‘This isn’t going to get the dinner cooked, is it?’ he said ruefully. ‘You have a very undermining effect on my self-control, you’re a very dangerous woman.’
A dangerous woman. She smiled to herself when he had gone. If she was a dangerous woman, then what did that make him?
* * *
From somewhere or other, Guy had found candles—only plain white kitchen ones, but he lit them with a flourish worthy of the most expensive and intimate restaurant and, as she sat down on the chair he pulled out for her, Campion marvelled at the versatility of this man whom she had originally dismissed as a lightweight chauvinist.
He had cooked a chicken casserole, and its succulent fragrance filled the room, but it was the sight of the wine bottle on the table that made her eyebrows lift in silent interrogation.
‘I had to go down to the village. Champagne would have been more appropriate, but the off-licence doesn’t stock it.’
He grinned at her and she smiled back. The off-licence was a tiny row of shelves in the cluttered general store that was the only retail outlet the village possessed, beside the chemist’s shop and the launderette.
‘I feel I should have made more of an effort to dress up.’ Campion touched her hair awkwardly. She wasn’t used to this feeling of wanting to please someone, of almost needing to see that slow, warm smile that began at the back of Guy’s eyes and spread until his whole face was illuminated by it.
‘I like you just the way you are.’
Incredibly, she could almost believe he meant it, and she gave a soft gurgle of amusement.
Once, long, long ago, she had tried to dress to please a man. Her face clouded as she remembered.
‘Don’t think about him,’ Guy demanded tersely. ‘He and I are two different men, Campion, and I don’t like it when you compare us.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘There’s been no one since, has there?’ he questioned abruptly, as though he already knew the answer.
‘No.’ She looked away from him. ‘I must seem very naïve, very inexperienced.’ She pulled a face. ‘Attractive in a very young woman, perhaps, but not so attractive in someone my age.’
She bit her lip and winced as he took hold of her abruptly.
‘Will you stop doing that?’
She stared at him, hurt by the rough anger in his voice.
‘Doing what?’
‘Running yourself down,’ he told her curtly. ‘Experience doesn’t guarantee physical pleasure.’
‘I didn’t even know how…how to touch you.’ Her face flamed as she looked briefly at him. ‘That was what was missing from my book, wasn’t it?’ she asked, suddenly illuminatingly aware of what had been behind his cricitisms. ‘Knowledge…experience…’
‘Sort of, but it was the emotional impact I was looking for, not the physical.’ His hand touched her face, and instantly she quivered in response. Immediately, his eyes darkened and the breath stopped in her throat. ‘Keep on looking at me like that, and we’ll be eating this chicken for breakfast,’ Guy told her ruefully.
It broke the tension. She laughed and watched, loving him as the smile broke out across his face.
How could she have not known before now that she loved him? She shivered, suddenly aware of how fleeting this precious time with him might be. He had said nothing of love, nothing of permanence, nothing of anything more than the fact that he wanted her.
‘Come on, let’s eat.’
He made her sit down, while he served the meal and then filled her wineglass.
Over dinner they talked, their conversation covering a wide diversity of subjects. He was entertaining to talk to, and a generous listener, Campion discovered, as the wine relaxed her and she told him about the loneliness of her childhood and the horror of Craig’s deceit.
‘I envy you coming from such a large family,’ she confessed. ‘Do you see much of them?’
‘Not as much as I’d like. I normally spend Christmas with Ma, but this year she’s going to Canada. Ian has just got engaged, and of course he wants her to meet his fiancée and her family.’
‘So you’re the only one who’s not married?’