lps of air, like a landed fish.
Blake’s fingers tugged at the knotted rope, unfastening it from around her. His head bent over his self-imposed task, Sapphire resisted the urge to reach out and stroke the thick darkness, but she couldn’t restrain the brief quiver tensing her body when she remembered how they had made love.
‘Keep still,’ Blake’s voice was terse, his hands clinically detached as they examined her body. ‘Nothing seems to be broken … Come on, I’d better get you back and alert the rest of the team.’ As she stood up Sapphire saw that his mouth was compressed, his eyes darkly bitter as they studied her.
‘The team?’ Was that really her own voice, soft and husky almost begging him to reach out and touch her?
‘The Rescue Team,’ he reminded her in the same clipped voice. ‘Your father called them out when you didn’t come back. Tom Barnes rang me and asked me to stand in for Geoff Plant—he’s away at the moment. I had no idea when I set out that it was you …’ He broke off and turned away from her, rubbing his forehead with tense fingers. ‘I called at Flaws on the way to see if you were there—I thought you might have decided to spend the evening with your father …’
‘In view of his ailing health I suppose you mean,’ Sapphire cut in sarcastically, only to be silenced by Blake’s brusque, ‘Not now Sapphire. You realise your father’s practically frantic with worry, to say nothing of how I felt …’
‘And how did you feel Blake?’ she asked bitterly, suddenly furiously and intensely angry, the adrenalin flowing fiercely along her veins. ‘Worried that you might not get Flaws after all? Oh yes, I know all about how the pair of you deceived me. Your very good friend Miranda enlightened me. My father I can forgive because I know he acted in what he believed to be my best interests, but you …’ Her heated words were silenced by the brief blast Blake gave on the whistle he was holding.
‘We can discuss all that later,’ he told her curtly. ‘Right now, like the rest of the team, all I want to do is get home to bed. You do realise that if I hadn’t remembered about this damned quarry, you’d have been there until morning, if not longer, don’t you? And just what the hell were you playing at when I arrived, for God’s sake?’ he shouted at her, fingers clenching into her shoulders as he shook her roughly. Once given life it seemed as though his anger couldn’t be quenched, and Sapphire listened in silence as it flowed moltenly over her. Blake was angry … It was a phenomenon she had never witnessed before. Before he had always been so cool and in control.
Other members of the team alerted by his whistle were hurrying towards them, and he stopped berating her, turning instead to assure them that she was quite safe.
‘She slipped off the path and luckily for her landed on a ledge,’ was the explanation he gave his co-rescuers, and after Sapphire had endured some well-deserved chaffing on the subject of her carelessness Blake started to guide her towards where he had left his Land Rover.
‘I’ll call at Flaws and let Simon have the good news,’ one of the men offered. ‘It’s on my way, and you’ll both be wanting to get back home. Hot baths and a good mug of toddy, put the pair of you to rights …’ He winked over his shoulder at Blake, and Sapphire felt the warmth seep up under her skin as she intercepted the very male look they exchanged. And the worst of it was that deep down inside her she still yearned for Blake to take her into the warmth of his bed and hold her until all the nightmare details of the day faded into oblivion.
Instead she had to sit with him in the Land Rover, the tense quality of the silence stretching between them acting on her nerves with all the torment of a thumbscrew. When the Land Rover eventually came to a halt in the farmyard she was out the moment Blake cut the engine, shocked to discover how weak her legs felt as she clung wretchedly to her open door.
‘You should have waited for me.’ The terse, unsympathetic words brought tears of weakness and pain to her eyes, but thankfully it was too dark for Blake to see them. She wanted to protest when he walked round to her and hauled her carelessly into his arms, but she knew that she just didn’t have the strength to object.
Upstairs she lay on the bed where he had dropped her knowing that she couldn’t endure sleeping with him now. Not that he was likely to want to. Her mouth twisted bitterly. Had he, like her father, hoped they might have a child—preferably a son who could inherit the rich Flaws acres he coveted? Was that why … Unable to endure the torment of her thoughts she gave a low moan, rolling on to her stomach.
‘Can you manage to get undressed or …’
Until Blake spoke she had forgotten she was still wearing her outdoor clothes.
‘I can manage.’ Her voice was colourless and completely dry.
‘Sapphire, we have to talk.’
Was that uncertainty and pain she could hear threading through the determined words? Anger hardened her heart. Whatever he might be enduring through guilt and fear of losing Flaws was nothing compared with her own agony. ‘Tomorrow,’ she told him briefly. ‘I don’t want to talk tonight Blake … I need to think.’ It was a lie, but at least it got him out of her room.
When he had gone she struggled exhaustedly to remove her clothes, almost crawling into the bathroom. Her legs were bruised and scraped where they had rubbed against the rough stone of the quarry walls, the abrasions stinging with the hot water. Bathed and dried she went back into the bedroom, tensing as she saw Blake waiting there.
‘I already told you, I don’t want to talk tonight Blake,’ she told him rudely. ‘I’m tired, and so if you don’t mind …’ Glad that she had had the forethought to take her nightdress into the bathroom with her, she swept past him with magnificent disdain, hoping that he wouldn’t guess how vulnerable and hurt she was really feeling.
‘It’s a bit late for this isn’t it?’ Lean fingers reached out and tugged at the fine lawn fabric. ‘After last night …’
‘Last night is something that should never have happened and would never have happened if I’d known …’ Sapphire gasped out loud as Blake’s fingers moved from the frill of her nightdress to the vee of its neckline, stroking softly over the upper swell of her breasts.
‘You think not?’ Blake’s voice was soft, almost detached, but there was nothing detached about the look in his eyes Sapphire realised, her heart starting to thud with powerful, heavy thuds. ‘I’m getting tired of playing “let’s make believe”, Sapphire,’ Blake told her thickly. ‘Last night you wanted me, and tonight I could make you want me again.’
‘No!’ The harsh denial was out before she could stop it and the moment it was said Sapphire knew she had made a mistake. It was almost as though something snapped inside Blake, some fine thread whose snapping unleashed a savage tumult of emotions that demanded expression.
Her moaned protest of ‘Blake you can’t do this’, went unheard as he picked her up and carried her over to the bed, stripping off her nightdress with ruthless, hard fingers, his touch a thousand times removed from that of the tender lover of the previous night.
‘I know you want me, damn you,’ Blake muttered in a tortured whisper against her skin, bruising it faintly with the pressure of lips suddenly savage with pent-up emotions whose origins she could only guess at. His thumb brushed her nipple and Sapphire felt the unmistakable flowering of her body, her cry of despair mingling with Blake’s murmured triumph.
As he bent his head to touch her treacherous body first with his tongue and then his lips Sapphire felt the first weak tears of broken pride slide from her eyes. In the darkness Blake lifted his head and stared at her, his thumb touching the dampness of her face.
‘You’re crying. Why?’ If she hadn’t known better Sapphire might have believed that the pain in his voice was real; that the anguish in his eyes was because he couldn’t bear to hurt her, but she did know better. She turned her head away from him too weak to stem the tears.
‘Don’t touch me Blake,’ she begged huskily, ‘Please … just leave me alone.’