Loves moves in mysterious ways

Chapter 11

With John's vivid imagination.

Oh Christ,yes Well,maybe I'll save that for next time.After junior has safely arrived. After all, we can't give,John too many shocks all at once!

They both laughed,and Kirstin was pleased to see how much more happy Carol looked.

Both of them were surprised when John came home early, but Kirstin tactfully took herself off to bed,

claiming that the unaccustomed pace of Germany life had exhausted her.Well there you are,safety delivered and on time.'

With cheerful disregard for the fact he was occupying a space reserved for taxis, John slid his red Lamborghini into the kerb.Ahead of them taxi was disgorging its passenger, and Kirstin felt her stomach jerk as though she had suddenly ascended nine floors in a high speed lift,

as she recognised James's dark head head and lean body emerging from its interior.

As though by some alchemy that was beyond rational analysis, he turned his head and looked straight at her.

She had no need to possess any mind-reading gift to interpret the hard contempt in his eyes as he glace raked from her to John.

While she was staring back at him in hypnotised agony John leaned across her, oblivious to what was happening and kissed her full on her mouth.

It wasn't a lover's kiss,

Carol the exuberant embrace of a man who enjoyed kissing women and who knew without conceit that they enjoyed it too,and Kirstin detached herself from it with ease, but when she looked towards the taxi,

James had gone.

Of course John insisted on going with her to the barrier, carrying the box with her dress in it,and kissing her again.This time on the cheek.

Have a safe journey back.

You'll have to fly out and see us when we're in the Hollywood.

As he hurried on the train Kirstin searched the first class compartments hoping to avoid any sign of James.And where was Jessa?

By what malignant turn of fate had she chosen to come down to Germany at exactly at the same time as they did?Her face burned suddenly as she thought of the construction James might have put on her appearance,

but then she relaxed as she remembered that he had also seen her with John,

and there had been no doubt from his expression what interpretation he had put on that.

No,he could hardly think she was following him after witnessing that kiss,thank oh,

dammed!

She settled herself comfortably in her seat, wishing she had forethought to get some magazines,

but John had bustled her on to the train without giving her the chance to buy any.

She turned her face towards the window as the train started to move.

She hoped that things would work out for Carol and John. She liked them both, but she had a special fondness and sympathy for Carol.

Lost in the thought,she was aware of someone subsiding in to the seat next to hers.

Out of the conner of her eyes she caught the brief glimpse of sun-tanned lean wrist and immaculate shirt cuff, and her stomach muscles suddenly clenched protestingly in immediate recognition.

James!His name had left her lips before she could suppress it,and as she turned towards him,

her suspicious confirmed, she saw the contemptuous way his mouth curled as he acknowledged her husky whisper.

Dreaming about your lover, we're you?

He didn't wait for her to confirm or deny his allegation. Odd isn't it,

how easily we human beings deceive ourselves?

There was a time when I would have said you were the last person to involve your self in a relationship with someone who was committed to someone else.

His open contempt hurt and made her want to last out at him to ease her pain.

People change, James, she told him.So I'm beginning to realise.He looked up and saw the box containing her dress on the parcel shelf above them.

A cynical glitter darkened his eyes,and he reached up and touched the box with his fingertips,

asking her dulcetly,What's this,Kirstin? Payment for services rendered, like the fur jacket?

She ached to hit out at him,

conscious of the way her face was burning with a mixture of rage and pain.

She stood up trembling with the force of her emotions,reaching for the box,and at the same time trying to scramble past him as she said fiercely, I don't need paying to spend time with the man I love or l like.

She couldn't get the past him,

His long legs were thrust out in front of him, and she couldn't seem to move without coming into physical contact with him.

Her voice thick with frustration,

she demanded huskily, James please let me out.Why?

She turned and stared at him.There was a deceptively calm amusement in his eyes.

She sucked in air,her muscles tensing.He was enjoying baiting her like this, and he had no intention of letting her go.

Sit down, Kirstin,he told her softly.

You are creating scene.

She looked around and saw that he was right other travellers were begging to stare at them.

I've got my car at RarePalace,

and my first appointment when I get home is to see your mother.

She'll think I odd when she learns that we've travelled home on the same train without seeing one another.

Kirstin knew that he was right, but there was no way she wanted to spend the journey fending off his acid comments. Where is Jessa?

she asked him curtly, subsiding on in Germany with her mother for a few days.

The look on his face prompted her into irrational for his cruel remarks to her.

I'm surprised she allowed you to return without her,she taunted, but instead of getting angry,

he merely laughed,his eyes glittering with the a strange intensity as he turned to her and whispered mockingly,

Why,

Kirstin, everyone would think you were jealous.He might have forced to remain setting with him,

but she didn't have to talk to him,Kirstin told herself.

Compressing her mouth, she turned away from him and stared out of the window.

Already she could feel the tension invading her body. Her throat was dry and she ached for something to drink.

Quite how she managed to fall asleep she didn't know, but somehow she must have done, and it was the sound of James's voice in her ear,

and the pressure and heat of her torso pressed against hers ashe leaned across to shake her the finally made her wake up.

Totally disorientated,she stared mutely up at him, noticing for the first time that his eyes weren't a flat hard grey after all,and that there was a band of darker almost brown-blue colour.

Fascinated, she stared at it,

until th sound his voice brought her back to the reality, and she became intensely aware of the heat emanating from his body, and the rebellious response of her own his proximity.

Beneath her leather jacket she could feel the prickling awareness swelling her breasts.

Nervously her glanced dropped from his,unintentionally lingering on the sculptured hardness of his mouth.

She felt herself to start tremble.

What would it be like to trace that hard outline with her fingertips,to feel his mouth on hers?

Sick with need and fear,

she tensed back from him.Was it her imagination ,or was there something dangerous about the thick, tense silence that seemed to engulf them?

She couldn't bring herself to look into James's eyes and read for herself that he was aware of her self betrayal.

I've brought you a cup black coffee and cheese sandwich.

The mundaneness of the words calmed her frantic imaginings, and she forced a polite smile to her lips,that suddenly seemed stiff and unwilling to move as ordered by her mind.

What a Terrifying complex man James was turning out

to be.

How could he change so fast?Not an hour ago he had been berating and taunting her,

and yet here he was now talking to her as calmly and pleasantly as he had done in the days when she was still a young, and he was her adored superhero.

But beneath that pleasant,

almost lazily indulgent surface lurked dangers she as young hadn't known existed, and consequently,

although James seemed to have abandoned his earlier aggression and talked pleasantly to her about the years he had spent in LA,Kirstin was on her guard against him, her responses stilted and slightly unnatural.

Every time he tried to run the conversation in her direction she instinctively parried every question,

refusing to allow him to draw her into any intimate confidences.

And yet,even as she did so,she was painfully aware that in other circumstances she could too easily have allowed herself to drift back into their past relationship.

He still exercised a power and enchantment for her that she knew would never entirely disappear,

but then she suspected that few women would able to withstand James if he chose not to allow them to do so.

The train was drawing into RareCastle Station when she saw him frown, a derisory glitter darkening his eyes as he scrutinised her.

'It isn't going to work, is it,Kirstin?'

he taunted her with return to his earlier cynicism.

There's no way you and I can ever be good nice acquaintance, is there?

She felt as though her heart was being torn enough, 'Is there any reason why we would be?'

She saw his face darken.

He turned away from heras he mattered under his breath, "No.. no.. dammed reason at all.

And then he was lifting her dress carton down for her,and she had no alternative but to follow him out of the train and along the station to his parked car.

She told herself that she was glad of his silence as he drove them home, but in truth it was more nerve racking that she wanted to admit.

She couldn't her foolish heart imagining all manner of romantic scenarios,

in which instead of being to people enduring an enforced intimacy as though it were a penance they were what she had always dreamed they might be; two lovers inhabiting a silence that sprang from perfect communion with one another.

When he stopped outside her parents 'home, he spoke for the first time.

I'll come in and see your mum now..'

Of course her mother was delighted to see them both, expressing delight and pleasure when she heard they had travelled back from Germany both.

And did you manage to sort out John's problem? "she asked Kirstin while her father went downstairs to make them all some coffee.

Ja,we found the documents.'And Carol's well,is she?'

Mrs Smith had heard all about John's wife from Kirstin.

Yes.

Well,she's as well as can be expected.

She had been staring out of the window while James pulled his jacket,

and now she turned round to address her mother, her breath catching in her throat as she saw the way fine cotton clung to his body.

Beneath it she could see the clear out line of his trunk, and she stood,

breathless and aching with love for him as she watched the masculine play of muscles and felt the need run through her body in a white hot searing tide.

Kirstin.. kirstin...."

The plaintive note in her mother's voice brought her back to reality and her unfinished sentence.

Now her face was as hot as her body had been many times before.

Ahh..... Ja.... Carol's become again a baby."

She was aware a sharply indrawn breath,

and only realised it was James's when she glanced at him and saw the

dreadful condemnation bracketing his mouth.

Too late she realised the interpretation he would put on her remark, and sure enough, as he came over to the bed,he stopped at her side to mutter bitterly in her ear, 'And you still accept him as your lover, knowing that? What sort of a girl like you,Kirstin?

The sort who's foolish enough to go on loving you even though my love isn't wanted,she longed to cry out,but the years of self-control stopped released her.

Her father's arrival with the coffee broke into the unnatural silence.

James move to her mother's side.

Well, you seem to be making excellent progress', he pronounced as he stood up.

It's all this spoiling I'm getting,' Grace smile back at him.

Which brings me to a favour I'd like to ask you,James. '

Why on earth couldn't he smile at her like that...just once, Kirstin though bitterly,instead of always thinking the worst of her?

Later she decided that her absorption in James's smile had been the reason her intuition hadn't warned her what was coming,but by then it was too late.

I was wondering if you would drive Kirstin to and from the ball, "her mother was saying.

Albert doesn't want to go. He says it won't be any fun without me. "

She gazed fondly across at her husband. And after she looked apologetically at Kirstin,

well...welll,after her slight mishap with the car we would be worried about her driving, specially if the weather is not good."

For a moment Kirstin was to appalled to speak.And she couldn't at look James, and then,her tongue suddenly freed of its constriction, she rushed into nervous to says.

God knows,

Mommy,there's no need for that," she protested.

I can get a taxi," she added widely,only to receive a quelling look from James.

I'd be glad to escort Kirstin to the ball, "he told her mother.In fact,'he looked up and across at Kirstin,

holding her eyes and daring her to contradict him,as he said smoothly,'I was going to ask her to come with me anyway.

Liar, Kirstin though bitterly,

but there was no way she could say that to him with her parents looking fondly on at them as though.

She swallowed and gulped for air, her heart sinking as she saw quite plainly what her parents were thinking.