‘No bother,’ he dismissed, then added softly, ‘I’d rather be here with you.’
Rachel’s eyes flicked open, a warning frisson skipping down her spine. ‘Next left,’ she directed.
Dutifully, he made the turn. ‘What does Daniel think of your being with me every Wednesday night?’ he enquired smoothly then.
Rachel shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about Daniel—she didn’t want to hoist up her guard either. ‘He’s very encouraging,’ she said, then grimaced at the lie. Daniel hated it and, because he hated it, she rubbed his nose in it. He rarely saw her without a sketch-pad in her hands these days—reminding him of who had helped her rediscover her love of drawing.
‘Yet you never draw him, do you?’ Zac prodded quietly. ‘You poke fun at every other member of your family, but never him.’
‘He isn’t a good subject,’ she said. ‘Go right at the next junction.’
‘Daniel?’ His tone was filled with mockery. ‘I would have thought him an ideal subject, being the hard-hitting, ruthless devil he is at work and the ordinary family man he is at home. Real scope for humour there by mixing the two, I would say.’
But Rachel didn’t agree. She saw nothing funny in Daniel any more. Once, maybe, she would have delighted in drawing him in cartoon form. But not any more. ‘Then maybe I’ll have a go one day,’ she said lightly, knowing she would not. ‘This is it,’ she told him. ‘The white rendered one with the black BMW parked outside.’
So Daniel was home. She shivered slightly, but not with the cold.
Zac drew the car to a halt at the bottom of the drive. The engine died, and they both sat there listening to the rain thunder against the glass. He turned in his seat to look at her, and Rachel made herself return the look.
‘Well—thank you for the lift,’ she said, without making a single move to get out of the car. She felt trapped, by Zac’s expression, by the warmth inside the car, by her own breathlessness caused by the darkened look in his eyes.
‘My pleasure,’ he said, but absently. His mind was elsewhere, searching her face for something she wasn’t sure whether she was showi
ng him or not. Then she found she was, because he leaned across the gap separating them and kissed her gently on the mouth. She didn’t respond, but nor did she pull away. Her heart gave a small leap, then began thundering in her breast, but she wasn’t certain whether that was because she was playing with fire here, or because she was genuinely attracted to him.
His hand covered her cheek, long artistic fingers running into her hair, and as the kiss continued he moved his thumb until it rested against the corner of her mouth and began stroking gently, urging it to respond.
But even as he did so she was pulling away, suddenly very sure that this was not what she wanted to do. He let her go, sitting back to study her through lazy, glittering eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled awkwardly—why, she wasn’t sure.
‘What for?’
She didn’t answer—couldn’t. All she wanted to do now was to get out of this car. And her hand fumbled for the door-catch again, trembling in its urgency to get away.
‘You wanted me to kiss you, Rachel,’ Zac murmured softly. ‘Whatever else is going through your mind right now, remember you wanted it as much as I did.’
He was right, and her cheeks flushed with guilt. She had wanted him to kiss her—had wanted to know what it was like to feel another man’s lips besides Daniel’s against her own.
But now she just felt foolish, and angry with herself for allowing it to happen, because it had encouraged Zac to think there might be a place for him in her life, when there never could be. Daniel was everything she wanted, damn him. Damn him to hell.
It was only as she ran through the driving rain towards the house that she wondered suddenly if Daniel had heard them arrive. She sent a sharp glance at the curtained windows, but there was no revealing twitching of velvet. He hadn’t seen her kissing Zac, she decided with relief. He would be expecting her to come home by bus, so even if he’d heard the car, he would not have associated the deep sound of Zac’s Porsche with her arrival home.
He wasn’t in the sitting-room. The study door was ajar and she glanced in but there was no sign of him there either. She found him in the kitchen.
‘You’re back earlier than I expected,’ she remarked casually as she entered. He had his back to her as he waited for the kettle to boil. And he looked nice in a simple black sweatshirt and casual jeans.
‘I let my mother go home,’ he told her, ignoring her remark. His hand was shaking a little as he poured the boiling water on to the tea-bags. ‘She was concerned about you when she saw your car was still on the drive and you were nowhere to be found. You could have let her know that you weren’t taking your own car.’
‘It wouldn’t start,’ she explained. ‘So I caught the bus. I’m sorry,’ she added belatedly. ‘I didn’t think it would worry Jenny. I’ll apologise to her tomorrow…’
Silence. He still hadn’t looked at her, his whole attention seemingly fixed on the tea-tray he was preparing. It suddenly hit her that Daniel was blindingly angry about something. It showed in the cording of the muscles in his neck, in the way his every movement was being severely controlled as he moved about the kitchen without so much as glancing her way.
Had he seen? Letting out a nervous little laugh, she said, ‘I’m soaking wet through!’ Trying to sound normal and failing miserably, guilt was staining her cheeks red. And she knew that if Daniel did bother to look at her he would know in an instant that she had been up to no good. ‘I think I’ll go and have a hot bath,’ she decided nervously. Then, belatedly, ‘H-Have you eaten? Can I get you anything before I—’
‘No!’ he barked out so violently that Rachel jumped.
Chewing pensively on her lower lip, she watched him make an effort to control himself, his shoulders heaving on a long intake of air as he lifted his face from its contemplation of the teapot to stare at the slatted blinds covering the kitchen window.