CATHY WILLIAMS - Shadows Of Yesterday

‘I’m not attracted to boys nearer my age. They’re immature. They don’t do anything for me.’ She was breathing quickly now and the palms of her hands were damp with perspiration.

‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he said roughly. ‘That’s the drink talking.’

‘No, it’s not!’ She took the smallest of steps towards him and rested her hand against his neck, brushing it with her thumb.

His eyes darkened and she was pleased to see that he wasn’t in total control either.

Does that mean that he’s attracted to me? she wondered. He hadn’t said otherwise, had he? And he had invited her to have a drink with him. That hadn’t been necessary, had it? So what did that add up to? she wondered feverishly.

There seemed only one way to find out. With one impulsive movement she pressed her mouth against his, parting her lips to allow her questing tongue entry into his mouth, and with a groan he began kissing her, really kissing her.

It was like being lifted off her feet and transported into a completely new dimension. He raised his hands to cup her face, pulling her towards him, devouring her with a savagery which made her blood boil.

When he slipped his hand underneath her jumper to caress her breast through the shirt, she had an insane desire to rip her clothes off so that she could feel flesh against flesh. Her nipples were hard and aching and she begged in a high, pleading voice,

‘Make love to me. I want you. I need you, I love you.’

She was so consumed by the ferocity of her own wanting that it took a few seconds to realise that he had frozen. She opened her eyes and looked at him in bewilderment.

‘What is it?’ she asked, reluctant to let go of the mood but knowing that she had no choice.

‘What the hell do you think?’ he grated, literally lifting her off her feet to move her aside. ‘I think it’s time that you left.’

‘Why? What have I done?’

‘There’s no room in my life for an infatuated child,’ he bit out grimly, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘This is all my fault. I’m completely to blame,’ he continued. ‘I’m just glad that I came to my senses before I ended up doing something that I would have lived to regret.’ He stood up and said dispassionately, ‘You can stay in here a couple of minutes, enough time to come to your senses, and then I suggest you leave.’

‘But you don’t understand! I love you!’

‘You don’t know the meaning of the word,’ he rasped harshly. ‘And in view of what’s happened here tonight, I think it might be a good idea if you didn’t return.’

‘No!’

She stared at him in mute silence and finally he said with a heavy sigh, ‘All right. You can stay, but keep out of my way. I shall be here for the next week and I don’t want to… Let’s just say that I’m only a man.’ He gave her a harsh, impatient look, then he was gone and she was left standing alone in the study and wondering what she would do now.

SHE couldn’t leave. Thinking back about it, and God knew she had thought about it all a million times over the past few months, she could see that she should have done. She should have nipped her growing love for him in the bud, and then she might have been able to retreat from the relationship with her dignity and emotional stability relatively intact.

But she stayed, and for a while things settled down into an uneasy pattern. James was hardly around, and when he was she knew that he was avoiding her. The few times they bumped into each other, he was scrupulously polite to her, and she in turn tried to hide the lovesick longing in her eyes.

She still hadn’t breathed a word of what was happening to either her parents, who would have been appalled by the whole thing, or to Jackie, who would have laughed and insisted that it was all a girlish crush, the result of having led such a retiring, introverted life as far as the opposite sex were concerned.

Then, the unthinkable happened. She went for an interview at a small but fast-expanding local advertising firm who were looking for someone to work in their creative department.

‘I expect you won’t have to give any notice at this cleaning job that you’re doing,’ her prospective boss said, reading through her application form and tapping his fingers on the desk as though he had more pressing things to do and really wanted the interview to conclude as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Claire looked at the downbent head miserably. She had already been shown around the company, met some of the people she would be working with, if she managed to land the job, and had been introduced to some of the types of work that she would be expected to do, and it was all exactly what she had had in mind when she had first moved to Reading from London.

So there was no way that she could blow her chances away by trying to juggle Frilton Manor and the job, and there was also no way that she could maintain any sort of part-time work at the Manor in the evenings because Tony, now looking at her impatiently and waiting for her answer, had told her from the start that overtime was unpaid and expected when the situation demanded, take it or leave it.

‘Well?’ he asked. He had a high, slightly effeminate voice and was good looking in a very blond, vaguely limpid way. He was her idea of what Adonis must have looked like. She had a suspicion that he probably never travelled without a comb in the breast pocket of his jacket and was addicted to looking at himself in mirrors. But she knew that all that concealed a fairly sharp brain because she had seen some examples of his work and they were brilliant.

‘Yes. I mean no. I mean,’ she said, gathering her thoughts together with effort, ‘I won’t have to give any notice. Perhaps a couple of days or so.’

‘Good.’ He looked at his watch and issued her with his first smile since she had arrived two hours ago. ‘In that case, you can start next Monday. Eight-thirty sharp. Sandra will take care of you until you find your feet, and Personnel will send you your contract through the post later today. You should have it by tomorrow, or day after latest.’

Claire’s mouth sagged open.

‘I can see you’re thrilled,’ Tony said smugly. ‘I needn’t tell you that you were one of thirty who applied for the job. We had a much bigger response than we had expected.’ He stood up and she followed suit hurriedly. ‘I must dash now,’ he said, moving or rather gliding towards the door and opening it for her. ‘Meetings call.’

She was still in a daze by the time she made it to Frilton Manor and she spent the remainder of the day viciously dusting and cleaning. She was wiping the row of books in the study when the door opened and she turned around to see James standing framed in the doorway, looking at her as though she had taken leave of her senses.

They stared at each other in silence for a while then he moved towards the desk and said drily,

‘You look murderous. I didn’t think that dusting a few books could do that to anyone.’ He began pressing buttons on the small computer on the desk, with his back to her, and she wondered whether he had forgotten about her being there at all.

‘I’ve got a job,’ she informed him bluntly, and he stopped what he was doing and turned around to face her.

It was obvious that he had just come from work, from the looks of it to continue working from the study. His jacket had been discarded, and the sleeves of his shirt were carelessly rolled back to the elbows, but he was still wearing his suit trousers, and his tie, deep burgundy silk, which had been tugged down so that the top button of his shirt could be undone. Did he know how devastatingly sexy he looked, standing there, watching her with those disconcerting green eyes?