Alison Fraser - The Mother And The Millionaire

‘No, you weren’t.’ Jack gave her a concerned look, as if now doubting her stability. ‘You were pretty and funny and—’

‘Don’t!’ Esme cut short this list of her qualities. ‘You’re patting me on the head again and I don’t need it. I’m quite happy with myself and my life now. I am simply pointing out that any reluctance to be pawed by you at this precise moment in time has no connection with the social class into which we were born.’

‘Pawed?’ Clearly oscillating between amusement and annoyance, he lifted her arm by the wrist. ‘This comes under the category of pawing?’

‘I… Don’t change the subject!’ Esme snapped back.

‘I’m afraid I’ve kind of lost it,’ he admitted, ‘but if this is what you consider pawing, you must have one pretty tame private life. Now if I’d done this—’ an arm curved round her waist to draw her closer ‘—or this,’ the other rose so a hand could briefly cup her cheek before turning to gently trail his knuckles down the long, elegant nape of her neck, ‘Then I think you might be justified.’

He’d moved in on her so suddenly, Esme was too startled to react. By the time she did, the brief embrace was over and he’d actually let her go.

She was left with a heart racing like a train and a rage inside her that she could barely contain.

In fact, she didn’t contain it, didn’t even try. She let her hand come up, open-palmed, and slapped him as hard as she could. Slapped him so hard his head jerked backwards and her palm stung.

Esme watched as his cheek reddened, initial exhilaration giving way to horror. She’d never slapped anyone before, never felt the urge to. It was basic and primitive. Like sex.

Like his reaction. Shock quickly followed by retaliation as he grabbed her arms and, pushing them behind her back, trapped her against the kitchen cupboards. Then a hand was thrust in her hair, pulling her head back, leaving her just time to spit out a swear word before he covered her mouth with his.

It was an assault of lips and teeth that robbed her of breath but not the will to fight. She clutched at his jacket, trying to push him off, feeling fury not fear as she recognised this subjugation for what it was.

Only he was stronger and fury was dangerously akin to passion as the kiss went relentlessly on, demanding a response, forcing long-dormant feelings to the surface. There was no exact point when things changed and the hands digging into his chest began to uncurl and flatten and spread upwards to his shoulders. No dividing line between the hateful bruising of his mouth on hers and the sweet, sensual invasion that followed.

All she knew was that what she started off repudiating, she ended up silently begging for, as she slid her hands round his neck and held his mouth to hers, shifting in his arms until she could feel his heart beating against the softness of her breasts, and she moaned aloud as the hand circling her waist slipped lower, half lifting her body to his, already hard with arousal.

When he finally broke off, it was to catch breath and ask, with his deep silent gaze, for what he might merely have taken.

For a moment Esme hovered between madness and sanity, dizzy with desire yet shaken by the very force of it. So easily she could have let herself be swept away but somehow, through fear of drowning, she clawed her way back to the bank.

She didn’t hit him again or play the outraged virgin or even pretend distaste. Half-ashamed, wholly disturbed, she said simply, ‘I can’t. I just can’t. Please leave me alone.’

Quiet words, but shot with desperation, and more effective than any shouting, it seemed.

‘Very well,’ was all he muttered back as, releasing her completely, he pushed a distracted hand through his hair.

No argument. No pleading. She could have seen it as insulting how quickly he retreated, making for the hallway, his footsteps an echo on the marble, then gone, the front door closed quietly behind him.

But she saw nothing because her eyes were filling with tears at the raw, ragged pain from the scarred-over wound he’d reopened.

ESME didn’t cry for long. It was an indulgence she could not afford. It was now mid-afternoon and soon she would have to go to pick up Harry.

She washed her face in cold water from the kitchen tap, trying to take the heat from it, then put the tonic and ice tray back in the fridge. She pushed the offending gin bottle back in its corner, half wishing she had taken a drink. At least then she could have blamed the alcohol for her pathetic behaviour.

It wasn’t as though she was entirely unprepared for Jack Doyle’s reappearance in her life. In fact, she’d imagined just such a scenario. Only in her version he would have changed, would not be so good-looking or smart or superior to most other men. She would wonder what she’d ever seen in him and be remote and dignified. Gone would be the young girl’s infatuation with an older boy, because she was no longer a young girl.

Reality, of course, had made a mockery of all her imaginings. He hadn’t changed, still maddeningly cool and collected ninety-nine per cent of the time, and frighteningly passionate that other one. And her? Well, it seemed she was still a walk-over even if the puppy love had festered into resentment.

Or maybe it was as he’d implied: her private life was too tame. Could that be the reason? It had been a while—a long while, it seemed—since her last abortive relationship had made celibacy an attractive option.

Yes, that had to be it. Sex-starved after three years of abstinence, she might have kissed any personable man in the same circumstances.

It didn’t say much for her self-restraint but she rather liked it as an explanation. In fact, she almost managed to convince herself of its truth. She would have but for the image of Charles Bell Fox, the nearest thing she currently had to a boyfriend. She’d known him for ever, liked him always and, encouraged by her mother, had even recognised him as good husband material. Yet she had repelled all his gentle overtures.

But then Charles was a gentleman. He’d never kiss her against her will, never force physical intimacy until some base sexual urges kicked in. Perhaps if he had, they might have progressed further than their current careful friendship.

A perverse thought, she shook her head, and, checking that Jack Doyle and his undoubtedly expensive motor had disappeared from the drive, locked and bolted the front door, before keying in the burglar-alarm code on the box above the cellar steps.

She exited smartly via the kitchen to the courtyard, then beyond to the back service road through the woods, passing her current home.

Intended originally for an unmarried gamekeeper, and built in the late 1890s, it wasn’t a pretty cottage, the stone roughly hewn and with ramshackle outhouses tacked on. But Esme had done her best to improve the outside with a bright terracotta masonry paint and bold blue doors and an array of pots and baskets of flowers to distract from the random ugliness of the house. She doubted Jack Doyle would have recognised it as his old home.

She slipped inside for a moment to collect a denim jacket and change her heels to flats. Transformed instantly from fashionable woman-about-town to young practical mother, she didn’t bother locking her door as she set off along a short cut through the wood to the rear gates of the estate.

She glanced at her watch, and, though on time, she quickened her pace. It was always an anxiety—that one day the bus would arrive early and deposit Harry alone at the side of the road.

The high wrought-iron gates were locked, so she used the door in the wall, its key hidden behind loose stonework. She emerged onto the verge of the main road and only then did she observe the car parked on the far side.