She bought a copy of the local newspaper whilst she waited for a taxi to take her from the station to the garden centre. Without that, without seeing that small, bare announcement of Silas’ marriage to another woman, she wouldn’t have known, would have walked into a situation for which she was totally unprepared.
The taxi driver, seeing her white face, was concerned enough to ask her if she was ill.
Verity looked at him blankly, her gaze returning to the newsprint in front of her. Silas was married. How could that be possible? He had been going to marry her. Was she suffering from some kind of madness, some kind of delusion? Was it all just a bad dream? How could Silas be married to someone else? There must have been a mistake, and yet she knew that there was no mistake, just as she now knew the reason for his silence during these last long weeks.
The pain was like nothing she had ever imagined experiencing: a tearing, wrenching, soul-destroying agony that made her want to scream and howl and tear at herself and her clothes, to ease a grief she could neither control nor contain.
She made the taxi driver take her back to the station. En route to Heathrow and a transatlantic flight back to New York she couldn’t understand why, despite the heat of the day, her fingers and toes felt as cold as ice, so cold that they hurt, her movements those of a very, very old woman.
Back in New York she applied herself to her work with a grim concentration, throwing up a barrier around herself that she would allow no one to pass through.
Silas hadn’t loved her at all. Silas had lied to her. Her uncle was right. From now on she was going to devote herself to the business. What else, after all, was there for her?
Fresh tears rolled down Verity’s face—the tears she had never allowed herself to cry during the reality of her heartbreak at losing Silas but which now, reliving those days in her sleep, she had no power to suppress.
Silas. Not even in the privacy of her apartment had she allowed
herself the weakness of whispering his name, of reliving all the times they had shared together.
‘Silas…’
As he heard her say his name Silas closed his eyes. It hurt him to hear the emotion in her voice and to see the evidence of the distress on her damp face.
Very gently he reached out and touched her wet cheek. Her skin felt cool beneath his fingertips, her eyelashes ridiculously long as they fanned darkly on her cheek. She was lying half on and half off the pillow and automatically he slid his hand beneath the nape of her neck intending to make her more comfortable, just as he often did for Honor. But Verity wasn’t Honor, a child…his child…She was a woman…his woman…
The shudder that galvanised his body was its own warning but it was a warning that came far too late. He stiffened as Verity suddenly opened her eyes.
‘Silas…’
The husky wonderment in her voice held him spellbound.
‘Silas.’
She said his name again, breathing it as unsteadily as an uncertain swimmer gulping air. As she struggled to sit up, the duvet slid further from her body, leaving it clothed only in the soft silver moonlight coming in through the window.
Silas caught his breath. In her early twenties she had had the body of a girl, slender and gently curved, only hinting at what it would be in maturity, but now she was fully a woman, her curves were so richly sensuous that he had to close his eyes to stop himself from reaching out to touch her just to make sure that she was real. He could feel the beads of sweat beginning to pearl his skin as he was flooded with hungry desire for her.
Even though he had looked away immediately, every detail of her was already imprinted on his eyeballs and his emotions. His hands ached to cup the ripe softness of her breasts, to stroke the taut warmth of her belly, to cover the feminine crispness of her pubic curls, to…
The power of his reaction to her, not just sexually but emotionally as well, shocked him into immobility.
‘Silas…’
Reluctantly he opened his eyes as she whispered his name. Her mouth looked soft and warm, her eyes confused and unhappy. He lifted his hand to touch her hair and let it slide silkily through his fingers, his body shuddering as he started to release her.
Verity watched wide-eyed, still caught up in the intensity of her dream, her glance following Silas’ every movement. Pleadingly she raised her hand to touch the side of his face, her palm flat against his jaw where she could feel his beard prickling her skin.
Silas closed his eyes as he moaned her name, a tortured, haunted sound of denial, but Verity was too lost in what she was doing to respond to it. Her fingertips trembled as she pressed them against his mouth, exploring its familiar shape, feeling them move as he mouthed her name. Instinctively she slipped them between his lips.
Immediately her nipples hardened, the muscles in her belly and thighs tautening as she shook with the force of what she was feeling.
Helplessly Silas opened his mouth, his tongue tip caressing the smooth warmth of her fingertips. He could see as well as feel her whole body trembling in reaction to his caress. Holding her arm, he sucked slowly on her fingers.
Beneath her breath Verity made a small, familiar keening noise as she lifted her other hand to his face, stroking him with frantic little movements, far more sensual and exciting for all their lack of open sexuality than a more calculatedly sexual caress could ever have been.
His self-control breaking, Silas caught hold of her hands, bearing her back against the softness of the pillow, his hands now cupping her face as he started to kiss her, opening her mouth with his lips, his tongue, feeding rather than satisfying his hunger for her with passionate, deeply intimate kisses.
As she opened her mouth to him, Verity caught back a small sob of relief. It had been so awful, dreaming that she had lost Silas, but here he was, with her, holding her, loving her, showing her that she was safe.