Just One Night

‘You’re crying.’ She could hear the accusation in Ran’s voice and immediately tried to blink away her tears. ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she heard Ran telling her gruffly. ‘I do understand... It must be hard for you loving a man who doesn’t...’

‘Love me back,’ Sylvie supplied chokily for him. If, in the past, she had thought that his anger and contempt were hard to bear, they were nothing now that she was faced with his pity and compassion. ‘Yes. It is,’ she agreed. ‘But I’m a woman now, Ran, not a child, and if I choose to love the wrong person, then that is my choice and my right. The last thing I want or need is your pity,’ she told him sharply, pride making her hold up her head.

‘Last night shouldn’t have happened,’ Ran told her quietly, ‘but I...’

‘Couldn’t help yourself,’ Sylvie finished lightly. ‘Yes, so you said at the time. It’s obviously something we should both...forget...’

Sylvie looked away as she spoke, knowing quite well that she was lying, that she would have the most important reason there could be for not forgetting it, for not being able to forget it, but that wasn’t a piece of information she had any intention of sharing with Ran.

‘I...I should like to go back to my own room to get dressed before Mrs Elliott arrives,’ she told him with formal dignity, adding, when he continued to look at her, ‘I want you to turn your back, Ran, so that I can get out of this bed...’

The look he gave her made her face burn.

‘Yes, I know that you’ve already seen...that... But that was last night,’ she snapped self-consciously. ‘That was then...this...this is now; this is different...’

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Ran agreed heavily, and then, to her relief, he turned away so that she could slip out of the bed and snatch up her nightdress which she pulled on before heading for the door, opening it without pausing to look back because she knew that if she did look back— Last night had been the most perfect, the most wonderful night of her life, but now it was over and soon, too, with Lloyd’s agreement, her time here would be over, and only she would know that when she left Haverton Hall, when she left Ran, she would be carrying a small and very precious piece of him with her.

CHAPTER TEN

‘I’M SORRY to disturb you but Ran said that he thought you might like coffee.’

Forcing a welcoming smile to her lips, Sylvie took the tray from Ran’s housekeeper.

She had been working in the library all morning, painstakingly going through the accounts and costings for the work she had already commissioned for Haverton Hall.

But now, even though she hadn’t eaten any breakfast and she knew that she ought to be hungry, the only hunger she had was the never-ending hunger for Ran’s love. And, as he had made more than plain to her, that was something she could never have.

Half an hour later she was just on her way downstairs, intending to drive over to Haverton, when her mobile rang. Answering it, she was surprised to hear Lloyd’s voice on the other end of the line.

‘Lloyd. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you today. I thought you’d be...otherwise engaged,’ Sylvie told him tactfully.

‘Well, I guess I thought I would be too,’ she heard Lloyd responding with a rueful note in his voice. ‘Like they say, though, there’s no fool like an old fool. Still, it was fun while it lasted, and I guess I had my money’s worth.’

From the tone of his voice Sylvie immediately recognised that Lloyd had quickly become disillusioned with Vicky.

‘I’m going to miss you, hon, when I’m back in New York,’ Lloyd told her with the warm affection that was so much a part of his personality.

‘I’ll miss you as well,’ Sylvie told him gravely, and meant it. ‘Lloyd, I need to talk to you,’ she added quietly. ‘There’s...there’s... I can’t stay here... I...I want to come back to New York...’

Biting down hard on her bottom lip, Sylvie willed herself not to lose control. Lloyd would wonder what on earth was the matter with her. She hadn’t intended to blurt it all out like that. She had told herself that she would wait, assemble all her arguments and then talk to him calmly and quietly, and yet here she was, letting her emotions run away with her, giving in to the urgent need she felt to protect herself from the pain that being so physically close to Ran was causing her.

‘Say, honey, you sound upset. What’s wrong?’ she heard Lloyd asking her anxiously.