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‘My stupid crush on you?’ Tara broke in bitterly, reaching for the door handle and turning blindly away from him.
James’s fingers reached the lock before her and then curled warmly round her wrist, the pressure of his grip forcing her towards him.
‘For God’s sake, Tara, what the hell are you trying to do to me—to us?’ he muttered savagely. ‘You can’t be so innocent that you don’t know how much I want you; how I’m having to fight against my own desire for your protection.’ He grimaced suddenly, his mouth wry. ‘How do you think I could live with myself if I allowed what there is between us to reach its natural conclusion? A woman’s first sexual experience is something deeply important in her life, yours shouldn’t be with a married man who isn’t free to…’
‘Make love to me?’ Tara finished for him. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be. I don’t care if I never see you again in my whole life,’ she announced dramatically. ‘I hate you!’
This time he made no attempt to stop her leaving the car, and Tara walked several miles before she calmed down enough to realise that her childish words stemmed more from pique than any genuine hatred. How could she hate him when she loved him so much? As she tried to untangle her muddled thoughts she knew that James had been right and that there was no future for them; that he was trying to protect her, and probably save himself the embarrassment of her crush on him. And then she remembered the look in his eyes when he had said that she must have known that he desired her, and her pulse quickened betrayingly, a dizzying image of how it would be to have James as her first lover, initiating her into the pleasures of lovemaking, sweeping aside common sense and logic.
It was late afternoon before she returned home, drained and exhausted, but not too tired to dream yearningly of James, crying his name over and over again until the sound of her own voice woke her.
It was lunchtime the following day before Tara saw Sue. The younger girl looked unhappy.
‘James has flown back to America,’ she announced miserably. ‘He had to leave suddenly yesterday.’
Tara’s heart plummeted. Had he really had to leave, or had it simply been a fabricated excuse to remove himself from her vicinity? She knew that logically she should be grateful and that he was only behaving as he should, but she felt bitterly hurt that he had gone without saying a word to her.
A month went by, and then two. Tara had expected that her feelings would diminish in the face of James’s absence, but to her consternation they seemed to flourish. The mere sound of his name on Sue’s lips was enough to set her heart pounding; the glimpse of a tall dark-haired man all that was needed to increase her pulse rate a hundred-fold.
Exams had come and gone, and Tara alternately longed for and yet dreaded the results.
One sultry afternoon in August, bored with her own company, she set out for Sue’s house. Sue’s mother was due to return at the end of the month. She was spending several weeks in Hillingdon before returning to New York. Would James be with her? Tara daren’t ask.
It was too hot for cycling and by the time she reached the house she was exhausted. The sun had disappeared and the air was full of the sullen electricity that presaged a thunderstorm. Tara shivered despite the heat. Thunder was something which had always terrified her.
The storm broke just as she turned into the drive, vivid streaks of lightning splitting the sky accompanied by fierce rolls of thunder so loud and close together that Tara was convinced the storm was almost overhead. She abandoned her bike in her terror and raced for the house at the same time as the heavens opened. On the short sprint to the back door she got soaked, but to her relief the handle turned easily beneath her shaking fingers, although there was no sign of Sue in the kitchen.
Calling her name, Tara waited, trying to block out the sound of the storm. Moisture dripped from her hair and her jeans were soaked at the hem and waistband.
It was ten minutes before she finally admitted that the house was empty. Sue often left the back door unlocked because she had a horror of losing her key and being locked out, and Tara guessed that she had probably cycled into Hillingdon to change her library books or do some shopping.
The sky had turned from brassy gold to dark pewter, the thunder increasing in volume with every passing second. Tara tried to turn on the radio in an effort to distract herself, but there was so much interference she abandoned the idea. A vivid flash of lightning lanced the sky, striking one of the oaks in the park beyond the house. A small terrified scream broke past her trembling lips. There was no way she could find the courage to leave the house while the storm was still in progress, and held rigid with terror, Tara simply stood in the middle of the kitchen, ears and eyes straining to detect some lessening in the fury outside.
She was concentrating so much on the storm that she never heard anything else until the kitchen door jerked inwards suddenly and she swung round at the sound, eyes dilated with fear, her skin stretched tightly over the delicate bones of her face.
James stood there, dressed in a formal business suit, briefcase in one hand. She registered the fact that he looked tired, and then everything else was forgotten as another clap of thunder sounded almost overhead. She screamed and ran instinctively for the protection of his arms, his rough, ‘Tara, what the hell…’ muffled against her hair as his arms tightened round her instinctively, the sudden impetus of her flight rocking him back on his heels.
‘Stop it, stop it!’ Tara whimpered, covering her ears with her hands to try and blot out the sound of the thunder, terror pouring through her veins like a floodtide.
‘Hush! It’s all right, nothing to be afraid of,’ James soothed. ‘Are you here on your own?’
She nodded. ‘I came to see Sue, but she was out.’ She flinched as another jagged flash of lightning split the sky.
‘You’re soaked!’ James exclaimed. ‘I’ll get a towel for your hair.’ He started to move away, but Tara clung desperately to his shoulders, her eyes begging him not to leave her.
‘It’s all right,’ he soothed. ‘Now just wait here and I’ll be back in a second.’
He disentangled her fingers from his jacket and walked back into the hall.
A fresh roll of thunder had Tara clenching her teeth and digging her fingernails into the soft skin of her palms. He wouldn’t be long, she told herself. What a fool he must think her! She must try not to panic. She was just congratulating herself on succeeding when an almighty clap of thunder seemed to shake the house to the foundations, lightning zigzagging electrifyingly just outside the window. Tara’s control broke, on a terrified scream she flung open the kitchen door and raced up the stairs, her feet taking her automatically to the room she knew belonged to James. She pushed open the door without pausing, barely aware of James’s smothered curse or the fact that he was just emerging from his bathroom with only a towel draped round his hips, until his hands gripped the soft flesh of her upper arms as he caught hold of her.
His ‘God, Tara, what am I going to do about you?’ was lost as she flung herself into his arms, shivering with a terror that obliterated everything else.
As though he sensed that words alone would not be enough to soothe her, James drew her slowly towards the window. ‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘the storm’s dying away. It’s passed over us now, we’re quite safe, Tara.’
The quiet confidence in his voice reached out to the wild panic shivering inside her and had a calming effect. Her terror started to die down and all at once she became intensely conscious of the hard warmth of his thighs against her own and the smoothly satin feel of his skin beneath her fingertips.
‘Tara…’
