Beaumont Brides Collection (76 page)

As his hands reached out for her she let out a little shriek of fear and stumbled back against the chair. He caught her, his fingers biting into her arms as he stopped her from falling, steadied her.

‘Why, Claudia?’ he said, very gently. ‘Why do you think I’d do that?’ She shook her head, unable to answer, but he was insistent. ‘That’s the second time you’ve suggested I’m capable of hurting you.’ His brow was furrowed in a deep frown that brought his thick dark brows down into a straight line. ‘I don’t understand why.’

Neither did she. She didn’t believe it. He’d tried to protect her from the photograph, the only reason he’d shown it to her was because he was so concerned about her. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Gabriel. I know you wouldn’t hurt me.’

‘You’re sure? I brought you here so that you would feel safe. If you’re in the least bit uncertain I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.’

And finally that did it. The tears welled up and spilled over. She shook her head unable for the moment to speak. Without another word he put his arms about her, drawing her into the warmth of his body, holding her close against his chest as he would a frightened child, so that she could take comfort from the steady beat of his heart.

‘It’s all right, sweetheart, let it out. You’re just scared. Anyone would be.’

‘Yes, I’m scared,’ she admitted, closing her eyes, as if that would make the fear go away. ‘I just feel so alone.’

‘You’re not alone, Claudia,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘You won’t ever be alone again.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“YOU won’t ever be alone again.“
The words had come from nowhere, but he meant them. Claudia Beaumont had taken his cold, bitter heart and warmed it with her bright eyes, her teasing mouth. A heart that he had learned was as big as a house, despite all her efforts to keep that fact hidden.

He had fought it every step of the way, but with that unpremeditated declaration he knew that he had lost the battle, that he was hers, for better or worse. That he would be there for her, for as long as she needed him.

He knew it might not be for long. She needed him, but need wasn’t love and he wasn’t about to load her with guilt by selfishly declaring his own feelings.

She stirred in his arms and looked up at him, her eyes wet with tears, her lashes clumped together. He wanted to kiss them. And because he thought it would make her feel better, he bent and touched her lids, tasting the salt of her tears on his lips.

‘Gabriel?’ The way she murmured his name was like an intimate caress, her liltingly soft voice stroking him, stirring a response, an ache of longing.

‘Why don’t you go to bed, Claudia,’ he said, thickly. ‘You’ve had a rough day. I’ll be here if you need me.’ And he eased himself away from her before his reaction to the warmth of her body, the scent of her skin became too obvious to ignore.

As he stepped back she turned away from him, but not before a fleeting expression of sadness darkened her eyes and for one treacherous moment every part of him screamed that he had made a mistake, that she wanted him to hold her, wanted him to make love with her every bit as much he was hungering for her. But then she lifted her head and smiled.

‘You’re right. It’s been a bloody awful day and it’s time it was over.’

‘You’ll feel better after a decent night’s sleep.’

‘That’ll do it every time,’ she agreed, brightly and there was a bustle while she brushed her teeth, found her handbag and finally departed for bed.

But once she had gone, he stabbed at the dead ashes of the fire, taking his frustration out on the inanimate embers.

Why? She kept asking him why he was bothering with her. Now he was asking himself why he had fallen in love with her. He couldn’t come up with an answer to either question that made any sense.

Why would he put himself out for a woman he had actively disliked before he had ever set eyes on her? It wasn’t as if she had made any effort to change his opinion. On the contrary she had gone out of her way to reinforce it, flirtatious one minute, downright rude the next, eagerly courting the media even while she purported to despise it.

Yet all the time, underlying so much worldly cynicism, there was a little girl lost fragility that made him want to wrap her in cotton wool. He was sure it wasn’t part of the act. The Claudia Beaumont performance.

For a while she had fooled him and it had made him angry with himself for wanting her so much. Angry with her for being so desirable. She was a man-eater. But a beautiful man-eater and honesty forced him to admit that he was a willing victim.

When she had kissed him for the cameras he had thought he would explode. Yet when she had kissed him this evening if had been different. She had been different.

He poked at the fire again as he relived that moment when she had fallen apart. She hadn’t cried. Not then. Wouldn’t an actress have cried? Just a little, nothing too messy. But she’d fought tears and when later she had finally succumbed there had been nothing controlled or pretty about them. They had been real enough.

So, was the glamorous image something she put on for public consumption, little more than a disguise to hide behind?

Love was clouding his judgement and he shied away from answering himself, knowing that he wanted it to be the truth, knowing how easy it would be to fool himself into believing that she returned his feelings.

He dragged his fingers through his hair, shutting his eyes tightly for a moment to blot out the moment when he had held her, when she had raised her lips and kissed him with an almost childlike innocence. He needed to concentrate, although how he was supposed to do that when he could hear the springs squeak as she climbed into bed just a few feet above his head. There was only so much a man could take. It was definitely time for some fresh air.

He dropped the poker, straightened, flexing his aching knee and then quietly let himself out of the back of the cottage, standing for a moment on the step.

The night was clear and the newly risen moon was bathing the scene in sufficient light to make the use of the torch unnecessary. The lake, pink in the dying light of the sun, was now a smooth sheet of steel grey. Everything was perfectly still.

The brightness drew him down towards the small dock he had helped his father build years before, drawing him out along its length over the lake to stand finally a few feet above the water.

He knew he should be doing what he had encouraged Claudia to do, think. Try and work out what was happening. The plain truth was that he was finding it difficult to think about anything but her.

He rubbed his hand over his face. The fire had dried him out, leaving him feeling tight-skinned and hot. He needed was a shower, preferably a cold one; what he had was the lake.

It wouldn’t be the first time he had taken a night time dip and now, when his body was tormented with the kind of thoughts that seemed to burn continuously in his brain, seemed as good a time as any.

He turned to look up at Claudia’s window, half hoping to see her there, but there was no flicker of candlelight from behind the dark window and he imagined her lying in the big old-fashioned bed and wondered if she was restless too.

For a moment he thought he saw a movement, but it was just the curtain shifting in the light breeze, his imagination conspiring with his overcharged libido to show him what he wanted to see.

He wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or sorry, but he refused to dwell on it. Instead he reached up and catching hold of the collar of his shirt, he pulled it over his head.

*****

It was too quiet. Used to London, Claudia missed the constant, day-and-night drone of traffic to lull her to sleep. Or maybe it was her thoughts that were keeping her awake, disturbing thoughts of Mac lying in this bed, locked in his wife’s arms, the little bedroom filled with the soft murmurs of their lovemaking.

As her imagination began to work overtime it provoked feelings of such self-disgust in her that she threw back the cover and flew to the window, hanging onto the sill as, eyes closed, she drew deep breaths of fresh air down into her lungs.

His wife. Jenny.

It was terribly wrong to be envious of a dead woman, but she wanted Gabriel so much. For just a moment, when he had held her, kissed away her tears, she had been certain that he felt the same way. She had been fooling herself. He couldn’t wait to get away from her.

The click of a thumb latch being raised startled her out of the bewildering thoughts that raced through her head, thoughts she didn’t want, couldn’t handle, but refused to be blocked out and she swung round, hoping that she had been wrong, that Gabriel would be standing the doorway. But the door remained closed.

Everything was so quiet here that each sound seemed magnified and after a moment when her confused brain sent her heart rate rocketing with a heady mixture of excitement and desire, she realised that the sound had come not from behind her, but from below.

Peering down into the overgrown garden she saw Gabriel stepping from beneath the shelter of the eaves, his tall frame bleached by the moonlight, his dark hair touched with silver as he covered the ground noiselessly, heading for the lake and out onto the landing stage.

For a moment Claudia watched him, an awful longing welling deep inside her, a longing to be down on the dock beside him, to go to him, put her arms about him and attempt to offer him some comfort for the pain buried deep within him. To offer him her love.

But she couldn’t.

There was a barrier between them now. His lack of trust would always be there. It wasn’t as if he had come racing back to her side because he realised that he was wrong, that he had misjudged her. He had come back because something had made him uneasy. Because his conscience had pricked him.

Determined to pull herself together, not to spy on him as he wrestled with memories that had kept him away from the cottage for so long, she began to back away from the window. Then he turned to look up at her window and Claudia froze.

Had he seen her watching him in the darkness?

For a moment she remained like a statue and hoped she was hidden by the curtains. Her hope was apparently realised because after what seemed an age he turned back to the lake. But before she could make good her resolve to beat a retreat to the bed, he had raised his hand and in one fluid movement pulled his shirt over his head, dropping it at his feet. She remained perfectly still as he kicked off the soft desert boots he wore, peeled off his socks.

Claudia’s forehead wrinkled in a frown, then her hand flew to her mouth to stifle the small hungering sound that bubbled up from her throat. Her earlier shivers had had more to do with the thick walls of the cottage that kept out the August heat, more to do with fear than the ambient temperature. The breeze that brushed against her cheek, moulding the fine lawn nightdress to her figure, was warm and Gabriel MacIntyre was going to swim naked in his lake.

As if to confirm her thoughts he began to unfasten the buckle at his waist. She could hear the sharp slap of the leather as he tugged the end of his belt free and she listened intently for the telltale sound of the zip. Before it reached her, he had pushed his denims over his hips, discarding them and his underwear in one smooth, economical movement. Then, as he stepped clear, she caught her breath.

It was as if he was being revealed to her by layers.

Even on that first encounter, when she had mentally dismissed him as too rough hewn for her taste, Claudia had still been toe-tinglingly aware of the promise beneath the heavy olive drab sweater and combat trousers that he had been wearing.

When, on Sunday morning, he had been dressed in well cut casual clothes she had realised that he was more elegantly put together than first impressions had suggested. He might have shoulders like a steel girder, but he was tall, well proportioned and the toughness had seemed less obvious. And afterwards, in her dimly lit spare bedroom, when she had been offered a more telling glimpse of the hard torso, a stomach flat enough to iron on and the kind of taut buttocks that a girl’s fantasies were made of, a great deal more than her toes had tingled.

More than her toes were tingling now as he stood quite naked on the dock, hers to admire and enjoy at leisure, with every tantalising promise more than fulfilled.

He was awesome. A statue by Michelangelo, but deliciously, gloriously alive and far more beautiful than any of the pretty actors who had escorted her to premieres and parties.

She sank to her knees in front of the window, propping her chin on her arms to marvel at the way the light muscling of his back was sculpted and accentuated by moon shadow, and the deep indentation of his spine terminated in neat, firm buttocks. Then, as he turned to drop his wristwatch on his clothes, she had the briefest glimpse of the spattering of hair that arrowed down his flat belly to his loins, fluffing darkly...

She felt herself blushing at her shamelessness, but her gaze remained fixed to his body and when he turned back to the lake she let her glance trickle down the straight, well-shaped legs. Leg. He favoured one of them. Without his clothes it was easier to see why. Even the soft moonlight could not disguise the scar that jagged viciously behind his left knee and calf where the bullet had sliced through his flesh. Before she could register the extent of the damage he had executed a simple, elegant dive, scarcely raising a ripple on the surface of the water and disappeared from sight.