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They broke apart, Tim turning to get into his car without looking behind him, and Claire remained on the footpath watching his car disappear, only aware of Brad’s arrival when he slammed his car door. She turned to face him with a startled expression.
‘Oh, Brad … You’ve just missed Tim,’ she began. ‘He—’
‘Yes, I saw him,’ Brad said tersely.
Claire tensed, searching Brad’s averted profile anxiously as she recognised his curt withdrawal.
Was Tim right? Was Brad on the point of dismissing him? She knew that there was no way she could bring herself to ask him; all she could manage was a hesitant, ‘Did you want to speak to Tim …?’
‘Not right now,’ he told her grimly, walking away from her and heading towards the house, leaving her to follow him—an act which in itself was so out of character for him that it caught her off guard. One of the first things she had noticed about him and reluctantly liked had been his quietly considerate good manners, his way of treating a woman with the kind of old-fashioned courtesy which seemed to have gone out of fashion.
‘In fact, right now, I think it would be just as well if I didn’t speak to him,’ he threw at her over his shoulder as he reached the back door.
‘You’re … you’re angry with him …’ Claire guessed hesitantly.
‘Angry with him! That’s one way of putting it,’ Brad agreed bitingly as he waited for her to precede him into the kitchen.
‘I know … he is very anxious about his job …’ Claire revealed, stumbling slightly over the words, wondering if she was doing the wrong thing in saying them. ‘Tim may not be a particularly … ambitious or aggressive man,’ Claire told him, feeling that she ought to do something to defend her brother-in-law and draw attention to his good points, ‘but he is very conscientious, very—’
‘You obviously hold him in high esteem,’ Brad interrupted her.
The sarcasm in his voice made Claire feel uncomfortable.
‘You obviously think I’m trying to interfere in something that is none of my business,’ she felt bound to say, ‘but—’
‘But you’d like to know anyway what my plans are for the future of the British side of our distribution network and, of course, Tim’s future with it. Is that it?’ Brad asked her, and grimly continued before she could make any denial.
‘Very well, I’ll tell you. Some changes will very definitely have to be made. As you yourself have just said, Tim is not the most confident of men and his lack of assertiveness comes across to potential customers as a lack of confidence, not just in himself but in our product as well. Couple that with his apparent inability to recruit the kind of highly motivated and even more highly skilled technicians and fitters we pride ourselves on using back home and it’s no wonder we’re having the problems over here that we are having.’
‘So, you do mean to cancel your contract with him and find a new distributor?’ Claire challenged him.
To her surprise, instead of immediately conceding that she was right, Brad frowned slightly and then said slowly, ‘No, not necessarily.’
When Claire looked questioningly at him, he explained, ‘It occurs to me that Tim might benefit from an intensive course on self-assertion techniques plus some input from a more positive role model to show him—’
‘How the job should be done,’ Claire supplied wryly.
‘No,’ Brad corrected her quietly. ‘To show him what can be achieved with a more positive approach … a different outlook if you like. We have someone working for us on the distribution side back home who would be perfect for the job, although it won’t be easy persuading him to come over here. But that’s my problem and you aren’t interested in my problems, are you? Only Tim’s. But then, after all, you are lovers.’
‘Lovers?’ Claire repeated in astonishment.
But before she could continue Brad was demanding angrily, ‘When did it start? After your husband’s death …? Before it?’
An affair! Brad thought she was having an affair with Tim.
‘OK, I can understand that your … marriage may not have … satisfied you, but hell … surely a woman like you could have found a man who was free to have a relationship and not one …’
Claire stared at him in shocked disbelief. ‘You have no right to make those kinds of assumptions about me,’ she told him stiffly. ‘You know nothing about me … or about my marriage.’
Even though she would rather have died than admit it to him, his comment about her marriage had hit a painful nerve, but not for the reason that he imagined.
‘I would never have an affair,’ she told him with passionate sincerity. ‘Never … I couldn’t.’
The vehemence in her voice fuelled Brad’s fury. How could she deny it when he had seen the evidence with his own eyes, heard it with his own ears? And if she had to have an affair with someone, surely she could have found someone more … more worthy than her poor, downtrodden brother-in-law?
‘“Couldn’t”?’ he challenged her contemptuously. ‘Oh, come on. You’re an adult, mature woman; you’ve been married … Your body knows how it feels to experience sexual desire, sexual fulfilment … sexual need; you must—’
‘No,’ Claire protested frantically. ‘No, that’s impossible; I could never … I have never …’
Something in her voice, in her face made Brad pause and look searchingly at her. She looked haunted, her eyes shadowed, her voice shamed … bruised.
‘What is it?’ he asked her. ‘What is it you’re trying to say?’
‘Nothing,’ Claire denied rigidly, starting to turn away from him.
But he reached out and caught hold of her arm, preventing her, telling her, ‘No, you can’t leave it like that. You could never … have never … what?’ he pressed.
He could feel the slight tremor that she tried to suppress run down her arm as she refused to look at him.
It was no use, Claire acknowledged fatalistically. Brad wasn’t going to give up until she had told him the truth. She closed her eyes, fighting back the engulfing wave of panic that threatened her. How on earth had this happened? How on earth had she got herself in such a situation, betrayed herself to such an extent?
As a child she had learned that the easiest way to deal with her aunt’s displeasure whenever she provoked it was simply to take a deep breath and submit to it, rather like taking a nasty dose of medicine all in one big swallow, so that she could get the whole thing over and done with.
‘I could never take a lover, have never had a lover,’ she emphasised with quiet dignity, fiercely ignoring her voice’s struggle not to wobble and the fact that she knew that her face, her whole body in fact, was burning with humiliated colour as she made herself admit the shameful truth to him—not that he had any right to demand it or any right to make her reveal it …
‘John … our marriage … John married me because he wanted a stepmother for Sally. I knew … he told me … that he could never love anyone the way he had loved Paula, but that for Sally’s sake he felt that he ought to provide her with a substitute mother.’
‘And you were happy with that … you accepted that?’ Brad persisted. There was something here that he didn’t understand. Had she, perhaps, been so desperately in love with her husband that she had hoped that he would change his mind … that he would fall in love with her? His heart ached with pity for her, and anger as well.
‘Yes,’ Claire confirmed.
‘But why?’ Brad probed. ‘Why? Why marry a man who you knew did not love you? A man who could never be a proper husband to you … never give you children … never share with you the pleasure of sexual fulfilment and commitment, the emotional …’ He paused as he saw the way she shuddered at his mention of her lack of sexual fulfilment.
‘What is it?’ he asked her curiously. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I didn’t mind the fact that John only wanted me as a stepmother for Sally because I didn’t want to have a sexual relationship with him … or with anyone,’ she told him doggedly.
For a long moment they looked at one another.
‘You didn’t want a sexual relationship … with anyone,’ Brad repeated.
Something here was eluding him. There had been no sexual revulsion or rejection in her reaction to him when … Shock, yes … anger too. Shock, anger and arousal. He listed them carefully in his mind a second and then a third time just to be sure that he was not making a mistake and letting his own emotions and responses obscure hers.
He looked away from her and started to release her arm, too stunned by what she had said to know what to say or do, and then he looked briefly back at her and saw that her eyes were brimming with huge tears which she was struggling desperately to control.
‘Oh, hell, come here,’ he muttered roughly under his breath, reacting instinctively to her distress, reaching for her and wrapping her in his arms in a fiercely protective hug, rocking her against his body as he held her tight with one arm and smoothed the silky fineness of her hair with the other and tried to comfort her.
‘It’s OK … It’s OK,’ he told her gruffly. ‘I’m sorry as hell that I upset you. I didn’t … What I said was out of line.
‘Talk to me, Claire,’ he groaned as he felt her body tensing under her attempts to stifle her sobs. ‘Talk to me … Let it all out … Tell me what it’s all about.’
‘I can’t,’ Claire sobbed. ‘I can’t …’
‘Yes, you can … Of course you can … Whatever it is you can tell me …’ Brad crooned the words in much the same way as he had once crooned similar reassurances to his brothers and sisters, comforting them through their childhood woes. Only Claire wasn’t a child, and she certainly wasn’t one of his siblings; his body was telling him that much.
Claire, thank the Lord, was too caught up in her own emotions to be aware of his arousal.
‘Tell me,’ he insisted, and then added with a smile, ‘I shan’t let you go until you do.’
‘There was a man,’ Claire told him reluctantly. ‘Another graduate. Three of us were sharing a rented house. It was my first time away from home … I … I suppose I was very naïve … My great-aunt was very strict; I … I didn’t have very much experience, didn’t know …
‘He … he came to my room. He said the gas in his own meter had run out and he had no money to replenish it. He asked if he could study with me … He offered to make our supper … I … I had just had a bath … Our rooms were very cold and I was wearing my … my nightdress and my dressing gown … I didn’t know … I didn’t think.
‘I … I went over to my bookshelves to get a book I needed. He followed me over. He was standing behind me … He put his arms round me …’ Claire moistened her upper lip, her eyes darkening as she relived what had happened.
‘At first I was too surprised to realise … I thought … I asked him to let me go but he wouldn’t; he just laughed. He started … he started …’ She stopped and swallowed painfully.
‘He started to kiss the side of my neck.’ She gave a small shudder. ‘I didn’t want him to … I tried to move away but he wouldn’t let me go. He started pulling at my dressing gown and …’ Her voice faltered to a standstill.
Brad’s arm tightened slightly around her. ‘It’s OK. Take your time,’ he told her softly.
‘I … Well, I’m sure you can guess the rest. He thought that by agreeing to him coming in I was … I was agreeing to have sex with him. He was furious with me when I refused—told me … called me … I … I thought he was going to force me … rape me …
‘We struggled for a while and eventually I managed to get free. I ran out of the house and into the street. It was raining and I slipped on the wet pavement … John saw me … he was on his way home … He stopped his car and came to help me. When I felt him touch me, at first I thought … I was almost hysterical,’ she admitted huskily, and Brad, remembering the night when he had unwittingly pursued her down a wet street, winced inwardly and cursed himself.
‘Eventually he managed to calm me down and make me explain. He took me home with him … made me stay the night.
‘He was so kind to me, so … so caring … I felt so safe with him,’ she told Brad quietly. ‘So … it was easy being with him and Sally, who, coincidentally was a pupil at the school where I was placed for teaching practice. There was no pressure … no awful feeling that he was about to pounce on me … that I might somehow … that he might think …’
Claire gave a tiny, despairing shake of her head.
‘You must think me very stupid, very naïve … to be so afraid of … of giving the wrong impression, of having someone, some man think … But I’d never felt very comfortable with boys … My great-aunt … And sexually …’
She struggled to find the right words and could only say huskily, ‘I didn’t … Some people don’t … The fact that John didn’t want to consummate our marriage was never a problem for me, and before you make any more accusations,’ she told him, a little more fiercely, ‘I was never tempted to break the vow of … of fidelity which I’d made when we were married. You must find me very … very cowardly and …’
‘No,’ Brad denied. ‘In actual fact I think you’re very brave to have told me what you just have,’ he elucidated gently when she looked uncertainly at him.
What he couldn’t tell her was what he thought of her husband, a man whom she obviously still looked up to but who, as far as he was concerned, had cruelly and selfishly taken advantage of her by using her naïvety and insecurity to trap her into a marriage which had robbed her of any right to discover her own sexuality.
‘How old were you when you and John married?’ he asked her gently.
‘Twenty-two,’ Claire told him.
Twenty-two. His heart ached for her.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she cried out fiercely when she saw his face. ‘I don’t want your pity. I wanted to marry John … I wanted …’
‘To deny your sexuality. Yes, I know,’ Brad said.
‘Some people … some women just aren’t very highly sexually motivated,’ Claire protested defensively. ‘They just don’t feel …’
‘Some women … some men are born with only a very low sex drive,’ Brad agreed, ‘but you aren’t one of them,’ he told her positively.
Claire stared at him, her eyes rounding, her face starting to flush slightly.
‘How can you say that?’ she protested. ‘You don’t know—’
‘Oh, I know,’ Brad interrupted. ‘I know very well because of this …’
And then, before she could really grasp what was happening, he had tightened his hold around her, one hand behind her head, and fastened his mouth gently over hers in the lightest and most delicate of kisses until the tantalising brush of his mouth against her own made her reach up instinctively to pull him down closer so that her lips could touch his fully, her body melting in liquid pleasure into his as he started to kiss her properly.
How could she ever have believed that she didn’t want this? Claire marvelled dizzily as her body threw off the shackles of self-restraint and fear and gloried unashamedly in its need to press even closer to Brad’s.
It was like taking off dark sunglasses and suddenly being dazzled by the brilliance of the sun, Claire decided in dazed euphoria as her senses revelled in their untrammelled freedom to indulge themselves.
The sound of Brad’s breathing, heavy and uneven, the smell of his skin, the heat of his body … Greedily Claire’s senses absorbed each new, sensual discovery, each new, sensual pleasure, whilst her mouth clung hungrily to his, willingly obeying his tongue’s urgent demand for her to part her closed lips to allow it to dart inside with quick, urgent strokes.
She could feel the harshness of Brad’s chest against her breasts as he started to breathe more deeply. The stiffness of the cloth separating their bodies chaffed their unfamiliar tenderness.
She could feel the difference, the arousal in her breasts, her nipples, her whole body, Claire realised.
And she could feel too the arousal in Brad’s. But where once the knowledge of a man’s arousal had filled her with revulsion and fear now her body shivered with heady, feminine triumph at her ability to cause such a reaction.
The discovery of her own sensuality and of Brad’s reaction to it was like drinking a heady aphrodisiac. She almost felt drunk on the effects of what she was experiencing, Claire recognised in a daze of pleasure as, without even knowing what she was doing, she rubbed her body provocatively against Brad’s, opening her eyes to gaze drowsily into his, her pupils so dilated that Brad caught his breath in an instantaneous and intense surge of sexual urgency.
She didn’t know what she was doing, he suspected as he fought to control his own searingly intense desire. Not to herself and certainly not to him. Oh, she knew that he was aroused but she didn’t know, had no way of knowing, just how out of character it was for him to be so vulnerable to sexual desire or just how fiercely intense that desire was.
She was still looking up at him, her mouth open over his, her teeth tugging sensually at his bottom lip, and he wondered what she would say if he told her how damned close he was to making the most primitive and urgent sensual use of the table only inches behind them.
And somehow he knew that the way he was feeling right now, the way she was unconsciously telling him what she was feeling … satisfying each other once wasn’t going to be enough … No way was it going to be enough.
As he tried to stifle the groan of longing that her teasingly erotic movements against his body were causing, he caught sight of the kitchen clock and cursed under his breath as he saw the time.
The office was twenty minutes’ drive away and he had an appointment in exactly half an hour with a potential customer.
‘Claire …’ He whispered her name into her mouth, watching in aching regret as he saw her eyes start to cloud. ‘Claire … I’ve got to go,’ he murmured softly.
He’d got to go … But he couldn’t go … She needed him, wanted him.
‘No …’ Claire started to protest huskily, and then abruptly she realised what she was doing, what she was saying, the enormity of her own behaviour. Scarlet-faced with mortification, she pulled away from him, unable even to look at him, never mind actually meet his eyes as she heard him explaining that he had an appointment but that he would get back just as soon as he could.
‘There was no need for you to … to do what you just did,’ she told him in a suffocated voice. ‘I know you feel sorry for me and that …’
Brad cursed silently, realising what she was thinking and what she was probably feeling. She thought that he had made love to her out of pity.
‘Claire—’
‘I suppose it must be quite a change for a man like you. I suppose I’ve got a certain curiosity value, if nothing else. After all, there can’t be many women of thirty-four in this day and age who don’t … who’ve never …’
