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What on earth had she said that for?
‘Then you should. Women who don’t cry throw things.’
She put down the handkerchief and stared at him.
‘It’s a way of releasing tension.’
Guy was sitting on the edge of the table, looking at her. There was such a tender look in his eyes that she blinked, and then blinked again when it didn’t disappear.
‘Why is it you’re so desperately afraid of showing emotion, Campion? You’re going through a very stressful time,’ he added quietly when she made no response. ‘There’s no reason for you to feel ashamed because…’
‘Because I can’t fry eggs,’ she interrupted savagely.
To her fury, he laughed. ‘Ah, well, that’s another story. Using a Rayburn takes a bit of know-how… Want me to show you?’
She didn’t want him to show her anything. She wanted him to leave her alone and free her from the dangerous spell of his intimacy. He was reacting to her in a way that was totally unfamiliar to her; treating her… treating her as a woman, she recognised with a quick start.
‘Who taught you?’ she asked coldly. ‘One of your women?’
He didn’t like that, and no wonder. She saw the tenderness fade from his eyes, to be replaced with a cool sternness that made her quail slightly.
‘No, as a matter of fact, my mother taught me,’ he said quietly.
‘Your mother?’
‘Yes. I was her eldest child. My father died when I was twelve, and Ma had to go out to work. She taught me to cook, so that I could prepare a meal for the others when we got home from school.’
‘The others?’
He smiled then, and it was a smile she couldn’t wholly interpret; she saw that it held love and resignation, and other things as well, and she was pierced with a pain that was compounded of loss and envy and a terrible, aching unhappiness that she knew nothing in her life would ever totally dim.
She loved him… She loved this intelligent, beautiful man who had women falling over themselves to attract his attention. She loved him, and part of her twisted in mortal agony that she could be so foolish and so vulnerable.
It hadn’t happened overnight. It had to have been there for some time, growing slowly and dangerously. This time together at the cottage had acted like a forcing house, making her recognise what was happening to her.
Before, she had been able to ignore the insidious growth of her feelings, pretending that her awareness of him sprang from dislike and resentment; here, at the cottage, there was no barrier behind which she could hide from the truth. She loved him.
‘My sisters and brother,’ he told her softly.
She turned away quickly so that he wouldn’t see her envy. She had hated being an only child; had longed for the companionship that came from being part of a family. Perhaps she had even turned to Craig out of that need.
‘You have sisters and a brother?’
‘I certainly do. Alison and Meg are twins, they’re three years younger than me, and Ian is the baby of the family. He had just started school when Pa was killed. It was a wrench for Ma to leave him and go back to work. She lost the baby she was carrying when my father died.’
‘What—what happened to him?’ Campion asked, barely aware of saying the words.
It amazed her that he could talk to her like this. She never discussed her private past life with anyone.
‘He was killed by a hit-and-run driver two days before Christmas.’
Champion turned an appalled face towards him.
‘Christmas! How dreadful…’
‘I can see what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong,’ he told her quietly. ‘Of course, we never forgot, but Ma never allowed the spirit of Christmas to be damaged for us by Pa’s death. They were two separate things, and she treated them as such. She still does.’
‘Where—where does she live?’
