Liz Fielding - Prisoner Of The Heart

Think, Sophie, she urged herself. You need a plan. Forget the plan, she answered herself a little caustically. What you need first are some clothes. Her glance fell on the chest of drawers and, for the first time since she woke, her mouth curved in the semblance of a smile.

She gripped the brass handle of one of the drawers and pulled, biting back a cry as pain shot through her shoulder where Chay Buchanan had hauled her over the edge of the cliff. She gave up all attempts to cling on to the sheet as she eased it, recalling with a tiny spurt of anger the huge bruise that decorated her back. Monster! He hadn’t needed to drag her up like that. She could have managed. Oh, really? Yes, really, she told the irritating little voice inside her head. Of course she could. But the recollection of that sickening lurch as she had missed her foothold and started to slip made her flesh rise in goose-bumps, and she shivered despite the warmth stealing in through the window as the early morning mist was burned off the sea. She had to get out of here.

She regarded the chest with loathing, but to escape she needed something to wear. This time she grasped both handles and the drawer slid open to reveal piles of beautifully ironed shirts. And this time she really smiled, with an almost irresistible curve of her lips.

She helped herself to a pale blue cotton shirt, easing her painful shoulder up to slide into the sleeve. The shirt was too big, hanging almost to her knees, but that was good. At a pinch, with a belt, she could wear it as a dress. She tried to fasten the buttons, but her fingers were stiff and painful, slowing her down, and she gave up after a couple.

She rifled through the remainder of the drawers, ignoring the ties but helping herself to a pair of thick white socks that would cushion her feet against stone. Pants? She regarded Chay Buchanan’s taste for plain white American boxer shorts with dismay. They would never stay up. What she really needed was a pair of jeans and a belt. Her fingers grasped the handles of the bottom drawer as she heard his voice speaking to someone on the stairs.

She flew across the room to the bed, and as the door opened she was demure beneath the sheet. He backed in with a tray and there was just the slightest hesitation, as he regarded the shirt that now covered her anatomy, before he placed it on the table beside the bed.

‘Feeling a little better?’ he asked.

‘Well enough to leave,’ she replied brightly, ignoring heavy, painful limbs and the overwhelming sense of weariness that her exertions had produced.

‘I think that is a decision for the doctor to make.’

‘Doctor?’

‘He’ll call in to see you later.’ He regarded her thoughtfully as hope betrayed itself in her eyes. ‘He’s a friend, Sophie, so don’t bother to bat those long eyelashes at him. He won’t be impressed.’

‘I’ve never batted an eyelash in my life!’

‘No?’ He sat on the edge of the bed and regarded her impassively. ‘I must have mistaken the signals. I had the distinct impression that you were batting like mad yesterday morning when you asked me to sit for you.’

‘That’s not true!’ she protested. She just hadn’t been prepared for the instant response of her body to the perilous masculinity of the man, the unexpected pull of dangerous undercurrents tugging her towards something new and exciting and wonderful. She swallowed. He had seen it. Was that why his rejection had hurt so much? Because he had quite wrongly assumed that she was offering herself as a reward for his co-operation and had still said no?

He sat beside her on the bed and handed her a cup of tea, holding her clumsy fingers around it with his own. And it was still there. The urgent fire surging through her veins as he touched her. She felt the sudden start of tears to her eyes. It wasn’t fair.

‘Come on, Sophie, drink this,’ he said. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

‘I doubt it,’ she sniffed. It wasn’t a cup of tea she needed. Her face, her whole body grew hot as she privately acknowledged that what she needed was Chay Buchanan. To be held in his arms, to... Oh, lord! She had always imagined herself feeling this kind of bewildering desire for a man she had fallen deeply, wonderfully in love with.

She buried her face in the cup. She hardly knew this man. And what she knew of him she didn’t like. It was lust, far from pure, and shockingly simple. What she should be doing was standing under a cold shower, not lying in his bed with his warm thigh pressed against hers, separated only by the single thickness of a sheet, his hands wrapped close around hers. Why couldn’t the wretched man wear a pair of trousers instead of those tailored shorts that blatantly offered his well-muscled thighs and beautifully shaped calves to her hungry eyes?

She gulped down the tea and he took the cup from her. ‘Can you eat something?’

‘Bread?’ she asked, making an effort to keep the exchange hostile, but suddenly too weak to care much.

‘The bread, and water will keep,’ he replied a little sharply. ‘Try some toast.’ She shook her head. Then wished she hadn’t. ‘All right. Just take these and lie down.’

She stared suspiciously at the white tablets. ‘What are they?’

‘Paul left them.’

‘Your friendly doctor?’ She withdrew slightly.

‘For heaven’s sake! Do you think I’m trying to drug you? He’s a respected consultant with a wife and considerable quantity of children. These are just something for your headache.’ He glared at her. ‘You have got a headache, I hope?’

Of course she had a headache. She took the pills, swallowed them with the aid of a glass of water that he held for her as if she was an invalid. Then, as the door closed behind him, she gave up the struggle to maintain the façade of defiance, and slid down between the sheets and tried to work out just what kind of a mess Nigel’s ‘little favour’ had got her into.

She hadn’t much relished the task and had left it until the last day...perhaps hoping that he wouldn’t be there. Nigel could hardly blame her for that.

But finally she had driven out along the coast road until she had seen the tower, just as Nigel had described it, four-square and massive, one of the many that had been built on the island to keep watch against pirates. A few in the more built-up areas had been turned into restaurants for the tourist trade. Most were abandoned. This one was surrounded by a garden.

Flowers tumbled from beds raised from the rocky ground and clambered over the walls, making the tower look more like some lost fairy-tale keep. With the impressive golden cliffs at its flanks, and the sea beyond, it had quite taken her breath away.

Close up, the tower had seemed rather more forbidding, despite the softening effect of the flowers, its entrance barricaded by a pair of heavy studded doors. But she had pinned a smile to her lips and lifted the traditional dolphin-shaped knocker.

For a long time nothing had happened. She had been trying to pluck up the courage to knock again when the door had swung open, and the figure that had filled the doorway took Sophie’s breath away for the second time in less than five minutes as every cell in her body had swivelled in his direction and jumped to attention.

She had seen photographs of the man, seen him on the television, but nothing had prepared her for his overwhelming physical presence, a compelling masculinity that drew her to him like iron filings to a magnet.

‘Yes?’ His curt manner released her, her quick step back observed by a pair of knowing eyes that after the most cursory inspection seemed to know more about her than she did herself.

It took every shred of self-possession to keep the smile fixed to her mouth and offer her hand. ‘Mr Buchanan? Mr Chay Buchanan?’ He ignored her hand, and a little self-consciously she pushed back a strand of hair that had fallen over her cheek before letting her own hand fall. ‘My name is Sophie Nash.’