Читать книгу Sharon Kendrick Collection - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 15

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN Lola awoke, Geraint had gone, and she looked around the room, feeling abandoned, until she saw that the carpet was still littered with some of his discarded clothes, which meant that he had not gone very far.

She went pink with remembered pleasure as she saw his silk sweater, which he had obviously hurled across the room without thinking. She had rather liked the way that his customary sang-froid seemed to have deserted him when she had lain on the bed silently watching him remove his clothes.

From the wicked glitter in his grey eyes, Lola had suspected that he intended to disrobe as slowly and seductively as possible, but in the end he had torn his clothes off with an impatience which had touched her heart as well as her body.

Lola plumped up several pillows and settled back against them, staring out of the window into the star-studded darkness and wondering whether lovemaking just carried on getting better and better like that.

And if that was the case, then how did people bear the pleasure? How could they lead normal lives knowing that such amazing rapture was theirs for the asking?

She heard the distant chinking of china, and footsteps approaching, and then Geraint appeared in the doorway carrying a loaded tray, naked save for a pair of faded jeans of which he hadn’t even bothered doing up the top button.

Lola gulped. With his tar-dark hair all ruffled from where she had been frantically running her hands through it, and the faint sheen which clung to his bare, lightly tanned skin he looked absolutely gorgeous.

In bed he had been the complete lover—passionate, considerate, imaginative. . . a little bit wild. Lola trembled. Even funny. She loved him; she knew that—it was impossible not to love him. Was there any chance, she wondered, that Geraint could grow to love her too?

‘Hello,’ he said softly.

‘Hello.’ She smiled happily. ‘You look like a rock star in that get-up!’

‘And you look like a naked nymph,’ he murmured.

‘Do I?’ she asked him, her smile widening as he approached.

She had plumped up his pillows too, and now she stared up at him expectantly, her face growing pink with the anticipation of having him naked in her arms again. ‘Aren’t you coming back to bed?’ she asked him, thinking how husky and provocative her voice sounded.

‘No. Not just now,’ he answered quickly, his body tensing—as though she had said something vaguely obscene.

Lola frowned, feeling puzzled. She saw the faintly guarded expression which had crossed his face and wondered what had caused it. What were the rules for after-bed behaviour between two people who did not, she realised with a slowly sinking heart, even know each other terribly well?

Surely it wasn’t too pushy to ask your lover to come back to bed with you? Especially since they had spent the most uninhibited hours of her life together, and he had positively encouraged her to tell him exactly what she wanted him to do to her—even when half the time she hadn’t even known herself! So was she now suddenly supposed to start playing it cool?

Lola grimaced. She hated playing games. She suspected that was one of the main reasons why she had dated men so infrequently—because she had a habit of saying what she actually meant. And a lot of men, it seemed, found it difficult to cope with the truth!

She forced herself to look with interest at the contents of the tray he had placed on the window-seat. ‘What have you brought?’ she asked.

‘Tea. Wine. Sandwiches. Cake. And some cold chicken and salad I found in the fridge—take your pick.’

Lola adopted a resolutely cheerful tone. ‘And what’s that supposed to be? Tea or dinner?’

‘Either. We’ve missed both.’

Lola’s eyes widened. ‘Good grief! What time is it?’

‘Getting on for nine.’

‘You mean we’ve been . . . I mean—’

He cut across her discomfiture with a rueful glance. ‘Yes, Lola—we’ve been in bed for almost four hours. Aren’t you hungry?’

She stared at him miserably. ‘I might be, if you’d only come back to bed—it’s awfully lonely in here.’

He did not answer immediately, but went abruptly over to the window and stood staring out into the empty night, before drawing the heavy velvet drapes and shutting out the starlight. ‘Why don’t we eat something first?’ he suggested.

If he hadn’t had such a grim expression ruining a perfectly handsome face, then Lola might have made a joke about the condemned man being given a last meal—because that was exactly what the atmosphere felt like. But she didn’t even dare joke about it.

She was frightened. Frightened by the cold, distant expression on his face and frightened by the physical distance he was putting between the two of them.

But Lola knew that she had to take it like a woman. If Geraint was now regretting having made love to her, then nothing she could say or do could possibly change his mind.

If he had decided, for whatever reason, that she was not the kind of person he wanted to have a relationship with, then she must just accept that—and gracefully, too. So that whenever he remembered her—if he remembered her—he would remember her dignity and calmness and not just the way she had blatantly invited him to make mad, passionate love to her!

She chewed on her bottom lip anxiously and wondered just how she had had the gall to ask him outright like that!

‘What would you like?’ he asked politely, as if he had just met her for the first time.

Lola bit back the desire to scream, and instead said, very calmly, ‘I’ll have one of those sandwiches, please.’

‘Coming up.’ He put the sandwiches on two plates, then handed her one—a beautiful bone-china plate in deep green, overlaid with a delicate lily-of-the-valley design, which Lola had never seen before.

‘Where did you find these?’ she queried as she took the plate from him. ‘Or did you go next door to Dominic’s and bring them?’ Even to her own ears the question sounded ridiculous.

He seemed to change his mind about his sandwich, and put the plate down quickly, as if it were made of hot metal. ‘No, I didn’t go next door. The plates were here,’ he said slowly. ‘In the china cupboard.’

‘The china cupboard?’ asked Lola, screwing her nose up in bemusement. ‘Here?’

He nodded. ‘Along the corridor that runs from the cellar—you know? There’s a doorway just at the back. . .’

She knew the part of the house to which he was referring—the basement area which looked as though it could be used as the set for a Gothic horror film. She had been in there once—very briefly. It was dark and dingy and it gave her the creeps.

‘I never use it,’ Lola said as she eyed the sandwich without enthusiasm, and then something else occurred to her. ‘So how come you know more about my house than I do?’ she demanded half-jokingly.

There was a silence, but it was not the tranquil hush born of easy companionship. Instead, it was a tense, uneasy silence, made all the more ominous by the bleak, haunted expression on Geraint’s face.

‘There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there, Geraint?’ Lola put the plate down on the beside table with a clatter and looked at him, noticing that her voice was suddenly sounding very unsteady.

There was only a fractional pause this time. ‘Yes, there is,’ he said grimly. ‘And it’s about time you heard it.’

The fear which was building a bigger barrier between them second by second made her hold her hands up to him in appeal. ‘No, Geraint,’ she said flatly. ‘Not yet.’

She felt at a disadvantage and she was scared. Scared because she instinctively dreaded that he was about to tell her something which would, by necessity, change the whole nature of their relationship. And disadvantaged because she was about to hear what she suspected would be a kind of true confession and she wasn’t even wearing any clothes!

She ran her fingers through the tangled mess of dark curls which fell over her shoulders and, thankfully, a few stray locks fell to conceal her breasts. ‘Is this something you could tell me in one sentence, Geraint?’

He gave a weary shake of his head. ‘No.’

‘Then I need to put some clothes on first.’

‘Yes, of course. Here.’ He bent to retrieve her stockings and panties and bra, and held them out to her in a crumpled array of different silks and lace, but Lola shook her head hurriedly and it took all her determination not to recoil from them.

She wanted something clean and fresh to wear, something which did not remind her of the four hours she had just spent in bed with Geraint Howell-Williams.

‘I meant my jeans,’ she said. ‘And I ought to shower—’

‘No!’ His response rang out decisively around the room.

‘No?’ Had he actually said no? Lola raised her eyebrows at him coldly. ‘I know I’ve just been to bed with you, but I’m not quite your chattel yet, Geraint!’

‘Don’t be so damned stupid!’ he snapped.

‘Then don’t you be so damned cavalier! Telling me I can’t shower, indeed—and in my own house!’ she added, on a puff of derision. ‘Wait here, and I’ll be back.’

‘How long will you be?’

‘However long it takes,’ she answered coolly, without a backward glance.

She marched straight along the corridor to her bedroom, where the pale, subtle greens and peaches of the walls and drapes for once failed to soothe her.

She did not take long; she could not bear to prolong the agony of waiting any longer than was necessary. Something in his expression had warned her that she was about to face an unpalatable truth.

So she showered quickly and felt a million times better afterwards for having done so, even though she hadn’t washed her wild, unruly hair. Then she threw on a pair of black denims and a thick black woollen jumper, brushed her hair quickly and clipped it back from her face on both sides.

She stole a swift glance in the mirror, thinking how pale her face looked against the background of the black clothes she wore. Had she subconsciously dressed in mourning? she wondered wryly.

When she went back into the room, Geraint was standing where she had left him, as if someone had cast a spell and turned him to stone.

She took a deep breath and asked him the question she had been rehearsing over and over in the shower. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re married, Geraint?’

‘Married?’ He looked taken aback, and then he laughed—but it was a short, humourless laugh. If it hadn’t been a contradictory description, then Lola might have said it was an angry laugh. But there was no such thing, surely?

‘No, I’m not married,’ he told her tersely, and went over to the table on which he had placed the tray, poured two cups of tea, and handed her one.

Lola shook her head. ‘I don’t want it.’

‘I think you should drink it,’ he said.

Lola’s eyes glittered. ‘I don’t want it,’ she repeated stubbornly.

He looked into her eyes for a moment, then nodded, took his tea over to the window-seat and sat down, although Lola noticed that his own cup went untouched.

‘How do you know all about this house?’ she asked him quietly, having remembered other things, too. ‘The paintings and the vase and now the china storeroom. Did you know Peter Featherstone?’

‘I knew of him,’ he answered. ‘And I had met him on several occasions.’

‘So?’

‘He was my sister’s lover,’ he explained starkly.

Confused, Lola searched in her mind for the name he had surely mentioned at the restaurant in Rome. The woman he clearly adored, who had looked after him when their parents had died. Who had sacrificed her place at university in order to support him. ‘Catrin?’ she ventured hesitantly.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘That’s right. Catrin had an affair with Peter Featherstone for almost fifteen years.’

Fifteen years? Lola blanched. ‘What kind of affair?’

He shrugged. ‘Like any other long-term relationship, I guess. She’s a successful businesswoman in her own right—she travels extensively, as did Peter. She has a flat in London—which Peter bought for her.’

‘But Catrin wanted more, did she?’

His mouth tightened with anger. ‘Why shouldn’t she want more? This house was the major part of his inheritance. They had shared a life together for nearly fifteen years!’

‘And why did they never marry?’

‘Peter didn’t want to. No reason—or at least he gave no reason to Catrin. He said that they were happy as they were, so why change? He used to give her that line—“if something’s not broken why mend it?”’

‘Did she love him?’

‘Very much,’ he answered reluctantly.

‘And did he love her?’

He froze, his features starkly defined and vaguely threatening, and at that moment Lola thought that he looked like the devil incarnate. ‘She thought he loved her,’ he responded quietly. ‘In fact, she was certain of it.’

‘Then why leave me the house?’ she wondered aloud.

His mouth hardened into a grim line. ‘Exactly.’

Lola stared at him, at the cold, forbidding expression on his face, and indignation slowly began to blaze away inside her. Who did he think he was—implying that she was at fault? ‘I think you have some explaining to do, Geraint.’

‘Such as?’

She stared at him, at where he sat on the other side of the room, and an air of disquiet seemed to descend on her. He seemed so distant now; almost a stranger. Had they really shared kisses and giggles and intimacies all that time in bed together?

She was afraid to answer his question, afraid to put into words her most basic fears, in case they turned out not to be fantasy. But if she did not confront her fears—what then?

‘You living next door,’ she said slowly. ‘That isn’t just coincidence, is it?’

He held her gaze steadily. ‘No. Dominic is my oldest friend. We meet up as often as our schedules allow.’ His eyes glittered. ‘He rarely uses this house, and when I explained the situation to him—’

‘And just how did you explain the situation to him?’ she cut in brutally.

He did not flinch under her accusing stare. ‘I didn’t lie, if that’s what you’re implying. I told him that I was interested in meeting the woman who I felt had done my sister out of something I considered to be rightfully hers.’

‘And he agreed, did he, to what some men might have considered a rather bizarre request?’

‘Not Dominic.’ He shrugged dismissively. ‘He didn’t consider the request bizarre at all—why should he? He understood my concern.’

The first arrow had pierced her heart, and she braced herself to withstand a whole quiverful of them. ‘And our meeting—that night we met at the tennis club—was that engineered too?’ Say no, she prayed silently. Please say no.

For the first time, he looked uncomfortable, but again he did not attempt to avoid her gaze. ‘I went there with the intention of meeting you, yes.’

Lola took her cup and drank some tea, and just that one small activity kept her in check, prevented her from some rash, illogical action against him which she might later regret. ‘So all that eyes across a crowded room stuff, which you’ve waxed lyrical about ever since—that was just so much moonshine, was it? You know, you’re really a very good actor, Geraint—’

‘No, Lola!’ His voice sounded savage now, teetering on the edge of control. ‘I went to the clubhouse with the intention of meeting you, yes, but—’

‘But what? With what goal in mind?’ she demanded acidly. ‘Revenge, I presume? A desire to seek some kind of redress for the sister you considered to have been done out of her rightful inheritance? Isn’t that it?’

‘At first, yes,’ he admitted. ‘Although I hadn’t really thought it through properly. Catrin was upset at Peter’s death, and I was angry. It was too easy to put you into the category of being a young and manipulatively beautiful seductress who had persuaded Peter Featherstone to leave his house to you.’ His voice deepened. ‘And then I met you—’

‘Oh, please!’ Lola turned away from him in disgust and sucked a dry, painful breath into her lungs. ‘Spare me the sweeteners, Geraint—I really don’t think I’m in the mood to stomach them right now!’

‘Lola, please listen to me—’

She whirled round, her face contorted with anger and shame. ‘No, I won’t listen to you! I’ve listened enough and I’m sick to my stomach! In fact, you can damned well listen to me! You can say what you want about not having thought things through, but I don’t believe you!

‘You walked into the tennis club that night, took one look at me and decided that turning the charm on was a sure-fire way of getting me to fall under your spell! You did that knowing that you are an extremely good-looking man who probably never needs to even lift a finger to get any woman to come running!

‘And as for someone like me, someone who isn’t used to dealing with men like you, well. . .’ she gave him a sad, wistful smile ‘. . . I never really stood a chance, did I?’

‘Lola, it wasn’t like that—’

‘Yes, it was!’ she yelled. ‘You know damned well it was! Admit it, Geraint! At least be man enough to admit it to me!’

There was silence, a fraught, angry silence as they eyed each other warily.

Eventually he spoke. ‘Revenge may have been at the forefront of my mind at the very beginning. I admit that the idea of me blindly reaching out for some form of primitive retribution was extremely gratifying—but that was nothing more than a temporary form of madness. Very temporary. And I can assure you that once I saw you—’

‘Oh, please don’t insult me by pretending that you were bowled over by my heart-stopping beauty!’ Lola snarled. ‘Although I suppose you must have been grateful that I didn’t resemble the back end of a bus! I mean, how would you have coped with bedding me if that had been the case, Geraint, huh? What would you have done then? Insisted that the seduction should go ahead as planned? Just closed your eyes and reminded yourself that revenge was sweet?’

‘Don’t be so disgusting!’

‘I’ll be anything I damned well like!’ she retorted, hotly.

‘Are you suggesting that revenge was the only reason I went to bed with you?’ he queried in a slow, dangerous voice.

‘What else am I supposed to think? I should imagine that for a man who is as sexually experienced as you obviously are one extra notch on the bedpost would be neither here nor there, would it? And, of course, you were working on the theory that I would fall hopelessly in love with you. That would, I suppose,’ she added, almost reflectively, ‘make giving me the push so pleasurable. Only I expect that in your wildest dreams you did not expect to hit the jackpot, did you, Geraint?’

He had gone very still, a faint but unmistakable line of distaste hardening the sensual curves of his mouth. ‘The jackpot?’ he queried. ‘I’m not sure that I understand what you mean, Lola.’

She suspected that she was going too far, maybe already had gone too far, but she was in too deep now to stop, on a roll, the words too steeped in bitterness to be halted. ‘Me,’ she explained simply. ‘The jackpot.’ And, seeing his still uncompre-hending look, she lanced home her point with the addition of a cruel smile. ‘I mean, if you’re going to try to hurt someone. . . if you’re going to bed them in order to dump them. . . then what better subject to choose than a virgin?’

He had gone very white, his grey eyes blazing with contemptuous fire as he looked at her in bitter disbelief. ‘As I recall,’ he drawled deliberately, ‘it was me who was just about to leave and you who begged me to stay.’

How dared he? Lola stared back. How dared he stand there looking as if he was the one who had been wronged and made a complete and utter fool of? ‘Yes, and more fool me!’ she stormed. She looked into his eyes and was suddenly flooded with a violent urge to seek her own form of revenge—and, what was more, she knew the perfect way to go about it! ‘And what if I’m pregnant?’ she asked quietly.

He threw her a ruthless smile. ‘But we didn’t have unprotected sex, Lola—remember?’

She willed the blush to stay away but it seemed to take great delight in flooding her cheeks with a hot pink colour.

Oh, yes, she could remember all right—how Geraint had reached into the back pocket of his jeans for the kind of small foil packet she had only ever seen on sale in chemist shops and ladies’ lavatories. She had shivered slightly as it had brought the reality of what she was about to do crashing home to her, and her feelings at the time had wavered between relief that he was obviously sensible enough to prevent any unwanted pregnancy occurring and disillusionment that he had been so prepared. Did he always carry condoms, she had wondered disappointedly, or had he just been so sure that she would capitulate?

But then his mouth had come down hungrily to seek out all the erotic places of her body, and Lola had given up caring.

Until now.

She glared at him. ‘No, we did not have unprotected sex,’ she agreed cuttingly. ‘But the method we used is not guaranteed to be one hundred per cent effective, is it?’ she ground out. ‘As far as I am aware abstinence is the only technique which can lay claim to that!’

If she had thought he was white before, she had been exaggerating, because now his face looked absolutely bloodless. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked, in a voice which was so tightly controlled that it sounded as though it might snap at any minute.

‘I’m saying that I am right in the middle of my cycle!’ she lied shamelessly. ‘I’m saying that, although it’s a very small chance, I could be pregnant! And what price your petty revenge then, Geraint?’

There was a pause, and when he spoke again his face had resumed something of its normal colour, though the chilly light which glittered from his eyes made Lola want to slink out of the room in shame.

‘We could stand here trading insults all day,’ he told her frostily. ‘But there seems little point. And there’s certainly no point in my staying.’

He pushed his teacup away and stood up, and he looked so formidably tall and strong and powerful that Lola knew an aching and desolate sense of despair, but somehow she managed to keep it from her face.

All Geraint would see would be that proud little look of indifference she had plastered all over her features. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘No point at all.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to inform me if there are any—’ his mouth tightened ‘—repercussions.’ He must have seen her bewildered expression for he added harshly and angrily, as though the words cost him a huge effort, ‘If you do happen to be pregnant, I will, of course, stand by you in whatever capacity you might wish—’

But he broke off mid-sentence, as if he was too appalled to continue, and, with a curt yet courteous nod of farewell—like a character from a costume drama—he strode out of the room.

Lola heard him going downstairs, but she did not hear the front door slam nor the gravel crunch beneath his firm step—because her broken-hearted sobs drowned out everything else.