It was a second before he understood, then a look of anger and frustration crossed his handsome face. But she didn’t have to struggle further. He let her go.
‘I’m sorry.’ Riona found herself apologising, only later asking why. ‘I can’t...I don’t...’ She shook her head.
Inarticulate mutterings, but he made something of them. The wrong thing. His dark look softened to wonder.
‘Hell, I didn’t realise...’ His eyes searched her face and saw the panic there. ‘I assumed...so few girls are these days.’
Are what? Riona could have asked, but she understood him well enough. She was just too embarrassed to say anything.
The colour was high on her cheeks, revealing, misleading, as he went on, ‘I should have known. It’s written all over you. I just didn’t want to see it.’
Riona remained silent, but she shook her head, trying to tell him. He misread the gesture, too.
‘OK, kid. It’s OK.’ He backed away from her, holding up his hands in truce. ‘No problem. I came on too strong. It won’t happen again.’
‘I-I’m not...’ a now acutely embarrassed Riona tried to explain.
He didn’t give her the chance. ‘You don’t have to say anything. Just show me the door, huh?’ he suggested with a smile that mocked himself.
He was being so nice, so reasonable that Riona felt worse. She opened her mouth, but no words came. It was easier just to do what he suggested and escort him to the door.
He left her with a wry, ‘Well, it was fun while it lasted,’ and a warning, ‘Keep your doors locked tight, kid,’ before walking off to his car.
Riona stood in the doorway, watching until he circled the car round and headed off back down the hill. She should have been relieved that he’d been put off. Should have been glad he’d deceived himself.
And she was a little, for she knew full well she couldn’t handle such a man. He was too...too everything. Different from Fergus Ross and the other young men round Invergair. Different from anyone she’d ever met. He jangled her nerves and assaulted her pride and filled her head with such thoughts that she was on the verge of screaming.
But oh, he made her senses reel, too, and relief was nothing compared to the longing as she touched her lips and felt the imprint of his mouth still.
Treacherous senses. Insane longing.
Feelings that had to be smothered before they could leave her open to pain and disillusionment much greater than any she had ever suffered at Fergus Ross’s hands.
She forced herself to remember her first and last disastrous attempt at love. To call it love, of course, was a deception in itself. Perhaps she’d thought herself in love with Fergus, but, in truth, it had just been need and fear and loneliness on her part. And on his? Sure, he had professed love until they had gone to bed together, but hadn’t much bothered afterwards.
Riona hadn’t complained, for her own feelings had proved insubstantial, dying even as he took her virginity with clumsy passion. The pain had barely touched her and was more bearable than the terrible emptiness in her heart. She had wanted to love Fergus, wanted to believe his promises, had slept with him rather than risk losing him. But there had been no real love there, just desire and desperation laid bare during an unloving act of intimacy. She hadn’t complained when it had turned Fergus from attentive suitor to arrogant lover, because her own love had proved such a poor, false thing.
She’d just heaved an enormous sigh of relief that Fergus had to return to his ship the next day, and done her best to forget the whole sorry interlude. She’d managed fairly well, too, which said a lot about how little she had really cared for Fergus. But it had left its mark on her, making her deeply distrustful of feelings, her own or anybody else’s.
Though her heart still beat painfully hard, Riona didn’t put words of love to its erratic rhythm. The truth was more basic.
Cameron Adams desired her. She desired him. It was that simple. It was that dangerous. And there was no doubt what she should do. Go to any lengths to avoid him.
Only a fool would do otherwise.
CHAPTER TWO
INVERGAIR covered a large area. In theory it should have been easy to avoid him, but things weren’t to work out that way.
The next day Riona cycled to the village for her groceries, and on the journey back the chain came off her bicycle. She emptied her basket and, turning the bike upside-down, began the messy job of fixing it. She was still struggling when the BMW happened along.
She saw him first, and kept her head down, but he drew to a halt and shouted from his window, ‘Need a hand, kid?’
She called over her shoulder, ‘No, thanks. I can manage.’
‘Riona?’ He frowned in surprise. He hadn’t recognised her, dressed as she was in jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair tucked beneath a baseball cap.
Now he probably felt obliged to park his car on the verge and cross the road to help her.
‘I really can manage,’ she insisted, only to be ignored.
Crouching down by the bike, he lifted up the oily chain and took one minute flat to do what she’d been trying to for five. ‘It won’t stay fixed. The chain needs tightening. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before.’
It had. Four times in as many weeks. But Riona decided he didn’t need to know that. He’d already made her feel incompetent enough.
‘I’ll take you home, just in case,’ he went on, unsmiling, and, before she could protest, uprighted the bike and wheeled it towards his car.
Riona caught up with him, saying, ‘You can’t. You’re going the other way.’
‘No problem,’ he dismissed. ‘It should fit in the trunk.’
‘Trunk?’ For a moment Riona had visions of him packing her bicycle away in a box, then she caught on. ‘Oh, you mean the boot.’
‘No, I mean the trunk,’ he drawled back. ‘A boot is something you wear on your foot.’
Riona decided not to argue the point. Being an American, how could he be expected to speak proper English?
She confined herself to muttering, ‘I don’t think the bike will fit,’ then wishing she’d kept quiet when she was proved wrong.
‘You want to get in?’ he suggested, after he had fetched her groceries and placed them in the boot, too.
No, Riona didn’t want to get in, but she didn’t want to make a fuss either. So reluctantly she climbed into the car and sat in silence while he did a three-point turn on the quiet country road, then drove back to her cottage.
The silence wasn’t lost on him, as he asked point-blank, ‘You sulking with me, kid?’
He made her sound childish and she claimed in response, ‘Of course not!’
‘Then could you possibly lighten up a little?’ he continued in his almost permanently amused drawl.
It drew a not very encouraging ‘Hmmph’ from Riona.
Cameron Adams, however, needed no encouragement. Having reached her croft, he turned in his seat to say, ‘I realise I came on a bit strong last night, but it won’t happen again. So you can relax. OK?’
‘OK,’ Riona echoed reluctantly.
‘Friends?’ He offered her a hand to shake.
‘Friends,’ Riona agreed, and suffered his rather bone-crunching grip, before adding, ‘On one condition.’