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The thought slid serpent-like into her mind, making her shiver and cross her arms repressively around her body, as though somehow by doing so she could subdue the ache inside her, the knowledge that she only had to think of Silas, to close her eyes and remember what it had felt like when he kissed her, and immediately she wanted him, ached for him.
This was not love. It was lust, she told herself defiantly, and probably the very best thing for her to do would be for her to go to bed with the man and get the whole thing out of her system.
Go to bed with him. She started to shiver, trembling inside with the force of what she was feeling, acknowledging the dangerous insidiousness of her own thoughts, at the same time as she tried to reassure herself that of course she would not want to do any such thing.
Casual sex was not for her. She was adamantly sure of that. And besides… Silas probably didn’t want her any more. If
her behaviour yesterday had not put him off her completely, then surely her idiotic confidences this morning, which had laid bare for him the paucity of her sexual history, must have done so?
Yes, she was safe enough from any subtle sexual pressure from Silas.
But was she safe from herself, she wondered, or was her self-control finally cracking up?
If so… She took a deep breath; if so then she would just have to keep as much distance between Silas and herself as possible, starting right now.
She might not need to do any work on the study, but there was still her father’s bedroom to turn out; the bed to be made up, the bathroom to be stocked with towels.
Silas could move in there tonight, where he would have the privacy of being virtually at the opposite end of the house from her, where he would have his own bathroom. Where she need not go into the house’s main bathroom and discover that the scent of his cologne still hung elusively on the air… Where she need not be tormented by erotic images of his body, nude and supple, and so very, very male.
Stop it, she urged herself as she headed for the stairs. For goodness’ sake stop it.
At half-past six, just when she had decided that Silas had taken her repudiation of him so much to heart that he was not going to return until after supper, she heard the sound of his car coming down the drive.
She hadn’t changed from the jeans and top she had been wearing earlier, and although she was wearing make-up it was no more than she would normally have worn. There was after all no reason why she should make any special effort to make herself look attractive for Silas. No reason at all, and yet before going downstairs she stared at herself critically in her bedroom mirror and decided depressingly that she was perfectly safe from Silas because no man with any sense of taste could possibly find anything remotely attractive in a five-foot-two female dressed in old jeans and a bulky sweatshirt, who wore her hair in a cloud of untidy curls. What she failed to see what was immediately obvious to others, and that was the clear naturalness of her skin, the youthful contours of her face and body, the soft silkiness of her abhorred curls, and the sexual appeal of her slender body clad in its oversized top and snug-fitting jeans.
No, there was most definitely nothing about her appearance which would lead Silas to imagine that she had changed her mind, she decided firmly before heading downstairs.
He was already in the kitchen when she walked in, looking across the room towards her with an expression in his eyes she could not decipher.
She decided that it was probably amusement and was therefore unable to hide her astonishment when he remarked softly, ‘You know, I’d forgotten how good it was to have someone to come home to. You do, when you live alone.’ He paused and then before she could pull herself together and say anything, he added thoughtfully, ‘You must miss your father, and Katie.’
Was he suggesting that he felt sorry for her? A woman on her own?
She looked defensively at him and, seeing neither pity nor mockery in his eyes, allowed herself to admit huskily, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do.’
‘You’re still young enough to marry. To have more children…’
Hazel’s jaw dropped.
‘I’m thirty-six,’ she protested, unable to hide her surprise.
‘So what? There are women today of forty who are having their first child; women who have spent their twenties and thirties concentrating on their careers, and who have realised that those careers aren’t enough, that they want a family as well. Or is it that you don’t want any more children? I can understand why you might not feel you want to take on a husband,’ he told her whimsically, ‘but children…’
Children… She’d never even thought about it. At least…well, yes, she had thought about it when Katie was younger, not wanting her to grow up alone as she had done, but then once Katie had reached her teens…and now… Well, she was thinking more in terms of the grandchildren Katie would one day provide her with, not babies of her own, and yet, as Silas had remarked, there were women older than her who were giving birth and bringing up young families.
‘I… I haven’t really thought about it,’ she fibbed, turning her back on him. ‘I certainly don’t feel any need to fulfil myself by conceiving a second child to bring up without its father,’ she added quietly. ‘With Katie I was lucky. She’s never reproached me because she’s had to grow up without knowing Jimmy. Jimmy’s family have always made her welcome as a part of them.’
‘Did you love him very much?’
The question startled her. It was one she wasn’t used to hearing. Jimmy was so very far away from her now in her past that she found it hard sometimes to remember exactly what she had felt towards him, but she knew it had not been the love of a woman for a man. How could it have been, when they had only been children?
‘He was my friend,’ she answered honestly. ‘I was a very intense teenager, perhaps because I was very lonely. Jimmy… Jimmy was very special to me as a person. But no, I didn’t love him as…as a lover.’
She had said far more than she had intended to say, revealed far more than she should have done, and as she swung round and saw the compassion darkening his eyes she bit her lip in vexation, saying abruptly, ‘It was all a very long time ago, and hardly matters now. I’ve cleared out Dad’s room for you. It has its own bathroom. I haven’t made anything for supper. I wasn’t sure if you’d be coming back.’
All the time she spoke, gabbled almost, she was aware of Silas watching her, studying her—as well he might, she reflected dismally. No doubt, as far as he was concerned, she was an odd and rare species, a woman whose one experience of sex had led to the conception of a child, and who had never allowed herself to become a fully functioning sexual woman. Oh, yes, he might well regard her with that thoughtful considering gaze that made her feel so uncomfortable and so…so vulnerable.
‘I thought we might have supper out. I’m having a small problem with my work, in that my research has revealed such a wealth of information and detail that I’m undecided as to whether I should only deal with a shorter space of Hugo’s life in this book, and then continue it in another. I need someone to listen while I talk myself through the problem, and I wonder, rather selfishly I know, if in return for supper you might be prepared to lend a sympathetic ear.’
