Authors: Kim Lawrence
‘We’ve met,’ Anna said, her dark brows meeting in a straight line over her nose.
‘You’ve so much in common.’ Beth Lacey gave a pleased smile.
‘We have?’ They both spoke in unison, and their eyes clashed as they each recognised the scandalised disbelief in their voices. Anna bit back the smile that quivered on her lips.
‘Of course you have; you’re both medical.’
‘Are you a doctor too?’
‘She could have been if she’d had less outside interests,’ the fond mother informed him. ‘She did train as a nurse, after—’
‘I don’t practise,’ Anna interrupted smoothly. ‘I found the hierarchical structure a little too confining for my taste; I branched out.’
‘Into what?’ Nursing must have breathed a sigh of relief to lose this anarchic spirit, he thought, watching her small hands moving expressively.
‘Therapeutic massage and aromatherapy.’
‘How…enterprising.’
Nasty, narrow-minded, patronising toad, she thought as she silently noted the faint, contemptuous smile. ‘I take it
you’re
not an advocate of alternative treatments?’ She bristled with antagonism.
‘Treatment—that implies that some benefit is gained?’
‘I told you you had a lot in common.’ Beth beamed with pleasure. ‘I’ll leave you children to talk shop.’
Anna noted how Adam’s startled gaze followed her parent’s retreat.
‘No, she isn’t guileless, or stupid,’ she told him. Cunning would be nearer the mark, she thought affectionately. ‘She keeps trying to set me up with eligible males, and I suppose she’s decided you fit into that category. I’ve told her if she’s that desperate for my room I’ll move out, but nothing will do for her but to try and get me married off. It’s very unfair; she doesn’t interfere
with Lindy and Hope, though that might have something to do with the fact they’re not around.’
‘You live at home?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘When I’m not having sex with every male in a fifty-mile radius. Mind you, I did have a wild couple of years in London before I started nursing. I didn’t actually finish my training.’
‘Some people find it hard to finish anything they start.’
She wasn’t fooled by his neutral expression. ‘We don’t have your rock-solid respectability, darling,’ Anna purred, aching to slap his smug, superior face.
‘It wasn’t a criticism, just an observation.’
‘Everything you say is a criticism.’ The man was aggravation incarnate!
‘This is a great party. There. Is that complimentary enough for you? I believe you organised it?’ At that moment a young man spun off the dance floor and hit Anna in the back, sending her straight towards Adam.
His arms opened automatically to prevent her falling. The nearly finished drink in her hand spilled down his shirt-front, and she found her cheek pressed against the damp fabric as his arms came up to steady her. A spicy, masculine aroma, the heavy thud of his heart and the tension that tautened the rock-hard muscles all made her head spin. The enforced intimacy only lasted a moment, but the light-headed sensation made her miss the cheerful enquiry from the instigator of the accident.
‘It’s only lemonade,’ she heard herself babble, seeing the damp patch spreading across his chest. ‘No permanent damage.’ She lifted her eyes and met the steady, cold regard of his. ‘For God’s sake, I didn’t do it on purpose,’ she snapped, seeing the wariness in his expression. ‘It wasn’t a further ploy in my attempts to have your body, so you can relax.’ Her breath still came in turbulent gasps as she tried to steady her racing pulses.
Adam wished he could follow her advice and relax, but tension had his spine in knots and all his anatomical
knowledge wasn’t going to help him unwind them. Getting the warm, womanly scent of her skin out of his nostrils might help.
‘Have I done something to disturb you?’ he asked, watching the colour ebb and flow in the small, vivid face of the young woman beside him. He was fascinated that anyone could have their emotions so close to the surface. Was she really as transparent as she appeared? he wondered.
‘Beyond the odd grope in the undergrowth?’ she asked, privately trying to analyse just what it was about this man that disturbed her so very much.
She liked open, straightforward people, and he had the sort of reticence that made a clam seem garrulous. His green eyes were secretive and mysterious and for some inexplicable reason made the pit of her stomach disintegrate. In the space where it should be was a cold and empty ache.
‘I had no right to do that.’ His face tightened with anger at the memory still fresh in his mind. Other parts of his body responded to the memory too!
‘But you enjoyed it,’ she said intuitively.
‘Yes!’ The stark admission seemed wrenched from him.
‘If it makes it any easier,’ she said huskily, ‘I did too.’
His eyes gleamed momentarily with a very basic emotion. Anna watched as tiny golden lights illuminated the green darkness of the irises. The chilling expression that swiftly supplanted the warmth made her wish for once that she’d held her tongue.
‘No, Anna, it doesn’t make it any easier at all,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re a wildly attractive young woman and any man would be flattered…’
But he’s not, she thought, summoning a jaunty smile to cover the rising tide of humiliation that was stealing over her. She wondered whether this defence looked as pathetic as it felt.
You’ve really made a complete fool of yourself this time, Anna, girl, she thought angrily. The man’s trying to let you down gently. She’d never laid herself so open to rejection before, and why? Just because this man had her hormones in chaos. For God’s sake, Anna, she chided herself, you don’t even like him.
‘The thing is, I’m here to look for a house to move into with my wife…at least she will be…’
It was like being struck in the face; she actually flinched. For a moment she didn’t know who she was most furious with—him for letting her glimpse a forbidden paradise, or herself for ignoring all the signals. Worse than acne or halitosis, he had a wife! I asked for this, she realised bleakly.
‘Say no more,’ she said in a cold little voice quite unlike the husky animation of her usual tones. She gave a light shrug as though she didn’t feel as if she’d been kicked in the guts. Where was her sense of proportion? This man was a total stranger.
‘I’m not nearly discreet enough for married men.’ Again the light, brittle laugh. ‘I can introduce you to an estate agent if you’re interested; there are at least two here. Let me go find them.’ Without looking at him, she moved purposefully away.
The problem with being open, she acknowledged, swallowing inexplicable tears, was you laid yourself open to a heavy share of hurt and humiliation. Her eternally optimistic heart told her one day she’d find something, or someone, worth the risk.
When one of the local estate agents she’d pointed in Adam’s direction sought her out to thank her later she found even her optimism wilting.
‘I might just get rid of the Old Rectory, Anna,’ he observed, rubbing his hands together. ‘Places that size and in that price range can be the very devil to shift.’
‘Isn’t that a bit big?’ she said, thinking wistfully of the large Georgian house she’d always loved. It had
stood empty for over a year now in the static property market.
‘Not for a family of four—or was it five? Anyway he wants lots of space.’
Anna watched him move away happily visualising his sale. The lick of pure rage that swept through her made her body grow rigid and her fine eyes sparkle with wrath and contempt. What an unscrupulous, faithless, pathetic excuse of a man. She hoped she would never come across Adam Deacon again because she knew she would not be able to be civil. Married men who kissed anyone but their wives were beneath contempt as far as she was concerned.
So much for instinct, she thought in disgust—lust was all I was responding to, and I bet he was lapping up every second of it. I’m as bad as him—the creep!
CHAPTER TWO
T
HE
rain had been falling steadily from the leaden grey skies all morning. The small group of protesters had gradually drifted away until only Anna and an elderly couple remained. Anna’s arms were aching from carrying her placard, and, looking at the faces of the retired couple, she could see that they were feeling the strain.
‘Shall we call it a day?’ she suggested to the remaining stalwarts.
‘We’re fine,’ the white-haired woman assured her staunchly.
‘I appreciate your enthusiasm, Ruth,’ Anna said with a smile. ‘But there’s not much point in maintaining a high public profile with no one to see us. Nobody has been in or out of the building for the past hour. We’ll regroup and work out a new strategy later in the week.’
Something a bit more spectacular, Anna thought stubbornly. Something to make those philistines in the planning office sit up and take notice. Tearing down a row of Georgian cottages to make a carpark and yet another supermarket was something worth fighting about. It made her blood boil just thinking about it. If you let some planners have their way unopposed we’d end up living in a concrete jungle, she fumed.
‘If you think so, Anna, dear,’ George Thompson said with thinly disguised relief as he wiped the water from his brow. ‘I think we will go home. Can we give you a lift?’ he asked, taking his wife’s arm.
‘No, that’s all right,’ Anna said stoutly as she shouldered her placard. ‘I’ll take the short cut across the common.’ The Thompsons lived at the opposite side of the
village to her parents’ farm, and the exercise would help vent her frustration.
Hood pulled lower over her eyes, head bent against the rain, she trudged off across the sodden ground. She was a member of the local ramblers’ association and knew all the footpaths; she had demonstrated to keep many of them open.
The route she’d chosen took her through the grounds of the Old Rectory. Anna had decided after her parents’ party the previous week that it might be tactfully expedient to avoid the Old Rectory and its new occupants for the foreseeable future.
Moving cautiously along the path that skirted the eastern border of the overgrown garden, she saw to her relief no sign of habitation in the large, uncared-for Georgian façade. With its peeling window frames and walls overgrown by a vigorous ivy the place looked deserted.
She relaxed a little, but still moved furtively along the moss-covered path, taking care she didn’t slip into the brook that bisected this portion of the grounds. Her encounter with Adam Deacon had shaken her stubborn optimism more than she was prepared to admit, not to mention her confidence in her judgement.
When Lindy had casually introduced—and Anna hadn’t been fooled by the
casual
part—the subject of Adam’s family ‘responsibilities’, as her sister had so quaintly termed it, Anna had played it very cool.
‘The wife and family part, you mean?’ she responded in an equally offhand manner.
For once Anna wasn’t prepared to have her mistakes discussed by her sisters. This was one self-inflicted hurt she wanted to keep private. No wonder Lindy had been worried if she knew Adam was a married man with a family. Anna had to live with the humiliating knowledge that she’d come on to him with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Adam probably imagined that she behaved like that
with every half-decent male she came across. He wasn’t to know she’d never been so attracted to anyone—at least not for a very long time, she mentally corrected. She had male friends and enjoyed their company, but romance hadn’t featured much in her life. In fact her existence had been blissfully free of complications.
‘Got you!’ The growl of triumph along with the arm that coiled around her neck made Anna shriek in shock. The sound was cut off as the arm tightened around her windpipe, and the other one around her midriff threatened to lift her off the ground. ‘Don’t struggle or you’ll be sorry!’
She wisely ignored this sinister advice. Without waiting to hear any more threats, she brought her placard around with all her might to strike her assailant and simultaneously lost her footing. She heard her captor’s grunt of pain as he fell with her down the incline and right into the stream.
Spluttering and gasping, she surfaced from the shallow water, clutching the first thing that came to hand. Her placard had been lost in the fall. She staggered to her feet as fast as her sodden clothes would permit.
Luckily her fall had been cushioned by her attacker. Lucky for me, unlucky for him, she thought when it seemed for a moment that he was unconscious. She backed away from the supine, dark-clothed figure and looked around wildly for the quickest route of escape. She froze as she saw him move, and waved the rock in her fist in what she hoped was a menacing manner.
‘I warn you, I’m a black belt in karate,’ she asserted, backing away.
‘You! I don’t believe it.’ The threatening figure sat upright and Anna saw the unmistakable features of Adam Deacon, recognisable even through a film of mud. He groaned and touched the welt on the side of his cheek.
Some of the fear that had sent adrenaline surging
through her body dispersed. The adrenaline high didn’t abate even though she felt weak with relief. Excitement swirled through her veins. Happily, the visions of herself as some gruesome statistic faded away. Whatever else Adam was, he didn’t fit her mental criteria of mugger or rapist. Now, if you were talking faithless swine or philanderer…!
‘That I’m a black belt? I did sort of stretch the truth there,’ she admitted. ‘It was self-defence classes.’
‘Specialising in dirty tricks, no doubt. You should carry hazard lights.’ He got to his feet slowly. ‘At least there’s nothing broken. At least not yet.’ His eyes touched the rock she still held aloft. ‘If you’re not going to use that do you mind putting it down? You’re making me nervous. I feel as though a ten-ton truck landed on me.’
With a grimace she obliged. Not that he looked nervous. He looked angry and fairly disgruntled, which, under the circumstances, was understandable, she conceded.
‘Well, what do you expect if you go leaping out on people? I only weigh seven and a half stone,’ she added judiciously. ‘Don’t be such a wimp.’