‘I’m sorry you can’t stay for dinner. Still, if you have a prior engagement…’
‘A prior engagement,’ she repeated stupidly, unable to drag her gaze from his, unable to forget the way he had looked at her mouth and made her feel as though… as though he wanted to kiss it.
‘Yes… with your friend. The one whose husband is away.’
The iron was back in his voice, the coolness in his eyes.
She tried to start the car, but her fingers were trembling so much she couldn’t turn the key properly until the third attempt.
‘Drive carefully,’ he told her as she finally got the engine started.
Drive carefully… Only when she was sure that he wouldn’t be standing there watching her any longer did she allow herself to look into her rearview mirror. What would have happened if she had told him the truth… that there was no friend… that she had lied in a desperate attempt to get away from him because… because… she couldn’t trust herself to be with him and not betray what she was feeling? When he had looked at her mouth just then, it had been almost as though he was willing her to do something. Like what? Invite him to kiss her?
She shuddered wildly, her hands sticky with perspiration as she clung to the steering-wheel. She was letting her imagination create fantasies that had no place in reality, imposing her own feelings, her own desires on to him. Horror-struck, she tried to control her careering thoughts. What was happening to her? Less than a week ago she had been a completely normal, sane, level-headed twenty-eight-year-old. Now… now she was heading with all the folly, all the idiocy, all the illogicality of a woman who had fallen instantly and hopelessly in love.
In love. ‘Please, God, no,’ she whispered through gritted teeth. Bad enough that she should desire him, but to love him as well…!
CHAPTER SIX
THAT night Miranda had the dream again, only this time it was stronger, clearer. She woke up with her body wet with sweat and her heart pounding, an ache in the pit of her stomach that made her go scarlet with embarrassment and guilt, even though there was no one there to witness her confusion.
How could she have dreamed like that, experiencing sensations and needs she had never even known? Her fingertips still burned as though they had actually come into contact with Ben’s flesh, her lips actually stung as though they had truly been kissed with all the force and desire Ben had evidenced in her dream.
How could a dream be so real, so physical? she asked herself sickly as she got out of bed. Her throat felt dry, and her body ached. What she needed was a calming drink of herbal tea. Something to soothe her over-inflamed nerves and send her back to sleep—a dreamless sleep this time.
Even now, when she was fully awake, she still couldn’t banish the memory of her dream intimacy with Ben. How had it happened? How had her mind, her subconscious been able to furnish her with such a shockingly intimate mental image of his body, of his touch, with so strong and lingering a sensation of having been held in his arms, of having been caressed… loved by him?
As her conscious mind flinched from the memories she was trying to suppress, the cup she was holding slipped from her fingers, smashing on the kitchen’s stone-flagged floor with a noise that hurt her eardrums. As she bent down to pick up the broken shards of pottery, one stabbed sharply into her finger.
A few minutes later, sucking it where it was still bleeding, she stared broodingly out through the window into the darkness.
This idiocy had to stop. It was almost unbelievable that she, who had prided herself on being so in control of her life, should now feel as though that control had been wrested from her; that her life was in fact frighteningly out of control.
If she could just find a way to stop having these dreams. She shivered as she sipped the herbal tea she had brewed, wrapping her fingers round the cup, and trying to force her thoughts into some kind of order.
There must be a way she could get back in control of her life… of her emotions… of her needs. All right, so she found Ben Frobisher physically desirable—there was no point in trying to deny that, at least not to herself—but that did not mean that he had to invade her dreams every night, taking over her subconscious, revealing to her needs… emotions… feelings she had never hitherto experienced.
She padded restlessly around her kitchen, telling herself fiercely that it was useless trying to blame Ben for her dreams; that the fault, the guilt, the blame lay with her.
But what if it wasn’t merely physical desire she felt for him… what if it was something else… something stronger… deeper… and far, far more dangerous? What if… what if what? What if she loved him?
She tried to deny the thought as she had tried to deny it before, but it remained lodged in her consciousness, refusing to go away, no matter how much she tried to evade or bury it.
Tonight at his cottage she had felt so… so frightened and helpless… so caught up in what she was feeling that she had had no control left to fight it; and even after she had left him, even after she had driven safely away, she had still ached for him, had still wanted to turn her car round and go back, to tell him she had changed her mind, to beg him to allow her to stay with him.
She shivered, putting down her empty cup. If she didn’t go back to bed soon, she might as well not bother. Already her disturbed nights were beginning to tell on her. She must stop thinking about him, she told herself wearily as she went back upstairs. She must find a way of blotting him out of her thoughts… out of her dreams.
Easy to say, but far, far harder to do, she acknowledged tiredly half an hour later, lying rigidly awake in her bed, too afraid to allow her tired body to relax into the sleep it needed.
* * *
A WEEK passed without her seeing Ben. A casual remark by her father informed her that he was apparently in London working and wouldn’t be returning until the following week.
Ironically, when this information should have relaxed her, all it actually did was to increase her tension, to make her even more fearful of allowing him to slide into her thoughts in her unguarded moments.
Every day she told herself that today she would not think about him, and yet every day, somehow or other, she would find that treacherously s
he was doing exactly that.
She even went out and bought herself a child’s money-box, which she kept on her desk and into which she made herself pay a small monetary fine whenever her determination not to think about him lapsed.
When, after only three days, she had virtually filled the money-box, she was forced to admit that by providing it in the first place she had been subconsciously encouraging her own self-betrayal.
As another measure to keep him out of her thoughts she resolved to avoid going anywhere near the house in the High Street, and yet every day or so, it seemed, she managed to find an equally valid and important reason why she should break this decision.
She attended the monthly meeting of another of her committees, and gritted her teeth when she was gently quizzed by some of its older members about her new ‘boyfriend’.
Even her father had heard the gossip, and had looked mildly surprised when she had rounded on him quite fiercely when he’d asked her if it was true that she and Ben were going together.
‘No, we are not,’ she had told him bitingly, adding, ‘Honestly, Dad, you know what this place is like for gossip.’
‘Sorry,’ he apologised. ‘Pity, though. Nice chap. Helen’s invited him to the wedding, by the way.’
The wedding was only ten days away. Helen had found the perfect outfit in Bath, reminding Miranda that she had still to find something suitable to wear. Pointing out to her father that she would be in sole charge of the agency while he was enjoying his leisurely honeymoon, she claimed the privilege of daughter as well as partner and told him that she intended to take a day off in order to go out and buy herself a new outfit.
Although he grumbled about it, Miranda knew him well enough to know that he didn’t really mind.
She chose a Wednesday, their local half-day, which meant that the town and business would be relatively quiet.
It was some months since she had last visited Bath—prior to Christmas, in fact, in order to do her Christmas shopping—and, as always, she immediately fell under the city’s architectural spell.