A chance remark by a client, wryly commenting that her six-year-old was very definitely punishing her for subjecting him to being an only child, had given her a startling and painful insight into her own childhood behaviour.
‘It’s all right,’ Daniel told her kindly, studying her expression. ‘I was the eldest in our family and there were times, believe you me, when I came close to hating my parents for providing me with three siblings, especially the twins.’
‘Twins?’
‘Mmm. David and Jonathon. You can see that my parents have a penchant for biblical names. The twins arrived when I was seven, and Rachel a year later.’
‘Do you still resent them?’ Jessica asked him curiously. It seemed impossible to imagine the man she had known today resenting anything or anyone.
He laughed. ‘Sometimes. When the twins decide to come and dump themselves and their friends on me for unheralded visits as they tended to do when they were at university, but they’re both working in the States now. David’s a biochemist and Jonathon’s in advertising.’
‘And your sister…Rachel?’
‘Ah, Rachel…Well, she looks set to surpass the lot of us. She’s training to be a surgeon. Following in our father’s footsteps, so to speak. He’s a GP,’ he added by way of explanation.
Jessica frowned. ‘Was he disappointed that none of his sons followed him into medicine?’
‘Not really. Why should he be?’
It was a question that she wasn’t really ready to answer, leading as it must to disclosures about her life which she was not sure she wanted to make.
Daniel was so well adjusted in comparison to herself. How would he view her actions? She trusted his judgement, and yet something held her back from confiding in him, almost as though she were afraid to have her actions weighed and found lacking.
She was deeply conscious of the fact that her ordeal had given her a get-out from the bank which she had been seeking for a long time.
Because of what she had endured, her parents, in their concern for her health, had made it easy for her to follow her own inclinations, and there were occasions like now when she wondered if part of her had not seized on the opportunity which her mental and physical vulnerability had given her, and if she would have had the courage and determination to follow her own path in life without it.
‘Something’s bothering you,’ Daniel said quietly. ‘What is it?’
Jessica shook her head and managed a strained smile.
‘I always look like this when I’m hungry,’ she told him lightly. ‘And I’ve heard that Mrs Markham’s apple pie is something very special.’
She could see that he wasn’t deceived, and tensed, waiting for him to press her, wondering how she would react, what she would say, but he didn’t, and she wasn’t sure if it was relief or disappointment she felt when he simply said easily, ‘It is. I can vouch for that.’
* * *
Half-way through the evening they received a visit from the local police who wanted to take statements from both of them. While Jessica stumbled and hesitated over hers, conscious that she out of the three of them in the post office had been the only one who had panicked, Daniel, in contrast, delivered his calmly and efficiently, politely answering all the officer’s questions.
When Jessica apologised for being so vague about her own recollections the officer comforted her. ‘That’s all right, miss. It’s only natural, after the shock you’ve had. We’ve got the lad, of course, thanks to Mr Hayward here. Time was when that kind of thing was only a city problem.’
It was almost ten o’clock when he left. Jessica felt exhausted. The kind of deadening exhaustion that made the senses blur and the mind and body scream silently for sleep.
After he had escorted the police officer to the door, Daniel came back, took one look at her and pronounced curtly, ‘You’ve had enough. I should have realised and—’
‘And what? Thrown him out?’ Jessica asked wryly. ‘Would you mind if I went to bed?’ she asked him. ‘If I stay down here much longer, I’ll be asleep on the sofa.’
‘Can I make you a bedtime drink?’ Daniel offered. ‘Something hot and milky and spiced with something alcoholic, as the doctor suggested?’
Jessica shook her head.
She half expected Daniel to offer to carry her upstairs. Not that she needed carrying. It was her arm that was injured, after all. But he was cosseting her as though she were something vulnerable and precious. He didn’t offer, though, merely standing at the bottom of the stairs watching her until she reached the top safely.
Another man in similar circumstances might have tried to make capital out of their intimacy, and the fact that he did not confirmed all the conclusions she had already drawn about him.
The house only had one small bathroom, and it had no lock, but she felt completely at ease with the fact that, for the first time in her life, she was sharing her home with someone else. Daniel wouldn’t crowd her or push…
She winced as she tried to lift her arm to remove her sweater, and found she couldn’t. It would be simple enough to call downstairs to Daniel for help, but although half of her ached for the intimacy of his hands on her body, even in performing such a mundane chore as helping her overcome the problems of her sore arm, the other half wanted to draw out the sweetness of this first stage of their relationship.
By the time she got into her nightshirt and to bed she was already half-asleep, her eyes closing and her breathing deepening.
She slept soundlessly for several hours, not stirring even when the stairs creaked under Daniel’s tread and he hesitated outside her door for a few seconds before going on to his own room.
The nightmare started abruptly, quickly gathering terrifying momentum, a sickening kaleidoscope of too vividly remembered terrors and fears. The darkness choked and blinded her. She moved despairingly in her sleep, feeling the sharp remembered pain of bonds breaking her skin, of fear, acrid and sour in her mouth, and a dangerous fever in her head.
She tore at the gag against her mouth and screamed out in her panic, a primitive, splintering sound that tore at her throat muscles and woke Daniel instantly.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN he came rushing into her room, Jessica was awake as well, sitting up in bed, hugging her arms around her shaking body, staring blindly at the wall.
‘Jessica. It’s all right. Everything’s all right. It was just a bad dream,’ he told her soothingly, summing up the situation immediately and sitting down next to her on the bed, drawing her gently against his body so that her back was resting against the warmth of his bare chest, his arms wrapping over her own.
‘It’s all right, now. It’s all right.’
He might have been soothing a frightened child, Jessica recognised numbly as his voice penetrated the miasma of terror that waking from her nightmare had done little to disperse.
‘It’s OK,’ he told her softly. ‘You’re safe. What happened this morning…’
Immediately Jessica stiffened.
‘Not this morning,’ she managed to whisper. Her throat ached, probably as a result of her screams, she recognised as she swallowed against the pain. She would have to tell him the truth now, otherwise he would be entitled to think her neurotic at the very least.
‘Not this morning,’ she repeated hoarsely. ‘Something that happened…before.’
Now it was his turn to tense, and oddly she was reassured by this evidence that he was not, after all, omniscient.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
The words came slowly, almost reluctantly, and the thought crossed her mind that she might have read too much into what he had said and done, into how he had looked at her, and that he might not want to be burdened by her confidences.
Immediately she started to withdraw into her protective shell and, as though he knew exactly what she was feeling, his hold on her tightened and he said raggedly, ‘I don’t want to push you into giving me confidences you might later regret, confidences that m
ight make you resent me.’
He turned her towards him, so that the top half of her body was pressed flat and hard against his bared chest. With a finger that shook slightly, he traced the shape of her half-parted mouth.
‘This is crazy,’ he whispered to her. ‘I’ve never experienced anything like this before…never felt such an instant rapport with another human being. I’m afraid of demanding too much from you, of frightening you off me.’
Jessica gave a shaky laugh, wanting to tell him that that was impossible, but suddenly too shy. The sensation of his callused fingertip moving so delicately against the sensitive flesh of her lips was playing havoc with her senses. She could feel the shallow thud of his heartbeat, and knew its excitement matched the rapid beat of her own.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,’ he was whispering against her ear, and the temptation to turn towards him and incite him to slide his mouth over her own and kiss her as her senses told her he could kiss her almost overwhelmed her.
But now was not the time for making love. If they did, she would never have been entirely sure that she hadn’t used the potent drug of his lovemaking to alleviate the fear that still lingered in her mind.