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Picturesquely the factory was housed in what seemed an almost fortress-like building-cum-castle, but when Beth couldn’t help remarking on this Alex told her grimly, ‘Until recently it was used as a prison.’
A prison. Beth shivered and took a few steps backwards just at the moment when a dilapidated lorry came roaring into the small courtyard.
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She heard the screech of its brakes as its driver reacted to her presence but for some reason she found it impossible to move, even though she could see the lorry bearing down on her.
A few feet away from her she heard Alex curse as he moved like lightning, turning and grabbing hold of her, lifting her bodily off her feet as he swung her out of the lorry’s path.
The whole incident had lasted less than a handful of seconds but it left Beth badly shaken. So much so that she could actually feel herself trembling violently as Alex continued to hold her.
‘It’s all right...it’s all right,’ she could hear him saying gruffly to her. ‘You’re safe...’
Safe!
Beth raised her head to look at him, the politely formal words of thanks she had intended to utter forgotten as her glance meshed with his.
How could eyes that were such a cool pale grey look so...so hot, like molten mercury?
‘Alex...’
She could feel the heat in his gaze as it shifted from her eyes to her mouth. Her lips started to tremble—and soften. Involuntarily she could feel them starting to part...to open in an age-old signal of female recognition—and invitation.
This couldn’t be happening, she told herself hazily. She couldn’t be standing here in the courtyard of this dilapidated building knowing that Alex Andrews intended to kiss her, knowing it and not doing the slightest thing to prevent him from doing so other than to utter a token ‘no’ as the downward descent of his head blotted out the daylight and she felt the warm, sure pressure of his mouth against hers.
If she was completely honest, when Julian had kissed her she had never truly enjoyed the too wet, too soft sensation of his mouth on hers, and had, on many occasions, actively tried to avoid it.
Some women were just not particularly highly sexed, she had assured herself, and she quite obviously was one of them—which made it all the more extraordinary that she should feel, the moment Alex Andrews’ mouth touched hers, as though her whole body was engulfed in a heat even greater than that generated by the blast furnaces used to heat silica.
Was it possible that somehow Alex Andrews had the power to convert her raw anger and dislike, her suspicion of him, into something else, a very different kind of emotion, just as the heat the furnaces used on the raw ingredients of the silica sand could turn it into the molten liquid which ultimately could be converted into the most beautiful crystal glass? But of course it wasn’t. How could the negative, self-defensive emotions she felt towards Alex ever be converted into something else, especially since she herself didn’t want them to be? So then why was she melting so into his arms, into his body; why was her body becoming molten liquid with the white heat of her own desire?
‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’ Alex asked hoarsely against her lips. His hands were cupping her face, his thumbs gently stroking the hot flesh of her flushed cheeks.
‘Oh, yes,’ Beth sighed mistily.
Hadn’t it always been one of her most cherished private dreams that one day she would meet a man, the man, and from the very first second of setting eyes on him, she would just know that he was the one?
But of course that was a silly, almost adolescent fantasy, a daydream that, now she was a grown woman, life and reality had forced her to abandon.
The mistiness in her eyes gave way to a grave sadness that told Alex far more than her silence and the abrupt, fierce denial which followed it.
‘No. No, of course I don’t. Love at first sight, it’s a fiction, a fantasy,’ Beth objected angrily. ‘It’s...it’s impossible.’
‘No, not impossible,’ Alex corrected her gently. ‘Incomprehensible from a logical point of view, perhaps, but not impossible. Ask any poet...’
‘Oh, poets,’ Beth denounced dismissively, but the sharp tone of her voice was still at odds with the betraying expression in her eyes.
Someone, somewhere in her past, had hurt her—and badly, Alex recognised. Someone at some time had robbed her of her faith and her trust, had forced her to retreat into the prickly thicket she had built around her emotions, but he could see what lay beyond that thicket; he could see in her eyes the woman that she actually was—a tender, loving, lovable woman, a woman who—‘Oh, no...look over there,’ Beth commanded, her voice suddenly as filled with emotion as her eyes as she pointed in the direction where a cat was stalking an unaware bird.
‘Oh, no. No. It’s going to catch it...’
As he heard the urgency and the anxiety in her voice Alex reacted instinctively, clapping his hands loudly together to distract the cat and alert its potential victim.
As the bird flew away, and the cat gave him a baleful glare, Beth turned to him, her eyes shining with relief.
‘Oh, that was good,’ she praised him involuntarily. ‘I’m glad you didn’t hurt the cat, like some people might have done...I wouldn’t have wanted it to be hurt. After all, it’s only obeying nature...’
Such a soft, tender heart, Alex marvelled, but apparently there was no softness or tenderness in it for him...apparently... When he had kissed her her kisses had been honey-sweet, but the words she spoke to him were vinegar-sharp and they were not, he felt sure, the words of her heart.
