He wasn’t going to kiss her after all she realised indignantly, trying to tell herself that it wasn’t disappointment that she was feeling at all, and that she was glad…yes, glad that he had finally started the engine and put an end to the dangerous conversation they had been having.
As Silas drove out of the town and into the darkness of the surrounding countryside, Hazel yawned again. She felt desperately tired; a legacy from her sleepless nights and emotional turmoil. She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. Just for a few minutes. She wasn’t going to go to sleep. She was just going to relax, that was all.
* * *
SILAS GLANCED at the sleeping figure in the passenger seat, grimacing wryly to himself as he noted the way she had turned her body away from him. Even in her sleep she withdrew from him.
It had stunned him tonight to discover that she had thought he was sexually involved with Katie, but, unflattering though her assumptions had been, they did explain a great deal.
Was he being a complete fool? he wondered musingly, glancing back at her. She certainly wasn’t willing to admit him into her life, but she wasn’t totally indifferent to him either. Had her father repressed her basic femininity so much that she would never be able to overcome that repression? She had described herself as having a low sex drive. Her body had already given him a very, very different message.
But would she ever be able to accept that…that what? That he had virtually fallen in love with her from Katie’s description of her, and that his first sight of her had only confirmed what he had already felt? And even if she accepted it, would she care?
She had responded to him when he kissed her, but sexual response was not love. He reflected that it was just as well her father was dead. They could almost certainly never have been friends. He had damaged her too much, destroyed her self-esteem and hurt her, even if he had not done that damage maliciously or knowingly.
* * *
WHEN HE STOPPED the car in the drive, Hazel was still asleep. Getting out of the car, he found the set of keys she had given him and went to open the back door. Then, returning to the car, he opened the passenger door and said her name quietly.
She moved in her sleep, frowning as though she had heard him, but refusing to wake up.
Common sense told him that the sensible thing to do was to give her a little shake and speak more loudly, but when had a man in love ever behaved sensibly, even one of forty-one? Especially one of forty-one, he told himself with a wry smile, as he leaned into the car and released her seatbelt, before gently easing her out of the seat and into his arms.
She weighed less heavily than his teenage goddaughter, but then she was almost half a head shorter as well. His sisters were going to love her. They were always on at him to get married, chivvying him for being too fussy, telling him that he was in danger of turning into a fussy old bachelor.
As he carried her towards the house, she seemed to nestle into his arms, burrowing against his body, making a soft sound of pleasure as she turned her face into his throat.
The sensation of her warm breath against his skin paralysed him where he stood, a wave of intense longing and need sweeping over him, making him wryly aware that falling in love wasn’t the only thing that, supposedly reserved for the youthful, could overtake a man of forty-one—but the very worst thing he could do right now would be to sweep her off to bed and make love to her the way his body was so urgently demanding.
Before he even so much as kissed her again, he needed to build up her trust, her self-confidence…he needed to establish a bridge between them, a rapport; he needed to make her respond to him as a fellow human being before he could show her how much he wanted to respond to her as a woman.
Which was why the moment they were inside the kitchen he put her down rather urgently, causing her to wake up abruptly and stare bemusedly into his eyes.
What was happening? Hazel wondered sleepily. What was she doing in the kitchen, standing so close to Silas that she could actually feel his heartbeat, when the last thing she could remember was being in the passenger seat of his car?
She looked away from him to the still open kitchen door. Had she really walked through it without realising what she was doing?
‘I carried you in,’ Silas told her, answering her unspoken question. ‘I tried to wake you, but you were too deeply asleep.’
He had carried her in! She looked up at him, her eyes still dazed with sleep, as her body continued to absorb the warmth of his. She didn’t want to move away from him. She wanted to stay right where she was. She wanted…
She looked at his mouth, her own lips parting, unconsciously seeking his kiss. Silas looked back at her, knowing that if he touched her now…
Immediately he stepped back from her and just as immediately Hazel realised what she was doing, what she was inviting. She was practically begging him to kiss her. No wonder he was looking at her so grimly. What on earth must he think of her?
She stepped back from him instinctively, not trusting herself to be able to look at him.
‘I’m rather tired,’ she told him quickly. ‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll have an early night.’
* * *
IT WAS ONLY later, when she was just on the verge of sleep, that she realised that neither of them had really eaten. For herself the last thing she wanted was food, but Silas…
He was an intelligent adult, she reminded herself. If he wanted something to eat, presumably he would make himself a meal. As she fell asleep, she was smiling a little sadly to herself, remembering her father, who would have been shocked and confused by any suggestion that he might prepare his own meals, but then her father and Silas were two very, very different members of the male sex.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A WEEK passed and then another. Silas was so absorbed in the research on his book that Hazel only saw him in the evening when he joined her for a meal.