Fantasy For Two

She could feel his arousal and her own body ached and pulsed in response. A series of frantic mental images crowded her brain, sharply clear flashes...images of the two of them entwined together, their bodies naked, his skin glistening with sweat, sleek, tanned, roughened with soft dark hair, hers paler, softer but no less aroused.

She could feel her nipples hardening, thrusting against her clothes. Her teeth worried at his lower lip. She could hear him groan and felt his answering passion in the way his hands moved over her body, shaping her, moulding her, cupping her breasts, holding them in such a way that she literally shook with aching need.

She could feel herself starting to moan as the force of it possessed her body; a reciprocal shudder racked Alex’s body, and the sound he made, a low, raw groan, reverberated through her as their mouths fused hotly together. And then, abruptly and shockingly, Mollie felt Alex lift his mouth from hers and firmly push her away from him.

Instinctively she resisted, her senses so thoroughly aroused and aching for him that she couldn’t bear to let him go. And then, thankfully, before she could make a complete fool of herself, sanity and common sense came to her rescue, allowing her to shrug off the hands still clasping her forearms and to assume an expression of furious anger as she demanded huskily, ‘How dare you...? How dare you—?’

She broke off as she caught sight of the basket of peaches Alex had brought in with him, thankful to have something other than him on which to focus her attention and her chaotic emotions. ‘And just where did those come from?’ she asked aggressively.

‘I brought them with me,’ Alex told her curtly. ‘They’re home-grown—from the orangery.’

He was still trying to understand just what had prompted him to behave in such an uncharacteristic fashion. He was sexually experienced enough to recognise the potential destruction that could be caused by emotions, sensations as explosive as those he had just experienced, but there had been a feeling, a need within him when he had held Mollie in his arms which had gone far, far beyond any mere desire for sex.

He could tell, too, that even though she was trying valiantly to hide it from him she had been as caught off guard, as unable to control what had happened as he had been himself.

The last thing he needed right now was to get involved with a woman, a situation like this one. He had enough problems in his life already. More than enough.

‘The orangery,’ Mollie repeated bitingly. ‘And how many poor souls have you had to evict from their homes to pay for that kind of luxury, I should like to know?’

‘I’m sure you would,’ Alex agreed.

‘These peaches are rotten—rotten because they’ve been grown and fed on human misery,’ Mollie told him dramatically, tilting her head proudly as she added, ‘It’s all there in my article—the way that people, men like you—’

‘You can’t publish what you’ve written...’ Alex began to tell her, intending to warn her that she had got her facts totally wrong, but before he could finish Mollie immediately interrupted.

‘You can’t intimidate me,’ she told him passionately.

Alex opened his mouth to tell her that intimidating her or anyone else had never entered his mind, nor was it ever likely to do so, and that essentially at heart he was a pacifist, a man who applauded and worked for harmony, a man who respected the views and feelings of others. But instead, to his own bemusement, he heard himself saying in a passably threatening male growl, ‘Don’t be so sure.’

The tiny quiver of sensation that shivered through Mollie’s body as she heard him wasn’t entirely based on fear, but, wisely, she had no intention of investigating just why the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice should generate within her a feeling not unlike the delicious excitement she had experienced as a child when engaging in some activity which she had known to be forbidden.

‘Typical,’ she responded contemptuously to Alex instead, with a provocative toss of her head. ‘But you don’t frighten me.’

Grimacing to himself, Alex turned away from her and headed for the front door.

‘Maybe not,’ he muttered to himself under his breath as he angrily yanked the door open and strode through it. ‘But you sure as hell frighten me.’

No wonder he had stormed off like that, Mollie crowed in mental triumph as she firmly slammed the door after him. He had known she had him routed, that she couldn’t be bullied or pushed or cowed, as he had no doubt expected.

Walking back into her living room, she absentmindedly picked up one of the peaches and bit deeply into it. The fruit was luscious and sweet, with a taste that made her close her eyes in momentary sensual bliss.

‘Mmm...yummy...’

She had virtually finished the peach before she remembered what she had said to its donor. Well, never mind, she wasn’t one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, she told herself stoutly. How many peaches were there exactly in that basket? Three more... Well, it would be wasteful not to eat them, an insult to whoever had taken such care in growing and nurturing them...

The next day, standing in Bob’s office whilst she waited for him to finish reading her article, Mollie was still seething over her run-in with Alex. How dare he threaten her? He was typical of his type: rich, arrogant, completely oblivious to the thoughts and feelings of others.

But it was his threat to her article that concerned her the most and possessed her thoughts, not what had gone before it. In fact that kiss they had shared, and her own regrettably insane and inadmissibly intense response to it, was something she simply wasn’t prepared to dwell on or give any kind of credence to by thinking about it. Everyone was permitted the odd small aberration.

She had been under stress, caught off guard. He had no doubt expected her to reject him, and would have enjoyed having her behave in what to him would have been a predictably female and victimish way. By kissing him back, by showing no fear, she had shown him that she was not so predictable, so easily readable, that she was not the kind of woman who was going to be overawed or daunted by him.

She was no fool. Of course there would be members of her sex who would be silly enough to be taken in by his good looks and by the aura of success and maleness that clung to him, but she was most certainly not one of them.

Bob had reached the end of her article. He put it down and removed his spectacles, and then frowned as he told her baldly, ‘We can’t print this. You do realise that people locally will assume that this landlord you refer to is Alex, and—?’

‘And because he happens to own half the county no one is allowed to say or write anything that might show him up in his true colours? Is that it?’ Mollie interrupted him hotly.

Bob Fleury’s frown deepened as he looked at her.

His grandfather on his mother’s side had been a Scot, and Bob had inherited some of his dourness and his cautious carefulness, which balanced his more unpredictable French trait. Now, as he placed both his hands on his desk and studied Mollie, he chose his words very carefully.

She was such a fiery young thing, with so much still to learn, but he liked her. She had spirit and, just as important, she genuinely cared about her fellow human beings. He had no time for these cynical and worldly young people who seemed bored with their lives before they had really begun.

‘Is that what you think—that Alex is the kind of landlord you’ve written about in this article?’

‘Well, isn’t he?’ Mollie challenged him.

‘No,’ Bob told her promptly and firmly. ‘I’ve known Alex all his life and there is no way he would ever treat his tenants badly. In fact, one of the first things he did after his father’s death was set about raising enough money to ensure that those who had worked for his father and were close to retirement could be securely housed when they reached retirement age.

‘He had to fight like the devil to get his plans past the local planning committee as well. Simply allowing people to stay on in the often remote cottages they had occupied during their working lives wasn’t enough for Alex. No. What he did was bring in an architect and instruct him to design purpose-built units suitable for independent elderly people to live in.’

Now it was Mollie’s turn to frown.

‘Anyone can make plans...promises...’ she began, but Bob shook his head, forestalling her.

‘Alex did more than that,’ he told her firmly. ‘Wherever he owns an estate he has financed the building of a small development of these units, close to all the local amenities and complete with resident wardens and facilities for the disabled. He’s even financed a nursing home for those ex-employees who can no longer manage to live by themselves.’

‘But Pat said—’ Mollie began, only to have her boss cut across her objection a second time.

‘There’s no way Pat Lawson would ever criticise Alex,’ he told her. ‘She thinks the world of him.’

Mollie looked away. It was true that Pat Lawson had never actually mentioned Alex by name, she acknowledged unhappily, but she had assumed when the older woman had agreed with her own comments that she had known that Mollie was obliquely referring to him.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she heard Bob telling her, and he very firmly tore her prized article in two, and then two again, before depositing the pieces in his wastepaper basket.

Then he asked her, ‘Did you get Pat’s recipe?’

‘She’s young and enthusiastic,’ his wife reminded him gently later in the day, when they were having lunch together at the White Swan. The pub had originally been a coaching inn, and since it was owned by Alex it had escaped any kind of themed modernisation and was still very much a traditional English pub, with proper English food including Bob’s favourite steak and ale pie.

‘She needs something she can get her teeth into,’ Eileen added. ‘She doesn’t want to write about recipes and knitting patterns.’

‘Maybe so, but I can’t understand her—to write something like that about Alex of all people...’ Bob said, shaking his head. ‘I told her one of the first things any journalist worth their salt has to learn is to get their facts right. I mean Alex... I can’t think what’s got into the girl. She seems to have taken a real dislike to him.’

‘She needs a crusade...’ Eileen told him wisely, before adding firmly, ‘You know what the doctor said about your cholesterol level. Why don’t you have the chicken salad?’

Mollie could feel her ears burning hotly as she walked through the Gazette’s main office. No doubt everyone had heard Bob rubbishing her article this morning. Well, she didn’t care what Bob said; she knew, she just knew that there was no way that Alex was as white as he liked to be painted. After all, she had firsthand knowledge of just how badly he could behave when he wanted to, hadn’t she?

A brief touch on her arm made her jump. She turned her head to find Bob’s secretary smiling at her.

‘I was just going out for lunch,’ she told Mollie, ‘and I wondered if you’d like to come with me.’

‘I’d love to,’ Mollie accepted gratefully. With the exception of Lucy, the secretary, all the other members of the Gazette’s staff were of a similar age to its owner, and although she was a girl who had never found a problem in meeting and making new friends, and one who, moreover, enjoyed her own company, she had begun to feel slightly isolated and alone since moving to the town.

Bob had just kissed his wife goodbye and was about to walk out of the White Swan when he was hailed by an old friend—the chief inspector of the town’s police force—who, he saw, was frowning grimly.

‘Something wrong?’ he asked casually.

‘You could say that,’ he was told. ‘We’ve just been put on alert. It seems we’ve got a convoy of travellers heading out this way.’

‘Travellers?’ Bob questioned slightly bemused.

‘Yes. You know—hippies. New Agers...’ the chief inspector explained briefly. ‘They pitch up and make camp with their caravans and their lorries and cause the devil’s own kind of problems. If they do decide to make camp locally I’ll have every farmer for miles around on my back wanting me to get rid of them, not to mention the calls we’ll be getting from anxious parents worrying about the possibility of them selling drugs and generally causing problems.

‘I’ve been trying to track Alex down,’ he added.

‘It’s more than likely to be his land they settle on if they do settle locally, so it will be up to him to seek what legal remedies he can to move them on.’

‘What makes them do it, I wonder...?’ Bob mused. ‘I mean why...why decide to live outside society instead of within it?’

‘You’re the journalist, not me. Although most of them would tell you that they have chosen to create their own society...’

‘Mmm...’

Having refused his offer of a drink, Bob made his way back to the Gazette’s offices. If the travellers did decide to settle locally his readers would want to know exactly what was going on. Not, from what he had just heard about them, that any of these young people were likely to confide to him what their plans were. A thought suddenly struck him.

‘She needs something she can get her teeth into,’ his wife had told him about his new employee... ‘She needs a crusade...’

After a sandwich and an enjoyable chat with Lucy, which had included an invitation for Mollie to join Lucy and some of her friends on a ramble the following weekend, followed by a meal at a local pub, Mollie returned to the Gazette’s offices feeling much more cheerful. But her heart sank a little bit as, before she could reach her desk, Bob appeared and asked her to step into his office.

‘New Age travellers are coming here and you want me to interview them?’ Mollie asked him excitedly when he had explained what was going to happen. This was more like it. This was the kind of human interest story she could really get her teeth into.

‘The Gazette’s readers are going to want to know what these people are about, why they can’t stay in their own homes. Don’t they realise the havoc they cause, the damage they do to local crops and livestock?’ Bob was demanding critically, pursing his lips.

Mollie could tell exactly what kind of article he wanted her to write, but there were always two sides to every story.

‘We don’t know yet if these people do intend to pitch camp locally,’ Bob was reminding her. ‘With any luck they won’t, but—’

‘Where are they now? Does anyone know?’ Mollie interrupted him excitedly.

‘Well, they’re travelling this way, from the north. The police are keeping an eye on them, but apparently there’s not an awful lot they can do.’

Mollie quickly drew a brief mental map of the town’s infrastructure. That meant they must be travelling on what had once been the London road. Even if they decided not to pitch camp locally, it would still be worthwhile interviewing them, finding out how they lived, what had made them take to the road in the first place.

‘I could drive out to meet them and see if I can do some interviews,’ she suggested, holding her breath until Bob had given a brief grunt of assent.

Alex received the news of the travellers’ imminent arrival with far less enthusiasm.

He was not antagonistic towards their way of life, nor to them, and in many ways felt extremely sympathetic towards them, but... But he was also a land-owner and a landlord. He knew the havoc their arrival could cause, and the friction which could develop between them and their unwilling hosts. What he couldn’t quite understand, though, was why on earth they should have picked on Fordcaster. They were a small, quiet backwater of a town, well off any of the main arterial routes.

The police had already advised him to get in touch with his solicitor and set in motion what legal remedies he could to evict them, should they decide to settle. Unwillingly he reached for the phone. He didn’t like having to turn away anyone who was in need—it went against his whole ethos and nature—but he also owed a duty to his tenants.

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