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The bed still wasn’t made, and, ignoring the flowers, she went quickly into the bedroom, hurriedly covering the bed in the crisp linen sheets.
She heard the car stop just as she finished, and, giving the rooms one last assessing glance, she hurried downstairs to welcome her new lodger.
‘I’ll take you upstairs,’ she told him as she opened the door to him, wondering if he would register her nervousness and guess at the cause of it, and then telling herself not to be so stupid. The way she was acting, she was practically begging him to guess how she felt. ‘Then I’ll l
eave you to get settled in, if you’ve got an early start in the morning.’
They were halfway upstairs, and she paused and added uncertainly, wondering if he would expect a meal, ‘The kitchen is in chaos. I’m using the pantry to cook in.’
‘It’s all right. I ate before I left the Bull.’
Charlotte opened the door to the study and walked in, waiting for Oliver to follow her. She saw the way he looked at the made-up fire and from it to the flowers on the desk.
‘It all looks very welcoming,’ he told her softly, walking over to the desk. ‘I don’t think I’ve enjoyed having garden flowers in my room since I left home. There’s something very evocative of a real home about garden-cut flowers rather than bought ones, don’t you think?’
‘Mrs Higham put them there,’ Charlotte lied, wishing she could do something about the frantic race of her heart. When he reached out and touched one of the tell-tale wet petals of one flower, she was glad he wasn’t looking at her to see the rich tide of colour burning her skin.
‘I’ll leave you to get settled in,’ she reiterated, and then fled to the door before she could make even more of a fool of herself.
Why on earth had she lied to him like that? It would have been simple enough to say that she had brought the flowers in to save them being battered by further rain, but no…she had had to go and behave like a love-crazed adolescent.
For a moment, making up the bed, she had actually lifted one of the linen-covered pillows to her face, imagining how it would feel against her skin if it carried his scent. The sharp twisting sensation that had coiled through her stomach had alerted her to what she was doing…what she was thinking. She hadn’t thought about a man in such sexually explicit terms since…since she had left her teenage years behind; and it shamed her now that her body should react so swiftly and so wantonly to the mental image of Oliver’s naked body.
* * *
While Oliver made several journeys up and down the stairs with his possessions, Charlotte worked diligently on some paperwork she had brought home with her, determined to keep out of his way and not to embarrass either herself or him by trying to put their relationship on anything other than a business footing.
When he had finished, he rapped briefly on the sitting-room door and then came in.
‘That’s finished. I was wondering if you’d like to go out for a drink somewhere…to celebrate our joint appointment this afternoon.’
Charlotte felt her heart leap, but almost immediately she shook her head. ‘No, thank you,’ she told him dampeningly.
He was just being polite, she told herself, trying to ignore the possibility of a more sinister purpose in his invitation. She was almost sure that Vanessa was wrong…almost sure. His offer of a drink was simply a polite gesture, which she was pretty sure he expected her to refuse.
Certainly he didn’t look particularly disappointed when she did.
‘Well, perhaps another time,’ was all he said, and then he cheerfully excused himself, going back upstairs, leaving her to wish that she weren’t the sort of person she was and that she had the kind of self-confidence so evident in women like Vanessa. That she was the kind of woman who knew that no man would ever ask her out simply out of compassion or good manners, but because he was attracted to her and found her desirable.
The thought of Oliver finding her desirable sent such a charge of sensation through her that her body tensed against it. How was it possible for him to make her feel like this? Desire…it was something she had comfortably assumed would never dominate her life. She had thought that, if she didn’t inspire sensual need in men, than at least she had the advantage of being free from experiencing it herself, but now she was discovering that all her comfortable and safe beliefs about herself were being swept aside…that she could indeed experience desire, and that it was a sharp, raking, painful sensation which made her body ache restlessly and her mind fill with such wanton mental images that she could feel the heat they generated crawling up under her skin.
It was a relief when she was finally able to go to bed, but sleep didn’t come easily. She was far too conscious of Oliver sleeping so close to her.
So close physically, maybe, but so very far away emotionally and mentally.
She had to get a grip on herself before it was too late, she warned herself. But too late for what? She wasn’t merely in love with Oliver Tennant—she loved him, which was infinitely worse. She sat bolt upright in bed as the truth burst upon her—irrefutable and inescapable. She loved him!
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE moment she opened her eyes, Charlotte was aware of a heavy sense of despair. Outside her bedroom window the sun was shining, but inside her heart everything was shadowed and dulled by the pain of knowing that she loved Oliver.
Oliver… Instinctively she glanced at her bedside clock. The house was silent, so presumably he had already left. It was extraordinary that, even knowing the folly of her emotions, even knowing that she was safer when he was absent, that every second spent in his company increased the intensity of her feelings, and the danger that she might somehow betray them, she should still feel this total sense of desolation in the knowledge that he wasn’t there.
She shivered under the bedclothes, not because she was cold, but because of the feelings prickling her skin.
God knew, she didn’t want to feel like this—had never imagined she could feel like this—and, if anyone other than herself should discover what she did feel, she thought she would die from the humiliation of it.
Restlessly she pushed back the bedclothes and got up. Her father’s old rooms had their own bathroom which had been installed when he had become too ill to walk very far.
