Love Me

Episode 12

No drink, thanks,’ she refused, giving him a thin smile as she added

deliberately, ‘I generally find that alcohol and business don’t mix.’

Giving a small shrug, David opened the dining-room door for her and waited for

her to precede him inside. As she did so, Kelly caught the clean, sharp scent of

his freshly showered body and the giddying thump of her vulnerable heart

became a frighteningly heavy ache.

‘I...I’ve brought the estimates down with me,’ she told him quickly, lifting the

papers she was holding in front of him, but David shook his head.

‘After dinner,’ he told her dismissively, adding, ‘I generally find that good

food and poor communication don’t mix.’

Poor communication. Kelly gave him a fulminating look before taking the

chair he had pulled out for her. The salmon was every bit as delicious as Kelly had imagined and so, too, was

the home-made summer pudding served with fresh cream that followed it. The

cheese they ate to finish the meal was made locally, David informed her, adding

that he had been wondering if he might not produce something similar himself,

but that he had decided the costs involved were prohibitive.

To have dinner alone with David like this would once have made her feel so

excited, so...so thrilled because she had been so besottedly in love with him. Of

course, she would hardly have been able to do justice to the meal because then

her fevered imagination would have been thrilling her with images of the two of

them together alone, after dinner, David taking her in his arms and...

‘I’ve asked Mrs Lee to serve coffee in the library...’

The crisp, businesslike tone of David’s voice cut across her treacherous

thoughts. Guiltily, Kelly pushed them away, reminding herself severely of just

why she was here.

‘Here is the separate estimate I asked for, for the work which needed doing here,

and here is the receipt I obtained for that work.’

Her facial muscles rigid, Kelly willed her hand not to tremble betrayingly as

she took the papers from David and then looked at them. She was furious with

herself for giving him the opportunity to put her in the wrong.

Her eyes strayed to the date at the top of the receipted invoice. She wasn’t

going to give in yet. Standing up, she handed the papers back to David and told

him dismissively, ‘What I can see is a signed and dated receipt, David.’

‘Showing that the invoice was settled several weeks ago...’

‘Purporting to show that it was settled several weeks ago,’ Kelly pointed out

stubbornly. ‘For all I know this date could have been written on the invoice last

week...or...’ She paused meaningfully before adding with a triumphant smile,

‘Or even today...’

She had started to walk away when David stopped her, grabbing hold of her arm

and swinging her round to face him as he exploded, ‘Are you really trying to

accuse me of falsifying this receipt? For God’s sake, Kelly, what the hell kind

of man do you think I am?’

Pointedly Kelly ignored his question and stared down at where he was still

holding onto her arm instead as she demanded icily, ‘Let go of me, David ‘Let go of you...? Do you realise what you’re saying, what you’re accusing

me of doing? You’re not a teenager any more, Kelly and if this is some kind of

petty attempt to—’

‘No, I’m not.’ Kelly interrupted him furiously. ‘I’m the Trust’s representative

here at city and as such it’s my job to protect the Trust’s interests and its

investments... If I think that someone, anyone, is trying to cheat the Trust or

misuse its funds, then it’s my job to—’

‘Your job...?’ David laughed savagely. ‘You sound very high-minded for

someone who’s slept her way into her “job.’

There was a second’s pause and then a white heat, a zigzag of pure fury and

frustrated womanly pride, hit Kelly like a bolt of lightning. Immediately she

reacted in the only way her outraged female instincts knew, lifting her hand and

slapping David’s face in furious rejection of his insult.

Kelly didn’t know which of them was the more shocked—she who had

delivered the blow or David who had received it. For a single beat of time they

both stood completely still, staring at one another. Kelly could feel her heart

racing, she could see the white, slowly reddening imprint of her hand against

David’s dark skin and she could see too the vengeful male fury darkening his eyes.

Too late to regret her behaviour, or to turn and run; David was still holding onto

her arm, and as she tried to pull away he dragged her towards him, his eyes

glittering with fevered rage.

Kelly knew, even before it happened, just what he was going to do. She was

already closing her eyes and whispering helplessly, ‘No,’ as she felt the hard,

bruising pressure of his mouth against her own.

To be kissed like this, in fury, in punishment, and with a blind, searing male

desire to dominate, was something totally outside all her experience. Her body

had no defences against it, no knowledge of how to deal with it. Panic and anger

surged through her body. She was no helpless virgin, she was a

modern woman, able to give as good as she got. Fiercely she returned the anger

of David’s furious kiss. He was already prising apart her closed lips with his

tongue, demanding entry to the intimacy of her mouth, not with the tender touch

of a lover but with the forceful pressure of a warrior, a victor. Wildly Kelly

tried to evade him, but he was holding onto her too strongly and all her attempts

to break free did was to bring her body into even closer contact with his. She still

fought to break free, pummelling his chest with her fists and then, when that did

no good and there was no longer any space between their bodies for her to do so,

angrily raking her nails down his back.

Somewhere, deep down, in the murkiest of waters of her subconscious Somewhere, deep down, in the murkiest of waters of her subconscious,

lay the knowledge that this wasn’t just about the insult he had given her, nor her

angry reaction to it; that this explosion of furious emotion this need to reach out

and hurt him, to damage and destroy what was left of the love she had once felt

for him, had its roots, its being, in something very, very different from mere

insulted female pride.

‘Little vixen,’ she heard David muttering thickly against her mouth as he caught

hold of her hand. ‘Your elderly lover might need the stimulus of having his back

scratched raw when you make love but I certainly don’t.’

Shocked into awareness of what she was doing by his words, Kelly went still.

Nichole might not be her lover, but that didn’t really matter; it was the impact of

what David had just said to her that hurt and wounded so badly, the fact that he

was comparing the anger and mutual hatred they were both expressing with an

act that, to Kelly, was one which should be highlighted and hallmarked with

tenderness and true emotional love. Suddenly all the anger drained out of her.

She felt sickened, not just by David’s words but more importantly by what she

herself had done. A vixen, David had called her, but when animals mated they did

so for a specific purpose; their coming together was never an act of cruelty or

cynical disregard for everything that sharing the intimacy of one’s body with

another should be.

Kelly could feel her eyes starting to fill with tears. David had pulled back from

her to look at her, and, taking advantage of his slackened grip, she pulled herself

free of him and started to walk quickly, if a little unsteadily, towards the library

door.

Startled, David called out to her, following her out into the hallway, watching as

she disappeared up the stairs. Should he go after her, apologise, explain...? That

look he had just seen in her eyes had shocked him. It was more the look of a hurt

child than a mature, experienced, worldly woman, and besides... There had been

no call for him to make that remark to her about Nichole. Her relationship with the

other man was, after all, her own affair, even if he... God... For a moment there

the feeling, the sharp dig of her nails into his skin through the fabric of his shirt,

had made him ache so badly for the feel of her naked body beneath his own, the

feel, the scent, the taste of her. And if he could have his time again... But what

was the point in thinking about, reliving old memories, old mistakes?

He had done what he had thought was best at the time, the honourable thing to

do. Kelly looked at the luminous face of her watch. Half past one in the

morning. She had been awake for the last hour, stubbornly courting sleep,

angrily refusing to allow her thoughts to take control, to force her to remember.

She was too hyped up for sleep, too afraid to sleep just in case she... She

what? Dreamed of David?

She looked across at the desk in front of the window. One of the small

pleasures of living in the depths of the country was that one did not need to close

the curtains at night. There was nothing Kelly liked more than being able to see

the night sky.

When her mother had first married Jack’s father and they had gone to live in

his ancestral home, she had been overwhelmed at first by the darkness of the

huge house. It had been David who had guessed her fears and apprehensions after

he had found her sleepwalking that night. David who had been staying at the house

instead of his cottage one weekend, ‘babysitting’ her in the absence of her

mother, and who had taken her, not back to bed, but to his own room where he

had made her a hot drink and talked to her, showing her the telescope he used to

watch the night sky.

The binoculars beside it he had used for another, more mundane purpose. As

the estate manager one of his jobs had been to keep a sharp look-out for

poachers. The night had no fears for David, and through him she too had learned to

appreciate its special beauties. It had been David who had taken her to watch the

badger cubs at play, earning her mother’s anger. Kelly quickly stopped that line

of thought. Since she couldn’t sleep she might as well try to do some work; that

at least would be a far more profitable way of spending her time than thinking

about David.

Her mouth still felt slightly swollen and sensitive from the way he had kissed

her earlier. Her face started to burn as she recalled again the comment he had

made to her about her being a vixen—and about Nichole being her lover.

What would he say if he knew that she had only had one lover and that lover

had been a man who hadn’t really wanted her, a man she had had to coax and

beg to take her to bed, a man who had told her that he felt no love for her, that

what had happened between them had been a mistake, an error of judgement best

forgotten?