‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? Have you gone right out of your mind?’ he demanded. ‘I tried to stop you going back up there. Why didn’t you listen to me?’
She decided that he might as well have the lot at once. ‘I still love him.’
‘Oh, my God.’ It was an agonised groan and she could picture his handsome face, composed in pained lines of cynicism and scorn, discomfiture lurking somewhere at the back of his green eyes. With the sole exception of anger, overt emotion made Grant extremely ill at ease.
‘That’s how I feel,’ she persisted unsteadily. ‘I won’t let you put me down.’
‘By the sound of it, you don’t need my assistance to do that,’ he parried with cutting satire. ‘We may have had our disagreements recently, but I’ve never been less than straight with you.’
‘I don’t need this right now,’ she muttered wearily. ‘I just wanted to be honest with you.’
‘Honesty like that I can do without. You’re making a complete ass of yourself. I suppose you do realise that?’ he probed with remorseless contempt. ‘Do you need your memory refreshed? He ran rings round you and he dumped you, Kitty. He probably hasn’t that in mind this time. After all, you’ve had your rough edges smoothed off and you just happen to be worth a few million. I’m not surprised to hear that he’s made a move on you, but I’m very surprised that you can be feeble enough to fall for the same lines a second time.’
Static buzzed on the line. In an expression of silent torment, she had squeezed her eyes shut. Not one derisive word had missed target. ‘Stop it,’ she whispered.
‘I’m sorry if you don’t like the bad news, but I’m damned if I’m going to apologise for it,’ he continued hardly. ‘What is it about this guy? You could have any man you wanted and yet it’s still him. Is he the one that got away? If this is an ego trip I could understand that, but I don’t understand anything else.’
‘You never have understood me,’ she murmured tautly.
‘You’ve been working too hard, Kitty. I’ll even allow that maybe I put on too much pressure there for a time,’ he conceded, obviously feeling generous after shredding her. ‘Pull yourself together and jump on the first plane over here, hmm? It’s too late for the film but I wouldn’t say no to a house guest. Your agent’s been in touch with me. There’s an offer of a mini-series pending…’
‘I can’t leave, I can’t run away from this!’
‘Tell him to drop dead and then catch the plane,’ Grant suggested drily. ‘I’m really not particular about how you do it. How’s the great literary work going?’
She started to tell him, but he wasn’t interested enough to listen and he cut her off to talk about his film. Ten minutes later, she slumped down in sick dizziness on the settee. She had never felt more alone and isolated. Or more wretched. Feeble, yes, she supposed, looking back over the past weeks; feeble was almost too kind a description.
There had never been the remotest possibility of her marrying Jake. Not a spoken-out-loud possibility. Did she punish herself now for harbouring a dream? A loveless union with Jake would kill her by degrees. Inch by inch, hour by hour. She attempted to console herself with the knowledge of the misery she would save herself from by cutting loose now. But since the prospect of not seeing him again today, never mind tomorrow, was capable of depressing her, it was a rather pointless procedure.
He had mentioned something about a trip to York and he was sure to be working tonight. She would leave tomorrow first thing. She had to make herself believe that. Staggering upright, she lifted the first two chapters of her book off the dresser and thrust the folder beneath her portable typewriter. She trudged out to the car with her burden. Her legs threatened to crumple under her and she sagged back down on to the settee again to catch her breath.
In a minute she would go back upstairs and pack. By tomorrow she was sure to be feeling stronger. She wasn’t planning to join her father in the South of France. But in her disorientation her lack of a decided destination really didn’t seem at all important. The minute of rest slid unnoticed into a few minutes and her aching eyes slowly closed.
She awakened without ever knowing she had been asleep, and she couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t breathe at all. Her fingers torturously clawed at the fabric beneath her cheek in a weak attempt to raise herself. The rasping agony of her own lungs controlled her. Her frantic movements sent her rolling on to the floor, the invisible smoke in the darkness choking her.
Glass splinters flew out from the window. Hands dragged at her. She didn’t feel them. The top of her head was flying off and she lapsed into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOMEBODY was shouting at Kitty, shaking her. She started to cough and gasp in wrenching, painful spasms that jerked her whole body. She recognised Jake’s arms by sense and touch alone, her eyes opening on a blurred vision of the night that was reminiscent of a view of hell. It was no longer dark. Incredible noise was bombarding her ears. A fizzling and a crackling joined in the roar of the orange and yellow flames shooting up into the skies, sending multi-coloured sparks showering down in all directions. She couldn’t see the cottage, couldn’t even grasp that it was in there somewhere feeding the thick, swirling smoke and the awesome flames.
There was a sudden flash and an ear-splitting report and she ducked her head into the shelter of Jake’s jacket, her arms tightening round him as she gasped for oxygen that hurt her raw throat. He was trembling against her and she could feel the ferocious anger he was fighting to contain. He was struggling to breathe and shout at the same time and somebody was bundling her into a blanket.
She wasn’t sure whether that somebody was Jake or not. She was floating in a poppy field awash with glorious scarlet flowers, the sun a drenching warmth on her skin. She couldn’t see Jake, but she could sense his presence. It was a paradise of a place and the far-off voices around her penetrated her mystic vision not at all.
‘Yes,’ she croaked to nobody in particular. ‘I said yes.’
She surfaced briefly in a strange, brightly lit room. Hazily she focused on Jake. His face was all black. He was arguing about something. A female in a white coat as wide as she was tall was towering over his chair, loudly telling him not to be obstreperous. She couldn’t keep her eyes open on that intriguing sight. With a little smile she drifted off again in search of her poppy field.
‘How does you feel?’
An anxious little face was hovering over her. Tina? With a groan, Kitty moved her head. Her temples pounded and there was a razor at the back of her throat. She winced.
‘Are you really coming to live at my house forever and ever?’ Tina demanded excitedly.
‘Put it like that and she might change her mind.’ Jake appeared and swept Tina off the bed. He gave her a hug before setting her down again. ‘Go and ask Jessie very nicely for a cup of
tea.’
Kitty plucked at the duvet and stole a dazed look round the pleasantly furnished unfamiliarity of her surroundings. ‘Where am I?’ she whispered.
‘Torbeck. It’s five in the afternoon, day one after the conflagration.’
Her brow indented. She had only the haziest memory of it all, disconnected snatches that didn’t make much sense. ‘You mean,’ she swallowed with difficulty, ‘it was real—there really was a fire?’
‘Either that or there are an awful lot of people suffering from a mass hallucination.’ Poised at the foot of the bed, he surveyed her, his dark beautiful eyes intent on her pallor. ‘I’ve spent most of the day dealing with the police and the fire department. I’m afraid they arrived too late. The house is a shell. Everything’s gone,’ he told her almost conversationally. ‘Do you realise just how lucky you are to be alive?’
She pushed a shaking hand through her tangled hair. ‘My God…the last thing I recall is sitting on the settee…well, there are one or two other bits…’ her voice tailed off.
‘You have Tina’s flu. Of course it would never have occurred to you to call a doctor,’ he breathed, flexing long fingers expressively on the brass foot-rail of the bed. ‘The fire started in your bedroom. You wouldn’t have had a prayer if you’d been up there.’
Her evasive gaze arrowed to the sprigged floral pattern on the duvet. ‘I left the electric fire burning,’ she mumbled.
‘Correction,’ he contradicted. ‘You left a faulty electric fire burning. Your grandmother put it away. She knew it was dangerous but she was too stingy to dump anything!’ A rise of strong emotion was betrayed by the ground-out syllables. ‘If the door between the hall and the kitchen hadn’t been shut, you’d be dead.’
Her stomach was feeling fragile. ‘Will you stop saying that?’
‘I just want it to sink in. I got you out with minutes to spare,’ he advanced tautly.
‘I wasn’t feeling well. I forgot that I’d put on the fire to heat the room.’