Loves moves in mysterious ways

Chapter 4

Although it was impossible to refuse to answer James's questions with her father smiling benignly at them,she kept her answer as curt and clipped as possible,

and after several attempts at conversion with her, all of which she blocked,

she saw his mouth compresse into hard line and a steely glint darken his eyes.

The phone rang in the hall, and her father got up to answer the call.

While he was gone James took advantage of his absence to say curtly,.What's wrong Kirstin?

That he should actually need to ask her robbed her of the breath with which to answer him,and by the time she had recovered her wits,

her father was back in the kitchen.

For the rest of the meal James dericted his conversation almost exclusively towards her father.

Nine years ago she would felt hurt and left out and would have made a childish attempt to break into their discussions, but now she was glad to be left alone.

After dinner,

her father's suggestion that he and James play a game of playing cards left Kirstin free to clear up the kitchen and then go upstairs to check on her mother.

You needn't sit up her with me sweetie Grace Smith told her. I'm perfectly alright. Infact,.

I was just thinking I'd like to go to sleep.Why don't you go back downstairs and join you r father and James?

They playing cards.Her mother laugh.

Oh dear, I remember how you always used to resent that.James tried to teach you to play several times, didn't he?

Memories she didn't want to acknowledge surged over her,an image of her petulant seventeen years old face putting protestingly as she tried to divert James's attention from his game to herself.

That had been in the days before she had realised the true nature of the strange restlessness that seemed to possess her.You were always far too restless to concentrate, her mother added fondly.

I remember one Saturday afternoon you picked up the board and threw all the pieces on the floor.

They year I took my O levels James threatened to wallop me for it.

Yes I remember.

Her mother laughed, and Kirstin wondered if also remembered how miserable afternoon had ended.She certainly did.

For weeks she had been trouble by a vague but persistent feeling of restlessness, she wanted to be with James, but when she was, she wasn't satisfied with their old comfortable friendship.

Too young and inexperienced to be able to analyse her own feelings. she had taken refuge infits of sulks alternated with bursts of temper.

James's treat to put her over his knee and administer the punishment he thought she deserved had acted like a shock of cold water on her bedroom,

in floods of tears.

The next day he had been waiting for her when she came out of school.

He had driven her halfway home and had then stopped the car on a secluded piece of road.

I'm sorry about last night, infact he had said softly.I forget sometimes that you are not a little girl anymore. ""

She had burst into tears again."

But this time there had nowhere to run and she had sobbed out her misery and confusion against the hard warmth of his shoulder,

even in her anguish conscious of the pleasure of his body close to her own and his arms wrapped round her.

He had kissed her briefly on the forehead as he realised her,offering his handkerchief so that she could dry her eyes.

That had been the day she knew she had fallen in love with him.

Come back Kirstin...."""

Her mother's teasing voice jolted her back to the present and reality and although she listened to her chatter as she smoothed her pillows and checked that she had everything she needed,

Kirstin was wondering what her mother would say if she told her that now she could play cards good.

Carol had thought her.Carol,whose patience made her an admirable teacher,"

Carol whose patience allowed her to turn a blind eye to a husband to whom a continuous string of brief sexaul affairs seemed to be as necessary as the air he breathed.

And yet without Carol,

John would be very unhappy.She was his wife, and in his way he loved her.

He also loved their children.Sighing faintly,Kirstin walked towards the door.

Adult relationships were very complex things.As a teenager she had day dreamed about the perfect life she would have with James if he loved her,"

she had imagined that love alone was enough that nothing else mattered,

but different people had different needs.

She herself was too old fashioned in her moral outlook to involve herself in an affair with a married man,specially a married man whose wife she knew and liked.

No matter how awkward and unsettling it was discovering that James had come back to home,

she knew that she had made the right decision in refusing to accompany John to Hollywood.

Already, the effect of his sexaul magnetism was beginning to fade now that he was no longer there to generate it.

Maybe even the desire she had felt clawing so sharply within her really been the desire of an inexperienced woman for experience rather than a particular desire for John himself.

Ever since the humiliation of her rejection by James,

Kirstin had kept the sexaul of her nature family under control.

She was not and never had been the sort of woman to whom s*x could be sufficient in itself,

but there were times, increasingly so these days,when she saw lovers embracing, couples together, when she was pierced by n intense need, coupled with sadness for all that she had lost in not having a lover of her own.

And that was James's,fault his strictures,his contempt had made it impossible for her to be open and honest in her dealing with her s*×;""

she was quite frankly terrified of misinterpreting a man feeling's and suffering once again the savage rejection which still haunted her.

She went downstairs and started to make a tray of coffee for her father and James.

It was gone nine o'clock and as James no doubt remembered her parents preferred early nights.

When she took the tray in it was obvious that James that was winning the game.

He's got me completely tied up, her father commented with a moch grimace as she handed him his coffee.Mhnnnmm,.

She studied the cards knowledgeably.

Another one move and you won't be able....""":

Her father's eyebrows rose, but he looked pleased.Well,well you've been in Germany!

Turning to James, he asked teasingly,.

Do you remember how often you tried to teach her? There are teachers and teachers,

Kirstin responded acidly, watching the way James frowned as he look up at her.

The humour she had seen warning his eyes earlier was gone now,and they were a hard, flat grey.

And pupils and pupils, '

he taunted back, while her father looked from one set face to the another as though suddenly conscious of the fast-flowing undercurrents racing between them.

Kirstin was glad that the phone rang,

cutting through the thick silence.Her father went to answer it,and she started to follow him until James's smooth voice stopped her.

You've changed,Kirstin.

And I don't suppose for one moment that cards is the only thing you've been thought.!

She swung round her eyes glittering with the temper he had he had always been so easily able arouse inside her,but before she could say anything her father come back into the room,

Frowning slightly. The call for you Kirstin.Its John.My ex-employer.

I suppose he's lost an all-important piece of filing.She was flushing and that moreover,

James was aware of it.

but John,ringing her when she had thought she had made it quite clear to him that there was no point in him pursuing her had caught her off-guard.

She hurried to the phone, curling the flex round her gingers in nervous agitation as she spoke the receiver.

Kirstin,my Darling,

you can't know how much I've missing you hearing your voice.

I messed you Kirstin,Come back.""

She gritted her teeth together.

She had always known that John was persistent when there was something that he wanted, but she thought she had made it clear there could be nothing between them.

I can't come back,

John, she responded cooly.My mother is ill and she needs me""".I need you God,

how i need you!Come back Kirstin....

Her body had started tremble.

This was too much to cope with coming on top of her clash with James.

I can't John,.She took a deep breath. and I wouldn't even if I could.

I've already told you that.You are a married man. You know how much I like Carol.

Oh for God's sake! she heard him swear sharply,.listen Kirstin...""

Suddenly she panicked. No ....no .....no.nono...I don't want to hear any more.

She held the receiver away from her,but before she could slam it down she heard him saying furiously I'm not letting you go that easily as that.

I want you....and I can make you want me....""

Even with the receiver held away from her the words were paintly audible.

She slammed it down, literally shaking with reaction.

And that's your boo,is it?

The shock of James's hard voice coming from behind her made her whirl round to stare at him.

Correctly reading her expression,

he added evenly,I just came in to say goodnight, on your father's instructions.

I didn't mean to eavesdrop.Do you love him, Kirstin... is that why you've come running home?

He is a committed man.

She cried out the words desperately, hating him for seeing her like this when she was so weak and vulnerable.

I see..."""Surely that wasn't compassion she could see in his eyes.She shook her head disbelieving and heard him say, 'If there anything I can do and help......""

Nine years ago she had needed his help, but he had rejected her,

and suddenly she wanted to throw that in his face, and to tell him that it was his fault she was the person she was now:"

that it was his fault that she was a twenty-five years old virgin with ridiculously unrealistic ideals love and marriage, but common sense told her that the blame wasn't all his, so instead she stormed past him,saying bitterly, Stop trying to big brother me,James;.

I don't need your help, either as a Doctor or as a man. '

His face closed up immediately, and she was conscious of an unfamiliar hardness about it,

an expression that warned her that he would be a dangerous man to push too hard.

I'll say goodnight, then.

He pause in the act of stepping past her to the front door and said quietly," just to tell you onething.

Was he.... he gestured to the phone, the one who thought you to play cards games?

Briefly she frowned. No....no...no......he wasn't..."""

What an odd thing to ask her.She was just about to ask him the reason for his question, but he opened the door and stepped through it before she could do so.

James gone,then?

Her father asked, coming in to the hall a moment later. He's a nice clever man.Clever, too.

Kirstin eyebrows rose as she went in to his study to collect the coffee cups.

If he is so clever then what's he doing coming to work here as a mere general practitioner?

I thought he would have been better off staying in LA?

Financially, maybe, her father agreed, his expression slightly reproving.

But the savage men have been general practitioners here for a generations, and James has a tremendous sense of duty.

He always did have;

don't you remember how protective he always used to be you? We never needed to worry about you when you were in James's care.

I would have thought he had more ambition than to want to spend all his life in Bayern.

They..Oh he's got ambition alright. He was telling me tonight about his hopes and plans.

He wants to try to raise enough money locally to buy and equip a local surgery that's capable of carrying out most of more common operations.

He's seen it done in Los Angeles and is convinced it can be copied here,and I think he'll do it, too.

There is going to quite a lot of work involved in raising the initial finance,

of course, but I've promised to give him what help I can" oh I told him that you'd probably be prepared to take on secretarial or partner side of things for him.

Its a very worthwhile cause,and I'm sure he'll be able to get a lot of local support.

After all,it's going on for forty miles to the nearest hospital, and the sort of clinic c*m operating theatre James plans for Bavaria,could only benefit everyone.

Her father's enthusiasm for James's plans make it impossible for Kirstin to tell him that there was no way she was going to be involved in anything that brought her into closer contact with James.

She tried to comfort herself with the conviction that she was very last person James would want to assist him,

but she couldn't help remembering that since his unexpected return he had behaved as though that final annihilating scene between them had simply never taken place.

Maybe he could do that,she remembered her humiliation.

Thoroughly infuriated and exasperated by her father's lack of intuition in realising that she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with James,

she carried the coffee tray into the kitchen.Four days passed without Kirstin seeing anything of James.