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At least Jamie will be tired out by bedtime, Annie thought, as she watched the small boy dive into a thicket of rhododendrons after the ball she'd just hit. Then she lifted her head as she heard the approach of the Ferrari.
At the sight of the tall figure unwinding itself from the driver's seat Annie's heart performed a lurching somersault. Making herself tear her eyes away from him, she walked over to the shrubs, peered into the dusty depths and called, 'Your mommy's home,' disgusted to hear how husky her voice was.
Damn the man! she agonised as she watched the child emerge, his face streaked with dirt, his fat
little legs seeming to fly over the ground as he headed for the car. Luke made her feel like a young girl in love, and she wasn't a girl and she wasn't in love and she was going to have to do something drastic about it.
But what? a weary inner voice enquired as she slowly made her way back to the house. What indeed?
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was dusk. The mountains were far behind them, and the countryside showing up in the Ferrari's headlamps seemed tame by comparison. But the atmosphere inside the car wasn't tame; it was tense, almost electric.
Paula had been adamant about her ability to manage on her own.
'There's no need for you to stay a moment longer. My family's imposed on you both too much already. And Jim will be here tomorrow.'
She had been a different woman after seeing for herself the rapid progress her father was making.
'And I'm going to put my foot down about Dad living here alone,' she'd stated, battle lights glinting in her eyes. 'He knows Jim and I would love to have him live with us—there's ample room for him and all his books, and Jamie adores him.'
'So all's well that ends well,' Luke commented, uncannily taking up Annie's train of thought, before adding, with that maddening confidence of his, 'And that's the way it's going to turn out for us.'
For a moment her heart seemed to stop and a sharp visceral pain knifed through her. He obviously believed she had given him the green light last night, that her later repudiation of their earlier intimacies had stemmed from a coy, virginal need to draw breath. So now, this minute, was the ideal time to put him right.
Drawing in a ragged breath, she stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the headlights as they cut a dazzling swath through the twilight.
'Nothing will end for us because nothing ever began,' she stated through stiff lips. Her mouth felt numb, as if she were gradually turning to a block of stone. Weird, she thought wildly, that the verbal act of denying the strange immediacy of the disastrous attraction between them should make her feel as if she were slowly dying inside.
But she was a sensible woman and she sure as hell wasn't going to have an affair with him, and she folded her hands in her lap and stoically waited for his blistering comments.
None came. And his voice was smooth as silk when he eventually replied, 'Lie to me if you must, but don't lie to yourself, there's a good girl. You can't be an emotional coward all your life.'
Apprehensively, she darted a sideways look but his features—or what she could see of them in the dusky interior—were as equable as his voice as he continued with damning veracity.
'Something began for us at the precise moment we met. Had it not, then I would simply have decided that Monk's Hall was suitable for my purposes, made a duty visit to The Laurels as I was in the area, paid my respects to Norman and his future wife, then returned to town. One of my deputies would have sat in on the auction and I probably wouldn't have set foot in Seabourne until the Monk's Hall project was completed. I don't keep dogs to do the barking myself. But I saw you and something started, something I couldn't fight, didn't want to fight.'
He glanced at her briefly and, even through the gloom, his electric-blue eyes reached her, touched her soul, made her shake.
'I'm being as honest with you as I know how to be, so why can't you be honest with me, Annie?'
'I am being,' she lied. Suddenly the issue of what he intended to do with Monk's Hall didn't matter any more. It hurt, but it was no longer the catastrophe she had believed it to be. Catastrophic emotions only emerged when one cared deeply, and perhaps he had been right and she had been sublimating her sexual drive into a pile of bricks and mortar. The central issue now was his shameless and openly acknowledged pursuit of seduction— her seduction! And that could turn out to be a catastrophe of monumental proportions if she ever allowed it to happen. An affair, for him, would be nothing more than a pleasant interlude in a busy life, nothing more meaningful than that. But for her, making love with him would mean loving him, and it wouldn't be meaningless at all. And if she allowed him to make love to her, with no love on either side, then she would be degrading herself, and she couldn't live with that.
'Last night is something I'll always be ashamed of,' she informed him stiffly. 'It can't and won't happen again.'
A sharp hiss of indrawn breath was his only response as with one swerving movement he hauled the car off the road, braking viciously on to a layby, gravel spurting beneath squealing tyres. And for the first time ever she sensed a terrible anger in him, his former patience with her clearly a thing of the past.
His reaction to her repudiation of him frightened her. Until now he'd always been in control, his management of her—and that was what it assuredly had been—light and easy, if sometimes a little acid.
But there was something dark here now, something furious and demanding, and the face he turned to her was grim. But his anger, although it was real, was controlled and he asked her tightly, levelly, 'Do I have to make you angry again before you'll tell me what this is all about? I think we could both do without the trauma, don't you?'
'In case you'd forgotten, I happen to be engaged to Norman and I don't want a sneaky affair with you!' she countered hotly. 'Why can't you get that into your head?'
'But you are going to break with Norman, aren't you?' he stated unequivocally, and she stared ahead into the darkness, her body rigid, and told him, 'No,' flatly, because she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right.
'And when that's behind you,' he went on grimly, as if she hadn't spoken, 'there'll be time for us. Because, whatever happens, you're going to be mine.'
'Oh, am I?' she choked, unnameable emotion clogging her throat. 'For how long? Until you tire of me? That's just great, isn't it?' she snorted, disgust with him, with the way he could churn her emotions, sparking her anger. 'You'd be willing to break up what Norman and I have, just because you've decided you want me to share your bed for a while? You've got to be the most selfish, unprincipled bastard I've ever met!'
