AllFreeNovel
Share Us
'Did you enjoy the roller-coaster ride? Sorry if you
got a fright, but I knew that once—'
Her working parts worked perfectly. Her slap nearly took his head off. Throat still raw from screaming, Fran didn't bother to say a single word, she let her back say it for her. She stormed over to Ross's pick-up, which was parked on the roadside next to the hangar, slammed into the driver's seat and took off in a whirlwind of dust along the unsealed road, ignoring the shouts behind her. Let Ross hitch a ride back with his brother. It would serve him right if she wiped this old rust-bucket out doing a few fancy driving 'stunts'!
It wasn't until she was half-way back to the cabin that reaction overtook her and she began to shake, and to have difficulty keeping the car on the road. She almost went straight past the Tarrant driveway, but at the last minute turned in, not really knowing why. Ross's home should be the last place she should run to, but when she stumbled into the warm kitchen to find Florence Tarrant sitting down to a quiet cup of tea she knew why she had come. She might be Ross's mother, but she would understand...
'I won't bother apologising for my son's behaviour, Fran,' the older woman said, plying Fran with a soothing brand of tea and sympathy after listening to her unexpected visitor's disjointed tale of woe. 'He's quite capable of doing that for himself. A pity he's got too big to put over my knee.'
'I took care of that,' Fran confessed, the slight sting in her hand recalling the slap. It probably hurt her more than it did him. 'He knew I'd never been up in a small plane before. He knew that I was nervous, that I thought Jason was going to take me up in something enclosed and modern and... and... then he leads me like a lamb to slaughter and does those awful things...' She shivered at the memory of the rushing wind, the wild, cartwheeling world.
'I know it's no consolation, dear, but Ross is so used to stunting that he probably doesn't think of it as frightening or dangerous. Perhaps he thought you would find it thrilling, perhaps he was just showing off, trying to impress you with his skill.'
'He doesn't have to impress me! cried Fran furiously, not realising what she was revealing to his interested mother. Just having him kiss and touch her was breathtaking thrill enough...how much more impressive could he be? 'What would you have done, if he had done that to you?'
Florence Tarrant sipped her tea thoughtfully. 'I would have been sick all over him,' she said drily.
Suddenly they were laughing, Fran's high-pitched giggles semi-hysterical with relief. This mixture of sympathy and humour was just what she had needed to restore her perspective. 'I suppose it was rather funny,' she chuckled grudgingly. 'Me, screaming like a banshee, hanging from my shoulder-straps. If I'd seen it in a movie I would have thought it great fun. And you should have seen his face when I took off in his car, leaving him choking in a cloud of dust in the middle of the road. Now that was like a movie, Keystone Cops variety. I half expected him to chase after me.' That set them off again, until Fran remembered that he might well be chasing after her. She felt too confused and angry to face him quite yet. She pushed her empty cup away and jumped nervously to her feet.
'You won't tell him I laughed?' she said tentatively.
'I think he deserves a good long bit of grovelling first, wouldn't you say?' Florence Tarrant asked, her eyes still filled with serene merriment at her son's expense.
'More than a little,' growled Francesca darkly. 'And if he thinks he can just walk back into that cabin and jolly me into forgetting it, he's got another think coming!'
'I'll make up his bed here,' his mother offered, perfectly understanding, but privately doubting that the bed would be used. 'I take it that you won't stay on for dinner... Ross thought you might.'
Another indication that he didn't want to be alone
with her. Fran stiffened at the sharp disappoint
ment that knifed in her breast. 'No, thank you.' The thought of food at this particular time made her feel ill anyway, and the thought of facing Ross in her present state, without knowing what kind of mood he would be in, was enough to make her stutter, 'But.. .do you think.. .could you keep him—'
'He invited himself for dinner, he can stay for dinner,' Mrs Tarrant said firmly. 'I'll tell him that you both need time to cool off. And if you take his car and I make sure that he can't get any transport from here, well...that should slow him down somewhat.' She gave Fran a gentle, warning smile. 'But, short of chaining him up, we can't stop him if he's determined. And Ross on a mission is a very determined man...'
'No more determined than I can be.' The stubborn line to the young woman's chin reminded Florence so sharply of her eldest son that she had to hide another smile as she bid her farewell. The two of them made an interesting combination, and although Ross had always jealously guarded his bachelorhood a mother could always hope...
The clouds building up in thick, dark columns in the western sky brought an early dusk which suited Fran-cesca's mood. She vented her initial wrath by packing up every stray possession of Ross's that she could find and dumping the lot out on the back porch. She had been right to have her doubts. It was lunacy to imagine that she and Ross could put aside their differences long enough to have any kind of amicable relationship. And to think that she had been on the verge of giving in to lust... no, actually mourning the fact that he seemed to be having second thoughts.
Funny side or not, what he had done this afternoon was a gross violation of her trust, and she refused to become the lover of a man who threatened to give her a coronary every time she ventured outside with him. Lurking beneath the pleasant, teasing character of the past few days was a daredevil monster champing at the bit to fling himself into another terrifying endeavour. Talk about Jekyll and Hyde... Ross was positively schizophrenic! On the one hand he was a mature, responsible doctor with an admirable reputation, on the other an incurable thrill-seeker. While Fran could imagine herself satisfying the one, she could never, in a million years of trying, satisfy the other. Cooped up here in convalescence, Ross had probably decided that he could 'make do' with Fran for feminine company, but out in the real world no doubt he required vibrant, exciting women, sophisticated and outgoing, the kind of women who make good race-track groupies or knife-thrower's assistants, Fran thought sourly. He was probably sitting at his parents' table right now, eating and drinking and laughing, relieved that he had escaped the toils of staid and boring Francesca Lewis. Perhaps it had been only pity in the first place, and he had merely pretended to want her because she had been so embarrassingly inept at hiding her inexplicable desire for this oh-so-desirable man! Fran cringed at the thought. She needed a drink—a large one. She was annoyed to find her hands shaking as she tried to extract the ice-cubes from the tray, dropping them all over the bench in the process. Perhaps that flight had been a deliberate attempt on Ross's part to frighten her off. Yes, that would appeal to his twisted mind! And now he was congratulating himself at having—
She gave a little scream as the sliding door to the deck shivered violently open. Ross stood there, scowling furiously at her, his hair damp and matted, jaw tense, sloppy sweatshirt showing dark circles under his arms.
'What in hell did you run away for?'
Fran controlled her well stoked fury with difficulty. How dared he make her sound like the guilty party? She drew herself up. 'Your stuff is on the back porch.'
'Typical, just typical,' Ross sneered, stepping into the
room, big and menacing, breathing hard. 'Ignore a
problem and it doesn't exist, huh, Fran? Well, Princess,
I'm not going to ignore it. We're going to have this out
if I have to—'
He was cut short by an ice-cube. It bounced off the hard angle of his chin, slithered down his chest and clattered on to the wooden floor. There was utter silence as the blue eyes narrowed dangerously. Fran swallowed nervously. She shouldn't have done that, but at least it had shut him up.
