FOR the rest of the week, Holly tried to put Saturday and her agreement to look over Robert’s gardens out of her mind. It should have been easy; her workload had increased while Paul was away and the launch of the new perfume range was putting added pressure on her, but somehow Robert still managed to creep into her thoughts, his presence there taking her unawares, making her tense her body as though in physical rejection of his mental image.
On Friday evening, she could not settle to anything, her glance constantly drawn to the telephone in her sitting-room.
She was overwhelmingly tempted to telephone Robert and tell him that she had changed her mind, but what if he insisted on making another date? There was, after all, no way she could let down her guard and tell him openly and honestly that she could not afford to allow her vulnerable senses any kind of contact with him.
There was a pile of books on the coffee-table—gardening books which she had extracted from her collection with the purpose of refreshing her memory on the type of gardens which would originally have been laid out around a house such as the Hall.
Had the inhabitants been wealthy enough, there would have been sophisticated walkways, arbours and formal beds surrounded by immaculate hedges or walls—gardens where the ladies of the house could walk in peace and privacy. There might even have been an early variation of a tennis court, and there would certainly have been a well-established kitchen garden.
It was only later that such formality had given way to the parkland of the Georgian and Regency eras. For the Stuarts and their courtiers the Dutch had been a strong source of inspiration, and Holly had a very expensive book which Paul had bought her the previous Christmas with some beautiful illustrations taken from paintings depicting these formal Dutch gardens with their topiary and formal beds, their long, straight canals and symmetrically shaped pools. She picked up the book, opening it, frowning over it, trying to force herself to concentrate on it. Beside her she had a notepad and a pen, supposedly to jot down anything which she thought might be useful, but so far all she had written was, ‘Hall Garden’.
At eleven o’clock, she acknowledged defeat and went to bed. It was only one day, a few short hours and then, like a nasty dose of medicine, it would be over, and she would be safe, she comforted herself as she lay in bed. And after all, what was there to fear? She knew the dangers—knew them and would be on her guard against them, wouldn’t she?
* * *
SHE WOKE UP EARLY with the warning signs of a tension headache building up behind her eyes. Outside the sun was shining and the blue sky held all the promise of a warm sunny day.
She dressed accordingly, donning jeans and a T-shirt, catching her hair up on top of her head in a pony-tail so that it would be out of the way, leaving her skin free of anything other than some protective moisturiser and a touch of lip-gloss to protect her lips.
No way was Robert going to be allowed to think that she cared enough about his opinion to don flattering clothes and make-up for him.
Downstairs she made some coffee and had her cereal. The papers had arrived along with the post, and while she opened her mail she read quickly through the headlines.
She was just wrapping some of her reference books in protective cling-film, prior to taking them out to the car, when she heard a vehicle drawing up outside.
Frowning, she went to the sitting-room window. A large Range Rover was parked outside. Her frown deepened. She knew of no one owning such a vehicle who was likely to visit her at this time of the morning.
But before she could turn away to go and open the door she saw Robert alighting from the vehicle. He stopped, catching sight of her standing there. Like her, he was dressed in worn jeans, a checked shirt tucked in at the waist, the sleeves rolled back to reveal his forearms.
He looked for all the world as though he had spent his entire life living here in the country, she reflected, as he smiled at her and waved. Her heart was hammering heavily against her ribs, the tension in her muscles making her head pound.
When she unlocked the front door and released the safety-chain, her fingers felt cold and stiff.
‘Hi. I thought I’d come round and pick you up, save you driving over...’
He was inside the house now, sniffing appreciatively as he commented, ‘Mm...freshly brewed coffee. It smells wonderful.’
Holly compressed her lips.
‘I was just finishing my breakfast,’ she told him curtly. She wasn’t going to offer him any coffee. She wasn’t going to do or say anything that would encourage him to think—to think what? That she still wanted him, still ached for him...still loved him?
As she turned her back on him, leaving him standing in the hall, she hurried into the kitchen, but, to her shock, instead of staying where he was he followed her, glancing assessingly round the room and then saying admiringly, ‘Now this is how a kitchen should look. Who planned and designed it for you?’
‘No one,’ Holly told him stiffly. ‘I did it myself.’
There was a small pause and then he said softly, ‘Yes, of course, I should have guessed, shouldn’t I? You always did believe that the kitchen was the heart of a home. I remember how you used to tell me that when you got married you wanted a big kitchen with the kind of table the whole family could sit round. I seem to remember in those days that you wanted four children...’
Holly could feel the wave of burning scarlet moving up over her body in a painful, stinging tide.
‘We all tend to have unrealistic and idealistic dreams when we’re that age,’ she managed to retort as she turned her back on him.
‘Idealistic maybe...but surely not unrealistic. You haven’t married—but then these days a woman doesn’t need a husband to be a mother, does she?’
Keeping her back to him, Holly reached for her coffee-mug, but her hand was trembling so much that some of the hot liquid jerked out over the rim, splashing down on to her jeans.
Instantly Robert was at her side, exclaiming over the accident, demanding to know if she was hurt. Frantically trying to keep some distance between them, Holly scrubbed at the small damp patch on her jeans, shaking her head, her throat too constricted with tension for her to be able to speak.
‘Here, you’d better let me do that,’ Robert told her, taking the cloth she had snatched up from her hand, adding, ‘You’re trembling like a leaf. Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I’m fine. It was just the shock,’ Holly lied. It was true that she was shocked, but that shock hadn’t been caused by the unexpected heat of the hot coffee against her skin. No, Robert was the one who was causing her to tremble so badly. She ached for him to move away from her, panic surging over her as he pressed the cloth to her damp jeans.
‘It’s all right...I can manage,’ she told him, pulling quickly away from him. ‘I’ll have to go and change my jeans, though.’
‘Any chance of some of that coffee while I’m waiting?’ he asked her.
What could she say? He could see for himself that the filter-jug was half full. To refuse would not just be churlish, it would be bad-mannered as well.
‘Help yourself,’ she told him in a stilted voice. ‘I shan’t be long.’
Upstairs, she wrenched off her jeans, briefly examining the small scarlet patch on her thigh. The scald was only minor, nothing at all really, and if the truth were known she could feel the imprint of Robert’s fingers against her skin where he had held her as he mopped up the coffee far more intensely than she could feel any burning sensation from the liquid.
It only took her seconds to collect a clean pair of jeans, but to put them on took much longer, principally because she was still trembling violently, her senses relaying to her over and over again all the unwanted information they had gathered in those few seconds while Robert had bent over her. She could still smell the scent of his skin, feel the faint roughness of the pads of his fingertips, and if she closed her eyes she could even hear the sound of his breathing and see the familiar outline of his jaw, remembering how eagerly a lifetime ago she had pressed her immature and inexperienced lips to it, tasting his skin, shocked by his response at the time as she thrilled to the knowledge that her touch excited him. How easily and how treacherously her lips could recall the slightly rough sensation of his skin, the sensual pleasure of that delicate friction against the sensitivity of her mouth; the way he had moved, so that she could explore the lean column of his throat, the way his hands had tightened around her waist as he pulled her closer to him, so close in fact that she could feel the hard throb of his body.
She was trembling so much now that she could barely fasten her jeans, her fingers almost numb with shocked reaction to her erotic thoughts—thoughts she had no right to have, thoughts she did not want to have. She swallowed a hysterical sob of frightened anger. Why did he have to come back? Why couldn’t he have stayed safely away and, once having returned, why did he have to seek her out like this...tormenting her...reminding her? Yes, it was true that once she had shyly and innocently confided to him her dreams: dreams of a husband, a lover, and the life she would live with him, a life which had included children, a life which would have allowed her to give full rein to her yearning to recreate for those children the same family atmosphere and security she herself had known. Was that so very wrong? She had, after all, been young...and immature, perhaps, for her age. Was it her fault that she had believed he loved her, that she had confused sexual desire with emotional need...that she had believed that their futures lay together?
Holly stared blindly out of her bedroom window, wishing he had not reminded her of those dreams, wishing he had not so cruelly pointed out to her that, while she might have realised her dream of a home that was comfortable and welcoming, she did not have the husband she had longed for, nor the children he would have given her. And yet she was content...more than content, and she had learned enough now to know that a woman could have a fulfilled and very happy life without a man in it. When she looked at other people’s relationships she saw that they were often flawed, that they were not perfection. And besides, she could have married, had she chosen to do so. The fact was that she had never been able to bring herself to take the risk of falling in love a second time—and without love...without love there was no point in marrying. At least not to her...
She had considered her life fulfilled and happy, and yet with those few brief words Robert had somehow made it seem as though she had been forced to accept second best—as though she had had to settle for less than her ideal. And yet that was not the case.
All right, so it was true that her life had taken a very different direction from that she had envisaged at eighteen, but could she honestly say now that even if she had married, even if she had had children that she would not have wanted and needed more, that there would not have come a time when intellectually, when perhaps selfishly, she would have needed to achieve something for herself, something outside her home and family, something which belonged to her and her alone?
The sound of the kitchen door opening made her tense.
‘Holly, are you OK?’
Robert was standing in the hall. If he came upstairs looking for her... Hurriedly she finished dressing, calling out to him, ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ as she opened her bedroom door and hurried along the landing.
As she turned the corner of the stairs she saw that he was standing at the bottom, one hand on the newel post as he looked upwards. For a moment she faltered. He looked so very masculine, so heart-shakingly familiar. It would be the easiest thing in the world to run down to him, to fling herself into his arms, to tell him how she missed him, to beg him to hold her and never let her go.
Horrified, she averted her face from him, praying that he would move out of the way before she reached the bottom stair, and yet when he did the surge of disappointment that swept her taunted her, mercilessly revealing her own weakness.
‘I’ve just got some books to collect,’ she told him as she hurried past him.
When she returned with them he was still standing in the hall.
‘I’ve emptied the coffee-filter and washed up,’ he told her.
She gave him a startled look. She hadn’t imagined a man in his position would have given a thought to such mundane domestic trivia.
Once they were outside he took the books from her, unlocking the passenger door of the Range Rover and helping her inside, before opening the back door and depositing the books on the rear seat.
He had always been a good driver, skilled but aware of the deficiencies of others and the hazards that could occur. Once she had loved nothing better than to sit beside him in the old sports car he had rebuilt, but now she discovered that she was keeping herself as far away from him as she could, concentrating on the view outside her window as though it were completely unfamiliar to her instead of something she saw every day.
They were almost halfway to the Hall, when he shocked her by asking, ‘Why have you never married, Holly?’
How could he of all people dare to ask her that? Did he really not know what he had done to her? How much he had hurt her? Was he really trying to pretend that he hadn’t known that when she’d talked of marriage what she had wanted had been marriage to him...?
As her body tensed in self-defence, the need to protect herself made her respond with a vehemence that was almost aggressive.
‘I don’t really see that’s any concern of yours, Robert, but, if you must know, what I’ve seen of other people’s marriages hasn’t inclined me to make that kind of commitment. For every couple I know who are genuinely happily married, there seem to be two or three other couples who merely endure one another, who exist in mutual apathy and sometimes in mutual dislike.’
‘You don’t think that perhaps you’re taking a negative and biased view of marriage?’ he suggested quietly. ‘After all, no one really knows what goes on inside a relationship apart from the two people themselves. What can seem an unsatisfactory partnership to the onlooker might suit the couple involved very well. After all, these couples you mentioned whose relationships seem to be less than idealistic are still together, aren’t they?
‘Nothing to say?’ he probed when she made no response.
‘What can I say?’ Holly demanded. ‘Other than that, I’m astonished to hear you of all men defending the married state.’
She didn’t bother to conceal either her bitterness or her contempt. Her throat felt raw as though she had been crying for hours and she was conscious of a sick shakiness weakening her body. What was the matter with her? Why was she allowing him to do this to her...to upset her so much? What did it matter to her how much his views had changed? He meant nothing to her now, nothing at all.
‘Tell me something, Holly,’ she heard him saying gravely. ‘Am I to be everlastingly punished and condemned for the sins and omissions of an immature and, dare I admit it, aggressively misguided twenty-two-year-old, who was too arrogant and too blind to recognise what he had? Yes, I was over-ambitious, and, yes, I did have my values the wrong way round, but I like to think that I’ve moved on a good bit from that boy I was then to the man I am now. I’m not saying that some of that learning process hasn’t been painful to others as well as to me, but I have learned, Holly. Why do you think I’ve come back here?’
She had started to shake inside. She felt sick with anger and distrust. Was he really trying to pretend that he had come back because of her...that he regretted the way he had hurt her, the way he had left her?
‘I really don’t know,’ she told him tightly, ‘and neither do I care. As far as I’m concerned the past is over...dead...finished. You say you’ve changed—well, so have I. I’m not the girl I was at eighteen, Robert, and I certainly don’t regret that change. And if you’re imagining that I haven’t married because—because of what happened between us...’ She was shaking so much, she could hardly speak, but the words had to be said; out of pride if nothing else she could not, would not allow him to think that her single state had anything to do with him. ‘Well, you’re wrong. There have been other men in my life, you know.’
‘Yes, I’m sure there have,’ he agreed, but his voice was terse and when she risked darting a brief glance at him he was staring straight ahead, his jaw tight and hard.
The panic she had been trying to suppress all week bubbled over inside her. She was just about to tell him that she had changed her mind, that if he needed advice about his garden then he must get it from someone else, when he turned into the Hall’s drive.
‘Strange the way things work out, isn’t it?’ he commented curtly. ‘Here I am, back in the village which in my arrogance I thought was too small, too parochial for me, wanting nothing more than to settle down and raise my family here, while you, the one who claimed to want only the love of a husband and children, have become a successful and innovative businesswoman who apparently has no time in her life for any kind of permanent commitment other than to her career.’
Holly’s throat was too constricted for her to speak. She ached to be able to give way to her emotions, to turn to Robert and to scream at him that he was the reason she had devoted herself to her business, that it was because of him that she was too afraid to let herself love again...that it was because of him that she distrusted her own judgement so much that she dared not allow herself to believe that a man could love her, could want her.
How dared he come back here now and casually tell her that he had changed, that he had learned, that he now wanted all those things he had so fiercely repudiated before? Or had it just been her whom he had repudiated? She smiled bitterly to herself, imagining the kind of woman he would now marry, someone sleek and cool...a woman who would grace the home he would give her, a woman who would give him one or perhaps two perfect children, a woman whom he could wear on his arm like a prize. Not her kind of woman. The partner, the lover Holly wanted now was a man who would share his life with her, who would encourage her independence and her achievements, a man who would take real pride and pleasure in her success instead of simply seeing her as an accompaniment to his own.
What Robert no doubt wanted was a younger Angela. Robert had stopped the car. Immediately she opened the door, jumping out quickly before he could come round to help her, before he could touch her.
‘I thought we’d have a coffee before we start,’ he told her after giving her a thoughtful look.
She wanted to refuse, but her senses warned her that, like a hunting animal with its prey, he would quickly sense her vulnerability and take advantage of it. What did he really want of her? she wondered sickly as she nodded her head and followed him towards the main house.
Surely he hadn’t been implying that he wanted to reactivate their old relationship? No, he couldn’t have been. Perhaps, then, he had simply been warning her that he was here to stay and that she must accustom herself both to that fact and the fact that he intended to marry—someone else. But why bother? After all, there must have been other women in his life since her, and she had never meant anything to him in the first place.
Sick and confused, Holly barely gave the huge, dismal kitchen a glance as he led the way into it.
‘It’s not a patch on yours, I know,’ he was telling her. ‘In fact I could do with a woman’s advice when it comes to re-designing it.’
‘Ask Angela. I’m sure she’ll be delighted to help you,’ Holly told him tersely.
‘Yes. I’m sure she will,’ he agreed.
He was watching her. She could feel it, but she refused to turn round and look at him.
‘Holly...’
His voice was unexpectedly gentle, tender almost. She could feel the hot rush of tears stabbing her eyes, the aching misery of the pain that flared inside her as she fought down her longing to run to him, to have his arms open to hold her, to have his mouth on hers.
What was wrong with her? She mustn’t feel like this. It was treachery to her own principles, the destruction of all she had fought to gain.
Why was she being so weak, so stupid, why was she allowing herself to fall into the same old trap? Hadn’t she learned anything, anything at all from the past?
‘Don’t bother with any coffee for me,’ she told him brusquely. ‘I’ll go and wait outside for you while you have yours. Oh, by the way, do you have any plans or drawings of the gardens?’
‘I don’t know. There’s a huge pile of stuff in the library, but I haven’t had time to go through it yet. Some of it is so badly mildewed and damaged that it will probably have to be thrown out. I did get a pile of deeds and other stuff when I bought the place. There could be something among that lot.’
His voice sounded flat and tired, defeated almost. Had she misread the situation? Could he genuinely have regretted the past? Could he...?
Bitterly she squashed the hope beginning to flare inside her. What was she doing? He had told her once that he didn’t love her; she surely wasn’t going to allow him to do the same thing to her again...
Quickly she opened the door and hurried through the maze of larders and store-rooms until she found the door into the stable yard. Once there, she stood still breathing deeply, trying to calm her inner tremors.
Why on earth had she ever agreed to come here today? And why on earth was she still so vulnerable to him? She hated herself for that—for still being weak and stupid enough to be swayed by his apparent desire to reach out to her...to apologise for the past.
She was standing with her body hunched, staring into space when she heard the door open.
‘It’s this way,’ she heard him saying to her, and she stiffened as he touched her arm lightly, wheeling away from him to keep as much distance between them as she could as he indicated a wooden door in the peripheral wall.
The door led into a traditional kitchen garden, now a riot of weeds and overgrown fruit bushes and trees—a veritable wilderness, Holly recognised as she studied it in silence.
‘If you intend to have a kitchen garden,’ she told him quietly, ‘all of this will have to be cleared. Some of the espaliered fruit trees could be retained, and it will require the attention of a full-time gardener. It will be a very expensive way of producing your own vegetables and fruit, but having said that—’
‘Having said that, there will be the advantage of knowing my family is eating healthy organically grown food.’
Holly shrugged, trying not to react to that emotive word ‘family’.
‘You can buy organically grown stuff at the local supermarket these days far more cheaply.’
‘All right, let’s say, then, for argument’s sake that I want to retain the kitchen garden and that I can afford the costs involved. How long would it take to get it back in order?’
‘That depends on who you get to do the work and how many men they can spare. That and how skilled and experienced they are, but at a guess if you started now and if you were very, very lucky, and the weather was with you, you could have your first crops planted by next spring.’
‘Mm... Any suggestions as to who might do the job?’
Holly shrugged. ‘It depends on exactly what you want, and how much you’re prepared to pay.’
‘Mm...well, that’s something we can discuss when you’ve seen the rest of the garden.’
Two hours later, hot and sticky from the sun, and longing for a cool drink, Holly could only marvel at both Robert’s stamina and his ability to remain cool and fresh when she felt anything but.
The gardens were far more extensive than she had expected and very, very neglected, but once long ago someone had cherished and cared for them, and, as she had pointed out to Robert with envy, the long borders protected by high yew hedges that separated the formal area of the gardens from the more informal, once restored, would be breathtakingly magnificent.
At one end of them, a flight of steps led to an enclosed area of formal flower-beds and another walled garden, at the other the vista opened out to reveal a large circular pond, cherubs holding dolphins that spouted water into it. Beneath the canopy of huge lily leaves, Holly glimpsed the orange backs of some huge goldfish.
Beyond the pond lay a lawn, a stone porticoed summer-house facing the pond and flanked on either side with a stone-columned pergola. Once roses had probably adorned the columns, but now they, like the overhead struts, had disappeared.
As they made their way through the weed-infested lawn, Holly paused to admire the lines of the summer-house, impulsively stepping forward to go into it.
‘No!’
The sharp command in Robert’s voice made her stiffen and turn round just as his hand grasped her upper arm, his fingers biting painfully into her flesh.
‘The roof isn’t safe,’ he told her, and as she glanced upwards she saw that there was a huge crack running across one of the stone ceiling segments.
‘I should have warned you before,’ she heard Robert saying as she stared sickly at the huge slab of stone poised so precariously.
She was shivering despite the heat of the sun, feeling both sick and oddly light-headed.
‘Look, I think you’d better sit down.’
She could tell that he was frowning without having to look at him. What a fool he must think her, but it wasn’t so much the shock of the near accident that might have befallen her that was making her feel so weak as the fact that he was still holding on to her. He had moved somehow so that he was standing behind her. She could feel the heat of his body; she felt totally engulfed by him...weak and vulnerable.
‘There’s a bench over there,’ he told her, indicating a stone seat almost overgrown by grass. ‘You go and sit down for a few minutes. If you’ll excuse me, there’s something I have to do.’
Only too glad to be released from her physical and mental bondage to him, Holly stepped away from Robert, and walked shakily over to the seat he had indicated. By the time she turned round he had gone and she was completely alone. Well, not completely, she realised, as she saw a rabbit, apparently oblivious to her presence, hopping across the grass, pausing every now and again to chew busily.
Given a good deal of time and even more money, these gardens could be breathtakingly beautiful, she reflected enviously as she closed her eyes and soaked up the heat of the sun. Already her imagination was painting them as they could be, imagining how they might look. They were large enough, too, to allow plenty of space for a play area for children, even for a cricket pitch and a tennis court, and in the paddock beyond the gardens there was plenty of space for a couple of fat, lazy ponies...
A sharp pain twisted inside her. What was she thinking...imagining? Once before she had allowed herself to daydream of having Robert’s children, but then she had been a naïve, trusting fool, who had believed every word, every lie he had told her.
She closed her eyes, not so much against the heat of the sun but more against the press of hot tears that burned behind her eyelids. She hardly recognised herself any more, hardly knew what emotional folly she was likely to commit next.
‘Holly, are you all right?’
The low-voiced question made her tense and open her eyes.
She hadn’t heard Robert’s soft-footed approach across the lawn. Now he was standing beside her, frowning down at her. He was, she noticed, carrying a blanket and a large picnic hamper.
‘I—I’m fine,’ she told him, instantly defensive and afraid, eyeing both him and what he was carrying suspiciously.
‘Lunch,’ he told her, smiling at her. ‘I thought it would be more pleasant to eat it out here. The house is far from comfortable at the moment.’ He added wryly, ‘I suspect I’m going to be living in my cottage for a long time to come as well. The architects tell me it’s going to take well into next year just to clear away the debris and start work on the renovations, and as for the trouble we’ve been having finding suitably skilled craftsmen...’
He put down the hamper, and then hunkered down on the grass, spreading the blanket. ‘Come and sit down here,’ he told her, patting it. ‘It will be far more comfortable than that seat. Oh, and I’ve brought these as well.’
Wrapped in the blanket had been two huge cush-ions, which he now propped up against a tree-trunk.
‘There was no need for you to go to so much trouble,’ Holly told him grittily as he opened the hamper. ‘We’ve almost finished. I could have gone home for lunch.’
‘Yes, but don’t you find that food is almost always more enjoyable when it’s eaten in the company of someone else?’ he asked her softly.
‘That depends on who the someone else is,’ Holly retorted bleakly, refusing to allow herself to acknowledge what she was beginning to feel.
She had started to stand up and now he came over to her, taking hold of her shoulders and holding her far too firmly for her to move away.
‘Holly, can’t we declare a truce?’ he said quietly. ‘I know I hurt you, I know I behaved badly, and I know as well that from your point of view my apology is all too probably far too little and far too late. You were always such a compassionate, loving girl; can’t you find it in your heart to allow me the comfort of acknowledging how badly I treated you, of allowing me the make amends?’
‘By doing what?’ she demanded brittly. ‘Asking my advice on your garden and feeding me lunch?’
Robert’s mouth twitched as though he was about to laugh, and she was shocked by the thrust of sensation that pierced her, the desire to reach out and touch his mouth, to trace the well-remembered shape of his lips.
‘Well, not really. They were both more for my benefit than yours. I’m not asking you to forgive me—why should you?’
‘Then what are you asking?’ she asked aggressively.
He gave her a sombre, brooding look, searching her face as though looking for something he had lost and desperately missed, and then he said slowly, ‘Perhaps just the opportunity to prove to you that I have changed.’
‘We’ve both changed, Robert,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I’ve changed too.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Yes, you have.’ She tensed in his grip. ‘You’re a woman now, Holly, not a girl. Can’t the woman in you find it in her heart to put aside the past and allow us to start again?’
‘There’s no reason for us to start again. No point. Nothing...’
‘Yes, there is. There’s this,’ Robert corrected her, and as she looked questioningly up at him she knew that he was going to kiss her...knew it and did nothing to stop him, to evade or check him...simply standing there with the sun on her upturned face and her body trembling as though she were in the grip of a dangerous fever.
His hands against her face were sun-warm, and firm, his fingertips slightly rough as they smoothed her skin, his head blotting out the light, his eyes looking straight into hers.
He had always kissed her like this, with his eyes open, whispering to her to do the same. When she had protested he had told her roughly that he wanted to see what she was feeling when he kissed her...that he wanted to look deep into her heart and her soul and to know that she was sharing with him his desire...his love.
But now she kept her eyes open out of a need to protect herself, too afraid to close them in case she completely slipped away from reality to a place where she could only feel...a place where reason could not exist—a place from which the only exit was laced with pain and anguish. As she well knew...
‘Holly.’ He breathed her name against her lips as he whispered, ‘There is still this, isn’t there?’ And then he was kissing her—no, not kissing her, what he was doing was subtly seducing her senses, by caressing her mouth with his, by stroking it over and over again with the warm pressure of his lips until hers softened and clung, until she was dizzy with the strength of the hot, aching pleasure that was beginning to burn through her.
His hands still cupped her face, holding her in gentle bondage, his fingers stroking her skin, seeking and finding the vulnerable places on her skull, the hollow behind her ears, the tender nape of her neck. A shudder tormented her, her mouth parting in an instinctive protest, and then too late she recognised that that unvoiced protest could all too easily have been interpreted as a plea for the increased pressure of his mouth, for the slow stroke of his tongue, for the sudden movement that brought his body into closer contact with hers.
The sound of denial and pain she made deep in her throat somehow become transmuted into one of need and longing. Robert’s hands left her face to gather her body close to his, and weakly, stupidly, she let him, her flesh as soft and pliable as water-weed, allowing him to wrap her so closely to him that her heartbeat took its rhythm from his.
‘Holly, Holly...’
Was he actually sighing her name or was it just the sound of the grass as it moved in the breeze? She felt dizzy, disorientated and totally out of control.
It was that knowledge that tensed her, checking her response, turning her body’s acceptance into rejection as she stiffened in Robert’s arms, dragging her mouth away from his.
‘Holly.’
‘No...no. I don’t want this,’ she told him frantically, pulling away from him. ‘Let me go, Robert. This isn’t what I came here for—and if you think for one moment that I’d be stupid enough to let you use me now the way you did before... If you think—’
‘You responded to me,’ he told her softly. ‘You—’
She had to stop this and now before it was too late and she was totally humiliated.
‘I’m a woman, not a girl,’ she interrupted him. ‘Of course I responded to you...just as I would have responded to any attractive man in the same circumstances. We’re both adults now, Robert. We both understand the force of sexual desire.’
She had to turn away from him in case he challenged her, in case he guessed that she was lying. She had never in her life responded to another man like this and she suspected that she never would. But sexual desire was all that it was. Her body had remembered that he had once been its lover and it had been to that memory, to the past, that it had responded—not the man he was now.
‘I think it’s time I went home,’ she told him grittily. ‘And if you really want my advice on your garden, then I suggest you do as Angela recommended and call in the experts. Or why not give Angela herself a call? I’m sure she’d be delighted to come round and—share your lunch.’
She had turned away from him and set off across the lawn before she remembered that she had no car, but as she hesitated he caught up with her and told her quietly, ‘I’m sorry if I upset you. I only wanted—’
He stopped speaking and shook his head.
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll drive you home.’ He saw her face and gave her a sardonic look. ‘It’s all right. You’ll be perfectly safe. If that’s what you want...’
Holly couldn’t allow it to go unchallenged. She forced herself to give him a long, cool look.
‘Yes, that is what I want,’ she told him emphatically, and she told herself that it was true and that the sensations, the feeling, the desire and the urgency she had experienced in his arms had simply been by-products of the past...ancient echoes of something that was long dead and could safely be forgotten—that had to be forgotten.
She had no idea why Robert was pursuing her like this, or what he really wanted from her, but what she did know was that she didn’t trust him, could not trust him; that it would be safer, wiser to make it plain to him right now that she did not want him in her life. After all, he wasn’t going to have any problems finding someone who would be only too happy to—
To what? To become his lover? Was that what he had in mind for her? After all, he had lived in New York. He must have witnessed at first hand the effect of living promiscuously. Who safer to have sex with than the girl he had first known as a virgin? She smiled bitterly to herself. Even safer than he imagined, since there hadn’t been anyone else since then.