WHAT ON EARTH was happening to her? Livvy fumed helplessly as she rubbed her damp hair dry and then reached for her hairdryer; her face flamed as she recalled the scene by the river’s edge. Why, oh, why had she given in to that ridiculously childish impulse to strip off and resurrect that old childhood pleasure?
No wonder Richard had looked at her the way he had. He must have thought she had taken leave of her senses. Either that, or…Her flush deepened, a dazed, helpless look darkening her eyes and softening her expression. Her lips parted slightly as her heart missed a small beat and then she caught sight of herself in the mirror and instantly banished that dangerous, weakening feeling.
Later, dressed, her hair plaited, thankful to discover that she had the kitchen to herself, she took herself severely to task.
It simply would not do, this idiotic foolishness…this dangerous and reprehensible awareness of Richard Field as a man…a very male man…a man to whom, for some unfathomable reason, she was dangerously attracted.
Attracted to Richard Field…her? Impossible. Surely she was far too sensible, had her feet planted far too firmly and safely on the ground to allow her emotions or her body to be swayed by a man who her brain told her had none of the qualities she really admired.
Look at his attitude towards women for a start. She frowned as she placed a large pile of books she had brought downstairs with her on the kitchen table. She had come here to the Dordogne to work as well as relax. Whether or not she decided to take up the school’s offer of promotion, she still had next term’s work to prepare.
The head had demurred at first when she had suggested French conversation classes, but Livvy’s enthusiasm had brought him round and he had been generous in his praise at the end of the school year when it had been obvious that the conversation classes had had a beneficial effect on her pupil’s grammatical grasp of the French language.
Next term, Livvy had planned to take her more advanced pupils a step further forward, initially planning to set them modern French novels to read, but after consideration changing her plans and substituting instead French film videos.
It was no use expecting a class of modern fourteen-year-olds to wax enthusiastic over the French classics, she acknowledged, no matter how much she would have enjoyed re-reading them, which was why she had bought herself a selection of the more popular French paperbacks to read over the holidays.
Right now, though, what she wanted to do was to sit down and do some work on the things she wanted to cover during the next term, the first of the new school year.
And thinking about Richard Field and the way he had held her, the way she had felt when he touched her, the way she had looked at him and for one dizzying, breathless second had actually wanted, yearned and ached for the feel of his mouth on hers, was not going to be conducive to such work.
It took her over half an hour to successfully, if not exactly banish Richard from her thoughts, then at least manage to restrict him to a relatively distant part of her mind.
She stopped once to make herself some coffee and to eat some of the crusty fresh bread she had bought, wondering as she did so where Richard had gone to.
He must have left while she was upstairs getting changed and, contradictorily, instead of being pleased that she had the farmhouse to herself, she realised that she was actually missing his presence, wondering where he was…what he was doing…who he was with.
No doubt when he did come back and found that she had taken possession of the kitchen table, and with it the kitchen itself, he probably wouldn’t be too pleased, she reflected as she looked a little guiltily at the mass of books and papers she had spread over the table.
After all, where else could she work? The dim, dark sitting-room-cum-parlour had no table or desk in it, the other downstairs rooms were virtually unfurnished, and besides, she felt more comfortable in the kitchen, with the comforting warmth and noise of the range and the cat, who had come inside with her, curled up asleep on the floor in front of it. For a farmyard creature, it was proving surprisingly adaptable to domesticity. Unlike a certain male. She nibbled the end of her pen thoughtfully. Why was he so antagonistic towards her sex?
She suspected that the curt, ‘I was. I’m not now,’ response he had made to her involuntary shocked, ‘You’re married?’ probably held the answers, or some of them.
What had his wife been like? she wondered. He must have loved her intensely for her to have hurt him so badly. How long had she…had they…?
‘Never get involved with a divorced man,’ Jenny had once told her with world-weary cynicism after the break-up of yet another romance. ‘They’re either so hung up on their ex-wives that they just can’t see anyone else, or they’re so bitter and resentful that they take it out on you. Either way, they’re trouble.’
Livvy’s frown deepened. She had laughed then, thinking that her friend was guilty of exaggeration. But people were affected by what they experienced in life, scarred sometimes…
She caught herself up quickly. How or why Richard Field had acquired his cynical and totally wrong-headed view of the female sex was nothing to do with her, and if she was wise she would make sure it stayed that way.
It should be easy enough after all. There was certainly nothing he had said or done that could have caused this anxiety she was feeling, this uncertainty whether she was capable of maintaining a sensible emotional distance between them. Nothing whatsoever.
Just because physically he had aroused her…just because this afternoon, when he had looked at her, touched her…
She tensed as she heard the BMW drive into the yard, caution and common sense urging her to collect her things together and leave before he came in. What after all was the point in risking another confrontation, or in reminding him of that brief heartbeat of time earlier when she had looked at him, looked at his mouth, her body and her eyes telling him nakedly and wantonly that she wanted him to kiss her?
Why should she go? She had nothing to be ashamed of. It had been a momentary lapse, that was all, but as she heard the door open she quickly bent her head over her work, raising it again only when she heard the noise he was making as he trundled the heavy replacement gas cylinder across the floor and towards the fridge.
For some reason she herself could not entirely understand, Livvy told him haughtily, ‘There was no need for you to do that. Gale has an arrangement with Mr Dubois to have the gas replaced when necessary…’
‘Fine, only what it seems he neglected to tell you or her is that he makes a surcharge on the canisters, and a connection fee. It seems to be a subject of great amusement at the garage where I got this stuff that he manages to make so much extra income out of gullible visitors by charging them almost double what the gas costs him and then making a profit on top of that re-connecting the thing for them. Amusement and envy. The garage owner told me he’s tired of supplying him with rusty connections which, it seems, only Monsieur Dubois has a wrench suitable for unfastening.’
‘It’s only natural that he should want to make a profit on us,’ Livvy told him lamely.
‘A profit, yes—a laughing-stock is something else.’
There was nothing Livvy could say.
But it seemed that Richard Field had not finished.
‘Of course, for all I know, you might have come to some special arrangement with him…The payment of a small douceur in exchange for his prompt service, perhaps…’
Livvy flushed as she read the real meaning behind his sneered words. She was almost shaking as she stood up and told him furiously, ‘You have no right to imply any such thing. I would never…’ She broke off, reminding herself that she had no need to defend herself to him, nor surely any reason to feel not just weak and shaky with the force of her anger, but frighteningly close to tears as well.
‘Besides,’ she challenged him, fighting to suppress her weakness, ‘according to you, Monsieur Dubois believes that I’m your mistress.’
‘All the more reason for him to take pleasure in having you,’ he told her brutally.
It was more than Livvy could stand. Trembling from head to foot, her face white with anguish, she swept her hand outwards in a fierce movement of rejection, accidentally dislodging some of her papers from the table as she did so.
‘Having me?’ Her mouth trembled. ‘Is that how you think of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman? If so, I’m not surprised that—’
Abruptly, she stopped herself, appalled by what she was doing, by what she had been about to say. Let him demean himself if he wished to do so; there was no need for her to stoop down to his level.
‘So how do you think of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman…?’
The unexpected question caught her off guard. He was standing next to the fridge, his face half in shadow so that she couldn’t read his expression. His voice was deceptively soft.
A tiny, fierce shiver ran over her skin. She couldn’t help herself. As she closed her eyes, she had a momentary mental image of the two of them together, his body lean, hard, male, arched protectively over hers, smaller, paler, softly feminine and vulnerable, but willingly, achingly open to him.
She bit down hard on her bottom lip, appalled by the intensity and clarity of her vision.
‘Well?’
His voice was still soft, but very, very determined. She gave another shiver, releasing her lip, feeling its swollen pressure where she had bitten it.
‘I think of it as an equal and mutual sharing of themselves with one another, a partnership in which the two people concerned complement one another and make one another whole; in which there is no taking, no selfish greed, no desire to hurt or dominate the other person. I think of it as a very special and privileged human experience which far too many people denigrate and destroy.’
Her voice was shaking, Livvy recognised as she turned away from him. What had come over her? She had not meant to tell him any of that; even if it was the truth. She felt sick at the thought of how much of herself she had revealed to him. She tensed, waiting for his jeering laughter, his caustic mockery and contempt, but instead of the harshness she had expected his voice sounded faintly rough, almost as though his throat was slightly sore as he told her, ‘Only an idealistic fool thinks things like that.’
Still shaking slightly, Livvy bent down to pick up her papers, not realising until she did so that he had moved and that he too was bending to retrieve them.
She saw him frowning as he studied them. ‘You’re a teacher?’
She could hear the disbelief in his voice and in other circumstances she might almost have been amused.
Instead she responded quietly, ‘Yes. Why? Have you got a thing against them as well as women? Don’t tell me,’ she added bitterly. ‘Let me guess. Your first teacher was a woman and you felt rejected when she didn’t devote all her attention to you…’
‘Yes. My first teacher was a woman,’ he agreed gravely. ‘Isn’t every man’s? And, yes, I suppose she did reject me in a sense. She left my father when I was two years old to go and live with her lover. She didn’t want to leave me behind, or so she told me years later. She simply didn’t have any choice. Her lover didn’t like children and certainly didn’t want to be burdened with another man’s. She felt I’d be better off with my father…’
If he had heard her shocked gasp of pity, he wasn’t making any response to it, Livvy realised thankfully, as she cursed her runaway tongue for its unwitting cruelty. She had never meant to hurt him nor to pry; she had simply lashed out in retaliation against the pain he had caused her.
‘My father did the best he could, but he had a business to run, a life to live, and at least at the boarding-school he sent me to I had the company of other children.’
‘Boarding-school?’
He gave her a wry look. ‘Why so shocked? It was a very good school. What do you teach?’ he asked her, changing the subject.
‘French,’ Livvy told him shakily.
He had picked up one of the paperbacks she had bought and was studying it.
‘It’s for my French conversation classes. The girls, are at an age where it’s pointless trying to interest them in the classics. I’ve managed to persuade the head to allow me to show French videos. There’ll be a question and answer session afterwards, and a discussion group, so that they’ll have to concentrate on what they’re watching.’
‘Is it a single-sex school?’ he asked her, as he studied the paperback he was holding.
‘No,’ Livvy responded, adding wryly, ‘I know it isn’t going to be easy finding something equally appealing to the boys as well as the girls, but…’
‘Computer games…’ he told her.
Livvy stared at him, watching as his frown disappeared and a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
‘I’m sorry. I’m interfering, aren’t I? It’s just that both my stepbrothers who are in their teens are mad on computer games…’
‘Your father remarried, then?’ Suddenly, for no reason she could think of, Livvy found that her heart was lifting, her own mouth starting to curve into a responsive smile.
‘Eventually.’
‘And you…you don’t mind…?’
‘No. My stepmother has made him very happy. She was his secretary for many years and knew him very well.’
‘And you get on well with her…?’
Livvy wasn’t sure why it suddenly seemed important to ask that question, why it should matter to her that there might be one woman whom he could like and respect.
When he hesitated, she found that she was holding her breath, willing him not to retreat from her, willing him to answer her. ‘I do now,’ he said eventually.
‘Now?’
His smile had gone. ‘She didn’t want me to get married. She didn’t care for my wife. Perhaps if I’d listened to her…’ He stopped abruptly and Livvy flushed, realising how inquisitive she was being. Would he put it down to mere feminine nosiness and curiosity, or would he guess that her interest had a much more personal motivation? What personal motivation? she asked herself nervously. Hadn’t she already agreed with herself that she was not going to allow herself to develop any personal interest in him? That it was far too dangerous to do so?
‘I get on very well with her,’ he told her, but his tone had become slightly brusque. Sensitively, Livvy recognised it and stopped herself from asking any more questions.
Instead she said as lightly as she could, ‘Computer games…Thanks for the tip. I suspect you’re probably right. I would never have thought of it myself. They aren’t something that appeals to me…my brain just doesn’t work in that kind of way.’
She looked up and caught the fleeting look of surprise in his eyes.
‘It’s very honest of you to admit it.’
It was Livvy’s turn to look surprised. ‘We all have our vulnerabilities and weaknesses,’ she told him. ‘I’ve never seen any point in trying to deny mine. I have a gift for languages which in its way involves a form of logic, but it isn’t the same kind of logic needed to work out mathematical sequences or become computer-adept, and besides…’
‘It’s not very feminine. Like knowing how to change a tyre. Very flattering to the male ego.’
His voice had hardened again and Livvy gritted her teeth. Why on earth was it that, every time they seemed to be talking to one another as normal human beings, he had to spoil everything by reverting to challenging her…accusing her…
Perhaps because it was his only way of protecting and defending himself. From her? Why should he need to? She didn’t pose any threat to him, did she?
He placed her papers on the table and turned away from her, walking over to the fridge.
Livvy tried to recapture her interest in her work, to concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing, but somehow her attention kept drifting away from the papers in front of her and in the direction of the man working quietly and determinedly in the corner of the room. He had his back to her and she could see the muscles moving in his back as he applied the wrench to the rusty connections of the existing gas container. He was wearing a shirt, but the pressure needed to loosen the connections was pulling it taut against his flesh.
A tiny feather-light sigh of sensation brushed against her skin, making her stomach muscles quiver and then tense.
She could feel her body getting hot, her mouth going dry. What would have happened this afternoon if she hadn’t pulled away when she had?
She closed her eyes briefly, mentally imagining him without his shirt, his skin sleek and smooth, clinging supplely to his muscles.
She heard the small grunt of satisfaction he made as the first connection came free and her eyes opened.
This afternoon, standing close to him, she had caught the hot, musky scent of his sweat. And had been aroused by it? Just as she was now being aroused by her own thoughts. No! How ridiculous. Only infatuated teenagers or women in love reacted like that to such small stimuli.
Women in love!
She could feel the small hairs on the nape of her neck standing on end as the shock engulfed her in an ice-cold frisson of fear.
In love with Richard Field? Impossible…How could she be?
Blindly she tried to focus on her work, to ignore his presence at the other end of the room.
Why on earth had George behaved so irrationally, allowing Richard Field to come down here, not telling Gale what he was doing? And how could she, even in her wildest imagination, allow herself to fall in love with a man who could behave as callously and uncaringly towards her sex as Richard Field did?
All right, so maybe this evening she had had a brief glimpse into his past, had sensed the pain he must have suffered when his mother left him and when his marriage broke up, but none of that altered the fact that he had been openly contemptuous and wrong about her.
Any woman falling in love with that kind of man was just asking to be hurt.
‘There, that should do it.’
At any other time the male satisfaction in his voice would have made her smile; as it was, instead she tensed, refusing to look up from her work.
What was he doing, hovering over her? Why didn’t he go away and leave her alone? He was standing behind her now, close enough for her to sense his presence, so much so that she could feel her body trembling in response to it.
‘I ought to ring Gale…She’ll want a full report on how I got on with the plumber…’
She was talking quickly, wildly almost, desperate to fill the dangerously intense silence between them, to defend herself against the miasma of awareness that threatened her. Would her cousin still want to go ahead with her plans if George was trying to sell the farmhouse?
‘The plumber?’ Richard Field was questioning her.
‘Yes…I went to see him this morning. Gale wants—’
‘Was that the plumber I saw you speaking with in Beaulieu?’
Livvy tensed. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it was,’ she agreed.
Inadvertently she turned round, her stomach lurching. He was standing even closer to her than she had imagined. She could see the faint beginnings of the new beard growing along his jaw. There was a smudge of oil on his cheek; it made him look younger, more approachable, very human and in some odd way almost vulnerable. She had to stop herself from reaching up and smoothing it away.
The cat too was affected by his closeness. It uncurled itself and stood up, arching its back and then rubbed itself against his legs, purring loudly.
Almost absently, he bent down and picked it up, stroking it.
‘You should be outside, not in here,’ he told it. He was frowning again, Livvy recognised. Not at the cat, but at her.
‘This is still Gale’s home,’ she told him defensively. ‘She has every right—’
‘As I understand it, it belongs to both Gale and George,’ Richard Field interrupted her curtly. ‘Does George know, I wonder, how Gale plans to spend his money? Or will she just present him with a fait accompli just as she always does? She treats him like an extra child, not a man. No wonder…’
The cat made a small squark of protest as he put it down.
‘I need a shower,’ he told her, then added curtly, ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that I might be allowed just some small space on the table on which to eat my meal?’
‘I’ll be finished before you come back down,’ Livvy assured him, equally curtly.
He was so changeable, so unfathomable, almost human one minute and then the next almost aggressively unpleasant and cold towards her.
She bent her head back over her work and didn’t raise it again until she had heard the door close behind him. A shower, he had said.
She shivered beneath the thrill of wanton fire that ran through her as she pictured his naked body and then hastily denied the image and its potent effect on her.
‘And as for you, you traitress,’ she accused the cat, as it leapt on to her lap, ‘you have absolutely no taste, do you know that? No sense of female solidarity; if you did, you’d have scratched him, not fawned all over him in that foolish, adoring manner.’
‘I forgot my jacket.’
Livvy flushed beetroot-red as she realised that Richard was standing right behind her and that he must have overheard every word she had just said. She hadn’t even heard him come back into the kitchen, and she certainly could not turn round now and give him the satisfaction of seeing her scarlet face.
It was enough that she had heard the amusement in his voice.