Vacation with a Commanding Stranger

She tensed as she heard the BMW drive into the yard, caution and common sense urging her to collect her things together and leave before he came in. What after all was the point in risking another confrontation, or in reminding him of that brief heartbeat of time earlier when she had looked at him, looked at his mouth, her body and her eyes telling him nakedly and wantonly that she wanted him to kiss her?

Why should she go? She had nothing to be ashamed of. It had been a momentary lapse, that was all, but as she heard the door open she quickly bent her head over her work, raising it again only when she heard the noise he was making as he trundled the heavy replacement gas cylinder across the floor and towards the fridge.

For some reason she herself could not entirely understand, Livvy told him haughtily, ‘There was no need for you to do that. Gale has an arrangement with Mr Dubois to have the gas replaced when necessary…’

‘Fine, only what it seems he neglected to tell you or her is that he makes a surcharge on the canisters, and a connection fee. It seems to be a subject of great amusement at the garage where I got this stuff that he manages to make so much extra income out of gullible visitors by charging them almost double what the gas costs him and then making a profit on top of that re-connecting the thing for them. Amusement and envy. The garage owner told me he’s tired of supplying him with rusty connections which, it seems, only Monsieur Dubois has a wrench suitable for unfastening.’

‘It’s only natural that he should want to make a profit on us,’ Livvy told him lamely.

‘A profit, yes—a laughing-stock is something else.’

There was nothing Livvy could say.

But it seemed that Richard Field had not finished.

‘Of course, for all I know, you might have come to some special arrangement with him… The payment of a small douceur in exchange for his prompt service, perhaps…’

Livvy flushed as she read the real meaning behind his sneered words. She was almost shaking as she stood up and told him furiously, ‘You have no right to imply any such thing. I would never…’ She broke off, reminding herself that she had no need to defend herself to him, nor surely any reason to feel not just weak and shaky with the force of her anger, but frighteningly close to tears as well.

‘Besides,’ she challenged him, fighting to suppress her weakness, ‘according to you, Monsieur Dubois believes that I’m your mistress.’

‘All the more reason for him to take pleasure in having you,’ he told her brutally.

It was more than Livvy could stand. Trembling from head to foot, her face white with anguish, she swept her hand outwards in a fierce movement of rejection, accidentally dislodging some of her papers from the table as she did so.

‘Having me?’ Her mouth trembled. ‘Is that how you think of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman? If so, I’m not surprised that—’

Abruptly, she stopped herself, appalled by what she was doing, by what she had been about to say. Let him demean himself if he wished to do so; there was no need for her to stoop down to his level.

‘So how do you think of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman…?’

The unexpected question caught her off guard. He was standing next to the fridge, his face half in shadow so that she couldn’t read his expression. His voice was deceptively soft.

A tiny, fierce shiver ran over her skin. She couldn’t help herself. As she closed her eyes, she had a momentary mental image of the two of them together, his body lean, hard, male, arched protectively over hers, smaller, paler, softly feminine and vulnerable, but willingly, achingly open to him.

She bit down hard on her bottom lip, appalled by the intensity and clarity of her vision.

‘Well?’

His voice was still soft, but very, very determined. She gave another shiver, releasing her lip, feeling its swollen pressure where she had bitten it.

‘I think of it as an equal and mutual sharing of themselves with one another, a partnership in which the two people concerned complement one another and make one another whole; in which there is no taking, no selfish greed, no desire to hurt or dominate the other person. I think of it as a very special and privileged human experience which far too many people denigrate and destroy.’

Her voice was shaking, Livvy recognised as she turned away from him. What had come over her? She had not meant to tell him any of that; even if it was the truth. She felt sick at the thought of how much of herself she had revealed to him. She tensed, waiting for his jeering laughter, his caustic mockery and contempt, but instead of the harshness she had expected his voice sounded faintly rough, almost as though his throat was slightly sore as he told her, ‘Only an idealistic fool thinks things like that.’

Still shaking slightly, Livvy bent down to pick up her papers, not realising until she did so that he had moved and that he too was bending to retrieve them.

She saw him frowning as he studied them. ‘You’re a teacher?’

She could hear the disbelief in his voice and in other circumstances she might almost have been amused.

Instead she responded quietly, ‘Yes. Why? Have you got a thing against them as well as women? Don’t tell me,’ she added bitterly. ‘Let me guess. Your first teacher was a woman and you felt rejected when she didn’t devote all her attention to you…’

‘Yes. My first teacher was a woman,’ he agreed gravely. ‘Isn’t every man’s? And, yes, I suppose she did reject me in a sense. She left my father when I was two years old to go and live with her lover. She didn’t want to leave me behind, or so she told me years later. She simply didn’t have any choice. Her lover didn’t like children and certainly didn’t want to be burdened with another man’s. She felt I’d be better off with my father…’

If he had heard her shocked gasp of pity, he wasn’t making any response to it, Livvy realised thankfully, as she cursed her runaway tongue for its unwitting cruelty. She had never meant to hurt him nor to pry; she had simply lashed out in retaliation against the pain he had caused her.

‘My father did the best he could, but he had a business to run, a life to live, and at least at the boarding-school he sent me to I had the company of other children.’