Valentine Vendetta

‘She sounds like a remarkable woman,’ said Fran quietly.

He looked at her for a long moment. ‘Yes. She was. Thank you.’

‘For what?’ she asked, surprised.

For being generous to a woman who had me when I think you want me for yourself, he nearly said. But he didn’t. That might scare her away. And besides, he wasn’t sure just how much she wanted him.

‘For making my mother’s birthday so successful. For being such a good listener. Shall I go on?’

‘Oh, please do!’ she said, laughing. ‘You’re doing wonders for my ego!’

While she was doing precisely nothing for his abnormally high levels of frustration! ‘I don’t know why I’ve unburdened my soul like this,’ he confessed.

Fran smiled. ‘Oh, that’s easy. Because you needed to,’ she said simply. ‘You live in a world of fantasy, reading your manuscripts in your beautiful, isolated house. But you’ve got to let reality in sometimes, Sam. However harsh it may be.’

Much more of this level of understanding, and he would be straddling her over the kitchen chair! ‘Just go to bed, Fran, honey,’ he growled. ‘Before I retract my offer of finishing the clearing up!’

She knew from the look on his eyes that to argue would be futile. She also knew that if he tried to kiss her, she would not protest.

But there was no kiss, and no protest and she was not the kind of woman to make the first move—even if he was the kind of man who wanted her to. Her bed awaited her, chaste and undisturbed. She would spend eight hours in it alone, as she had done last night. And tomorrow she would go home.

She thought that the silence which stretched out between the two of them seemed like a bridge—the kind made of wooden slats which swayed precariously whenever the wind blew.

A bit like life, really.

‘I’ll say good-night then, Sam.’

He smiled. ‘Good night, honey.’

CHAPTER TEN

UNSURPRISINGLY, Fran couldn’t sleep, and after a while she gave up trying, climbing out of bed and wandering over to the window to see what the stars were doing. She drew back the curtains and looked out.

Outside, the moon looked like a giant satellite dish in the sky, milk-bright and gleaming. How dark the trees appeared against that ghostly light, she thought. How flat and silent the landscape. She leaned her hands on the window ledge, and wondered what Sam was doing.

Sam had been unable to sleep and was genuinely thirsty. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. So naturally he needed to go downstairs to make himself a drink. He moved as silently as a shadow only because he didn’t wish to wake his elderly mother. Or his two sisters. All of whom needed their sleep.

And the only reason he walked down the passageway which lay away from the kitchen was because he thought he heard a noise. He definitely heard a noise. A soft, swishing noise like the sound of a curtain being gently pulled. And how could he be called any kind of man unless he investigated noises coming from the direction of Fran’s room?

But when he crept silently and barefooted along the polished boards to stand outside the partially open door, it was to find that his heart and his stomach seemed to have fused somewhere in the region of his mouth.

It was like one of those films they hardly ever made any more, when you just forgot everything—everything—except the person standing right in front of you who had invaded every single one of your senses.

She was wearing a long, pale sort of nightgown, worn high to the neck, and long to the ground. The sleeves were long, too, and gathered at the wrists, and the tip of the gown brushed the floor. If the window had been open, the wind would have blown the garment away from her in a diaphanous cloud, so that she would have resembled the figurehead of a ship, looking out to sea.

But it was her hair which captured his imagination most. Loose. Free. Spilling down her back like warm honey. And he knew that it was loose for the rest of the night. His breath caught in a small, choking sound.

She heard him, and turned, too dreamy with the sight of him to act like she wasn’t used to dark, ruffled men appearing at her door, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. Her heart began to plummet out of control, but this sense of feeling that this was somehow meant to happen, made her voice sound oddly calm.

‘Hello, Sam,’ she said.

He shook his head, fruitlessly trying to break the spell of her enchantment. ‘Surprised to see me?’

Her eyes were slitted. ‘No.’

He smiled at her lack of pretence. ‘Can’t you sleep?’

‘No.’