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'That's none of your damned business,' she flung at him. 'I've told you, you may be living next door—and heaven knows that's bad enough—but just keep out of my life, will you?'
She sensed more than saw the faintest smile tug at his mouth. 'It won't work, my sweetheart.'
'And don't call—W—what do you mean?'
'You're not going to marry him, you know.'
'Of course I am,' she said loudly. 'Simon and I are getting married on Easter Saturday—in the village church.'
'You aren't going to marry him,' he repeated, as though she had not even spoken, 'because I'm not going to let you.'
'You aren't—!' She stared up at him, her eyes darkening with shock. And exactly how do you propose stopping me?'
'Oh, Petra, do I really have to spell it out to you?'
At the lazy sensuality in his voice she took a step away, flinging her hands up as if to protect herself from him, though lie had not moved a muscle. But then, as she went to escape, he caught her by the wrist, turning her back to face him.
She stood quite motionless as he lifted his hand and very slowly unpinned her heavy coil of hair. It fell through his fingers and on to her shoulders in a gleaming red-gold curtain, and she heard his breath hiss softly in his throat.
'I told you ten years ago, you should always wear it like this.'
'Ten years ago!' she blurted out. 'You mean you remember?'
As she gazed at him in shocked dismay he moved closer, so that he blotted out the light entirely and his face was a dark blur, swooping down on her. Before she could draw even one jagged breath his mouth had closed with hers and his tongue had slid between her lips, stifling her heated protest.
He tasted sweet yet salty and warm, probing the moist recesses of her mouth in a blatantly erotic assault that set her senses spinning. Her eyelids fluttered, then fell beneath the weight of her lashes, and she clutched helplessly on to his shoulders. She tensed fractionally as his hand slid inside her jacket, then she felt his fingers begin to glide up and down her spine, setting up a friction, agonisingly sensuous against the silky fabric of her blouse, so fine that it was no more than a second skin.
Moments before, Simon too had kissed her and held her to him like this, but Jared's lips, his tongue, his hands were obliterating all memory of that other embrace. In Simon's arms she'd felt becalmed on a tranquil sea; now she was being driven before a raging tempest—swept helplessly on to rocks of self-destruction!
Violently she jerked her mouth free. His arm still held her, but so lightly now that all she had to do was take one single step back and she was free. But she could not move, could do nothing t0 break out of the charmed circle his kiss had woven round her, and she lifted dazed eyes to his—glittering, crystalline, triumphant.
'Now do you see, Petra?'
'No! No, I don't,' she cried with all the vehemence she could conjure up. You . . . and your kisses—they mean nothing to me.'
'All right, my sweet—if that's really what you want to believe.' A fleeting chimera of a smile curved his lips. 'And who knows? You just keep telling yourself that and you might even persuade yourself that it's true.'
He raised his hands slightly in a contemptuous gesture of dismissal, and after a second's indecision she turned to flee. But as she fumbled blindly with her door-handle his mocking laugh floated through the darkness to her.
Sobbing for breath, she flung herself into her cottage then locked the door, bolted it top and bottom and leaned against it as violent tremors shook her slender frame. CHAPTER FIVE
Petra set her case on the ground then wearily hauled Sam's travelling basket out of the car boot. Reaching in her jacket pocket for her key, she hurried down the path to her cottage. At this rate, Simon would be here before she'd got their New Year's Eve meal organised; the roads weren't icy today, so he'd have a clear run down from his mother's. Abruptly an upstairs window of the next-door cottage was flung open, and before she could stop the reflex action her eyes flew upwards, to widen with shock. Framed in the window was a young woman, barely older than herself. A highly attractive young woman in a frothy pale cream neglige, dark hair tumbling in abandoned disarray around her slim shoulders. She was in the main bedroom. Jared's bedroom. As Petra stood paralysed, still staring blankly up at her, she yawned, stretched voluptuously then knelt down, leaning her arms on the low sill. Petra finally came to, and, desperate now not to be seen, turned away—but too late.
'Hi.' The friendly greeting wafted down, forcing her out of sheer common politeness to halt.
'Good morning.' She raised her head again reluctantly, to be met by a warm smile.
'You must be Petra, Jared's neighbour.'
So his ... house-guest was American. 'That's right.' She managed a stiff little smile and set Sam's basket down on the path.
'What a wonderful day.'
'Er—yes.'
'And what a marvellous view. I do envy you, waking up to this every morning.' The woman gestured towards the cliffs and the wide expanse of shimmering pale green sea.
'Yes.' What's the matter, Petra, Gran would have said, cat got your tongue? But it was no use—she was having to squeeze out every word past a huge obstruction in her throat. The young woman went on smiling down at her but then, as they both heard Jared's voice from further back in the bedroom, she turned her head, said something in reply, which Petra did not catch, and with a last little wave disappeared.
