For One Night

In this stranger’s arms, she could forget the trauma of these last weeks; she could celebrate the reality of life; she could renew herself and feel really alive again for the first time in months.

At any other time Diana would have been shocked by her own thoughts, but now they seemed natural and normal.

The way she was staring at him made him feel almost as though she was looking through him, Marcus thought. He looked at her mouth, her lips half parted and quivering slightly. The bathrobe concealed the shape of her body and he suddenly longed to wrench it from her and take all the feminine sweetness of her in his arms.

He fought to control himself, his voice grating slightly as he warned her, “Stay here and there’s no way I’m going to be able to stop myself from taking you to bed with me—you know that, don’t you?”

Diana hesitated briefly, knowing she was teetering on the edge of a chasm, but unable to do the sensible thing and pull herself back.

In a dream she heard herself saying huskily, “Yes.” And then there was no going back. She took a step toward him, and heard him groan. Fired with a wild determination that pulsed through her, she unfastened the tie of her robe and let it slide from her body.

What was she doing? She had never acted like this in her life—she must be mad. But it was too late. She was in his arms, his hands shaping and moulding her flesh, his mouth hotly demanding as it fastened on hers.

He wrenched it away to mutter briefly, in her ear, “I don’t know who you are, or where the hell you’ve come from. What I’m doing now goes against every principle I’ve ever had but, God knows, I can’t stop myself. I know I’m going to regret this like hell in the morning, but all that matters now is the way you’re making me feel.”

He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t feel herself. She couldn’t explain to him what was driving her, what she was feeling; and why should she? They were strangers; they each had a need—after tonight they would never meet again.

He picked her up and carried her over to the bed, lying her down gently, his eyes never once leaving hers as he quickly stripped.

His body was well muscled, sleek and hard, dark hair shadowing down over his chest and his flat belly. Diana looked at him in awe and fierce pleasure. Her previous sexual experience had been limited to clumsy caresses shared with fellow university students; the sensual side of her nature had been slow to blossom; and then before it could flower it had been cruelly destroyed by Randolph Hewitt’s cynical cruelty.

The shock of learning that he had simply been using her had withered away her youthful urge to share her heart and her body with anyone. There had been no one since Randolph, but that scarcely impinged on her consciousness now.

Now she felt, deep within her, nature’s remorseless drive toward the re-creation of life. She knew even as she looked into Marcus’s eyes that the need that drove her was in some way linked to Leslie’s death and the long, achingly unhappy months that had led up to it.

She was like a moth shedding its chrysalis; a phoenix having been destroyed in the flames and now being renewed.

She needed this … this sensation of flesh against flesh, this fierce clamoring of her blood. She needed this man, here and now, she admitted, as Marcus returned her look, studying the naked length of her, making her skin burn with febrile excitement as his glance lingered intimately, like a caress against her flesh.

“I must be mad doing this!”

His thoughts only echoed her own, but they didn’t stop the intimate melding of their mouths, his, hot and demanding, hers, meltingly enticing.

He kissed her with a hunger she hadn’t expected. Somehow she had imagined that for him sex must be a regular and frequent part of his life, but the touch of his mouth against her own, the fierceness of his hands against her skin told her that she was wrong.

Neither had she expected the sudden spiral of excitement and anticipation running over her nerve endings as he kissed her. Her need to purge herself of the horror and pain of Leslie’s death in the act of procreation was something she could accept and understand—just about—but the desire she felt for this particular man wasn’t.

She pulled back, tensing slightly, and heard him growl deep in his throat. “No, damn you, you aren’t changing your mind now. You’ve already made me want you too much.”

But despite his words, the silken glide of his hands over her rib cage and against her breasts was almost hesitant, as though he was waiting for her to tell him to stop. His thumb brushed against her nipple sending a savage surge of desire stabbing through her. She saw the gleam of triumph glittering in his eyes as he caught the betraying sound.

“You liked that?”

She shuddered finely as he repeated the caress and then bent his head to roughly brush the aroused areola with his tongue.

Flames—spears of sensation pierced her, making her cry out and cling despairingly to him, her nails etching sharp crescents in the flesh of his shoulders. His mouth absorbed the whole swollen bud, bathing it in moist heat, drowning her in awesome pleasure.

She cried out, her body arching like a bow. Tiny droplets of sweat dampened her skin and made it glisten beneath the soft illumination of the bedside lamp.

“Beautiful … you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, do you know that?”

He was slurring his words faintly, like a man under the influence of drink or drugs, his breath quivering over her sensitized flesh as his lips continued to caress her breasts, tormenting them with brief kisses and tiny delicate bites, frustrating her growing desire to have her flesh taken deep inside the hot cavern of his mouth.

His touch was unleashing a wildness within her that she had never known existed. She wanted to scratch and bite, to cling and demand; she wanted …

Her hands slid over his sweat-slick back; her fingers drawing his head down to her breasts, a sharp cry of pleasure breaking the thick silence as he correctly interpreted her silent demand.

When the pleasure he was giving her became almost too sharp to endure she bit frantically into his skin, and felt his body shudder in open response.

His hands shaped her waist and hips, and then molded her against his aroused male form.

The heat of him was dangerously exciting, firing her own blood, making her ache for the culmination of her driven need. His hand touched her intimately, caressing and enticing her to abandon herself to him, his softly murmured words of praise singing in her ears.

Under his guidance she caressed him in turn, but both of them were too impatient to linger over the preliminaries, no matter how pleasurable. After all, they weren’t lovers, content to simply adore one another’s bodies, but two people driven by different emotions but similar needs, to find together an elemental completeness.

At the first surge of his body within her own Diana was filled with a wild exultation. She moved instinctively beneath him, hearing the savagery of his indrawn breath, and glorying in the fierceness of his possession.

She didn’t experience any pain, contrary to everything she had ever anticipated; her virginity might never have existed, so joyfully did her body welcome his.

Together they strove to reach the shimmering pinnacle of human experience; together they shared the awesome reality of the apex of human desire, Marcus’s deep-throated cry of release mingling with her own husky sob of delight.

It was over. Diana lay, trying to steady her breathing, while the world righted itself around her. In the wake of physical satisfaction came exhaustion, so complete and so numbing that she was deeply asleep within seconds.

Marcus looked down at her broodingly. He had just experienced the most physically intense pleasure he had ever known with any woman, and she had fallen asleep!

Now for the first time, reality hit him. She had used him as a substitute for her dead lover. It was like being tipped into a pool of iced water. When he surfaced he felt totally disorientated. Man was the predator, the hunter, the user and abuser of the female sex, so why did he feel as though he was the one who had been used? Why did he have this disquieting fear that his life was never going to be the same again?

They had had sex, that was all. He didn’t even know her name … She had simply been a body—a very beautiful and sexy body—but a body nonetheless. He must be crazy to be lying here in this emotional stupor. He ought to be worrying about far more mundane things. He reached out, unable to stop himself from tucking a stray lock of amber hair behind her ear. In sleep she looked like a little girl.

She mumbled something and moved in her sleep. The sheet slipped and revealed one creamy, rose-tipped breast, still swollen and flushed from his caresses.

Suppressing a fierce shudder, Marcus covered her again, and then swung himself out of the bed. He never wore pyjamas, but there was a spare robe in the bathroom. He put it on, and then eyed the bedroom’s one easy chair in grim determination.

He had behaved foolishly enough for one night—he would spend the rest of it alone in that chair, otherwise God alone knew what might happen. He had been stupid enough as it was—insanely so. He ought to have thrown her out when he had had the opportunity. Against his will he remembered the look of aching desolation he had glimpsed in her eyes earlier. It must be hell to lose someone you loved to death. Who could blame her for wanting to hang on to life in the most basic way possible?

Neither of them were to blame for what had happened; another time, and things would have been different. They had come together as strangers, he thought broodingly, and that was the way they must part—for both their sakes. He had enough problems on his plate with the farm, without involving himself with a woman who was grieving for another man.

He would be gone before she woke up. They would never meet again. He knew his decision was the right one, but some part of him was reluctant to let her go. Some part of him wanted to hold on to her and …

And what?

And nothing, he told himself firmly.

CHAPTER TWO

“WELL, DIANA, you know your own mind best, but I must admit that I’m surprised. You’ve always fitted in well here at Southern Television, and somehow I can’t see you living in a small country village, running a bookshop.”

“I trained as a librarian before I came here, Don,” Diana reminded her boss, “and my parents lived in the country.”

“Oh, I see.”

She was surprised to see that he looked a little nonplussed. “You want to be closer to them, is that it?”

Diana shook her head. Her parents had emigrated to Australia six months ago to be close to her elder brother and his children, and her decision to sell the London flat and start a new life for herself in a small and fairly remote Herefordshire town had nothing to do with them.

“No, not really, I just thought it was time I had a change.” As she spoke, she glanced instinctively into the mirror on the opposite wall. Her stomach was still quite flat, her body as reed-slim as ever; no one looking at her could possibly guess that she was three months pregnant.

A guilty twinge flared through her, and she bit nervously at her bottom lip. By rights she ought to feel horrified at the thought of her impending motherhood, but she didn’t—she couldn’t. Ridiculously, she felt as though she had been given a most precious and wonderful gift.

To go to bed with a stranger, and then to conceive his child, was so removed from the way she lived her life that even now she could hardly believe it had actually happened.

Indeed, when she had woken up that morning in her hotel room and found all trace of the man and his possessions gone, her first thought was that it had been a dream; only there had been that tiny betraying stain on the sheet, and the invisible, but unmistakable knowledge that her body had changed; that she had changed.

It had never occurred to her that she might have conceived, and for a while she had put her nausea and tiredness down to the after-effects of Leslie’s death. It had been Dr. Copeland who had somewhat diffidently suggested there might be another cause.

Diana knew that the doctor had expected her to be disturbed and displeased by her pregnancy; after all, she was a single woman, a career woman living alone; but what she had felt had been a thrill of pleasure so great that nothing else had seemed important.

Oddly, until now she had never even contemplated the possibility of having children, had never considered what role, if any, they might play in her life; but now she was as fiercely protective of this new emergent life within her as though she had lived her life with no further end in view than this act of procreation.

Her decision to give up her job and start life completely afresh had been an easy one to reach. She could not bring up her child the way she would wish in London. Leslie’s legacy made her independent; wealthy enough, in fact, not to need to work.

However, it was one thing to decide to have a completely fresh start, it was another to achieve it. On impulse she went to see Mr. Soames to ask for his advice.

He listened to her whilst she explained what she wanted to do.

“Hmm. I would not advocate complete seclusion from the rest of the world,” he commented when she had finished. “Perhaps a small business that you could run by yourself ….”

“I’m an archivist,” Diana interrupted him. “I have no training for running a business.” But Mr. Soames wasn’t listening, he was looking at her with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“My dear Miss Johnson,” he exclaimed with a beam. “I think I may have the ideal solution. Only very recently, a cotrustee came to see me on behalf of a mutual friend—now deceased, alas. I was brought up near Hereford, and have retained some ties there. My client owned a small bookshop in a Herefordshire market town.

“She died several months ago—both the property and the business are extremely run down—I am an executor of her estate, as indeed is the gentleman who came to see me.

“Since there is no one to inherit, it has been decided that the property will be put on the market. I must warn you, though, that since both the living and shop premises constitute a listed building, certain restrictions are imposed on their alterations and development.”

Diana listened to him in silence. A bookshop. It was something she had never thought of doing … But she had the contacts … and the knowledge … and her years with the television company had given her a keen insight into marketing and selling techniques.

A tiny glimmer of excitement flickered to life inside her.

“Are you suggesting that I might buy the business and the building?” she asked Mr. Soames.

“Heppleton Magna is an extremely pretty market town, on the River Wye. None of my family live there now, but I have fond memories of the place, and I still have several clients there. If you are interested I could arrange for you to see the premises.”

Diana thought quickly and made up her mind before her courage could desert her.

“I’d love to see it, Mr. Soames.”

Before she left his office, she had arranged to visit the shop with him later in the week.

“I shall telephone you with the exact details. My coexecutor is out of the country at the moment—on business, buying bulls I believe. He is a farmer, so I shall have to accompany you myself, if that’s agreeable.”

THREE DAYS LATER they went, and Diana fell in love almost immediately with Heppleton Magna and its surrounds.

The town was more of a large village, with red brick Queen Anne buildings surrounding the town square, and narrow wobbly lanes leading off it, where Tudor houses with overhanging upper casements pressed closely together. The shop was down at the bottom of one of these lanes.

Inside, the rooms showed the signs of neglect that came from having an elderly, proud owner who, according to Mr. Soames, had refused to allow her friends to help her.

“She was in hospital for the last few months of her life, but she still refused to hand over the keys to anyone. You can see the results,” he added with a faint sigh, pointing out damp patches where water had seeped through the leaking roof.

The kitchen and bathroom in the living quarters were apallingly basic, and the bookshop itself, so dark and dim that Diana was not surprised to see from the accounts that over the last few years its takings had dropped drastically.

Even so she had fallen in love with the place; in a strange way it seemed to reach out to embrace and welcome her.

They would be happy here, she and her child.

The house was in the middle of a block of three and it had a long back garden running down to the river. Beyond the river stretched endless fields; and she had already ascertained that there were plenty of schools and other facilities in the area. She and her child could settle down here and put out firm roots. She remembered with love and gratitude her own childhood in the Yorkshire Dales. Engrossed in her own thoughts, she scarcely heard what Mr. Soames was saying to her. Not that it mattered a great deal. She had already made up her mind. Just as soon as it could be arranged she was going to move down here.

On the way back to London she found herself wishing that Leslie could have been here to share the excitement with her. Unhappiness shadowed her eyes momentarily; and then she reflected that had it not been for Leslie’s death she would not be making these plans, because there would have been no child to plan for. This child was nature’s way of compensating her for the friend she had lost. She felt no guilt or remorse about the way her baby had been conceived. She had shut the night and the man out of her mind. They had no place in this new life she was making for herself. They had met and parted as strangers. For the first and last time in her life she had acted out of character. Indeed, sometimes she wondered, rather fancifully, if a higher authority had perhaps directed her actions that night. Certainly it was not the sort of thing she had ever previously contemplated doing; nor would do again. And equally certain was the fact that she had had no deliberate intention of conceiving—but she had. She touched her stomach gently and turned to Mr. Soames.

“You will get everything sorted out as quickly as possible, won’t you?” she asked him.

“Well, if you’re sure, my dear. I’ll have to have the agreement of my cotrustee, of course. He should be back within the next few days. I’ll get in touch with him just as soon as he is.”

Diana wasn’t listening. The property would be hers; instinctively she knew it. It was just as meant to be as her conception had been ….

The move to Heppleton Magna was accomplished smoothly and easily. In anticipation of the baby’s birth and the life she would soon lead, Diana had traded in her small nippy runabout for a much sturdier and larger estate car.

The flat she and Leslie had shared had been sold, and with it the modern, designer furniture they had chosen together. All she had kept had been various photographs and keepsakes. She wanted her child to grow up knowing her friend.

She had already transported most of her clothes and bits and pieces down to Herefordshire, and she paused beneath the window of the flat to say a final goodbye to it, before getting into her car.

A shaft of sunlight caught the bright gold of the wedding ring she was wearing, and she touched it lightly, her mouth curling in a wryly amused smile.

Perhaps it was wrong of her to pretend she was a widow, but the country wasn’t London, where single parents were almost the norm. Heppleton Magna had a predominantly elderly population, and she had no intention of allowing her child to grow up under the shadow of their disapproval.

Of course, there would come a time when he or she would ask about its father. Quite what she would say she had no idea. It would be difficult to make anyone understand the force that had driven her that night. She wasn’t sure she understood it properly herself, and she was sometimes inclined to wonder if her behaviour hadn’t at least in part been motivated by that extremely large gin and tonic she had consumed, on top of a sleeping pill.

It wasn’t important now, now it had happened, she told herself firmly. She was on the brink of starting a new life; it was time to put the past well and truly behind her.

She didn’t rush the journey—after all, there was plenty of time. She stopped off for a leisurely lunch and arrived at her new home late in the afternoon. A heavy workload at the TV station had meant that she had had no time to spare to furnish or equip her new home before leaving London so she had taken the precaution of booking herself into the local pub for a couple of weeks.

Because her new property was a listed building there were certain rules and regulations she would have to abide by in any alterations and improvements she had carried out, but luckily she had discovered a building firm locally who specialized in renovation and repairs of the kind she would need. She had an appointment to meet with their representative in the morning, when they would go over the house and shop together to list and discuss what had to be done.

She knew exactly how she wanted her home to look. The building was three stories high, with a lovely large sitting room, a breakfast room/kitchen, and two good-sized bedrooms, so she would have plenty of space.

The almost euphoric sense of freedom and happiness that possessed her these days must be something to do with her changing hormone structure, she decided guiltily as she thought of Leslie. Her friend would have wanted her to be happy though, she knew that. The baby—her new life—these were fate’s bonuses and she must look upon them as such.

The local pub was another Queen Anne building; next to it was the rectory, and next to that the church and the small local school; all relics from the days when a rich landowner had designed that part of the town to please a new wife, who had been entranced with their quaint prettiness.

Diana had a room overlooking the rear of the pub. The river flowed past the bottom of the long garden—the same river that flowed past her own, and she made a mental note to ensure that at some stage she had adequate, childproof fencing erected as a protective measure.

The room’s four-poster bed was part of the original furnishings of the pub; it was huge and cavernous, and Diana surveyed it with a certain amount of wry bemusement. This was a bed for lovers, for couples.

Off it was her bathroom and a small sitting room. She could if she wished either have her meals in her suite, or take them downstairs in the dining room.

After she had unpacked, she wasn’t hungry enough to want to eat again, and so instead she decided to go for a quiet stroll around the town.

The town was still very much a working country town whose businesses focused on the needs of the local farming population. The Queen Anne “village” had long ago become part of the growing market town, which was now a mishmash of several architectural styles. In the centre was an attractive town square, and the cattle market. Her own property fronted on to this square, and was in the busier area of the town.

As she wandered around she discovered, tucked away down a narrow alley, an interesting looking dress shop. As yet her figure had barely changed, but new clothes of the fashionable variety would be something she wouldn’t need to buy for some considerable time.

She paused to linger for a moment outside a shop selling nursery equipment and children’s clothes. She could see from the window display that the shop catered for the wealthier inhabitants of the town. Of course, this part of the country was well established as a rich farming community.

A very traditional coach-built pram caught her eye and she found herself imagining what it would be like to push. A small fugitive smile tugged at her mouth. What was happening to her? She had never once in her life imagined herself having such maternal feelings and longings, and yet here she was drooling over prams. How Leslie would have laughed.