Four Christmas Treats. Jessica Hart
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was what we both wanted. But…’
‘But?’
‘What happened last night wasn’t…isn’t…I just don’t do casual sex,’ she told him truthfully. ‘Last night I got a bit carried away by the heat of the moment, so to speak, but now that we’ve both had time to reflect…’
‘You’ve changed your mind?’ Silas finished for her.
‘I haven’t changed my mind about finding you sexually attractive,’ Tilly felt obliged to admit. ‘But I have changed my mind about how sensible it would be to go ahead.’
She wanted him so badly, and yet at the same time she was afraid of taking the step that would take her from her emotionally secure present into a future that couldn’t be guaranteed. Perhaps it was old-fashioned, but for her giving her body couldn’t happen without giving something of herself emotionally. Modern men didn’t always want that. She certainly didn’t want to burden Silas with something he didn’t want, and she didn’t want to burden herself with an emotional commitment to a man who couldn’t return it. It might be illogical, but she felt that by holding back sexually she was protecting herself emotionally.
Tilly was handing him the perfect get-out from his own unwanted temptation, and he would be a fool not to take it. So why was Silas even thinking about hesitating? Guilt wasn’t a condition he liked experiencing. Neither were the feelings gripping him right now. Silas told himself that it wasn’t too late for him to draw back and tell himself that he didn’t really feel what he was feeling.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ he told her tersely. ‘After all, one should never mix business with pleasure.’
Tilly felt his words like a physical blow, but she told herself that it was a good, clean blow she herself had invited, and that what didn’t kill a person made them stronger. And she wanted to be strong to fight the very dangerous and intoxicating mix of emotions and desires Silas aroused in her.
‘I’ll give Art a ring to explain what’s happened, and then I suggest we go and eat and explore the rest of the town.’
Why was she looking at him like that? Making him want to go to her and hold her and tell her…Tell her what? That he had lied to her?
His guilt lay so heavily on his conscience that it felt like a physical weight.
Tilly nodded her head. She was willing to agree to anything that meant she would be safe from the intimacy of being alone with him and the effect both it and he had on her.
It was his frustration at not being able to get on with his research that was fuelling his mood now, Silas tried to tell himself. Not Tilly, or how he felt about her.
TILLY looked uncertainly at her reflection in the shop mirror. Not because she was in any doubt about the dress she was trying on—she had known the moment she had seen it in the window that it would be perfect for her, and it was. No, her doubts were coming from the guilty conscience that made her remember that even though her mother might have apologised to her over the phone for what Cissie-Rose had done, and urged her to treat herself to ‘something pretty’ for which she would pay, Tilly knew that on her return to London she would have to find the money to pay back their hotel bill.
And if that wasn’t enough to put her off the admittedly very reasonable cost of the little black dress that was clinging so lovingly to her curves, then she only had to point out to herself that she did not live the kind of lifestyle that actually required the wearing of little black dresses. But perhaps if she had one, another inner voice persuaded, she might accept more invitations where she could wear it.
She had seen the dress in the window of a small shop close to the hotel when she and Silas had walked past it earlier, on their way to find somewhere to have a late lunch. Afterwards she had made an excuse to slip away from Silas to have a closer look at it, telling him that she needed to buy a few personal items because of their overnight stay.
‘It is perfect on you,’ the sales assistant told her with a small smile. ‘It’s a dress that requires a woman to have curves. Its designer is Spanish, and it is a new range we have only just started to carry.’
It was just as well the other woman’s English was better than her own Spanish, Tilly acknowledged, as she smoothed the fine-knit black jersey over the curve of her hip. The dress might be fitted, but it was also elegant, without any hint of tartiness or flamboyance. It was, in fact, the kind of dress one might spend a lifetime looking for and not find.
‘With the right jewellery or a scarf it could be so versatile. See…’ the shop assistant coaxed, bringing a chunky-looking costume jewellery necklace of black beads, glass drops and cream pearls tied with black silk ribbon and slipping it around Tilly’s neck to show her what she meant. Then, putting the necklace on one side, she tied a brightly coloured silk scarf around Tilly’s waist in the same way Tilly had noticed the elegant assistants in Sloane Street’s Hermès shop wearing their scarves.
She needed something to wear for dinner at the hotel tonight, Tilly told herself, weakening.
Silas, who had been standing on the other side of the road watching her, reached into his pocket for his wallet. He had spent enough time on shopping missions with both his stepmother and his lovers to be able to recognise when a woman and an outfit were made for one another. If Tilly didn’t go ahead and buy herself that dress in which she looked so intoxicatingly desirable then he would buy it for her. Even if he had to do so surreptitiously. He was, after all, her fiancé.
But why did he want her to have it? Because of the look of dazed disbelief he could see so plainly in her reflection as she stared at herself in the mirror, or because of what he was doing?Angrily he pushed aside his inner questioning of his motives. He had no option other than to use Tilly as the key to the locked door of Art Johnson’s confidence.
‘I’ll take it,’ Tilly told the waiting shop assistant. ‘And the shoes?’ the girl asked with a smile, indicating the pretty black satin evening shoes she had persuaded Tilly to try on with the dress.
Tilly looked down and then nodded her head, trying to control the almost dizzying sense of euphoria that was speeding through her. She had never thought of herself as the kind of woman who got excited about buying new clothes—but then she had never thought of herself as the kind of woman who got excited about the thought of having sex with a man she barely knew either, before Silas had come into her life.
Silas! He would be wondering where on earth she was. They had agreed to meet back at the restaurant where they had had lunch, and she still had another purchase to make. She gestured towards the pretty underwear set on display—a matching bra and boy-cut shorts in soft black and pale baby pink.
‘It’s another new range,’ the saleswoman told her approvingly. ‘It’s been one of our most popular sellers.’
‘Got everything you wanted?’ Silas asked calmly when she met him outside the restaurant, as if she hadn’t been half an hour longer than she’d said she’d be.
Silas had obviously been shopping himself, she noted, because he was carrying a very masculine-looking carrier bag.
‘I didn’t think the maître d’ would be too pleased with me if I turned up for dinner tonight in chinos and a polo shirt,’ he informed Tilly easily.
‘I thought the same thing. Not about you. I meant about me,’ Tilly said hurriedly. ‘Well, I mean, I thought I’d better buy myself something to wear for dinner.’ She was gabbling like a person on speed. Why? Surely not because just for a second, when she had watched the sales assistant packing up the rather more sexily cut bra than she would normally have chosen to wear and its accompanying briefs, she had had a sudden mental image of Silas removing her new dress to reveal them? And that, of course, was not the reason she had changed her mind about buying a pair of tights and had opted for hold-ups instead, was it?