Force of Feeling

Craig had made it clear enough all those years ago. The only way he had been able to make love to her, he had said, had been by closing his eyes and pretending she was someone else, and even then… Even then it had only been the thought of her parents’ wealth that had enabled him to go through with it.

Even now, those words still had the power to wound her, to scour her soul and destroy her self-confidence. It was no use telling herself she was a successful writer, that she had a good and fulfilling life, that many, many people would envy her; all she had to do was to remember Craig’s words, to recall how Guy had just looked at her, and she was that same sick, shaking teenager whose eyes had been so cruelly opened to exactly how unattractive she actually was.

Was it any wonder she couldn’t give her heroine the confidence to go out and choose her own lover, that she couldn’t flesh out the sensual, physical side of Lynsey’s nature? There, she had admitted it. She swallowed hard. She had admitted that Guy was right, and that she couldn’t finish the book.

Panic filled her as she fought to deny her own thoughts. It wasn’t true. She would finish it… There must be another way, and she would find it.

Suddenly she remembered her dream. In her dream, she had felt Lynsey’s emotions: her anger, her desperation, her resentment towards the man who had stopped her from going to her cousin. If she could just hold on to those memories… If she could just get them down on paper… Suddenly her doubts were subdued, her mind busy trying to work out how best she could use the avenue opened up to her by her dream.

She washed and dressed hurriedly, pulling out of her bag her clean underwear, and then frowning. No clean bra… She must have left it in her flat on the bed, and the rest of her underwear was in the case in the boot of her car. She eyed the one she had been wearing the previous day with distaste.

On the bed were the jeans, sweater and shirt she was planning to wear. The shirt was fine wool, and the sweater

a warm, bulky one. If Guy hadn’t been here, she wouldn’t even have hesitated about not wearing a bra. What difference did his being here make? Surely she wasn’t afraid that the sight of her braless but thickly covered body was going to send him into a fury of lust?

No, of course she wasn’t, but what if he should notice and think that perhaps she… She licked her top lip nervously. She had learned to be so careful about not conveying the wrong impression, about not allowing men to think that she was at all interested in them. She didn’t want the humiliation of being rejected a second time, and so she had learned that it was best to cultivate an appearance that made it plain that she didn’t consider herself to be a sexual woman.

She was wasting time when she ought to be working, she reminded herself. Guy was hardly likely to notice that she wasn’t wearing one, not particularly important article of underwear, and even if he did… Even if he did, the thought of a woman like her daring to imagine she might physically attract him was so ludicrous that it would never even cross his mind.

Having reassured herself, she dressed quickly, and then pinned up her hair.

The scent of frying bacon greeted her as she walked into the kitchen. Guy was standing in front of the cooker, deftly manoeuvring an array of pans.

He must have sharp ears, she acknowledged as he turned and smiled at her.

‘Just in time. How do you like your eggs?

‘I don’t,’ Campion told him shortly.

His eyebrows rose in the way that was becoming very familiar.

‘Nonsense! You need a decent breakfast inside you if you’re going to work.’ His eyes narrowed slightly, and she realised he was looking at her hair. She itched to raise her hand to ensure that it was all tidily tucked away, and had to fight not to make the betraying gesture.

‘What happened to the curls?’ he asked softly, looking at her in such a way that she could feel her skin start to burn.

Ignoring him, she turned towards the door that led into the cottage’s sitting-room. Off it was the small study that had once been an outhouse, and which Helena had had converted into a very efficient work-room for those of her writers who took advantage of her standing offer to use the cottage as a bolt hole.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To work. That’s what I came up here for—remember?’ she asked dangerously.

‘Not before you’ve had something to eat.’

Campion found that she was literally grinding her teeth.

It was all too tempting to make some childish riposte such as ‘Make me,’ but she had the uncomfortable feeling that he would take the greatest delight in doing exactly that, and so, instead, she walked across the floor and sat down reluctantly at the table.

‘That’s better. Even brain cells needs feeding… and stimulating,’ he added softly.

Campion stared at him, her breath suddenly trapped deep in her lungs. A most curious sensation invaded her, a feeling of weakness edged with excitement. And then she tore her gaze away, and the feeling subsided.

‘For someone who didn’t want any breakfast, you’ve managed to demolish a surprising amount of food.’

She should have expected a taunt like that, Campion told herself bitterly as she drank the last of her coffee. To her own surprise, she had been hungry. It was a luxury to have her breakfast prepared for her—to have any meal prepared for her, come to think of it.

‘I have a perfectly normal appetite,’ she told him frigidly. ‘Unlike the women you date, I’m not obsessed by my weight,’ she added scathingly.

It was a shot in the dark, but she suspected from all that she had been told that the glamorous women he normally dated were hardly the types to sit down to a full cooked breakfast. A vitamin cocktail and a glass of Perrier was probably their style.