The Garnett Marriage Pact

He seemed to have recovered quite quickly though, and had been cheerful enough when she took them both swimming later.

CHAPTER SIX

THE HEAT STILL HUNG in the summer air like a miasma on Saturday morning when Jessica got up. The kitchen felt oppressively hot and she half wished she had not offered to contribute a raspberry soufflé to the barbecue lunch.

Lyle had some calls to make and disappeared immediately after breakfast. As always, Jessica experienced an easing of her disturbing inner tension when he had gone, and after shooing both boys out into the garden she started making her soufflé. She was just about to pour the mixture into its collared soufflé-dish to set when Stuart came in.

‘It’s too hot to play,’ he complained, scowling as he added, ‘do we really have to go to Aunt Justine’s? I’d rather stay here.’

Putting down her bowl, Jessica studied his down-bent head. She was aware of the problems that had existed between Justine’s son and his cousins, and could well understand Stuart’s reluctance to return to the scene of the crime so to speak, and even sympathised with it to some extent, but this was one of those occasions when for his own good she knew she would have to be firm.

‘If you stay it would be rather rude, especially as your uncle will be there. He hasn’t seen you for a long time, has he? I know it’s hot,’ she continued, smiling a little as she added persuasively, ‘how would you like it if we went in my car? We could put the hood down and that will help you to cool off.’

She could see that he was tempted, and was glad that she hadn’t fallen into the trap of insisting that he should accompany them.

‘What’s that you’re making?’ he asked her, changing the subject.

‘Raspberry soufflé. Want a taste?’

When he nodded his head, she found a clean teaspoon and scooped up some of the mixture, handing the spoon to him. The look of sheer pleasure on his face as he licked it clean made her laugh, and she was still smiling when Lyle walked in through the back door.

‘God, it’s hot out there. We’re in for a storm soon, I suspect. What time are we due at Justine’s?’ he asked, frowning slightly as he glanced at his watch.

‘Twelve,’ Jessica told him, deftly pouring the soufflé into the dish and carrying it across to the refrigerator. By the time they were ready to leave it would be set, and just to be on the safe side she would put it into a coolbag to transport it.

‘Dad, just have a taste of this,’ Stuart exhorted his father. ‘It’s great.’

‘Raspberry soufflé,’ Jessica explained in response to the enquiring look Lyle gave her over his son’s head. ‘Justine asked me to make it.’

‘Let Dad taste it,’ Stuart urged her.

Feeling unaccountably nervous, Jessica got a clean teaspoon and scraped it along the side of the empty bowl. Lyle had come to stand beside her, and as always she felt her muscles clench, her nerve endings vibrating in acute awareness of his proximity.

She had intended merely to hand Lyle the spoon, but somehow as she tried to pass it to him, his fingers became entangled with hers, closing firmly over them. Even so, the shock of being touched by him made her hand shake so much that half the contents of the heaped spoon ended up on her fingers. Unable to pull away, she tried not to watch the slow curl of Lyle’s tongue as he cleaned the spoon, her stomach abruptly compressing with shock as he removed the spoon and then lifted her sticky fingers to his mouth, first licking away the spilled soufflé and then slowly sucking her fingers clean.

A sensation unlike anything she had ever experienced in her life before sheeted through her, her body paralysed as she simply stood there in amazed shock, unable to move away. She felt as though her entire body had turned to liquid, as though she was about to dissolve completely and escape the material cage of her flesh.

It seemed unbelievable that such a simple and automatic reaction on his part should have such a devastating effect on her senses. The minute his tongue had touched her skin her stomach had dropped like a high-speed lift, while her pulse rate had accelerated way, way past its normal level.

Now as he released her hand it was impossible for her to look away from him, even though she desperately wanted to conceal from him what she had experienced.

Stuart might just as well not have been there for all the attention Lyle paid him as he said softly to her, ‘Now we’re equal.’

Equal? What was he talking about? Her brain felt sluggish and heavy as though somehow it had been drugged. Stuart had to speak to her twice before she realised he had said anything, and even then it was several seconds before she could

pull herself together sufficiently to agree that it was time that he and James went upstairs to shower and change.

‘Don’t forget you promised we could go in your car,’ he reminded her as he shot out into the garden.

Lyle was watching her. She could tell, even with her back to him, simply by the way the skin at the base of her skull prickled.

‘It isn’t nice being aroused when you can’t do a damn thing about it, is it, Jessica?’

She spun round staring at him, shock coursing through her veins. ‘Now you know how I felt the other day,’ he continued harshly. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing? Surely you can’t have forgotten the rules already?’

His voice was so bitterly derisory that it took her some time to realise what he meant, and when she did her face flamed hotly. He didn’t think that she had deliberately… But he did, she realised swiftly, and what’s more he was so furiously angry about it that he had deliberately set out to punish her.

Anger fought with guilt and shock as she tried to blot out the fierce surge of desire that had kicked through her body when he touched her, wanting to deny to herself how she had felt but totally unable to do so.