Authors: Rosemary Carter
'Yes..." No more than a whisper.
'You're so lovely.' He sank down on to the bed and gathered her to him. His hands moved over her shoulders, her back, her hips, moulding her un- resistant body to his.
He began to kiss her again, his lips a sweet torture against eyes and throat and breasts. Her nostrils were filled with the smell of his maleness, and each one of her senses was vibrantly alive.
'There can be no turning back,' he said once, lifting his head.
'I know.' Only dimly was she aware of the possible consequences of their lovemaking. Her senses had taken over her body, destroying the last vestiges of any resistance, but that did not seem to matter.
'Kelly ...' This time the voice was huskier than before. 'If only you knew how I..
A loud ringing invaded the room, shocking, somehow obscene. It took a second for Kelly to understand that it was the ring of the telephone.
'Damn!' Nicholas swore quietly.
'Don't answer...' An unashamed plea.
The telephone rang once more, unheeded, as a rough hand caressed a smooth shoulder. Then Nicholas lifted himself away from her. 'I must. It must be urgent for Joshua to put the call through.'
Kelly lay rigid on the bed and watched as he cradled the receiver to his ear. His breathing was still a little ragged, and she was so close to him thatshe imagined she could hear the quickened beat of his heart. But his tone was terse and clipped, so that the person at the other end of the line could have had no idea of what he had interrupted.
'Kelly, I'm needed ...' The conversation ended, he replaced the phone and looked down at the small feminine figure.
'Nicholas, I ... Can't ...' She paused, uncertain and unhappy, the words refusing to come.
'Perhaps it's better this way.' The mobile lips curved wryly, and there was a strange tenderness in the eyes which studied the flushed oval face. A hand touched a breast, lingering fleetingly before trailing a path up the slender column of the throat. Kelly held her breath, the sensual touch giving her an exquisite pleasure which transcended all need for words.
'Maybe the call was providential.' The huskiness in his voice gave the lie to his smile. 'I couldn't have stopped, Kelly. You know that.'
Through a blur of pain she watched him get dressed. The telephone had prevented him from making love to her fully. He was glad, Kelly thought, he had said almost as much. It was only a thoughtless intimacy which had provoked his emotions to blind passion. But he did not want her, not really. Now that he had a few moments to reflect on what had happened he was clear about that, whereas she wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
'I'm needed at the mill.' His breathing had quietened. 'Would you like to come with me, or would you rather relax in the garden for a while?'
She had pulled the sheet over her. For the timeless moments when only passion had existed, there had been no embarrassment. Now she did not want him to see her unclothed. 'If you wait for me I'll come along.' She tried to make her voice as casual as his. Not for anything should he guess at the turmoil raging within her. 'The mill is part of the general tour, isn't it?'
An enigmatic expression appeared in his eyes. Perhaps he guessed at her pain, yet was glad that she would regard what had happened as no more than the interlude it had been meant to be.
'Get dressed,' he said quietly. 'I'll wait for you on the patio.'
What were his thoughts as he waited? Kelly wondered, as she showered in the chocolate-tiled bathroom before slipping into her clothes. Did he see her as a girl without any morals? A girl who enjoyed taking her fun behind her fiance's back? If he did, it would not surprise him. Nicholas's opinion of her had been low from the start. He had seen her only as a spoiled parasite who had bribed a man in order to fulfil a whim. He had taken pleasure in getting her to work off a debt, never dreaming that she gained an enormous satisfaction from what she did. This new evidence of her character would merely strengthen his views.
Even with Gary's ring on her finger Kelly had not been prepared to share a room with him. Yet she had yearned to experience Nicholas's lovemaking to the fullest. The reason for this was simple, but Nicholas would never know it. For she could not tell him that she loved him, nor that she understood for the first time how a woman could be stirred to a point where reasoning took second place to emotion.
This was a love which she had never experienced with Gary. Had she not decided to end her engagement because she could no longer accept the immature aspects of her fiance's nature, Kelly knew that she would in any case have had to change her mind about marrying him. What she had once felt for Gary was no more than infatuation for a man who was totally different from the people who moved in her father's world of high finance.
Her feelings for Nicholas were on another level altogether. Though there could be no future with him, she did not regret the time at Great Peaks. For she knew now that she was a woman in every sense of the word and that it was in her to love very deeply. For some reason that was important. She would never see Nicholas again—there was no way she would revisit this part of the Drakensberg to reopen a wound whose rawness she could only hope would lessen with time—yet Kelly knew that where- ever life might take her, she would never forget the magic days when she had crossed the threshold into emotional womanhood.
She came on to the patio and found him waiting for her. His back was to the doorway, and he was staring over the pine-covered slopes of the plantation. And then he turned, and there was a remoteness in his eyes before which she froze.
When he had dealt with the situation in the sawmill, an important one which revealed to Kelly how much he had sacrificed in giving up his time to supervise the running of the hotel, Nicholas showed her around. Everywhere there was activity, and the men who worked in the mill were openly glad to see him. The sawmill was well run, its operations efficient, each man understood his function. Yet all looked to Nicholas for direction. It was as if he gave a focus to their working lives. As he was fast becoming the focus of her own life, Kelly thought.
Throughout he was polite. Kelly could not fault him on that. A stranger might even have thought him friendly. But the remoteness never left his manner. To Kelly, who had shared moments of the closest sensual intimacy with this man, the remoteness was more painful than all his previous mockery and contempt had been.
She was almost glad when they returned at last to Great Peaks Lodge. She had had such high hopes for this day. For a short time it had even seemed as if she would experience an ecstasy greater than anything she had ever imagined. And then suddenly, inexplicably, the magic of the day was gone, and in its place was a numbing emptiness.
Had she done something wrong? she wondered. Had she offended him in some way? Twice she parted dry lips to ask him a question. But a glance at his profile, detached and a little forbidding, stifled the words before they were uttered.
Serena was at Great Peaks for dinner that evening. Kelly did not know if she had been invited by Nicholas or if he was surprised by her coming. Even without the presence of the cool poised beauty the meal would have been a strain. But with Serena atthe table, claiming and receiving Nicholas's undivided attention, it would be unbearable. Kelly had no qualms about excusing herself from dinner. She had had a long day at Pinevale, she said, and was tired. She would have an early night.
At mention of Pinevale Serena's glance went quickly to Nicholas. For the first time she looked uncertain of herself. But Kelly gained no satisfaction from what was only a very minor and, in the circumstances, meaningless victory. Her head was aching as she walked through the scent-filled garden to the cottage.
For a while she lay on the Andersons' big double bed. The light was off and as she stared through the open window she tried very hard to relax, a difficult feat when just a little distance away, in the candlelit intimacy of the dining-room, Serena was enchanting Nicholas with her loveliness. What would that woman say if she knew of the scene in the bedroom at Pinevale? Kelly wondered. Would she mind very much? Would she ache with a pain that knifed beneath the ribs and throbbed at the temples?—a pain which Kelly was beginning to know too well. The thought was an idle one. Nicholas would never tell his bride-to-be what had happened. Apart from the fact that he would not want tq, disturb Serena, there was no reason for him to mention an incident which had been of no importance to him.
The breeze which wafted in through the window did not lessen the heat in the room. Kelly moved restlessly on the bed. Though she was not tired in a physical sense, she wanted very much to sleep. Sleep would block out thought, it would block out the turmoil of emotion which she had never imagined when she left Gary and his friends in Estcourt to return to Great Peaks Lodge.
How differently things had turned out from the way she had planned them, she mused wryly. Helping out at Great Peaks had been an unexpected development, but it had been one to which she had quickly adjusted. Falling in love was something else altogether. This she had not anticipated, had not wanted—still did not want. She had not yet found a way of coping with the event which had changed her world so that it would never be quite the same again. She wondered now if she ever would.
Impatient all at once, she left the bed and went out of the cottage. Outside the air was aromatic and cool. Save for the ceaseless hum of the crickets it was very still. As she walked through the quiet garden, Kelly felt a little of the tension draining from her.
Silently she moved between the dark shapes of the trees, her footfalls deadened by the thickness of the grass. She saw Nicholas quite suddenly. There was no mistaking the broad shoulders and the tall well-built body; the tilt of the head and the thrust of the throat. There was no mistaking her own instinctive reaction, the tightening of her muscles and the instant leaping of her senses. Pride forgotten— what did it matter if Serena had had dinner with him?—Kelly stepped quickly forwards. And then, just as suddenly, she checked the movement.
For Nicholas was not alone. The breadth of his shoulders had blocked the vision of someone else, but now that person had moved just a little, and Kelly saw the white folds of a dress brush against the long male trouser-legs.
She stood still as a statue. Through the quiet air came the sound of Serena's voice, brittle and not as poised as she remembered it, and then the low answering tone of the man with whom she stood. Kelly could not hear their actual words, and did not want to. She wanted only to leave the scene before they saw her. She would have fled if her limbs had not been suddenly robbed of the power of movement.
As she watched, Nicholas bent his head, and two slender arms came up to clasp themselves behind his neck. Kelly choked back an involuntary sob. Blood surged back through her limbs. As the couple not more than a few yards from her clung together in an embrace, she vanished, like a wounded animal, away through the trees.
She was still awake when Nicholas came into the cottage. She lay quietly in the bed that belonged to the Andersons, and when he opened the door of her room and came towards her bed she made her breathing slow and deep. For what seemed a long time he stood beside her. He did not speak—the regularity of her breathing must have had him convinced—and she was thankful that it was too dark for him to see the matted lashes and the moist patch on her pillow.
Even now, when she had every reason to hate him, Kelly was acutely aware of the long virile body and the clean male smell that seemed to fill the room. She heard him take a step away from the bed, and then he halted. A hand touched her hair, the movement like a caress. At the touch her chest tightened. It became an effort to breathe at all. Just as she wondered how long she could keep up her act, the hand left her hair, and she heard him walk from the room. His footsteps had a sound that was quick and angry.
She became adept at avoiding him. Avoidance was important. If the wound that slashed her emotions were to heal at all, the less contact she had with Nicholas the better. Kelly had grown accustomed to the daily routine of the hotel. She did not need Nicholas to guide or advise her. She knew too his own routine. It was relatively easy to keep out of his way. And Mary
must
return soon...
When Andrew asked her to go for a walk with him she accepted with alacrity. The invitation came at a time when her chores were done and she was at a loss for something to kill the hours until lunch.
They took a path that swung around the hotel towards a mountain cleft where the slopes were covered in jungle. Trees, tall and spindly, reached for the sun through a dense green canopy of foliage. Roots sprawled grotesquely above the ground, and moss and toadstools made a spongy carpet underfoot.
Although from the beginning Andrew had made a point of seeking her out, they had never been quite alone together. Kelly found herself enjoying the walk. After the strain of the last few days it was refreshing to be able to relax in a man's company. So much had happened since the day they had metthat she had almost forgotten the occasional undertone and the look which had been sometimes in Andrew's eyes. She only knew that she liked this man very much, and that it was fun to be with him in the dim coolness of the jungle.
They came to a waterfall where the water spilled over the wet cliff-face to fall into the measureless depths of a dark pool. Wild lilies grew at the edge of the pool, and a thin shaft of light speared the jungle canopy, splintering the water into tiny prisms of light.
'Isn't this beautiful!' Kelly uttered the words on an indrawn breath of sheer delight.
'You
are beautiful.'
Kelly turned slowly, caught by the inflection in Andrew's tone. She had been smiling, but now the smile trembled on her lips as she met his gaze.
'Andrew ...' Her tone was low, the name spoken in a kind of warning. The expression in his face told her what she should have anticipated. But even now perhaps it was not too late...