Liz Fielding: Prisoner Of The Heart

‘Come on, Sophie Nash. You can’t expect me to believe that you would risk all that work?’ he said incredulously.

‘Risk?’ Nothing was making much sense. She was the one who had been at risk.

‘You might have dropped your bag while you were climbing down.’

‘I...’ She blinked as he began to recede. ‘I was very careful.’ She took a step, but the ground seemed to be made of foam rubber. Surprised, she reached out a hand to steady herself and he caught it.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice seemed to come from a long way off. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to be...’ She lifted her hand to her head and saw the blood running down her fingers. Then, mercifully, everything went black.

CHAPTER TWO

SOPHIE woke with a throbbing head and dry mouth, every part of her aching. The room was dim, what light there was slanting through two pairs of louvred shutters closed on tall windows. She raised her wrist to see what time it was and heard a groan. It was a moment or two before she realised the sound had come from her own lips.

She stared at bruised, swollen fingers, that looked as if they might have been through a wringer, and winced. Her fingers. And memory began to rush back, a little confused, but with the basic facts intact. The slow motion nightmare as she had tried to make it to the cliff-top. And she had nearly made it. Would have made it. Only Chay Buchanan had been waiting for her.

She looked around her at the strange room and then with a rush of horror she knew. She was in the lion’s den. Worse. She groaned, and this time the response was quite deliberate. She was in the lion’s bed.

The thought was enough to drag her protesting body from the smooth linen sheet, but as she propped herself against the great carved bedhead and the sheet slipped from her body something else became startlingly obvious. She was naked. She gingerly grasped the sheet between her fingers and lifted it. Utterly naked. Someone had undressed her.

Who? It seemed vitally important that she remember. Then, rather hurriedly, she blotted out the thought before she did. She didn’t want to contemplate the possibility of her unconscious body being undressed by Chay Buchanan. Instead she focused her attention on her surroundings.

She was in a long, wide room, the stone walls painted matt white, with two large panels, glowing blue-green abstractions of the sea, the only decoration. The floor was of some dark polished wood. On it were laid rich Bukhara rugs, barred with faint stripes of light that filtered through louvred shutters closed over floor-to-ceiling windows. Apart from the bed, flanked by nighttables and a pair of tall Chinese lamps, the only furniture was an enormous chest of drawers with heavy brass handles and an equally impressive wardrobe. A man’s room. Completely devoid of any woman’s touch.

She rose unsteadily, dragged the sheet from the bed, clumsily wrapped it about her with fingers that refused to bend properly and staggered to the bathroom at the far end of the room. Halfway there she questioned her knowledge that it was a bathroom, but with the question came the all too shocking answer. She remembered. And blushed hot and painfully at the memory.

He had brought her here. She had been dimly aware of being carried up a wide staircase. Then he had propped her up and the sudden rush of water had brought her gasping back to life as he had stood with her in the enormous shower-stall, stripping her while the cascade of warm water had washed away dust and sweat and blood.

She tried to swallow, but her tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth as she remembered how, too weak to stand unaided, she had simply leaned against him, her head against his shoulder, her breasts startlingly white against the dark tan of his chest. She had been incapable of protest as he had held her around the waist and briskly soaped her with a huge sponge, rinsed her, dried her and wrapped her in a soft white bathrobe and bathed her hands with antiseptic, his fingers gentle, even if the straight, hard lines of his mouth and his angry eyes had made his feelings more than plain.

The mirror alongside the bath reflected bright spots of colour that rouged her cheeks like patches on a rag doll’s face against the whiteness of her skin, the pale gold shock of hair. And he had threatened her with a dungeon. She had the unnerving feeling that his dungeon would be far safer than his bathroom.

But one question was answered. There was no Mrs Buchanan. No wife, however tolerant, would have put up with such goings on. She glanced around, and the lack of feminine accoutrements confirmed the fact that whoever usually shared Chay Buchanan’s king-sized bed she certainly wasn’t a permanent fixture. She forced herself to her feet and opened the bathroom cabinet. Not even constant enough to have left a toothbrush. She quickly closed the door. It was none of her business, she told herself firmly.

But it was too late to blot out the image of his personal toiletries, his exquisite taste in cologne, the fact that he used an open razor.

‘Have you seen enough? Or do you want the guided tour?’

She spun round, then wished she hadn’t as the room lurched sickeningly. She leaned momentarily against the cool richness of Catalan tiles that decorated the wall. Then, as she followed the direction of his eyes, tugged desperately at the sheet, which had shifted alarmingly as she turned, a sudden coolness warned her that it had left her rear exposed. She edged sideways as she caught her reflection in the mirror alongside the bath. How on earth had she got that bruise on her shoulder? She lifted it slightly and the pain brought instant recall of the tearing jerk as he had hauled her over the edge of the cliff to safety.

‘I was looking for some painkillers,’ she said, with a brave attempt at dignified suffering.

His lip curled derisively. ‘Of course you were.’ He took her arm and led her firmly back to the bed. ‘Lie down and I’ll bring you something.’

‘I’m not an invalid.’

‘No, just a pain in the backside. But you’d better lie down before you fall down.’ She sat down abruptly on the bed, but only because her legs were so wobbly. It was nothing to do with his telling her to and she stubbornly refused the cool enticement of a down pillow.

‘If you’ll bring my clothes, I’ll stop being a pain in the—’ she started angrily, then stopped, gathered herself a little. She couldn’t afford to aggravate the man any further. ‘If you’ll bring my clothes, I’ll be happy to leave,’ she said, with exaggerated politeness.

‘Please?’ he suggested.

For a moment her large grey eyes snapped dangerously. ‘Do I have to beg for my own clothes?’ she demanded. He didn’t reply, merely waited. And waited. Apparently she did. ‘Please,’ she ground out through clenched teeth.

‘That’s better. But I’m afraid your clothes are being washed. Perhaps you can have them tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow! But I have a plane to catch—’

‘Had a plane to catch. I contacted the airport and cancelled your booking.’

‘You did what?’ she exclaimed, ignoring the sharp reminder that scythed through her head that anything much above a whisper was inadvisable. ‘You had no right to do that!’ No right to go through her handbag. Look at her personal things.

‘Since you were in no position to use it, and since it’s an open ticket, I thought you might be grateful to have the opportunity to re-book. I suppose I should have known better.’

‘I’m fine!’ she declared, with a careless disregard for the truth. ‘You can keep your washing. I’m leaving.’ She rose a little shakily, hitching- the sheet up and taking a step in the direction of the door only to find him barring her way. ‘Right now,’ she said.