One Reckless Night (10 page)

 
Their coming together was almost leisurely, a slow, lingering enfolding. Zanna felt almost weightless in his arms, her hair floating on the water like a mermaid's as she surrendered herself. And at first the pleasure was gentle too, like the advance and reluctant ebb of a midsummer tide. Until, suddenly, the seeking became urgent, the swift ferocity of desire carrying them away, overwhelming them so that they were drowning in each other, mouths frantic, arms and legs entwined as their todies strove for satiation.

 
And then the final wave lifted them, engulfed them, and threw them, gasping and crying out, onto a shore where, dazed and shaken, they found a kind of peace waiting for them.

 
She awoke slowly, and lay, momentarily disorientated, staring around her. Then sat up abruptly, in something close to panic, as she registered the unfamiliar room, the rumpled bed-and her own nakedness. And, most salient of all, the body of the man beside her, totally relaxed in deep, unmoving sleep.

 
For a moment she was completely still herself, gazing down at him as the first shock waves began to resound through her mind. And as she began to remember in detail a wave of shamed, incredulous heat swept through her body.

 
Was it possible that she-Zanna Westcott-had really allowed this to happen? That the cool shell she'd built around herself and believed to be impregnable had been so easily shattered-and by a stranger, at that. A man she'd only just met and certainly had no reason to trust. A village mechanic, for heaven's sake-a caretaker to whom she wouldn't have given a second thought in normal circumstances.

 
Dear God, she thought, swallowing. I must have gone mad.

 
But ever since she'd come to this place, she seemed to have lost touch with reality, she reminded herself, as if she'd been bewitched, held in the toils of some spell. Or was she simply making excuses for her own inexplicable, unforgivable loss of control?

 
Whatever, she was awake now, and back in her right mind. And her overriding need was to get out of this bed, out of this house and safely away before he woke too.

 
Slowly, and with immense care, she began to ease herself towards the edge of the bed, her eyes raking the room for her clothes. They seemed to be all there, littered jarringly across the carpet, apart from her jacket, bag and shoes, which were still downstairs, if yet another appalling memory served her correctly.

 
Zanna collected her things together, one frightened eye fixed on the bed and its occupant still, thankfully, dead to the world.

 
Please, she prayed silently, let me get out of here. Let me not have to face him.

 
The phrase 'in the cold light of day' had suddenly assumed a new and terrifying meaning.

 
The bedroom door opened noiselessly under her hand. She'd intended to dress in the bathroom, but the evocative scent of bath oil, mixed with the more acrid odour of candle-wax stopped her in her tracks on the threshold.

 
No, she couldn't go back in there, she realised. The memories it aroused were too new, too raw-too potent to bear. She huddled into her clothes on the landing, then tiptoed down the stairs, listening intently for sounds of movement from the bedroom she'd just left.

 
But her luck seemed to be holding. As she retrieved the rest of her belongings and let herself out by the back door the house remained shrouded in silence.

 
Of course, it was still very early. There was no one immediately visible as she gingerly unlocked the side door at the Black Bull and let herself in, although she could hear the distant sound of voices and a clatter of crockery from the kitchen regions.

 
Just in time, she thought, going up the stairs two at a time, praying she wouldn't meet Trudy Sharman on the way. Her room was just as she'd left it, and if her luck held nobody would ever realize she'd not spent the night there, she told herself as she rumpled the sheets and dented the pillow.

 
She combed her hair, pulling it back fiercely into its usual strict confinement at the nape of her neck, trying not to wince as she fastened the ribbon back where it belonged. Trying to forget how it had looked tied round her throat.

 
She splashed her face and hands with water, then applied a dusting of the solid make-up base she favored. Lipstick in hand, she paused. Because her mouth looked different, pink and swollen beyond the constraint of its usual cool contours. Her eyes too were shadowed, looking back at her with a knowledge as old as time. A stranger's eyes, she thought as she replaced the lipstick, unused, in her bag. A stranger's face.

 
She left the room, and went downstairs.

 
'Your bill already?' Trudy Sharman sounded surprised and disappointed. 'But surely you'll have some breakfast? It is included in the price.'

 
Zanna shook her head. 'I need to make an early start. I have appointments today-people to see.'

 
That sounded like her usual confident tone, with no giveaway signs of the sick trembling inside her. The pub was up and running for the day now, and every time a door slammed or a footstep sounded Zanna was on tenterhooks, scared to look over her shoulder in case Jake was there. Watching her. Waiting for her.

 
She paid the ridiculously small amount requested with cash, thanked Mrs Sharman, said, mendaciously, that she'd been more than comfortable, and went out to her car, trying not to run.

 
Well, he said he'd fixed it, she rallied herself as she slid behind the wheel. Now she could only hope it was true.

 
She turned the key in the ignition, and the engine- the traitor-purred into instant life, just as if it had never been away.

 
It wasn't until the village sign had been passed and she was heading back to the motorway that Zanna realized she'd been holding her breath.

 
Now all she had to do was go back to the hotel and collect the rest of her belongings. Then she would do what she should have done in the first place and return to London.

 
She'd taken a step back into the past and it had proved a dangerous country. Her wild-goose chase had ended in disaster, and she couldn't pretend otherwise.

 
Jake had got her if not actually drunk at least the worse for alcohol, and seduced her. A sordid story, and hardly unique, but she could arrive at no other explanation for her total loss of control. Nor make any other excuse either.

 
But at least he doesn't know who I am, she placated herself.

 
Susie Smith had been left behind in Emplesham, sloughed off like an outgrown skin, and she should be grateful for that. Grateful that she could at least vanish without trace and without recriminations, that she could erase the last disastrous twelve hours as if they had never happened and resume her life as normal. Or what passed for normality... For one searing moment her mind was invaded by an image of Jake as she'd last seen him, the lithe body that had been the tender, passionate, untiring instrument of her pleasure, relaxed at last in exhausted slumber against the pale sheets.

 
They had stumbled back to bed, still wrapped in the huge fluffy bath sheets they'd used to dry each other in hushed and tender intimacy, and later made love again, she remembered, starting with laughter and champagne and ending in a kind of fierce, mindless desperation. As if they had both known it was the last time.

 
She imagined him waking-reaching for her and finding the bed empty beside him. And she felt her heart lurch in anguish and the car slow as her foot automatically reached for the brake.

 
After which he would no doubt shrug, write her off as the one that got away and resume his life too, she reminded herself in savage self-derision, accelerating away again with renewed determination. She wouldn't be missed for long. There would be the pretty redhead, or some other 'Susie' to console him.

 
She closed her ears to the small voice in her mind asking how she was going to find consolation.

 
I'm my father's daughter, she thought. I'll make out.

 
*
   
*
   
*

 
Further reminders that she was Gerald Westcott's daughter awaited her at the hotel. Having failed to find her at home, her father had left a number of increasingly brusque messages at reception.

 
'Sir Gerald was concerned that you could not be contacted yesterday evening, Miss Westcott,' the receptionist told her, her eyes sharp with curiosity.

 
Zanna smiled coolly, 'I've been visiting friends and decided to stay over.'

 
'But you'll be checking out today?' The girl was already looking for Zanna's account on the computer.

 
'No, in the morning.' Zanna returned, her tone clipped. 'In the meantime, please hold all calls.'

 
She turned away, biting her lip. Her defiant reaction had been instinctive, but probably unwise. After all, it had been the assumption mat she existed only to dance to her father's tune which had originally led to this fiasco, she reflected bitterly as she rode up to her suite in the lift.

 
The impersonality of her surroundings, which had previously been an irritant, now seemed oddly comforting. A good place to lick her wounds and generally recover her composure, she told herself.

 
She stripped off her clothes, shivering at the beguiling fragrance of rose and jasmine still clinging to her skin, and took a shower, treating it as a ritual cleansing, washing away Jake-the memory, the scent, the touch of him-for ever.

 
After all, she could not allow one act of foolishness to colour her entire life, she thought angrily.

 
She put on her nightdress, climbed into the smooth, impeccably made bed, and fell asleep almost at once.

 
It was late afternoon when she woke. She sat up slowly, pushing her hair back from her face, trying to clear her head.

 
She'd get dressed, she thought, then order some tea from room service to revive her. And she wouldn't skulk in this room all evening either. She'd book a table in the restaurant. Take charge of her life again.

 
After she'd made the necessary calls, she chose a pair of smartly cut cream trousers from the small selection of clothes she'd brought with her, topping them with a silk shirt the color of sapphire. Then she sat down at the dressing table and brushed her hair till it gleamed.

 
Her tea would be arriving at any moment, so she reached for her bag, searching for her coin purse in order to tip the waiter.

 
As soon as she opened the bag, she knew that something was wrong. The purse, her wallet and credit card folder were all there, together with the usual jumble of diary, tissues and keys, yet a familiar bulkiness was missing.

 
And then she saw the gaping pocket and her hand went to her throat. She said aloud, 'Oh, no-my photograph album.'

 
She turned the bag out onto the dressing table, scrabbling frantically through the jumble of contents, but the leather folder was nowhere to be seen.

 
She tried to think back-to decide when she'd had it last. She'd glanced through it in her room at the Black Bull before going down to dinner last night, but she'd zipped it safely away again. She could swear to it.

 
On the other hand, she couldn't remember feeling it there when she'd reached into her bag for her make-up, just before this morning's precipitate flight.

 
So she must have lost it either at the dance-or, more disturbingly, at the house. Whichever it was, it was gone for good. Because she could not-dared not-take the risk of going back to look for it.

 
Sudden defeated tears pricked at her eyes and were fought back. Perhaps it was for the best, she thought as she slowly replaced her things in her bag. Perhaps it was time she cut her ties with the past.

 
And whatever spell had bound her to Emplesham, she thought sombrely, was now well and truly broken.

 
CHAPTER SIX

 
ZANNA arrived back at her flat the following afternoon. The red light was blinking furiously on her answering machine, but the only messages were from Sir Gerald. As she pressed the rewind button it occurred to her how pleasant it would have been to have found a call from someone else-a girlfriend, perhaps, suggesting a meal out or a visit to the cinema. The kind of normal weekend activity that most of her contemporaries enjoyed as a matter of course.

 
It brought home to her suddenly how isolated, and indeed how humdrum, her life usually was these days. Unless she dined with her father she generally ate alone, and spent at least part of her weekend working.