walk and even then she wasn’t escaping them, because her biggest problem was herself.
She turned to retrace her steps and froze, her heart shuddering in her breast.
Correction, her biggest problem was in front of her, calmly strolling between the rocks as if he had as much right to be there as she did.
She waited until he got into earshot before she asked tightly, ‘What are you doing here?’
Benedict shrugged, his black leather jacket sliding open over his cream sweater with the careless movement as he halted on the other side of a shallow rock-pool. ‘Walking.’
She snorted. ‘You never walk.’
‘Only because I don’t usually stay here long enough to miss my daily swims. I’ve decided I’d better get out and about a bit if I don’t want to run to fat.’
She gave his lean length a contemptuous look. ‘I don’t think you have to worry about that.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It wasn’t a compliment, it was a statement of fact,’ she said irritably.
‘Thank you anyway. You’re looking very trim yourself.’
He was looking at her long legs, clad in the jeans that she kept in the boot of the estate car along with her spare down parka and a pair of old sports shoes. When she had left the house earlier she hadn’t even bothered to change, just grabbed a cardigan and fled, and now, with her prim navy ‘uniform’ lying on the back seat of the car, she felt wretchedly defenceless.
She brushed the wind-blown hair out of her eyes, trying to tuck the strands back into the scarf she had used to tie it back.
‘Did you follow me here?’ she asked bluntly.
‘What makes you think that?’
She refused to retreat in the face of his daunting amusement. ‘It seems a very strange coincidence, that’s all.’
‘Since there’s only one main road around here, it’s not that much of a coincidence. I saw the car parked on the verge so I stopped.’
He made it sound like an idle impulse but what reason would he have for driving north from Whitefield? He didn’t strike her as a man with sightseeing on his mind. That only left one alternative.
‘You said I could have the afternoon off,’ she challenged.
‘I suggested we take the afternoon off,’ he corrected gently. ‘And you snuck away to hide as soon as my back was turned.’
‘I’m not hiding. I just wanted to—to get some fresh air and stretch my legs,’ she invented wildly.
Ever since that electric encounter two weeks ago she had been attempting to put a physical distance between them that he had been equally determined to thwart. One night, to her fury, he had invited Richard and his mother to dinner and commanded Vanessa to act as his hostess. She had been forced to smile and act cool and unruffled by his teasing casualness while underneath she had simmered with a temper that had given an unaccustomed sparkle to her looks and prompted some searching glances from Mrs Wells. She couldn’t help but be aware, seeing Richard and Benedict together, how dramatically different they were, like light and shadow, day and night, and unfortunately a primitive part of her was far more fascinated by the powerful lure of the hidden and forbidden than the mellow sunshine.
To her further dismay, during dinner Richard had let the cat out of the bag about the work she was doing for Judge Seaton’s publisher, completing the book about the colourful history of Thames that he had been working on at the time of his death. Richard had cheerfully recounted the difficulties she had had trying to collate and compress boxes of copious notes and sort through half-scribbled ideas in her spare time and somehow by the end of the meal Vanessa had found that she had been neatly manoeuvred into accepting Benedict’s help.
Since then much of her spare time had been spent cheek by jowl with Benedict at the library desk, resolutely trying to treat him like a block of wood while deeply chagrined to realise that his unwelcome expertise was indeed making the book progress much faster.
‘Precisely my plan,’ he said smugly now. ‘We can stretch our legs together. Exercise is boring without company, don’t you think?’
‘No.’
He regarded her truculent glare with amusement. ‘Well, in that case you just carry on by yourself and I’ll keep a discreet distance behind.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous—!’
‘It’s not me who’s being ridiculous, Vanessa,’ he said gently. ‘What did you think I intended when I suggested you and I play hooky today?’
Vanessa turned away but he had already seen her blush. ‘Do I have to tell you my thoughts now? Aren’t I entitled to any privacy at all?’ she demanded fiercely.