‘Upstairs, Campion. Unless, of course, you get a thrill out of watching men strip off.’
Her skin burned. He couldn’t have thought of a more cruel way to taunt her.
All the way back she had avoided looking at his body, but now she couldn’t help it. She could feel the heat burning up under her skin as he turned his back on her and deliberately started to remove his sweater and shirt. Her mouth went dry. She ached to be able to reach out and touch him, to see if his skin felt as warm and male as it looked. And then she realised that Guy was turning round.
With a small, choked cry, she fled upstairs.
She had a bath, washed her hair, dried it as best she could with a towel, grimacing at the tangle of curls that hung on to her shoulders. Pulling on her bathrobe, she gathered up her wet clothes and headed back to her bedroom.
As she walked in, she saw that Guy was standing with his back to her, staring out of the window. Like her, he was dressed in a towelling robe. His legs beneath its short hem were bare and brown. Her own toes curled protestingly into the carpet. She didn’t want to see him like this. It made it all so much harder.
He turned round abruptly and stared at her, and instinctively she tugged at her robe and wished that she had been able to do something more sensible with her hair.
‘We have to talk…’
Of course. She ought to have expected that.
‘There’s nothing to talk about, Guy,’ she said wearily. ‘You needn’t worry. I didn’t take what you said seriously.’
A muscle twitched in his jaw.
‘Like hell! You took it seriously enough to walk out of her and damn well nearly kill yourself.’
Kill herself? Did he actually think…?
‘That was an accident. I walked out in a temper, I admit, but you don’t think I actually…’
Guy pushed his hand into his hair. He looked tired.
‘No, no, of course not. But you must see that we can’t go on like this. I think it would be best if I left…’
Oh, God! But wasn’t it what she had been expecting? For the sake of her pride, if nothing else, she mustn’t let him see how she felt; she mustn’t let him guess at the pain exploding inside her. She opened her mouth to make a cool, composed response and then, to her horror, she heard herself crying out bitterly, ‘Do you really think I’m so much of a fool that I believed you, Guy? Did you honestly think I had deluded myself into believing that you wanted me? You’re quite safe, you know. I never had any intention of asking you to prove that you weren’t lying.’
‘What…’
He was looking at her rather strangely, with a different grimness round his mouth, and a glimmer of something in the back of his eyes that made her stomach kick dangerously.
‘Just what in hell are you talking about? You may not be a fool, but you certainly have the lowest self-esteem of any woman I’ve ever met.’
The softness in his voice unnerved her. He had turned round and was watching her, and she had the curious sensation of being trapped and defenceless.
‘I’d hardly call it low self-esteem to realise that an attractive, virile man is extremely unlikely to be consumed with desire for me,’ she said proudly, determined not to let him see how much the admission hurt.
‘Then what would you call it?’ Guy demanded, without taking his eyes off her face.
‘Reality,’ she told him firmly. ‘You said you were going to leave…’ She wanted him to go quickly, before she broke down and begged him to stay. If she did that… She tried to breathe, and felt her whole body quiver with pain.
She turned her back on him, and so it was a shock to feel his hands on her arms, dragging her round to face him. He was breathing hard, as though he had been running. And he looked angry, furiously angry. Her heart kicked in her chest, and she shivered beneath a frisson of sexual need.
‘That was before,’ he told her cryptically. ‘God, Campion, I’ve never known a woman like you. Have you really no idea what you are, what you’re doing to me? All this time… At first I thought—’ He shook his head and continued after a pause. ‘There has to be a way to get through to you.’
Still holding on to her, he looked round the room. Before she could protest, Campion found herself dragged in front of an old-fashioned Victorian pier-glass which threw back to her their full-length reflections. He dwarfed her in height and in breadth. He made her look small and frail. With her hair tumbling around her shoulders, she looked different, even to herself.
‘Look at yourself,’ he commanded her huskily, dragging the robe from her body, exposing her nudity, not just to his gaze, but also to her own. Before she could react, before she could cry out in protest, he was shrugging off his own robe.
‘Look at us,’ he demanded softly. ‘And look at what you do to me.’
He stood without touching her, watching the colour crawl up under her skin as she hurriedly looked away from the open arousal of his body.