AllFreeNovel
Share Us
. .'
'Some of them very accurate,' he intervened, grinning, and she scowled at him.
'All of them wrong! You were making a pass at me! I wasn't encouraging you!'
'No?' he drawled, and her teeth met.
She took a long breath, then said sharply, 'I'm ready to bet she went straight off to tell David something was going on between you and me, and that's why David thought I wouldn't care whether he went or not.'
'For once Lynsey wasn't far wrong, though, was she?' Josh said.
'Lynsey jumped at her chance,' Prue thought aloud, ignoring what he'd said. 'Maybe the two of you set it up beforehand? Planned for her to walk in just then so that she could go to David and tell him . . .'
'Don't be ridiculous!' Josh had stopped looking amused, he was angry, then he smoothed out his frown and gave her a wry look. 'Stop fooling yourself, Prue. I watched you with him in the hospital that day Lynsey went back to give him flowers—the two of you acted like friends, not lovers!'
'You don't know either of us . . .' she burst out in a hoarse voice.
'I know you,' Josh said softly, standing very close to her, his eyes pare provocation, 'I know you intimately, Prue, although not as intimately as I'd like.'
She drew a sharp breath. 'And you never will!' she hissed, and he smiled in that mocking, lazy way, nodding.
'Oh, yes!'
'Don't kid yourself! You won't, not ever . . .' But she was shaking from head to foot, because his body exerted a magnetism which drew her like a needle seeking the north, quivering involuntarily and turning in a helpless obedience, and his dark eyes told her that he knew what happened whenever she was near him.
'Losing him isn't going to wreck your life, is it?' Josh murmured, his gaze intent on her face. 'You aren't broken-hearted, Prue, don't pretend you are.'
'Get out!' she muttered. 'I hate you. Stop talking about it, leave me alone. I can't stand you near me.'
She got home to him with that; she felt his body tense, saw his eyes narrow and flash, isn't that too bad?' he said harshly. 'Well, you're going to have to stand it, right now . . .' He reached for her and she went into panic again and hit out at him with closed fists, yelling.
'Don't touch me... I'm not staying here, I'm going tomorrow . . . back to Australia . . .'
Josh froze, staring at her. For a long moment they looked at each other from across an abyss, then Josh snarled at her, 'Go, then, damn you to hell—go to Australia and never come back!' He turned on his heel and went, crashing down the stairs and out of the front door, leaving her numb.
CHAPTER NINE
SHE hadn't meant to go, she didn't want to return to Australia, and the last thing on her mind was to continue with her holiday trip to Europe, but her quarrel with Josh had changed everything. His last words kept echoing inside her head and she listened to them in that frozen stillness, icy with shock.
Go away, go back to Australia, damn you! he'd told her as if he hated her—and Prue sat on her bed, with a white face and eyes dark with pain, facing something she had been trying to avoid admitting ever since she first set eyes on Josh Killane.
She didn't hate him at all; she had been lying to herself like crazy and it had to stop now. The admission was painful; her mouth went dry, her body trembled, her nerve-ends quivered as if at the touch of fire on her skin, but she made herself face it.
She was in love with Josh, and it was nothing like the warm, happy, casual feeling she had had with David. David had never made her feel like this; she hadn't even known it was possible to want someone with this bitter intensity, but from the moment she saw Josh that was how she had felt and that was why she had hated him, quarrelled with him, resented him. .Her feelings had scared her! She hadn't known how to cope with that agonising ache of aroused sensuality, except by converting desire into rage, because it hid her real emotions from Josh as well as herself, but now she would no longer be able to go on pretending. The secret was out of her unconscious and now it would be ten times harder to hide it from Josh.
She was bound to give herself away sooner or later, and once Josh knew how she felt, he would put pressure on her; he would talk her into bed and Prue would hate herself if she let him. She might love Josh, but he wasn't the type to take a woman seriously. He had flirted with her, even though he knew she was engaged to marry another man—Josh didn't believe in love, he was opportunist, a sexual pirate, a disastrous man to love.
She got off the bed and slowly began to pack again. She couldn't stay here now. She had to get away. She would go up to London first, to give herself time to decide what she really wanted to do. Maybe she would get a job in London? Or perhaps she would be safer back in Australia?
She couldn't think clearly; she didn't know where to go yet and her mind was in such a muddle that she gave up trying to decide—only one thing seemed crystal-clear to her. She had to get away; now, at once.
She flung clothes into her cases and locked them, then she had a shower and put on a freshly ironed shirt and a clean pair of jeans. She couldn't drive all the way down England in crumpled clothes. She did something about her make-up, looked at herself wryly in the dressing-table mirror, recognising that she might now be neat in appearance but she still looked tense and edgy. There was nothing she could do about that, so she went downstairs with her cases.
The farmhouse seemed oddly empty; she wished her father was there so that she could say goodbye to him, but if he had been around she knew he would have tried to talk her out of going, so it was probably just as well.
She sat down to write to him, but it was very hard to explain why she was going without seeing him first. She sat staring at the paper for ages, chewing her lower lip and sighing, then she hurriedly scribbled a brief note, saying she was sorry, she had to go, but promising to write again soon and let him know her address, then she put her suitcases into the hire car and set off in the vague direction of London. It wouldn't be hard to get a hotel room somewhere in the city. Maybe tomorrow she would have made up her mind what she wanted to do.
A bitter little smile curled her mouth and she shuddered. She knew what she wanted to do now! But she couldn't give in to the way she felt; she'd despise herself for the rest of her life if she did. This terrible ache of desire would ease once she was far away from Josh; she clung on to that thought, driving very fast, barely noticing the other traffic on the road. „
