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He smiled at her, eyes heavy lidded as he looked over the incongruous combination of her best silk blouse and the tight jeans encasing long, shapely legs. 'The idea has a certain appeal,' he murmured huskily. 'There are things you could do for me on your hands and knees that I find myself wanting very much.. '
Clare went from pink to scarlet. Even the most flirtatious guests she had fended off had never resorted to such explicit suggestion. She looked anywhere but into the now laughing dark eyes.
'Calm down, Clare, I was only teasing. My motives are… were…' he corrected himself with amusement, 'pure as the driven snow. I knew you'd be feeling wrung out, so I asked Grace to put something together for us.' He looked ruefully down at the laden trolley. 'She told me it served us right for trying to sneak out to 'that artsy-tartsy French joint'. This spread is her idea of rubbing it in.' He began to lift silver lids. 'We have crab timbales, cold babaco soup, venison, strawberry and cucumber salad, and little fruit tarts with whipped cream.'
'I think I'm going to faint,' groaned Clare, drawn like a magnet towards the delicious fragrances mingling above the warmed salvers. David had included a bottle of wine, and even two candlesticks, which he placed on the small table in the corner of the room, where she and Tim ate on the infrequent occasions that Clare cooked for them on the small range in her kitchenette. She fetched cutlery and napkins from the dresser drawer while David dished up. Far from a romantic, candlelight conversation, they were both so absorbed in the food that they hardly spoke until they had finished the main course.
'Feeling better?' David asked, his face half shadowed in the soft light.
'Yes, thank you,' said Clare meekly as she enjoyed the rich, full flavour of the Australian red wine he had chosen. She finished her glass and held it out for some more.
'Are you sure? On top of the night you've had, it might just finish you off.'
Clare had never pouted in her life, but she did so now. She felt full of warm contentment, a lazy sense of well-being that she wanted to sustain for as long as possible. 'I'm not a child, David. I can hold my liquor.'
'I'll drink to that,' he said drily, and poured her half a glass before finishing off the bottle himself. 'Why don't we sit by the fire to eat these tarts?'
Although the lodge was centrally heated, all the suites and public rooms had fireplaces that were kept burning, often day and night during the winter, not only to conserve the heat draw-off from the bore, but to provide the atmosphere that Miles wanted to engender.
'I couldn't eat another thing, but you go ahead,' said Clare, taking her half-glass of wine and sinking on to the wide, thick sheepskin which covered the floor in front of the stone fireplace. She wouldn't have bothered lighting it herself, but Shari had come in and done it for her, saying that since Clare was probably going to have a late night ministering to Tim, she might find the fire companionable. Actually, she had. Too restless and anxious to read, she had found sitting down staring into the flames very soothing.
David put three or four of the small tarts on a plate and joined her. He ate two and then licked his fingers. Clare smiled.
'What's funny?'
'Magic fingers.' She reminded him of the phrase he had used to Tim.
'And so they are. Would you like a personal demonstration?' He swivelled around until their faces were level, lying on his side, his body propped on his elbow as she leant back on her hands. He, too, had changed since their earlier encounter. He had on a black V-necked cashmere sweater that looked even softer than the sheepskin beneath her palms, and it had slid over on one shoulder, showing a strong ripple of muscle and a thick mat of hair on his chest—dark, like his head, with flecks of grey.
Clare swallowed. 'No, thank you… I told you I could hold my liquor,' she added smugly, when it appeared that she was safe, he wasn't going to lunge.
'You said you weren't a child, too. But when you smile like that…' He lifted a finger and touched her cheek very lightly. 'You dimple like a chubby baby, all sweet powdered innocence.'
For some reason that offended her, and she latched on to the only acceptable line of objection. 'I'm not chubby. Thin people can have dimples too, you know.'
'Mmm, but you're not thin.' He grinned. 'You're just chubby where it counts. And you have the most fantastic legs I have ever seen…like fluid muscle sheathed in cream satin, smooth and hard. What a waste to hide them in trousers.'
Instead of bristling at his chauvinism, Clare's inner warmth increased. She turned on her side to pick up her glass, taking the opportunity to ease back a few discreet inches, so that her leg no longer brushed his. 'I don't usually,' she admitted. 'I much prefer wearing skirts, but when you have a son, jeans are sometimes handy to have around…particularly when his digestion's uncertain!'
'It was the first thing I noticed about you.' David wasn't really listening. The finger that had explored her dimple was now tracing the outer seam of her jeans where it curved over her very unbaby-like hip. 'Your legs, wrapped around that ageing spiv.'
'I don't think Ray would appreciate being called either ageing or a spiv.'
David ignored her second attempt to deflect him. 'I couldn't help imagining you gripping me like that, holding me between your thighs. It excited me to picture you like that. And then you stung me out of my erotic fantasies by dismissing me like some slimy foot-in-the-door salesman. I planned right then and there that you weren't going to get away with it. Of course, I told myself that it was for Tim's sake, but all through my tour I had dreams about your lovely strong legs…'
She was staring at him, wide-eyed, little lights from the fire dancing in the grey depths, and he smiled. 'Do I sound like a fetishist? I never was before, but then you make me feel all sorts of things I never felt before.'
'Like what?' Clare whispered, trembling on the verge of discovery. She felt his hand slide back and forth along her thigh.
'Like the agony of self-denial. Here we are, having an intimate conversation in front of a roaring fire, filled with food, wine and desire, and yet I can't make love to you.'
Clare's eyes widened further still. 'W… why not?'
His hand tightened on her hip. 'While you're vulnerable with worry over Tim? While you're a little drunk and a lot weary? When your son may interrupt us at any moment? That's not what I want.'
'What do you want?' Clare asked huskily.
'That's the hell of it—I don't know.' He drank, recklessly, then discarded his glass on the hearth, not taking his eyes off her flushed arousal. 'Yes, I do. I want to see what you're wearing under those clothes. Ever since I saw that lacy thing you wear to bed, I've ached to know what other sexy secrets your cool modesty conceals.'
