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‘I think I, more than most, can understand how you feel. After all, growing up without a father, never even knowing who he was, has always made me feel incomplete somehow—as if some important piece of my own personal jigsaw puzzle is missing, one that would help me see the complete picture.’
‘Your mother never said anything, even at the end?’
‘She wasn’t capable of saying anything,’ Natalie sighed, her eyes clouding at the painful memory of her mother’s last illness, three years before, while she had been in her final year at college. ‘At least, not coherently, though there was one point when she kept saying a name over and over—Hilton—I think it was that. I’ve let myself believe that it was my father’s surname, and that, at the end, she forgave him for abandoning her.’
Her voice had no strength to it, her thoughts swinging to the irony in the way that, while in full health her mother had been so determined to keep the two of them apart, her illness had in fact brought her and Pierce closer together, if only briefly.
Because if she hadn’t already fallen head over heels in love with Pierce, then she would have done so on that bleak March morning when he had arrived out of the blue with the appalling news of Nora Brennan’s collapse. If he hadn’t already had possession of it, she would have given him her heart as a result of the unfailing kindness and consideration he had shown her then and throughout the dark days that had followed. Certainly, it had been the time when her love had matured, becoming that of a woman instead of the girl Pierce had known.
‘It would mean so much to you?’
‘It would help me feel I know who I really am—if you know what I mean. If I could just know who my father was, even if he’s dead, at least then I’d have a name to put on my birth certificate instead of that empty space. It’d go a little way to make up for not having a real family. So, you see, I can appreciate how important your family name must be to you and that you’d want that line to continue. And, of course, I expect your mother would want grandchildren.’
‘My mother—’ Pierce’s face darkened, his mouth twisting in the firelight. ‘There’s going to be hell to pay there—she’s already bought a particularly spectacular hat in anticipation of the wedding that isn’t going to be.’
The wry humour didn’t convince; Natalie was still very much aware of the bitterness underneath.
‘She doesn’t know?’
‘No one knows except for Phillippa and myself—and now you.’
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ Natalie put in hastily, and was surprised by his dismissive shrug.
‘People will have to know some time. It might as well be sooner rather than later.’
‘Your mother won’t be the only one who’ll be disappointed. Everyone in the village was looking forward to a summer wedding—’
‘Hell and damnation, Nat!’ Pierce’s furious roar was matched by a violent movement that brought him swiftly to his feet, so that he towered over her, the ominous threat of his dark scowl making her nerves twist in fearful apprehension. ‘My marriage wasn’t planned to please the bloody village!’
Too late, Natalie realised the tactlessness of her words. Pierce had always hated the almost possessive way in which the inhabitants of Ellerby regarded the Donellans. The family were still seen very much as the local nobility, their lives and activities commented on with almost as much interest as the royal family was nationally.
‘Of course not—I’m sorry, I didn’t think.’
Her shaken words seemed to pull him back from wherever his savage thoughts had taken him, leaving him looking troubled and, just for a moment, strangely confused. At last his eyes focused on her again, taking in the way she had shrunk back from him, her wide, dark eyes.
‘Oh, hell, Nat—I’m sorry.’ Roughly he raked both hands through his black hair, disturbing its shining sleekness. ‘I should never have come—never have inflicted myself on you like this. I’m not fit company for anyone.’
‘That’s hardly surprising in the circumstances.’ Natalie switched on a smile that she hoped looked genuine. ‘And you didn’t inflict yourself.’
‘Nevertheless, I ought to go.’
He was looking around him for his jacket and something about the way he moved, the angle at which he held his head alerted her, sounding warning bells in her thoughts.
‘Pierce...’
‘Mmm?’
The heavy lids hooding the over-bright eyes he turned confirmed her suspicions, as did a faint slowness in his reaction. It was tiny, almost imperceptible, and only someone as sensitive to everything about him as she was would have noticed it.
‘How much have you had to drink?’
‘Too much to remember clearly, but not enough to make me forget,’ he returned with a sudden harshness that she had to ignore as she moved to catch hold of his arm.
‘You had something before you came here, didn’t you? And then the sherry—Pierce, you shouldn’t have been driving in that state!’
‘My dear Natalie—my eminently sensible little friend—how very moral and controlled you are about everything.’
Those sapphire eyes danced in unholy amusement as Pierce lifted one hand and rested it lightly against her cheek. But a moment later his mood changed again, sobering abruptly as he shrugged off her protest.
‘I know I would have done better not to drive, but I wasn’t over the limit, and I had to talk to someone or go out of my mind.’
‘Yes—but all the same...’ Natalie struggled to ignore the warmth that had flooded through her veins at his touch, and the double-edged effect of that ‘little friend’. ‘You can’t drive any further tonight.’
‘I have to, sweetheart—unless you have some alternative to suggest.’
Sweetheart! If anything convinced her that he was not completely sober, it was that. Pierce had never called her anything even remotely so affectionate before. In the past he had labelled her only by the shortened form of her name, refusing to use its full version because ‘Natalie’s far too elegant for a little scrap like you’. Such uncharacteristic behaviour was more revealing than anything that had gone before.
There was only one possibility. ‘You’ll have to stay here.’
‘Here?’
Black eyebrows lifted in an exaggerated expression of amazement, and the gleam of wicked humour lit up those blue eyes once again.
‘That’s a highly improper suggestion, Miss Brennan.’ The sardonic mockery did nothing to hide the cutting edge to his words. ‘Whatever will the neighbours think?’
‘They needn’t know anything about it.’ Natalie refused to rise to his taunt. ‘After all, you said that you parked the car some distance away, and if you leave latish tomorrow when everyone’s gone to work—’ She broke off on a stab of pain as Pierce shook his head in adamant rejection.
‘I think not,’ he said curtly. ‘My coat—’
‘No, Pierce.’
Moving swiftly, she reached the jacket before him, snatching it up and holding it behind her back, out of his reach.
‘I won’t let you—you’re not fit to drive.’
‘Then I’ll walk.’ His tone was positively dangerous now, his eyes almost black with anger, resistance and denial of her arguments stamped into every line of his body. ‘I can’t be found drunk in charge of my feet!’
‘It’s pouring with rain! You’ll get soaked!’
‘I won’t melt. Natalie, I can’t stay—I can’t share your—’
‘You won’t have to share anything!’
Concentrating hard on getting him to listen to reason, she knew she shouldn’t pause to consider how his words made her feel. She couldn’t cope with the ambiguous feelings that assailed her at the thought that he actually believed she was offering him a place in her own bed, the realisation that this was the only possibility that had crossed his mind. In her thoughts she could hear her mother’s voice, cynical conviction in every word.
‘There’s only one thing a man like that wants from a girl like you, and I don’t have to tell you what that is.’
And of course she could have no doubt as to what was meant when she herself was the living proof of that ‘one thing’ a man might want, and even more evidence of the fact that when it became plain that that pleasure would result in consequences then the man responsible wouldn’t be seen for dust.
But her mother had been wrong about Pierce, as Natalie knew to her cost. He had made it plain that even when it was offered he had no interest at all in her body. So now, squashing down the pain that simply remembering brought, Natalie had no hesitation in pursuing her point determinedly.
‘This may not be the Manor House, but I do have a perfectly adequate spare bedroom.’
‘All the same—’
He made a move towards the door, but Natalie was there before him, slamming it shut and putting her back against it so that he would have to move her physically out of the way if he was really determined to leave.
‘Natalie—’
‘No argument, Pierce!’
She had to struggle to ignore the warning implicit in his use of her full name, refusing to let herself consider the fact that his determination to leave was motivated by much more than a simple concern for her reputation. Allowing herself the thought that he simply didn’t want to stay with her would weaken her too much and she couldn’t give in now.
‘I couldn’t have it on my conscience if I let you go and you hurt yourself or someone—’
‘For God’s sake, woman!’
As hard fingers closed over her arms, digging fiercely into the soft flesh, she knew with a terrible sinking sense of despair that if he did decide to move her she would be unable to resist, even her determination appearing pathetically puny when compared with his muscular strength.
And in the same moment she suddenly, shockingly, but far, far too late, knew a dreadful creeping fear at the thought of the force of the anger she had awoken in Pierce, the power she had unthinkingly released and might be totally incapable of stopping. She had always known that Pierce Donellan was a formidable force to be reckoned with, both at home and in the business world. The respect his estate workers had for him, his almost legendary reputation as a big fish in a very big pool were well known, but never before had she had that forcefulness turned on her personally, and, faced with the storm power of it, she needed all her courage in order to hold her ground.
‘I can’t let you do this!’
For a frightening second his grip tightened bruisingly, and she swallowed hard, nerving herself for the inevitable. Surprisingly, it didn’t come. Instead, Pierce looked deep into her eyes, seeing the determination in their coffee-coloured depths—the defiance—the fear.
‘Oh, hell!’ he muttered harshly, releasing her with such abruptness that she stumbled backwards and would actually have fallen if it hadn’t been for the support of the door behind her. ‘All right, if it’ll get you off my back—you win! Which room?’
‘Top of the stairs, first right—bathroom’s just next door.’
Natalie could feel no pleasure in her victory. Did he have to make it so obvious that staying was the last thing he wanted? she asked herself as Pierce, after the curtest of goodnights, made his way upstairs. She had got what she wanted, but at the cost of a painful blow to her heart.
She would give him time to use the bathroom and get into bed, she told herself, determinedly turning her attention to washing up, and refusing to let her mind drift because it showed an alarming tendency to wander off on to disturbing thoughts of Pierce undressing in the soft blue and white bedroom, of his strong, lean body sliding between the sheets...
‘Put the milk bottle out—lock the door—bolt it—fireguard—switch off the lights...’ she muttered to herself in order to provide a distraction from the wayward path her thoughts were taking. Was twenty minutes long enough?
It would have to be. It was coming up to midnight; she was worn out, and she had to be up before seven in the morning.
Not that she had any real hope of sleeping, she told herself as, dressed in a short denim-blue cotton nightdress, she brushed her teeth before taking herself off to bed. The thought of Pierce in the room directly opposite her own was more than enough to keep her wide awake. She would be able to hear every creak of the elderly bed, any slight movement he made.
stop it!
Ruthlessly she splashed her face with cold water, praying that it would cool her heated thoughts, lower the heightened temperature that was the result of her crazily racing pulse. It was as she dried herself that she realised she hadn’t provided clean towels for Pierce. She had been so knocked back by his unexpected capitulation that she hadn’t even thought about it. He would need them in the morning.
She would just drop them in on her way back to her room. He was probably already fast asleep anyway, the wine he had drunk having taken effect, but when, finding his door ajar, she put her head round it, she was surprised to see that the bedside lamp was still on, throwing a pool of warm light onto the dark head that lay on the crisp white pillows.
But Pierce’s eyes were closed, she noted with a sense of relief, his long black lashes lying like crescents just above the strong cheekbones, the dark regrowth of his beard already shadowing the hard line of his jaw. She’d just leave the towels and go, she told herself, moving on tiptoe so as not to disturb him.
It was as she reached for the switch to turn off the lamp that those heavy lashes lifted slowly and she froze, staring straight into slightly unfocused, sleep-clouded sapphire-blue eyes.
‘Natalie...’ Her name was a weary sigh rather than a sound of welcome, stilling the tentative smile on her lips. ‘What the hell do you want now?’
‘I just brought some towels—I forgot to give them to you earlier.’ Pain made her voice tight and cold, her gesture jerky as she indicated the small bundle at the foot of the bed. ‘I thought you’d probably want a shower in the morning.’
‘Thanks.’
She was dismissed, his indifferent tone said. His eyes were closing again, deliberately, she thought, communicating only too clearly the message that she was not wanted.
“All right, then, I’ll leave you in peace.’
‘Please do.’
Those two words burned like bitter acid in her heart.
‘Well... goodnight.’
She couldn’t help herself; a shadow of her distress tinged her words in spite of the effort she made to hold it back, and, as he heard it, Pierce’s eyes flew open again.
‘Nat...’ His voice was low and strangely rough at the edges. ‘Thanks for everything.’
There was a subtle, indefinable change in his face, one she couldn’t even begin to interpret, and suddenly he lifted himself up on the pillows, holding out a hand to her.
‘I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t been at home.’
‘I’m glad I was here for you.’
She tried to sound brisk and matter-of-fact, fighting against the recollection of just why he was here in the first place—because of the hurt that another woman had inflicted on him. But, try as she might, she wasn’t strong enough to resist the appeal of that outstretched hand, the new softness in his eyes.
Her heart jerked violently in her chest as she perched awkwardly on the side of the bed, taking the warm strength of his fingers in hers.
‘After all, isn’t that what friends are for?’ She let her hand linger in his for a moment longer, then forced herself to make a move to get up. ‘Now you must get some sleep—I need some if you don’t; I have—’
‘Nat,’ Pierce interrupted suddenly, his voice touched with a rawly urgent note that stilled her, holding her unable to move. ‘Don’t go—I don’t want to be alone—not tonight.’
‘But...’ Looking into his eyes, she saw how they had darkened, only the tiniest trace of blue edging the blackness of the pupils. ‘Pierce—’
‘Please.’
It was frightening how easily she found herself considering it, appalling how little hesitation there was before she accepted the idea. It was downright impossible to say no, even though stern reason warned her not to consider the idea even for a second, but to get out now.
‘I don’t have any ulterior motives.’ Slight as it had been, Pierce had caught her hesitation and hurried to reassure her. ‘For one thing, I’m half asleep already—I was dead on my feet downstairs—and I’ve really had far too much to drink to be considered a threat to any woman. And besides, we’re friends...’
If only he knew how much she had come to hate that word, particularly now, when the description seemed so very far from flattering. It was more than he had ever offered her before, but a million miles from what she wanted. As his friend, she had no physical appeal for him. The cold rationality of that thought pushed her into a belated attempt to assert some sort of control over things.
‘I don’t think it would be—’
‘Please.’
It came so softly that she might have missed it if she hadn’t been so sensitive to everything about him, but she did catch it and it tugged at her already vulnerable heart. It would have taken a far stronger will than she possessed to resist that low-voiced appeal, and besides, he was already drifting away into exhausted sleep, heavy lids closing, his breathing slowing.
