A tiny feather-light sigh of sensation brushed against her skin, making her stomach muscles quiver and then tense.
She could feel her body getting hot, her mouth going dry. What would have happened this afternoon if she hadn’t pulled away when she had?
She closed her eyes briefly, mentally imagining him without his shirt, his skin sleek and smooth, clinging supplely to his muscles.
She heard the small grunt of satisfaction he made as the first connection came free and her eyes opened.
This afternoon, standing close to him, she had caught the hot, musky scent of his sweat. And had been aroused by it? Just as she was now being aroused by her own thoughts. No! How ridiculous. Only infatuated teenagers or women in love reacted like that to such small stimuli.
Women in love!
She could feel the small hairs on the nape of her neck standing on end as the shock engulfed her in an ice-cold frisson of fear.
In love with Richard Field? Impossible… How could she be?
Blindly she tried to focus on her work, to ignore his presence at the other end of the room.
Why on earth had George behaved so irrationally, allowing Richard Field to come down here, not telling Gale what he was doing? And how could she, even in her wildest imagination, allow herself to fall in love with a man who could behave as callously and uncaringly towards her sex as Richard Field did?
All right, so maybe this evening she had had a brief glimpse into his past, had sensed the pain he must have suffered when his mother left him and when his marriage broke up, but none of that altered the fact that he had been openly contemptuous and wrong about her.
Any woman falling in love with that kind of man was just asking to be hurt.
‘There, that should do it.’
At any other time the male satisfaction in his voice would have made her smile; as it was, instead she tensed, refusing to look up from her work.
What was he doing, hovering over her? Why didn’t he go away and leave her alone? He was standing behind her now, close enough for her to sense his presence, so much so that she could feel her body trembling in response to it.
‘I ought to ring Gale… She’ll want a full report on how I got on with the plumber…’
She was talking quickly, wildly almost, desperate to fill the dangerously intense silence between them, to defend herself against the miasma of awareness that threatened her. Would her cousin still want to go ahead with her plans if George was trying to sell the farmhouse?
‘The plumber?’ Richard Field was questioning her.
‘Yes…I went to see him this morning. Gale wants—’
‘Was that the plumber I saw you speaking with in Beaulieu?’
Livvy tensed. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it was,’ she agreed.
Inadvertently she turned round, her stomach lurching. He was standing even closer to her than she had imagined. She could see the faint beginnings of the new beard growing along his jaw. There was a smudge of oil on his cheek; it made him look younger, more approachable, very human and in some odd way almost vulnerable. She had to stop herself from reaching up and smoothing it away.
The cat too was affected by his closeness. It uncurled itself and stood up, arching its back and then rubbed itself against his legs, purring loudly.
Almost absently, he bent down and picked it up, stroking it.
‘You should be outside, not in here,’ he told it. He was frowning again, Livvy recognised. Not at the cat, but at her.
‘This is still Gale’s home,’ she told him defensively. ‘She has every right—’
‘As I understand it, it belongs to both Gale and George,’ Richard Field interrupted her curtly. ‘Does George know, I wonder, how Gale plans to spend his money? Or will she just present him with a fait accompli just as she always does? She treats him like an extra child, not a man. No wonder…’
The cat made a small squark of protest as he put it down.
‘I need a shower,’ he told her, then added curtly, ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that I might be allowed just some small space on the table on which to eat my meal?’
‘I’ll be finished before you come back down,’ Livvy assured him, equally curtly.