‘But we’re too far away from the river here, surely, for it to affect us?’ Livvy protested.
‘It wasn’t the river he was bothered about. It was the lane. It seems that at one time it must have been the bed of a stream. The stream long ago ceased to exist but during heavy storms the lane acts as a natural channel for any flood water and becomes waterlogged. He said something about a tractor…’
‘Oh, that must have been the one he wanted Gale to buy. She thought he was trying to palm it off on her and refused.’
She was keeping as much distance between them as she could. She couldn’t look at him without remembering how it had felt to be in his arms and how much she had wanted to go on being there…how much she had wanted him.
‘We have to talk.’
The quiet words caught her off guard. She looked at him and then flushed, turning quickly away.
‘I don’t…there isn’t…’
‘We’re adults, not teenagers,’ he told her, overruling her stammered denials. ‘It’s pointless either of us pretending that we don’t know what’s happening between us.’
Livvy held her breath. Her heart felt as though it had stopped beating, as emotion, shock and hope choked her.
Could she have been wrong after all? Could he actually share what she was feeling? Could he actually love her as she loved him?
She could feel herself starting to tremble, her heart thudding frantically against her ribs as she waited for him to continue.
‘Neither of us can deny that there’s a certain very strong physical attraction between us—even though it might be something that neither of us wants.’
Livvy felt physically sick. How could she have been so stupid, so self-deluding? Of course he didn’t love her, and from what he was saying it was obvious that emotions were the last thing on his mind.
‘As I said, we’d be foolish to pretend any different; to ignore what’s happening.’
Livvy lifted her chin, her pride smarting from the blow he had just delivered.
‘If this is some ploy to persuade me to go to bed with you—’ she began, but he wouldn’t let her finish.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he told her curtly. ‘What I want to do is to make sure that both of us are on our guard to ensure that that is exactly what does not happen.
‘I’d be lying if I tried to deny the sexual chemistry that’s developed between us, but, logically, giving in to it will only lead to complications which neither of us can really want.’
Livvy’s face flushed. He was making her feel worse, not better. What kind of man was he, to be able to say openly that he wanted her one minute and then to tell her the next that he wasn’t going to do anything about it?
An honest and responsible one, her conscience suggested, but her sense of rejection, coupled with the knowledge of her love, was too strong to allow her to listen to it.
‘Your sexual urges might be so strong tha
t you feel you can’t exert control over them,’ she told him coldly. ‘But I assure you that mine are not.’
‘No?’ he challenged softly. ‘Then what was all that about downstairs in the kitchen just now? If Monsieur Dubois hadn’t arrived when he did, you know full well I could have had you right there and then, and it wouldn’t have mattered a damn if I’d taken you across the kitchen table—to either of us,’ he added thickly as the flush which had stung Livvy’s face earlier became a searing burn of shocked heat.
Shocked, not just because of what he had said, nor the graphic picture he had drawn for her, but because of her own body’s reaction to his words, that sudden, fierce aching pulsing low down in her body which made her want to turn away from him to conceal herself, not just from his eyes but from her own awareness as well.
‘As I’ve just said,’ he repeated, ‘both of us are too intelligent to pretend it isn’t happening, and too adult not to acknowledge the danger.
‘Promiscuity and sexual greed are not labels I want to hang round my neck…’
‘Meaning that you think I do?’ Livvy challenged.
Suddenly she was furiously angry, and not just with him but with herself as well. Surely she had the strength of character to recognise how pointless and self-destructive it would be to get any further involved with him?
How much further involved could she be, though? Loving him…
She wasn’t going to think about that now. She was going to concentrate instead on denying what he had just said.