Well, she was not going to be providing any family with meals, Livvy reassured herself as she wiped the top of the range clear of dust and returned to the sink to wash her grimy hands.
She wondered how long it would be before Richard Field grew tired of the game he was playing with her and decided to leave. Not too long, she hoped. And in the meantime she would just have to learn to live with his unwanted presence, for Gale’s sake.
How could George behave so unkindly, so unfairly? It was totally unlike him. Livvy’s tender heart ached for her cousin and his children.
She saw the two men coming back across the yard, and frowned as she saw the friendly, almost approving way the farmer clapped Richard on the back before shaking his head and walking over to his truck. Something Richard Field had said or done had obviously impressed the farmer and earned his respect.
It was several minutes after the farmer had left before Richard came into the kitchen, and when he did he was carrying a box of provisions.
Even from where she stood, Livvy could smell the rich scent of the fresh baked bread he had bought, and her mouth started to water. She had still not had her breakfast, although it was almost lunchtime.
She had made herself a cup of coffee…instant, but at least it was a drink; but now, as she smelled the fresh bread, she remembered resentfully how, before Richard Field had arrived to spoil everything, she had planned to drive into the local town and buy croissants for her breakfast.
‘You’ve lit the range.’
She saw him frown and walk over to check, almost as though he didn’t believe it, and Livvy felt a small spurt of satisfaction that she had managed to throw him a little. No doubt in his book women of her type had only one set of skills…the sort learned and honed in a wide variety of different men’s beds.
‘Monsieur Dubois sends his apologies for not coming in to say goodbye,’ he told her. ‘I suspect he is afraid that madame would not approve of him consorting with a fallen woman, one so free with her favours that she openly admits she is not married to her lover.’
Livvy stared at him, her normal calm deserting her as she confronted him, shock and fury two equally powerful forces within her as she demanded fiercely, ‘What have you said to him? What lies have you told him? He knows that I’m Gale’s cousin. Gale telephoned…’
‘I have said nothing,’ he interrupted her, unkind relish darkening in his eyes as he told her, ‘You yourself were the one who told him that I was not your husband.’
‘Not my husband, and not my lover either… I…’
‘Monsieur Dubois does not see it that way. In his view, when two people, a man and a woman, choose to spend time together at a secluded, remote farmhouse deep in the countryside, there can be only one reason for their doing so.’
‘But it’s not true,’ Livvy burst out when the significance of his taunting comment had finally sunk in. ‘You should have told him…explained…’
‘I did try, but he seemed to think that I was merely attempting to protect your honour. It seems that I am not alone in recognising you for what you are, chérie.’
His insulting use of that small word of supposed endearment was the last straw; Livvy crossed the distance that separated them, her face flushed with heat, an anger she had never ever experienced before overwhelming her.
‘You have no idea of what I am,’ she denied furiously. ‘And nor will you ever know. You and I…lovers.’ She flashed him a look of concentrated loathing and fury, desperately trying to control the small quiver of her tightly closed mouth. ‘Never, never would I let someone like you touch me.’ She gave a small shudder, her body involuntarily reinforcing the passion in her words, and subconsciously registering her revulsion at her earlier inexplicable sensual awareness of him.
She turned to move away from him, but he moved first, her body going rigid with shock as he took hold of her.
As though somehow she herself was distanced from it, her brain separated somehow from her body, she was aware of registering the pressure with which he was gripping her upper arms; the anger that emanated from him, surrounding him—engulfing her with an almost physical heat.
She had never seen a man so angry before, and had certainly never been responsible for that anger: a dangerous, sexual anger that made his eyes glitter with such brilliance and fierceness that she had to look away from him, her body starting to tremble with humiliating female vulnerability and reaction as she recognised her danger.
Her still lips struggled to form the word ‘no’ just as she tried to free herself from him, but one brief, despairing look into his implacable face told her that there was going to be no mercy.
She had known right from the start what he had intended to do, but, in the handful of seconds which elapsed between his taking hold of her and giving vent to the fury she had aroused in him by punishing her with the hard pressure of his mouth, a part of her had still refused to accept that he would actually do it, that he would actually take her mouth in that savage, punishing parody of a kiss.
She tried to stop him, to turn her head away, but he anticipated her, releasing one of her arms to slide his hand along her jaw, holding her head still, making her completely vulnerable to him.
She stared at him wide-eyed, willing him to release her, her body, her mouth frozen with shock, but he refused to be quelled, and something in the hot, male glitter of his eyes made her own burn with the threat of tears so that she had to close them to defend herself.
Immediately, she wished she hadn’t done so. With her eyes closed, she was acutely conscious of his hand against her skin, the strength, the power, the heat of his fingers.
She shivered as she felt them stroking against her skin, a wave of heat and panic engulfing her as she realised what had caused that tiny physical reaction.
She couldn’t possibly be aroused by him. It was just anger…rage…combined with her fear that was making her body tremble and start to ache. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the way his fingertips were slowly caressing her throat,
nor the fact that he had now released her other arm and was holding her unforgivably close to his body, binding her against him with the pressure of the arm he had wrapped around her, holding her so close that she could feel his heart beating, savagely uneven, thudding out a primitive message of male anger, male arousal…a male adrenalin-induced need to meet the challenge she had so dangerously flung down between them.
Her lips felt soft, swollen, vulnerable to the deliberately sensual assault of his. He wasn’t just expressing his anger, she recognised, he was trying to arouse her as well…to punish her and taunt her by calling her a liar.