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‘Yes.’
But when she looked at Marsh there was no trace of anger in his face. Instead he was smiling, amusement glinting in his eyes as he told her easily, ‘Yes. Yes, I do, but, since as yet the marvels of science have not made it possible for a man to bear his own child, I shall have to curb that desire until I find a woman who shares it with me.’
‘I can see that would be an almost impossible task,’ Leigh told him, irrepressively grinning at him.
Fortunately he seemed to take her teasing in good part.
‘Almost,’ he agreed, tongue in cheek. ‘It’s the glass slippers, you see—they will keep on breaking.’
Later, when they had reached the river, and Marsh was crouching down, pointing out to the two entranced little girls some small trout basking peacefully in the sun, Leigh whispered to Debra, ‘You’re mad. You know that, don’t you?’
Debra gave her a confused look.
‘You want him, Debs,’ Leigh continued softly. ‘And I’m damn sure that he wants you. For goodness’ sake...life doesn’t hand out too many chances like that to turn your back on one. All right, so ultimately there may be pain, but it won’t be deliberately inflicted. Not by a man like that, and even if it was...’ She stopped speaking and looked at Marsh’s crouched figure.
‘I’d say that he was a man who knows instinctively how to give a woman pleasure and how to appreciate the pleasure she would want to give him.
‘That was one of my biggest irritations with Paul. He was a terrific lover, just so long as he was the one doing the loving, but he had to be the one in control, and in the end I got tired of being controlled, even though it took me a long time to admit it.
‘Don’t turn your back on what he’s offering you, Debs.’
‘He isn’t offering me anything,’ Debra told her fiercely.
Leigh’s eyebrows rose.
‘No...I’d say his presence here is making a pretty clear statement of intent.’
‘That was just a coincidence,’ Debra hissed at her, anxiously checking to make sure that Marsh couldn’t overhear what they were saying.
Leigh laughed. ‘It’s no coincidence,’ she told her in amusement.
Debra told herself that Leigh was wrong, but when her mother invited Marsh back to have tea with them and he accepted she began to wonder.
As they walked back she could hear the two men, her stepfather and Marsh, chatting amicably together. Her elder niece slipped her hand into Debra’s and whispered that she thought that Marsh was ‘really nice’, and, from the way her mother fussed over him, urging him to have another scone and flushing as he praised the jam she had made the previous autumn, Debra suspected that she shared her small granddaughter’s view.
In fact, he was so at home with her family that he might have known them all years and not merely a few brief hours.
She herself hardly took part in the conversation. She sat silently watching the others, tense and on edge, and yet at the same time in some vague way almost resentful of them for the way they monopolised Marsh’s attention, and then he turned his head and smiled at her, and right there, in the comfortable shabbiness of the familiar sitting-room, her heart did a double somersault inside her chest and the dismaying truth hit her.
She was actually falling in love with him!
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I believe we’ve got a group meeting tonight.’ Debra tensed as Marsh walked into her office. Ever since the weekend of her stepfather’s birthday she had deliberately maintained a distance between them, but Marsh seemed oblivious of it, ignoring it, just as he ignored the way she always carefully physically distanced herself from him whenever he came close to her.
She had seen from his eyes that he was not oblivious to it, though, and a small bout of nervousness shook her now as he added, ‘I’ve got to drive past your place on the way there. Why don’t I pick you up? Save us using two cars.’ She would have liked to refuse. The mere thought of sitting beside Marsh in the close confines of his car was a burden she did not want to place on her frail self-control.
She might be able to banish him from her thoughts during the day, but at night, when she had no conscious control, it was a different matter.
She was exhausted by trying to fight off going to sleep and then waking too early, her body trembling, aching. Her mind in turmoil as she tried to deny the desire that tormented her sleep.
She couldn’t refuse, however. Her car was in the garage, being serviced, and when Brian had rung her this morning to announce that he had brought forward the date of the meeting because he was due to go on holiday she had called the garage and they had informed her that it was impossible for them to get her car back to her until later in the week.
Numbly she nodded her head, thankful that the strident ring of the telephone meant that she didn’t have to do anything other than agree when Marsh suggested picking her up at seven-thirty. As he closed the door behind him she drew in a shaky breath of air. Surely he must be able to see that she didn’t want to get involved with him, so why didn’t he just leave her alone?
‘Haven’t you heard?’ Leigh had derided her when she’d complained miserably to her. ‘Men like to chase. They can’t help themselves. It’s in their natures, poor things. They’re designed to respond to the challenge... if you really want someone to blame, don’t blame Marsh, blame nature, and besides,’ she’d asked Debra with a sideways look, ‘are you so sure that you don’t really want to be caught?’
‘Of course not,’ Debra had denied furiously. ‘I don’t believe in playing those kinds of games.’
