Loves moves in mysterious ways

Chapter 8

Don't move from there, I'm going to go and ring your father and explain what's happened.

Then I'll come back and check you over. Before he left, he knelt down and applied a lighted match to the fire set in the grate.

Kirstin watched the flames spread and leap through the sticks and coal like someone drugged as she waited for him to come back.

She was still suffering from shock, she told herself unwilling to admit that most of her shock was caused not by the accident,

but the proximity of James, and the realisation of that proximity was doing to her.

He come back within a minutes ,his face still grimm...

I've told your father that I don't think there's anything to worry about.

But for your mother's sake we both think it best that you stay here this evening.

He is going to tell your mother that I invested you to come back her for dinner and that you accepted.If you go back looking the way you do now,

you're likely cause her to have a relapse.He crouched down in front of her,

expertly sliding the zips down on her boots and tugging them off before she could even think of a protest.

The heat of his plam as he held the arch of her foot, his long fingers curling round her ankle, made her heart thud at twice its normal rate."

You'll have to take these off. I'm afraid he told he,Standing up and gesturing to her demin skinny jeans.Her face froze,

and she knew suddenly and intensely that there was no way she could do what he asked,

It was all very well to tell herself that he was a doctor,but he was also James.

She knew that she was being silly; after all,he had seen her growing up,

a skinny, flat-chested looking good child, but she wasn't that child anymore,and for some reason she didn't want him looking at her body with that the same clinical detachment with which he had studied it before.

I'm perfectly all right. To prove it she swung her legs to the floor and stood up, taking a few tentative steps,before she started to shiver and had to subside back on to the black sofa.

Far from being relieved, James's mouth had compressed into a savagely inimical line. What is it Kirstin?He demanded harshly.

Surely you aren't frightened of my taking advantage the situation?

The explicit way he let his glance linger on her body left her in no doubt as to what he meant.

Even though she tried to suppress it,there was nothing she could do to control the hot surge of colour sweeping up under her skin.

Don't be so ridiculous.Her voice sounded unfamiliar and thick, almost as though it was choked with tears, She turned her head away from him and added huskily,

I know quite well that you're the last person who'd ever want me ,James.

She couldn't look at him, but even without doing so she was intensely conscious of the stunned quality of his stillness. In the end she had to look at him,her eyes meeting the brilliant, disbelieving glitter of his shocked astonishment.

Is that what you honestly think?

He dropped down on to his heels and slid his hand into her hair so that she couldn't turn away from him.His voice sounded oddly rusty.Is it Kirstin?

She wanted to turn away from him,but there was no way she could.

Instinctively she moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, and then froze when she saw the way his eyes darkened and followed the movement.

You've been pushing me away ever since you came home. I thought it was because he broke off and shook his head. The firelight dance of the exposed nape of his neck and she had an aching desire to reach out and stroke it.

Kirstin what's gone wrong between us? What?.......

She couldn't let herself listen to the huskily seduction of his voice.

He had hurt her once, and so badly that she had never really recovered.

She had to remember that. She twisted beneath his hand and instantly he realised her,

his frown deepening.

I don't know what game you think you're playing with me, James,she told him. You humiliated me once, she burst out bitterly. I'm not going to let that happen again. It's all very well for you to act as though it never happened...."" as though you never virtually called me a little tramp "" Her colour was high now her eyes glittering with unshed tears,

her mind sliding back to the past, and her body shaking with pain. Her voice broke, and beacuse she knew she wasn't far from tears,she curled her hands into tight fists, willing herself not to give way,

her face turned into the darkness of the sofa and away from James's probing scrutiny.

She heard him get up, and left him standing in front of the fire, blocking off its warmth.

He moved,almost restlessly, and then she heard him say, I'd no idea you felt like this.

God sake in heaven you can't be holding that against me,Kirstin!

What was I supposed to do? She felt him coming towards her and cringed back, but he didn't touch her ,his voice roughening and coming from somewhere above. You were a child!

His voice was almost tortured now.

She struggled to sit up and face him, as he stood looking down at her.

I was eighteen,she told him bitterly. Like I said, just a child.

She couldn't avoid the tight lipped look he gave her as he suddenly swore savagely and volubly something she had never before heard him do.

A very provocative child, maybe, he added tersely, but a child none the less. "

She was the one who should have been bitterly angry, not him.

She couldn't understand that anger,and something of her lack of understanding must have shown in her face, for suddenly he grasped her shoulders and pulled her around into the firelight. You may be nine years older,

Kirstin, but that doesn't seem to have made you any more mature.

You've held on to your bitterness and resentment like a child instead of trying to see my point of view.What the hell" I was supposed to do?

What would you think of me right now,if I'd taken you up on your offer?

It was something she had never thought of,and her eyes widened as he forced her t face up to the reality of what had happened between them.

Now as a woman of twenty-six herself, what would she think of a man of her own age who made love to an ignorant, adoring adolescent?

She shuddered as the realisation of what he had saved her from shot through her,

falling back against the back of the sofa like a jointless doll as he abruptly released her.

You never even tried to see if from my point of view, did you? He was pacing the floor now,

his face in the windows. My Goodness, to think you've carried this resentment against me around with you all these years! I know I hurt and upset you,Kirstin, but I had to.... can't you see that? I was so dammed and scared for you.

You were such an innocent. Hell ,you hadn't the faintest idea.

He broke off and swore again.

I'm not in the right frame of mind to go into the right now.

I'd no idea you felt like this.

He shook his head heavily like a man coming out of deep water for much needed air.

Why did he keep on stressing that? It couldn't possibly matter to him what she thought.Kirstin didn't realise she had spoken out loud until he caught hold of her again hauling her to her feet in front of him.

Of course it damn well matters!

He was practically shouting at her .Do you believe for one moment that if you walked in here now and offered yourself to me like that I'd even think of turning you down?Shock crystallised inside her.

She searched his eyes and face for signs of mockery and saw only anguish and"" and desire. It was like being hit in the chest with an iron first.

James wanted her.She opened her mouth and closed it again and then heard him say in a thick, unfamiliar tone, through a haze of cotton wholly disbelief, "

Do that again,

and her mouth opened instinctively to absorb the heat of his as he pulled her against him and kissed her with a famished kind of hunger that was so erotic that she had no defences against it.

Against her mouth she heard him mutter,You can't know how much I've wasted to do this.

Even then,"" My God help me,".I want you so badly' Kristin, I want to take you to bed with me and make love to you, I like you so much so so badly.

It was his voice that brought her back to reality, making her pull away from him in panicky tense.

What it is?

She push away him away, tense and shaking her head, and as she did so,She saw him frown and look at her leather jacket.

I see, You're thinking of him. Is that it?

His mouth hardened and she saw the bitterness in his eyes.You'll you have to forgive me.I forgot that you are committed'"" elsewhere or Someone .'

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for her to tell him how wrong he was ,but some last shred of sanity luckily prevented her.

He wanted her,he had said and God alone knew she had wanted him.

The moment his mouth touched hers she had known how much she ached and yearned for him" nine years of telling herself she had changed meant nothing.

She had known the moment she felt his mouth against her own that she still loved him, but this time it was a woman's love,not a young girl.

Half of her couldn't believe it didn't want to believe it,but it was true none the less.

She had to fight to keep back the hysterical laughter building up inside her.

I'd better take you home now.

She didn't protest, simply allowing him to lead her to the front of the door,her mouth still tingling from the pressure of his hunger kiss.

Her body ached in a way that was far more intense than any mild desire that John had ever arouse in her.

How crazy fate could be.

Almost she could laugh the ridiculous folly of James thinking that John was her lover, but just as long as he continued to think that, she was safe.

If he ever discovered that no man had ever touched her,that he could arouse, then she was lost.

Lost beacuse he would take her simply out of his own need and desire for her,and that was something she didn't think she could bear.

Once,she had thought no further than the dazzling pleasure of having him make love to her, but then she had been a child convinced that somehow once he had made love to her,he must love her.

Now she was adult and knew better. James had said nothing about loving her,

and she didn't think she could endure giving herself to him knowing that while he was her whole life,she was nothing more to him that a woman whom he wanted.

He drove her home in silence,

parking his car close enough to the door for her to get out and dash up to it,before he could join her.

No don't come in with me,"she told him fiercely as she unlocked the door,

and to her relief he stepped back towards his car, leaving her to face her father's surprise at her early return on her own home.

Kirstin was profoundly thankful yo have the excuse of her mishap with the car to explain away her pallor and tension when went upstairs to face her mother.

The shock, not only of the discovery of her love for James, but also of the anger he had exhibited when she had brought up the subject of their nine years old mis-undertanding were not things she could easily put out of her mind.

Realising that her daughter was both upset and on edge, Grace Smith wisely refrained from questioning her at length, suggesting instead that she have and early night.

Your are the one who's supposed to be the in valid not me, Kirstin protested with a smile.

I don't know. Your father said that James sounded most concerned when he rang up.

I must admit I expected you to come in a far more battered and bruised state than you have.

Her bruised were there all right, but they were all inside,Kirstin, reflected ruefully.

Why didn't James come in with you?He knows that he's always welcome,'

Frau Samantha's had invited him round for dinner.

An invitation which he had originally refused.

At her Auntie's behest no doubt.

James is very attractive man,' She paused almost as though expecting Kirstin to deny it,but she wasn't that good a liar.

She got up off the bed, trembling slightly as he remembered the passionate with which James had kissed her.

If Jessa had been the one in his arms, she doubted that the other woman would have run away from him like a frightened child.

What was the matter her? she asked herself crossly as she prepared for bed.