PENNY JORDAN - Passionate Nights - The Mistress Assignment / Mistress of Convenience / Mistress to Her Husband

‘I’m sorry,’ Brough returned equally formally and coolly. ‘Forgive me, but I had assumed that since this commission was business …’

Immediately hot colour burned a mortified flush up her throat and over her face.

‘I realise that,’ she retorted stiffly, and of course she did, even if very briefly earlier in the day she had momentarily forgotten.

But, in truth, hadn’t there been a few brief but oh, so telling occasions during the day when the sharp line that in the past had always divided her professional life from her personal one had become dangerously blurred—when she had looked at Brough, compelled to do so by something he had said, only to find that it was not the client she was seeing but the man?

And what a man!

Kelly groaned in dismay, lashed by a delicate shiver of sexual awareness. This wasn’t what she wanted, what she needed in her life right now.

Her reaction to Brough would have unnerved her even without the added complication of the situation with Julian Cox. When she added to that the already highly combustible mixture of anger and attraction she felt towards Brough, the dangerous extra ingredient of emotional awareness and longing she was confronted with became a potentially lethal cocktail which she knew could destroy her if she wasn’t careful. After all, put together all those ingredients and the result was as dangerous as some magical, mystical sorcerer’s potion, because the result was quite simply love. And Brough was the last person she could ever allow herself to love. He didn’t like her now, so what on earth was he going to feel about her when he discovered—as discover he surely must—that she was deliberately trying to take Julian away from his sister?

She could try telling him, of course, that her motives were truly altruistic, but somehow she doubted that he would believe her, that he would even want to believe her.

‘Tired?’

The unexpected concern in his voice brought a small, anguished lump to her throat. Unable to reply without betraying her emotion, she shook her head.

‘It’s been a long day,’ Brough told her, adding ruefully, ‘I must admit I had no idea of the complexity of the task I was asking you to take on when I first approached you.’

‘It will be a challenge,’ Kelly admitted, relieved to be back on a safer subject. ‘But I am looking forward to it. My biggest worry is that your grandmother is going to be disappointed. The teaset must mean so much to her … When Frank showed us those jugs this afternoon, which had been in the same family for six generations, and he told us how much each generation had to reinsure them at, it really brought it home to me that it isn’t the material value that means so much but the fact that they represent a part of a family no longer there in person, a piece of very personal history … memories …’

‘Yes,’ Brough agreed soberly. ‘I can see from the look in Nan’s eyes when she touches her teaset that it’s Gramps she’s thinking about.’

A little enviously Kelly wondered what it must be like to have experienced such love, and to still be able to warm oneself by its embers.

What was Brough’s grandmother like? What had his grandfather been like? Brough? Her heart gave a small, uneven thump. In thirty years from now Brough could be a grandfather himself. Her heart gave another, even more uneven thud, and then a series of short, frantic, accelerating mini-beats as she contemplated her own future. In thirty years from now how would she feel when she looked back on today? Would the sharp ache of newly discovered love for Brough she had recognised today have dulled to nothing more than a dim memory, or would she be looking back in sadness and regret for what had never been?

They were almost home now, the lights of the town shining in the valley ahead of them as Brough turned off the motorway. Kelly sat in silence beside him as he drove through the quiet streets towards the shop. Rye-on-Averton was a genteel town, its residents either middle-aged or retired in the main. Its wine bars and restaurants, though, were well patronised, as were the shows put on by the excellent local amateur dramatic and operatic societies.

‘I’ll come up with you,’ Kelly heard Brough saying as he parked his car outside the shop.

Immediately she shook her head, but Brough was already climbing out of the car.

‘It really isn’t necessary,’ she said as he opened her car door for her.

The flat had its own entrance, and she had already removed the keys in readiness from her bag and was holding them in her hand, but to her chagrin Brough quietly removed them from her grasp.

‘I know this is a relatively crime-free and safe area, but I’m afraid my grandmother’s influence means that I would feel I had failed in my male duty if I didn’t see you safely inside.’

So he was only acting out of duty. What had she imagined? she derided herself as she walked silently towards the rear entrance of the flat. That he was insisting on seeing her inside because he wanted to delay the moment when he parted from her for as long as he could? How utterly ridiculous. He probably couldn’t wait to see the back of her.

‘It’s this way,’ she told him unnecessarily, indicating the rear ground-floor door.

Stepping past her, Brough inserted the key in the lock and then opened the door for her.

‘Thank you …’ Kelly started to say as she stepped past him, but it seemed he still did not consider his duty to be fully done, because he shook his head and stepped into the small hallway with her, glancing towards the stairs as he did so.

‘Would you like me to come up with you and look around?’ he asked her politely.

Immediately, Kelly shook her head.

In the hallway on a small console table was one of the first pieces of china she had painted. She saw Brough looking at it.

‘One of your pieces?’ he asked her.

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘The inspiration for it came to me when I was on holiday in South Africa with my family.’

The piece, all greens and blues and surf-whites, always made her think of the magnificence of the Cape’s beaches. Such a dramatically beautiful country with such a horrifically cruel history. She touched the curving contours of the piece of china with gentle fingers. It held many happy memories—days when she had played with her brother’s children, running in and out of the surf with them, evenings when she had strolled along the beach with her parents and her brother and his wife. Very happy memories. She shuddered a little to imagine what they would think of her current involvement with Julian Cox.

‘Are you cold?’ Brough asked her, frowning slightly and taking a step towards her just as Kelly, too, stepped forward, away from the table.

Automatically, she put her hand out to prevent them bumping into one another as she shook her head in response to his question, but unwisely, as she did so, her gaze was drawn to his face and then his mouth.

The shape of it had been tantalising her all day—the sharp masculine cut of it, the sensual fullness of his lower lip, the dangerous and somehow illicit knowledge she had of just how it felt to have it moving on her own.

Now, just when she knew she needed to be at her coolest and most in control, her breathing had become erratic, her pulses racing, her pupils betraying the surge of feminine longing that was overpowering her.

Her brain begged her body to behave sensibly, her eyes to break contact, her breathing to slow down and become properly measured, but her senses had become flagrantly disobedient.

Very slowly Kelly lifted her gaze from Brough’s mouth to his eyes. It was like gazing into deep waters, so cool that they made her body tremble as though she had touched ice, and yet so hot that her bones felt as though they were going to melt. Every sense she possessed, every centimetre of flesh covering her body, suddenly seemed to have become a thousand times more sensitive than normal, a thousand times more receptive.