Sleeping Partners

Her heart was fluttering against her ribs like a captive bird at the look on his face, and in that moment all she wanted to do was to move into his arms again, to nestle close and slide her hands down the muscled column of his neck and inside his half-opened shirt. She wanted to feel his skin, tangle her fingers in the dark silky warmth of the body hair just visible in the V of the denim shirt, explore the hard, male chest.

She stepped back a pace sharply, wondering how she could ever have been so stupid as to think she was over Clay Lincoln. She had loved him all her life; she would die loving him. ‘I’ll have to change but it won’t take a minute.’

‘Fine.’ He walked over to the windows at the end of the room which looked out onto the paved garden. ‘I’ll wait here.’

Robyn took her cue from the way Clay was dressed and changed quickly into casual cream drawstring trousers and a short-sleeved, waist-length cotton top in pastel blue. She combed out her hair from the high knot on top of her head it had been in all day, and then hesitated as her hands went to draw it up again. Her scalp was aching slightly and she balked at the idea of further pressure. She’d leave it loose.

She was back downstairs again in under five minutes, and Clay was still standing where she’d left him looking out of the windows. He turned to face her as she reached the bottom step, his eyes flashing over her, their silver light very bright. ‘You look sixteen again with your hair like that,’ he said quietly, his face unreadable.

It startled her. He hadn’t made any reference to the past other than in a derogatory nature, and she found it acutely painful to be reminded that he’d thought she was a flirtatious little coquette then, a provocative tease who had been trying out her new-found femininity on any male within kissing distance.

She smiled stiffly. ‘Gallons of water have passed under the bridge since those days,’ she said tightly. He probably thought deep inside that if her behaviour with him on the night of Cass’s wedding was anything to go by she had got exactly what she’d asked for with this mysterious man from university, who according to her sister had broken her heart.

‘That’s for sure.’ For a second his eyes were as hard and clear and uncompromising as diamonds, a ruthless quality to his mouth that hadn’t been there a moment before. And then it was gone and he was walking towards her, smiling easily.

Robyn responded in a like manner, making small talk as they left the house and walked out to the car, but inside she was trembling slightly. What had happened, what had he been remembering to put that expression in his eyes? she asked herself silently. He was different to the Clay of old, but just how different she hadn’t realised until this very moment.

By the time they drove into Windsor the air was heavy with the lazy golden twilight that seemed to last endlessly in the summer. Shafts of sun were slanting through the trees of the road they were following, and then Clay drew up outside large wrought-iron gates set in an eight-feet-high stone wall which he opened automatically from the car window.

Once inside the wide drive was flanked by towering oaks, but within moments they emerged into a wide semi-circle leading to a beautiful, stone-built Victorian house surrounded on three sides by massive cypresses.

‘It’s wonderful, Clay.’ They had said very little on the drive to the house, but now Robyn turned to the big dark figure at the side of her, her voice warm. ‘What a gorgeous place to live.’ Gorgeous? It was like a mini paradise all of its own.

He watched her face for a moment and then he smiled slowly. ‘I bought it some years ago from a friend of a friend who was emigrating to Canada,’ he said quietly. ‘It’d been in his family from when it was built in 1870, and from the first moment I stepped in the door I knew I had to have it. It felt good, solid. Life has been happy within its walls, you can feel it.’

She stared at him, absolutely amazed by his sensitivity, and then flushed hotly when he said, his tone sardonic, ‘Surprised I’ve got a soul, Robyn?’

‘Not at all,’ she lied swiftly. ‘Don’t be silly.’

He continued to survey her for a moment more before cutting the engine, and then he said, his voice very even and cool, ‘I had a privileged upbringing by most standards. My mother was English and my father American, and both families were well-off, my father’s particularly so, but my maternal grandparents’ farm in Sussex was a haven for two small inquisitive boys with acres to roam about in. That was fortunate as we were often dumped there while my parents sorted out yet another quarrel.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t know what else to say.

He was looking through the windscreen now, his profile hard, as he continued, ‘The trouble was my mother’s inability to be faithful. She had scores of lovers by all accounts, but my father—who was twenty years older than her—loved her and turned a blind eye where he could. Unfortunately my mother sometimes made that impossible, and then we’d be shipped off to our grandparents from wherever we were in the world. Every time they resolved their differences we seemed to move to a new home, a new start—’ his voice was very cynical ‘—so Mitch and I never seemed able to make permanent friends or put down roots.’

‘Did…did you live in America?’ she asked softly, aware that it was anathema to him to talk like this, to reveal anything of himself.

‘All over the place,’ he answered shortly. ‘My father’s shipping empire, which he’d inherited from his father, made it possible for any location in the world to be within their price range. We hated it, Mitch and I. The only time we were happy was when we were on the farm in Sussex. That’s why I was determined to come to university in England, to be near my grandparents.’

‘And they had the potting shed?’ she asked lightly, aiming to bring him out of the past.

‘What?’ For a moment his face was blank, and then the darkness that had gripped it lifted and he smiled, nodding as he said, ‘Oh, yes, the potting shed. We had our first drink, our first stolen cigarette in its hallowed walls, watched only by the family of mice who lived there.’

He was opening his car door as he spoke; clearly the glimpse into his past had finished, Robyn acknowledged silently. But that was fine. Although she was burning with curiosity, another part of her brain was warning her very strongly that everything she learnt about him, every personal little detail, wasn’t going to make it any easier when this tenuous relationship finished. And it would finish. She would have known that even if he hadn’t spelled it out for her.

From the outside the house had appeared large but not excessively so; however once Clay opened the front door and Robyn stepped into the hall she realised the building was huge, even before Clay told her there were eight bedrooms all with ensuite.

The hall was vast and the staircase a thing of beauty all on its own, being of ornate iron drag-painted in gold, but Robyn had little time to take in the lush russet carpet and fine paintings on the walls before Clay was introducing her to his housekeeper. Mrs Jones was a tall, slim, attractive woman with a Welsh lilt to her voice who apparently lived with her husband—an invalid—in a bungalow annexe at the back of the house, and Robyn liked her on sight. She was friendly and warm but not gushing.

‘Come and have a quick look round and then we’ll have a drink before dinner,’ Clay said casually, as though he brought women into his house every day of the week. Which he probably did, Robyn reminded herself painfully.

He showed her the upstairs first which seemed to stretch for ever in pale cream carpets, bedroom after bedroom in different colour schemes of peach, lemon, strawberry and other soft shades, until they came to the master bedroom which was uncompromisingly Clay. Maple wood floor, a predominantly stark colour scheme of silver and black, and a huge four-poster bed was so him, Robyn thought tensely, as she gingerly poked her head round the door, refusing his invitation to

proceed further into the room. Silken curtains hung at the full length windows which were wide open and led onto a large stone balcony, and the enormous bed was draped with silk sheets and billowy pillows and cushions in abundance.

It was as different to the other rooms as chalk to cheese, and relentlessly masculine. Luxurious, but with a sensuality that was both spartan and hedonistic.

How many women had lounged on those wicked silken sheets and pillows? Robyn thought miserably, replete and satisfied after a long night of lovemaking. They would be glowing, purring like sleek, contented cats and—