That Tender Feeling (20 page)

Cradling her on one hip, he removed her sweater and then her bra. She lifted her arms, assisting him in this undressing as a child would, but the breasts his fingers ran fiery rings round were those of a woman peaked to desire, for his desire. They hardened under the burning throb of his lips, betraying to him both the pleasure he gave her and the sweet urges pushing her to surrender to the demanding potency of his body. That he ached to possess her was obvious in the tremor that jerked through him, swift, uncontrollable, filling her with tenderness and surprise, she supposed because she hadn't realized she could move him like that. She had thought endlessly of his strength but had never considered his weakness.

She enclosed his dark head in the circle of her arms, her own flesh trembling in sensual response to the erotic intimacy of his lips, and the restless fever in the hand following the line of her waist, hip and thigh, until she feared her wildly beating heart would run out of control, just as she had.

He pulled her round on top of him, crushing her close. She knew she should resist but couldn't. In the drowning pleasure of the moment, she didn't know how. She was totally defeated, and victory would have been his if he'd taken it without first gloating over his triumph. It shone in his eyes as he drew his head back a fraction to look at her. The overbearing smugness of the smile on his mouth was more than she could stomach as he crowed: ‘Isn't this better than cold virtue? How lovely you are. Lovely and warm and mine.'

This infuriating part was, he didn't know he was gloating. He was merely soliciting her agreement that it was better to indulge in physical pleasure than deny oneself on the grounds of conscience.

A quick, bitter rage filled her heart that made it easy for her to free herself of his arms and scramble off his knee, pulling her sweater back on to hide her body from his eyes. He was so surprised, and that was comic and maddening in itself, that he let her go without putting up even a token fight to detain her. He didn't understand why she suddenly sprang away from him.

‘I am not lovely or warm, and I am certainly not
yours
,' she denied.

‘You were a moment ago—or almost mine.'

She wanted to lash out at him for being right. She wanted to hit back at him for those moments she had lain in his arms responsive to his lovemaking, for bringing her down to eager, trembling submission. For the passion he had aroused in her. For wanting the body she was doing her best to withhold from him for physical appeasement and for shunning the heart she so desperately wanted to give him. She hated him for being almost his, for the easy conquest he had achieved over her, and for his egotism in knowing that it was in his power to do so. So great was the power he held over her that even in her pain and humiliation she still wanted him. Despite everything, it wouldn't take much for her to fly back into his arms. And that would be the ultimate degradation.

‘I don't understand you, I don't understand you at all,' he ground out savagely. ‘Why did you kiss me like that if you'd no intention of following it through?'

‘Following it through? I didn't realize I was committing myself to anything.' The word ‘committing' was the one most suited. It might not have been chosen deliberately, but it served to strengthen her determination and hitch her pride up several notches higher. ‘I'm afraid I'm a novice. I don't know the rules of the game. But if it's any consolation, I'm catching on fast. Somewhere in this world is the man for me. I'll just have to keep turning stones over until I find him. If the joke slip in the Christmas cracker is right and I have to kiss a lot of frogs in the process, it occurred to me that it might be as well for me to keep my hand in.'

‘Why you—'

The end of that sentence blistered her ears as she ran into the kitchen.

She retired to her room early but didn't really expect to get much sleep that night. Her thoughts were too angry and confused. Why had she had to get tangled up with someone like Cliff? She remembered the way his kisses set her senses on fire and how marvelous it had been when he touched her, discovering the deeply passionate woman she was, a side of her nature that had surprised her and that she still didn't know how to cope with. Her thoughts and feelings ran away with her and wouldn't be suppressed. She felt a gnawing, aching regret that she wasn't at that moment lying pampered and cherished in Cliff's arms and hated herself for it.

She was just in the drifting-off stages of sleep when a knock on her door awakened her, followed by Cliff's voice calling out to her, ‘Let me in, Ros. I want to talk to you.'

‘Go away, Cliff, please. No more tonight.'

She knew what turn the conversation would take, and she'd had enough of the sweet persecution. If he entered her bedroom, she knew what the outcome would be. She had no fight left in her.

He knocked again. ‘Come on, Ros. Be reasonable.'

She stuffed her fingers in her ears and hid her head under the bedclothes, and finally he went away.

He tried to work on her again the following day, but still she wouldn't give way. The atmosphere inside the cottage was as many degrees below as it was on the snow-bound outside. There was no camaraderie between them. They stopped talking, sharing the same table but eating their meals in frigid silence. On day three, he attempted to talk her round again, without success. Despite her numbness, she felt quite proud of herself.

It was still day three, but dusk's shadows were gathering, as he said with weary resignation: ‘You win. All right, I'll marry you.'

She looked at him in astonishment. No words would come.

‘I want you, Ros. It's driving me out of my mind. It's an obsession. I've got to have you, it's as simple as that. You have my solemn oath that as soon as the roads are safe enough for us to venture out, we'll get the paper work done. I won't cheat on you there, but don't cheat on me now. I can't take being shut up with you, yet shut out. I keep remembering things, how you were in my arms. I want you back there again. You held out, and it paid off. You can congratulate yourself. I never thought I'd give in and agree to marriage to possess a body I desired. But then, no body has ever turned me on as much as yours does. I want to go to bed with you for a month. I want to sate myself with you, rid myself of this grinding agony. Come to me laughing, Ros, you've got your own way.'

She couldn't believe her ears. Did he honestly think that would suit her, that she, or any woman with a shred of pride or the tiniest spark of spirit, would accept such a bitter and insulting proposal? Being proposed to by the man you loved was supposed to be the most romantic moment of a girl's life. Something that special should have been wrapped up in his heart and given in tenderness.

She was realistic enough to know that passions couldn't stay indefinitely perched on some high and dazzling peak of excitement. There would be days when other demands took priority. When the children were in too boisterous a mood and her head was splitting with the noise or when they were sick and her heart was aching at the silence. Sometimes she'd want to go for a walk, watch television or read a book, but instead there would be buttons to sew on, the laundering to do, a house to clean. When she simply wanted to relax, it could be that she would be expected to provide him with amusing and loving companionship or play hostess and be witty and sociable to his friends. In exasperation, sadness, worry and stress or in plain old boredom, it would be something to have the tender knowledge of his love locked in her heart. She wanted this moment for those times. The magic of it would always be there to fall back on when things didn't quite go according to plan.

She didn't think she was being unreasonable or asking too much. Cliff professed to know her. If he thought that kind of proposal would suffice, it proved that he didn't know her at all. And if he couldn't come up with something better than that, then she didn't want to know him!

‘No, Cliff!' The refusal broke from her lips, full of condemnation.

‘What do you mean—no?'

‘I can't say yes to that proposal.'

‘What's wrong with it?'

‘If you don't know, I can't tell you.'

He looked puzzled, then angry. ‘Look—I've managed to hang on to my freedom for a long time. I've said I'll marry you. What more do you want?'

He seemed to think she ought to be falling all over him in gratitude because of the sublime sacrifice he was making. But what of her sacrifice? It would hardly change things at all for him. Not like the shattering changes it would bring to her. He would have everything he had now. His work, his friends, with the comfortable and homely addition of a wife. But her life would alter drastically. She was luckier than most females in the flexibility of her occupation. She wouldn't have to give it up completely to go with him. She could cook and compile her cookbooks wherever she had a stove and a typewriter, but if anything exciting came up, like the series of programs for television, she wouldn't be on instant call. It was irrelevant that she had already decided that her future didn't lie in television, the point was that she would have to adapt her life around his, fit in with his commitments and the conditions of his job.

It wouldn't have mattered one bit to her, and she would gladly have given up everything if it was asked of her—in the right way! The work she had been so totally and joyfully immersed in before Cliff reappeared in her life was no longer the be all and end all of her existence. But she had worked too hard at forging a career for herself for it to be dismissed lightly. She wasn't going to jeopardize it to such a degree—to any degree—for a bigoted man with only his own self-interest at heart.

She rounded on him. ‘I want you to want
me
, not just my body. I'm a person, I want to be respected as such. I won't just be an object that you can sate your selfish lust on. I want a proper proposal, not that sniveling moan, “All right, I'll marry you.” Well,
I
won't marry
you
! The proposal I accept will be one I can be proud of, one I'll want to remember all my life.'

‘Do you know what you want, I wonder? First you want marriage, then you don't. I've made enough of a spectacle of myself as it is. My pride has to be considered, too. And I'm not proud of showing how weak I am where you're concerned. The line has got to be drawn somewhere.'

‘Is that all you've got to say?'

‘Every last word.'

Even then, she longed to throw herself into his arms and touch her lips to the unyielding harshness of his mouth. She had to make herself walk away from him and go upstairs to pack. Her hands obeyed her brain's instructions, but her heart wasn't in it.

This would be the second time she had walked out on a man. She had got over Jarvis in a relatively short time, but she knew she wouldn't ever get over Cliff. Was she too exacting? She was accusing Cliff of wanting everything his own way, but in one respect she was no better herself. He'd asked her to marry him! Wasn't that a miracle in itself? Did she have to lay down the law and insist on the proposal's being worded in a different way? Cliff might think that if he conceded, it would set a precedent, and he would be saddling himself with a bossy wife. Why couldn't she have said yes? If she had, she would be in Cliff's arms at that very moment instead of packing to go. She didn't want to go. And what if Cliff
had
backed down? If he'd groveled at her feet and told her all the things she wanted to hear and pleaded with her to marry him, would she have been any better suited? About the sweet things, yes, even if they weren't whole truths. A lie, if repeated often enough, seemed like the truth, and perhaps she could have made it true in time. But the groveling part wouldn't have appealed to her at all. She wouldn't want to humble Cliff. But that was what she had been trying to do.

He had been anti-marriage for so long, what had made him finally come round? She was remembering Cliff's words of comfort the time she broke down and admitted her guilt over taking Aunt Miranda for granted while she was alive and not appreciating her enough. ‘Love is taking someone for granted. It's knowing without being told. The words are just the frosting on the cake,' he'd said. If Cliff were to be believed at the moment, he had proposed because he lusted for her body, and if marriage was the only way he could get it, then okay. She had taken offense at that, refusing him on the grounds of needing to be wanted for herself as a person and not just for her body. She had considered him bigoted and egotistical. A bigot was a person who holds steadfastly to an unreasonable opinion. Well, the opinions that she held dear and that seemed reasonable to her were unreasonable to him. So didn't that make her a bigot in his eyes? And egotistical. Wasn't it egotistical of her to
believe
that her body was such a turn-on, so fantastic that a man would throw away the set ideas of a lifetime to have it? She wasn't that conceited, surely? She wasn't conceited at all about her body. It was quite nice, but she would have said it was only average on sex appeal. Instead of being insulted, she ought to have been flattered that someone as superb as Cliff looked at her in that way and was prepared to go to such lengths to get her—if that was all it was.

But of course it wasn't! It wasn't possible to divorce the person from the body, and if Cliff wanted her, it meant that he wanted her for herself, which was all
she
really wanted. Love was a word that was bandied about a lot, but what did it mean? It meant having a deep affection for someone, and tender feelings.

Cliff had shown tender feelings for her the night she went to his bed and he refused to take advantage of the impulse that had taken her there. He had shown tender feelings when he'd been waiting for her to come home with her slippers warming. Who needed the icing? Cliff might not know it himself, but what had really trapped him was that tender feeling called love. It had bent even his will of iron.