CHARLOTTE LAMB - Guilty Love

He had blinked at her owlishly and stuttered, ‘Sure, Meg...Meg...an! I’d love to d...dance with you.’

She had whirled him round the room, aiming for the door, and Barty had clung on to her, his head only too obviously going round too. Linzi had followed, avoiding the amused or sympathetic glances she was getting from other guests. Outside in the hall Barty was sitting on the bottom of the stairs, leaning against the wall, his eyes glazed.

‘Here’s Linzi to take you home,’ Megan said softly. ‘Up we come, there’s a good boy.’

Together they had got him to his feet and steered him out of the house and into the car.

‘Can you manage at the other end? Would you like me to come home with you?’ Megan had asked her, and Linzi had shaken her head, very flushed.

‘No, I’ll manage, but thanks, he doesn’t usually drink so much...’

The lie had stuck in her throat and she had repeated huskily, ‘But thanks, Megan, and I’m sorry we spoiled your party.’

‘You didn’t, don’t be silly. These things happen at parties—we understand, forget the whole thing. Now, you drive carefully.’ She had looked into the car and laughed. ‘Look, he’s sleeping like a baby. By the time you get home he’ll be himself again.’

Ever since that night, Linzi had thought of Megan as a friend, and they had met for lunch several times when Ted was flying Ritchie Calhoun to some far-flung corner of Britain.

Megan and Ted had three sons, all at school now. The baby she was expecting would, she said, be her last child and if she didn’t want a little girl so badly she wouldn’t have wanted another child at all, not that she didn’t love her boys.

She was a warm and loving mother and she and Ted were clearly very happy together. Linzi envied Megan; the older woman had everything she wanted and would probably never have now.

Ritchie took the briefcase from her and gestured to a third chair placed at the table. ‘Sit down and have some lunch. We haven’t ordered yet.’

She hesitated. ‘Shouldn’t I get back to the office?’

‘Sit down and don’t argue!’

Ted winked at her. Linzi sat down and picked up the menu just as the waiter came over to the table. The men immediately began ordering their lunch; they both wanted melon followed by steak. Linzi ordered melon too, and a prawn and cottage cheese salad.

‘No wine for me,’ Ritchie said, shaking his head at the wine-list he was offered. ‘What would you like to drink, Linzi?’

She asked for a fizzy mineral water and the waiter left. Ted grinned at her.

‘I have to watch what I drink when I’m flying, especially on a day as hot as this! Aren’t you hot in that jacket, Linzi, love?’

‘No, I’m fine...’

‘Yes, take it off,’ Ritchie said in his curt, determined way, and he got up and came behind her. ‘All this hair!’ he added wryly. ‘Doesn’t it get in the way?’ and he pushed it aside.

Heat rushed up Linzi’s face as she felt his fingertips brush the nape of her neck. Her breathing seemed to stop. She began to shake. It was all over in a flash; he removed her jacket in one deft movement and hung it neatly over the back of her chair, then he went back to his own chair and sat down again. Their eyes met across the table. He was as flushed as she was and his eyes looked dark, smouldering like coals.

‘Doesn’t that feel better?’ asked Ted, seeming oblivious to the atmosphere between them.

Linzi nodded, her pulses drumming. The waiter arrived with her drink and the melon they had all ordered. It was very prettily arranged, thinly sliced, in a fan, with raspberries scattered around it, one slice of star fruit at the upper edge.

‘Isn’t that pretty?’ Linzi said huskily.

‘I don’t like my food pretty,’ Ted complained. ‘It makes me wonder if I’m supposed to eat it or frame it and hang it on the wall!’

Linzi pretended to laugh. She lowered her eyes to her plate, took a raspberry to pop into her mouth and under cover of eating it gave Ritchie a nervous, secret, sideways, look through her lashes. Had he noticed what just happened to her? She’d want to die if he had; oh, God, how humiliating. And she couldn’t even explain, she couldn’t tell him that it didn’t mean anything, it wasn’t personal, any man might have got the same reaction, that drumming pulse, the drowning sensuality which came from long-frustrated need. The heat grew in her face. Well, not any man! she hastily contradicted. It had never happened with any man before, after all; this was the first time in years she had felt that flashpoint of desire.

Why should it have come just now while Ritchie Calhoun was touching her? She didn’t even like him! He disturbed her, made her jumpy.

He had felt something, too—she was sure of that. Her intuition had picked up on the vibrations inside him, she had known when she looked into those darkened eyes of his. He had felt something...

Desire, she thought—why pretend you don’t know he felt it too? It was there between them, throbbing like a dynamo. A desire like nothing she had ever felt in her life before.

You’re married! she fiercely reminded herself, digging her nails into her palms. Whatever Barty has done to you, you are still his wife, and he loves you even when he acts as if he hates you. The pain made it easier to snap out of her mood.

Ritchie was frowning over a map he had got out of his briefcase. He hadn’t touched his food yet. A heavy lock of black hair fell forward over his eyes, and he brushed it impatiently back with one lean, tanned hand.

Linzi looked away, swallowing convulsively. She must stop this! Stop noticing everything he does! she told herself angrily.

Oh, Barty, what has happened to us? she thought in a swell of agony, remembering how passionately they had once made love. How merciful that you could never guess the future, that it was veiled from sight until it hit you.

She pushed her thin slices of melon around the plate, forced herself to eat, the cool fruit sliding down her parched throat, the perfect food for a day as hot as this one. Maybe it was the weather that was making her act so strangely, so unlike herself?

Ritchie began talking to Ted, flung the open map across the table between them, pointing, then picked up his fork and ate his own melon while Ted was studying the map.

‘Have you been up in a chopper yet?’ Ted asked her, and Linzi shook her head. ‘Well, come with us today,’ he suggested.

‘Good idea,’ Ritchie said. ‘It’s time you realised how vital the air dimension is to planning, Linzi. Seeing a site on a map or even on the ground you don’t get the full picture, but fly over it and you realise how much you miss until you’ve seen it from the air.’

‘I ought to get back to the office,’ she demurred.

‘Nonsense. Petal can hold the fort for an afternoon.’

The waiter brought their second course; Linzi ate some of her salad, trying to think of a way out of going up in the helicopter with them, but Ritchie was like a bulldozer once he had made up his mind. He wouldn’t be stopped or turned aside.

Half an hour later Linzi found herself crossing a mown field towards the waiting helicopter.

‘Up you get!’ Ritchie said, seizing her waist and lifting her up. Ted showed her how to belt herself into her seat, and gave her headphones to wear, to shut out the noise. Ritchie clambered in beside them, and the door closed. Linzi stared up at the whirling blades, her eyes blurred by the speed at which they went round. The machine began to lift and she looked down to see their black shadow flying across the ground below.

Ritchie tapped her shoulder, gesticulated downwards, mouthed, ‘Along this ridge, the line of poplars...that’s the route.’