Carefully she waded back to the bank. She had been right about the depth of the water. It had been well over halfway up her thighs. Luckily, her briefs were still dry.
Leaving her clothes where she had removed them, she walked silently upstream until she reached the overhanging rocks she had seen from the middle of the river.
Once there, she lay down carefully on them, making sure she was safely balanced before leaning over and peering down into the water.
Yes, she had been right… She could see the trout quite clearly, basking lazily in a sunlit patch of water half under the protection of the rocks.
Holding her breath, she leaned over very, very carefully. The trick was to get her hand into the water without disturbing the fish.
Slowly now…
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Startled, Livvy tried to turn round and then realised that she was too precariously balanced and that she was going to fall into the river, but before she did her body was grabbed from behind, two strong male hands gripping her waist as Richard Field hauled her back and lifted her on to her feet.
‘What do you think you’re doing? Let go of me,’ she demanded crossly as he swung her round to face him.
‘What do I think I’m doing?’
He suddenly seemed to become aware of her semi-naked state, his eyes narrowing as his gaze skimmed her body, his hands tightening momentarily on her waist so that a sharp frisson of sensation raced over her skin. She could feel the rough maleness of the pads of his fingers. It was an almost caressive abrasiveness, an awareness of the contrast between the softness of her female flesh and the hardness of his maleness. Disturbed by her awareness of him, Livvy pulled against his imprisonment of her, her face flushing with self-consciousness.
No wonder he was looking at her like that. She must look a sight, clad in a pair of white briefs, with her shirt knotted up round her middle.
‘Haven’t you any more sense than to come creeping up on someone like that?’ she demanded. ‘I could have fallen in…’
‘By the look of you, you already have,’ he retorted crisply, and before Livvy could stop him he lifted one hand from her waist and ran it experimentally down her still damp side. The touch of his fingers, of his palm against the curve of her buttock and then the sensitive skin of her thigh, no matter how non-sexual it was intended to be, brought an outraged protest to her lips, and a rash of equally shocked goose-flesh to her skin; the shiver that ran up her spine lifted the tiny blonde hairs upwards in stiff, outraged reaction.
For a moment she was acutely aware of the contrast between them: of him, his body male and hard, clad in a dark cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled back to reveal brown, sinewy forearms, his jeans equally dark, an alien male figure bathed in black and gold against the sun, while in contrast she stood half-naked before him, her skin soft and pale, vulnerable to his view, and to his touch.
He seemed to sense something of what she was feeling because immediately he released her, frowning as he asked her, ‘What were you doing…?’
‘Tickling trout,’ she told him, her chin lifting as she saw first the surprise and then the amusement lightening his expression.
‘What? I don’t suppose it occurred to you that it might be easier to use a rod and line?’ He was openly mocking her now.
‘If I had one, I suppose I might, although I was taught that it requires far more skill to land the fish with one’s bare hands than to bait a hook and simply wait for it to impale itself…’
She saw his eyebrows rise.
‘I think there’s a large lobby of fishermen who would take umbrage with you at such a denigration of their skills,’ he told her drily.
He was still watching her, but there was curiosity in his gaze now, curiosity and interest.
‘You like fishing?’ he asked her, almost as though he was expecting her to deny it.
‘Yes,’ she told him, and then admitted honestly, ‘but only if I can put the fish back alive. My grandfather used to get very cross with me for refusing to eat what we caught. And even now I’m still not overfond of trout.’
‘Your grandfather?’
‘Mmm… He taught me…all of us…he and my grandmother.’ She paused, frowning. Why was she telling him this? He couldn’t really be interested. She turned away from him, but her still damp foot slipped on a piece of moss. As she felt herself start to fall backwards, she cried out. Instantly, Richard reached for her, dragging her back from the edge of the overhang, swinging her away from it and into his arms.
Immediately, she froze.
It was the worst, the most betraying thing she could have done, she acknowledged a heartbeat of time later, as she looked up into his face and saw the expression in his eyes.
Impossible for him not to be aware of the reason for that brief shudder which had ripped through her body, for him not to have recognised the sexual orientation, for him not to be able to see as clearly as she could feel that beneath her thin shirt her nipples were hard with arousal and that the reason her heart was beating so fast had nothing at all to do with the shock of almost falling into the river and everything to do with the fact that she was standing so close to him.
She watched motionless, her eyes blind with shocked self-knowledge as he slowly lowered his head. Her tongue-tip touched her lips. She gave a small, aching sigh.