Moth to the Flame (14 page)

Gareth smiled. ‘Nothing earth-shattering. I was just thinking how out of place I am in this modern world of ours,' he mused.

Davina's eyes narrowed. ‘Are you? You seem to have it pretty much licked, as far as I can see. A cushy job. Respect,' she forced herself to choke the word out. ‘Your choice of women. What more does a modern man want?'

Gareth frowned, surprised by her sudden venom.

‘You sound as if you hate me,' he said quietly. He indicated left, leaving the dual carriageway, and heading towards the picturesque Cotswold village of Duns Tew.

‘I do,' Davina said simply.

Gareth caught his breath.

She was wonderful.

‘Good,' he said softly. ‘Just as long as you're never indifferent.'

Davina fought back the urge to launch herself at him. Whether in attack, or to rip the clothes off him and ravish him, she wasn't quite sure. Any other man in the world would have been appalled by what she'd said. Would have been tongue-tied, or angry, or shell-
shocked.
But not this one.

‘And I think I'm hating you more and more with every minute that passes,' she whispered.

Gareth, pulling up into a small, narrow lane, reached out and took her hand. He braked the car to a halt, switched off the engine, then turned in the seat, and looked into her stormy cat-like eyes. ‘Kiss me,' he commanded. And she did. Hard. Grinding her lips against his, forcing his head back against the leather headrest, their tongues duelling. Gareth felt his body leap as she clambered across the gear stick, her knees on either side of him, pressing herself hard against him. He felt himself grow hard against her. She reached down for his zip, freeing him, dragging her own dress, a long, loose confection of tiny poppies against a cornflower blue sky, high up over her thighs. He groaned.

A car passed them, the driver giving them an astonished double-take.

Davina slowly lifted her lips. Her lipstick was smudged, and she impatiently wiped her mouth clean on the back of her hand. Her hand curled around him. He felt so vulnerable in her hand. And yet so full of promising male power.

She felt his hips lift beneath her, but the car's bucket seat was too small and low-slung to allow him much room for manoeuvre. She watched his eyes drift closed, heard a low, rumbling moan roll past his lips. She removed
her
hand and leaned back. His eyes snapped open. She glanced around them, and smiled as a postman's van overtook them. Then she looked back at Gareth and shrugged graphically.

‘We'll be seen,' she said regretfully.

‘You don't care a damn if we're seen or not,' he shot back, his voice husky and dark.

‘True.'

‘You're just doing this to torture me,' he persisted.

Davina smiled. ‘I know,' she leaned forward, her eyes only inches from his. ‘Do you want me to stop?'

‘No,' Gareth said softly. He swallowed hard. ‘No. Never stop.'

Davina felt a sexual punch of desire hit her solidly in the very heat of her femininity. ‘You're determined to be my soul mate, huh?' she whispered, eyes glittering.

‘I am your soul mate.'

‘What? The oh-so-respected, well-established, Oxford don?'

Gareth leaned back in the seat, his body slowly, reluctantly, letting the clamour for release drain out of him as he realised she was not going to make love to him. He smiled gently. Whimsically. ‘You don't like St Bede's?' he asked softly.

Davina laughed. ‘Oh, it's all right. For what it is. But I wouldn't want to live there for ever.'

‘No. Neither would I,' he said. And took her
utterly
by surprise, both with his strength of body, and strength of mind, when he shifted her up off his lap in a one-armed lift, and thrust her to one side. He got out, opening his door and then walking around to her side, gallantly opening her own door for her. Bemused, Davina slid out. ‘Which is why,' Gareth continued, turning around and holding out a hand towards the building opposite them, ‘I've bought this place.'

Davina looked long and hard into his face for one endless moment, then turned and looked at the cottage in question.

It was on the very edge of the village. A simple, classic, thatched Cotswold cottage, made of pale Cotswold stone, gleaming like clotted cream in the spring sunshine. The thatch had been renewed last year, she could see, and was the indeterminate colour of straw weathered to a tan brown. The windows were low, ancient, and newly-painted white. The door was set straight as an arrow in the very centre of the building. A chimney stood at one end. Surrounded by a dry stone wall, the garden was already frothing with spring colour—from early wallflowers, to blue and pink hyacinths.

‘How very . . . pretty,' she said. And it was. They walked across the road to the gate, which opened with a teeth-tingling squeak.

He moved in front of her, extracting a set of keys from his pocket and opened the door, his
eyes
slightly mocking as he ushered her inside. The door opened straight into the living room itself. Genuine low oak beams ran the length the ceiling. The ancient walls bulged, and were painted an off-white. A stone fireplace dominated one wall.

‘I do hope you weren't thinking of polka-dot curtains and floral chair covers,' Davina muttered drolly over one shoulder, as he marched inside and looked around.

‘No. I thought I'd leave the decorating to you.'

The words echoed in the cool empty interior, bouncing off the walls and ricocheting back to her, making her eyes widen.

She turned, slowly, and looked at him. Gareth closed the door behind him, the old-fashioned black-painted latch falling and enclosing them in a cool private silence.

‘Me? Why should I decorate the place?'

Gareth continued to look at her. His eyes were as fathomless as the ocean, and as powerful. ‘Don't you want to?' he challenged her softly.

Davina turned away quickly, before he could decipher the look on her face. She turned, looking around the empty room. Being black and white it cried out for loud, bold, splashes of colour. Ruby red velvet curtains, perhaps, or scarlet silk? A leather couch in front of the fireplace. A bold, multi-coloured Arabic rug on the floor. And around the lights
.
. . stained glass? She knew a woman who made exquisite stained glass lampshades. She moved towards the empty fireplace, imagining a log fire flickering away.

‘Are you asking me to move in with you?' she asked loftily, looking at the soot-darkened stones.

‘Yes.'

‘You know I'm not the home-making type.'

‘A real home doesn't need to be made,' Gareth mused. ‘It just is.'

Davina laughed. ‘You should write greeting card verses,' she said, deliberately cruel. She turned then, to see what effect she'd had on him. And instantly saw that it was none at all. He was still leaning against that door, still looking wonderful, still watching her with that patient, considering, gentle understanding. Damn him!

She turned back to the fireplace, tossing her find blonde head, wondering what the hell she thought she was doing.

Wasn't this everything she could hope for?

She had part two of her plan well under way. As soon as he'd finished setting those exam papers, all she had to do was make a photocopy. Pay off Gavin Brock. And then sit back and watch Gareth's world fall apart. And now, right here, he was offering her another way to break his heart. He was asking her to share this place with him. His dream cottage. His life. What better way to teach him what
real
pain betrayal could cause? So why was she hesitating? Why wasn't she reassuring him that of course she would decorate this beautiful place for him. Of course she would come live with him, and be his love . . .

‘It can be on any terms that you want,' Gareth said quietly, watching her shoulders tense, as if he'd just issued a threat, rather than a freedom. ‘If you want to go back to London and only come here for the odd weekend, that's all right. Or stay away for longer, and come for a few weeks at a time. Or just come in between jaunts to wherever in the world you want to visit,' he murmured, ‘I don't mind. So long as you come home to me.'

He'd read the poems she'd written whilst she'd been in Borneo, living in a beach hut. Poems written in the Australian Outback. Poems written when she'd been in Hollywood, living with Jax Coulson. He understood that inspiration meant everything . . .

‘That's very obliging of you,' Davina said drolly, trying to put some venom into her voice and failing miserably. ‘Like being a doormat, do you?'

Gareth sighed deeply. ‘It's not going to work, Davina, I told you that,' he said quietly. ‘You only have the power to treat me like a doormat if I choose to give you that power. And I don't.'

She turned on him then, her cat-green eyes blazing. ‘Oh, but in the meantime I have your
permission
to come and go from this place, just how I like?'

‘Yes.'

‘Living just as I please?' her chin lifted challengingly.

‘Yes.'

‘And what if I decide to take a new lover as well?'

Gareth's eyes flickered. He felt the room around him recede, then rush back. Felt pain. Anger. Fear. And then, suddenly, as clear as a flash from a precious gem, he understood a truth that had his heart melting.

‘You don't do infidelity, Davina,' he reminded her quietly.

Davina felt her eyes widen. How . . . She turned back to the fireplace. ‘You know me pretty well, don't you?' she said bitterly.

Gareth moved from the door at last, walking across the empty floor, his footsteps echoing eerily off the walls. She tensed, then relaxed, as his arms slipped around her. His hands folded across her waist, pulling her back, nestling the curve of her spine against the line of his chest and stomach.

They fitted like a pair of spoons.

‘Yes, I do,' he said softly. ‘That scares you, doesn't it?'

Davina smiled ruefully. It did, somewhat! ‘You're a strange man, Gareth Lacey,' she said at last. ‘Tell me about that student who died.' She blinked, wondering where those words
had
come from. She hadn't even been thinking about David. And yet . . . Yes. She had to know. Now, before she could say Yes or No to moving into this cottage with him. She had to have his version of the death of her brother.

Gareth stiffened, and almost instantly pushed her away. She sensed at once the upheaval inside him, and turned to watch him walk to one of the windows and stare out across the rolling Oxfordshire countryside. ‘What do you want to know?' he asked bleakly.

‘Why did he die?'

‘He killed himself.'

Davina clenched her hands into fists, and forced them open again. He sounded so . . . blank. As if the words he was saying meant nothing. ‘Why?'

‘I caught him cheating on his Prelims.'

Davina knew that at the end of their first year, students in some subjects had Preliminary Examinations. She knew why Sin-Jun had been forced to send David down. She wanted more from him than just the facts. What did facts matter?

‘How can you be so sure that he cheated?' she demanded angrily, knowing that David would never cheat in his life.

Gareth turned to look at her, the grey eyes genuinely puzzled. ‘Why do you want to talk about all this, Davina?' he asked, his voice dangerously soft, and she felt a warning shaft of alarm flicker through her. Damn, she
should
have known not to push him too hard. She'd always known she would have to keep a tight rein on her feelings.

If he began to suspect . . . She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know all about Jax Coulson, who has to be the biggest disaster in my life. I just wanted to know about your worst secret too.'

Gareth shook his head. ‘What do I know about Jax Coulson? You were together when he was a struggling actor, you split up when he made it big. He gave a rather lurid interview about you that made you sound like a human version of a black widow spider, and you kept quiet.' He shrugged.

Davina laughed. ‘Jax was . . . a man with a dream, when I met him,' she began to explain.

‘You loved him?' he asked curiously.

‘Not like I love you.'

Davina would have taken the words back the moment they left her mouth, came out of her subconscious, but it was too late.

Gareth couldn't say a word. Couldn't think of a word that would fit. He just . . . lived the most wonderful moment of his life.

‘When he made it big, the fame just . . . went straight to his head. So I ended it.'

‘He was angry? That was why he dumped on you so publicly?'

Davina shook her head, laughing softly. ‘Hell no. It was his publicist who put him up to that interview and gave him the famous quote. I didn't mind. I am wild.'

‘I
love you.'

She stared into the fireplace. ‘I know.'

‘Davina?' he said softly.

‘What?'

‘Why don't you think we stand a chance?'

The quick gasp she gave was easily audible in the fraught quietness of the empty room. So, he'd picked up on that had he? Why was she so surprised? She turned around slowly. Looked at him. And wanted to tell him the truth. We're doomed, my darling, because you killed my brother.

It was as if they were living in some hideous scene from Romeo and Juliet! She wanted to laugh, and cry. But she did neither. ‘Perhaps I just don't trust you enough yet.'

Gareth nodded. ‘Time will cure that,' he said confidently. And it would. She would come to learn that being loved didn't have to mean being controlled. Being caged.

Time. Davina laughed. Time would only show him that you couldn't destroy people and get away with it. That's all that time would show her soul mate, Gareth Lacey.

She laughed again, a bleak, harsh, bark of laughter, but Gareth wouldn't have traded it for a gentler kind, from a gentler woman.