His Convenient Mistress (9 page)

‘You won't be having your wicked way with me,' Sara protested weakly.

‘Shall we join some of the others outside?' He had to stop looking at those drowsy, beckoning eyes or he would have no choice but to abandon eating and drag her somewhere private, to hell with what the entire town had to say on the subject. Corporate businesswoman she might well have been, but when it came to emotions she was the most intriguing woman he had ever met and the complex combination of vulnerability and gutsy intelligence was driving him crazy.

Sara was barely aware of the conversation swirling around her as she munched her way through chicken, a sausage and some bits of salad and bread. The only thing she was aware of was the energy emanating from the man sitting alongside her on the bench, his thigh grazing hers every so often.

When the music started back, drifting through the open windows to where outside lights had been switched on to
accommodate the gathering darkness, James stood up and announced that it was time for them to leave.

‘Sara wants to be back early as it's the first time my mother is babysitting her son.'

Her chance was now, to agree with him and leave, but to go where and do what, or to disagree, stand her ground and put her provocative behaviour down to a little too much wine on an empty stomach. Right now, she felt as sober as a judge.

Wrong time, wrong place and definitely, she thought, wrong man. She was behaving like a teenager instead of the responsible mother that she was, flopping all over him like a wet rag and acting as though that husky voice of his and his body pressing against hers so that she could feel his arousal was because of
her
. When instead he was only a red-blooded male responding in typical fashion to a reasonably attractive woman who had too much wine inside her for her own good.

But she had been in a deep freeze for five years. Somewhere along the line she had forgotten that she was only twenty-six, hardly over the hill.

‘He can be a bit nervous with strangers, to start with,' Sara said, clearing her throat and standing up. ‘I promised him that I wouldn't be back late. Where shall I put my plate and glass?'

‘Leave it here,' Fiona said, catching her eye and grinning broadly. ‘I'll take it in. Some of us poor, hapless souls have been roped into doing all the clearing away, so we'll be here until the break of dawn. Or at least until eleven-thirty when our resident DJ packs up and leaves.'

‘That would be my brother,' Helen explained, smiling, ‘and he'll pack up exactly when I tell him to.'

It was only when they were outside in the clear, cool air that a sickening rush of nerves washed over her, and
when she stepped gingerly into his car it intensified to the point where she had to rest her head back and close her eyes.

He didn't start the engine immediately. Instead, he turned in his seat and looked at her. ‘If you want to back out, tell me now.'

Sara slowly inclined her head so that she was looking straight into his glittering eyes. ‘I don't know what to do,' she answered truthfully.

‘I know what you
want
to do,' he murmured, reaching out to slide his fingers along her cheek and into her hair, and Sara's breath caught painfully in her throat.

‘Where will we go?'

‘To the Rectory.' He gave her a killing smile that made her shiver with fear and searing anticipation. ‘And don't worry,' he dipped his fingers to her half-parted mouth and gently traced its outline, ‘I'm not a beast. If you change your mind along the way, I won't take advantage of you.' But she wouldn't, he thought with a flare of triumph that made his loins physically ache. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her. He could feel it in the loaded atmosphere between them. The air was thick with unexpressed needs. He was not surprised when she gave him an imperceptible nod and only then did he turn away and fire the engine into life.

E
VEN
to Sara's racing mind, the drive back seemed a lot shorter and was accomplished in silence. A silence pregnant with slick excitement.

‘Changed your mind yet?' James asked softly, when they reached the Rectory and he had killed the engine.

‘Changed yours?' She laughed a little wryly. ‘We're behaving like teenagers. At least I am. It's just that…'

‘Just that what…?'

‘Oh, I don't know.' She shrugged and stared out of the window. Yes, she wanted to sleep with him. Badly. Too badly, and that was the problem, but how could she explain that to him? How could she tell him that she was frankly terrified of opening herself up to another man when her experiences with the last one had left her mortally wounded? He would roar with laughter. This wasn't about having a relationship as far as James Dalgleish was concerned, it was about having sex, and having sex was not something he would associate with agonising.

‘Look, why don't we go inside and we can…talk?'

‘Are you interested in talking?' She looked at him and he felt a sharp tug somewhere inside at the worried expression on her face. ‘No, of course you're not,' she said on a little sigh. ‘Why should you be? What does sex have to do with talking?'

‘Come on.' He slung open his car door and strode round so that he could pull hers open for her. ‘If you need to talk until this time next week, then I'm going to listen, so
out you come and we'll go inside and get ourselves some good, strong coffee.'

‘You don't have to…I know the last thing you want to do is drink coffee at a kitchen table and chat, especially when…especially since…'

He didn't answer. Instead he took her limp hand in his and gently pulled her out of the car.

‘Where are your keys?'

‘I can open the door.' She detached her hand from his so that she could rummage around in her bag, and as soon as she had found the keys and opened the side-door immediately wanted to slip her hand back into his.

No wonder I'm in a state, she thought jerkily. When was the last time she had wanted physical contact with a man? But what the hell must he be thinking of her? She certainly wasn't living up to her image of a savvy London girl who had moved in the fast lane and knew how to behave accordingly. She was acting like an adolescent suffering an extreme case of first-date nerves.

‘There's no need…'

‘If you say that once more, I'll throttle you. Now step aside, and go into the kitchen. I'll make us some coffee and we can take it into the sitting room. Then we'll…talk.' He leaned against the frame of the door, towering over her, and she stood back to let him brush past.

‘Perhaps we should go back to your house. I need to check and make sure that Simon's OK.'

‘He'll be fine.' He stuck the kettle on, fetched mugs, spooned coffee into them and resisted the temptation to turn around and drink in the figure on the chair. Having given him the green light, she was now applying the brakes as if her life depended on it, and to his amazement he wasn't in the slightest bit annoyed. Frustrated yes, but an
noyed no. And he still wanted her. Instead of dampening his enthusiasm, her hesitant retreat seemed to have fuelled him even more. He must be mellowing with age, he thought with wry bemusement.

‘Now, you go into the sitting room. You can call my mother and find out whether everything's all right, but she would have called me if there had been a problem. I took my mobile phone with me. Still, if it puts your mind at rest…'

‘Why are you being so understanding?' Sara asked warily. ‘And don't tell me that you're an understanding man by nature.'

‘Well,' James shot her a slow, amused smile that made her stomach curl like a fist inside her, ‘I must say I've never known any woman who's used aggression as part of her courtship routine.'

‘We're not courting one another, though,' Sara returned quickly, ‘so I'm allowed.' Courtship? James Dalgleish? Had he ever courted a woman in his life? She very much doubted it, and then hard on the heels of that thought came another—what would it be like? What would it be like to have this big, powerful, self-confident, sexy man go weak at the knees at the thought of a woman? To find himself unable to function unless she was around? The thought of it made her blush and she hustled towards the sitting room, acutely conscious of him following closely behind her.

‘You can't hide away forever.' Those were his first words the minute she had sat down and he had moved across to the bay window so that he could perch against the ledge and stare down at her.

‘Because I didn't jump into the sack with you doesn't mean that I'm hiding away from anything!' Sara lied, but there was no vigour in her voice. He was staring at her in
the same probing way that she would have shied away from a day ago, but which now made her want to just…just let him in. She had no idea where the urge was coming from but her helplessness to fight it off frightened her.

‘Of course you are.' James sauntered towards the sofa and sat down next to her, depressing it with his weight. It was small enough for his thigh to rest lightly against hers and all those crazy, racing pulses leapt into life as he turned to look at her, stretching out his arm along the back of the sofa so that it was resting loosely behind her shoulders. ‘Why else would you have run out here, to the back of beyond?'

‘You know why. Simon…Simon has had these recurrent chest infections for years; he needed to get out of London. This house, coming when it did, just seemed like the hand of fate.'

‘You could have moved to the country and still been within commuting distance of your job in London.'

‘Why are you pinning me against the wall with your questions?'

‘Because you said you wanted to talk and talk you will. What's the relationship with Simon's father?'

‘What's that got to do with anything?' She began to look away and he caught her chin in one hand and forced her to look at him instead.

‘Just about everything,' he grated. ‘I want to sleep with you, but I have no intention of sleeping with a woman who's still involved with her ex.' It shocked him just how much he hated the thought of someone else having a claim to her body, to her mind.

‘And here I was, thinking that you were one of those typical, unscrupulous high-fliers,' Sara mocked in an at
tempt to lighten the atmosphere. It didn't work. He continued to look at her with such unsmiling concentration that she felt giddy and the curling feeling in her stomach began to spread to other places in her body.

‘You still haven't answered my question.'

‘I don't
have
any kind of relationship with Phillip,' Sara said in a rush. Her cheeks were pink with colour. ‘No, I'm lying. I have got a relationship with Phillip, but it's more along the lines of loathing.' She gave a bitter laugh. ‘You could say we didn't part on the best of terms.'

‘You mean before you came up here?'

‘I mean when he discovered I was pregnant. There. Satisfied?'

‘I'll tell you when I'm satisfied,' James murmured. ‘And I'm not. I take it he didn't like the thought of becoming a daddy?'

‘What's the point in talking about this?' Sara squirmed.

‘The point is that you can't live your life if you're still attached to your past.'

‘That's psychobabble.'

‘Is it? I bet you haven't had a relationship with any man since Simon's been on the scene,' he said astutely. ‘Have all the men in your life over the past five years just been good friends, Sara?'

Pride struggled with weary helplessness and she shrugged. ‘You don't understand. You go out to work because you want to not because you have to. I've worked so that I could pay off the mortgage and raise a child. I haven't had a choice and there's no room to clock-watch when you're a commodity trader. It's not a nine-to-five job and just the smallest hint of weakness would have cost me my job. I haven't had…had time to devote to cultivating
a relationship.' She found that she was wringing her hands together and she made an effort to still them.

‘So you worked from dawn till dusk and spent your leisure time feeling guilty because you had to leave your son in the care of a stranger.'

‘She wasn't a stranger,' Sara said, hearing the misery in her voice with distaste. Self-pity was an indulgence which she had always viewed with contempt, except in the very early hours of the morning, when the rest of the world was asleep and she could allow her mind to drift over its past and build castles that were never going to be.

‘You could have got another job, something less demanding. Moved out of London, worked somewhere in one of the counties.'

‘You don't understand,' Sara muttered, tugging her face out of his controlling grip so that she didn't have to look into those disturbing, piercing navy blue eyes.

She knew why he was doing this, sitting on this sofa, encouraging her to spill out her life history. He wanted to sleep with her and was prepared to help her over this little stumbling block simply as a means to an end. What confused her was her own temptation to yield. She had spent too long on her own, she thought feverishly, too long warding off the rest of the world. She had confided in Phillip and look where that had got her.

‘So you keep telling me. Well, then, why don't you enlighten me?'

He watched the fractional tilt of her head and the stubborn compression of her mouth and thought that if he had any sense at all he would leave her to her zealously protected thoughts and walk right out of the kitchen door. He wasn't interested in playing lengthy games with the opposite sex.

‘Scared, Sara?' he murmured softly. She didn't answer, just continued to stare unblinkingly in front of her. ‘What did that bastard do to you?' he enquired and it was the gentleness in his voice that did it for her.

She felt the prick of tears behind her lids and was mortified when one oozed out of the corner of her eye.

‘Sorry,' she mumbled, rubbing her fist against her eye and taking several deep breaths. He silently handed her a crisp white handkerchief and she dabbed her eyes without looking at him and then clenched the handkerchief in her hand. ‘I bet you hate women who cry.'

He flushed darkly when she slid her eyes sideways to catch the expression of discomfort on his face.

‘Thought so.'

‘I don't hate women who cry,
per se
,' James said, wondering how he had suddenly happened to find himself on the back legs.

‘You just hate it when they cry because they want more from you than you're prepared to give.'

‘We weren't talking about
me
,' he rasped uncomfortably and Sara impulsively reached out and stroked the side of his cheek. It was the first time she had glimpsed any loss of that phenomenal self-control and he suddenly looked like a boy, caught having to confess to something he didn't want to.

James caught her hand in his and nipped her soft palm, looking into her face as he did so. ‘Witch,' he murmured, ‘don't think you can change the subject whenever you want to. I'm not through talking to you quite yet.' He trailed his tongue lightly against the soft underside of her wrist and she gasped at the burst of pleasure that the simple touch invoked.

Phillip had been her first and only lover but his love-
making had been targeted towards his own satisfaction, something she had only seen in retrospect and with the advantage of hindsight when the limitations of his personality had become stunningly obvious. She had had no points of comparison but instinctively she knew that James was not cut from the same cloth. At least not as far as the sexual game was concerned.

She was breathing quickly as he trailed a leisurely path with his mouth along her arm, finally pulling her towards him so that he could assault her mouth in a kiss that was lingering and coaxing but ultimately promised total possession. Every pore in her body was screaming out for satisfaction.

‘I…I thought you wanted…to talk.'

‘Later. Now…shall we go somewhere more comfortable?' He paused to murmur against her mouth and Sara nodded drowsily at him.

‘Upstairs. My bedroom. It's the first door on the left.' She found that she could barely utter the words coherently.

Before she could put her trembling legs to the test, he had reached out and scooped her up, carrying her through the sitting room as though she weighed less than a feather, then up the stairs and along the landing until he could nudge open the door to her bedroom with his foot.

‘Please, no lights,' Sara begged, when he made to turn on the overhead light.

‘I'll compromise,' he drawled by way of response, and promptly switched on the little lamp on the table by the side of the king-sized bed, so that the room was bathed in a very soft glow. ‘I want to see you, my darling. I want to see your face when I touch you and I want you to see me.'

He watched her cheeks turn pink and marvelled how a
woman who had obviously held her own in the demanding, cut-throat world of trading could be rendered as shy as a kitten when it came to her own sexuality.

He had laid her on the bed and he looked at her as she stared at him with fascination, her red hair dramatic against the pale cream bed linen.

Deliberately he removed his clothes, item by item. First his shirt, then his shoes, his socks and his trousers, never letting his eyes leave her face. Her breath was coming in short little gasps. Did she know how much of a turn-on it was for him to be watched the way she was watching him now? he wondered. What was going on in her head? She didn't want to be attracted to him, had fought against it tooth and nail, but she was. So how valuable was his conquest? One part of her was his, but he was slowly discovering that capturing that one part was not going to be enough. It helped that she wasn't harbouring any nostalgic feelings about her ex, but he still wanted more than her physical capitulation.