‘Right.’ She found the sight of those long legs utterly distracting. Best to sidetrack her thoughts. She glanced curiously out of the window at the flat, empty landscape whizzing by. ‘Why choose to live in such an out-of-the-way place?’
Sam changed gear. ‘Well, I like the country and I need the isolation. Space and peace and quiet. These days I only go to London when it’s absolutely necessary. Most people seem to labour under the misconception that literary agents spend their whole lives swanning around the world in the lap of luxury and pulling off film deals, when they’re not lurching from boozy party to boozy party, that is.’ He shot her a swift glance. ‘What do you think I spend most of my time doing?’
Having sex, she wondered wildly, going hot with just the thought of it. ‘Er—reading?’
‘Exactly!’ he enthused, pleased by her perception. Women were notoriously hopeless at understanding his job. He threw her another glance and saw that she was blushing. ‘Why have your cheeks gone all blotchy, Fran?’ he asked, with cruel candour. ‘Surely you don’t find the idea of books sexually exciting?’
‘Well, some, of course,’ she parried. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said softly, thinking that this visit was getting more interesting by the second. ‘Ve-ry exciting. Maybe we should compare choices some time? We could even have a private reading of erotic literature while you’re here, what do you say?’
She suspected that he could make a train timetable sound erotic, if he read it aloud! ‘I doubt there will be the time for literary analysis,’ she said crushingly. ‘So why don’t you stop wasting time and tell me about the sort of party you want for your mother instead.’
He threw her an innocent look. ‘But I thought that was your department? To advise me. You had very definite ideas about the Valentine Ball, as I recall.’
‘Balls are different—you can generalise.’ She swept on, unwilling to dwell on an evening which still had the power to make her feel uncomfortable. ‘Birthday parties have to be t
ailored to the person they’re for. So you’ll have to tell me something about your mother.’
He slowed down as they reached some traffic lights. ‘Well, she’s quite a lady,’ he said, smiling.
The trouble was that the longer she spent with him, the harder it was to stay indignant. And harder still to accept that this was the man who had—by his own admission—robbed her friend of her virginity on a one-night stand. Yet a man who described his mother in such a fond way was the kind of man you couldn’t help warming to. If he had raved on and on about her, she might have thought that he was a ‘Mummy’s Boy’ and if he’d expressed nothing but dislike she would have had him down as cold and unfeeling. He’d managed to gauge it just right.
‘Go on,’ prompted Fran.
He turned up the narrow lane which led to his house. ‘She was an actress—in fact, she still is. She does the odd voice-over and the occasional television commercial.’
‘Would I have heard of her?’
‘I don’t know. You might. Her stage name was Helen Hart and she used to work in children’s television in the very early days—’
‘Helen Hart!’ Fran’s face broke into a smile as she remembered tumbles of curls and a mobile mouth which could contort itself into all kinds of funny expressions. Helen Hart was Sam’s mother! ‘Gosh! Didn’t she used to be Rolly the rag doll on “Tea-Time for Tots”?’
Sam grinned. ‘Aren’t you a little too young to remember that?’
‘Of course I am!’ she said severely. ‘But it’s a television classic! They’re always showing those old black-and-white clips, and most people know Rolly’s special tune, even if they weren’t born when she used to sing it!’ Her voice began to bubble over with enthusiasm. ‘And, of course, she must have a birthday cake with Rolly on the top—no question.’
He thought how infectious her smile could be. ‘I don’t see how. They probably wouldn’t be able to produce it at the local bakers—not unless you drew them a picture,’ he said gently. ‘It was so long ago.’
‘You’re probably right.’ Fran smoothed back her already smooth hair. ‘So I’ll just have to make it myself, won’t I? When is she arriving?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon.’
‘It’ll be tight—but I’ll manage it.’
The car was crunching up the drive towards his front door now and Fran felt fear and excitement all mingled up with this odd sense of her body feeling like it belonged to someone else.
Her clothes, which were good-quality clothes she had worn and felt comfortable in many times before, suddenly seemed all wrong. He looked so casual, and she looked so uptight.
She felt like a rat in a trap with the constricting roll-neck sweater enveloping her face like a ruff and the camel trousers all scratchy against her legs. Her face was still flushed and hot and her hair felt too-tight in its restricting pins. She found her fingers were itching to creep up and loosen them, and yank them out so that the glossy, golden-brown waves fell in a liberated cascade all the way down past her shoulders.
‘Here we are!’ Sam stopped the car and saw her rosy cheeks and her frowning profile and wondered why she was so uptight. Was it because she could feel the sexual tension closing in on them like a storm brewing, the same as he could?
Bizarrely, he found himself asking, ‘Do you always wear your hair up?’
Fran turned round, vexed by a question which somehow managed to sound as personal as if he’d just asked her whether she always wore a bra! ‘Why?’ she questioned acidly. ‘Does it bother you?’
Crazily, he wanted to tell her that, yes—it bothered him a great deal. That he would never know a full night’s sleep until he had seen and felt the silk of that hair lying all over his bare chest. He swallowed down the desire and tried to make the subject sound scientific. ‘It would just be interesting to see what it looks like down.’