In Bed with a Stranger

apron crackled as she moved past him to the door of Lewis’s room, pausing with her hand on the doorplate. ‘His family’s here now. You’ve looked after these boys for five months, Major,’ she said gently. ‘It’s time you looked after yourself.’

Kit got a brief glimpse of the inert figure in the bed before the door swung shut again. He exhaled heavily, guilt squeezing the air from his lungs.

Home.

Sophie.

The thought of her almost severed the last shreds of his self-control. He looked at the clock again, realising that although he’d been staring at it for hours he had no idea what time it was.

Almost six o’clock in the evening, and he was almost three hundred miles away. He stumbled to his feet, his mind racing, his heart suddenly beating hard with the need to get to her. To feel her in his arms and lose himself in her sweetness and forget …

Behind him a door opened, pulling him back into the present. Turning he saw Lewis’s girlfriend come out of the room, her thin shoulders hunched, her pregnant stomach incongruously out of proportion with the rest of her. Slumping against the wall, she looked appallingly young.

‘They won’t say anything. I just want to know if he’s going to be OK.’ She spoke with a kind of sulky defiance, but Kit could see the fear in her face when she looked at him. ‘Is he?’

‘Wing Commander Randall’s the army medic here. According to him, he’s over the worst now,’ Kit said tersely. ‘If soldiers survive the airlift to the camp hospital their chances of survival are already ninety-seven percent. He’s made it all the way home.’

Her scowl deepened. ‘I don’t mean is he going to survive. I mean is he going to be OK? I mean, back to normal. Because I don’t think I could stand it if he wasn’t …’ She broke off, turning her face away. Kit could see her throat working franticallyas she swallowed back tears. ‘We don’t even know each other that well,’ she went on, after a moment. ‘We’d not been going out long when this happened.’ A sharp gesture of her head told him she was referring to the pregnancy. ‘It wasn’t exactly planned but, as my mum says, it was my own fault. Just got to get on with it now.’ She looked at Kit with dead eyes then; inky tears were running down her face. ‘And what about this? If he’s … I dunno … injured, I’m stuck with it, aren’t I? But whose fault is that?’

Mine, Kit wanted to say. All mine.

What right did he have to forget that?

Sophie’s eyes snapped open.

She lay very still, staring into the soft summer darkness, all her senses on high alert as she listened out for a repeat of the sound that had woken her.

Or maybe it hadn’t even been a sound. Maybe it was just a feeling. A dream perhaps? Or an instinct …

She sat up, struggling from sleep, the hairs rising on the back of her neck. The blood was swishing in her ears, but outside she could hear the usual sounds of the city at night—traffic on the King’s Road, a distant siren, a car moving through the square below.

And then something else, closer, inside the house. A muffled thud, like something being dropped, followed by the soft, heavy tread of someone coming slowly up the stairs.

Sophie froze.

Then, with a muttered curse, she kicked off the covers and scrambled to her feet on the bed, looking frantically around for a weapon and finding herself fervently wishing she’d taken up cricket or baseball. Her heart was galloping. It was no good—there was nothing remotely suited to fending off an intruder within reach, and she realised that she should simply have rolled off the bed and hidden underneath it …

A shape appeared in the doorway, filling it, just as Sophie’s

pounding heart seemed to have filled her throat. It was too late to move now, too late to do anything but brazen it out.

‘Don’t move,’ she croaked. ‘I have a weapon.’

With what sounded like a sigh the intruder took a step forwards.

‘Where I’ve just come from we don’t call that a weapon. We call that a TV remote.’

His voice was hoarse with fatigue, sexy as hell and instantly familiar.

‘Kit!’

It was a cross between a shout of jubilation and a sob. In a split second Sophie had bounded across the bed and he caught her as she hurtled into his arms, wrapping her legs tightly around his waist as their mouths met. Questions half formed themselves in her brain, bubbling up then dissolving again in the more urgent need to feel him and touch him and keep on kissing him …

He lowered her onto the bed without breaking the kiss, and his mouth on hers was hard and hungry. Sliding her hands into his hair, she felt grit. He smelled of earth and antiseptic, but beneath that she caught the scent that made her senses reel—the dry cedar-scent that was all his own, that she had craved like a drug.

‘I thought …’ she gasped ‘… you weren’t home … until tomorrow.’

His lips found hers again.

‘I’m here now,’ he rasped against her.

Now that they were both together on the bed, that was all that mattered.

Desire gushed through her, slippery and quick. Laying her down on the bed, he straightened up, towering over her for a second. Shadows obscured his face, but in spite of the darkness she caught the silvery glitter of his eyes and it sent another wave of urgent need crashing through her. Rising up onto her knees, she pulled off her T-shirt, stopping with

her mouth the low moan he uttered as her naked body moved against him.

‘Are you all right?’ she murmured moments later, fumbling for the buttons on his shirt with shaking fingers.

‘Yes.’

It was a primitive growl that came from low in his chest. He pulled away, half turning as he yanked his shirt from his trousers and wrenched it over his head. In that moment the light from the street filtering through a gap in the curtains caught his face and Sophie gasped.

‘No—you’re hurt. Kit, your face—’

She got to her feet, reaching for him, taking his face between her hands and stroking her thumbs with great tenderness over the lacerations on his cheekbones until she felt him flinch away.

‘It’s nothing.’

His hands slid around her waist as his mouth came down on hers again, and the feel of his bare chest, hard against her breasts, was enough to banish the anxiety that had leapt in her, along with every other thought in her head that wasn’t concerned with the immediate need to wrap herself around him. To feel him against her and inside her until there were no joins left and the distance of the last one hundred and fifty-four days was forgotten.

His hands were warm on her back, moving across her quivering skin with a certainty and steadiness of touch she couldn’t possibly match as she struggled to undo his belt, impatient to get rid of the last barriers that stood between them. She gave a gasp of triumph as she managed to work the buttons free. Swiftly he kicked off his desert combats and they fell back onto the bed.

None of it was as she’d planned. There was no champagne, no sexy silk nightdress, no sense of seduction, no conversation, just skin and hands and a need so huge she felt as if it might break her wide open.

There would be a time for talking. Later. Tomorrow.

This was the best way she knew of bridging the spaces between them, of telling him what she wanted him to know, of reaching him. Just like the first time they’d made love, on the night he’d found out that Ralph Fitzroy wasn’t his father. There had been nothing she could say then because it was too big, too raw, too complex, but for a while it had been flamed into insignificance in the heat of their passion.

His body was rigid with tension, his shoulders like concrete beneath her fingers. They were both shaking, but as he entered her she felt some of the tightness leave his body as if he too felt the wild, exhilarating rightness that surged through her. Her arms were locked around his neck, their foreheads touching, and the feel of his breath on her cheek, his skin, was almost enough to make her come. Her body shivered and burned, but fiercely she held back, tightening her muscles around him, holding on like a woman in danger of drowning.

With a moan he slid his arms beneath her back, gathering her up and pulling her hard against his chest as he sat up. Sophie wrapped her legs around his waist, and the increase in pressure was enough to tip her over the edge. She let go, arching backwards and gasping as her orgasm ripped through her.

He held her, waiting until it had subsided before pulling her back into his arms and burying his face in her neck. She could feel him inside her still, and slowly she rotated her pelvis, stroking his hair, holding him tightly until he stiffened and cried out her name.

Together they collapsed back onto the bed. Cradling his head against her breasts, Sophie stared up into the darkness and smiled.

CHAPTER TWO

KIT woke suddenly, his body convulsing with panic.

It took a few seconds for reality to reassert itself. It was light—the cool, bluish light of an English morning, and the sheets were clean and smooth against his skin. Sophie was lying on her side, tucked into his body, one hand flat on his chest, over his frantically thudding heart.

The fact that he wasn’t actually walking along a dust track towards a bridge with a bomb beneath it told him he must have slept. After a hundred and fifty-four largely sleepless nights it felt like a small miracle.

He shifted position slightly so he could look into Sophie’s sleeping face, stretching limbs that had stiffened from being still for so long. His heart squeezed. God, she was so lovely. The summer had brought out a faint sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and put a bloom into her creamy cheeks. Or maybe that was last night. The erection he’d woken up with intensified as he remembered, and he looked at her mouth. Her top lip with its steep upwards sweep and pronounced Cupid’s bow was slightly swollen from his kisses.

It was also curved into the faintest and most secretive of smiles.

Deeply asleep, she looked serene and self-contained, as if she was travelling through wonderful places where he could

never hope to follow, full of people he didn’t know. No godforsaken, mine-strewn desert roads for her, he thought bleakly.

The light filtering through the narrow gap in the curtains gleamed on her smooth bare shoulder and cast a halo around her hair. Picking up a silken strand, he wound it lazily around his finger, thinking back to one of the last times he had lain here beside her and asked her to marry him.

What a fool. What a selfish, stupid fool.

Anything could have happened. He thought of Lewis’s girlfriend; her terrified eyes and her swollen stomach. We don’t even know each other that well … If he’s … injured, I’m stuck with it, aren’t I? What if it had been him instead of Lewis? They’d only had three weeks together. Three weeks. How could he have expected Sophie to stand by him for a lifetime when he barely knew her?

The gleaming lock of hair fell back onto her creamy shoulder, but he left his hand there, holding it in front of his face and stretching his fingers. They shook slightly, prickling with pins and needles, and he curled them into a fist, squeezing hard.

Harder.

The bones showed white beneath his sun-darkened skin and pain flared through the stretched tendons, but it didn’t quite manage to drive away the numbness, or stop the slide-show that was replaying itself in his head again. The heat shimmering over the road, the hard sun glinting off windows in the buildings above. That eerie silence. The way everything had seemed to slip into slow motion, as if it were happening underwater. His hands trembling uncontrollably; the wire cutters slipping through his nerveless fingers as the voice in his earpiece grew more urgent, telling him that a sniper had been spotted …

And then the gunshots.

He sat up, swearing under his breath. Dragging a hand

over his face, he winced as he caught a scab that had begun to form on one of the cuts across his cheekbone.

He was home, and back with Sophie. So why did it feel as if he were still fighting, and further away from her than ever?

Sophie stopped in the kitchen doorway.

Kit was sitting at the table with the pile of letters that had come while he’d been away, drinking coffee. He was wearing jeans but no shirt, and his skin was tanned to the colour of mahogany. Sophie’s stomach flipped.

‘Hi.’

Oh, dear. Having leapt out of bed almost as soon as she opened her eyes, brushed her teeth like a person on speeded-up film and even slapped a bit of tinted moisturiser onto her too-pale cheeks before running downstairs, it was ridiculous that that was all she could manage. Hi. And in a voice that was barely more than a strangled whisper.

He looked up. The morning light showed up the mess of cuts and bruising on his face, making him look battered and exhausted and beautiful.

‘Hi.’

‘So you are real,’ she said ruefully, going across to fill the kettle. ‘I thought I might have dreamed it. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d done that while you’ve been gone—dreamed about you so vividly that waking up was like saying goodbye all over again.’ She stopped, before she said any more and gave herself away as being a terrifying, crazy, obsessive fiancée. To make it sound as if she were joking she asked, ‘Did they let you off a day early for good behaviour?’

‘Unfortunately not.’ He put down the letter he was reading and pushed a hand through his hair. It was still wet from the shower, but she could see that it had been lightened by the sun, giving the kind of tawny streaks only the most expensivehairdressers could produce. ‘A man in my unit was badly injured yesterday. I flew home with him.’

‘Oh, Kit, I’m so sorry.’ Filled with contrition for thinking such shallow thoughts, Sophie went over to stand beside him. ‘How is he?’

‘Not good.’

His voice was flat, toneless, and he looked down at the letter again, as if the subject was closed. On the other side of the kitchen the kettle began its steam-train rattle. Sophie touched his cheekbone with her fingertips.

‘What happened?’ she said softly. ‘Was it an explosion?’

For a moment he said nothing, but she saw his eyelids flicker, as if he was remembering something he didn’t want to remember; reliving something he didn’t want to relive.

‘Yes …’

His forehead creased into a sudden frown of pain and for a second she thought he was going to say more. But then the shutters descended and he looked up at her with a cool smile that was more about masking emotion than conveying it.

Sophie pulled out the chair beside him and sat down, turning to face him. ‘How badly hurt is he?’

‘It’s hard to tell at the moment,’ he said neutrally. ‘It looks like he’ll live, but it’s too early to say how bad his injuries will be.’ His smile twisted. ‘He’s only nineteen.’

‘Just a boy,’ she murmured. The kettle boiled in a billow of steam and hissed into silence. Aching for him, Sophie took his hand between hers, feeling the hard skin on the undersides of his fingers, willing him to open up to her. ‘It’s good that you stayed with him. It must have made a huge difference to him, having you there, and to his family, knowing that someone was looking after him …’

She trailed off as he got abruptly to his feet, giving her no choice but to let go of his hand.

‘Coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’ Hurt blossomed inside her but she didn’t let it

seep into her tone. ‘Sorry—there’s only instant. I was going to go shopping today to get things in for when you came back.’

She thought of all the plans she had made for his homecoming; the food she was going to buy that could be eaten in bed—olives, quails’ eggs, tiny dim sum and Lebanese pastries from the deli around the corner—champagne and proper coffee, piles of croissants and brioche for breakfast. And the X-rated silk nightdress, of course. Now they all seemed to belong to a silly, frilly fantasy in which Kit took the part of the Disney Prince, doe-eyed with adoration.

The reality was turning out to be slightly different.

‘What on earth have you been living on?’ he said, his voice an acerbic drawl. ‘I was going to make you breakfast, but the cupboard seems to be bare.’

‘I usually eat on the go,’ she said lightly, getting up and going over to the designer stainless-steel bread bin. ‘But look, there’s bread. And …’ she opened a cupboard and pulled down a jar with a flourish ‘… chocolate spread.’

Splinters of guilt lodged themselves in Kit’s throat. She was making a good attempt to hide it but behind the show of nonchalance he could tell she was hurt. She’d tried to reach out to him—to talk to him like a normal human being, and he’d behaved as if she’d done something indecent.

It must have made a huge difference to him, having you there, and to his family, knowing that someone was looking after him …

How she overestimated him. In so many ways.

He looked at her. She was putting bread into the toaster and her glossy hair was tousled, her legs long and bare beneath an old checked shirt she must have taken from his wardrobe. He felt his chest tighten with remorse and desire. He wasn’t brave enough to shatter her illusions about him yet, but he could at least try to make up to her for being such a callous bastard.

Gently he took the jar from her and unscrewed the lid. He peered inside and then looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

‘You actually eat this stuff?’

She shrugged, reaching for a knife from the cutlery drawer. ‘What else would you do with it?’

‘I’m surprised,’ he said gravely, taking the knife from her too, ‘that you need to ask that …’

Looking at her speculatively, keeping his face completely straight, he reached out and undid the buttons of her shirt. He felt her jump slightly at his touch and she let out a little sound of surprise. But as he took hold of her waist and lifted her onto the countertop her green eyes glittered with instant excitement.

Slowly, with great focus he dipped the tip of the blade into the jar, loading it with soft, velvety chocolate. The moment stretched as he turned the knife around in his hand, then turned his attention to her, moving the edge of her shirt aside to expose her bare breast.

It took considerable self-control to keep the lust that was rampaging through him from showing on his face, or in his movements. His hand shook slightly as he cupped her warm, perfect breast. Behind them, the toast sprang up in the toaster and she jumped, giving a little indrawn breath. In one smooth sweep, Kit spread the chocolate over her skin.

Abstractly, as he parted his lips to taste her, he thought how beautiful it looked—the chocolate against the vanilla cream of her skin. But then all thoughts were driven from his head as he took her chocolate-covered nipple into his mouth and felt her stiffen and arch against him.

His tongue teased her, licking her clean. The chocolate was impossibly sweet and cloying and it masked the taste of her skin, so without lifting his head he reached behind her and turned the tap on, running cold water into the cup of his hand. Straightening up, he let it trickle onto her, watching her eyes widen in shock as the cold water ran down her skin.

‘Kit, you—!’

His mouth was on hers before she could finish. Sitting on the granite countertop, she was the same height as he was and he put his hands on her bottom, pulling her forwards so that her thighs were tight around his waist, her pelvis hard against his erection.

God, he loved her. He loved her straightforwardness, her generosity. He loved the way she seemed to understand him, and her willingness to give him what he needed. He didn’t have to find words, not when he could show her how he felt this way.

Her arms were around his neck, her fingers tangling in his damp hair. He was just about to lift her up, hitch her around him and haul her over to the table where he could take her more easily when there was a loud knock at the front door.

He stopped, stepping backwards, cursing quietly and with more than a hint of irony, given his choice of word.

‘Don’t answer it.’

It was tempting, so tempting, given how utterly, outrageously sexy she looked sprawled on the kitchen countertop, her wet shirt open, her mouth bee-stung from his kisses. He dragged a hand over his face, summoning the shreds of his control.

‘I have to,’ he said ruefully, heading for the door. ‘It’s breakfast. I ordered it when you were sleeping, and since they only agreed to home delivery as a special favour …’

Left alone in the kitchen, Sophie pulled her shirt together and slid shakily down from the worktop, her trembling legs almost giving way beneath her as she tried to stand. Through the thick fog of desire she was dimly aware of voices in the hallway—one Kit’s, the other vaguely familiar. Dreamily she picked up the chocolate spread and dipped her finger into it, closing her eyes and tipping her head back as she put it in her mouth.

‘In here?’

The vaguely familiar voice was closer now and she jumped, opening her eyes in time to see an even more familiar face come into the kitchen; so familiar that for a moment she thought it was someone she must know from way back—a friend of Jasper’s, perhaps?

‘Hi. You must be Sophie.’

Grinning, the man put a wooden crate stacked with aluminium cartons on the table and held out his hand. Sophie shook it, feeling guilty that she couldn’t quite place him and managing to say hello without making it obvious she couldn’t remember his name.

Kit came in carrying a bottle of champagne.

‘Thanks, I appreciate this.’

‘No big deal—it’s the least I can do considering you’ve spent the last five months being a hero. It’s good to see you back in one piece—or nearly.’

He gestured to the shrapnel wounds on Kit’s face. Sophie noticed the tiny shift in Kit’s expression; the way it darkened, tightened.

‘How’s the restaurant?’ he asked smoothly.

‘Good, thanks, although I don’t get to spend as much time there as I’d like, thanks to the TV stuff. I just got back from filming for a new series in the US.’

Horror congealed like cold porridge in Sophie’s stomach as her eyes flew back to the man. She now realised why he was vaguely familiar. Suddenly she was aware that she was standing in the same kitchen as one of the country’s top celebrity chefs wearing a wet shirt that barely skimmed her bottom and clung to her breasts, eating chocolate spread with her finger straight from the jar.

Surreptitiously she put the jar down and tried to shrink backwards behind the large vase of flowers she’d bought in Covent Garden. Luckily the Very Famous Chef was engrossed in a discussion about business with Kit as they headed back

towards the door, but he did pause in the doorway and look back at her.

‘Nice to meet you, Sophie. You must get Kit to bring you to the restaurant some time.’

Not on your life, thought Sophie, smiling and nodding; not now he’d seen her like this. As soon as he’d gone she picked up the jar of chocolate spread and was eating it with a spoon when Kit came back in.

‘You could have warned me,’ she moaned between spoonfuls.

‘Sorry,’ Kit drawled, ‘but I was pretty distracted myself.’

‘He’s a friend of yours?’

‘That depends on your definition of friend. I know him reasonably well because his restaurant is just around the corner from here and I’ve been there enough times over the years.’

Sophie took another spoonful of chocolate spread. People didn’t go to restaurants on their own. She pictured the kind of women Mr Celeb-Chef must have seen with Kit in the past, and the contrast they must have made with her, now.

Kit was looking at the foil trays in the crate. ‘Put down that revolting sweet stuff; we have smoked-salmon bagels, blueberry pancakes, almond croissants, proper coffee, oh—and this, of course.’ He held up the bottle of champagne. ‘So—do you want to eat here, or in bed?’