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‘I need the money,’ she said bluntly, ‘and I like this house. Manor,’ she corrected hastily. ‘I like beautiful things, and this house—sorry, manor—is full of beautiful objects. I studied art at college, you see. Did I mention that to you? I’ve always loved paintings, sculptures; they’re so much more soothing than all that grit and grime we see around us every day. Don’t you think?’
He was nodding in an abstracted sort of way and she wondered whether she was on the verge of losing his attention. He was probably finding her gauche and earnest, but she wasn’t the sort to play verbal games; she didn’t know how.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, taking refuge in as cool a tone of voice as she could muster, but feeling deflated. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know your name.’
‘Forrester. James Forrester.’ He didn’t stretch out his hand to hers. Instead he joined his fingers under his chin and continued to survey her with the sort of frank appraisal which she decided bordered on rude. ‘And your name is…?’
‘Claire Harper.’ That said, there didn’t seem much else to say and she hovered indecisively, wondering whether she could find the self-possession to smile blankly, utter a few closing pleasantries and take her leave.
He made her nervous and she wondered whether the housekeeper, Mrs Evans, had been right when she’d said that he was not around very much.
‘Why don’t you sit down,’ he said, ‘you look like a frightened animal about to turn tail and take flight. I won’t eat you.’
Ha ha, Claire thought, smiling weakly, very funny. She would have to get some lessons from her sister on how to deal with men like him. Jackie was far more adept when it came to the fine art of social interaction and savoir-faire. Staring and stammering definitely weren’t top of the league when it came to masterful social interaction.
‘I really can’t,’ she mumbled. ‘I want to get back before it’s too dark.’
‘I don’t think it’s possible to get any darker, do you? How did you get here? I assume you didn’t drive; there’s no car in the courtyard. Did you cycle?’
Claire shook her head. ‘Bus, then I walked the mile or so from the bus stop,’ she confessed, and he stared at her as though the concept of walking was very far removed from his idea of ways and means of getting from A to B.
‘Come on,’ he said, standing up. ‘I’ll run you back in my car.’
She refused, of course, protested, backed away, which only brought a curl of amusement to his lips, but in the end he drove her back to her lodgings in his sleek burgundy convertible Mercedes, and when she hurriedly tripped out of the car, he followed her up to the house, putting her in a position whereby to stand at the door and tell him to go would have seemed impossibly childish.
‘You live here?’ he asked in amazement, looking around the kitchen, and she followed the direction of his gaze.
It was shabby. The linoleum was lifting from the floor, the appliances all looked as though they had seen better times in the Boer war and God only knew when the walls had last had a lick of paint. Judging from the accumulated layers of grime, decades ago. If you think this is bad, she wanted to tell him, you ought to see the bedrooms, but then she had a sudden, disturbing picture of him in her bedroom and launched into a confused apology for the scrappy condition of the kitchen, explaining how difficult it was to get somewhere cheap and presentable to rent when landlords seemed to adhere to the belief that there was no reason to do anything but the very basic with their accommodation when lack of choice would bring tenants anyway.
Her voice trailed off and she stared at him nervously. The other girls were not yet back from work, although they would be shortly, and in her haste to hurry him out of the house before they returned and began asking her a series of questions about him, she took him by the arm to lead him back to the side door.
The jolt of awareness that shot through her at the slight physical contact brought hectic colour to her cheeks and she sprang back, alarmed.
‘Take good care of my house,’ he drawled, watching her face and leaving her with the impression that he was well aware of the effect he had on her. ‘Sorry—manor.’
There was a little silence and she raised her eyes reluctantly to his, and for some reason her head began to spin and her mouth went completely dry. He was so overpowering, with those potent, dark good looks and that air of lazy sex appeal which she could glimpse quite easily now that some of his cold arrogance was no longer in evidence.
Only when he left did she relax, leaning heavily against the door and breathlessly telling herself that Jackie would die laughing if she could see her now.
She would have seen all that crazy self-consciousness and stammering shyness as one hundred per cent predictable. If you’d read fewer books and done more partying as a girl, if Mum and Dad hadn’t treated you like breakable china, if you’d stayed in London and allowed me to sort you out, if, if, if… Jackie would never have understood.
She didn’t understand it herself. In the car, surrounded by darkness, listening to that deep, sery voice as he chatted about Frilton Manor, she had felt as though she was drowning. Confused and nervous, but wonderfully so. As if she was truly alive for the first time in her life. Sleeping Beauty awakened by a magical kiss.
It was another fortnight before she saw him again, but after that they seemed to bump into each other on a regular basis. He was working from home. She gleaned that from Mrs Evans, who also told her that that in itself was highly unusual.
Unusual or not, Claire found that the prospect of him being in the manor made her wake up in the mornings raring to go, although she didn’t question why this should be so. She found herself listening for his footsteps, contriving to be in the same room as he was, always making sure that there was a duster and a can of polish in her hand, of course. She was, she knew, beginning to feed off the illicit thrill of seeing his dark, handsome face, hearing the deep timbre of his voice. She was still looking in the newspapers for jobs, but half-heartedly, because a part of her didn’t want to have to give up her job at Frilton Manor, or else continue at it on weekends only, when he wasn’t guaranteed to be around.
She was about to leave one evening when he appeared from the direction of the library, which doubled as his office, and called out to her. She found herself immediately smiling at him, appreciatively taking in the casual green cords and thick off-white jumper. He could wear anything, she had decided, and still look unbearably, terrifyingly handsome.
He looked at her with that lazy amusement which she knew she had glimpsed in his eyes occasionally, and which always made her tremble with awareness, and then surprised her by asking her to join him for a drink.
‘Or some coffee,’ he said, ‘if you don’t drink.’
‘Oh, I do!’ she lied, blushing. ‘I’d love a…’ she thought quickly about it’… gin and tonic.’
It was after six and already pitch black outside with the threat of snow hanging in the air, and she knew that she should leave before the threat became reality, but the temptation to linger in his company was too irresistible.
She followed him into his study, where a carved mahogany bar blended comfortably with the rest of the furniture, and looked around her guilelessly while he poured her a drink.
It was a shame, she thought, that he had caught her like this at the end of the day, when she was looking a little worse for wear, but at least she was wearing her best-fitting pair of jeans and a navy blue baggy cotton jumper which she knew was flattering with her shade of eyes and dark hair.
He handed her the drink and gestured for her to sit down, while he perched on the edge of the desk, looking down at her from what seemed a great height.
She was beginning to feel nervous and jumpy, which always seemed to be the case whenever she got too close to him, when he broke the silence by asking her whether she had found a job as yet.
Claire looked at him, startled.
‘No,’ she stammered, frowning, ‘I haven’t. I’m sorry. They’re terribly difficult to find, or at least the right ones are. Why do you ask? Do you want to get rid of me?’ She hoped, as she stared at him, that she didn’t look too pleading, but the thought of never seeing him again made her feel slightly sick.
He gave her a long, careful look. ‘Of course not. I just imagined that working here can’t exactly be riveting for a girl of your age. Not on a full-time basis, at any rate. It’s a beautiful house, full of beautiful things, but the job isn’t exactly the height of intellectual stimulation, is it? And I gather from the little I’ve seen of you that you’re not an unintelligent girl.’
She wished that he would stop calling her a girl. She was a woman, not a ten-year-old in a gingham dress with her hair in pigtails. She was twenty years old, wasn’t she? She had been to college, hadn’t she? And she was sitting here now with a glass of gin and tonic in her hand, and that was a very adult drink indeed. She took a mouthful of it and tried to control the grimace of distaste from crossing her features.
‘I enjoy working here,’ she murmured evasively, carefully putting the glass on the table next to her and then sitting on her hands because they were showing a tendency to tremble.
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ She looked at him blankly. ‘Because…’ Her voice trailed off while she tried to think of some logical reason to explain why a college graduate qualified to do a completely different job should be content with a cleaning job at Frilton Manor, however splendid a house it was.
‘Because…?’ he prompted, throwing his head back to swallow from his glass.
She watched him, fascinated by the strong, brown column of his throat, the long fingers, the forearm finely sprinkled with dark hair. She was still staring at him when his eyes met hers and she started guiltily.
‘Because,’ she said, trying to remember the question.
‘Because, perhaps, it’s a challenge?’ he drawled. ‘Come on, Claire, be honest with me. Is there some other reason for your working here?’ His green eyes were sharp on her face. ‘You seem honest enough, but who knows? Perhaps there’s a boyfriend lurking on the sidelines somewhere, and the two of you are simply biding your time until you decide which bits of silver you’re going to lift.’
She jumped to her feet angrily, her cheeks flaming red.
‘How can you even think such a thing?’ she asked fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t…I couldn’t…there’s no boyfriend lurking on the sidelines! I wouldn’t dream of…’ His implications were so staggering that she was finding it difficult to articulate, and she grabbed the glass from the table, swallowing the remainder of the drink in one long gulp. There was a rush of blood to her head and for a minute she thought that she was going to faint but she gritted her teeth together and looked at him straight in the eye.
‘It was merely a passing thought,’ he said, shrugging, ‘and I’m surprised you can’t understand my line of questioning. Why would a beautiful girl like you be willing to spend pretty much all day here,’ he gestured around him, ‘when there are far more exciting things happening in the big bad world outside?’
‘I am not a girl!’ she heard herself say in a loud voice, ‘I’m a woman!’ Had he called her beautiful? He had!
There was a long silence, during which she could hear her heart thumping in her chest, even if he couldn’t. She hardly dared breathe and she had the funny feeling that he was looking at her in a completely different way. Or was it just the gin and tonic going to her head? Two glasses of cider and she felt tipsy. Perhaps after one gin and tonic she was beginning to hallucinate.
‘Yes, I suppose you are,’ he said blandly.
‘But not like the sort of women that you’re accustomed to, is that it? Is that what you’re implying?’
‘I didn’t think that I was implying anything.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. Not the first bit of it, anyway.’ These were not at all the things she wanted to say, she realised, but for some reason they were spilling out of her mouth of their own accord and the brain seemed to have very little say in the matter.
Standing up as she was, she was on an eye-to-eye level with him. He was within touching distance, she thought.
‘All right,’ he said as though the matter was really of no great importance to him anyway, ‘if you really want to know, no, you’re nothing like the sort of women that I’m accustomed to. In fact, I can’t recall meeting anyone like you in a very long time. Are you usually so forthright?’
‘I don’t believe in playing games with people.’
‘We shouldn’t be having this conversation,’ he said heavily, and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask him why not when it struck her precisely why not.
Here they were, alone, in a semi-lit room which carried its own seductive atmosphere of intimacy, having a conversation about what was basically sex. It was a dangerous situation, but it was also an exciting one, one in which Claire had never before found herself.
Her emotional life, at the age of twenty, was as pristine as the driven snow. She had had boyfriends, that was inevitable, but they had all been passing interests, not one of them serious enough to make her lose any sleep.
‘I only wanted to find out a bit more about you,’ she said weakly.
‘About which aspect of my life in particular?’ he asked with a return to his normal dry tone of voice, although something in his manner wasn’t as relaxed as she knew he was trying to appear.
She looked at him vaguely and he said, raising his eyebrows in an amused question, ‘The sexual aspect?’
‘Sexual aspect?’ The frankness of the question horrified and excited her at the same time. Was this how the upper echelons communicated all the time? It wasn’t as if she didn’t know about sex, but it was the thought of him in a sexual situation that addled her. It wasn’t just that beneath those clothes it was easy to discern a physically powerful body. It was much more than that. It was his personality, the combination of ruthlessness and sensuality that made for such a heady mix.
She was certainly feeling very heady now. Doubtless the drink had something to do with it, but, she had to admit in all honesty, not really a great deal.
There was a thick silence, and then she said recklessly, ‘All right, yes, I can’t deny that I’m curious about the sexual aspect of your life. Have you slept with lots of women?’
‘What do you think?’
Claire stated at him nervously. ‘I don’t know. I suppose you have. I mean, you’re…’
‘What?’ he asked softly, and she bit down on her lower lip, wishing now that the conversation had never got started.
‘Attractive, I guess.’ Now that it was out, now that she had admitted that she was attracted to him, she began to feel considerably braver. Two months ago she would have run a mile at the thought of this type of conversation. She had always tended to shy away from anything that was provocative or blatant. It was a trait which her parents thought was charming, but which she personally considered an anachronism in this day and age when sexual liberation was so commonplace that it wasn’t even discussed.
Right now, though, her emotions were calling the tune and her mouth just seemed to be dancing to its music, uttering things that she would never have imagined herself saying to a man in a million years.
‘In fact, I’m very attracted to you,’ she said boldly.
He was staring at her and the intensity of his gaze brought a rush of colour to her cheeks.
‘That’s very flattering,’ he murmured, raking his fingers through his hair, ‘but you’d be better off confining your infatuations to someone nearer your age.’
‘Does that mean that you don’t find me attractive?’
‘You’re putting words into my mouth.’
She knew that he would have stood up and walked away, probably out of the room if not out of the house, but she was standing directly in front of him, blocking an easy exit.
‘I’m not attracted to boys nearer my age. They’re immature. They don’t do anything for me.’ She was breathing quickly now and the palms of her hands were damp with perspiration.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he said roughly. ‘That’s the drink talking.’
‘No, it’s not!’ She took the smallest of steps towards him and rested her hand against his neck, brushing it with her thumb.
His eyes darkened and she was pleased to see that he wasn’t in total control either.
Does that mean that he’s attracted to me? she wondered. He hadn’t said otherwise, had he? And he had invited her to have a drink with him. That hadn’t been necessary, had it? So what did that add up to? she wondered feverishly.
There seemed only one way to find out. With one impulsive movement she pressed her mouth against his, parting her lips to allow her questing tongue entry into his mouth, and with a groan he began kissing her, really kissing her.
It was like being lifted off her feet and transported into a completely new dimension. He raised his hands to cup her face, pulling her towards him, devouring her with a savagery which made her blood boil.
When he slipped his hand underneath her jumper to caress her breast through the shirt, she had an insane desire to rip her clothes off so that she could feel flesh against flesh. Her nipples were hard and aching and she begged in a high, pleading voice,
‘Make love to me. I want you. I need you, I love you.’
She was so consumed by the ferocity of her own wanting that it took a few seconds to realise that he had frozen. She opened her eyes and looked at him in bewilderment.
‘What is it?’ she asked, reluctant to let go of the mood but knowing that she had no choice.
‘What the hell do you think?’ he grated, literally lifting her off her feet to move her aside. ‘I think it’s time that you left.’
‘Why? What have I done?’
‘There’s no room in my life for an infatuated child,’ he bit out grimly, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘This is all my fault. I’m completely to blame,’ he continued. ‘I’m just glad that I came to my senses before I ended up doing something that I would have lived to regret.’ He stood up and said dispassionately, ‘You can stay in here a couple of minutes, enough time to come to your senses, and then I suggest you leave.’
‘But you don’t understand! I love you!’
‘You don’t know the meaning of the word,’ he rasped harshly. ‘And in view of what’s happened here tonight, I think it might be a good idea if you didn’t return.’
‘No!’
She stared at him in mute silence and finally he said with a heavy sigh, ‘All right. You can stay, but keep out of my way. I shall be here for the next week and I don’t want to… Let’s just say that I’m only a man.’ He gave her a harsh, impatient look, then he was gone and she was left standing alone in the study and wondering what she would do now.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_fa28b21b-e60e-5639-aff8-fce1f84c0e8e)
SHE couldn’t leave. Thinking back about it, and God knew she had thought about it all a million times over the past few months, she could see that she should have done. She should have nipped her growing love for him in the bud, and then she might have been able to retreat from the relationship with her dignity and emotional stability relatively intact.
But she stayed, and for a while things settled down into an uneasy pattern. James was hardly around, and when he was she knew that he was avoiding her. The few times they bumped into each other, he was scrupulously polite to her, and she in turn tried to hide the lovesick longing in her eyes.
She still hadn’t breathed a word of what was happening to either her parents, who would have been appalled by the whole thing, or to Jackie, who would have laughed and insisted that it was all a girlish crush, the result of having led such a retiring, introverted life as far as the opposite sex were concerned.
Then, the unthinkable happened. She went for an interview at a small but fast-expanding local advertising firm who were looking for someone to work in their creative department.
‘I expect you won’t have to give any notice at this cleaning job that you’re doing,’ her prospective boss said, reading through her application form and tapping his fingers on the desk as though he had more pressing things to do and really wanted the interview to conclude as quickly and painlessly as possible.
