculating look hardened the smoky grey eyes and something approaching regret darkened their pupils to an inky glitter. ‘Did I underestimate your honesty, Lola? You want to play games with me now, do you?’

‘N-no,’ she stumbled. She wanted something, yes, but not games. Something more exciting than games. And what she wanted she was just about to get. . .

He reached out and tilted her chin with his hands, his gaze locking thoughtfully with hers. ‘Yes,’ he said, as if he was answering a question, and bent his head to kiss her.

Lola tried to hold back the tide of emotion which was threatening to flood her with its sweet, relentless waves, but it was no good. One touch and she was hooked. Out of her mind and out of control—just like that. Unprotesting, she let him take her wordlessly into his embrace.

He cradled her in a manner which hinted at protectiveness and yet at the same time he made no effort whatsoever to disguise the fact that he wanted her very, very much.

Lola shivered when she felt the hardness of his hips as he pressed his body close to hers, and found her fingers stealing up to rub distractedly at the broad bank of his shoulders.

She heard the small laugh he gave—of triumph and desire and delight—and she lifted her face to his, not caring whether it was right or wrong, just eager to have his lips on hers once more. To have him rain sweet, reviving kisses onto her mouth. . .

There was an unsettling, questioning look in his eyes and then they narrowed with the determined glitter of passion. Their mouths were near enough for Lola to be able to feel the warmth of his quickened breath, when, with all the welcomeness of an early morning alarm call, the doorbell pealed loudly in their ears.