The heat was still coursing through her body in the aftermath of his deliberate erotic scrutiny of her, and it took her several seconds to pull herself together enough to say distractedly, ‘Which room? Oh, there are only two. The spare room faces the street.’
Her eyes focused betrayingly on him as he bent to remove his leather holdall from the floor.
The leather was soft and worn, the holdall unadorned with gimmicky logos, unostentatious and battered, but Jessica recognised its quality none the less. She suspected that had she looked inside it she would have seen tucked discreetly almost out of sight a name familiar to her from her father’s luggage. It was his proud boast that he had been given his cases second-hand by an uncle, when he first went up to Oxford, and that he still found them far superior to anything that modern science could produce.
Seeing the familiar brown leather reminded her sharply of her parents and of the gulf that lay between them; a gulf she felt it necessary to maintain to preserve her own independence.
Oh, there was no open rift. Whenever her mother could coax her home they welcomed her with open arms, and she knew quite well that nothing would delight her parents more than to have her living with them once more. Nothing…unless it was the news that she was married and pregnant with a grandson. A grandson who would take the place in the bank which she had rejected.
The last time she had been home her cousin had been visiting with her parents. Jessica wasn’t particularly fond of Emma. Her cousin was the only child of her mother’s sister and her husband.
Emma’s father was a country solicitor, and comfortably rather than well off. Jessica suspected that Emma had always resented the fact that her aunt and uncle were far more wealthy than her parents.
They had both attended the same private school. There were only a few months’ difference in their ages, and while they were at school Emma had often behaved towards her in a way that was spiteful and jealous.
Now they rarely saw one another. Emma worked in a very expensive and up-market Kensington boutique, and she had long ago announced that it was her sole ambition to find a man rich enough to support her in the same style that Jessica’s father supported his family.
‘But so many marriages end in divorce, and if you don’t love him in the first place…’ Jessica had objected sharply, shocked by Emma’s revelations.
‘Judgemental Jessica, all pi and prudery,’ Emma had taunted her. ‘So what if it does? You can be sure that I’ll make sure I don’t come out of any divorce without a substantial sum of money. It’s all right for you to look down and sneer. You don’t know what real life’s all about. Your father’s a millionaire.’
‘Money isn’t everything,’ Jessica had told her.
Emma had laughed shrilly. ‘Only you could come out with a statement like that. Of course it isn’t to you…’
That had been when they were both eighteen.
Later, after Jessica’s ordeal, Emma had come to see her at home. On the verge of getting engaged to an extremely wealthy minor baronet, she had been seething with resentment and anger because her quarry had been snatched out of her grasp at the last moment by his domineering and extremely protective mother. When she heard that Jessica didn’t intend returning to the bank, she had been derisive.
‘My God…if only I had your opportunities. You’re a fool, Jess. Turning your back on the bank and setting yourself up as some dreary little sewing woman. You’re a fool. Do you know that?’
Jessica had ignored her jibes about her embroidery skills and refused to rise to her bait, but since then the disaffection between them had grown.
Emma had married, divorced, and was now looking for husband number two, or so Jessica suspected.
‘Come back.’
The soft words made her realise that she had drifted off into her own thoughts.
Daniel smiled at her as he picked up his bag. Even beneath his thick sweater, she could discern the powerful play of his muscles.
A weakening sensation invaded her body as she stared at his supple back, imagining how it would look, how it would feel, to have that powerful, lean body close to her own. His skin would feel smooth and warm, like silk—no, not like silk, like the most expensive kind of satin. And beneath it she would be able to feel the hard, padded muscles and the long, male bones.
Her imagination conjured up pictures that made her face go hot. Guiltily she averted her eyes from his body, sternly lecturing herself on her wanton thoughts.
More for distraction than anything else, while he was upstairs she got up and walked over to the sink. She wasn’t an invalid, after all. She had simply bruised the muscles in her arm.
She could fill the kettle left-handedly, and set about the preparations for their evening meal.
Cluny came in through the cat flap, miaowing demandingly. Obligingly she went to get a tin of cat food, automatically reaching for it with her right hand, and then stifling a sharp gasp as her bruised muscles locked and went into a stabbing flash of pain. She dropped the tin of cat food, instinctively nursing her bruised shoulder.
When Daniel came quickly into the kitchen, alerted by her cry of distress, he found her kneeling on the floor trying to recover the tin, which had rolled under the table.
‘Leave it!’ he told her, his voice so sharp and steely that she obeyed it instinctively, her face flushing with mortification as she realised that his tone was more suitable for addressing a recalcitrant insubordinate than a woman who considered herself both mature and under no one’s authority other than her own, but before she could voice any protest he was at her side, tugging her to her feet with such concern that
she forgot her anger.
‘Why on earth didn’t you wait?’ he chided her when she explained what had happened.
‘It’s my arm that’s bruised, not my legs. And, besides, Cluny was hungry.’
‘Cluny?’ He looked down and saw the cat, who was fixing him with a basilisk-like stare.
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
‘Ah, yes. I see…Cluny…For the tapestries, of course.’
‘Yes,’ Jessica agreed, pleased that he had recognised the connection. Not many people who were not knowledgeable in her field realised that she had named her cat after the famous Cluny tapestries. She liked the idea that, economist though he was, Daniel had an obviously wide-ranging grasp of things outside his own field. It pointed to a mind quick and generous enough to acknowledge that monetary matters were not necessarily the focus of everyone’s life.
‘Well, I think that for tonight at least Cluny will have to rely on me for his food.’
‘But it seems all wrong, you waiting on me,’ she protested as he firmly led her back to the sofa.
‘Chauvinist,’ he teased, and then added, ‘I promise you I’m quite at home in the kitchen. My mother brought us all up to be self-sufficient.’
‘All?’ Jessica queried curiously.
‘Yes. I have two brothers and a sister.’
Her envy showed in her face. ‘How lucky you were. I’m an only child.’
‘Only child, lonely child?’ he hazarded as he opened the can and spooned out the contents into Cluny’s bowl.
‘Yes, I was. Oh, my mother did her best. She was forever dragging me off to parties, introducing me to the children of friends, but…’
‘But?’ Daniel queried, looking thoughtfully at her. ‘But what? You didn’t like them, you preferred your own company, or you wanted to punish your parents for not providing you with brothers and sisters?’
Jessica raised startled eyes to meet his. How had he known that? She had only recently discovered herself what had lain behind her stubborn refusal to break out of her loneliness, and then only by accident.