Secrets: One Night in His Arms / Taken for Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure

‘Perhaps my tastes have changed,’ Sylvie said a little loftily, adding robustly, ‘Unlike yours …’

As he started to frown she explained sweetly, ‘I saw your … friend. She called at the Rectory just as I was leaving. I’m sure she’d be more than delighted to share your salmon with you, Ran,’ she told him coolly. ‘Now, about those receipts …’

Inwardly Sylvie shivered a bit as she saw the anger flare in his eyes but outwardly she stood her ground. It was, after all, her job to make sure that the Trust wasn’t cheated—by anyone.

‘Of course,’ Ran told her formally, inclining his head as though in defeat, but then, just as Sylvie started to draw a relieved breath, he gave her a dangerously vulpine smile and told her softly, ‘But I’m afraid it will have to be this evening as I have a business meeting tomorrow morning and then I shall probably be away for several days …’

‘With your … friend …?’

Later Sylvie could only despair over whatever it was that had led her to make such a dangerously betraying and provocative remark, but inexplicably the words were out before she could stop them, causing Ran, who had been on the point of turning away from her, to turn back and slowly scrutinise her from head to foot before asking her softly, ‘If you mean Vicky, is that really any of your business … or the Trust’s …?’

He had caught her out and Sylvie knew it. It most certainly was not part of her duty as the Trust’s representative to ask any questions about his personal life, and she was mortified that she had done so.

‘If you want to see the receipts for the work on the Rectory then it will have to be this evening, Sylvie,’ Ran was repeating briskly. ‘Shall we say about eight-thirty?’

Before she could say anything else he had gone, striding across the dusty floor and leaving her to watch his departing back.

It was a good ten minutes after she had heard the noise of his Land Rover engine die away before Sylvie felt able to continue with her work. Her intelligence told her that their antagonism was coming between her and the normally wisely efficient way in which she dealt with even the most awkward of the Trust’s clients, but her emotions refused to allow her to back down, to climb down. If she was wary of him, suspicious of him, then she had every right to be.

And every right to as good as accuse him of trying to defraud the Trust?

She started to nibble anxiously at her bottom lip. If she was wrong about him trying to get the Trust to cover the cost of work he had had done on his own home, and if he chose to complain to Lloyd—

Irritably Sylvie reminded herself why she was here.

Although the house wasn’t any larger than others she had dealt with, it certainly seemed to possess far more small interconnecting rooms here on its upper storeys. She rubbed the dust from the window of one of them and peered out at the countryside spread all around her. From here she could see the river where Ran must have caught his fish. It wound lazily in a long half-loop through the parkland which surrounded the house. Although the terrain here in Derbyshire was very different from that which surrounded Alex’s home, it was disturbingly easy, looking down towards the river, to remember the many happy hours she had spent with Alex and Ran as a young girl, watching them as they worked together, helping them fish and later learning from them their countryside skills.

One of the ways in which, hopefully, ultimately, Haverton Hall could generate its own income would be, as Ran had suggested in the initial approach he had made to the Trust, for the house to be let out to large corporations and groups along with its fishing and shooting rights. The Trust adopted a policy that no game existing on its lands could be killed simply for sport—a very strict culling programme was put in place where necessary and the art of tracking animals was taught as a skill for its own sake rather than with a view to killing. That had been a condition which she herself had insisted on persuading the trustees to adopt, and it made her stop and frown slightly to herself now as she was forced to remember how it had been Ran who had first shown her that it was not necessary to kill to enjoy such traditional country sports.

Ran …

Sylvie was still thinking about him some time later when an exhausting drive through the virtually uninhabited countryside which surrounded the house had only produced three small villages, not one of which boasted a restaurant.

In the small pub in the third village the landlord shook his head when she asked about food and apologised.

‘We don’t have the trade for it round here, although I could perhaps see if there’s any sandwiches left over from lunchtime.’

Smiling wanly, Sylvie shook her head. She was hungry, very hungry in fact, and had been looking forward to sitting down to a proper hot meal.

‘There’s a good place over Lintwell way,’ the pub manager was continuing helpfully, ‘but that’s a good twenty-five miles from here.’

Twenty-five miles. Sylvie’s stomach was already starting to rumble. Against her will she had a mental vision of Ran’s salmon, pink and poached, served with delicious home-grown baby new potatoes and fresh vegetables and, of course, a proper hollandaise sauce. Her mouth watered.

It was gone seven o’clock now, though, and if she were to drive to Lintwell and back and eat as well that would mean she would be late for her meeting with Ran and there was no way she was going to allow him the opportunity to accuse her of being unprofessional.

Refusing the landlord’s offer of the afternoon’s leftover sandwiches, she made her way back to her car. She would just have to go without a meal tonight, she told herself firmly; after all, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. She was hardly going to starve … But oh, that salmon and … Ran was quite right. It was her favourite.

It was almost eight when Sylvie pulled up outside the Rectory’s front door.

Her earlier hunger had turned into a gnawing irritation that was making her head ache and her temper on edge. Low blood sugar, she told herself sternly. All you need is a sweet drink.

All she needed maybe, but not all she wanted. What she wanted …

What on earth was the matter with her? she derided herself as she opened the front door. Other women her age daydreamed and fantasised about having men, not meals.

Eight o’clock. She just had time to get showered and changed before her meeting with Ran. She wanted to run through her figures again, but if, as he said, he had paid for the work himself and he had the receipts to prove it … Perhaps she had been too quick to accuse him …

‘Sylvie …’

She froze at the bottom of the stairs as she heard Ran’s voice. When she turned her head he was standing in an open doorway several feet away from her.

‘Mrs Elliott is going to serve dinner at eight-thirty so you’ve got half an hour to get ready … ‘

A dozen questions and just as many denials and arguments sprang immediately to Sylvie’s lips, but somehow she managed not to utter them and she was at the top of the stairs before she managed to ask herself why she had not simply told Ran that she had eaten already.

Why? The audible rumble of her stomach as she opened her bedroom door gave its own answer. Even so, it galled her to know that Ran had guessed she would have to return to the house without having found somewhere to eat. But just let him try to make something of it, Sylvie decided fiercely as, having had her shower, she changed into a long silky black jersey dress, brushing her hair and quickly re-doing her make-up before checking the time.

Almost eight-thirty. Taking a deep breath, Sylvie checked her appearance in the mirror and then, holding her head high, headed for the bedroom door.

Her jersey dress, plain black and unadorned, might not, to anyone but the cognoscente, reveal the fact that it had cost her the best part of a month’s wages and carried the label of one of New York’s top designers—the uninitiated might be deceived by the simple design and the way the heavy fabric discreetly hinted at rather than clung more obviously to Sylvie’s slender figure. But even the most self-confessed sartorial ignoramus would have reacted to the way Ran looked when Sylvie saw him waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.

Used as she was to seeing him wearing casual work clothes, and perhaps because that was the image she held engraved in her mind’s eye—jeans fitting snugly against the hard muscle of his thighs, checked work shirt rolled up at the sleeves and just open enough at the neck to reveal the silky dark expanse of body hair which so temptingly and tormentingly made one’s fingers long to unfasten a few more buttons and explore just how thick, just how silky that soft dark hair actually was—Sylvie had forgotten how very male Ran could look in formal clothes.

And although he hadn’t gone so far as to change into a dinner suit he was wearing a pair of well-cut dark trousers and a crisp white shirt.

The fact that he was just shrugging on his jacket as she came down the stairs afforded Sylvie an unwanted glimpse of the lethal maleness of the muscles in his torso and made her hesitate betrayingly just for a second before continuing her journey downwards.

He had changed his clothes simply to have dinner with her.

Why? Because he knew very well the effect his appearance would have on any susceptible woman and because he intended to use that fact to distract her, confuse her when she needed all her attention, all her concentration to ascertain the truth about that invoice? Or was she letting her imagination run away with her? Was the woman he had dressed so elegantly for not her but—?

Was he perhaps seeing the other woman after their meeting had finished?

‘We’ve just got time for a drink before dinner if you’d like one,’ Ran told her calmly, but his glance, Sylvie was sure, had rested for just a betraying fraction of a second on the soft thrust of her breasts before it had lifted to her face. Her heart started to thump giddily.

‘No … No drink, thanks,’ she refused, giving him a thin smile as she added deliberately, ‘I generally find that alcohol and business don’t mix. ‘

Giving a small shrug, Ran opened the dining-room door for her and waited for her to precede him inside. As she did so, Sylvie caught the clean, sharp scent of his freshly showered body and the giddying thump of her vulnerable heart became a frighteningly heavy ache.

‘I … I’ve brought the estimates down with me,’ she told him quickly, lifting the papers she was holding in front of him, but Ran shook his head.

‘After dinner,’ he told her dismissively, adding, ‘I generally find that good food and poor communication don’t mix.’

Poor communication. Sylvie gave him a fulminating look before taking the chair he had pulled out for her.

The salmon was every bit as delicious as Sylvie had imagined and so, too, was the home-made summer pudding served with fresh cream that followed it. The cheese they ate to finish the meal was made locally, Ran informed her, adding that he had been wondering if he might not produce something similar himself, but that he had decided the costs involved were prohibitive.

To have dinner alone with Ran like this would once have made her feel so excited, so … so thrilled because she had been so besottedly in love with him. Of course, she would hardly have been able to do justice to the meal because then her fevered imagination would have been thrilling her with images of the two of them together alone, after dinner, Ran taking her in his arms and …

‘I’ve asked Mrs Elliott to serve coffee in the library … ‘

The crisp, businesslike tone of Ran’s voice cut across her treacherous thoughts. Guiltily, Sylvie pushed them away, reminding herself severely of just why she was here.

‘Here is the separate estimate I asked for, for the work which needed doing here, and here is the receipt I obtained for that work.’

Her facial muscles rigid, Sylvie willed her hand not to tremble betrayingly as she took the papers from Ran and then looked at them. She was furious with herself for giving him the opportunity to put her in the wrong.

Her eyes strayed to the date at the top of the receipted invoice. She wasn’t going to give in yet. Standing up, she handed the papers back to Ran and told him dismissively, ‘What I can see is a signed and dated receipt, Ran.’

‘Showing that the invoice was settled several weeks ago …’

‘Purporting to show that it was settled several weeks ago,’ Sylvie pointed out stubbornly. ‘For all I know this date could have been written on the invoice last week … or …’ She paused meaningfully before adding with a triumphant smile, ‘Or even today …’

She had started to walk away when Ran stopped her, grabbing hold of her arm and swinging her round to face him as he exploded, ‘Are you really trying to accuse me of falsifying this receipt? For God’s sake, Sylvie, what the hell kind of man do you think I am?’

Pointedly Sylvie ignored his question and stared down at where he was still holding onto her arm instead as she demanded icily, ‘Let go of me, Ran.’

‘Let go of you …? Do you realise what you’re saying, what you’re accusing me of doing? You’re not a teenager any more, Sylvie, and if this is some kind of petty attempt to—’

‘No, I’m not.’ Sylvie interrupted him furiously. ‘I’m the Trust’s representative here at Haverton and as such it’s my job to protect the Trust’s interests and its investments … If I think that someone, anyone, is trying to cheat the Trust or misuse its funds, then it’s my job to—’

‘Your job …?’ Ran laughed savagely. ‘You sound very high-minded for someone who’s slept her way into her ‘‘job’’ via her boss’s bed.’

There was a second’s pause and then a white heat, a zigzag of pure fury and frustrated womanly pride, hit Sylvie like a bolt of lightning. Immediately she reacted in the only way her outraged female instincts knew, lifting her hand and slapping Ran’s face in furious rejection of his insult.

Sylvie didn’t know which of them was the more shocked—she who had delivered the blow or Ran who had received it. For a single beat of time they both stood completely still, staring at one another. Sylvie could feel her heart racing, she could see the white, slowly reddening imprint of her hand against Ran’s dark skin and she could see too the vengeful male fury darkening his eyes. Too late to regret her behaviour, or to turn and run; Ran was still holding onto her arm, and as she tried to pull away he dragged her towards him, his eyes glittering with fevered rage.

Sylvie knew, even before it happened, just what he was going to do. She was already closing her eyes and whispering helplessly, ‘No,’ as she felt the hard, bruising pressure of his mouth against her own.

To be kissed like this, in fury, in punishment, and with a blind, searing male desire to dominate, was something totally outside all her experience. Her body had no defences against it, no knowledge of how to deal with it. Panic and anger surged through her body. She was no helpless Victorian virgin, she was a modern woman, able to give as good as she got. Fiercely she returned the anger of Ran’s furious kiss. He was already prising apart her closed lips with his tongue, demanding entry to the intimacy of her mouth, not with the tender touch of a lover but with the forceful pressure of a warrior, a victor. Wildly Sylvie tried to evade him, but he was holding onto her too strongly and all her attempts to break free did was to bring her body into even closer contact with his. She still fought to break free, pummelling his chest with her fists and then, when that did no good and there was no longer any space between their bodies for her to do so, angrily raking her nails down his back.

Somewhere, deep down, in the murkiest of murky waters of her subconscious, lay the knowledge that this wasn’t just about the insult he had given her, nor her angry reaction to it; that this explosion of furious emotion this need to reach out and hurt him, to damage and destroy what was left of the love she had once felt for him, had its roots, its being, in something very, very different from mere insulted female pride.

‘Little vixen,’ she heard Ran muttering thickly against her mouth as he caught hold of her hand. ‘Your elderly lover might need the stimulus of having his back scratched raw when you make love but I certainly don’t.’

Shocked into awareness of what she was doing by his words, Sylvie went still.

Lloyd might not be her lover, but that didn’t really matter; it was the impact of what Ran had just said to her that hurt and wounded so badly, the fact that he was comparing the anger and mutual hatred they were both expressing with an act that, to Sylvie, was one which should be highlighted and hallmarked with tenderness and true emotional love. Suddenly all the anger drained out of her. She felt sickened, not just by Ran’s words but more importantly by what she herself had done. A vixen, Ran had called her, but when animals mated they did so for a specific purpose; their coming together was never an act of cruelty or cynical disregard for everything that sharing the intimacy of one’s body with another should be.

Sylvie could feel her eyes starting to fill with tears. Ran had pulled back from her to look at her, and, taking advantage of his slackened grip, she pulled herself free of him and started to walk quickly, if a little unsteadily, towards the library door.

Startled, Ran called out to her, following her out into the hallway, watching as she disappeared up the stairs. Should he go after her, apologise, explain …? That look he had just seen in her eyes had shocked him. It was more the look of a hurt child than a mature, experienced, worldly woman, and besides … There had been no call for him to make that remark to her about Lloyd. Her relationship with the other man was, after all, her own affair, even if he … God … For a moment there the feeling, the sharp dig of her nails into his skin through the fabric of his shirt, had made him ache so badly for the feel of her naked body beneath his own, the feel, the scent, the taste of her. And if he could have his time again … But what was the point in thinking about, reliving old memories, old mistakes?

He had done what he had thought was best at the time, the honourable thing to do …

CHAPTER SIX

WEARILY Sylvie looked at the luminous face of her watch. Half past one in the morning. She had been awake for the last hour, stubbornly courting sleep, angrily refusing to allow her thoughts to take control, to force her to remember.

She was too hyped up for sleep, too afraid to sleep just in case she … She what? Dreamed of Ran?

She looked across at the desk in front of the window. One of the small pleasures of living in the depths of the country was that one did not need to close the curtains at night. There was nothing Sylvie liked more than being able to see the night sky.

When her mother had first married Alex’s father and they had gone to live in his ancestral home, she had been overwhelmed at first by the darkness of the huge house. It had been Ran who had guessed her fears and apprehensions after he had found her sleepwalking that night. Ran who had been staying at the house instead of his cottage one weekend, ‘babysitting’ her in the absence of her mother, and who had taken her, not back to bed, but to his own room where he had made her a hot drink and talked to her, showing her the telescope he used to watch the night sky.

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