‘What makes you think it was something I said? Perhaps he got scared and changed his mind. You’ve got a very hungry look about you, Heather. Some men might find that intimidating.’
‘But not you, I suppose,’ Heather challenged, too angry to watch her words.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you actually want to find out?’
Of course she wasn’t, and he knew it! This element of sexual tension had never been there in their previous relationship of mutual antipathy, and she couldn’t understand how it came to be there now. It confused and alarmed her. She wasn’t used to indulging in this kind of riposte with Kyle, and when he made comments like that it threw her. As he fully intended it should do, she suspected angrily.
While she hunted desperately to think up a suitably crushing retort, he was already turning to leave.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ were his last words to her.
CHAPTER FOUR
ODDLY, in view of her pending luncheon engagement with Kyle, Heather slept very well, but the moment she woke up her tension returned. Yesterday’s headache was now just a vague nagging pain in the back of her neck and, while her concern over the financing of her father’s operation had eased, she was now on edge in a different way.
She had told herself, from the moment she’d accepted that she would have to approach Kyle on her parents’ behalf, that her memories of him were coloured by her own immaturity and jealousy, and that he could not be as all-powerful as she had imagined. It had been disturbing to discover how quickly and how easily he could make her feel fourteen years old again.
Today, though, he was not going to catch her off guard. She would be in full control. She would be calm and restrained, and they would talk about the business as though he was as remote from her personal life as her father’s bank manager or accountant.
It worried her how quickly and easily he seemed to have slipped back into their lives. It was almost as though he had never been gone.
He made her feel like a cat with its fur stroked the wrong way, all on edge and ruffled.
Her skin was too pale, she acknowledged as she got ready. Too many sleepless nights and too much worry had taken their toll on her. She had lost weight; the skirt she had decided to wear was loose on her waist, her face looked drained and tired, and even her hair, normally so vibrant and full of life, seemed lacklustre.
An hour later, she stood back from her mirror and viewed her reflection critically. It was amazing what make-up could achieve. She hadn’t gone to art school for nothing and, although there was nothing heavy or overdone about the way she had made up her face, she had subtly managed to conceal nearly all the effects of the last few very harrowing days.
It wasn’t snowing when she left, although snow was forecast and it was bitterly cold. The roads were treacherous, with deep ruts of frozen slush and patches of ice.
The van had been slow to start, coughing and sputtering protestingly, and it seemed to Heather as she drove that the engine note didn’t sound quite as it ought.
She drove slowly and carefully, not wanting to take any risks. She had allowed herself plenty of time, and Kyle’s directions were very clear and concise.
He hadn’t given her any explanation as to why he wanted her to call at his home, other than to say that sometimes he preferred to work from there. She had half expected to find him living in one of the many very lovely formal mansions in the countryside surrounding Bath, but instead, when she finally turned in through the gates and up the drive, she discovered in front of her a low, rambling farmhouse built in cream stone under a slate roof.
Kyle’s car, a powerful Jaguar, stood outside, and although the informal gardens looked bare under the harsh winter sky Heather could well imagine that in spring and summer this must be an idyllic spot.
Kyle came out to greet her as she stopped the van.
If anything, the temperature seemed to have dropped even further. Or maybe it was just because she was so cold that she thought it had, for as they went inside Kyle remarked casually, glancing at the sky, ‘We’ll have snow before the afternoon’s over. I can smell it in the air, can’t you?’
She hadn’t come here to listen to idle conversation about the weather, Heather thought tensely, as she allowed him to take her heavy coat.
The heating system in the van was temperamental to say the least, and she shivered as she took her coat off.
‘Cold? Come into the library.’
The floor in the hallway was uneven and homely, huge polished stone slabs with rich dark rugs over them.
Kyle opened one of the doors and stood back to let her pass. The doorway was only narrow, and as she moved forward Heather caught the clean male scent of his skin. Instantly her muscles froze, a faint frisson of sensation skittering down her spine.
‘What’s the matter?’
She caught Kyle’s frown as she hurried forward, her face flushing uncomfortably in the realisation of her almost sexual awareness of him.
‘Just cold, that’s all,’ she fibbed, hurrying towards the fire burning in the huge stone grate.
On the carved wooden mantel she could see a coat of arms with a Latin inscription, and she pretended to be engrossed in it to give herself time to get back to normal. What was the matter with her? It was completely crazy that she should have imagined, even for a second, that that peculiar frisson had been caused by anything remotely sexual. She disliked and detested Kyle; he wasn’t her type of man. She had always viewed his life-style with distaste, and she could no more imagine the thought of him as her lover than she could…