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‘Oh, Tullah and Saul Crighton’s table.’
Crightons!
Immediately Sara twisted round to stare at the trio. As luck would have it the couple, obviously Tullah and Saul, were seated with their backs towards her. But the man she’d bumped into …
Sara’s breath rattled in her throat as he lifted his head and glared at her.
‘Oh, poor Nick,’ Frances was saying. ‘He’s not been very well.’
‘You mean like a bear with a sore head not well,’ Sara responded pseudo sweetly.
Frances’s eyebrows rose.
‘Oh, dear, he really has upset you, hasn’t he?’ she sympathised before continuing briskly, ‘No, actually he was involved in a very unpleasant incident. Like nearly all the Crightons he’s a qualified solicitor but the work he does is extremely specialised and often rather dangerous. Although in this case …’ Quickly she explained just how Nick had come to be hurt, but stubbornly Sara refused to be impressed.
‘Perhaps it might help if he carried a sign warning people not to get too close to him,’ she suggested through gritted teeth.
Frances forbore to comment. Sara was a gorgeous-looking girl and Nick was a singularly handsome man. Therefore, it seemed logical to Frances that the two of them should be attracted to one another. As the mother of young adults she was also well aware that sometimes such attraction presented itself disguised as hostility.
‘It’s nine o’clock. You’ve been working all evening,’ she told Sara with a smile. ‘Why don’t you call it a day.’
‘Not yet,’ Sara refused determinedly. Armed with the information Frances had given her she was sure she could solve her problem with the recalcitrant computer.
Frances smiled ruefully as she watched Sara walk away, this time giving the Crighton table a wide berth.
She had liked Sara on sight, sensing within her a gutsy determination allied to a warm sense of humour. Her stunning good looks would cause havoc, of course!
‘Nick,’ Tullah expostulated as she saw the grim way her brother-in-law was watching the woman’s determined circumnavigation of their table.
‘Little madam,’ Nick seethed without taking his eyes off her departing back. ‘Did you see the look she gave me?’
‘Well, I certainly saw the one you gave her,’ Tullah told him dryly.
‘Yes,’ Saul corroborated. ‘You were hardly your normal charming smooth self with her, Nick,’ he pointed out. ‘Pretty girl,’ he added appreciatively, laughing when Tullah gave him a mock glare whilst saying with wifely warning, ‘Saul …’
‘Very pretty,’ Nick agreed sourly. He wasn’t even sure himself just why he had reacted so badly to her. Common sense told him that the painful jolt she had given his still aching wound had been completely accidental and he knew that normally he would not only have accepted her embarrassed apology gracefully but that he would probably have done everything he could to create a good impression and set her at her ease.
So why hadn’t he?
Not surely because of that sharp little jolt of male sensual electricity, that more than a mere frisson of sensation that had seized him at their accidental bodily contact. After all, he had experienced physical desire for plenty of other women before her.
Physical desire, yes, but not that swift pang of dangerous knowledge, that unwanted awareness, that instinct that … that what?
That nothing, he told himself firmly.
‘You’re right,’ he announced, even though neither Saul nor Tullah had said anything. ‘I behaved very boorishly … and by rights I should apologise. I wonder where she’s gone.’
‘Frances will probably know,’ Tullah informed him. ‘She was talking to her.’
Ruefully Nick pushed back his chair and got up.
‘Sara?’ Frances responded in answer to his question. ‘Oh, she’ll be in the office. She’s standing in for our office manager….’
Thoughtfully she watched as Nick made his way through the tables.
Sara gave a small crow of satisfaction as she finally got the computer to do as she wished. Nick heard it as he pushed open the door of the office. Sara was standing looking at the computer screen, her eyes alight with triumph and pleasure. She was more than just pretty Nick acknowledged as he felt his heart jolt fiercely against his ribs.
Sensing someone’s presence Sara turned her head away from the screen, the breath rushing out of her lungs on a shocked whoosh as she realised who the intruder was.
‘Frances said I’d find you in here,’ Nick told her. Her body had stiffened and the look in her eyes was both wary and hostile.
Immediately his own body—and emotions—reacted.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he began tersely.
‘Yes, you do,’ Sara agreed spiritedly, ‘But you’re a Crighton and of course Crightons never apologise, especially to women….’
Nick stared at her. Her reaction was so unexpected and so extraordinary that it had taken him completely by surprise.
‘What on earth …’ he began, but to his fury he saw that Sara was ignoring him, concentrating instead on the screen in front of her, blanking him so totally and completely that he might just as well not have existed. Women never blanked Nick. Never! Whilst a part of him was distantly relishing his shock the rest of him was sharply and furiously angry that she could dare to both speak and act as she had.
‘Now look here,’ he said grimly, ‘there’s no way you can make that kind of statement without explaining just what it’s supposed to mean.’
As he spoke he moved closer to the desk, so close in fact that Sara could feel the angry heat coming off his body. This close he was overpoweringly male. Tall, broad, his eyes so dark that they could almost have been black, not the navy-blue she knew they were. Excitement and fear raced through her veins like rocket fuel. Caution told her that she had gone too far, but the voice of caution wasn’t one Sara wanted to listen to. No, she would much rather listen to the siren lure of the exultation egging her on, telling her she was giving Nick what he deserved.
Ignoring him she continued to work.
Nick had had enough. Irritably he reached out towards her, merely intending to cover her hand to stop her working the keyboard, but the moment his fingers brushed her skin a surge of such powerful sexual immediacy coursed through his veins that the original cause of his physical contact with her was forgotten.
‘Just let go of me,’ Sara snapped at him, her face as white now as it had been flushed when she had bumped into him earlier in the restaurant, her eyes brilliant with the intensity of what she was feeling. And what she was feeling was … Instinctively Nick knew that she was as aware of the sexual chemistry between them as he was himself.
For a man who was used to being totally in control of himself and his emotions, what he was experiencing was totally unwanted, so incomprehensible.
‘I came in here to apologise,’ he reminded Sara sharply.
Angrily Sara raised her head to look at him but the sarcastic response she had been about to make died on her lips unspoken, as for some inconceivable reason her gaze was drawn to his mouth and then his eyes and then back to his mouth again.
Almost as though he were standing outside of himself watching what he was doing Nick was aware of his own actions and his inability to stop them. It seemed to take an aeon of time for him to lean forward closing the gap between Sara and himself and then to cover her mouth with his, but in reality he knew it could only have been seconds. Her mouth tasted velvety warm, sweet salt sexy and the pressure of his own against it intensified.
Beneath the hot crushing sexuality of Nick’s kiss Sara’s senses reeled. This was the kind of kiss she had dreamed of as a young awkward girl … the kind of man … the kind of sensual immediacy that could not be contained or controlled. Instinctively her mouth softened beneath Nick’s and then outside in the corridor she heard someone laughing.
Immediately reality intruded, breaking the spell she was under. In the same second that she pulled back from him Nick released her. Wordlessly they glared at one another. Two pairs of eyes both reflecting the same furious resentment, both reflecting the same hot aching desire.
‘Everything all right now?’ Tullah asked Nick when he rejoined them. Saul had gone to pay the bill so only she was there to see the shattered, shocked expression in Nick’s eyes.
‘Everything’s fine,’ he lied as he guided her towards the exit where Saul was waiting for them both.
Crighton men! Sara seethed, her emotions in chaotic turmoil, her body equally disturbed. Tania had been so right about them.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_8296d807-1d2e-55e5-9296-80ebfbc52998)
‘GOOD LORD, IS that really the time?’ Frederick de Voysey exclaimed as he glanced at his watch. ‘I had no idea. Can’t remember when I last enjoyed m’self so much … excellent dinner, m’dear,’ he praised Honor.
‘I’ll drive you back to Fitzburgh Place.’ David smiled. He had deliberately not had any wine with his meal, knowing that he would be driving Honor’s cousin home afterwards.
He had been a little bit uncertain about the wisdom of inviting Freddy round for dinner the same day that the priest was arriving, but as always Honor’s judgement had proved better than his and the two men both in their seventies had got on famously together. So much so that Lord Astlegh had already invited the priest to join him in a game of chess later in the week.
‘In terms of religion they may be poles apart,’ Honor had agreed when David had raised that issue. ‘But in terms of their desire to help their fellow man they are very similar and surely that matters more.’
And so it had proved to be. From the tone of Freddy’s conversation David suspected that it wouldn’t be too long before the priest found himself involved in one or other of the peer’s ‘good works,’ but right now he could see that the older man was looking tired. He had, after all, only arrived from Ireland a few hours earlier.
‘I think I’m ready to call it a night as well,’ Father Ignatius agreed.
At the front door Honor kissed her elderly cousin fondly.
‘I’ve had the plans back for the orangery,’ he reminded her. ‘You’d better come up and see them.’
‘I shall,’ Honor assured him affectionately.
Closing the front door behind him she smiled at the priest. ‘Would you like to wait here until David comes back or would you prefer to go straight to your bed?’
‘Straight to bed if you don’t mind,’ he confirmed.
It had been a tiring journey from Ireland but it was a peaceful kind of tiredness. He had gone there for a purpose, back to the place where his ministry had begun. Now he could settle to a life in the Cheshire countryside. Father Ignatius was at the place that he knew would be his final home on earth.
He allowed Honor to walk with him to the small self-contained apartment they had prepared for him. Its rooms had a stark almost cell-like bareness that he knew was deliberate. David’s decision or Honor’s? It didn’t really matter. He felt comfortable here. At home … and was appreciative of whichever of them it was that had had the sensitivity to know that this would be what he wanted.
The books on the simple bookshelves were David’s choice—he knew that—and would have known it even if Honor had not whispered to him that David had spent days combing antiquarian booksellers lists for them.
They were books they had talked of in Jamaica. He reached for one, smoothing the aged leather cover, opening it and breathing in the familiar smell of its pages. There had been books like this at the Jesuit college where he had been educated. How long ago that seemed now.
‘Do you think Father Ignatius is all right?’ David asked Honor an hour later. They were in bed lovingly curled up together like two spoons. Whilst he waited for her response David started to nibble tenderly at the exposed curve of Honor’s neck. There was something uniquely adorable and almost absurdly youthful about the back of her neck. Closing his eyes he breathed in the unmatchable Honor scent of her. He was lucky, so undeservably blessed.
‘He’s tired after his journey, that’s all,’ Honor reassured him. ‘He certainly enjoyed Freddy’s company.’
‘Okay, I concede, you were right about them getting on well together,’ David laughed.
‘Olivia and Caspar were due back today, weren’t they?’ Honor said quietly.
‘Yes,’ David agreed. There was no laughter in his voice now.
Immediately Honor turned round to look at him.
‘Give her time, David,’ she counselled him. ‘I know how much you want to show her what she means to you, but—’
‘She hates me, Honor,’ David interrupted her sadly. ‘I can feel it….’
‘No, it isn’t you she hates,’ Honor told him wisely. ‘It’s herself. Poor Olivia …’
‘It’s my fault that she is suffering so much,’ David told her.
‘In part, yes,’ Honor agreed steadily.
‘I was a bad father,’ he said heavily.
‘Yes,’ Honor acknowledged. ‘You were a bad father, David,’ she told him truthfully.
‘I just want to make it up to her but she won’t let me get near her….’
‘Give her time,’ Honor repeated.
She could hear the pain and frustration in his voice and see it in his eyes.
‘Somehow it’s easier with Jack,’ David continued. ‘He’s—’
‘… male?’ Honor supplied.
‘No,’ David denied immediately.
Honor shook her head and told him truthfully, ‘That’s what Olivia’s going to think, David. The blame doesn’t all lie with you, though. Your father …’ She stopped.
‘Olivia is my daughter. I should have protected her from my father’s prejudices.’ David closed his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t burden you with all this.’
‘Of course you should,’ Honor told him immediately. ‘That’s part of what loving someone is all about … sharing … the bad as well as the good.’
Smiling she reached out and cupped his face and then very gently and slowly started to kiss him.
‘Mmm … more,’ David coaxed hopefully as he gathered her into his arms and started to kiss her back.
Jenny frowned over her shopping list. It seemed pathetically brief, but now, after all, she was only shopping for two. Joss had flown out to America to visit Jon’s aunt Ruth who was living there with her American husband, his last chance to do so before he started focussing on his school exams.
Joss and Ruth had always been particularly close and Jenny smiled as she thought about her aunt-in-law and her youngest son. Both of them were blessed with a special temperament, a serenity and wisdom that had a gentling effect on everyone they came in contact with.
The telephone started to ring and she went to answer it.
‘Jen, it’s me,’ she heard Jon saying. ‘Look, don’t wait for me for dinner tonight. David’s asked me to go up to Fitzburgh Place to see Lord Freddy. He’s got some business he wants to discuss with me.’
‘Is David going to be there as well?’ Jenny couldn’t stop herself from asking tersely.
‘David?’ She could hear the confusion in Jon’s voice. ‘I don’t know. He could be. Why?’
‘Nothing,’ Jenny fibbed. She could imagine how Jon was likely to react if she gave in to the childish desire to complain that just lately he seemed to be spending more time with his brother than he was with her. He had gone out earlier to play golf and she had been expecting him to return within the hour.
On her way back from her shopping she would call and see Olivia, she decided, to see if there was anything she could do to help.
‘Mumee … Mumee … Wake up. I’m hungry.’
Olivia opened her eyes as she heard Alex’s voice, her heart pounding as she saw the time. Ten o’clock. She was always up at six. She could feel the now familiar ice-cold nausea rising up inside her as fear flooded her veins. Her skin felt clammy but icy cold.
