Lingering Shadows. PENNY JORDAN
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when they were out together he so patently never even thought of looking at anyone else.
Lucy was a beautiful young woman but her upbringing, her insecurities and the type of men she had dated before had taught her that, while she might be valued and wanted for her physical appearance, her escorts were constantly and sometimes not even very tactfully checking to make sure that she, their date, was the most attractive woman in the room; that the other men were aware who she was with, that they were envying them because she was with them.
With Giles there was none of that, and yet it was plain that he was totally bemused, totally head over heels in love with her. Lucy, starved all her life of such unquestioning love, responded to it.
The sharply clever manner she adopted with other men softened when she was with Giles. When they were together she started to shed the outer of her many layers of protective cynicism. When he kissed her and she felt his body tremble, instead of inwardly mocking him for his weakness she found that she wanted to cling to him and hold him.
She had assumed from his manner towards her that Giles would be a tentative, hesitant lover, but when he stumblingly invited her to spend a long weekend with him she discovered otherwise.
He did not, as others had, take her to an expensive, prestigious hotel where he could show her off during the day to the other envious male guests, and where at night he could make love to her in the anonymous surroundings of their hotel bedroom.
Instead Lucy discovered that he had rented what he hesitantly described as ‘a cottage’, though not some rough, ill-equipped and damp affair as she had dreaded. No, he had displayed far greater sensitivity than that, and what intrigued and tantalised her even more was that he had also displayed how keenly aware he was of what pleased her. Because the cottage was, in fact, a small country house, not very far from Bath, since, as he told her hesitantly when they arrived, he had thought she might like to visit Bath while they were staying in the area.
‘I believe there are some very good shops,’ he told her, clearing his throat a little uncertainly and looking hesitantly at her in the half-light of the evening.
Shops! Lucy smiled to herself. Giles was far more perceptive than she had realised. There was nothing she enjoyed more than shopping. She remembered for the first time with a faint touch of self-dislike the occasions in the past when she had subtly manoeuvred a previous unwilling escort into taking her shopping, and when she had normally also managed to inveigle him into buying her something.
Her machinations had never bothered her in the past, so why did she feel this unexpected dislike at the thought of cynically coaxing Giles into buying her something? She dismissed the thought, wondering if the ‘cottage’ would be as presentable inside as it was out.
It was set in its own large gardens, and, from what she could see of them in the dusk, they were softly pretty with flowers, climbing roses and clematis, a perfect complement for the softly washed pink-tinged front of the house.
She wasn’t disappointed.
Inside, the house smelled of polish and fresh flowers, which were everywhere, and in her favourite colours as well, she observed as she walked silently through the downstairs rooms and the hall, with its polished floor and rugs, its circular polished table with the huge display of delphiniums, and larkspurs in their lavender-blues and lilacs spiked with white.
The sitting-room was large and elegantly furnished, off-white settees with mounds of cushions, sofa tables with displays of flowers, this time in creams and soft pinks, huge overblown roses that looked as though they had come straight from some country garden.
She touched the petals of one of them. It was still slightly damp, as though it had actually just been picked.
A log fire, a real one, burned in the hearth, the faint smell of seasoned logs mingling with the scent of the roses.
Behind her she heard Giles saying roughly, ‘They reminded me of you, of the colour and texture of your skin, of the way you smell,’ and then he was holding her, burying his mouth in the nape of her neck and then the side of her throat, and she realised that he had actually chosen the flowers himself.
Something inside her, some hard, tight part of her which had never been breached, swelled and ached with the emotion she had locked away inside it. Astoundingly she felt her eyes prick with tears and her heart … her heart, not just her body, ache with feeling.
Giles was pressed up hard against her back. She could feel him trembling, knew how much he wanted her, and yet he still released her, apologising rawly, ‘I’m sorry. That was crass of me.’
Lucy looked at him. One of her flatmates had commented on how attractive he was, how solid and male-looking. She herself hadn’t really been aware of it before, but now suddenly she was.
Angry with herself and for some reason a little afraid, she reacted instinctively, adopting her normal manner of protective cynicism, shrugging as she flicked the petals of one of the roses with her polished fingertips and commenting, ‘Well, there certainly isn’t any need to rush, is there? I mean, we’ve got the whole long weekend. Four whole days.’
The look in Giles’s eyes stunned her.
‘A lifetime wouldn’t be enough for me, Lucy,’ he told her hoarsely.
After that, to be allowed to go upstairs on her own while he unpacked the car threw her a little.
The house had five bedrooms, two with their own bathrooms. She chose the smaller of these, oddly drawn by its softly pretty country décor. The ceiling sloped down to a pair of dormer windows, and it had been papered with a pretty cottagey paper. The bed was high and old-fashioned, with proper bedding instead of a duvet. The floor was carpeted in such a pale peach carpet that it made the whole room seem full of warmth and light.
The bathroom off the bedroom was simple and functional. The sanitary-ware was white and old-fashioned, the bath huge with enormous brass taps. As a concession to modern-day living, a wall of neat cupboards had been installed with, Lucy was pleased to see, mirrors set above them and decent lighting. The floor was polished and sealed, a proper door on the shower instead of the plastic curtain they had in the flat.
She heard Giles coming upstairs and opened the bedroom door.
‘I haven’t booked dinner anywhere for us this evening,’ he told her awkwardly. ‘I wasn’t sure what you’d feel like doing.’
It was obvious what he felt like doing, Lucy reflected to herself. She was torn between irritation and a sudden and sharply unexpected frisson of tension, of nervousness almost. Her, nervous … and of Giles? Impossible.
‘Well, what I feel like doing right now is having a shower,’ she told him coolly. ‘And what I shan’t feel like doing afterwards is …’ She hesitated deliberately, watching him, waiting for him to become either angry or hectoring, but instead he simply looked steadily back at her. ‘I’m hungry,’ she told him pettishly, suddenly unsure of herself, and afraid because of it. ‘And I certainly don’t intend to play the little woman and start cooking.’
She reached out, took her case from him, and then retreated, closing the bedroom door on him. She waited for several minutes, wondering what he would do, and then she heard him going back downstairs.
As she stripped off her clothes and showered she wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or disappointed that he had taken her dismissal so calmly. Most of the men she knew would have been demanding their pound of flesh by now and no mistake.
She eyed herself in the mirrors as she stepped out of the shower. She had a good body; her breasts were perhaps a little fuller than fashion dictated, but her waist was enviably narrow, her legs long and slender, her bone-structure that of an expensive, fragile racehorse. Her skin gleamed with health and with the scented moisturiser she was fanatical about using. She had the beginnings of a soft peachy tan.
There was a hectic flush along her cheekbones and her eyes looked huge, as though she had been on drugs, she recognised tensely. She dried her hair and then took her time dressing and reapplying