Susan Stephens - Susan Stephens Selection

‘Stop… Stop it now, Guy!’ She managed to force out at last as she stumbled away from him. ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing but whatever it is I’m not ready for it.’

‘Really?’ he murmured sardonically.

‘You know what I mean,’ she said, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, as if that was all it took to hide her arousal. But from the look on his face the moment had passed—she might even have imagined it to judge from the steely determination on his face. But what was his game? Was this a test? If so, it seemed his intention was to prove to her that in spite of all her denials she was as attracted to him as ever. And the way he had closed himself off now from her was simply to make the point that she should not think, even for one moment, that he felt the same.

‘This might look bad,’ he said coolly, turning his attention to the ruined kitchen. ‘But upstairs there’s hardly any damage at all. And even this is all cosmetic.’

Kate’s mind was still churning as she fixed her gaze on Guy’s broad, uncompromising back. He was so focused, so composed. How could that be when his kiss had left her reeling and confused? And did he really expect her to be able to enter into a rational discussion about the state of the kitchen?

‘Look at this, for example,’ he continued, apparently unaware of her state of mind as he pointed to a row of cupboards. ‘These doors can easily be replaced and they’re so solid—’ He rapped one with his fist and opened it. ‘Everything inside is completely unharmed. ‘See,’ he said, whipping out a couple of terracotta bowls. ‘Not even a crack in one of these. You could easily serve up a meal for half the village.’

‘All of them, I hope,’ Kate murmured, determined to show she could be as untroubled as he was by The Kiss.

‘Ah, yes,’ Guy said as he replaced the bowls. ‘Your house-warming party in three weeks’ time.’ Planting his hands on his lean hips, he looked at her. ‘I guess that’s my target for getting everything here back to normal for you.’

He was clearly pleased to see what he must have imagined was her return to clear thinking, Kate thought, imposing a smile on her strained features. Lucky for her he couldn’t sense the mayhem in her mind. Suddenly it was all too much for her—the loss of Aunt Alice, the deception, the devastation at the cottage, not to mention Guy’s reminder of the impossible deadline she had set herself. She had to get out of the cottage—into the fresh air.

‘You can cook?’ Guy demanded, oblivious to the storm clouds brewing as he followed her out. ‘If not, don’t worry about it. I’ll arrange something with Madame Duplessis. No one need ever know.’

That suggestion doused the aftershock of his kiss more effectively than any bucket of cold water. As a child, her life had been ordered for her, but things were very different now. She was in charge of her own life. ‘I can manage, thank you,’ Kate broke in, turning her face to the sun as she gulped in air. Perhaps it did sound ungrateful, but she had to put him straight.

‘I’m sure you can,’ he said. ‘But if you need any help, don’t be afraid to ask.’

She couldn’t let him go on. ‘When I knew my career as a dancer was over…’

He broke in, taking hold of her arm for emphasis. ‘I noticed your limp. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’

‘I retrained as a Cordon Bleu cook,’ Kate went on steadily in an attempt to avoid discussing something that could only strengthen his impression of her as being the same headstrong character he had known years before.

‘I’m impressed,’ Guy said with a small shrug. ‘But I’m more concerned about the tragic loss of your dancing career. That must have been terrible for you.’

‘Not as terrible as what happened to your father…and Aunt Alice,’ Kate pointed out. ‘Compared to that, it hardly seems worth mentioning.’

‘Of course it’s worth mentioning,’ Guy insisted calmly. ‘You must have been at the peak of your career when it happened. I used to read about you all the time in the arts columns…and then nothing.’

Kate’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘That’s right. But I was too tall.’

‘Nonsense,’ Guy argued. ‘All the critics said you were a dream.’

‘Yes,’ Kate said, forcing out a short laugh. ‘But it was always my mother’s dream, not mine. And in a strange sort of way the accident freed me.’

‘Freed you?’ he said in a puzzled voice.

‘Yes. To be myself,’ Kate explained. ‘To do what I wanted to do.’

‘To start up in business?’

He clearly found the idea bewildering, but for Kate breaking into the world of commerce had fulfilled her dreams however crazy that might seem to Guy. ‘That’s right,’ she confirmed. ‘At first I thought of becoming a chef, but that wasn’t quite right for me. Then one day when I was trawling the Internet to find a holiday I hit on the idea of opening a travel agency with a difference. A one-stop shop which you could access via the Internet, put a package together yourself, but also with the option to ask for advice from staff who really knew what they were talking about. At first I was the only staff member,’ she said with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘But if there was one thing my career as a dancer had given me it was the chance to see the world. So Freedom Holidays took off like a rocket—beyond all my wildest expectations. At last I’d found something I wanted to do—something I enjoyed.’

‘Past tense,’ Guy observed shrewdly.

‘Not at all,’ Kate returned quickly. ‘I still love what I do. But now it’s time to expand.’

‘And expansion doesn’t always mean getting bigger,’ he reasoned out loud. ‘Sometimes it means taking a broader view.’

‘Exactly,’ she agreed, enthusing at his quicksilver grasp of the situation.

‘So, what is your plan?’ he said, surprising her with the accuracy and speed of his lunge into the soft, exposed heart of her deception.

‘I thought you wanted to hear about what happened to me, not my business,’ Kate parried. She never talked about the accident, but right now it seemed the safer…no, the only option. She saw his gaze soften fractionally.

‘ Continues , Kate.’

‘It was stupid really…’ Now it had come to it, she knew it sounded nothing less than lunatic. ‘I accepted a dare…’ She stopped. His face had adopted an all too familiar look. ‘It was my twentieth birthday. I know.’ She said it for him. ‘You’re thinking I should have grown out of my daredevil phase long before then.’

Guy managed to confine himself to a wry shrug as he waited for her to go on.

‘There was a gantry over the flies,’ she explained, referring to the iron structure that spanned the space high over the backstage area in the theatre where she had been working.

‘And the dare was?’ he pressed when she hesitated.

‘To walk across it à pointe .’ She could only wait a few moments when his imagination took flight and he groaned. There really was no way to explain what she had been doing all that way off the ground, tiptoeing across a six-inch beam in a pair of ballet shoes. ‘My fall was broken by the ropes and—’

Guy’s face tightened with concern as he held up his hands to stop her. ‘It sounds like the most horrendous accident. It’s a miracle you weren’t killed.’

‘I know,’ she said softly.

‘Well, now you’ve returned here to Villeneuve, I hope you can assure me that your days of risk-taking are well and truly over.’

How was she supposed to answer that? Kate thought, as her mind drifted back to his kiss. How did that rank on a risk scale from one to ten? However cool Guy might be choosing to play it now, safe men didn’t kiss like that—and cautious girls didn’t let them. ‘It’s not always obvious at the time that you are taking a risk,’ she argued sensibly.