‘Sorry,’ Caroline declined. She wasn’t ready for a relaxed evening out; she’d be terrible company. ‘I’ve got a bedroom to paper. We’ll hit the town some other time?’
Danielle planted her hands on her curvaceous hips, her chin going up at an angle as she huffed, ‘Caroline Harvey—you are the most stubborn creature—’ and fell silent as another, harder voice intervened, ‘A sentiment I most sincerely endorse.’
Ben!
Caroline didn’t know whether she’d spoken his name aloud or whether it simply rattled around inside her head. In any case, her heart had stopped, she was sure it had. Danielle was staring with wide grey eyes, her mouth partly open, her cheeks flushed.
Caroline could understand that reaction because Ben Dexter was something else: six feet plus of sizzlingly virile masculinity clothed in a silvery grey suit that fitted the lithe body to perfection; dark, dark hair, beautifully groomed, and eyes as black as night, fringed by those extravagant lashes.
And he was still angry, she recognised with a shock of icy sensation that ran right down her spine and all the way back up again. The atmosphere positively thrummed with it, although he cloaked it with the urbanity of the smile he turned on Danielle, who went pinker and burbled, ‘Well, I’ll be off, then.’ And behind Ben’s back she rolled her eyes expressively, grinned and gave the stunned Caroline the thumbs-up sign.
‘Am I to be invited in?’ His voice was all honey-smooth on the surface but quite definitely laced with ice. Caroline put a hand up to where a pulse was beating madly at the base of her throat.
She had dreamed of being with him again, yearning, aching, desperate dreams, but the reality filled her with a deep and dark foreboding. He had the face of an austere stranger. He looked as if what they had been to each other, the glimpses of paradise they’d shared, had been ruthlessly wiped from his memory.
Wordlessly, she stepped aside, her heart flipping over because it was there, and always would be, the fateful, deeply ingrained physical recognition that made her body ache for his.
His taut profile grim, he strode ahead of her into the sitting room, a single raking glance taking in her few pieces of shrouded furniture, the paint-spattered newspapers spread all over the floor. And then his eyes flowed over her, making her suddenly and horribly aware of the sight she must present. Cheap baggy jeans and sloppy T-shirt, liberally splashed with paint, her hair caught back from her make-up-less face with a piece of string.
But the sheer length of his scrutiny, the slow gleam of something sultry in those narrowed black eyes sent her dizzy with hope. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t dead for him, either.
The violent sexual attraction, the meeting and mating of souls that had lasted through twelve, long years of separation, making them both unfit partners for anyone else on the planet, couldn’t have been wiped out overnight. Surely it couldn’t.
Her head still swimming, her lower limbs suddenly feeling like cotton wool she forced herself to say something, anything, to break the charged and spikey silence. And the breaking of it would enable him to open up, tell her why he was here when he hadn’t wanted to have to talk to her at all on that dreadful last day at Langley Hayes.
‘Can I—’ her tongue felt as if it were twisted into knots. Her milky skin burned with fierce colour as she forced out the words ‘—offer you coffee?’
‘This isn’t a social call.’
His voice was flat, the eyes that pinned hers were hard and dark. His feet planted apart, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers, his superbly cut jacket falling open to reveal the pale grey silk of the shirt that covered the broad plane of his chest. ‘It’s been long enough—a full month. I used no protection. Although knowing now of your relationship with the younger Weinberg, I guessed you’re more than likely to be on the pill.’
His staggeringly handsome features were blank but his eyes brimmed with unconcealed contempt. ‘However, I need to know if you’re pregnant. And if you are, I need to know if it’s mine, or Weinberg’s.’
His lips pulled back against his teeth in a smile that wasn’t a smile at all. ‘Tell me you’re not and I’ll leave you in peace. And I promise you’ll never have to see me again.’
Caroline swayed on her feet, the final frail hope snatched away from her. Her soft mouth trembled as her blood roared in her ears. So much pain coming on the top of all that had gone before. She didn’t know how she was going to bear it.
Darkness closed in on her and she felt herself falling.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GRATING out a harsh expletive, Ben’s voice sounded as if it were echoing over some vast distance, and his face, hovering over her, was fuzzy, as if the bright May morning had spawned a thick November fog.
Caroline shook her head and her vision cleared; she had to be imagining the sharp stab of concern in the night-black eyes.
Of course he didn’t care about her, not any more, and she wasn’t going to be pathetic or crazy enough to let herself even begin to hope that he did. If he hadn’t been too lost in passion when they’d made love to remember to use protection he wouldn’t be here at all, she reminded herself wretchedly.
Struggling to escape the arms that were holding her upright, she gave a strangled, anguished sob. Being held so close to the hard heat of his body was torture, all the more painful because her own body was flooding with a wildfire heat of its own, her pulses racing, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
‘Stop it!’ His command was rough-edged as he subdued her feeble efforts by sweeping her up into his arms and shouldering his way through doors until he found her bedroom.
With a muted hiss of impatience, Ben swept the rolls of wallpaper off the narrow single bed and lowered her down onto it. ‘Stay right there,’ he stated emphatically. ‘I’ll fetch you a glass of water.’
A piercing glance from under lowered brows reinforced her opinion that concern for her well-being had been a product of her own demented imagination, an immature grasping at non-existent straws. He simply and obviously regarded her as nothing more than a nuisance, her unprecedented collapse something he had to handle but could very well have done without.
She turned her face into the pillow and shuddered. She wished he’d go away. It was better to be alone, struggling to accept that everything was finally over, rather than have to see him the way he was now. She didn’t want to have to remember him like this, so cold, so contemptuous, so forbidding.
How he must hate her!