Did he want to confide to her the reason that lay behind that haunted look? Some urgent inner prompting caused Lola to whisper his name, but so softly that he did not hear it—or if he did he chose not to answer—and, still holding her hand, he moved towards one of the double doors which led into the sitting room.
It was a vast room, dominated by soft blues and green, filled with light from the mighty bay window and scented with a glass bowl of narcissi which Lola had placed there yesterday, just before she had left for Rome.
Once inside, he sat her gently down on the sofa, and Lola was half expecting him to join her, but to her surprise—and, she was forced to admit, her disappointment—he did no such thing. He went to stand at the window, to watch the yellow patches of daffodils as they swayed with fragile and tattered grace in the March wind.
He stood there in silence for a moment, and when he spoke his voice sounded harsh. ‘What do you think you’ll do with this house?’ he demanded suddenly.
Without stopping to wonder why he had asked, Lola gave voice to the thoughts which had been bubbling away in her head for weeks now. ‘I think I’m probably going to sell up,’ she said slowly.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Oh?’
‘It’s too big for one person, especially one who leads the kind of life that I do.’
‘And what will you do? Buy something smaller?’
‘Much smaller,’ Lola agreed. ‘And whatever money is left after I’ve given some to my mum can go to charity.’
He turned around. ‘You’re giving the money away?’ he asked carefully.
‘Yes,’ Lola nodded. ‘To Dream-makers. I think that’s what Peter would have liked me to do with it, really.’
He looked at her. ‘Are you really this good and this sweet, Lola Hennessy? Or just too good to be true?’
She smiled at the question which had almost been a compliment. ‘You’ll have to judge that for yourself, won’t you, Geraint?’
‘Yes. I guess I will.’ And he turned to stare pensively out of the window once more.
He was so still, Lola thought suddenly, and so silent, too, his stance proud and magnificently arrogant, the set of his shoulders slightly forbidding. She remembered what he had said about forbidden passion, how his eyes had glittered some secret message at her, and how she had shivered in spite of herself.
How little she knew about him, Lola acknowledged. About his past, or even his present—and she certainly had no idea what was going on in his mind right now.
And yet. . . Lola frowned. Did she really care? She had known the pilot—or thought that she had—and he had turned out to be a two-timing swine. The fundamental question was whether or not she could trust Geraint not to hurt her, and something beyond logic or reason—something buried away deep in her heart—told her that she could.
As she watched, his posture seemed to alter fractionally—she saw his shoulders and the big muscles of his forearms bunch up beneath the thin cream silk of his jumper and she found herself hungrily wondering what it would be like to be contained within those arms. To be naked within those naked arms. . .
He turned abruptly and something in her wistful face must have angered him, or infuriated him, or something—because his own darkened and his eyes blazed with some strange, pale fire which seemed to drive a shaft of longing right through Lola’s heart as she looked at him.
‘I’m going now,’ he told her harshly, and Lola’s mouth flew open in surprise. It was the last thing in the world she’d expected him to say.
‘G-going?’
‘That’s right,’ he affirmed grimly.
Lola gazed at him in bemusement. ‘But why?’
‘Because. . .’ He shook his head with barely concealed impatience. ‘I can’t stay. Not now, Lola—not when. . .’
Lola noted the incredible tension which had etched deep lines of strain on his face and suddenly she thought she understood, or at least partly, though she did not yet know the reason for his astonishing about-face.
She knew that his proposed departure should bring her a degree of comfort, indicating as it did that he must in some small way respect her, and yet just the thought of him going absolutely appalled her.
Clumsily, with limbs which seemed suddenly weighted down with lead, Lola rose to her feet, painfully aware of the lurching disappointment in her chest.
‘Of course,’ she said stiffly, but she knew, with an unarguable certainty, that if he walked out of her life now, then he would never return.
He stood staring at her for one last, long moment and then he turned away, and the pain was as in-tense as if someone had punched her.
Lola’s hand jerked up automatically, as if it had been twitched by an invisible string, but the silent movement did nothing to halt him as he strode pur-posefully towards the door.
Could she really let him go?
She suddenly realised how stimulating she found his company—even when he made her so mad she could hit him; she felt so alive when she was with him—never more alive, in fact. And she realised how much she admired his strength, and his persistence.
She thought about the unique and powerful effect he had on her. She remembered the exquisite sensations he had inspired in her—what she had felt in Geraint’s arms must be the closest thing to heaven on earth—and he had only kissed her, for heaven’s sake! Imagine what it would be like if he really did make love to her! Lola shuddered.
What if she died tomorrow—would she regret having let him walk out of her life?
Damned right she would!
Not that you could live your life solely on the basis that it might not last beyond the day, because hopefully it would—and all actions had their repercussions.
But what of passion, and living life to the full? Was she sentencing herself to a life without either? Hadn’t that been one of the reasons why she had left Cornwall in the first place? To escape from the drab, monotonous existence which her mother had embraced if not eagerly, then resignedly?
What if she never fell in love? Never met the man with whom she hoped to settle down in quiet obscurity, to rear children and grow vegetables? Or should that be the other way round? she mused.
In that case she would never experience the joys of love. Lola sighed. And was it so very wrong to want to experience them? Even if it was only once? Wasn’t sex supposed to be a gift from God?
‘Geraint!’ she called out, without any conscious intention of doing so. ‘Geraint!’
He stopped, but seemed to take for ever to turn round again, and when he did his face was as cool and as expressionless as if it had been sculpted from marble. ‘Yes, Lola?’ he queried dispassionately. ‘What is it?’
Lola lost herself in that sweeping grey stare, knowing suddenly that all her moral agonising had been for nothing. Because she truly believed that sex, when defined by love, was not wrong at all. And she realised that somehow, on a primitive level at once too simple and too sophisticated for her understanding, that crazily, stupidly, ridiculously, she had fallen in love with Geraint Howell-Williams.
‘Don’t go, Geraint,’ she whispered helplessly into the fraught silence. ‘I don’t want you to go.’
She sensed some inner tussle as his face hardened, and then suddenly he was beside her again, his eyes narrowed and searching as they swept over her, as if he was expecting her to change her mind.
But Lola had no intention of changing