An Innocent Affair (6 page)

‘Then it was stupid of you to come here,' Hope pointed out. The farm was quite high up, and the weather was always worse here than down in the town.

‘I said I'd come, so I have,' he said, with a note of finality that she found extremely frustrating.

‘Even though it's totally unnecessary?'

He flicked her an assessing look. ‘I'll hang this in the hall to dry, shall I?'

‘Why ask me?' she called after him. ‘You seem to be quite at home.'

He returned moments later. ‘Don't look for hidden agendas, Hope,' he said bluntly. ‘You made your position quite clear and I don't have the inclination or energy for coercion. So you can stop looking at me as if I'm about to leap on you,' he said drily.

‘That's a relief,' she responded flippantly, to cover the disturbingly ambiguous feelings this statement inspired. So she only had her own base urges to worry about now. The thought gave her scant comfort.

‘You do look tired.' The lines of exhaustion that bracketed his mouth worried her. There was a grey tinge to his skin too, and the dark smudges beneath his eyes suggested that he hadn't had enough sleep. ‘Sit down.' Why did I say that? she wondered in an agony of self-recrimination. You should be showing him the door, not creating an atmosphere of welcome.

Alex looked as if he wondered why too, but rather to his own surprise he followed her suggestion. ‘I had a meeting in Birmingham this morning and I had to make a detour on the way back. As usual, at the first sign of a snowflake the whole road system is grinding to a halt. It was one of those days when you have to drive defensively. That weird section of society who feel they're immortal were out in force. Suicidal tendencies don't begin to cover it. I also had to change a tyre on the hard shoulder, which was the finishing touch to a very frustrating day.' He moved his hand and it nudged her wine glass. Quick reactions stopped the contents from spilling.

He might be tired, she reflected, but he isn't slow. I'm sure the last thing he wanted to do was come here. It was terrible to be designated a boring chore. I expect he's longing for his own hearth. He obviously works too hard, she decided with a frown.

‘This is your seat.' He made as if to move.

‘No, it's all right. I'll sit here.' The back of her knee made contact with the sofa. ‘Do you want some wine?' The offer came out in a rush. Silently she despaired of her behaviour. A little chink of vulnerability in his armour and she was getting all mushy and protective. Alex is the last person in the world who needs protecting, she reminded herself sternly.

His slanted brows shot towards his hairline. ‘To celebrate our truce? I'm all for that.'

‘Don't push it, Matheson,' she growled, without any real conviction. When his eyes smiled he really was incredibly attractive. He was just incredibly attractive full stop.

‘Let me get the glass,' he said as she reached into the bureau cupboard.

‘Don't you dare. I'm getting tired of telling people I'm not helpless.'

‘No, but you are vulnerable. Thanks,' he said as she handed him the wine glass. ‘How many times were your parents cut off last winter?'

‘I don't know; I wasn't here.'

‘But you'll agree they were?'

Hope nodded reluctantly. ‘We usually are.'

‘Then I can perfectly understand your mother's concern; it's about time you did too. I'm all for independence, but I've no great admiration for stupidity!'

‘Are you calling me stupid?'

‘Let's not start name-calling.' He looked at her over the top of his glass and Hope viewed his pacifism with suspicion. ‘Shall we just take it as read that you're as obstinate as a mule?' he continued smoothly, ignoring her snort of outrage. ‘I'm the closest neighbour you've got if anything goes wrong, and it's very little inconvenience for me to spend ten minutes every day to check things.' He made it sound as though she was making a fuss about nothing.

‘The Wilsons are closer,' she pointed out pedantically.

‘As the crow flies,' he agreed, ‘but they'd have to trek across four fields to get here if the roads were blocked. They are already looking after the livestock, aren't they? Do you want to impose on them even further?'

‘I still think it's totally unnecessary.' She already knew she'd lost. It was awful! She was going to see him every day for the next three weeks. Every day she'd be the chore he had to do at the end of the day. Every day she'd be in a state of breathless anticipation by the time he arrived. All that emotional turmoil, and for what? I can't cope with all this anticlimax, she thought bleakly.

‘Fortunately,' he said wearily, closing his eyes, ‘I'm not too bothered about what you think.' His big body slumped in the armchair.

She'd had a puppy once that could do that—fall asleep
without warning—often in the strangest locations. This was the first time she'd seen a person do it.

‘Don't fall asleep!' Panic sharpened her voice.

‘What…? God, no.' He rubbed his hands over his face roughly and shook his head ‘Sorry. It must be the heat.'

‘It doesn't matter,' she responded gruffly. She couldn't help feeling fascinated by the youthful cast to his features as he'd hovered on the brink of sleep. All the usual hard wariness had momentarily vanished. Don't go confusing him with your puppy, Hope, girl, she told herself firmly. ‘I'm sure you've got things to do.' Things involving slender female bankers probably, she thought darkly.

‘Sleep.' He had the stamina and the discipline to get by with very little of this commodity, but just lately he'd been pushing it.

‘You should eat,' she told him sternly. ‘I was just about to—' She stopped herself in the nick of time. Hope wasn't used to being distant and unfriendly. The warmth of her natural personality kept peeking out at all the wrong moments.

Alex was watching her, a trace of amusement in his eyes. ‘What were you about to do?'

‘Eat.' She gave a sigh of defeat. ‘You can have some if you like. There's plenty.' That was an understatement. Her mother hadn't adjusted her quantities when she'd filled the freezer with ready-to-heat meals. ‘The dogs will have it if you don't.'

Obviously she categorised him in the same file as canines; that did wonders for his ego. ‘Your hospitality has a warmth and charm all of its own,' he responded gravely. ‘I'd be delighted to dine with you.'

‘Don't expect it every night.'

‘I'll try and keep my appetite in check.'

‘Humph,' she snorted, turning her face way so he
couldn't see her blushing like a teenager at the sly
double entendre.

 

‘This is delicious.'

Hope nodded, pleased he appreciated her mother's cooking. She laid her fork to one side and watched with fascination as he made substantial inroads into the food.

He looked up and intercepted her stare. ‘The stuff they fed me at lunchtime was pretty, but not very substantial.'

‘And there's a lot of you to fill.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Do you cook?'

‘When I've someone to cook for. It's too much bother just for one.'

Hope nodded agreement, and wondered how often he had someone to cook for. ‘Have you always lived at the Mill?' Considering the Mill House was barely a mile from the farm, it was strange she'd never been inside.

Alex pushed his plate to one side and leaned back in his chair. ‘Dad bought it at the same time he did the old warehouse. He never got around to converting it until the board booted him out as chairman.' Despite the bland delivery Hope saw the tell-tale tightening of the small muscles around his mouth. ‘Before then we lived over the job, so to speak. There's a flat at the factory. Dad and Eva had a place in town, of course, but that was a child-free zone.'

‘Why did they do that? Boot him out?'

‘You're very curious tonight.' The expression in his eyes was close to hostility, and she was surprised when he saw fit to reply. ‘Matheson's is and always has been a profitable venture from the outset. The banks loved it—it was an investment that paid off. The only fly in the ointment was Dad—he just didn't fit into their world. He didn't have the right school tie; he wasn't one of
them. His style could be aggressive and he trod on a lot of people's toes—they didn't forget.

‘When a freak set of circumstances gave them the chance to cast doubt on his ability to run the company they milked it for all it was worth. Conspiracy is a hard word, but I think on this occasion it's justified. The last thing he expected was to be stabbed in the back,' he reflected grimly. ‘That's what made it worse somehow.'

‘But you're the boss now?'

The expression on his hard features had a savage element that made her shudder involuntarily. ‘I decided I was going to reclaim the firm the day my father came back home a broken, disillusioned man. I did it, and possibly there's some flaw in my character but I enjoyed it—I enjoyed making the people who had destroyed him taste their own medicine.'

The ruthlessness in him had never been more apparent than at that moment. He would make a truly devastating enemy. This neither repelled nor attracted Hope; it was just part of what he was.

‘I didn't mean to be nosy,' she said softly. ‘It's just considering you're, in your own words, our closest neighbour, I don't know much about you. You're not really the sort of neighbour who drops in for tea, biscuits and a cosy gossip.'

‘Dad was never really accepted as part of the community. I don't suppose it occurred to me to do it.'

‘Are you trying to tell me your father was some sort of social outcast?' she said sceptically.

‘He may have made a fortune, but to some people he never stopped being the ex-miner with the funny accent.'

‘That's ridiculous, Alex. People aren't like that,' she protested.

‘You're wrong, Hope, that's
exactly
what people are like,' he said harshly.

‘It seems to me,' she retorted, ‘that it's you who has the problem. My mum and dad have never judged anyone on their background in their lives,' she responded indignantly.

The shake of Alex's head conceded this. ‘It was partly the old man's fault. He did have social aspirations of the most transparent kind, and marrying Eva gave him a pathetic sort of desperation to please her. It was the sort of people he desperately wanted to be accepted by who never really did so. In business his talent won him respect, but I think he tried too hard to fit in socially. The right clothes, the right car, the right school for his son and even eventually the right wife.'

‘And that embarrassed you?'

The glance that Alex shot her was tinged with shock. ‘If I'm honest, I think it did,' he admitted ruefully. At a very early age he'd vowed never to be called a social climber. People would have to accept him on his own terms or not at all.

‘And that's why you never make the first move. If anyone wants to be your friend
they
have to make the effort. Don't you think you're a bit big to be afraid of rejection?'

She held her breath. She was taking a bit of a risk. These revelations had given her insight into Alex Matheson's character. His aloofness was suddenly a lot easier to understand. She relaxed as the flare of anger in his eyes was swiftly replaced by a grudging amusement.

‘You play dirty, Hope.'

‘It depends on the company I keep.' This unfortunate comment reminded her of the sort of company Alex imagined she kept, and the humour faded from her face. ‘There's no pudding,' she said abruptly. It wasn't going to do her any good to build up some cosy rapport. The
fact Alex despised her was going to get in the way whichever way you looked at it.

‘Watching your weight?' His eyes dropped to skim over the lush curves of her figure.

‘An occupational hazard—along with the drugs, debauchery and general dissipation.'

‘Are you trying to tell me that's not the case?' The way his lip curled scornfully made her blood boil. It was so unfair.
Life's
unfair. Cut out the self-pity, Hope!

‘Are you trying to tell me there's not a lot of corruption and underhand dirty dealing in the wonderful world of big business?'

‘Are you questioning my integrity?' he asked stiffly.

He really couldn't see the double standard; it was amazing. ‘I wouldn't do that, Alex, unless I was very sure of my facts,' Hope shot back swiftly.

There was a startled pause. ‘That's a very neat way of calling someone a narrow-minded bigot,' he breathed admiringly.

If the cap fits, Mr Matheson, dear. ‘I'm working under the constraints imposed by your being my guest. Mum was always a very liberal parent, but she has some very strict rules about things like that.'

‘And have you always kept your mum's rules in mind, Hope?'

‘Once I got past the rebellious stage.'

‘I had a rebellious stage, too,' he admitted, rather surprisingly.

‘You can remember that far back?' she gasped admiringly. A deeply wicked grin revealed the dimple in her left cheek. ‘Did it involve motorbikes—the large, noisy variety?'

‘Amongst other things.' His nostrils flared. Did she know that the husky intonation in her voice was sheer torture?

Hope gave a soulful sigh. ‘It was an unfulfilled ambition of mine during my dissident period. Young men with motorbikes were strictly forbidden, you see,' she explained. ‘I think it was more the motorbikes than the young men that worried Mum. She didn't want any of her daughters ending up in plaster.' She regarded her plastered leg with a quizzical smile. ‘Not infallible, my mum.'

‘And are you still attracted by forbidden fruit?' Alex's brooding regard had darkened with desire as he watched her animated face, the graceful gestures of her elegant hands. She was incredibly beautiful, but it wasn't just that—it was the aura of warmth she emanated. Mysterious feminine allure and child-like honesty was a bewitching combination. A combination that was eating away at his better judgement.