Lita tried not to let her crestfallen face show. She beat a hasty retreat to the door, then smiled at Mrs 1
‘So, when do I see the doctor again?’ she asked. ‘Next week?’ ‘Oh, no, madam. You won’t need to see him again for another year. Good morning, Mr Hams,’ she added to the old man behind Lita. ‘The doctor will see you now.’
Shit, Lita thought as she left the office.
Oh, well. It was sophomoric to be infatuated with a physician. Maybe there just weren’t enough cute guys at work for her to think about, Lita told herself the next Saturday. She had been obeying Dr Conran’s orders, and she felt so much better for it that it wasn’t even funny. If she
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knew she had to be home by seven, she .just worked harder. Or, at least, smarter. She managed to let some of her talented new employees pry just a little control from her iron grip, and as a result they got more done, better, because Lira was free to concentrate on the big picture.
Now she would come home, cook something for herself, eat it with a
large glass of wine and listen to Mozart or watch Top of the Pops. She was relaxed and rested, and she worked better. She actually had a life. If you overlooked the lack of a man.
So here she was, on her way to the Century Health Club in Chelsea Harbour, her neat little Louis Vuitton carrying-case packed with a towel, a cashmere robe and other necessary items. They had a warm, Olympic-sized pool in the brand-new, modern gym. Lita had started swimming and found it pretty relaxing. At least her health was improving. She waved to the receptionist who nodded at her to go through. Other members had to sign in, but not Lita. Everyone recognized her. She slipped into the women’s changing room, with its bamboo matting and oversized lockers, and changed into her swimsuit, a lemon-yellow Lycra number, cut high on the thigh. She tied back her long hair and tugged on the tight little cap, then walked through the sterile footbath out to the long, echoing cavern of the pool, built under
glass, with hothouse plants dotted back against the walls.
‘Hello,’ said a voice.
Lita jumped out of her skin and almost lost her balance on the
slippery tiles. A strong male hand reached out to steady her. ‘You don’t want to crack your head open.’ Her mouth opened slightly.
‘Dr Conran! What are you doing here?’
He was wearing a pair of tight, and therefore very flattering, black
shorts. Lita dragged her eyes away from the tell-tale bulge in his crotch, but didn’t know where to put them. It was hard of to stare at the thick, ball-player thighs, the tight muscles of his quads, the defined crunch of the stomach muscles with their thick silky knot of hair trailing down to his waistband, or the worked-out pecs covered with dripping, beautiful black hair.
‘I’m off duty. Call me Mark.’
‘And it’s Lita,’ she said, fidgeting. A stab of intense desire was blasting
through her stomach.
‘That’s a beautiful name.’ And .that’s a beautiful body, Conran
thought. Damn it all. He was going to have to get the woman another doctor. As professional and smooth as he’d fought to appear with her, it was not every day such a fox strutted through the doors of his office. To his horror, his groin had started to stir the first time he put a stethoscope
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between those awesome soft breasts. That was not supposed to happen to doctors.
Now he was toast. You could stick a fork in him. Oh, shit. Look at her, with that olive skin and perfect-ten body, her ass in that yellow suit jutting out behind her, perfectly rounded and lifted, and that tiny waist and then the swollen tits, with the nipples winking at him from under that tantalizing suit. She was short and curvy, in ideal proportion, everything from the sexy hollow in her throat to the turn of her ankle, on which she was wearing a tiny gold bracelet. He could never safely examine this woman without being struck off the register. He’d have to hurry to get out of there. Once there was water trickling between those breasts …
Oh, God. There it was again, that tell-tale tickle in his crotch. Hurriedly, Conran half ran to the edge of the pool and dived straight in.
Lita watched his body curve tautly and part the water with incredible precision. If he hadn’t been a doctor, he might have been an athlete.
It was no good. Her nipples hardened mercilessly. She walked to the edge of the pool and slipped into the water herself, for safety. She couldn’t continue to see this guy. Lita racked her brains. He was swimming back towards her. But what the hell did you say? Not, Oh, Doctor I can’t see you any more, you’re too gorgeous …
Maybe she had been referred to a specialist. Yeah, that was it. Lita took a deep breath. He was swimming towards her like a very muscular otter. His head surfaced, and he stood up, towering over her.
‘Lita. I’m afraid I won’t be able to treat you any more, but I can give you a referral to another very good doctor.’
‘B-but … why not?’ Lita stammered. It was one thing for her to make an excuse, quite another for him to blow her off.
He smiled, and his lips had a slightly crooked quirk to them that she found enchanting.
‘Because I feel the urgent need to ask you out instead. Not that I expect you to say yes, but.., might there be any chance you’d consider having dinner with me at Blake’s tonight?’
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‘Where are we going?’
Logan looked over at her and chuckled. ‘Now, now. Patience. It’s my date, and I set the agenda. You don’t want to be a sore loser, do you?’
Becky scowled at him. ‘I guess not.’
He handled the car like it was a horse, Becky noticed, his hands easy on the wheel, coaxing the old banger almost smoothly round the narrow twists and turns of the back country roads. His car was a piece of shit, but she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t enjoying this. The trees overhung the roads with a carpet of emerald, pierced through with shafts of sunlight. Soon they fell away, and the car took a steep climb up
a hill, with fields and copses stretching below them. ‘God, this is beautiful,’ Becky breathed. Logan winked at her. ‘Just wait.’
He finally pulled the car into a stop on a bare patch of gravel. They were at the top of a ridge, which banked down steeply below them. The view was fantastic - lush fields in a patchwork of grass green and arable yellow, and then behind them, dark, massed woods, with a glittering river snaking into them from the left. The horizon shimmered
slightly and shivered a little dance in the heat. ‘This is … incredibly romantic.’ He grinned. ‘Yeah, it is, rather.’
‘Don’t tell me. They call this Devil’s Leap.’
Logan laughed out loud, a rich, deep laugh that lit up his entire face, and Becky couldn’t keep up the barriers that she had shoved between them. She smiled back, and he thought her face was like a morning glory flower opening up to the sun.
He moved closer to her, until Becky could smell the faint masculine tang of him and feel the heat of his breath on her face. She half closed her eyes, waiting for him to kiss her. In fact, she wanted him to kiss her. And maybe she secretly had for quite a while.
There had been nobody since Rupert. She’d had no time, and she hadn’t even wanted anyone else. But now …
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Becky looked at Logan’s sensual, crooked mouth, and her lips parted gently.
But he moved past her and flipped open the rusty hinge of his car boot.
‘This is what I could rustle up at the last minute.’ He pulled out an antique-looking wicker hamper. ‘A smoked chicken, some strawberries,
a bottle of champagne, water, and cheese and biscuits.’
Her mouth started to water. ‘That sounds great.’
‘I hadn’t done my washing-up, so we’ve got no glasses.’ He passed
her a cracked china mug. ‘As I recall, though, this’ll do just fine for you.’ Becky blushed. ‘Sure it will.’
Logan spread his rug on the grass. ‘It’s got a few dog hairs on it.
Capability sheds like mad.’
‘Your dog?’
Logan’s eyes lit up. ‘My Border terrier. He’s a very fine hound.’ Like his master, Becky thought.
‘You named him after the landscaper?’
‘That’s right. I’ve always loved his work.’ Logan gestured at the view below them. ‘I come here because it reminds me of the sense of proportion in nature. Modern gardens are so intent on being.., oh, I don’t know.., cutesy.., that they’ve forgotten proportions and scale. Which are beautiful.’
He poured a generous measure of champagne out and handed the mug across to her.
‘Thanks.’ Becky took refuge in a large swig of champagne and helped herself to a slice of smoked chicken.
‘And don’t forget these. I gro them fresh in my own garden.’ Logan hulled a strawberry and passed it over to her. Becky took a bite, her soft pink lips reddening as the fruit was crushed between them. Her blue
eyes widened at the taste. ‘That’s incredible.’ ‘No, you’re incredible.’
The compliment was so unexpected, for a second it didn’t even register with her. Then she stared at him. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard me,’ Logan said easily. ‘I was just remarking how incredibly lovely you are.’
Becky’s cheeks flamed the colour of the strawberry. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that.’
‘I say what I think.’ He shrugged. ‘So, tell me your tory.’
‘You know it.’
‘Only what I read in the papers. Let’s see.’ He was teasing her cruelly. Becky felt his eyes on her skin like hands, peeling the dress from her. He
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was so handsome, and the maddening thing was, he knew it. ‘English heiress, lives in America with her mother’s people, comes home triumphant to her vast empire, only there’s boyfriend trouble and it all goes horribly wrong.’
Becky’s blue eyes widened in astonishment, then in was her turn to laugh. It was such a release of tension, it amazed her. When was the last time she had really laughed? She sometimes felt twenty-two going on forty-five.
‘I guess you think I’m a playgirl that ran my daddy’s company into the ground.’
His grin was unrepentant. ‘And are you?’
‘Only partly. I did a pretty good job when I took over, but I let other people run it for years without checking up on them. So it was kind of my responsibility. A lot of the damage was done when I got here.’
Logan moved closer to her. ‘You know, you’re not on a job interview.’
Her defences flew up. ‘I wanted you to be impressed,’ she snapped. He smiled with perfect self-possession. ‘Because you care about my good opinion?’ Logan reached up and pulled his shirt off, in the sun, and she was right next to that gorgeous, hard-body chest, tanned, with the natural muscles sliding under the skin and the faint smell of him and the warm sunlight on his wiry chest hair. A small breath escaped from her, and her nipples tightened further.
‘Don’t worry.’ He leaned in so his lips hun, g millimetres above hers. ‘I’m impressed.’ And then he kissed her.
Becky couldn’t even try to resist. She didn’t want to. Her smooth lips were mingling with his salty ones, his tongue lightly probing her mouth, flickering over it. Her body, hot with wanting him, melted into his arms which held her weight as though it were nothing at all. Logan unbuttoned her dress and expertly undid her br with one hand, while the other caressed her back and the soft, downy skin at the side of her neck.
‘Logan …’
‘Shh. Don’t say anything.’
He caressed her delicate, little apple-breasts until Becky was completely ready and warm and he slipped inside her, losing himself in the soft, yielding flesh, his hard chest pressed down against her softness, his lips taking hers mercilessly.
Lita was worried.
There wasn’t anything to complain about with Mark. He was perfectly manly in every way. He was a self-made man, he played rugby,
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he lifted weights, he even boxed. When he took her out to dinner
parties, he was gregarious, rather cynical, dry and witty. The other I women there looked at her with envy and muttered obviously catty
things behind her back, which Lita, tossing her glossy mane and giving them a long, arrogant smile, rather enjoyed. As her client list widened, she had to start socializing. She found, to her surprise, that she quite enjoyed it. Giving a dinner for important clients and their wives was as good for business as a late-night session in the office - in fact, better - and now Mark was sternly supervising her health, Lita was forced to do it more often. Only she was good at it. These weren’t the days back in New York with Rupert, when she was trailing around after him, hoping desperately to be found good enough. Lita was confident in her own skills and her new company. And she had that American-abroad style that the London wives seemed to long to imitate. It was the seventies, and Britain was bound in strikes, stoppages and power failures, while America revelled in Charlie’s Angels and oil money. It endowed Lita with instant glamour, and she made the most of it.
Mark helped her to do that. Unlike Rupert, he needed nothing from her success, and unlike Edward, he didn’t resent it. He supported her, but he also demanded that she support him. They were falling in love, independent of each other, but protective of each other. He made her laugh, he made her feel safe, he made her sweat with longing to have him inside her.
And that was the problem.
Mark had never been to bed with her. Not once.
She didn’t think he was gay, though the thought had crossed her mind, and it made her feel physically sick, almost panicked. This was only the third relationship of her life. Rupert - well, the fire of hatred in her for him still burned. Her first love, and her first hate. One day she would deal with him the way she had dealt with his snotty girlfriend. Edward - physically intense, but emotionally dead. She still felt slightly dirtied from that love, because he had been dominant to the extent that he wanted to crush her spirit, and she had fought too long and too hard for that. And now Mark, younger, more vital than Edward, funnier too, more loving, more of a friend. One she ached for. And it was almost as if he didn’t want her.