CHAPTER NINE

It began to snow again as Ros headed back for Yorkshire. She switched on the car radio and listened to the dismal announcement of freezing fog, snow and black ice. The farther north she traveled, the worse the conditions. She wanted to put her foot down and get there as quickly as possible, but common sense told her that would be a short cut to the nearest hospital, and so she went easy on the accelerator pedal.

She was still dazed by the turn of events, her sadness for Edward Banks mingling with her joy that it wasn’t Cliff. She prayed earnestly that it would come out all right for Edward, that the treatment would work and he would be given a new lease on life. And how precious that life would be. He would view each day as a miracle and never again take his existence for granted. She didn’t know that he ever had, only that it was common knowledge that most people do.

Her happiness that it wasn’t Cliff knew no bounds. Even as she raged inwardly at herself for jumping to the conclusion that she had—and everything had interlocked so convincingly that she had been positive that Cliff was the man her father had phoned about—she didn’t regret everything. She knew that by asking herself just one question. Say she was vested with some strange power that allowed her to give this Christmas back, never to have known the wonder and fun of that idyllic time with Cliff, would she use it? The answer was no! That time was fiercely precious to her. So then she asked herself another question. If she refused to deny herself what had been, why was she denying herself what could be even better now that the sadness was erased? She’d discovered firsthand that women have the same feelings, desires, as men. Only a man puts the demands of his body first, whereas a woman must appease her conscience before she can satisfy the urges of her body. She was up against the fundamental difference of the sexes.

Her indignation took a sharp climb. Why should she be the one to give in? Wasn’t her pride every bit as important as Cliff’s unreasonable reluctance to commit himself? It wasn’t just a matter of pride, but a question of caring. Not just hers, but Cliff’s as well. Some of the caring had to be on his side. If he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, give her his love, she couldn’t settle for his lust.

It was dark by the time she arrived at the cottage. Cliff must have been listening for her, as he had on that other occasion when she came back from phoning Miles, her heart in anguish because of what she’d heard. It was like a replay of an old film, she thought, as the cutting of the car engine triggered off the opening of the cottage door and Cliff came striding forward to greet her. Cold and despondent, with her heart no longer in anguish but frozen in anger, she got out of the driving seat, slammed the car door shut as though taking some of her vengeance out on it and trudged forward to meet him.

‘You look chilled to the core,’ he said, tucking her under the protection of his arm.

She didn’t seem able to summon up the energy to thrust it off. ‘I had to drive with the car window down for most of the way to be able to see.’

He shuttled her through the door. Just as she hadn’t been able to push off his arm, so she couldn’t push off the sensation of coming home. It wedged in her throat and made swallowing difficult. And that was nothing to the mammoth difficulty that faced her. She would have to get the message across to Cliff, the sooner the better, before his forceful character melted her resistance.

He sat her down on the same kitchen chair as before and removed her boots. He had put her slippers out in readiness, and he took each foot in turn and slid it into the blissful warmth.

He dealt with her gloves and unbuttoned her coat, saying, ‘We’ll soon have the blood circulating.’

‘I’m not staying, Cliff.’

His eyebrows contested that remark.

‘Tonight, yes,’ she amended, submitting to having her coat removed. ‘I’m not foolish enough to drive straight back again. I’ve come for my things, and I’m leaving in the morning.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘No mystery, just what I said. I head south again tomorrow.’

‘I won’t let you go.’

She waved a ringless hand in front of his face. ‘It works both ways, Cliff. You can’t have a commitment on one side and none on the other. We are both free agents. You can’t stop me from going.’

‘I see. It’s that, is it?’ His mouth twisted in cynicism. ‘What am I supposed to do now? Go down on my bended knees and ask you to marry me? Is that what you expect?’

‘I don’t expect anything from you, Cliff. That way I won’t be disappointed.’

She sighed in near desperation. ‘I’m sorry, Cliff, but I’m not interested in a casual affair.’

‘There is nothing casual about our feelings for one another, and you insult us both by suggesting there is.’

‘It was Christmas. We were flung together in the season of good will. What else could you expect? But Christmas is over, Cliff.’

‘Don’t you believe it! Nothing’s over. It’s just beginning. There might have been an element of chance in the way we met up again, but proximity didn’t take us into one another’s arms, the force of our own emotions drove us there.’

She hadn’t missed his reaction about the Christmas dig. She’d stumbled on that line by accident and didn’t see why she shouldn’t make the most of it, even as her sense of self-preservation appealed for caution.

‘It was better than playing noughts and crosses,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders to imply indifference, surrendering to the unwise delight of goading him.

‘Why you—’ His jaw tightened, his hands reached out and pulled her to her feet, and then she was held meltingly close in his arms.

Their views clashed violently, his opinion of the worthless state of marriage was repugnant to her, but she couldn’t find his nearness repellent. Physically, they were on the same wave length.

He had proved his point by setting her pulses racing and firing her blood with wild expectancy; but the kiss her mouth yearned for did not materialize as his hold loosened and his head drew away to look at her. ‘Did that feel casual, Ros? Didn’t you want more?’

Declining to answer that, stepping back to put some needful distance between them, she said, ‘You give it a casual flavor by avoiding a decision.’

‘You can’t charge me with that and make it stick. I could have drifted along and kept you guessing. I made a decision, long before I met you, not to sink up to my ears into domesticity. I never conned you on that score.’

‘I conned myself,’ she said bitterly. ‘It was all my fault. I can lay no blame at your door.’

‘My kind of work will always take me away from home for a spell. I’ve seen too many of my mates taken in by cheating wives. It’s not going to happen to me. I’ll tell you the pattern. At first, the new bride goes with her husband, but then the children begin to arrive. Wife stays home, gets lonely, seeks adult male company.’

‘One rotten apple doesn’t mean the whole barrel’s tainted. All women aren’t alike. And while we’re about it, how many of your mates cheat on their wives?’

‘Fair comment. You’re better off not getting tied up with the likes of me. If I was the marrying kind, there’s no one with whom I’d rather plight my troth, believe me.’

‘Sorry, but I don’t find that much of a compliment. As for the bit about plighting your troth—’she laughed—‘what an archaic description.’

‘I used it deliberately. It fits an archaic institution. In my opinion, trust is more important.’

‘Trust in what? That you don’t get tired of me and send me packing in under six months? A year, or whatever? I find this argument rather pointless. You keep your views, and I’ll stick to mine.’

A puzzled frown creased his forehead. ‘You knew my views before. You might not have accepted them, but they didn’t stand between us. You never froze me off because of them.’

‘Ah . . . well. There was a reason.’

‘Which, if I’m any judge of that mutinous look on your face, you’re not telling.’

‘Too true, I’m not.’

‘Something’s happened during the time you were away.’

‘Top marks again for a correct observation.’

‘You’ve seen your old boy friend again.’

She had never told him of the complete reversal of her feelings for Jarvis. When he’d first made the suggestion that they share Holly Cottage, she’d kept her thoughts on that score to herself, feeling that if the situation got out of hand, it would serve as some kind of protection to let him think that she was still pining for her ex-fiancé. His male arrogance would never permit him to make love to a woman whose affections were held by another man.

So she smiled, letting her lashes slide down as though protective of a look of dreamy reminiscence in her eyes as her thoughts lingered on her recent meeting with Jarvis. ‘Brilliant,’ she said on a breathy laugh. ‘Miles and his sister, Hannah, always throw a New Year’s Day party. Jarvis was there.’

‘And you got chummy again?’

A small, gloating smile possessed her mouth. ‘We talked.’

‘And he wants to patch things up between you?’

‘He wants to marry me,’ she said.

‘Liar.’

‘I beg your pardon!’

‘Oh, I don’t mean about his wanting to marry you. I’ll take your word on that. I mean this touching little performance you’re giving is a lie. He might have ignited a small glimmer of feeling in you once, I won’t dispute that fact, either. But the fire we lit together blew it out.’

The way he tore down her arguments, slashed through her defenses, horrified her. Drawing back her shoulders, lifting her chin at him in defiance, she began, ‘Your conceit is—’

‘—completely justified.’ His searching glance compelled her eyes to meet his and submit to the cruelly penetrating look he gave her. ‘You’re not a shallow person, Ros. Feelings run deep in you. You might have thought you were once in love with Jarvis when you didn’t know any better, before your senses were excited and you were in complete physical harmony with a man for the first time. The tongue can lie, the heart can play you false, but the senses can always be relied upon to spell out the truth. Feelings can’t be faked. And neither do you have to search for them like words, or truth even. It’s something you know, an instinctive reaction that hits you.’ His fingers reached forward and scraped down her cheek. The electric tingle encompassed every part of her body. ‘What do you feel, Ros?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, her voice little more than a croak.

‘Then I shall have to carry the demonstration a step further.’

‘Don’t touch me!’ The words that should have been screamed at him came out sounding more like a plea.

‘Why mustn’t I touch you?’

‘Because it doesn’t please me any more.’

‘Oh? What does it do to you?’

‘It fills me with revulsion.’ The revulsion was against herself for being so weak where he was concerned, for not having the strength of character to be cold and indifferent toward him.

‘No, Ros, that isn’t true. When you feel revulsion toward a person, it’s just about impossible not to show it. If you stand too close to them, your inclination is to cringe away. You don’t cringe away from me, not deep down inside. It’s all a pretense, Ros, an ill-concealed covering for what you really want, which is for me to take you into my arms. Your lips are hungry for mine, your body yearns to experience fully the sweet delights it has been awakened to.’

‘Why, you monster!’

‘Is that an improvement on a frog, I wonder. Perhaps frogs are your preference, Ros. To hear you talk, Jarvis has suddenly turned into your prince, but I bet you can’t even stand him near you. It might even have crossed your mind to wonder how you ever could. Not that he ever got that close to you. An engaged couple sharing a platonic relationship!’ His dry laugh was insulting. ‘That tells its own story.’

‘It wasn’t that platonic,’ she said, retaliating to that smug, taunting look.

He couldn’t know for sure. Or could he? He didn’t just look at her but into her mind. It was as if he could read beyond her own thoughts and see into compartments of her brain that baffled her. He couldn’t know her better than she knew herself! And in this instance, it was just blind guesswork.

‘You’re bluffing, Cliff. You want to believe so hard that it didn’t happen between me and Jarvis that you’d fall over backward to convince yourself. But you don’t know. And there’s no way you ever can know for sure.’

‘Isn’t there?’

Before she could possibly realize what he had in mind to do, she was swept into his arms, and his mouth came down on hers, stemming any protest she might have made and highlighting the truth of all he had said. Feelings are beyond the power of human control. Hers swamped her as the driving passion of his kiss carried her into a vortex of pure pleasure. Much to her own displeasure. She had revealed herself to him before her brain had had a chance to signal to her emotions that it was against her wishes. She willed her body to stiffen in rejection as it had when she danced in Jarvis’s arms. She clamped her mouth so tightly shut to him that her jaw and cheek bone ached with the tension it inflicted upon them. This belated reaction brought a smile to the mouth that had briefly drawn away from hers, and with it came a change of tactics. The steel grip of his arms became a more gentle trap as his hands played along the rigidity of her spine, his fingertips burning through the thickness of her sweater. His mouth covered hers with light butterfly kisses that tantalized and excited and left her feeling dissatisfied.

Not only did it melt her sham resistance, it was all she could do not to cling to him and let her traitorous mouth beg for the passion it had previously known. But that would offer only partial appeasement, and it wouldn’t be long before her body was crying out for parity. It remembered the joy of being molded to his desire by hands that coaxed and demanded by turn, a subtle variance that goaded her into active response as it made her long to yield to his male dominance. He was clever and devious and persuasive, and her inflexible will was putty in his hands.

‘See what I mean,’ he said, and she could cheerfully have hit him. ‘You are a straightforward idealist, Ros. Nothing happened between you and Jarvis that a third party couldn’t have observed. It isn’t in your makeup to amuse yourself with a man you don’t feel deeply about, and you couldn’t feel for Jarvis and be warm and responsive in my arms. I’ve made some supper. A hot-pot, because I thought you’d need something to thaw you out after your long journey. Let’s eat, and then we’ll go to bed.’ He didn’t say together, but the implication was there.

He knew all the answers. She had only one answer, and he had no intention of asking the question that fitted it. She hated him for what he did to her. She was also very hungry. Perhaps inner sustenance would give her the strength to resist him. At all costs, she must stay out of his bed and keep him out of hers.

‘You had your chance. You passed it up.’

‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘To my dying day, I’ll wonder why.’

To work, the kind of no-strings relationship he had in mind had to be acceptable to both parties. He had spoken one truth too many, to his own detriment. Her feelings did run deep. When she went swimming, she never paddled in the shallow end, she swam where the water was over her head, and this corresponded with her emotions. She was already in deeper than she cared for. It would be a long time, if ever, before she got over Cliff. The longer she let it linger on, the harder it would be when the parting eventually came.

It was a very good hot-pot. As they ate her thoughts ran on. Despite what he’d said, she had gotten to him about Jarvis. He had no idea how accurately he had hit the nail on the head about her waning interest in her ex-fiancé, and so against all the odds, he was jealous. Was there anyone in his life whom she ought to be jealous of?

‘Cliff?’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you never been in love?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

Breaking off a chunk of bread ready to pop into her mouth, she said, ‘You haven’t, then. If you’d been in love, you’d know for definite.’

A cross appeared between his heavy black brows, drawing them more closely together. ‘You still don’t think that milk-and-water affection you had for Jarvis was love, do you?’

It might have been in her best interest to keep that pot boiling, but she was a stickler for the truth, and so she was forced to admit, ‘No.’

‘I’m assuming there was no one before Jarvis?’

‘No.’

‘So how can you know whether or not I’d know if I’d ever been in love, never having been in that state yourself? The only way you would be in a position to know would be if you’d been in love.’

Had it never crossed his mind to wonder if she was in love with him, or was that what he was angling to find out? That was one secret better kept to herself.

‘Because I’m a woman,’ she replied, ‘and women know about these things. I don’t suppose you believe in feminine intuition any more than you believe in marriage.’

‘No, I don’t. Neither can I understand your constant preoccupation with marriage.’

‘Know something? When I look at you, neither can I. I think it’s as well you hold the views you do. You’ve saved some poor girl a very unhappy life. And now I’m going to wash the supper things and take my weary self to bed.’

‘Want company?’

‘I thought I’d already made it outstandingly clear that I’m sleeping on my own.’

‘You’ve got a one-track mind. I meant with the washing up.’

‘You didn’t, you know.’

‘Perhaps not,’ he said darkly, watching her stack the cutlery on to the plates, and then he picked up the tureen the hot-pot had been in and followed her into the kitchen.

‘Something’s got me really puzzled, Ros.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked in slight trepidation, not caring for the sharply discerning look that had come to his face. It made her nervous.

‘I’ve been recalling how you were as a child. You were so honest, on occasion it hurt—and frequently you were the one it hurt. You wouldn’t shirk the truth, even to avoid a scolding or worse. There was no deception about you, no wheedling little tricks or resorting to guile to get your own way. And in this respect you haven’t altered one bit. You’re still truthful and straight dealing to the point of self-destruction. Oh, you might fall back upon the odd permitted evasion that marks your sex, because women are notoriously equivocal creatures, but you are totally without subterfuge in the issues that are important.’

‘Where is this leading, Cliff?’ she asked, her nervousness increasing. She tried not to draw her tongue over her lips or make any gesture that might give some hint of her feelings.

‘I admit that at first I did wonder if you were giving me a sample taste of the goods to sell the whole product. But I soon realized that wasn’t so. I know you too well. It’s not your style to resort to tactics. You didn’t set out to make yourself indispensable to me to force my hand. You didn’t come into my bed and offer yourself to me to trap me into marriage, did you? Did you?’ he insisted when she made no reply.

‘You’re the one with the answers, so why ask me?’ she said, falling back on prevarication, which he seemed to interpret as provocation.

‘Because I want to hear it from you.’ His eyes concentrated wickedly on her mouth, as if he knew that it had suddenly gone as dry as though she were trying to swallow razor blades. The compulsion to lick her lips was almost unbearable. But then he lost ground by revealing the temper smoldering under his seemingly benign manner, showing that he was not so unruffled and in control, after all. ‘Confound it, you’ll tell me even if I have to beat it out of you.’

‘How do you know what my style is?’ she said, shooting home the advantage he had unexpectedly given her. ‘I would have said that using violence against a woman wasn’t your style.’

‘You’re not acting like a woman,’ he ground out savagely. ‘I understand women. You’re behaving like a pixilated child, and that’s what’s thrown me. Now answer me, so help me or—’ He grabbed hold of her wrists, holding them so tightly she wondered they didn’t snap, and yanked her forward, his eyes, above hers, dark shafts of menace. ‘You didn’t come into my bed to force a marriage proposal out of me, did you?’

‘No!’ she shrieked at him, fearing to ignite his anger further but shrinking in apprehension of the question she knew would inexorably follow.

‘So why did you come into my bed and offer your delicious self to me as a gift?’ he said, turning the joking way she had put it when she went to him into an insult.

Even so, her desire to lash back at him was tempered with kindness. She couldn’t tell him the reason why. And so, lifting a defiant chin at him, she countered, ‘Could it be because I felt it was time I got myself some—’she was going to say experience but chopped it off and said instead—‘form of comparison.’

‘That was one of the permitted feminine evasions I just spoke of. Not very good, was it?’ he sneered. ‘You need to practice harder to get it right, but on some other guy. Don’t try it on with me.’

‘And don’t you threaten me. Oh, I’m perfectly well aware that you could bully the truth out of me, but let me tell you this, if you do you won’t like it.’

‘Try me.’

‘All right. It’s good enough for you. I don’t know why I tried to spare your feelings. I came to you out of compassion. Or if you like—pity!’

‘Pity! I thought I’d heard everything. But that’s a new one on me. What kind of stupid answer is that?’

‘I wanted to give you some comfort.’

‘Now you’re really getting under my skin. Cut the smart talk.’

‘It’s the truth. You’re hurting me. What are you trying to do—brand me? If you’ll stop using brute force on me,’ she said, impotently trying to shake his hands off her wrists, ‘and sit down and listen to me in a reasonable manner, I’ll explain how the misunderstanding came about.’

‘Very well,’ he said, his hands dropping from her, the surprise on his face showing that he had barely been aware that he had subjected her to such a cruel hold.

Tomorrow she would have finger bruises on her wrists, now she rubbed each one in turn to get the circulation going, which brought a fresh wave of displeasure to his face. Apparently, it was in order for him to ill use her but not acceptable for her to draw attention to it.

‘I thought you were going to die,’ she said, rubbing her wrists harder in bravado.

‘I am. So are you. Everyone dies eventually.’

‘Don’t mock. Listen!’ she called out hotly. ‘I thought your death was coming quite soon.’

She went on to explain fully, and this time he listened without interrupting her. She had been wrong about a lot of things, but she had been right in thinking he would not be pleased at her reason for going to him. She might have been selflessly drawn to do what she did in the first place, but Hannah had got it right and her compassion for him had quickly turned into unimaginable delight for her, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She enjoyed watching him squirm, seeing the dark color flood into his cheeks as fury held his features rigid.

When she’d finished, he didn’t speak for a moment. Then his savage eyes slid down her body, stripping her insolently before coming back to rest in taunting derision on her face. ‘This Edward Banks. Presumably you offered him the same comfort. Minus gift wrapping. A gift that had been prehandled, but I don’t suppose he would demur too much about that.’

Taking a clamp on her rising temper, her mouth shaped to sweetness. ‘What’s that to you? In any case, isn’t that a rather cowardly way of hitting back? I didn’t want to tell you. You insisted on knowing the truth. I’m sorry it wasn’t to your liking.’

‘Like hell you are.’ His voice had now gone ominously quiet.

His eyes narrowed in concentrated thought. He hadn’t finished with her yet. It would be safer for her to do the washing up in record time and get out of the kitchen before he decided on what line to take. It went against her fastidious streak to leave the dishes until morning, although when she saw him reach for the drying cloth, she realized that’s what she ought to have done. Unlike her, he never ran true to form. She had expected him to say, ‘Damn you to hell,’ or even some more robust expletive and storm out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him with enough force to shake it off its hinges. This quiet, controlled violence as he worked by her side was unnerving.

‘You don’t have to help,’ she said. ‘I can manage the dishes on my own.’

‘I’m sure you can. I like to do my share.’

‘You prepared the meal. That was doing more than your share.’

‘If you say so,’ he said, putting the cloth down but not moving away.

She bent her head, feigning absorption in her task, sinking her hands deep into the sudsy water. She heard the shuffle of his footsteps and took a deep breath, thinking he was going, and held it as it was brought forcibly home to her that he had merely shifted position to stand behind her. His hands came round her waist, drawing her back against him.

‘Go away, Cliff.’

His mouth nuzzled under her hair and made teasing bites along her neck. ‘Send me away. You can now that you know I’m not going to die, not before my allotted time, anyway.’

‘If someone doesn’t kill you first.’

‘All you have to say is, “Go away, Cliff.”’

‘Are you deaf? I’ve just said it.’

‘But you’ve got to mean it. Say, “Go away, Cliff,” and mean it. Surely that’s not very difficult? You don’t have to endure my odious attentions now that you no longer feel pity for me. Or perhaps,’ he said, his fingers sliding under her sweater and layering themselves against her rib cage, ‘you don’t find this odious?’

‘I never said I did.’

‘No, you didn’t. Perhaps you find it exciting. The story you’ve just spun out is too incredible not to be true. In any case, it’s already been agreed between us that you wouldn’t lie about anything of that magnitude.’

‘I did come to you out of compassion,’ she said doggedly.

‘And for how long was compassion uppermost in your mind? I didn’t hold a passive female in my arms. You found me as physically desirable as I found you.’

It hadn’t taken him long to reason that out, she thought bitterly, biting heavily on her lower lip to stop herself letting out a yelp of pleasure as his trespassing fingers, having made a slight detour to unfasten her bra, scaled upward to cup both her breasts. The resultant electric thrill that radiated through her was like an adhesive that pressed and held her enraptured body closer to his. It was as if she were trying to melt into the solid torso and the strong muscular legs that were slightly straddled to form an inverted, protective vee round hers and stopped them both from falling over. It took a lot of will power to pull herself away from him and transfer her weight to the edge of the kitchen sink.

‘It’s your privilege to move away.’ His whispery laugh assaulted her ear, the breath from it scalded her neck. ‘I don’t force myself on any woman. No woman takes me out of pity. You’re safe. I’ll amend that, as safe as you want to be. How safe do you want to be, Ros?’

A good question.

He turned her round to face him. His hands stroked down over her disarranged sweater in a feeble pretense of straightening it, which made her yearn to be crushed close to his chest. They both knew that she was having to fight off not only him but also her own inflamed senses. His aim would be to keep them inflamed. It had slashed him when she had told him that she’d gone to him out of compassion. It had insulted his masculinity. She would never forget the way his face had changed color, the suppressed fury of him. She had known he would seek vengeance. And this was it, of course. Her punishment for daring to suggest that she had been motivated by pity. He wasn’t going to have that. He would work on her without respite until she owned to her own feelings. He knew what those feelings were. Every quivering nerve in her awakened body was a brazen announcement of her craving for him. But that wasn’t enough for him. He had made her admit to her reason for going to him, and he wouldn’t let up until she admitted to this. He wanted to hear that she wanted him from her own lips. Well, she’d be damned if she would. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.

She was in no danger for the moment, she knew that. He wouldn’t enter her bedroom without invitation, and tomorrow she would be gone. She could surely hold out for the short length of time she would be here.

She lifted her hands and placed them flat against his chest, pushing him away. She hadn’t been given time to dry her hands, and the soapy bubbles on them from the washing-up water adhered to his front like the falling snow outside. As she stalked out of the kitchen, her horrified vision was caught and held by the ominous beauty. Big ragged flakes fell to cluster upon the window sill and obliterate the sky.

‘I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere tomorrow,’ Cliff said, plucking the thought out of her mind and sending it after her as a parting shot.