Shadow of Love (15 page)

If he didn’t like women in casual clothing, so much the better. Maybe he would reconsider his plans for their future together. It was a slim possibility, but she clung to it like a drowning person hanging on to a flimsy, slippery raft. A dab of her favorite perfume finished her outfit, the soft fragrance of sweet irises and ferns soothing her strained nerves.

She needed much more soothing than that, she thought as she regretted getting ready so fast. With almost an hour to spare, she found herself pacing restlessly, too distracted to do anything more than straighten the already pristine place. For once it would be nice to be more of a slob, she thought sarcastically, recalling Sophie’s unholy mess that aggravated their cleaning lady each and every time. At least she would be busy, instead of having too much time to think.

As it was, she found herself peeking through her curtains every few minutes, checking nervously if his car had already arrived. In a way, she wished it to come, eager to put an end to the torture of guessing his next move. He made no secret of the fact he had a very good idea of how and what he expected to happen, leaving little room for negotiation.

Unfortunately, punctuality had proven to be one of his traits, she thought half an hour later, her heart going to her throat at the sight of a sleek black car pulling to the curb. Exactly at noon to the last minute, the phone rang, and, still glued to her window, she jumped at the sound.

‘
Emily, my driver has arrived to pick you up.’ Smooth and cool, his voice sounded as near and intimate as if he were standing next to her in her living room. She had to suppress a nervous giggle at the absurdity of the way he handled things. Was he monitoring his driver? Ordinary people would leave it to the driver to ring her doorbell or call her to come down, she thought with sick amusement. But then again, James was nothing like ordinary people, was he?

‘
Are you there?’ Was it a hint of exasperation that she detected in his voice? She had to fight the urge to explore that possibility by remaining silent. It wasn’t wise to antagonize him even more, she decided as she answered him before hanging up and leaving her flat for downstairs.

As she pushed the outer door open and felt the cool moist air bathe her face and revive her senses, she wondered why she hadn’t heard a word from Sophie. It wasn’t like her sister to remain silent for that long, especially on the day after an event that mattered.

A horrible thought entered her brain, her feet slowing as she approached the waiting car. Was she with James? Had he spent his night with her, making sure all went according to his plan? It shouldn’t really matter, she told herself firmly as she smiled at the polite driver who held the door open for her. Only it did. It made her feel dirty and sleazy to think that she was on her way to join the man who most probably had made love to her sister with cold-blooded focus.

It was too late to ask the driver to stop and get off without causing a scene. She could just imagine the man’s confusion if she demanded him to pull over and let her out. Who knew, maybe he wouldn’t even do it? Maybe he was blindly devoted to James, his order to bring in his newest lover enough to make him deaf to any objections she might have. She wasn’t ready to put that theory to the test.

Instead, she sat in the luxurious, tan leather seat, her eyes going over the elegant interior that screamed money. If the rest of James’s possessions resembled his car, she wasn’t surprised Sophie fell in love with him so fast and so furiously. The thought was ugly, and she regretted it the moment it came to her head, but it was true. Her sister loved luxury in all areas of life, saying more than once how important it was to her to keep up her high standards. The Rolls Royce definitely fit into her category of adequate money, the exquisite details in the interior making it a far cry from transportation used by regular people.

To distract herself from her less than cheerful thoughts, she glanced out the window, gasping in surprise as she noticed them leaving the main road and taking a turn into the countryside. When James mentioned them having lunch together, she imagined a restaurant or a bar downtown. She had underestimated him once more. The road ahead was leading away from the city with its crowds of people around them, which would have prevented him from doing anything uncivilized. The road, weaving its way through yellowed, stubble-covered fields framed by somber lines of bare trees and hedges of bushes, gave her no security.

‘
Where are we going?’ She asked the driver, giving up the pretense of being well informed. It didn’t matter if he found it weird that she had no clue where she was meeting her lover.

‘
To the Black House.’ If he was surprised by her ignorance, he hid it well, his wide smile and cheerful eyes friendly and innocent.

She had to stop herself from asking him if she supposed to know about it. She had lived in the area all her life and had never heard of a restaurant like that. Being in the restaurant business made it unlikely she would have overlooked it.

‘
Mr. James bought it just last year,’ the driver continued, oblivious to her confusion. ‘Had it renovated and ready for moving in, a grand place, I tell you.’

He must have felt that he had overstepped the boundaries, for he hushed suddenly, his cheerfulness evaporating.

‘
I mean, it’s a lovely property,’ he added, sounding prim and proper. ‘Nobody bought it for a long time, the way it was run down and falling apart. The owners asked a lot, as far as I know.’

‘
It’s his house?’ She asked weakly, the implication of being ushered to some God-forsaken place in the countryside finally sinking in. ‘I thought he lived in London.’

‘
He does, most of the time. But with his mom moving back from the States and all, he wanted to have a place for her away from the city and all that noise. And with her career, too.’

She didn’t ask any follow-up questions, too worried to be able to think about anything but the fact she was in the middle of nowhere, soon to be alone with the man who detested her almost as much as he did her sister. Even the name of his home sent shivers down her spine, her eyes searching the landscape for something large, dark, and forbidding to come out of the mist at any moment.

The fields through which they were driving ended abruptly, transitioning into a forest of thick dark oaks and fir trees that cast shadows over the narrow two-lane road. Even the still-golden and red leaves hanging on to most of the gnarled, twisted branches didn’t manage to disperse the perpetual darkness, making her think of the description of the Old Forest in
The Lord of the Rings
. It must have been something similar, she thought, her eyes widening as the forest finally ended, opening into a wide clearing with a brook glistening to one side.

‘
That’s how the house got its name, Miss,’ the driver said, noticing her cautious looks. ‘Now, some of the forest around had been cut down and logged over the years, but in olden days it was everywhere, making it real dark. So they christened the house “The Black House.”’

The house stood there in the middle of the clearing, the stony façade and dark green roof far less forbidding than what she expected. It was old—at least a couple of hundred years, if not more. The clean classical lines and geometric symmetry of the windows and doors made her think of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the wide sweeping staircase leading to the impressive two-winged entrance just Begginsing for horses and a carriage to be waiting to take its inhabitants to the ball. The left side of the house was hidden behind scaffolding, a dozen or so people and tools waking her up from her fantasy. A renovation was going on, she realized with relief. He could hardly be too nasty with all those workers swarming around.

The car pulled to the staircase and the driver turned to her before opening the door with old-fashioned politeness.

‘
Here we are, Miss. Mr. James will be somewhere in the back, as far as I can tell. He was busy with the workers in the lower gardens as I left to pick you up. They’re setting up the studio pavilion for his mom there, and it isn’t going as well as planned, let me tell you that much.’

Maybe it was his way of reassuring her that her lover would pick her up himself if he weren’t so tied up, she thought warmly, appreciating the older man’s empathy. He must have noticed how on edge she was during their ride to the home and was trying to make her feel better, honestly believing that she was disappointed not to see Mr. James. Obviously he thought a lot of him, judging by the respect coloring his voice each time he mentioned his name. It wasn’t as if he was afraid of him, she thought, his proud voice betraying his weak spot for his employer. He genuinely liked him.

She got out of the car, her legs stiff from her tense position. Too tense to relax, she had barely moved in the half hour of their drive. Glancing up to the façade of the house, she hesitated, not sure what to do next. She had to do something, she realized, catching a few cautious glances the workers threw her way. She walked slowly to the side of the house free of scaffolding. She would go to the back instead of climbing the wide staircase and banging on the impossibly impressive main door. Maybe James was trying to make it difficult. If so, she would disappoint him, the solid, cobblestone path leading around the house giving her hope to arrive somewhere useful in the end.

She wasn’t disappointed.

She would remember it in years to come, the moment when she turned the corner, the tall hedge of yews that guarded the sides of the house opening into a vast, sun-filled space that positively took her breath away. All she could think was how absolutely beautiful, even now with the season of blooming almost over. Masses of tiny purple asters and golden Maximilian sunflowers filled the lower garden, where the formality of manicured lawn and clipped boxwood relaxed into a typical English garden, the meadow flittering with late autumn butterflies and bees drunk with the sweet nectar of the thousands of flowers. She noted the blood-red foliage of numerous Japanese maples shading the path leading down from the house toward the lawn, red, yellow and fiery orange contrasting beautifully with the still-green grass. Rhododendrons and azaleas with their leathery, dark green leaves guarded the steps going from the terrace, making her think how beautiful it must have been in the spring.

Construction was going on in the lower garden, a smallish, rectangular building with large windows and a roof matching the main house rising from the surprisingly unaffected ground. A small group of men stood next to it, their heads bent over a large sheet of paper she imagined to be a blueprint of the building. She was too preoccupied watching them, her heart thudding loudly in her chest as she imagined James standing there with them, to notice anything else.

So, it came to her as a surprise as she heard a voice, warm and amused, calling her name from a totally different direction.

‘
Here you are, darling.’ She spun around, her eyes widening as she saw James walking toward her across the grass, accompanied by two men. He looked different. The elegant suit had been replaced with a pair of old jeans and a plain grey sweatshirt, his feet covered with simple running shoes that were nothing like the handmade Italian shoes she remembered from the party. His dark hair was ruffled by the fresh breeze that moved the tops of the trees and sent showers of colorful leaves to spiral gently to the ground.

And yet, he was the same. She could see the steely resolve behind the deceptive warmth of his dark eyes, his heart-stopping, beautiful smile not quite reaching his careful and assessing gaze.

She didn’t get too far with her observation. With just a few steps, he was at her side, the two men left a few meters behind. Before she could do anything, a strong arm came around her shoulders pulling her to him with one effortless motion. Suddenly they were too close, his hands molding her body to his tall, muscular frame. Shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, it was an embrace of lovers, she thought as her face heated in embarrassment. His dark head bent lower, the intent to kiss her so obvious, her heart stopped. She had to stop him, was her last sane thought before his mouth brushed her lips, surprisingly gentle and slow, moving maraudingly from one corner to the other. It was a kiss of a lover, confident and unhurried.

She had been kissed before, some of her memories better than the others. Never one to fall easily for any of the boys, she found it utterly disappointing how little it affected her to be physical with them on one of those awkward dates that still haunted her memory. Only Peter had managed to break through the wall of her shyness and nervousness, making her think for the first time what it would be like to be with a man in the true meaning of the phrase. His kisses and caresses had cajoled her into a totally new territory, his patience to wait for her to come around making it an easy choice to say yes to his advances. But then Sophie came along, her sexual expertise and breathtaking beauty snatching away any affection he might have had for Emily.

And yet in those brief seconds when she felt James’s mouth moving against her stiff lips, tantalizingly warm and persuasive, she knew that whatever she had experienced before didn’t really matter. His touch branded her in a way that was too alien and too new to be analyzed, all her senses attuned for this one crazy moment in time of nothing but the sheer sensation of pleasure. Her whole body welcomed it, dismissing the urgent calls of her brain that it was wrong and dangerous. She should have pushed him away, she thought dazedly as she felt her lips moving on their own volition, shaping themselves around the impossibly firm, mobile mouth that wrecked havoc on her senses. Kissing him back was a bad idea, a horrible one.