‘Yes.’
He turned his back and walked over to the fire, and ridiculously Kate found herself wanting to linger…torn between common sense and desire. If he turned round and looked at her the choice would be made for her, and she trembled, waiting…but he did not. Quietly she opened the door and slid through it, telling herself that she had made the wisest choice.
CHAPTER NINE
SOMETHING was pressing down on her, stifling her, threatening to deprive her of breath.
Kate came awake with a jolt. Her heart was pounding vi
olently, her breathing erratic. She had been having a nightmare. She shivered, suddenly cold where she had been hot, and then froze as her ears picked up an alien sound. Sitting tensely in her bed, hands clasped round her knees, she listened, hardly daring to breathe.
Yes…that had definitely been the kitchen door to the hall opening, she would recognise its squeak anywhere.
Terror galvanised her into action, taking her out of bed and towards her door before she even had time to think properly. The landing was in darkness, of course, but she knew it so well she did not need any light. Her pulse was drumming against her skin, fear releasing adrenalin into her blood.
Someone had broken into the house. She had to tell Dominic—that was the thought that was uppermost in her mind as she stood poised by her open door, judging the distance to Dominic’s room, trying to remember if there were any boards likely to creak. The air she breathed seemed heavy and thick with tension, her lungs expanding only with difficulty. God, she was so frightened! As she moved out on to the landing it crossed her mind to wonder at what her fear would have been if she had been alone in the house.
She was halfway there when something made her tense and turn to look back towards the stairs. The fine hairs lining her skin prickled upwards in atavistic terror as she saw the dark, bulky shape coming slowly towards her.
For a moment she was too shocked to do anything, and then her paralysis broke, a sharp scream tearing the muscles of her throat as she realised the intruder had seen her and was coming towards her, reaching out to her.
A black void opened up beneath her and she felt herself falling dizzily into it. In the distance someone called her name, the voice deep and familiar. She struggled to respond, but the darkness whirled faster and faster around her, sucking her down with a noise like a train going through a tunnel.
* * *
‘Kate?’
Behind her closed eyelids patterns broke and re-formed. She frowned, recognising the voice, but knowing that its urgent note of concern was alien to her knowledge of it. She wanted to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt like lead. In fact her whole body felt heavy, and very, very weak.
‘Kate, it’s all right… You’re quite safe.’
Safe! Unexpectedly she shuddered, her eyes flying open as panic hit her.
She was in the guest-room, in Dominic’s bed, in fact, and he was crouching down beside the bed, his eyes almost on a level with her own. Urgency overwhelmed everything else as she reached towards him, tugging on the rough towelling of the robe he was wearing, her voice sharp and high with anxiety.
‘Dominic, there’s someone downstairs. I heard them…’ She shuddered again, and then frowned, remembering. ‘I saw them… I…’
‘You fainted, Kate. No, it’s all right.’ He stood up, bending over her, his fingers curling comfortingly round her arm. ‘No one’s broken in,’ he told her reassuringly.
‘But…but I saw them…’
‘You saw me, Kate,’ he corrected her gently. ‘I couldn’t sleep and I’d gone to make myself a drink. I’m sorry I frightened you so much.’
Dominic…it had been Dominic all the time. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking—a physical reaction to the shock, she recognised dizzily.
‘When you fainted I brought you in here because this room was the nearest.’ His fingers left her arm, and she could have cried, she felt so bereft. He straightened up and in the lamplight that illuminated the room she saw that his legs and chest were bare where they were not covered by his robe.
The knowledge that he was naked beneath it made her stomach twist in aching heat, the blood surging up under her skin.
‘I’ll go down and make you a cup of tea.’
‘No.’ She shivered again and closed her eyes. ‘Please stay with me, Dominic… God, I was so frightened!’
She opened her eyes in time to catch the remorse in his. She felt so extraordinarily weak, as though her whole life had suddenly shifted focus, and all that was important now was that he never left her alone again.
She refused to analyse her feelings, clinging instead to his arm.
‘Kate!’ His fingers covered her own, gently prising them away, his voice rough but warm. ‘You know if you stay here that I’ll make love to you.’