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'Leave it,' Dominic snapped, turning in his seat to frown bleakly at her. 'I don't want you putting any weight on your legs until I've checked you over properly. I'll carry you inside.'
Eight years ago Christy would have been delirious with delight at the thought of being in his arms. Now all she felt was apprehension, and a fine spear of pain that seemed to have no logical reason for springing into being.
'I thought you were supposed to be having supper at the Manor.'
As he bent to lift her out of the car she was overwhelmed by her own awareness of his proximity. A feeling of acute panic raced through her body and she had to force herself to breathe normally.
'Then you thought wrong, didn't you.' His abrupt tone warned her not to pursue the subject.
She could feel icy cold flakes of snow stinging her exposed skin as he carried her to the house. He paused to unlock the door, shifting her in his arms so that briefly her face rested against his neck. She could smell the warm male scent of his skin. Her body tensed instantly against her awareness of him, her face drawn into lines of rejection which he obviously mistook for pain, as he pushed open the door and switched the light on.
His 'What's wrong?' fanned a warm breath of air against her skin, making her shiver wildly.
It wasn't possible for her to speak, only to shake her head, denying that anything was the matter. Dominic strode through into the library, and set her down on the leather settee.
'Don't move from there, I'm going to go and ring your father and explain what's happened. Then I'll come back and check you over.'
Before he left, he knelt down and applied a lighted match to the fire set in the grate. Christy watched the flames spread and leap through the sticks and coal like someone drugged as she waited for him to come back. She was still suffering from shock, she told herself, unwilling to admit that most of her shock was caused not by the accident, but the proximity of Dominic, and th
e realisation of what that proximity was doing to her.
He came back within minutes, his face still grim.
'I've told your father that I don't think there's anything to worry about, but for your mother's sake we both think it best that you stay here this evening. He's going to tell your mother that I invited you back here for supper and that you accepted. If you go back looking the way you do now, you're likely to cause her to have a relapse.' He crouched down in front of her, expertly sliding the zips down on her boots and tugging them off before she could even think of a protest. The heat of his palm as he held the arch of her foot, his long fingers curling round her ankle, made her heart thud at twice its normal rate.
'You'll have to take these off, I'm afraid,' he told her, standing up and gesturing to her tight jeans.
Her face froze, and she knew suddenly and intensely that there was no way she could do what he asked. It was all very well to tell herself that he was a doctor, but he was also Dominic. She knew that she was being silly ; after all, he had seen her growing up, a skinny, flat-chested, adoring child, but she wasn't that child any more, and for some reason she didn't want him looking at her body with that same clinical detachment with which he had studied it before.
'I'm perfectly all right.' To prove it she swung her legs to the floor and stood up, taking a few tentative steps, before she started to shiver and had to subside back on to the settee.
Far from being relieved, Dominic's mouth had compressed into a savagely inimical line.
'What is it, Christy?' he demanded harshly. 'Surely you aren't frightened of my taking advantage of the situation?'
The explicit way he let his glance linger on her body left her in no doubt as to what he meant. Even though she tried to suppress it, there was nothing she could do to control the hot surge of colour sweeping up under her skin.
'Don't be so ridiculous.' Her voice sounded unfamiliar and thick, almost as though it was choked with tears. She turned her head away from him and added huskily, 'I know quite well that you're the last person who'd ever want me, Dominic.'
She couldn't look at him, but even without doing so she was intensely conscious of the stunned quality of his stillness. In the end she had to look at him, her eyes meeting the brilliant, disbelieving glitter of his in shocked astonishment.
'Is that what you honestly think?' He dropped down on to his heels and slid his hand into her hair so that she couldn't turn away from him. His voice sounded oddly rusty. 'Is it, Christy?'
She wanted to turn away from him, but there was no way she could. Instinctively she moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, and then froze when she saw the way his eyes darkened and followed the movement.
'You've been pushing me away ever since you came home. I thought it was because…' he broke off and shook his head. The firelight danced on the exposed nape of his neck, and she had an aching desire to reach out and stroke it.
'Christy, what's gone wrong between us? What…?'
She couldn't let herself listen to the husky seduction of his voice. He had hurt her once, and so badly that she had never really recovered. She had to remember that. She twisted beneath his hand and instantly he released her, his frown deepening.
'I don't know what game you think you're playing with me, Dominic,' she told him. 'You humiliated me once,' she burst out bitterly. 'I'm not going to let that happen again. It's all very well for you to act as though it never happened… as though you never virtually called me a little tramp…' Her colour was high now, her eyes glittering with unshed tears, her mind sliding back to the past, and her body shivering with pain.
Her voice broke, and because she knew she wasn't far from tears, she curled her hands into tight fists, willing herself not to give way, her face turned into the darkness of the settee and away from Dominic's probing scrutiny.
She heard him get up, and felt him standing in front of the fire, blocking off its warmth. He moved, almost restlessly, and then she heard him say, 'I'd no idea you felt like this. God in heaven, you can't be holding that against me, Christy! What was I supposed to do?' She felt him coming towards her and cringed back, but he didn't touch her, his voice roughening and coming from somewhere above. 'You were a child!' His voice was almost tortured now.
She struggled to sit up and face him, as he stood looking down at her.
