CHAPTER THREE

INEVITABLY, perhaps, after her disturbed night, Campion overslept. When she eventually woke up, it was to the sound of heavy rain outside, whipped against the windows by a buffeting wind.

Her bedroom was gloriously warm and she wriggled her toes blissfully, the comfort of the room and its contrast to the weather outside taking her back to her childhood. She snuggled deeper into the bed and closed her eyes.

‘I thought you came here to work.’

The drawling male voice destroyed her pleasure, and made her sit up in bed with a frown.

Guy was standing beside the bed, holding a tray. The delicious aroma of freshly made coffee tantalised her senses. There was toast as well, crisply golden and melting with butter.

‘I hope you’ve brought some sensible clothes with you,’ Guy remarked as he settled the tray on the small chest beside the bed. ‘Helena isn’t exactly geared up for anything other than brief summer living here.’

‘How can you say that?’ Campion demanded. ‘The house is centrally heated. It’s beautifully warm in here. If you’re finding it uncomfortable in any way, perhaps you ought to go back to London.’

He gave her a wry look.

‘No way. And for your information, the cottage is centrally heated only because I drove down to the village this morning and begged and borrowed a couple of bags of boiler fuel. Luckily, I’ve managed to get a supplier to deliver some more this afternoon.’ He grimaced in disgust. ‘Trust a woman to have a solid fuel heating system installed, and then forget to order any fuel for it.’

Campion bit her lip and glanced involuntarily at the window. Outside, rain pelted against the glass. If Guy hadn’t been here, she would have woken up to a cold, damp atmosphere, and somehow she doubted that she would have had the self-confidence to march down to the village and acquire the necessary fuel. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything, other than a grudging, ‘No one asked you to come here.’

There was a long, unnerving silence, during which Guy looked steadily at her, before saying in a quietly even voice, ‘Didn’t they? I rather thought I’d heard a cry for help.’

Colour stung her face as Campion glared at him. He had said nearly the same thing last night, and if he thought for one moment that she had actually expected him to follow her down here…

‘Not from me, you didn’t,’ she told him angrily. ‘If you must know, I came here to get away from you…’

‘Really?’ How dangerous his voice sounded when it took on that silky quality! Dangerous was not a word she would ever have applied to Guy before; in fact, she had rather disparagingly considered him to be something of a lightweight. But somehow, down here, alone with him, seeing him dressed in rugged jeans and casual shirts, she was beginning to view him in a different light. He should have looked odd out of his immaculate suits and shirts, but he didn’t. In fact, he looked very much at home in them.

‘Odd. I distinctively remember you telling me you came here to work…’

‘To work and to get away from your interference with that work,’ Campion countered aggressively after a minute pause. ‘And if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to get up and get on with that work.’

The dark eyebrows rose, and she could have sworn there was almost something vaguely reminiscent of a courtly but mocking bow in the way he moved his arm.

‘By my guest,’ he offered, picking a piece of toast off the plate, and leaning back against the wall, ignoring her.

There was just no way she was going to get out of bed with him standing there, eating her toast, Campion decided grimly.

She had no doubt that he was simply amusing himself at her expense, pretending not to know how much she detested being forced into such intimacy with him.

She moved angrily, her hair swirling into tousled curls. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Guy tense, and then, to her surprise, he said abruptly, ‘I’d better go and check on the boiler.’

He’d gone without even finishing his toast, she realised a few seconds later, as she stared at the door he had closed after him.

An odd feeling crept over her, a sense of loss, combined with a far more familiar feeling of acute self-disgust. Under the bedclothes, her body started to shake and she closed her eyes tightly, trying to ward off her own thoughts.

She knew quite well what had brought that look to Guy’s eyes, why he had been so anxious to get out of the room. He had looked at her and had been repulsed by her, just as Craig had been, as every man who looked at her must be, she admitted bleakly.

What was the point in letting herself be hurt by it? Surely, by now, she was used to the truth? Surely she had taught herself to accept that men found her undesirable, that it was revulsion rather than arousal they experienced when they looked at her?

Craig had made it clear enough all those years ago. The only way he had been able to make love to her, he had said, had been by closing his eyes and pretending she was someone else, and even then… Even then it had only been the thought of her parents’ wealth that had enabled him to go through with it.

Even now, those words still had the power to wound her, to scour her soul and destroy her self-confidence. It was no use telling herself she was a successful writer, that she had a good and fulfilling life, that many, many people would envy her; all she had to do was to remember Craig’s words, to recall how Guy had just looked at her, and she was that same sick, shaking teenager whose eyes had been so cruelly opened to exactly how unattractive she actually was.

Was it any wonder she couldn’t give her heroine the confidence to go out and choose her own lover, that she couldn’t flesh out the sensual, physical side of Lynsey’s nature? There, she had admitted it. She swallowed hard. She had admitted that Guy was right, and that she couldn’t finish the book.

Panic filled her as she fought to deny her own thoughts. It wasn’t true. She would finish it… There must be another way, and she would find it.

Suddenly she remembered her dream. In her dream, she had felt Lynsey’s emotions: her anger, her desperation, her resentment towards the man who had stopped her from going to her cousin. If she could just hold on to those memories… If she could just get them down on paper… Suddenly her doubts were subdued, her mind busy trying to work out how best she could use the avenue opened up to her by her dream.

She washed and dressed hurriedly, pulling out of her bag her clean underwear, and then frowning. No clean bra… She must have left it in her flat on the bed, and the rest of her underwear was in the case in the boot of her car. She eyed the one she had been wearing the previous day with distaste.

On the bed were the jeans, sweater and shirt she was planning to wear. The shirt was fine wool, and the sweater a warm, bulky one. If Guy hadn’t been here, she wouldn’t even have hesitated about not wearing a bra. What difference did his being here make? Surely she wasn’t afraid that the sight of her braless but thickly covered body was going to send him into a fury of lust?

No, of course she wasn’t, but what if he should notice and think that perhaps she… She licked her top lip nervously. She had learned to be so careful about not conveying the wrong impression, about not allowing men to think that she was at all interested in them. She didn’t want the humiliation of being rejected a second time, and so she had learned that it was best to cultivate an appearance that made it plain that she didn’t consider herself to be a sexual woman.

She was wasting time when she ought to be working, she reminded herself. Guy was hardly likely to notice that she wasn’t wearing one, not particularly important article of underwear, and even if he did… Even if he did, the thought of a woman like her daring to imagine she might physically attract him was so ludicrous that it would never even cross his mind.

Having reassured herself, she dressed quickly, and then pinned up her hair.

The scent of frying bacon greeted her as she walked into the kitchen. Guy was standing in front of the cooker, deftly manoeuvring an array of pans.

He must have sharp ears, she acknowledged as he turned and smiled at her.

‘Just in time. How do you like your eggs?

‘I don’t,’ Campion told him shortly.

His eyebrows rose in the way that was becoming very familiar.

‘Nonsense! You need a decent breakfast inside you if you’re going to work.’ His eyes narrowed slightly, and she realised he was looking at her hair. She itched to raise her hand to ensure that it was all tidily tucked away, and had to fight not to make the betraying gesture.

‘What happened to the curls?’ he asked softly, looking at her in such a way that she could feel her skin start to burn.

Ignoring him, she turned towards the door that led into the cottage’s sitting-room. Off it was the small study that had once been an outhouse, and which Helena had had converted into a very efficient work-room for those of her writers who took advantage of her standing offer to use the cottage as a bolt hole.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To work. That’s what I came up here for—remember?’ she asked dangerously.

‘Not before you’ve had something to eat.’

Campion found that she was literally grinding her teeth.

It was all too tempting to make some childish riposte such as ‘Make me,’ but she had the uncomfortable feeling that he would take the greatest delight in doing exactly that, and so, instead, she walked across the floor and sat down reluctantly at the table.

‘That’s better. Even brain cells needs feeding… and stimulating,’ he added softly.

Campion stared at him, her breath suddenly trapped deep in her lungs. A most curious sensation invaded her, a feeling of weakness edged with excitement. And then she tore her gaze away, and the feeling subsided.

‘For someone who didn’t want any breakfast, you’ve managed to demolish a surprising amount of food.’

She should have expected a taunt like that, Campion told herself bitterly as she drank the last of her coffee. To her own surprise, she had been hungry. It was a luxury to have her breakfast prepared for her—to have any meal prepared for her, come to think of it.

‘I have a perfectly normal appetite,’ she told him frigidly. ‘Unlike the women you date, I’m not obsessed by my weight,’ she added scathingly.

It was a shot in the dark, but she suspected from all that she had been told that the glamorous women he normally dated were hardly the types to sit down to a full cooked breakfast. A vitamin cocktail and a glass of Perrier was probably their style.

‘No, you’re not obsessed by your weight,’ Guy agreed steadily, but the look in his eyes made her feel acutely uncomfortable. She felt as though he had looked right into her mind and seen things there that she would much rather he had not seen.

She offered to do the washing up, as much to escape from his too-close scrutiny as anything else. He had discarded the sweater he’d had on earlier, and she could see the fine, dark hairs curling in the open neckline of his shirt. She swallowed nervously, wondering why she was reacting so stupidly.

‘I’ll wash up. You’ll want to bring in the rest of your things.’ For some reason, his remark annoyed her.

‘Oh, I’ll do that later,’ she told him carelessly. ‘Right now, I want to start work.’ She turned her back on him and opened the door.

The small study had a radiator and was blissfully warm. She was just about to close the door and get to work when Guy suddenly appeared in the doorway, and casually reached down to unplug the machine.

Campion stared at him, her eyes revealing her baffled anger.

‘What on earth are you doing? I want to start work.’

‘Not yet,’ he told her calmly. ‘First, we have to analyse properly where you’re going wrong.’

For a moment, she was lost for words. She took a deep breath, holding on to her anger with difficulty, and said through clenched teeth, ‘I thought you’d already done that.’

‘Yes, I have, but you don’t seem to agree. So, before you so much as put another word on paper, I think we should both be clear on exactly what alterations are required.’

We? It was her book, her work, her characters. Campion felt ready to explode, so great was the resentment building up inside her, but she had taught herself long ago to control her feelings and to keep them hidden from others, and so all she could do was to glare at him and curl her fingers tightly into her palms.

‘Like a cup of coffee before we start?’

‘No, thanks, I think I’ve already got enough adrenalin pumping round my veins right now,’ Campion told him freezingly.

‘Well, if you’ll bear with me for a second, I’ll make myself one, and then we can settle down to work.’

Did nothing ever faze him? Campion wondered bitterly, watching him walk away. Was that smooth, laconic manner never ruffled by irritation or anger? He projected an image of being totally in control of his life, and now he was trying to take control of hers, and she didn’t like it.

She was still fuming when he came back, carrying a steaming mug of coffee.

‘I thought you said it was a secretary I needed, not someone to stand over me and monitor every single word I write,’ she demanded, glowering at him.

The study was only small, and she hated the sensation of having him so close to her. The desk was pushed into a corner, and she had a wall to one side of her and Guy to the other. She could smell the scent of his skin, tangy with the soap he had used to wash. His hair still held the fresh coldness of the outdoors and looked slightly damp.

‘My suggestion that you take on a secretary was simply made to relieve you of the pressure of trying to finish the book on time. I must admit that then I envisaged that you would submit your rewrites to me in the normal way; when I learned from Mabel that you’d decided to disappear, I realised that slightly more drastic measures were called for.’

‘I did not decide to disappear,’ Campion contradicted acidly. ‘I’ve already told you I came here to work, and I can do that work far better without you hanging over my shoulder. I’d get the alterations finished much faster if you would leave me alone and go back to London.’

‘Would you?’ His eyebrows lifted. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ He opened a briefcase he had put down beside the desk, and extracted a copy of her manuscript.

‘Right…Chapter four, when Lynsey first realises that her feelings for her cousin have become those of a woman and not those of a child. You say she loves him, but there is no real sense of any awareness from the reader’s point of view of her own sexuality. If you like, she’s like a robot reading the words off an autocue. So, what do you plan to do to make the reader aware of Lynsey’s burgeoning womanhood?’

Campion felt her skin start to burn with a mixture of rage and confusion. Panic hit her. She tried desperately to blot out Guy and the emotions that were filling the small room, clogging her thought processes, and instead imagine that she was her heroine: a headstrong, spoilt girl of sixteen, who was just beginning to realise the power of her femininity, but somehow, no matter how much she tried to concentrate, no sense of any awareness of being in touch with Lynsey’s feelings would come. She might have been trying to imagine the feelings of an alien being from another planet!

Frantically, she tried to think back, to remember how she had felt at that age, but she had been shy and different. Frustratedly, she realised that she had created as her heroine the kind of girl/woman she had once ached to be, and that, for once, not even her powerful imagination was strong enough to give her an insight into how that girl might have felt.

‘Come on, Campion. The girl’s in love, as much with the idea of being in love as with anything else. She’s seen how her cousin reacts to her. What would she do?’

‘Why should she do anything?’ Campion countered huskily. ‘She’s only sixteen… She would wait for Francis to approach her.’

‘No, she’s not that kind; he’s the weaker of the two, you say so yourself later in the book. Think, Campion, she’s been indulged all her life; she’s self-confident, fearless, and most of all curious…I suggest that she would try to engineer a meeting between herself and Francis where they could be alone and she could test her new-found power.’

‘No!’ The sharp revulsion in her own voice startled her, and Campion avoided looking at Guy.

‘No? Why not?’ he asked her quietly.

She felt like a butterfly pinned down for inspection. She desperately wanted to escape, to be left alone. She hated this merciless probing, this constant pushing at her to produce something that… That she was incapable of producing? Despair stabbed through her. She couldn’t tell him that. She had her pride, after all. There must be a way… While she was still trying to sort out her confused thoughts, she heard Guy saying softly, ‘Campion, I’ve read all your books over the last few weeks. There’s an odd lack of sexuality in all of them, do you know that?’

Odd? Her body stiffened, sensing danger, her head lifting defiantly as she met the look in his eyes and forced herself not to cringe beneath it.

‘Why should I be considered odd just because I don’t spatter my work with lurid passages of pseudo-pornography?’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Is that how you see sex? As pornographic? You surprise me. The written word can be pornographic, I agree, but it can also be very, very sensual.’

‘It isn’t my job to write that kind of thing,’ she protested sharply.

‘No, but it is your job to flesh out the character of a young woman whom you seem to be dooming to a course of behaviour that’s totally out of keeping with the personality you’ve given her, and thus making her totally unbelievable in the mind of the reader.’

‘I could change her character.’

As she looked at him, Campion was unaware of the desperation in her voice and eyes. All she saw was a sudden and totally unexpected softening in the grey eyes that held her gaze. Guy lifted his hand from her manuscript, and instinctively she flinched back. Immediately, that slight softening was gone, and tiny sparks seemed to ignite in the depths of his eyes, as though he was very, very angry indeed. But he still continued to smile, and she decided that she must have been wrong. When men got angry they lost control, said and did things that were hurtful in the extreme, as she knew to her cost.

‘Tell me, Campion, why do you find it so hard to give your characters any sexuality? Your men, for instance. I’ve noticed that, even when you’re sticking to historical fact, you manage to avoid the human side of their natures completely. Why?’

She was frightened now. He was probing too close to things that hurt. Things that she had always thought were her secrets, and hers alone. Helena had never talked to her like this. All right, so sometimes she had laughed and teased her, sometimes she had made gentle suggestions which necessitated some small alterations in her work, but she had never, ever done anything like this.

Suddenly, her anger left her, and in its place came an icy thrust of fear. Why was Guy doing this to her? What was he trying to get her to admit? That she was inadequate as a woman? Her skin crawled as she realised how much she might have unwittingly betrayed about herself in her writing. Was this why she had so fiercely resisted the idea of having a secretary? Had she known, without actually acknowledging it, that she was vulnerable? Had she been afraid of what someone working closely with her might discover about her?

Panic built up inside her, coiling and burning, seeking some means of escape.

Guy was sitting far too close to her. She felt trapped, hemmed in. She stared desperately at the wall, as though she could somehow conjure up a gap in it through which she could escape, but there was none. She turned to face him, her eyes darkening as she saw the calm, waiting quality in his composed silence.

‘What is this? The Inquisition?’

To her relief, he didn’t laugh at her. Instead, he asked seriously, ‘Is that how you see me, Campion? As an inquisitor; a man capable of great cruelty; a man who enjoys inflicting pain on others; a man so zealous in his pursuit of what he believes in that he’s prepared to go to any lengths to secure those beliefs?’

Of course she didn’t. It had been stupid of her to choose that particular simile.

‘I’m just trying to help you, that’s all.’

‘I don’t need your help…’

‘I think you do,’ retorted Guy quietly. ‘Shall I tell you what I see when I look at you, Campion?’

Now, when she wasn’t prepared for it, he did reach out and touch her, his hand cupping the side of her face firmly. Her skin hurt, and she shook with shock and fear. She could feel the hard pads of his fingertips against her skin. She was shaking like someone in the grip of an intense fever, and there was nothing she could do about it—not a single thing.

She could see the irises of his eyes—clear, cool grey. His eyes were thickly and darkly lashed, his jaw dark where he shaved.

Campion opened her mouth to cry out to him to let her go, but no sound emerged. Panic flooded her. She wanted to cry and scream. She wanted to tear his hand from her skin. She wanted…she wanted to turn and run, and go on running until she could find somewhere to hide, both from him and from herself.

What was he doing this for?

‘Your skin feels like silk velvet.’ He smiled at her, and tiny lines fanned out from around his eyes.

Campion felt as though she were disintegrating, as though she was being torn apart by the pain of what was happening. How could he do this to her? Did he think she was blind, that she didn’t, couldn’t see for herself the differences between them? Did he honestly imagine she was stupid enough to believe that he could actually find anything physically attractive about her?

‘Stop it! Stop it! Don’t touch me!’

At last she had found her voice, even if the words did come out high and strained. She jerked back, her eyes wild with emotions that made Guy release her immediately.

‘You don’t have to waste your time complimenting me, Guy,’ she told him harshly. ‘I know exactly what kind of woman I am.’

‘Do you?’ Unexpectedly, his own voice was far from its normal, even tone. ‘I wonder.’

She couldn’t stand it any longer; the atmosphere in the small room was far too fraught and tense for her to even think about working.

She got up clumsily, almost flattening herself against the wall in her desire to avoid touching him.

‘I’m going out for a walk.’

‘You’ll get soaked.’

‘I don’t care.’

If he suggested going with her, she would probably push him down the first hillside they came to. She had to get away from him. To her relief, he stepped easily to one side to allow her to leave.

Her outdoor coat and her wellingtons were still in the car. She found them and pulled them on, ignoring the rain pelting down on her.

Out here she could breathe, she could relax, and most of all she could forget how she had felt when Guy French touched her.

* * *

Campion had walked in Pembroke before on visits with Helena. For mile upon glorious mile, the headland and cliffs belonged to the National Trust, and their paths were open to walkers, but that had been in summer, and she had gone less than a mile when she realised how very cold and wet it actually was.

The cottage and the village were only a couple of miles from the coast, but she would be a fool to try and walk there today, Campion acknowledged. The wind seemed to have trebled in force since she had come out, and already she was almost bent double under the force of it. It had whipped back her hood and tormented strands of her hair free from her French pleat to plaster them wetly across her skin. Her hands were icy cold, and she discovered that her wellingtons seemed to leak. Even so, despite all her discomfort, she preferred to be here outside rather than cooped up in the cottage with Guy.

What had he been trying to do? Surely he must know how aware she was that a man like him would never find her attractive? So why touch her…why make that stupid remark about her skin? She shivered, and not because of the cold or the damp penetrating her coat.

The sensation she had experienced when he touched her skin had been so electrifying, so shocking, that she was still shaken by the memory of it.

Her whole body had seemed to leap to meet his touch, and for one horrendous moment she had actually wondered what it would be like to experience his hand against her naked skin.

She had never known anything like it before. Not even with Craig. It was all Guy’s fault; all his probing and digging had unleashed an awareness in her of all that was missing from her life. For one incredible moment in the study, she had actually found herself envying and resenting her own heroine, jealously wishing that she was Lynsey, free to explore and enjoy her sensuality.

She must be going crazy, she told herself. It was this damn book. She should never have agreed to take it on. But she had agreed, and her pride would not let her give up now. She had to finish it…

Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by a frantic need to get back to work. She turned blindly and started to almost run back. The sooner the alterations were done, the sooner she would be free to escape from Guy. She would even let him tell her what to write, if that got the work done faster…

A sudden gust of wind caught her, winding her with its force. She staggered and slipped on the treacherously muddy path, landing uncomfortably, but not too painfully, on the wet ground.

When she got up, she saw with despair that her coat was covered in mud and soaking wet. She shivered. The wind had developed an icy edge that cut through her jeans and top.

By the time she got back to the cottage, her teeth were chattering and her hands turning blue.

Guy was in the kitchen when she staggered in, stirring something in a pan. The rich smell of hot soup filled the room, and Campion couldn’t help despairingly contrasting the calm efficiency of this man, who seemed to have a deftly sure touch in all he did, with her own apparently doomed attempts to show him that she was entirely self-sufficient.

She couldn’t even go out for a short walk without inviting disaster, she reflected bitterly as she struggled to tug off her wellingtons.

‘Here, let me…’

Of course, the damn things would have to slide off easily the moment he touched them.

She stiffened as she looked down at his dark head as he kneeled to help her. Why was it that there was something almost vulnerable about the sight of the nape of his neck? His skin was faintly brown, his muscles moving easily as he helped her out of her boots.

She felt oddly lethargic; unable to move. She felt the warmth of his hand on her skin, and the ripples of heat that spread out from the place where he touched her.

‘Are you all right?’

Humiliation filled her, and she struggled to step back from him. How had he known about that peculiar sensation of pleasure she had just experienced? And then she realised he was looking at her muddy coat.

‘I fell over, that’s all,’ she told him shortly. ‘The path was muddy.’

‘Why don’t you go up and have a shower, and then we can have lunch?’

The thought of warm water on her cold, wet skin was too blissful to be ignored.

It took far longer than she had anticipated to remove her wet jeans. They clung stubbornly to her legs, resisting all her attempts to tug them off, but at last she managed to remove them. Underneath, her skin was red and chafed from the irritation of the harsh cloth.

She had to take down her hair as well, but only realised when she was in the bathroom that she had forgotten her shower cap, so she had to use some of Guy’s shampoo, and waste even more time.

When she stepped out of the shower, she discovered she had left her fresh underwear on the bed. What was happening to her? She was normally so organised.

Still wrapped in the damp towel, her hair curling wetly on to her shoulders, she stepped irritably out of the bathroom and walked straight into Guy.

His hands steadied her, holding on to the bare skin of her upper arms.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘You’ve been up here so long, I thought your fall must have been more serious than you were letting on.’

She was carrying her wet briefs and top in one hand, and her toilet bag in the other. It wasn’t very warm on the landing, and already she was starting to shiver.

‘I’ve already told you I’m perfectly all right, and if you don’t mind I’d like to go and get dressed.’

When Guy didn’t release her immediately, she pulled away from him, and then gave a sharp cry of dismay as she felt her towel starting to slide away from her body.

She dropped everything she was carrying immediately, but even so Guy moved faster, catching the towel just as it slithered down to reveal the full curves of her breasts.

‘Whoops…’

Deftly, he caught up the ends and secured them more firmly above her breasts, and she, for some reason, simply stood there and let him.

She was having difficulty in breathing, and her brain seemed to have stopped functioning at precisely that second when she had felt the brief touch of Guy’s fingers against the swell of her breasts as he reached for the towel. Her body turned and then froze, her mind blank of everything bar the feeling his touch had engendered.

Sickly, she acknowledged the truth. When Guy had touched her, she had actually been physically aroused.

Oh, God, what was happening to her? She must be sick, deranged in some way. She had to be to feel like that. How could she be stupid enough to desire a man whom she knew could never, ever want her?

Dimly, she was aware of Guy bending to pick up the things she had dropped, and gently handing them to her. She focused on him, her eyes unknowingly dark with pain and shock.

He touched her arm and she flinched.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

All right? How could she be all right, when she felt like this, when her whole body was still tormented with the most acute thrust of need she had ever felt?

The sound of his voice brought her back to reality. She couldn’t let him see what was happening to her. She had to fight against whatever madness it was that possessed her; she had to stop herself feeling like this. If only he could go away and leave her in peace…but she couldn’t run away. Not a second time…

The betraying words hung in her mind, as though they were written there in the fire. A second time… Her mouth went dry, and she forced herself to swallow to relieve some of the tension invading her throat.

Was that why she had come here, then? Because of Guy French? Because she had known subconsciously that she was physically attracted to him?

They were questions she couldn’t bear to answer. There was only one way she could escape from her torment, she acknowledged, only one way she could stop herself from going mad thinking about her folly, and that was to lose herself in her work.

‘I don’t want any lunch,’ she told him harshly, ‘I want to get back to work. I…I had an idea while I was out…’

It wasn’t true, but she had had an idea the previous night, and she could work on that. Anything to get away from him.