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'I'm coming with you,' he told her as he opened the door for her. This time she did not demure or protest, saying softly instead, 'Thank you.'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
'I TAKE it you aren't au fait with modern technology?'
Sara commented flippantly to Nick as he pushed open the door to his cottage and she saw the pile of mail on his mat.
Her flippancy was a desperate grab at something—
anything—to conceal from him just how nervous she was feeling and how much she was regretting the false bravado which had brought her here. It wasn't that she didn't want Nick—she did—but she was now miserably aware that she was masquerading under a false persona and that the feelings she had tried to belittle and dismiss were now showing her their affronted outrage and rebellion.
Her feelings, she recognised, were mercilessly con-temptuous about the concept of emotionless sex; and worse, they seemed to have decided that they recognised in Nick Crighton everything that they had ever wanted and they were now determined to rush pell-mell into proving to her that there was no way they were going to be prevented from showing what they wanted.
'Wrong,' Nick contradicted her as he closed the door on the damp mist. 'I do have someone to come in and sort through my mail, but she's obviously not been for a day or so. I couldn't do my job without technology, but unfortunately the nemesis currently hovering over me is in the shape of big brother Saul—
to such an extent that the merest hint I might have received a fax or email from a client is enough to have him put me under lock and key—for my own safety, of course!' Nick grinned when he saw her expression.
'Well, no, it isn't quite as bad as that, but as Saul has pointed out, until my GP has given me a clean bill of health, running the risk of getting myself locked up in some insalubrious foreign gaol is not a good idea.'
'Is that likely to happen?' Sara questioned him.
'Hopefully not, but I suppose it is always on the cards. The people who hire my services are hiring me to get my client out of such a situation. But...' He gave a brief careless shrug which showed Sara that he was neither exaggerating nor boasting in an attempt to impress her but simply speaking the truth. 'In some countries there comes a time when negotiation isn't going to get anywhere and a more physical form of action needs to be taken.' He started to frown. The hostage case he'd most recently been asked to take on had fortunately resolved itself as the woman had been released.
'There've been instances—fortunately very few—
when my client's health has been so damaged by their incarceration that protracted negotiations could have meant that even if they were freed it might have been too late.
'I had one client...a nineteen-year-old. He was up at Oxford and predicted to get a double first. Unbe-knownst to him the person he was travelling with to the Far East had agreed to act as a drugs mule not for money but for a dare. This person was being used as a decoy and of course, he got caught and my client was imprisoned along with him. They'd both been set up so that the real carrier could get through. The country they were caught in has a death penalty for drug smuggling....'
He saw Sara's indrawn breath.
'My client's parents were both distraught and they turned to me as a last resort.'
From the sudden subtle shadowing of his expression Sara knew intuitively that his story did not have a happy ending.
'You—you couldn't help?' she guessed.
'Oh, yes. I got him out and the other man finally got reprieved,' Nick told her. 'But unfortunately my client had been bitten by some insect whilst he was in prison. The wound had not been treated and as a result gangrene had set in and he had to have his leg am-putated.
'Oh, hell,' he swore when he saw Sara's expression.
'That was crass of me. I didn't mean to upset you.
Saul keeps telling me that I'm getting too old for this kind of work—or rather that it's getting too dangerous for me. He thinks I should give it up and settle for something more mundane.'
'But you don't want to,' Sara guessed, fighting to recover her equilibrium.
'No,' Nick acknowledged. 'Unlike Saul, I'm not the settling-down kind. I'm too restless...there's still too much I want to do...see....'
He was warning her off getting involved with him, Sara recognised; letting her know that there was strictly no future for her with him. But she already knew that—didn't she?
'I'll take your stuff upstairs for you,' Nick was telling her. 'If you want to come up with me I'll show you where everything is.'
Her heart thumping, Sara followed him up the narrow stairs which led off the attractive square hallway.
Halfway up the stairs a deep window with a cosy seat looked out across the countryside.
'On a clear day you can see the sea,' Nick informed her as she paused automatically to look out. 'On a day like today, you can't even see the road.'
'Do you live here all the time?' Sara asked him curiously.
'More or less. I'm not as isolated as it may seem.
My parents live less than an hour's drive away and the estate to which this cottage originally belonged is only a few miles across the hills.
'I had thought at one time of buying a flat in Chester—but so many members of the family live there that I can always beg a bed for the night when I want to visit.'
They had reached the top of the stairs now. Four closed doors led off it.
Nick pushed one of them open. Cautiously Sara followed him inside it.
'It's a guest room,' Nick told her before she could say anything. 'It's got its own bathroom.
'I'll leave you to make yourself at home while I go down and make us both a drink. Which do you prefer—tea or coffee?'
'Coffee, please,' Sara responded automatically. He was putting down her case, turning to look at her as he did so, not giving her time to conceal the surprise his comment had given her.
'What were you expecting?' he mocked her softly.
'That I was going to throw you on the bed and have my wicked way with you right here and now?'
'Don't be ridiculous,' Sara managed to reply, but she knew that her face was flushing and she prayed that her body language wasn't giving away what she was really thinking—and wanting!
'We've got all weekend, after all,' Nick continued, giving her a wicked smile as he added softly, 'although, of course, if you wish to pounce on me...'
Refusing to respond, Sara turned her back on him, but she could hear him laughing softly as he left her.
NICK FROWNED as he made his way back downstairs.
He had been an almighty fool to ever suggest what he had suggested and, as for bringing Sara here... Wasn't the very reason he had previously never invited a woman to spend time at the cottage with him simply because he had known what a dangerous, a treacher-ous swamp of potential disaster he would be letting himself in for if he did? Ah, yes; but that had been because he had been afraid that such close intimacy with the woman concerned would lead to boredom and irritation. With Sara... With Sara he was fascinated, entranced, driven mad with curiosity and desire, desperate to find some flaw in her which would enable him to step back from her. But instead... Even that unexpected shyness and reserve she had betrayed in the bedroom had idiotically appealed to him. Sharp-ening his
hunting instinct?
In the cottage's well-equipped kitchen he filled the kettle and switched it on. A timer ensured that the place was warm and centrally heated. He might like the cottage's remoteness but Nick was not someone who saw any virtue in depriving himself of civilisa-tion's comforts unless he had to.
IN HER BEDROOM Sara looked uncertainly towards the bathroom. She felt grimy after her journey and would have enjoyed a shower. A quick examination of the bathroom revealed that it had a lock and that her privacy could be assured.
She started to frown. She knew she was inexperienced where 'weekends away for sex' were concerned, but surely it was highly unusual to give one's partner a separate room. Or was that simply a subtle ploy on Nick's part, a deliberate reminder that all they were having was sex and that there was to be no intimacy between them? No intimacy and no preliminaries, either?
'HELLO THERE,' Nick announced cheerfully half an hour later as Sara emerged into the kitchen. 'I'm afraid the coffee's gone cold. I'll make a fresh one.'
'I decided to have a shower,' Sara told him and then blushed. Would he interpret her remark as a hint that she was expecting...that she wanted... But to her relief he didn't pick her up on her comment or try to turn it into a sexual innuendo.
'There's quite a good restaurant in St. David's. I could book a table for us there this evening if you like or if you prefer we can eat here. I've brought some stuff with me.'
'Er...I don't mind,' Sara told him awkwardly.
'No?' Nick smiled. 'Well, in that case, we'll have dinner here. A client gave me a case of a particularly good red wine that I haven't touched yet. Will steak be okay for you? I'm afraid I'm no gourmet chef....'
'Steak will be line,' Sara confirmed.
Nick's eyebrows rose and Sara tensed as he came towards her carrying a mug of coffee.
'You've become unexpectedly docile,' he commented as he put the coffee down on the wooden table next to her. 'If I didn't know better I'd begin to think that you were feeling nervous.'
'Nervous... Of course I'm not....' Sara denied un-truthfully.
