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She made her voice as cool and crisp as she could but was a prey to distinctly ambiguous feelings as she saw the effect her words had, freezing that downward movement instantly, Pierce’s eyes becoming suddenly hooded and withdrawn.
‘I understand that congratulations are in order.’
From the way his face changed she knew that she had had the effect that she wanted—or, rather, the result that she had aimed for. What she had wanted was very, very different, and only now, with the possibility—or did she mean the threat?—that he might kiss her clearly averted, did she realise just how much she had wanted that caress, wanted it so desperately that the ache of loss that tormented her now made her clench her fingers into tight fists, nails digging into the palms of her hands.
‘I’d forgotten how quickly the village gossip grapevine work.’
‘So it’s true.’
‘Yeah, it’s true.’ Pierce’s voice was strangely flat. ‘I proposed to Phillippa a couple of months ago and she said yes straight away.’
I’ll bet she did, Natalie thought, the taste of jealousy like bitter acid in her mouth. No woman with red blood in her veins would turn down Pierce Donellan, even if he didn’t come with the added attraction of a private fortune—one that he had personally doubled over the last ten years or so as a result of the brilliant business acumen that had made his computer software company a major force to be reckoned with.
‘So what are you doing here? Why aren’t you with her?’
Why had he strolled back into her life, destroying the sort of acceptance she had achieved?
‘A little tricky,’ Pierce murmured sardonically, ‘seeing as she’s off on holiday—a Mediterranean cruise.’
‘A cruise?’
It seemed a strange thing for a newly engaged woman to do. If Pierce had asked her to marry him, there was no way she would have left his side unless she absolutely had to.
‘It was all arranged before we got engaged. She’d promised to go with her cousin.’
Something about his voice, the total lack of expression in his face heightened Natalie’s conviction that something was wrong, that he hadn’t just come here on the off chance as he’d said.
‘Pierce—why have you come here tonight?’
Broad shoulders under the supple leather lifted in an indifferent shrug.
‘To see a friendly face—totalk.’
‘About what?’
The change in his eyes worried her.
‘Tell me,’ she insisted. ‘What did you want to talk about?’
For a long, taut moment he considered the question, the blue gaze strangely dull and unfocused. Then at last he seemed to come to a decision.
‘About Phillippa,’ he said, his voice harsh and raw.
‘About my fiancée—or, rather, ex-fiancée, seeing as she’s dumped me.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘SHE’S—?’
Natalie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had to have it all wrong—he must have said something else.
‘Phillippa—she—? But I don’t understand.’
‘My fiancée has dumped me—broken off our engagement. To put it bluntly, she no longer wants to marry me,’ Pierce explained with exaggerated patience.
‘Oh, not that! I understand what you’re saying—but why?’
How could anyone in their right mind, having once accepted Pierce’s proposal, be fool enough to change her mind?
‘She’s found someone else.’ The bitterness in the declaration made her wince painfully. ‘Someone she met on the cruise—she prefers him.’
‘Oh, Pierce...’
Impulsively Natalie took a step towards him, the instinct to comfort overwhelming, but she froze immediately, seeing the way he stiffened, his face closing up, warning her to stay away.
‘How about that coffee?’ he prompted.
‘Oh, yes.’
She was glad to move away, into the kitchen, grateful for the chance to hide the pain she knew must show in her eyes. There was no way she could conceal it; just for that second she didn’t have the strength to hold it back. The very matter-of-factness of his tone had told her only too plainly that he didn’t want her sympathy, her concern. If he had slapped her hard in the face he couldn’t have got the message across more clearly or more painfully. But she couldn’t just leave it...
She turned to see Pierce lounging in the doorway.
‘It must have hurt you.’ If she wanted an idea of how it had felt, she had only to think of the pain she had experienced on hearing that he was to marry. Knowing it must happen some time hadn’t made it any easier to bear.
‘My ego suffered one hell of a shock, that’s for sure.’ Pierce’s laughter was harsh, no trace of humour in it. ‘And my pride.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Natalie was filling the kettle as she spoke, concentrating fiercely on what she was doing. ‘I mean, it might help.’
‘No.’ The declaration was hard and unyielding, leaving no room for negotiation. ‘I don’t want to talk about Phillippa, or her reasoning, or my feelings—I’d much rather talk about you.’
‘Me?’ Natalie set the mug she was holding down on the worktop with a crash that revealed her sense of shock. ‘There’s nothing interesting about me.’
‘I beg to differ.’ Pierce settled himself at the table. ‘For one thing, you’re not at all as I remember—you’ve changed.’
‘Hardly surprising when you consider that it’s almost three years since you saw me. It’d be pretty strange if I hadn’t altered in some way in that time. I grew up, Pierce—I’m not a little girl any more.’
‘You’re certainly not,’ he agreed. ‘But there’s more to it than that.’
‘You mean I’m no longer the plain, scrawny teenager who used to hang around the Manor kitchens?’ And who had been foolish enough to let herself believe—dream—that the occasional word or glance he tossed her way meant more than a casual interest in the daughter of one of the family’s employees.
‘No one could describe you as plain any more—you’ve flowered. Though you do yourself no favours scraping your hair back into that appalling spinster’s bun.’
‘I am a spinster, Pierce.’
It was an effort to speak because it was only then, belatedly, that Natalie paused to consider the possible implications of Pierce’s blunt announcement for herself, common sense warning her to take things very carefully.
All those years ago, she would have given anything she possessed for just one word of approval, one compliment from him. Now, when he seemed prepared to give them out with a generous hand, she didn’t know how to deal with it, the question of just what his motives were for being here permanently at the back of her thoughts, setting her mind on edge. After all, he had said that he wanted to talk about his broken engagement, but had then dismissed the subject immediately.
‘Technically, I suppose you are, but I’m sure the term doesn’t really apply—not after three years at college.’
‘I’m an old-fashioned girl.’ Natalie could feel the colour rush into her cheeks as she spoke.
His snort of dismissive laughter was disturbing.
‘Not that old-fashioned, I’ll bet! You’re not trying to tell me you didn’t have a long line of suitors forming a queue outside your door?’
‘Hardly a line.’
‘There must have been someone. You’re not telling me that you spent three years at college and no one even asked you out. What were they all? Zombies?’
‘Nothing like that.’ Natalie’s laughter was close to being genuine, only a little exaggerated in order to ease the tension that still hung in the air. ‘But there was no one special.’
How could there have been, when the man she loved most in all the world was sitting opposite her right now, so close that all she had to do was reach out a hand and she could touch him, stroke his cheek, brush back the lock of silky black hair that had fallen over his forehead—?
Becoming aware of the way that Pierce was watching her, the disturbing intensity of that sapphire-blue gaze, she dragged herself back to reality with an effort.
‘But you’re not claiming that no one got a look-in?’.
‘If by “a look-in” you mean did any of them move in with me or vice versa, then no!’
Natalie stirred the coffee she had made with unnecessary force, before placing the mug on the table beside him, hoping that the jerky movement conveyed more indignation than the uneasy churning in the pit of her stomach she was actually feeling.
‘Why are you harping on about this? I told you I was an old-fashioned sort of girl.’
‘I’m not harping, just interested—and that’s not so much old-fashioned as positively puritanical.’ Pierce laughed. ‘Are you trying to claim that you were waiting for Mr Right to come along?’ He sounded frankly incredulous, a deeply sardonic amusement lacing his tone.
But what he had said was just a bit too close to the truth for comfort. Belatedly, Natalie realised that instead of damping down his curiosity she was in fact fanning its flames with her attempts to dodge his questions.
‘Oh, all right, there was one man—Gerry. We were—close all the time I was at college.’
Gerry wouldn’t mind his name being taken in vain. He had wanted to be more to her than a friend. In fact, they had shared several very pleasant evenings which, for his part, he might have thought would lead to greater things, but which to Natalie were simply that—enjoyable nights out with an attractive man as her escort. The lighthearted kisses she had given him had remained totally uninvolved, sparking off none of the disturbing sensations that Pierce’s lightest touch could arouse.
‘I thought there must have been—when do you see him?’
‘I don’t.’ It might have been safer to pretend to an ongoing, passionate relationship with Gerry, but she couldn’t do it. ‘When we left Sheffield he got a job in Edinburgh.’
‘And it’s not a case of absence making the heart grow fonder?’
‘More like out of sight, out of mind, though we do write occasionally.’
‘Very occasionally, from the sound of your voice,’ Pierce murmured. ‘Whatever your Gerry did, it certainly riled you.’
‘It’s not what he did—it’s what you’re doing.’
‘Me?’ Pierce froze, his mug half raised, his look of confusion so apparently uncontrived that Natalie could almost believe it was genuine.
‘Yes, you—you’re prying into my private life.’ The knowledge of how dangerously close he had come to the truth made her voice tart. ‘Asking too many questions.’
‘The privilege isn’t exclusive,’ Pierce returned, surprising her. ‘You can ask as well as answer. Oh, come on, Nat!’ he laughed when she looked distinctly sceptical. ‘This isn’t the girl I know and love! As I recall, the problem used to be shutting you up rather than getting you to talk.’
‘And I can ask anything?’ Natalie asked with only a tiny shake in her voice. Her peace of mind demanded that she try to ignore that ‘I know and love’, being only too well aware of just how cynically it was meant.
‘Anything within reason.’
‘Then why did you decide to get married?’
The question was so close to the surface of her mind that it burst from her before she had time to consider whether it was really wise, but at least she bad enough presence of mind to catch herself up in time and not add the name that would have revealed that what she really wanted to ask was ‘Why did you want to marry Phillippa?’
But she’d overstepped the mark this time; she knew it as she saw the way that his face closed up, his mouth hardening, the muscles in his jaw tightening.
‘It’s all right! I shouldn’t-’
‘You asked—I’ll answer. After all—’ Pierce’s laugh was a travesty of genuine humour, no warmth in it at all ‘—after what’s happened, it would probably be a good idea to have a look at my motives—see exactly how I got myself into this mess.’
If she had regretted the question moments before, then now she wished she had cut her tongue out—anything other than push him into this darkly cynical frame of mind which made her want to weep for the loss of the ease they had shared only a short time before.
‘I always wanted to get married—’
‘It looked that way!’ Natalie couldn’t help retorting, recalling the seemingly endless stream of girlfriends that had blighted her adolescence.
‘Oh, damn it, Nat! Don’t look so sceptical! What’s wrong with playing the field until you find the right person—the one you want to settle down with?’
‘Nothing,’ she was forced to mutter, incapable of injecting any enthusiasm into the word, being only too painfully aware of the fact that Pierce believed he had found ‘the right person’ in Phillippa. ‘But I don’t know about field—it was more like fields—acres of them,’ she added in an attempt to conceal her private pain.
‘But I never led anyone on, let them think it was serious when it was nothing of the sort. Every girl I ever dated knew exactly where she stood—that there was no commitment—just a lot of fun. They all had a good time, and so did I—you know how it is.’
Natalie managed an inarticulate murmur that she hoped he would take as agreement. She wished she did know how it was. She had tried dating for fun, both at school and, later, at college, and she had enjoyed the company of the men she’d gone out with—some more than others—but that was all, and in the end it had all been ultimately disappointing.
‘No?’ She hadn’t convinced him.
‘I have to admit that I find no-commitment relationships rather like just treading water—not going anywhere and so frustratingly unproductive. I’m afraid I’m an all or nothing sort of person.’
And Pierce was all she wanted, but she couldn’t have him and so would she have to settle for nothing?
‘You always were far too serious for your own good. It was never like that for me—until my father died.’
Pierce stared down into the coffee in his mug, a frown drawing his dark, straight brows together.
‘Then I came up hard against a terrible realisation of my own mortality—one that was enhanced by a strong sense of responsibility.’
‘Responsibility?’
‘Like my dad, I’d always wanted children, but suddenly that need was overlaid by the realisation that the Donellan line depended on me. The Manor has been in our family for centuries and I know Dad wanted it to continue that way—I want it too. I suppose that sounds positively feudal to you.’
‘Not really.’
Natalie chose her words with care, painfully aware of the flatness of his voice on that ‘I’d always wanted children’. He’d wanted a family and now, because of Phillippa’s decision, he would be denied that. He sounded as if he had lost sight of all his dreams.
