His blood.
The essence of him.
A shudder rippled through her.
‘Everything all right?’
Orlando’s voice from the doorway startled her from her thoughts, sent her hand flying to her throat in terror and confusion and shame.
‘Yes…yes, of course.’
He came forward, dressed in a faded checked shirt, two fingers of his left hand bound up with gauze. ‘You don’t seem to have got very far.’
‘No.’ Making a conscious effort to steady her breathing, she lifted her chin and met his eye. ‘I’m still clearing up. And I’m afraid I have no idea where to start with this. I’ve never cooked anything in my life, I don’t know how to—’
He cut her off with a sharp, scornful sound. ‘Then it’s high time you learned.’
Rachel swallowed hard. Reaching for a cloth, she briskly wiped up the blood from the chopping board and shook her head. ‘No. I’m no good at things like that….practical things.’
He gave a curse of pure, undisguised exasperation. OK, so Arabella might have been something of an über-achiever, but this girl seemed to take the word incompetent to a whole new level.
‘What on earth makes you say that?’ he said scathingly.
‘How about twenty-three years of experience?’ she retorted hotly. ‘Or should that be twenty-three years of inexperience? I’ve never done anything remotely domesticated!’
He couldn’t see her toss her head, but he could certainly imagine it from the indignant tone of her voice, and maybe a little from the rustle of her heavy hair. Turning his mind resolutely from the mental images that instantly flared into life, he smothered a sneer.
‘So now’s your chance.’ He picked up the knife. ‘Come here.’
‘No!’
Orlando froze. There was no mistaking the genuine anguish in her voice. For a long moment neither of them moved. He suddenly felt very, very tired.
‘What are you afraid of?’ he asked heavily, and then he remembered he was still holding the knife. ‘Jeez, Rachel, I’m not going to hurt you for God’s sake…!’
‘I didn’t think you were,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just…’ How could she explain that it wasn’t that kind of fear, the fear of harm, that was causing her to tremble so violently, but fear of losing control. How could she explain that when she could hardly understand it herself?
He sighed. ‘Come and stand here…’
Tentatively she took a step towards him, stopping a few feet away so he had to take her hand and draw her forwards. Gently, firmly, he positioned her in front of the marble chopping board and replaced the pepper he’d started to slice. She wondered if he could feel the frantic beat of her heart throbbing through her body, vibrating in the tiny space that separated them.
‘Now…take hold of the pepper,’ he said tonelessly. He was standing right behind her, and his voice close to her ear made a shiver run through her. She picked up the pepper in one shaking hand, holding onto it as if it was her last connection with reality.
‘Good. Now, in the other hand pick up the knife.’ His tone was carefully blank, but she could sense the tightly controlled frustration behind his words. Biting her lip in shame, she picked up the knife, watching the blade quiver in her uncertain grip until Orlando’s hand closed over hers.
She gasped.
His arms encircled her, safe, strong, and she had to muster every inch of self-control she had to prevent her from leaning back into his embrace and letting her head fall on to his chest.
‘No, I can’t!’
She dropped the knife with a clatter and clenched her fists. Instantly he stepped backwards, and she turned round in time to see his uninjured hand go to his head, his fingers raking through his hair in a gesture of wordless exasperation.
‘I’m sorry…’ she said lamely. ‘It’s just…it’s my hands. I have to be careful. They’re…precious…’
He suddenly went very still.
‘Precious?’
For a moment she watched as he half-raised his own hands, gazing downwards at them, at the fingers of the left one held rigidly in place by the bloodstained gauze. And then he turned away.
Precious. God, her shallowness took his breath away. Her hands were precious. Jeez.
She was unreal. His hands… His hands weren’t just precious, they were his lifeline. This spoiled little girl would never understand that.
Not that he had any intention of her finding out.
CHAPTER FOUR
RACHEL’S eyes snapped open, and for a moment she felt suffocating fear as she stared into black nothingness. Her hands were twisted in the soft duvet, her fingers cramped, and the darkness was filled with the sickening thud of her heart.
Whimpering quietly, she unravelled her hands from the bedcovers and held them out in front of her as her eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom. She had dreamed of Carlos—a bizarre, terrible dream, where he chased her down a labyrinth of narrow lanes in her wedding dress, a knife flashing in his hand. And she knew with the terrible certainty that came in sleep that he intended to damage her hands with it, in revenge for humiliating him.
And then suddenly Orlando was there, naked to the waist and standing between her and Carlos, shielding her, until the next thing she knew her wedding dress was scarlet with his blood. All she could do was hold his lacerated hands, knowing as the blood kept flowing that she had brought this on him.
Earlier on in the kitchen she had felt dizzy as his bare chest had been revealed…too shocked and too shy to take in what she was seeing. But while her conscious mind had been having a fit of the vapours it seemed her eyes had missed nothing—noting every muscle, every sinew, every inch of delicious flesh. And they had chosen the dead hours of the night to revisit them all in disturbing detail.
Her pulse raced, and her body twitched and throbbed with strange, uncomfortable sensations. In the thick silence she could hear nothing but the thudding of her heart.
Until her stomach gave a deafening rumble.
The sound broke the spell and made her laugh out loud with relief. Of course—she’d eaten virtually nothing all day, which totally explained the bizarre feelings that buzzed through her nerve-endings.
She was hungry, that was all. So hungry.
She had no idea what time it was, but food suddenly seemed like an imperative. She longed for the normality of hot buttered toast or a cup of tea. God, a chocolate biscuit seemed like the most desirable thing in the entire world…
Apart from Orlando Winterton’s chest. And his sinuous back. And his green, green eyes…
No! Resolutely she swung her legs out of bed and strode to the door.
It was bitterly, bitterly cold, but she kept going, too nervous and jumpy to want to take the time to retrace her steps and retrieve her clothes. Silver light flooded the corridor, and passing window after window she saw a full moon, swathed in diaphanous drifts of cloud trailing languidly across the star-spiked sky. Rachel slipped noiselessly down the stairs and stopped, suddenly disorientated and wishing she had paid more attention earlier, instead of concentrating on Orlando Winterton’s bloody hands…
Bloody hands. The words made images she was trying to forget come flooding back, and again she experienced that painful fizz inside her, as if someone had just pressed an electrode to her heart.
Blindly she stumbled in what she thought was the right direction for the kitchen. But there were so many doors.