CHAPTER SIX
DANIEL’S meeting with the builder went well enough for the two of them to be able to agree that, once he had looked at the house and confirmed that the plans drawn up by Daniel’s architect were compatible with the capabilities of his workforce, he would be able to start work almost immediately.
When Daniel looked surprised and pleased he went on to explain that under normal circumstances it would have been weeks, if not months, before he would have been able to do the work, but a barn conversion on which he had been due to start work had hit some last-minute snags, which meant a long delay while work went back to the planning stage.
Having made an appointment to meet the builder at the house in the morning, they set off back for the village.
Although she didn’t say anything, Jessica’s arm and shoulder were beginning to ache quite painfully. She thought she had done a very good job of hiding this fact from Daniel, until he pulled up in front of her cottage and said abruptly, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve exhausted you. Thoughtless of me.’
He sounded so terse that Jessica felt for a moment that her weakness irritated him. Her father had always been rather intolerant of anyone less than physically one hundred per cent. It was his boast that he never caught so much as a cold, and that he had never in all his working life had to have time off through ill health, and so she said quickly, ‘I’m not normally like this. I’m pretty tough really.’
As though he sensed the vulnerability and defensiveness hidden by her quick smile and light voice, Daniel caught hold of her good arm, sliding his hand down it. His fingers brushed the turbulent pulse, the delicate inner skin of her wrist, sending her pulse-rate into turbulent disorder. He turned her hand over, studying her palm so intently that she started to tremble, and then he lifted her hand to his mouth, dropping a light kiss into her palm.
‘I wasn’t criticising you, Jess,’ he told her softly. ‘I was condemning myself for being thoughtless.’
She looked at him, her breath catching on a ragged sigh as he read the emotions chasing one another across her face.
‘Jess…Jess…’ he said rawly, lifting her palm to his lips a second time, but this time their pressure was hard and forceful, and when she quivered under the assault of sensations rioting through her his tongue caressed the soft pads of flesh at the base of her fingers. When they curled in immediate reaction to the rush of pleasure swamping her, he bit gently into the soft mound at the base of her thumb, and then less gently, so that she shuddered violently, her eyes huge and dark with bewilderment.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he muttered roughly, his thumb registering the too rapid thud of her pulse, his eyes monitoring the hectic flush staining her cheekbones, his body responding violently to her arousal.
‘Why?’
Her lips parted softly on the question, a tiny frown etched between her eyebrows.
‘Because it makes me want to do this.’
His hand cupped her head, sliding into her hair, his fingers hard and warm against her scalp. During the day his jaw had darkened with the new growth of beard, and when he kissed her the roughness of his skin against the softness of her own created a frisson of sharp pleasure that made her shiver inside and break out in a rash of goose-flesh outside.
She had never done anything like this before—never been kissed so passionately and demandingly in full sight of anyone who chose to walk past the car, and been so oblivious to that fact that if Daniel had started to undress her all she would have known was that now, at last, she was going to feel the delirious joy of his touch against her skin.
It was a car backfiring in the distance that brought her to her senses, making her pull back from him, her eyes still cloudy and confused by the suddenness and intensity of her own desire.
Neither of them spoke as they went inside, but Jessica was acutely aware of Daniel’s hand on her arm, of the tension gripping him—the same tension that was still invading her. She sensed his impatience, his male desire to carry them both to the culmination of the feelings they had just shared.
They looked at one another in silence, but the air between them quivered with expectancy and anticipation. If she went towards him now, if she touched him, spoke to him, Jessica knew that he would make love to her. She wanted him to so intensely, her need so sharp and spearing, that it seemed incredible to imagine that she had ever hesitated or doubted. The Jessica who she was now, this moment, looked back in incredulous amazement at the Jessica she had been, unable to comprehend why she had had such doubts, such fears.
And then the phone rang, the sound shrill and imperious, fragmenting the fragile bubble of desire that held them both captive. Jessica reached for it instinctively, her voice unsteady and slightly higher-pitched than usual as she said her name.
‘Jessica, darling, are you all right? I’ve been trying to reach you all day.’
‘Mother…Is something wrong?’
Discreetly Daniel moved out of earshot to give her privacy, but there was nothing private she wanted to say to her mother. Strange that, while she loved her and knew that she was loved in turn, there were still these immense barriers between them.
‘No, nothing’s wrong. It’s just that it’s rather a long time since I spoke to you.’
Instantly Jessica felt guilty, uncomfortably aware of the low tone of unhappiness in her mother’s voice.
Jessica suppressed her guilt.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, darling?’ her mother pressed. ‘You don’t sound your normal self. Your father and I worry about you, living alone.’
‘Living in London is much more dangerous,’ Jessica pointed out wryly, and then, aware of the quality of her mother’s silence, mentally cursed herself. No doubt her mother thought she was making an unkind reference to her kidnapping.
‘Why don’t you come home for the weekend?’
Jessica felt her stomach knotting as it always did at the thought of spending time with her parents, of being vulnerable to their subtle persuasion and coercion, and yet she heard the yearning note beneath the lightness of her mother’s words.
‘I can’t, Mother,’ she fibbed, hating herself for her own weakness. ‘I’m afraid I’ve already got something on.’
‘A date?’ her mother enquired, her voice brightening.
A date…What would her parents say if they knew about Daniel? If they knew she had fallen in love? Not that she was going to tell them. Not yet. Not until she herself was sure.
Sure of what? Of Daniel? Of herself? As she muttered something non-committal and replaced the receiver the euphoria of her earlier mood of reckless certainty and confidence had gone, replaced by one of uncertainty and tension.
Daniel obviously sensed it. He gave her a thoughtful look and offered quietly. ‘If you’d like me to leave…’
She shook her head. Part of her did. Part of her wanted to crawl back into the security of the solitary life with which she was so familiar, but another part of her wanted to break free of the old Jessica and her fears.
‘No,’ she said huskily. ‘Please stay.’
And as they looked at one another across the width of the room she wondered if he realised that those were probably the most portentous words she had ever said.
* * *
As though he knew what she was going through, over the meal, which he had insisted on preparing, Daniel deliberately kept the conversation light and general.
He was interesting to talk with—not like some men, whose entire lives and interests were themselves and their careers. Daniel was widely read, and knowledgeable, drawing her out to talk about herself so easily and gently that she scarcely realised what he was doing.
At nine o’clock exhaustion suddenly hit her.
‘You’re tired,’ Daniel said quietly. ‘I’d better go.’
Go? Jessica stared at him. She had taken it for granted that he would be staying the night again.
He touched her face with his hand, his touch both reassuring and tender.
‘I promised I wouldn’t rush you,’ he reminded her. ‘But if I stay here with you tonight, I may not be able to keep that promise. We both know that.’ He frowned and hesitated. ‘I want your love and your trust, Jessica.’
She desperately wanted to beg him to stay, to push caution aside and say that she had changed her mind, that she was ready now to make the fullest kind of commitment to him, but the words stuck in her throat, a paralysing shyness silencing her, and by the time she had found her voice he was already on his feet and walking towards the door.
‘I’ll get my bag,’ he told her quietly, and then added, ‘Tomorrow, would it be too much if I asked you to be with me when Alan Pierce comes to go round the house? I’d like your views on anything he has to say.’
‘A woman’s touch,’Jessica said lightly, trying to mask her pleasure that he should want her there.
‘No,’ he corrected, watching her. ‘The woman’s touch.’