‘Sorry,’ she apologised curtly, hating the mocking glance he gave her. Did he think she had deliberately fallen against him?
‘No need to apologise,’ he drawled. ‘This road is appalling. I must get something done about it—either that or get myself a Land Rover, but there’s not much point in doing anything now until the winter’s over. The combination of salt and ice is lethal on freshly laid tarmac, but the Ferrari certainly isn’t built for this sort of terrain.’
‘A city dweller, like its owner,’ Chelsea suggested sweetly.
Slade brought the car to a halt in front of the house and she froze suddenly in her seat.
‘Waiting for something?’
In the darkness her face flushed anger, making her tremble as she reached for the door handle. Was he trying to imply that she had expected him to make love to her?
With false sweetness she said softly, ‘Forgive me, for a moment—I forgot that you weren’t Tom.’ Triumph glittered in her eyes as she added, ‘He always opens the door for me.’
She almost had it open when Slade leaned across, imprisoning her against her seat with his body. Neither of them was deceiving the other, and she knew the taunt about Tom, which had had nothing to do with the car door, would not go unpunished. It didn’t.
Slade was looking at her in a way that was unmistakable even in the semi-darkness. His left hand reached for the door handle, his arm imprisoning her. The door swung open and his arm was slowly withdrawn, brushing with subtle menace against her breasts. She was shaking from head to foot when she emerged from the car. The impulse to run into the house was overpowering, but somehow she mastered it. Behind her she heard the Ferrari engine fire, and despite the cold perspiration broke out on her forehead. On unsteady feet she headed for the kitchen, longing suddenly for a cold drink to steady her.
She let the tap run and found a glass. She was just filling it when she heard the door open. She drank the ice cold water quickly.
‘Going somewhere?’
Slade’s voice was almost as icy as the water had been, and Chelsea felt herself shiver. She felt him move behind her, stiffening when he gripped her shoulders, the hard touch of his fingers burning through her dress.
‘Let go of me!’
His only response was the subtle alteration in his touch from imprisoning to sensual caressing as his thumbs moved rhythmically over the tense muscles of her shoulders. His left hand gathered up the fall of her hair, his thumb moving sensually over the exposed vulnerability of her nape. Rigid with anger, she breathed in sharply, clenching every muscle against him. For all the impression it made she might just as well have not bothered. Effectively imprisoned between his body and the kitchen units, she had no means of escape when his head lowered and his mouth moved slowly over her neck, brushing it lightly, bringing her out in goosebumps as she tried not to react. The light, almost teasing kisses continued. She felt his hand on her zip, his lips tracing the exposed line of her spine before returning to the smooth curve of the neck, and icy shivers alternated with a hot dryness that enveloped her skin. Outrage warred with a heated upsurge of physical response, as Slade’s lips continued to nibble provocatively at her skin. It took every ounce of willpower to resist the fierce tug of desire surging through her; to suppress the small startled sounds of pleasure threatening to betray her as his mouth continued its damaging assault on her defences. She closed her eyes to strengthen her resolve, but it was a fatal mistake. Without the mundaneness of their surroundings to concentrate upon she was lost in a black velvety darkness which intensified a thousand times the pleasurable sensation of Slade’s mouth moving gently over her skin, seeming to know instinctively just where to linger. A Small sound of pleasure escaped her compressed lips, and as though it were the sign he had been waiting for Slade turned her into his arms, sweeping aside the dark fall of her hair and exerting just enough pressure on her neck to fully expose the vulnerability of her throat to his mouth.
Pleasure washed over in surging waves, and her head fell back against his shoulder as his lips plundered the pale flesh of her throat and shoulders, moving seductively against them until she was groaning huskily with pleasure, her fingers entwined in the thick darkness of his hair, everything but the sensations he was arousing within her forgotten.
His free hand covered the place where her heart thudded shallowly against her skin, moving upwards to stroke sensuously over her breast.
A fierce heat engulfed her. When he reached for her zip she made no attempt to stop him. Suddenly Slade froze, and then calmly zipped up her dress and released her, switching on the kitchen light and reaching past her for the kettle.
Chelsea’s senses reeled, and her own movements were sluggish and apathetic. She felt as though she had been caught up in an alien force against which she had no defences. Her body felt weak and she was trembling.
Damn him she thought bitterly watching him fill the kettle. He had done it again! She opened her mouth to tell him how much she detested him, but he forestalled her, smiling mockingly as he murmured softly, ‘Save it… Mrs Rudge is on her way down, and you wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea, would you?’
Her eyes rounded with disbelief and then she heard the unmistakable sounds of the house-keeper’s imminent arrival. Humiliation writhed through her. When she had been lost to everything but the feelings he had aroused he had been sufficiently detached to hear the housekeeper moving about. Something seemed to have gone badly wrong. It was men who were supposed to be so vulnerable to passion that they forgot everything else, wasn’t it?
Passion! A bitter smile touched her lips as she used the housekeeper’s entrance to make good her escape. Much more of this and he would have her believing that she was suffering from a frustration so acute that his touch was enough to bring it surging to life.
CHAPTER FIVE
IN the morning there was no sign of Slade, and Mrs Rudge told Chelsea acidly that he had had to go into Newcastle on business.
She was just on the point of leaving the house when the housekeeper suddenly produced a set of car keys which she handed begrudgingly to Chelsea, watching her speculatively.
‘Told me to give these to you and said you were to make sure you used the car. Out driving it, he was this morning before he left.’
For a moment Chelsea was tempted to tell Mrs Rudge in no uncertain terms that she had no intention of using the car, but caution prevailed. She had no intention of arousing the woman’s curiosity even further, and it had occurred to her that with the car she might be able to find alternative accommodation.
With this in mind she drove up to the farm shortly after three o’clock, intending to ask Tom’s mother if she could recommend somewhere where she could stay.
She found Mrs Little in the large old-fashioned farmhouse kitchen. The appetising smell of newly baked bread filled the stone-flagged kitchen, and Chelsea sniffed appreciatively as she followed Mrs Little inside.
‘Fancy a slice, do you? It will give you indigestion, mind,’ she warned, chuckling at Chelsea’s obvious battle against temptation.
‘Tom isn’t here,’ she told Chelsea several minutes later when they were both sitting down at the scrubbed wooden table. ‘He had to go into Jedburgh.’
‘It’s not him I’ve come to see,’ and Chelsea quickly explained the purpose of her visit.
‘Hmm. Finding a room hereabouts won’t be easy. There’s none to be had in the village, that I know of. Not making you comfortable at the Dower House? Janet Rudge is a sour old besom right enough…’
‘It’s got nothing to do with Mrs Rudge,’ Chelsea told her hastily, avoiding her eyes as she added, ‘It’s just that now that Mr Ashford has returned, I thought he might want his home to himself.’
She purposefully avoided Mrs Little’s shrewd eyes as she added the last remark, but felt that she had not totally deceived her when the older woman mused thoughtfully,
‘Aye, well, there’s them as would be pretty quick to jump to the wrong conclusions if Janet
Rudge wasn’t living there, and young Slade’s a fine-looking man; takes after his mother’s family for his looks. I mind well his uncle when he was his age. A bonny lad he was, with all the lasses wild for him. I’m sorry, lass,’ she apologised when Chelsea remained silent, ‘but if it’s lodgings you’re wanting I doubt that you’ll find anything local.’
The kitchen door swung open as she spoke and Tom strode in, patently surprised and pleased to see Chelsea there.
‘Sorry about last night,’ he apologised, when she had explained the purpose of her visit, and he had agreed with his mother about the unlikelihood of her finding alternative accommodation, ‘but at least you had Slade to take you home.’
‘Yes.’ Chelsea forced a noncommittal smile and glanced at her watch. ‘Heavens—I’d better be going. I’d no idea it was that time.’
‘I see Slade’s fixed you up with your own transport,’ Tom commented. ‘If you’ve got a minute I’ll show you the new arrival who interrupted our dinner party.’