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Her hand fisted against his chest. Clever, clever man. ‘No, but they gave him to me as a birthday present when I was eight years old. A marmalade kitten, because I loved marmalade. It…it was a family joke.’ Only now there was no family…no one to share the silly joke with…
‘My goodness, he was a venerable age, then,’ he murmured gently.
‘He was eighteen,’ she sobbed. ‘And don’t tell me that he had a good long life—as if it makes it somehow easier to lose him…It doesn’t, it makes it harder!’
‘I know. I know.’ The vibrating growl of his voice in her ear where it was pressed against his chest was not unlike Frank’s deep, rumbling purr. ‘Of course it hurts. You’ve known him most of your life. He was a link to your childhood…’
Shattered by compassion and understanding where she had expected derision and an admonition to pull herself together, Harriet felt her brave new image totter and collapse. Escaping into boundless grief, she burrowed past his jacket to the snowy-white shirt-front, which soaked up her hot tears until the wet silk was transparent under her cheek.
She hardly noticed when he picked her up and carried her across the small dining room to the deeply padded window-seat, where he settled her on his substantial lap. He patted her shuddering back and nudged the tumbled curls away from her sticky forehead with the roughness of his jaw, and all the white held her so tightly that she knew she was safe, that she wouldn’t fall into the yawning pit of emptiness that lurked at the edge of her consciousness. The luxury of a simple hug was infinitely seductive, and Harriet cried all the harder in the knowledge that when Marcus took his arms away she would again be devastatingly alone.
But he didn’t take them away, and when at last her crying jag was over and she lay quiet against his chest Harriet became aware that it wasn’t an impassive rock beneath her, but a living, breathing man of flesh and sinew and pumping blood. Her arms had wound themselves around his waist underneath his splayed jacket, and she could feel the slow, deep expansion and contraction of his ribcage through the thinness of his shirt. Her breast was compressed over his heart and the rhythmic thudding against her soft tissue created streamers of sensation that radiated out to lace her body with the knowledge of his powerful life force.
She couldn’t see his face but his lower jaw rested on her head, trapping it against his shoulder, and she could feel him swallow with the whole of her scalp—little ripples of motion along his throat that massaged her ultra-sensitive skin and made the blood rush to her head. If she looked up at him her mouth would touch the dark, grainy skin under his chin, and if she parted her lips she might taste the fine whiskers which had abraded her temples with the delicate roughness of a cat’s tongue.
His scent was heavy, musky, unmasked by any hint of the cologne she thought she had detected at the nightclub. Now he merely smelled of Marcus—mellow and rich and memorable, like the aroma of a fine cigar. His strong thighs were warm and relaxed beneath hers, slightly splayed to cup her slender bottom, tilting her body so that her hip was tucked against the apex of his legs where the soft cushion of his masculinity informed her that, while she might be prickling all over with physical awareness, his embrace was solely one of consolation.
Feeling safe and yet aware of a tantalising danger, Harriet inhaled and let out a shuddering sigh and wriggled deeper into his lap. The malleable outline against her hip was large, and Harriet felt another wave of prickly heat wash over her as she indulged her sinful curiosity and wondered what it would take to arouse a man of his iron self-control and how different he would feel in his state of excitement.
She imagined what would happen if she was lying like this in his arms but for some inexplicable but necessary reason they were both completely nude. Surely he wouldn’t be unaffected then, no matter how skinny or pathetic he thought she was? He was a man and he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He might fight against his primitive instincts because he didn’t want to hurt her, but he would eventually succumb to the feel of her naked breasts and thighs rubbing against him. He would kiss her fiercely, and smother her small breasts in his big, clever hands, and then he would go thick and hard against her squirming bottom and he would turn her in his lap and—
With a squeak of horror Harriet jerked upright, appalled at the trend of her fantasising. Marcus lifted his head, loosening his grip instantly, and she scooted towards his knees, looking back at him as if he were the devil, her lips parting in dismay as her gaze fell onto the large wet patch her tears had left on his shirt, faintly streaked with specks of her waterproof mascara. It looked stunningly indecent, she thought faintly, as if she had been nuzzling and drooling over him…which she virtually had been!
‘Feeling better?’
‘Y-yes, thank you.’
She blushed to the core of her being, feeling as if she had violated his trust. He had offered her kind consolation and she had responded by conducting a mental rape. But then, the only way a woman could take a man of honour against his will was in her imagination. Why, if she were truly depraved, she could force the cool, proud, forbiddingly severe Marcus Fox to be her lover over and over in her dreams and he would be powerless to stop her. She could do anything she liked to and with him and no one would be any the wiser. Harriet crammed the forbidden thought back into the wicked corner in her mind whence it had sprung.
How shocked he would be if he knew what she had been thinking! She felt even worse when, brushing away her babbling apologies for the damage to his shirt, he produced a white silk square from his breast pocket and gravely wiped her tear-stained cheeks. Then, his hands almost spanning her waist, he gently set her back on her feet and suggested that the tea must definitely be drawn by now.
Actually it was almost cold,
but he politely pretended not to notice and sipped it quietly at the kitchen table, allowing Harriet to flutter on about nothing in particular until she had recovered her equilibrium.
When she had, he immediately upset it again by saying quietly, as she carried the empty cups back to the bench, ‘If you’re worried about being alone tonight, perhaps you’d like me to stay?’
Spend the night with Marcus Fox? Fastidious Marcus Fox showering in her old-fashioned bathroom, soaping himself with her scented soap, drying his lean, hard body on one of her towels? Marcus Fox sleeping in her spare bed? Marcus awake in her bed…big and bare, arms folded behind his head, revealing the thick, dark tufts of silky-soft hair under his arms, his slitted eyes watching Harriet play the slave girl, dancing around him, shedding her glittering gold metal skin inch by tantalising inch until he erupted out of his gentlemanly skin—?
‘No!’ The cups crashed into the sink and she spun around, quickly pinning on a bright smile as she met his eyes, slitted just as they had been in her fantasy, but not with desire, just with his infernal, impersonal kindness. Having witnessed her breakdown, he was concerned for her well-being, that was all. ‘I mean no, thank you. That won’t be necessary. It was just a delayed reaction, that’s all. I’m fine now.’
‘If you’re sure,’ he said slowly.
‘Very sure,’ she declared.
‘Well, perhaps it’s time I let you go to bed…’
Past time, thought Harriet fervently, if her hot flushes at his every innocent comment were anything to go by. She was furious at the trick her body had played on her mind. Marcus Fox had made it very clear that he was sexually immune to blondes. She had no wish to waste any more of her life on futile hopes. An unrequited desire was definitely not on the agenda!
‘Uh—about tomorrow…?’ she said as she followed him to the door.
He halted on the threshold. ‘Yes?’
‘I—do you still want me to work with Nicola?’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
She shrugged. ‘Well, I just thought—having seen how unstable I am—that it might have put you off…You can change your mind, you know; I won’t be offended…’
