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‘I’ve managed to narrow it down to three,’ he told her. ‘I’m doing the final interviews tomorrow. I’ll be glad when it’s all sorted out.’
He looked tired Lissa realised, her frown deepening when she realised as well that he had lost a little weight. He had removed his suit jacket before he sat down for dinner and the fine silk of his shirt moved fluidly against his skin as he shifted in his seat. A strange, unfamiliar tension gripped her, her mouth suddenly dry, a pulse beating through her body with heavy forcefulness.
‘Lissa?’
She realised that she was staring at him and dragged her gaze away, wondering if perhaps she was coming down with something. She felt so odd.
‘Lissa, are you okay?’ He
stretched across the table, his fingers circling her wrist, his touch wholly clinical but it was like having a manacle of fire on her wrist. In shocked stupor Lissa found that she was looking at his mouth; remembering the cool strength of it against her own that morning. Something approaching faintness seemed to creep over her. She pulled away from him and tried to stand up, her legs refusing to support her properly.
‘Lissa?’
Joel got up too, concerned for her, his eyes, as they always did when he was worried darkening slightly. She knew so much about him now she thought hazily, shaking her head, and telling him that she was fine; little insignificant things she hadn’t even known she knew until now … like the way the dark hairs grew against his skin … the way his eyes changed colour, betraying him despite the control he seemed to have over his features. She could even faithfully recall the way he moved, simply by closing her eyes and picturing him. She was familiar with the masculine contours of his torso—at least visually. He wore pyjama bottoms in bed—for her benefit, she was sure, and she hadn’t realised until now how often she had silently studied the hard male lines of his body. Hot colour touched her skin, scorching it as her thoughts were scorching her mind.
‘I’ll go and make the coffee,’ she said hurriedly.
They had fallen into the habit of continuing the conversation begun over the dinner table through coffee and often until quite late in the evening. Joel was interesting to listen to, and he made Lissa feel that he valued her opinions. She had never enjoyed anyone’s company as much as she enjoyed his and it came to her as she busied herself in the kitchen that if he were to leave her life now, there would be an acutely painful void. But the fact that she found him good company and mentally stimulating did not account for her rapid pulse and accelerated breathing … neither did it account for the disturbing physical response she had just experienced. She wasn’t totally naive; she had felt physical desire before even if it had only been fleetingly. But this was different … this was Joel. She couldn’t desire Joel. Why not, an inner voice demanded to know? Why shouldn’t she desire him? Because … because … Because what? The same voice jeered. Because you’d convinced yourself you hated him? Because you resented the fact that as a teenager he found you totally uninteresting until the night of that party.
Lissa bit down hard on her bottom lip, trying to quell her rebellious thoughts. It was true, she was forced to acknowledge with painful honesty, that on the very brief occasions on which she had seen Joel before that night—and they had been fleeting in the extreme—she had been instantly struck by the masculine aura he carried about him. Amanda had caught her staring at him once with rounded eyes and had teased her about it.
‘For goodness sake don’t go and develop a crush on Joel,’ she had warned her. ‘He eats little girls like you for breakfast.’
Unwilling to follow her thoughts any further, Lissa made the coffee and carried it through into the sitting room. Joel was reading a farming magazine which he put down to take the tray from her, asking briefly, ‘Okay now?’
When Lissa nodded he added. ‘I’m sorry I missed the girls’ bedtime tonight. I’ll be glad when I’ve got the responsibility for the factory off my hands. I’ve been neglecting my own work recently … and I don’t intend to be just a figurehead in the girls’ lives—someone they hear about but rarely see. As my own father was to me,’ he added, surprising her with this information about his childhood.
‘Oh yes,’ he told her obviously reading her mind. ‘Like you, I was very much second best as far as my father was concerned. He and I never hit it off the way he and John did, although my childhood was nothing like as traumatic as yours.’
‘Mine was bad because I reacted too emotionally,’ Lissa told him. ‘I was too sensitive … too easily hurt and confused.’ She got up to pick up the sweater she was knitting for Louise, and as she did so, stumbled against Joel’s chair.
Instantly his hand shot out to steady her, his arm supporting her as she fell, so that somehow she ended up in his lap feeling both stupidly clumsy and flustered, but strangely enough with no desire to shrink away from him; with none of the tension she would have expected to feel.
‘Lissa?’
She looked at him automatically, smiling herself when she saw the amusement lightening his eyes and curling his mouth. ‘Do you suppose Louise is going to expect me to kiss you goodbye every morning?’ he asked her in a lazy drawl.
The teasing amusement in his voice was familiar to her and she responded to it relaxing in the half circle of his arm, shrugging easily.
‘Umm … well I suspect that she is,’ he continued softly, ‘and that being the case I definitely feel our technique could do with a little polishing.’
‘I …’ Whatever objection she had been about to make slid from her mind forever when Joel slid his fingers into her hair, their warmth spread across the back of her scalp, heating her skin, preventing her from moving; from avoiding the sensually slow downward movement of his head, as his lips feathered softly across her skin. First her temple, then the corner of her eye; the vulnerable hollow of her cheekbone where his breath against her ear, coupled with the slowly gentle movement of his fingers against her scalp, made her shiver with pleasure. With pleasure! Lissa acknowledged numbly, hearing him murmur her name and responding automatically to the sound of his voice so that she turned towards him unwittingly facilitating the warm glide of his mouth against her own.
She had been kissed before; and had even enjoyed those kisses, before she discovered the truth about herself, but this somehow was different. For a start no one had ever kissed her with such gentle thoroughness; such innate tenderness and yet somehow at the same time conveying that there was a potential within that tenderness for something deeper and far more dangerous. There was nothing intimidating or frightening about the way Joel’s mouth moved on hers, and yet her body was aware with a deep nerve-tingling frisson of awareness that if she were to signal that she desired it there could be much, much more.
And she did desire it, Lissa acknowledged inwardly … Unbelievably she was tempted to slide her arms round Joel’s neck and hold him closer, to press her body against his and feel it harden with masculine desire.
She wanted him to make love to her! Immediately she tensed and he let her go. Instinctively she veiled her eyes from him, frightened of what he might see in them; that he might guess what she was feeling. And what? she asked herself. Take advantage of it? Feel sorry for her? She scarcely knew which she disliked the most. Somehow she managed to scramble off his knee, and outside the inner turmoil of her thoughts she was aware of the sound of her own voice, high and tense, gabbling inanities about the time, desperately trying to provide a smokescreen for her to hide behind.
She knew that Joel was studying her, watching her with unnerving narrow eyed scrutiny. What was he thinking? Why had he kissed her? If it had just been a game then it had been a cruel one, and somehow unlike the man she knew him to be.
‘Lissa, sometimes I’ll have to kiss you,’ he said quietly at last. ‘It’s expected occasionally of married couples, even in these enlightened times.’
That drew a shaky smile from her, and he smiled too. ‘Surely it wasn’t so bad?’ There was a whimsical quality to his smile that relaxed her.
‘No, of course not.’ So that was it. Joel was just trying to accustom her to the social kisses they might have to exchange, but there had been a warm persuasiveness in the movement of his mouth against hers that had reminded her that he was a powerfully virile man and so she said awkwardly, ‘Joel … what will you do … what will happen …? You can’t live the rest of your life in celibacy,’ she managed at last.
‘Lissa, I’ve got so much on my mind at the moment that there just isn’t room for sexual frustration,’ he told her drily. ‘When there is …’ He shrugged and then said tight-lipped, ‘Well let’s just say I won’t burden you with it.’
