Her head was suddenly pounding so hard that it hurt to stand, and for one horrible moment she thought she might faint. Forcing her feet to move, she sat down in the nearest seat even as somewhere inside her head she heard her own voice telling Arlo that she’d never passed out in her life.
Pressing her head against the window, she closed her eyes. Last night had been an admission of something beyond thought—the raw and inescapable hunger that seemed to have engulfed them both since that moment on the causeway.
It had been a moment of passion. A moment, not even a night. Only something had happened. Something had passed between them...
The carriage doors opened.
‘I think she’s got a cheek, talking to you like that.’ The woman’s voice floated over her head. ‘You should tell Mary. She’d give her what for—’
‘I don’t want to cause any trouble...’ A second woman, quieter, anxious sounding.
‘Frankie.’
The deep voice made her eyes snap open and, turning her head, she froze.
Arlo was standing beside her, his broad, muscular body effortlessly filling the carriage, his face austere and irregular beneath the harsh overhead lights.
She stared up at him wordlessly, her skin prickling with shock. He looked almost as stunned as she did, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing.
‘Is this how you want to leave things?’ he asked.
There was short, quivering silence as she stared at him wordlessly, stunned by the directness of his question.
‘No.’ Breathing out shakily, she shook her head. ‘No, it’s not.’
Something flared in his dark eyes and then he was reaching up and pulling down her suitcase. ‘Then come with me.’
* * *
This was not something he did, Arlo thought as he reversed out of the parking space and accelerated away from the car park. He did not chase after women and drag them off trains. It was a mistake on so many levels. He knew that logically and unequivocally—and yet here he was doing it.
It had taken two minutes.
Two minutes of his legs carrying his numb body forward before he had turned and headed back to the station past an open-mouthed Alan. And with each step he’d told himself that he could stop, turn around, go back to the car at any point.
But as soon as he stepped into the carriage and seen her sitting there that had changed. He’d spoken before he’d caught up with himself, the question fully formed on his lips, and by the time he’d considered the bigger picture they were walking back, past Alan.
The horse had well and truly bolted.
Or rather the train had left the station.
Maybe Frankie hadn’t considered the consequences until now either. It would certainly explain her silence, he thought, staring fixedly out through the windscreen.
He was still staring fixedly ahead as they strode back into the Hall, past an open-mouthed Constance and upstairs.
The enormity, the incredible stupidity of what he was doing, hit him like a wrecking ball as he walked into Frankie’s bedroom. At the station he had simply wanted to stop her leaving. That had been the endpoint. Now, though, he saw it was just the beginning.
Only of what?
Last night he had behaved recklessly, driven by a compulsion he hadn’t understood. But in some part of what could loosely be called his brain it had made sense. He had wanted Frankie, wanted to satisfy the hunger that had been eating at him ever since he’d found her in his bed.
If she hadn’t wanted him he would have walked away, of course. Only she had wanted him. She had turned to flame beneath his fingers and now his body was hard and aching for more.
He didn’t know why. All he knew was that they weren’t finished. And that it was the pursuit of their unfinished connection that had brought them here.
‘There’s another train in four hours.’ Still holding her suitcase, he swung round to face her. ‘If you’ve changed your mind about coming back.’
‘I haven’t,’ she said quietly.