‘I said I was sorry…’
He took another step towards her and she tried to edge a little further away without actually running. Cool and controlled was good, running like a frightened rabbit was not.
Very easily, Abigail realised with rising panic, this could degenerate into something more than simply unpleasant. Ross Anderson was a tough man who went for the kill and he was accustomed to having his way with women much more sophisticated than she was. There was no point in flinging counter-accusations at him, or even in holding her hands up in horror at what had happened. And there certainly was no point in apologising further. He looked as though if she uttered another sorry he would throttle her.
She would have to be composed and she would have to try and defuse the situation. Later, alone, would be the time for angry debate with herself.
‘Look,’ she said quietly, ignoring the curl of his lips, ‘I’m very sorry things got out of hand.’
‘So you keep informing me.’
‘Do you have to loom?’ she snapped. ‘You’re making me very nervous!’ Stay calm, she told herself, and took a few deep breaths. ‘There’s no point in discussing this. I’m sorry…’
‘If you say that once more,’ Ross warned her, enunciating every syllable very carefully, ‘I will personally see to it that you have something to be sorry about.’
‘Am I supposed to be quaking with fear at that?’ she flung at him angrily, throwing composure to the four winds. ‘Because if that’s what you’re aiming at, then you’re way off course. A woman has every right to say no!’
He moved swiftly. One minute he was standing at a reasonable distance away, close but not too close for comfort, and the next minute he was towering over her, his black brows drawn together in rage and she discovered that breathing was not a function to be taken for granted. She was having a great deal of difficulty with it. She was also beginning to regret her spark of retaliation.
He circled her, as if looking at something distasteful. ‘I feel sorry for that boyfriend of yours. He’d have needed a sledgehammer to break through to you.’
That stung, and she didn’t say anything. In a protective gesture, she folded her arms around her breasts and lowered her head.
‘That’s nasty,’ she mumbled finally, and he raked his fingers frustratedly through his hair.
‘Oh, what do you expect?’ he muttered harshly. ‘Every time I come near you, you freeze.’
‘You shouldn’t be coming near me at all!’ Abigail flung at him. ‘You have a girlfriend! Have you forgotten? You never used to…It was never like this…We worked well together!’
She knew what she wanted to say and she knew that she was being inarticulate, but he understood because some of that tightly controlled rage began to dissipate.
‘Fiona and I are not married. I have no hold over her and she has none over me. If I were interested in that sort of possessive relationship, I would be married.’
That was not the impression Fiona had given her, Abigail thought, but this was neither the time nor the place to have a debate on the subject. In fact, there was no time or place when the subject could be conceivably discussed because it was none of her business and he was telling her as much with his tone of voice.
‘As for things being different between us——’ his mouth twisted ‘—they just are. Don’t ask me why, but they are.’
The air trembled between them. She was so aware of him that she was finding it difficult to think.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but whatever impression I gave, I do not want to jump into bed with you, or anyone else for that matter, because the chemistry is right at the time. That’s not for me.’
‘Are you afraid of sex?’ The question hung in the air and she didn’t know where to look. She knew, without doubt, that she would never be so mortified in her entire life. From thinking that she was a tease, which was bad enough, he now thought that she was a freak with deeprooted psychological problems.
‘I think I need to sit down,’ was all she said, and she didn’t wait for him to answer. She went across to the bed on legs that felt like pieces of wood, and sat down heavily.
‘I’ll understand if you no longer want me to work for you,’ she ventured into the silence.
‘Wouldn’t that be an easy way out for you?’ he said coolly. ‘If you don’t have to confront me on a daily basis, if you don’t have to face the fact that you’re attracted to me, then you could pretend that it was all some kind of aberration. Because that’s what you want, isn’t it? You don’t want to be confronted with anything that threatens to shake that aloof demeanour of yours.’
‘I don’t want to discuss this.’
He ignored that. ‘Life isn’t about avoiding strong emotions. And you still haven’t answered my question.’
‘Look, I’m not the sort who can make love to a man because my hormones are egging me on. I might be tempted, but in the end the temptation wouldn’t be worth the regret.’ She looked at him. ‘I know you probably wouldn’t understand, but that’s just how it is.’
He sighed and there was more impatience there than fury. The anger had abated.
‘You’re building castles in the sky,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘Over the years you’ve had it instilled in you that safety is the most important thing, but safety is dull, uninspiring.’
‘And danger isn’t for me.’
‘Not danger, excitement.’
‘I’ve had danger,’ she said bitterly, without thinking, ‘I’ve had damned excitement, and it was an experience I won’t ever repeat!’
‘Ah.’ He sat down next to her on the bed, and eventually she said in a stiff little voice,
‘And what does ah mean?’
Looking at him wasn’t a good idea, she decided, so she didn’t. But she couldn’t avoid seeing his hands, lightly clasped on his lap, with their dark fine hair and their graceful, powerful lines.
Every nerve in her body felt stretched with unbearable tension.
‘That man…’
‘Yes,’ she said rapidly, ‘that man.’ Suddenly her legs wanted to move and she stood up, hugging her arms around her, and paced across to the window to look down. Outside was the harbour, a dark black mass at this time of night.
He was waiting for her to carry on, and she did, in a voice that barely rose above a whisper.
‘You were right when you said that I left my last job because of an affair.’ She glanced at him with wary, antagonistic eyes. ‘Yes, I had an affair with Ellis Fitzmerton. I must have been out of my mind. We had been working closely for some time and one thing just seemed to lead to another.’ She gave him a defiant look but he remained silent. ‘I had never before done anything like that; in fact I had never before been attracted to a man like that.’
‘A man like what?’
‘He was charming, self-confident.’ She hesitated and thought that there were other, more appropriate adjectives she could find now to apply to him, but at the time she had been dazzled by the superficial. She had spent a lifetime being reminded of her limitations and Ellis had reached out and offered another glimpse of herself. The glimpse he had offered had looked bright and clever and attractive and it was only when reality had taken over that she had had the painful duty of seeing herself for what she was.
‘Empty,’ Ross said with an edge of acid scorn in his voice, and her head snapped up to look at him.
‘Yes, empty! I can see that now, but I was vulnerable then.’
‘And you’re not now?’ he enquired softly.
‘I’m not stupid. I was burnt once. I don’t intend to stray close to the fire again.’
‘So you got engaged to the first man who represented the opposite of that disaster of a man you got involved with.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’ He stood up and walked towards her and she held her ground. ‘Admit it, you never loved Martin Redman. He was an alternative that presented itself when you needed it.’
‘He is a very nice man.’
That had a familiar ring to it, she knew that she had defended him before in those same words, but Ross was staring at her, his mouth set, forcing admissions on to her.
‘You can’t judge the rest of the human race from one bad experience,’ he said, and that made her smile wryly.
‘No? Is that an order?’ She looked right into his eyes and felt a stabbing shiver of forbidden desire. It was almost a pleasure to fight it back. ‘I may not be a mental giant, but I’m not dimwitted enough not to realise that only a fool goes through life lurching from one experience to another, without learning lessons along the way.’ She looked at him steadily and when she spoke there was a hardness in her voice, ‘In other words, Mr Anderson, you may be an attractive man, but I am not going to sleep with you. You are not about to become mistake number two on my list of regrettable incidents.’
‘You can’t let the past control you, Abby,’ he said softly, ‘and you can’t escape from feeling, however much you’d like to.’ He reached out with one hand and stroked her arm, then the curve of her neck, then the soft swell of her breast.