‘My plans for the method of conception of my future children is none of your business,’ she managed to retort loftily as she fought to control her dizzying light-headedness. She had to get him out of her room and fast, she determined feverishly, but could think of nothing more compelling to say to him other than a decidedly panicky ‘You can’t sleep here.’
‘No,’ he agreed unexpectedly as he looked at the bed. ‘I can’t, and neither, I imagine, can you.’ He gave the standard-size hotel bed a disparaging glance. ‘If I had to sleep in that toy-box version of what a proper bed should be, I’d wake up with cramp and backache to say the least.’
Bobbie knew exactly what he meant. Back home they had proper beds, big wide long beds in which a person could stretch out luxuriously and still have plenty of room left over for...
A startled glance seized her face, widening her eyes as she absorbed the mental image that had materialised so dangerously out of nowhere—two bodies tangled lovingly together in the comfort of her generously proportioned bed, the fine cotton sheets she favoured wrapped loosely around them, her body snugly protected by the larger, heavier, bulkier form of the man who lay next to her on his side and half across her, one leg flung possessively over her, one arm wrapped securely around her. Little could be seen of his features, but she could visualize the broad, tanned sweep of his well-muscled back and just the beginning of the sensual curve where its line ran into his butt, the dark sleekness of the back of his head, but she knew totally, of course, just what his face looked like, just as she knew, too, how he felt, how he smelled and how he tasted...before love and after it...
She definitely must be ill, Bobbie decided as she finally managed to close her eyes and blink the awesomely realistic vision away. Why else would she be picturing herself in bed with Luke Crighton? And not just any bed, if you please, but her very own bed back home in her small, pretty clapboard house tucked away on one of the quieter streets of their little New England town.
‘You can’t stay here,’ she repeated. Her body trembled as she heard the rusty note of shock in her voice.
‘No, I don’t think I can,’ she heard Luke agreeing. There was an odd note in his voice, as well, but when she looked at him he was focusing on the bed. To her relief he started to walk towards the door, but before he opened it he stopped and turned round saying, ‘By the way, exactly how did you come to meet young Joss?’
‘I bumped into him by accident in Haslewich,’ Bobbie told him truthfully.
‘Mmm, so he said,’ Luke commented. ‘In the churchyard apparently. He said you were looking at the gravestones...?’
Bobbie could feel her heartbeat increasing, the adrenalin starting to pump through her veins as she reacted to her awareness of danger. ‘Yes, I was,’ she agreed carefully.
‘Looking for one in particular?’ Luke questioned.
‘Just looking,’ Bobbie answered. ‘As an American I find it’s still something of a novelty for me to see gravestones with such old dates on them.’
‘You were in the modeRN part of the graveyard when he saw you, according to Joss.’
‘Was I? I can’t remember,’ Bobbie lied disinterestedly, dropping her head so that her hair swung forward to conceal and protect her expression from him. ‘Have you finished your cross-examination?’ she asked him with acid sweetness. ‘I would like to get some sleep....’
‘In order for me to need to cross-question you, you would either have to be guilty of or a witness to some sort of crime,’ Luke told her silkily. ‘Which, I wonder, did you have in mind when you made that rather betraying statement, and why?’
‘Neither,’ Bobbie fibbed fiercely as he opened the door and walked through it, but despite the conviction she had injected into her denial, she somehow had the uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t believe her.
Oh, damn the man, he was the last complication she needed to have around now, the very last.
BOBBIE woke up with a start to realise that someone was knocking discreetly on her door. Whoever it was, it thankfully could not possibly be Luke Crighton; discretion and that man could never be said to go hand in hand.
The waiter standing outside with a table fully set for a breakfast for two, which included freshly made Buck’s Fizz, refused to listen to her insistence that she had most certainly not ordered such a lavish and highly obvious ‘the morning after the night before’ breakfast.
‘This breakfast was most definitely ordered for this room,’ he informed her.
‘It can’t possibly have been...’ Bobbie began to deny and then changed her mind, an ominous thought occurring to her as she demanded warily, ‘Ordered by whom?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ the waiter apologised, but Bobbie suspected that she did.
No doubt this was another of Luke Crighton’s little tricks to convince Fenella that he had spent the night here with her, although how on earth he expected the other woman to discover that he had ordered breakfast for two for Bobbie’s room, she had no idea, unless Fenella was the type who made a habit of checking up on that kind of thing. Perhaps she did. Bobbie made a small moue of distaste before surveying the feast she had been left with. Buck’s Fizz... Strong coffee was her normal breakfast indulgence. Somehow she had never seen herself as the kind of woman who drank Buck’s Fizz for breakfast and neither, she suspected, did Luke Crighton, not for a moment.
Recklessly she reached for a glass and took a sip. The orange juice was freshly squeezed and deliciously tangy, the champagne icy cold, making her taste buds shiver in pleasure.
If she had been sharing this treat with a lover, she doubted that it would have done anything to encourage her to leave the warmth of her bed—or him—rather the opposite.
Disconcertingly, just as she raised the glass to her lips to take a second rebellious sip, she was revisited by the same disturbing mental image of Luke she had had the previous evening.
The bubbles in the champagne made her splutter slightly, which just went to show how highly dangerous it could be to consume alcohol first thing in the morning, she told herself sternly, firmly replacing the glass.
An hour later, having consumed two cups of strong coffee and eaten some wholemeal toast, she was downstairs in the hotel lobby comfortably dressed in a pair of soft, cream trousers and a soft, silky knit top.
She wasn’t here in England to waste time lying in bed and drinking champagne, she reminded herself firmly, and she certainly wasn’t here to indulge in crazy mental images of disconcerting and recklessly intimate scenarios between her and a man who she had good reason to know was never likely to partner her in the kind of highly sensual and erotic love play their tangled bodies had indicated. She walked determinedly across to the reception desk and asked the clerk behind the counter if there were any messages for her.
Smilingly he handed her a couple of sealed notes. Frowning a little since she didn’t recognise the handwriting on either of them, Bobbie opened the top one and then dropped it on the desk as though it had burned her fingertips when she read the message contained inside.
‘Thank you for last night, you were wonderful. I can’t wait until tonight, Luke.’ As the clerk picked up the note and discreetly handed it back to her, Bobbie realised that she was now not the only one to have seen his outrageous message.
He certainly believed in acting out the part, she acknowledged wrathfully as she stuffed the note into her pocket and started to walk away from the reception desk. She opened the other envelope. Its contents, too, were unexpected, but in a very different way from the message contained in Luke’s.
It was signed by Olivia and read:
I tried to catch