‘I didn’t know the half of it then.’
It was something about the defensive note in his voice that made her gasp suddenly. ‘Is it possible that you’ve been seeing this sympathetic person? What was her name?’
She’d always accepted work commitments as the reason for him pulling out of a number of arrangements at the last minute. Now it looked suspiciously as if he had been keeping his options open all along!
‘Jenny,’ he responded, tight-lipped, looking annoyed that she’d introduced the subject. ‘It’s all perfectly innocent.’
‘Is that what you told her about us?’ The unattractive shade of crimson that washed over his fair complexion was more revealing than any words.
‘I asked you to marry me,’ he responded in a disgruntled tone.
‘Flip the coin again.’ She felt a whole lot less wretched knowing that Nigel wasn’t the saint she’d thought him.
‘Promiscuous women like you are ten-a-penny, and then these days there’s the question of contamination simply on medical grounds.’
‘That’s it.’ Benedict’s voice was suddenly decisive. ‘A bit of bile is acceptable when you’ve just been kicked where it hurts, but I think Rachel has grovelled guiltily for long enough. Cut your losses, mate, and clear out.’ His tone was unfailingly polite but the hard light of warning in his dark eyes told another story. ‘Don’t be tempted to indulge in any more colourful insults or I might just be tempted to—’
This intervention was too much! Rachel pulled clear of his arms. ‘I’m quite capable of sorting out my own problems.’
He shrugged and held up his hands in mock submission. ‘I never thought otherwise.’ His smile held a caressing warmth that robbed her anger of its impetus.
She cleared her throat. ‘Good.’ She grabbed her scattered wits by the scruff of the neck. ‘Nigel…’
‘Don’t worry, I’m going. I can see how things are.’ He looked from Rachel to the tall man at her side. ‘I’m not blind. Don’t bother—I know my way out,’ he said bitterly. The slamming of the front door reverberated through the flat.
‘Poor Nigel.’
‘Don’t become too attached to that hair shirt, Rachel; it doesn’t suit you. Poor Nigel has a filthy mind and a substitute in the wings—crafty old Nigel..’
‘He’s not like that, really; he was hurt and humiliated.’
Benedict found her defence of her former lover irritating, though it seemed the ‘lover’ part hadn’t been strictly accurate.
‘Why didn’t you sleep with him?’
‘Is it obligatory?’ She could hardly tell him she was a cautious individual with a low sex drive after the way she’d behaved with him!
‘When you’re going to marry someone it usually is,’ he confirmed drily.
‘I didn’t say yes.’
‘He mentioned that.’
‘I mean I didn’t say I’d marry him.’
‘Didn’t he think it was a bit odd?’ Benedict continued with what she considered insensitive persistence.
‘He was sensitive and understanding.’
‘Dead from the neck down, more like!’
‘You can be very coarse and vulgar,’ she observed frigidly.
‘I can,’ he promised warmly.
The warmth as much as the promise made her step backwards. The impetuous movement brought her into direct collision with a coffee table over which she fell in a tangle of arms and legs.
‘Don’t touch me!’ she commanded urgently as he bent forward. ‘I can’t think when you touch me.’
‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ he told her as she got to her feet, straightened the coffee table and wished she’d been wearing trousers. She smoothed her skirt with slightly unsteady fingers.
‘Well, cherish it because that’s as good as it’s going to get,’ she said nastily.
‘I cherish every kind word you say to me, Rachel, and a few of the insulting ones too.’
An unwilling laugh was torn from her throat; he was impossible! Shaking her head slowly from side to side as she looked reprovingly at him dislodged the last remaining hairpin and her gently waving, glossy hair cascaded slowly around her face.
‘Blast!’ she cried impatiently as the heavy weight came to rest at shoulder-blade level.
‘Is it as soft as it looks?’
The tone of his voice as much as the taut, hungry expression on his face warned her of the imminent danger of this situation. She turned a deaf ear to the reckless voice that told her to walk straight into the path of that danger. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the physical pain of denial.