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Her first thought when she realised he was alone was that some accident had befallen the twins, but before she could voice her fears, James was inside the house, closing the door behind him, assuring her calmly that they were perfectly all right.
‘Sue and Alec were delayed, and so instead of eating at the Zoo Sue’s taking them to a McDonalds. We tried to ring you, but couldn’t get through, and as she was concerned that you might be worried, I volunteered to come round and soothe your maternal fears. It seems I needn’t have bothered.’ His eyes were resting on Chas’s cigar stubs and the almost empty bottle of champagne, and to her annoyance Tara felt herself flush. Cynicism darkened his eyes and she longed to refute the accusations lying heavy but unspoken in the silence between them.
‘I’m sure you must have plans of your own for the evening,’ Tara managed pointedly.
‘Meaning that you have?’ James countered softly, crossing the room and picking up the receiver of the telephone, which Tara realised she must have accidentally knocked because it was already partially off the stand, explaining why Sue hadn’t been able to get through to her.
‘A sensible precaution,’ James murmured sardonically. ‘Are you expecting the same “friend” who visited you this afternoon to pay a return call, or.…’
Tara didn’t let him finish.
‘For your information,’ she burst out angrily, ‘my visitor hapened to be my employer. He came round to…’
‘To drink champagne with you and bring you roses?’ said James in a voice icy with venom. ‘But of course. Quite natural behaviour in an employer. God, Tara, I’d thought better of you,’ he told her, his mouth curling fastidiously. ‘I can understand that you want a man in your life—after all, you’re a very sensual woman—but Chas Saunders of all people! God, have you no pride? Don’t you mind sharing his bed with every little model girl who catches his eye?’
‘In this house the bed is mine,’ Tara pointed out with syrupy sweetness, controlling her growing fury, ‘so the question doesn’t really arise.’
‘Then perhaps it ought to,’ James gritted at her. ‘Perhaps it’s time you gave him a taste of his own medicine. I can’t believe you’ve become spineless enough to let him flaunt his little affairs in front of you… God knows he makes them public enough!’
‘Thanks for the concern!’ Tara felt a rush of bitter anger. How dared he stand there and lecture her, criticise Chas, when he… ‘Or is it really as altruistic as it seems?’
The look of murderous anger in his eyes made Tara realise she had gone too far. She stepped backwards, suppressing a small cry of fright as James’s hands tightened round the frail bones of her shoulders.
‘What are you trying to suggest?’ he asked softly. ‘That I want to share your bed myself? Why not? It would be an interesting exercise if nothing else—a study in comparisons; the girl you were and the woman you’ve become. Although I suppose you’re going to tell me that if your husband hadn’t died you’d never have got involved with a man like Saunders. Strange how women always blame the man!’
Tara tried to respond, but her mouth had gone dry. Tiny beads of perspiration gathered on her skin, fear coiling sickly through her stomach, a fear that was shot through with a peculiar sort of excitement. Nauseous disgust rose up inside her. What was the matter with her? Did she really find the thought of James making love to her arousing? She shivered beneath the crushing grip of his hands, wanting to find the words which would break the spell which seemed to hold her in thrall and yet somehow unable to find them, and then with a tiny inarticulate cry she pulled free of him and ran headlong up the stairs, a petrified creature in flight, unaware of where she was going, only knowing that she must at all costs escape from the menace of her pursuer.
Her bedroom offered frail sanctuary. The champagne glass she had brought upstairs with her and emptied while she was taking her bath—with a ridiculous feeling of depravity—was empty on the bedside table. She stared at it blindly, gasping with shock as she heard the soft footfall behind her and the ominous click of the door. She swung round, eyes widening in outrage. James leaned laconically against the closed door. He had discarded his jacket and his skin gleamed silkily bronze in the vee-necked opening of his shirt. Her eyes slid helplessly from broad shoulders down to a narrow waist and lean hips, stopping short in burning confusion.
‘What are you doing up here?’ she managed in
a husky voice. ‘Please go…’
‘You ran, I followed,’ James interrupted smoothly. ‘That’s the way the game goes, isn’t it?’ His glance sharpened suddenly and he crossed the room, lifting the glass, his lips curling back from his teeth.
‘Very romantic,’ he sneered. ‘A glass of champagne shared in the aftermath of love—or to give it its proper name—lust!’
‘Something you’re an expert on!’ Tara flung at him, all caution leaving her as her anger welled up inside her, her protests silenced by the swift capture of her arms; the lethal menace in eyes no longer blue but dark, deep pools of rage.
‘What are you trying to do, Tara?’ James mouthed softly against her ear. ‘Provoke me, or arouse me?’
‘Neither,’ Tara denied, trying to pull away from him, hating the weak, draining sensation spreading through her body; the overwhelming longing to melt against the male form behind her, to be lifted in James’s arms and…
A deep shudder ran through her, and as though her thoughts were crystal clear to him James turned her slowly in his arms, threading his fingers through the newly washed softness of her hair, his lips a mere breath away as he murmured almost to himself, ‘Why not… why the hell not?’ and then his lips were brushing hers, lightly, almost tentatively, playing on her quivering flesh like an expert on a finely tuned instrument, knowing where and how to draw the most exquisite pleasure from it. Shudder after shudder exhausted her; a mindless, powerful pleasure sweeping over her, her body overturning her will, responding to a mastery it recognised and craved.
Thoughts, half formed and wildly unreasonable, fluttered in her mind like so many moths beating their wings uselessly.
‘Tara.’
Her name was a whispered sigh, felt rather than heard, her lips quivering beneath the sensual brush of skin against skin. James’s fingers slid from her hair to her throat, stroking sensuously, wild pulses leaping to life in flesh that traitorously rejoiced in his touch.
‘Tara, Tara, you’re a witch, you bewitch me,’ James groaned against her throat, tugging impatiently at her sweat-shirt. ‘Seven years…’ Beneath the fleecy fabric of her shirt his palm shaped her breast, dragging a reluctant groan from her throat.
Somehow her hands were inside his shirt, trembling against the musky warmth of his body, shaping the taut bones of his shoulders, her body trembling as his teeth nibbled erotically at the tender flesh of her neck.
A tinge of colour darkened James’s skin. It seemed to burn to Tara’s touch. She felt his hand on the waistband of her jeans, and common sense told her she ought to protest, but the hard muscularity of his body against hers, the heated pressure of his thighs, all combined to overrule her innate caution and the sensuous writhing of her body against the tautly male contours covering it brought a jerked protest from James’s lips before they were buried against hers, tasting the inner sweetness of her mouth.
Her jeans and shirt fell disregarded to the floor, the hardness of James’s hands as he moulded her lissom femininity against the fierce heat of his thighs burning into her like a brand, his dark head bending to the creamy hollow between her breasts.
