Beyond All Reason

‘There’s nothing to tell. I left because I wasn’t interested in having a fling.’

‘Don’t stop there, Abby,’ he said softly. ‘Finish that thought and tell me what more you want from me and why.’

They stared at each other in thick silence and she could feel the pounding of her heart going like a hammer in her chest, making her breathless and light-headed.

‘Do you have any idea what I’m going through?’ Ross asked harshly and she didn’t answer. ‘I’ve been going mad, thinking about you.’

Abigail didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to hear this, she didn’t want to rise on a tide of hope only to be thrown back down to earth.

‘Say something, damn you!’

He shook her and she broke out bitterly, ‘There’s nothing to say! I still won’t have an affair with you!’

‘I’m not asking for an affair!’ he snarled, and she looked at him, startled.

‘Then what are you asking for?’

He turned away and raked his fingers impatiently through his hair.

‘Don’t you know?’ he said, with his profile to her. ‘I’m in love with you, Abby. I don’t know when it happened, I just know that when you told me that you were engaged to a man I felt as though my foundations were collapsing.’

‘Aren’t you going to look at me when you talk to me?’ she asked, and he faced her.

‘Marry me,’ he whispered unsteadily. ‘Tell me that you love me.’

‘Of course I love you,’ she said simply, her eyes shining, and she slipped her arms around his waist. She felt as though she was coming home, returning to a place where she belonged.

His arms tightened around her and he kissed her, his tongue exploring her mouth, then he buried his head against her neck.

‘When I first saw that man I felt sick. I didn’t have to turn up at your engagement party, I didn’t want to, but something was driving me on. I got there with Fiona complaining all the way, and it was like being punched in the chest. I felt betrayed!’ He laughed shakily under his breath. ‘I needed you! How could you just decide to marry someone without…without…?’

‘Asking your permission?’ she teased.

He shot her a dark, brooding look, then lifted her off her feet and carried her to the sofa, sitting down with her on his lap.

‘We can’t do anything here!’ she protested, and he ignored her.

‘Of course you should have asked my permission!’ he told her.

‘And what would you have said?’

‘Not to be damned stupid. You see, little by little I’d come to depend on you. Do you know that unconsciously I compared other women to you?’ He made a rueful sound. ‘You’d managed to edge your way under my skin and when I spoke to another woman, I kept saying to myself that Abigail wouldn’t be so stupid, so lacking in self-irony, so conceited, so weight-conscious. I didn’t even realise what was going on. Then I found myself looking at you, thinking about you. I’m not sure when I started wanting you, but suddenly I felt as though I’d been catapulted back into adolescence. Every move you made fascinated me.’

‘You were seeing Fiona!’ Abigail reminded him.

‘No, I wasn’t. She was seeing me. I broke it off with her shortly after that disastrous engagement party, but she refused to accept it, and I suppose, for a while, I felt sorry for her.’

He pulled her towards him and their lips met, as his hand stroked her thigh, found the lacy edge of her stocking and caressed the bare flesh above it.

‘I never loved Martin,’ Abigail said softly. ‘We met and something clicked. Friendship, I guess, and we both mistook friendship for something else. We were both so ripe for falling in love. He was desperate to settle down, to start a family, and, well…’ She paused reflectively. ‘I suppose I thought that the stability he offered was what I was looking for, especially after what I’d been through with Ellis. I hadn’t been in love with Ellis, but it was still a blow when he laughed at what we had.’ She sighed. ‘When you told me that he wasn’t the man for me, I was angry, because I had had niggling doubts of my own. I just wasn’t sure.’

She settled against him, leaning her head on his shoulder. He eased her dress up, and she squirmed, giggling.

‘We really mustn’t. What if Fiona comes back? Her bag’s still on the bed!’

‘So it is,’ he murmured. ‘Well, I’d better see to that, then, hadn’t I?’

He lifted her and placed her gently on the bed, then made a brief call to Reception. The room was now occupied. The lady who had booked the room might return for a bag, in which case they were to tell her that the bag would be forwarded to her address. Abigail could hear them murmuring consent down the line. Power and wealth pulled strings, and Ross was well known enough to the hotel for no fuss to be made. The owner was a personal friend of his, and the staff treated him with the respect reserved for only a privileged few.

Then he went to the door and slipped the chain across. She watched his movements with languid fascination. She still couldn’t believe that this proud, arrogant man was in love with her. She felt deliriously happy. How could she ever have imagined that what she felt for Martin had been anything substantial? Love was pain and ecstasy, anguish and needing.

‘Better?’ he asked, sinking on to the bed next to her, and she nodded.

‘It’s been hell, you know,’ he murmured, ‘in the office. Watching you. Wanting you. Hating myself for still wanting you when you had told me to get lost. When you told me about that man in your last job, I felt sick. How could I fight your preconceptions of me? Then when I saw him at that party, I could have strangled him. I’d never been jealous of anyone in my life before, and suddenly I was feeling murderous towards two perfect strangers just because they happened to have been close to you somewhere along the way. I wasn’t going to show you how much you’d winded me when you told me that you weren’t going to have an affair with me. I thought that I was being a fool, that if I could treat you like a stranger, then whatever chaos was happening inside me might go away. I was crazy.’ He began unbuttoning his shirt, and when he had disrobed to his boxer shorts he said with restrained passion, ‘I want to see you undress. Slowly. My own personal striptease. I seem to have been waiting for so long.’

The only light in the room was the glow from the bedside lamp. Ross had switched off the top light, and Abigail, with blushing self-consciousness, stood up and began wriggling out of her dress.

‘Slowly!’ he commanded, and she felt a pulse of excited delight as she looked at his dark eyes, drowsy with desire.

She removed her dress, slowly, and he smiled, then she undid her bra and cradled her breasts in her hands, with a wicked, thrilling lack of inhibition. When she reached to unfasten her suspenders, he told her not to, so she removed her briefs instead, then joined him on the bed, closing her eyes as he trailed his hand along the length of her body.

‘You’re exquisite,’ he murmured. ‘You have a body that should never see the inside of an office suit again.’

‘I don’t think that would be wise, do you?’ she asked with a gurgle.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It’s for my eyes only.’ He smoothed her thighs, then began caressing her with the flat of his hand, and she half closed her eyes, moving against him.

‘I couldn’t bear the thought that other men had kissed you. Before then, women were pleasant companions but never more. If any one of them had told me that she had found someone else, I would have shrugged and wished her the best luck in the world. That’s why I couldn’t understand my rage when you told me that you were going to marry that man. And after we spent that time in the cottage in the Lake District.’ He paused the steady rhythm of his hand and cupped her face. There was raw emotion in his eyes. ‘God, woman, it was as though I had never known the meaning of making love! Then you told me that you weren’t sure, that you’d have to think about it.’ He drew in a sharp breath. ‘What was there to think about? I couldn’t conceive that you didn’t feel the same as I did.’

‘I loved you,’ Abigail said soberly. ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of being hurt by you. Don’t forget I’d worked with you; I’d seen you close up and I knew your track record.’

‘It wasn’t good, was it?’ he said in a rueful voice and she laughed.

‘I’ve known better. But I wasn’t about to become a casualty. Love makes you vulnerable.’ She sought for the words. ‘Besides, we were so different. I was an ordinary working girl and I’d always had it drummed into me that I was destined to marry a good, ordinary man. The first time Fiona warned me off you, she told me that we were from different worlds, and part of me was willing to believe her because it was something that frightened me as well. When Ellis and I broke up he laughed in my face, you know. I don’t think he meant to be unkind, not deliberately, but he found the thought of us having some sort of serious relationship quite ludicrous, and since I’d spent a lifetime hearing that sort of thing from my mother, having it drummed into me that I was an average girl who should expect an average life, I believed him.’