‘Yes,’ she confirmed crisply.
‘Mmm…pity, I was hoping I might be offered a cup of coffee before we set off. I missed mine this morning.’
‘What a shame,’ Jenna smiled acidly at him. ‘Next time, choose a bedmate who can cook.’
‘Sharp, but wrong,’ he told her crisply. ‘I’ve got my step-sister living with me at the moment, and she was due to go into hospital this morning. I wanted to take her myself. S
he’s still suffering from the emotional shock of losing her parents, and she tends to be unhappy in the presence of strangers.’
Jenna knew she was flushing in a mixture of guilt and chagrin. It wasn’t entirely her fault she had leapt to the wrong conclusion, she told herself as she locked the front door behind her and joined him by the lift. Knowing his lifestyle it had been a perfectly natural assumption to make. But she would have been wiser not to have voiced it, an inner voice told her. In her desire to put him down, she had only succeeded in making herself look crassly thoughtless.
His car was parked outside the apartments, and Jenna was surprised when he walked round to the passenger door and opened it for her, handing her into the car before returning to the driver’s side. She was unused to such old-fashioned male courtesies from anyone other than Bill and had even begun to believe they had ceased to exist.
The city centre traffic was heavy and Jenna leaned back in her seat closing her eyes, leaving James to concentrate on driving. He was a good driver, she recognised unwillingly, neither impatient nor a dawdler.
‘Tired?’
His question startled her.
‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘It’s been a hectic week.’ Only yesterday afternoon she had had a phone call from Gordon Burns complaining that the business account overdraft was too high. There were monies outstanding to her company and Jenna had promised herself once she returned from Yorkshire she would get down to collecting them. Even so, the telephone call had disturbed her. It seemed suddenly as though fate had turned completely against her, and that everything in her life was going wrong. She had the Hall though, she reminded herself comfortingly, closing her eyes as a signal to James Allingham that she had no desire to talk.
A little to her surprise he respected it. She was aware of them turning on to the motorway and then nothing until she felt him shaking her awake. Stunned, she opened her eyes, her mind still muzzy with sleep. ‘Are we there already?’
‘No. I thought it was time I had a break.’ His hand was still on her shoulder, his nails clean and neatly cut, his fingers lean and strong. A strange quiver of sensation coiled through her stomach and unnervingly she was reminded of other hands on her body…of her dream…Swiftly shutting the memory away, she struggled to sit upright.
‘You look more like Lucy’s sister than her mother in that get up,’ James told her softly. ‘Did you know you sleep with your mouth open?’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’ Jenna returned shortly. His voice was seductively teasing, deepening the enclosed intimacy of the car. She could smell the faint tang of his cologne, elegant and masculine. Like her he was wearing jeans, old and faded, the soft fabric clinging to the muscles of his thighs. The leather blouson jacket he had been wearing was lying on the back seat. He had taken it off before getting in the car and the fine wool checked shirt he had on underneath it was open at the throat.
A curious constriction seemed to grip her own throat muscles as he leaned over her. A panicky desire to push him away from her tensed her muscles as she fought against it. To react to his proximity in such an adolescent way would be totally humiliating. She knew quite well that he was deliberately taunting her with his sexuality, knowing that she was unnerved by it, but she also knew there was no real reason for her fear; he was not going to attack her as Charles had attacked Rachel.
That kiss he had forced upon her in Margery’s study had been an act of retaliation, not one of undeserved aggression, but even so his closeness ignited all her repressed feelings of anger for and fear of his sex.
‘You have the most lovely hair.’ He raised his hand to touch her head and instantly Jenna jerked away, fear suddenly far stronger than logic, panic flaring briefly in her eyes as she froze.
His hand dropped, his eyes narrowing disbelievingly. ‘What are you so afraid of?’
Her mouth had gone dry, her heart thudding erratically. It was worse than all her most terrifying nightmares: she was always so careful about hiding her inner fears, and yet here she was betraying them to the one man she would most hate to recognise them.
‘Nothing.’ Even to her own ears her voice sounded husky and unfamiliar.
‘Liar.’ His hand lifted to her face and then dropped away again as she was unable to stop herself from cringing. His mouth compressed and Jenna could see the anger in his eyes. She felt sick with inner disgust.
‘Come on,’ he said abruptly, ‘let’s go and get that coffee. It seems that we both need it.’
He had stopped off the motorway at a small country hotel. They had the comfortable coffee lounge completely to themselves. A smiling waitress brought them a pot of coffee, and even though Jenna had not particularly wanted a drink its aromatic fragrance tempted her tastebuds.
‘Black for me,’ James told her, as she picked up the pot.
Lounging opposite her in a deep armchair he was completely at ease. Conversely, she was perched tensely on the edge of hers. Biting her lip Jenna tried to relax. She hadn’t wanted to share the journey north with him and now it seemed as though she had had good reason not to.
‘Lucy safely back at school?’ he asked, picking up his coffee.
In anyone else the question would merely have been a civil attempt to make conversation, but remembering his criticisms of her as a mother Jenna flushed angrily.
‘Yes, she is,’ she told him curtly. She kept her attention on her coffee-cup until good manners prompted her to say hesitantly, ‘It must have been a dreadful shock to you to lose your father and step-mother…I hope your step-sister is soon better.’
He shrugged before replacing his coffee-cup. ‘I was always closer to my mother than my father, but yes, it’s always painful to come to terms with the loss of a parent. Sarah—my step-sister—is finding it particularly hard. She was in the car with them when it happened and was trapped there for several hours before they could free her. Since then she hasn’t moved—the doctors tell me that physically there’s nothing wrong with her, that the paralysis is psychosomatic, probably a result of shock and fear. She had to lie completely still while they cut her free, in case she injured herself. At the moment I feel she’s too cut off from other people to make a speedy recovery, but she refuses to see anyone other than myself and her nurse. She’s convinced the scratches she received on her face will make her hideous for life. At the moment the scars do look bad, but the doctors assure me that they will fade and eventually disappear completely. She’s always been rather shy and withdrawn.