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Certainly there’d be no good wishes for her future with Adam coming from Zac, who was leaning in the drawing room doorway, his dark face expressionless.
Well, let him think what he wants, she thought biting her lip. Let him discover that he can’t win them all. It will be good for his soul if not his temper.
She set herself to enjoy the rest of the party, dancing with anyone who asked her, chatting to the older couples who remembered her kindly and explaining a dozen tines how she and Nicola had chanced to meet again. Resigned to the knowledge that she would spend no more time with Adam that evening, with Robina apparently glued to his side.
Her face had begun to ache with smiling, her body tense with the effort of trying to be wherever Zac was not, so it was a relief when people started to go and she could relax a little.
There would be coffee and sandwiches in the drawing room for the house guests, but Dana decided to slip away to her room and made a quiet excuse to Nicola.
She paused in the dark hall, drawing a deep breath as she looked up at the unlit chandelier, remembering how Adam had once caught her here and kissed her.
From behind her Zac said softly, ‘Sadly, it is the wrong time of year for mistletoe, mia bella, so you must console yourself with memories.’
She spun round gasping to meet the mockery in his eyes.
‘You were spying on us?’ Her voice rose.
He shrugged. ‘I was merely coming downstairs. Adam knew, but you, mia cara, were too absorbed in your Christmas idyll to notice me.’
She said curtly, ‘I was a child.’
‘A child,’ he said, ‘learning to be a woman, as we both have cause to remember.’
But I don’t want to remember, she thought. I want to forget everything you’ve ever said or done to me, as if it never happened. Just as I don’t want to be here in the dark with you now.
Her voice shook. ‘I’m not in a reminiscent mood. Excuse me, please.’
She turned to head for the stairs, but Zac halted her, his hands lightly clasping her hips, drawing her back against him.
He said quietly, ‘Not yet.’
They were not alone. She could hear, as he must, the voices from the dining room, a mere stone’s throw away.
All she had to do was call out and someone would come.
She felt his lips gently brush the nape of her neck, then continue slowly downwards between her shoulder blades, his kisses delineating every bone in her spine with tantalising delicacy.
She heard herself gasp. Felt the sharp inner clench of her body—the sudden heaviness of her breasts as their tumescent nipples pressed against the concealment of her dress in potent self-betrayal.
Wrong, she thought feverishly. This is so wrong.
Although this was exactly why she was wearing this elegant tease of a dress. But it was Adam who should have been here with her, ready to fulfil the vivid desires of her imagination,
Adam whom she wanted to turn her in his arms and kiss her mouth, then untie the knot of her halter-neck and take her swollen, aching breasts in his hands.
Adam—to carry her upstairs to his room and lie between her thighs on a soft, cool bed.
Not this other—her nemesis, who had harmed her enough already. Who had to be stopped before this went any further.
‘Let me go.’ The words might be hers, but the voice, driven and husky, belonged to a stranger. ‘Let me go—now.’
For a moment, he did nothing. Simply stood, his warm breath stirring the loose tendrils of hair on the back of her neck. Then, as her own breathing quickened in what she told herself was panic, he lifted his hands from her hips and she was free.
Free to cross to the stairs. To climb to the place where they curved and pause, for some incomprehensible reason, to look back over her shoulder.
Only to find the hall below silent and empty.
Which in some curious way, was also how she felt.
‘Madness,’ she whispered under her breath. Total madness. And she went on up the stairs into yet more darkness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ONLY NICOLA AND Eddie were in the dining room when she went down to breakfast the following morning.
‘Where is everyone?’ she queried, taking a seat.
‘Mum and Dad have gone to church to have another word with the Vicar, and the gang are playing tennis before it gets too hot.’ Eddie was heaping marmalade onto his toast.
‘Like my parents, you were wise to disappear last night,’ he added. ‘Because, not long afterwards, all hell broke loose over the bedtime snacks when Nic’s aunt Mimi, who must have been a pit bull in an earlier life, went back to the subject of Adam’s marital prospects.’
