That Tender Feeling (2 page)

‘Do that. Drive carefully.'

‘Will do. Give my love to Hannah.' Hannah was the sister who lived with Miles and acted as his housekeeper.

Ros spent the day packing and notifying anyone that she felt should be notified of her move north. Jarvis came round in the evening. Again, he tried to win her over, but she shook her head and declared adamantly, ‘No, I've made up my mind. I've got to get away for a while.'

‘What a fool I've been,' he said.

‘The fault is never all on one side, Jarvis.' Now that her first surge of anger had subsided, she could see the situation through fairer eyes. ‘It will do us good to be apart for a while, give us the chance to reassess our feelings. You'll know whether or not you'll be satisfied with just me. And if I do decide to sell the cottage, after all, at least I'll have had the satisfaction of living there for a spell. That's something I've got to get out of my system.'

‘I'll miss you,' he said broodingly.

Not a word to the effect of ‘How will you cope on your own? Will you be lonely away from the life you know, cut off from all your friends?' Just that selfish—and was she standing back and taking her first detached view of him because she amended that in her mind to
typically
selfish ‘I'll miss you.'

‘Jarvis, if you meet someone else or even decide that Glenis is the one for you, remember that you are now a free agent. But you must understand that the same counts for me. I also will regard myself as being without ties.'

Poor Jarvis, even though he was out of favor, she felt sorry for him. She realized that he expected his woman to meet certain requirements and that, in terms of these, she had quite a lot going for her. More than any man she knew, he appreciated good food, and as cooks go, she was considered to be among the best. He thought a woman should be decorative. And even while making the most cruelly candid assessment of her overall looks, which were admittedly not in Glenis's league of beauty, she couldn't deny that she had her good points. Her hair had the sheen of copper, with leaping red fires in its silky depths. Her gray eyes had chameleon qualities. In certain lights or in anger, they turned green. Her nose was neat—someone had once described it as deliciously pert; her mouth was full and warm, giving more than a hint of her true nature. Despite the fact that she was a trained cook who tucked in generously to the products of her profession, her figure was, although femininely curved, as lithesome and trim as if she starved on lettuce leaves. Even the restraint that Jarvis deplored in her manner had its nicer side. If she was sometimes less warm with him than he would have liked, he made no bones of the fact that her coolness to other men met with his wholehearted approval.

Jarvis was not showing approval now. On the contrary, he was looking most displeased. Now that her anger was on the wane, his was smoldering to the surface.

His handsome brow was tight as he said, ‘Hasn't it occurred to you that my letting you catch me like that might have been a Freudian slip? Good grief, Glenis isn't the first woman I've looked at since we got serious. But last night's blowup was the first spark of jealousy you've shown. It could be that I was beginning to think you didn't care. If nothing else, it's proved one thing to me, that you do.'

But did she? Wasn't that the whole crux of the matter, what she was really going away to find out? Had it been jealousy, or had she perhaps felt something else? Had she felt that she was being laughed at behind her back? Had she also objected to being made a fool of? If she'd been jealous, could she drag herself all those miles away from him, leaving him open to temptation? Jarvis was an extremely good-looking man. Blond hair, clean, wholesome, with perfect features, all the things that added up to give him bags of appeal to a woman. Miles said it was effeminate to be that perfect and that a lopsided nose, a chipped tooth or a crooked eyebrow would have given him some character. Miles said he was as bland as milk chocolate, but in fairness Miles didn't like Jarvis, and so his opinion didn't count. It was mutual—neither did Jarvis like Miles. Jarvis's connection with publishing meant he moved in Miles's circle, and of necessity they tolerated each other. That had always been a slight disappointment to Ros, who had wanted two men who figured so prominently in her life to like one another.

Next day, she said good-bye to Glenis. The flat had come fully furnished, so she didn't have the problem of disposing of unwanted pieces of furniture. Her rent was paid until the end of the month, which would give Glenis time to find another roommate to share the expenses with. Just before she closed the flat door for the last time, her eye fell on the calendar. It was the thirteenth. She hoped that wasn't a bad omen.

Until then, events, assisted by her own impulsive nature, had swept her along at such a pace that she'd hardly had time to draw breath, let alone think. The time to think was granted to her on the long journey north.

As she traveled, she thought about the events of the past few days. Had she been foolish to cut and run? Jarvis thought she was acting out of pique. But Miles understood. Bless him, he always did. She felt slightly dismayed at what she'd done, but excited. If it were wrong, how could it feel so right? She knew that it would seem strange living on her own again after sharing all that time. Despite her differences with Glenis, she would miss her. And—no disputing the fact—Hawthorn Cottage wouldn't be the same without Aunt Miranda. Great-aunt Miranda, really. The apple-cheeked old lady with the permanent grin had been her mother's aunt. She had taken Ros into her home and done her best to fill her mother's place after she had died. The loss had been all the greater for the bewildered little girl because of her footloose father, whose job in civil engineering sent him careering round the world. Ros had wanted to make her home with her father, but Aunt Miranda had vetoed the idea. Explaining to Ros, she had said, ‘Your father isn't a bad man, but I wouldn't wish to inflict his morals on an impressionable child.' Ros had expected her father to defend himself while at the same time putting up a fight to keep her with him. Instead, he had looked slightly relieved as he'd said, ‘Aunt Miranda is right, Rusty. I would be a bad influence on you.'

Rusty was the name of her childhood—for the color of her hair. Now she was Ros, short for her given name of Rosalynd.

In spite of that nostalgic turn of thought, she did not travel unhappily, but drove for the most part on the tide of her growing enthusiasm, gaining greater certainty with every mile that swept under the hood of her car that she was doing the right thing.

The farmsteads and trees began to look like stenciled cutouts as she, and darkness, approached the village of Gillybeck. Of compact proportions, it had an endearing and friendly quaintness about it, with its cobbled square where market stalls were set up on Saturdays and Wednesdays and queer-shaped cottages lurked in unlikely corners.

She pulled up at the public telephone box to honor her promise to Miles, sorted out a collection of the necessary coins and dialed his number.

On hearing the friendly and comforting familiarity of his voice, she said, ‘I've arrived without mishap, and I'm in fine spirits, so you don't have to worry about me.'

‘I was hoping you'd remember to ring. As it happens, I've had a phone call from your father.'

The line was atrocious. For a moment, she thought he'd said her father.

‘Who did you say?'

‘Your father,' he said.

Gracious he had!

‘Obviously, he was trying to get in touch with you,' he went on. ‘Glenis gave him my number, and he got through to me.'

‘What did he want?'

The anxiety in her voice prompted Miles to say, ‘No cause for alarm. Sorry, I should have put your mind at rest about his well-being straightaway.'

‘Where was he phoning from?' Her father was grossly extravagant, finding it easier to pick up a phone rather than a pen, and it could have been from anywhere in the world.

She thought Miles said Australia, but there was another burst of static on the line, and so she couldn't be sure. It cleared, and she heard him say quite distinctly, ‘He's been working with a guy who has returned to the U.K. because of illness . . .' The line faded, and then she heard, ‘. . . said he'd look you up if he got the chance.'

‘What did you say his name was, Miles?'

‘Sorry, what's that? Can you shout up?'

She was shouting up.

‘Is that better?'

‘Better did you say? Not much.' He said something else that Ros couldn't catch. The static was now so bad that Ros only managed to get occasional snatches. ‘. . . nothing definite . . . might not show up . . . thought you should be warned just in case.' Warned about what?

Ros asked Miles to repeat what he'd said but gave up on realizing the hopelessness of it. Letting it go, she merely said, ‘I'll look forward to seeing him, whoever he is.' Soon after that, she rang off.

On stepping out of the phone box, Ros decided not to return immediately to the car. After being confined behind the wheel for so long, she needed to stretch her legs. It was cold, yes, but she had anticipated that it would be, and so she'd layered herself with extra woollies accordingly. In any case, it was a crisp, invigorating coldness, and the air was like wine as she breathed it into her lungs.

By this time, the shops were closed and shuttered for the night. She had foolishly not stopped on the way to buy provisions, so unless she found somewhere to eat, she would go to bed hungry. With that thought came the realization of just how hungry she was. Like the shops, the main street's cafés that catered to the daytime tourists were also closed. She knew she would be able to get a meal at the Gillybeck Arms, which served as both residential hotel and local pub, so she made her way there.

Later, she had no doubt, trade would pick up in the hotel's dining room, for the town wasn't noted for its variety of choice; but this early in the evening, she had the restaurant practically to herself. The exception was a family group enjoying high tea. The dinner menu wasn't supposed to be served until seven o'clock, and so certain things weren't available, but the obliging waitress said she thought the kitchen staff could come up with a grilled T-bone steak, and of course the dessert trolley was available, so Ros was well pleased.

She didn't hurry over her meal. It was pleasant to relax in that warm and comfortable atmosphere, and she was still there when the first of the early diners began to trickle in. Mostly twosomes and foursomes, but there was one man on his own.

She had put her cumbersome handbag on the floor by her chair, and he kicked it as he passed. They both apologized at once, she for leaving it at such a careless angle, he for kicking it.

He bent to retrieve it, examining it for damage as his long, lean frame uncoiled with the grace of an animal. His hair was thick and smooth, the color of ebony. His face was deeply tanned; he was either a sun worshipper, or he worked long hours out-of-doors in a country where the sun was much fiercer than here. His features were strong—harsh was the word that flung itself into her mind. It was the type of face that Miles would have said was full of character, lopsided nose and all. Had he been born with that tilt to one side of his nose or gained it in a punch-up? He had the kind of broad shoulders that suggested he would be handy with his fists. In contrast to the satanic hard lines of his face, his mouth came as a shock. It was too full, hinting at an inner sensuality. His eyes complemented his mouth—dark brown, the color of woodsmoke, emitting more sex appeal than any one man should be allowed to pack. They lifted from inspecting her handbag for any outward sign of the abuse it had just received, and as they played over her face, her knees turned to jelly. She had an uncanny sensation of déjà vu. Someone, somewhere in her past, had created feelings similar to these, if not quite taking the same form.

He clearly registered her reaction; indeed, the glazing of contempt that came to his eyes told her that it was one he was used to and found boring.

‘It doesn't seem to have come to any harm,' he said, and even though the scorn that was so apparent in his eyes had now slid into his voice, the deep and slightly husky tone was still attractive.

She swallowed, hating herself for responding to his masculinity and hating him for knowing that she found him so disturbingly interesting.

‘Thank you,' she said.

In accepting her handbag, her fingers brushed with his. She jerked back as if a naked flame had touched her, and that was just what the sensation had been like.

She expected him to depart then, but he did not. Instead of continuing on his way, he remained where he was and surveyed her for a moment. The woodsmoke eyes no longer contained that gleam of derision but smoldered in speculation. The nature of that speculation was unknown to her; that it wasn't to his liking was obvious in the grim frown that touched his lips. She couldn't be sure, but she felt that his awesome self-assurance had slipped a little.

From her own point of view, she was overwhelmingly conscious of two things: her quickened pulse beat and her crumpled appearance. He was the most maddeningly handsome man she had ever come across, and it had to be when she was feeling considerably less than her best, after a long and tiring day's drive. She had gone into the ladies' room before coming into the restaurant, but only to pay court to hygiene and wash the grime from her fingers. She hadn't bothered to comb her hair or touch up her makeup, and her comfortable traveling gear—trousers and thick-knit sweater—were hardly Bond Street. In contrast to his clothes, they didn't seem all that far removed from the rags category. He was superbly turned out in tasteful country tweeds. She knew how poor Cinders felt—but her prince was blocking her exit, and she could hardly push him out of the way to make her escape.

Collecting up her coat from where she had deposited it on the spare chair, she said, ‘Excuse me, please,' and rose to her feet with dignity.