‘I need to get back. I have to work.’
Scraping his fingers through his hair, he managed a smile of sorts: a smile that barely reached the suddenly frigid depths of his unsettling brown eyes. Liadan’s hand fluttered nervously to her throat.
‘Adrian, I hope you don’t—’
‘It’s not you, Liadan. I don’t want to hurt you but if you were expecting something more…’ He shrugged his wide shoulders and grimaced. ‘To be brutal, sex is all I can offer you. I just can’t give you anything more meaningful than that. You’re a lovely girl and some day you’ll no doubt meet the right man who’ll fulfil all your expectations of love and romance…but that’s not me, sweetheart. That’s not me.’
As he turned and opened the door the wind rushed in with a vengeance, bringing with it a spray of ice-cold rain that made Liadan shiver violently beneath her inadequate robe. But it wasn’t just the freezing rain that made her blood run cold. It was the bleak, haunted look in Adrian’s eyes that was taking him even further away from her than physical distance ever could.
‘They’re beautiful, George, thank you.’
Liadan dropped her gaze to the abundant bunch of daffodils George had just presented her with. Her heart went out to the older man. As he stood in the front hall, his cap in his hand, his embarrassment was plain to see, and clearly painfully acute. Liadan had already planned on visiting him this morning to put his anxieties at rest, to assure him that she didn’t blame him in any way for what his son had done. But she hadn’t yet had the opportunity, because Adrian had had a long list of things for her to do on her return.
He obviously thought that if he kept her as busy as possible she wouldn’t have time to brood on whether she’d made the right decision to come back or not. He was wrong.
Although they’d shared the ultimate intimacy, he’d made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t to expect much else, and, although Liadan was heartsick about such a decision, she couldn’t bring herself to leave. Not when she now knew with all certainty that she loved him more than she could ever imagine loving anyone else on this earth…They had a deep connection—even if Adrian was too blind to see it. She didn’t buy that ‘all he could offer her was sex’ baloney. He was merely hiding behind that harsh assertion to prevent himself from ever being emotionally hurt again. Liadan knew that as surely as she knew her own name.
So, even now when Adrian was already laying down new ground rules as to how he expected their relationship to continue, Liadan was determined to stay put and weather the storm. Did he regret making love to her last night? The mere idea scared her senseless. If only there were some way of getting through to him, of proving to him that she would never let him down or break his heart…
She tried to convince herself that what really mattered, practically speaking, was that she still had a job and would be able to meet her mortgage payments. But she knew she’d be willing to live in a tent if it meant that she could be with the man that she loved for ever.
‘Nothing I could say or do could make it up to you, lass…for what Steven did.’ George lifted his head as though determined to face whatever punishment Liadan cared to mete out, and his pale blue eyes went strangely glassy when she merely smiled and pressed his hand warmly with her own.
‘You don’t owe me anything, George. You aren’t responsible for what your son did. He’s an adult. I certainly don’t think we should let it come between our friendship, do you?’
‘That’s very good of you, lass…more than I deserve. You know Mr Jacobs fired him, of course? I’m only grateful that he didn’t call the police, even though the stupid little bugger deserved it—pardon my language. I just wanted to reassure you that he wouldn’t be bothering you again. I’ve paid for him to go and stay with my sister Marge for a while down in Wales. Her and her husband are farmers and they’ll keep him busy, don’t you worry. He knows if he ever sets foot up here again, I’ll be the first one to call the police.’
‘All right, George. I’m sure you must have plenty of work to be getting on with—particularly now when we’re short-staffed. Liadan has work to do, too.’
Adrian walked up beside her, taking her by surprise, his tone ringing icy command and clearly expecting those commands to be instantly met. As she glanced sidelong at his formidably stern profile her stomach clenched hard at the pain of the little knot that was currently twisting her insides together.
Placing his cap back firmly on his head, George muttered, ‘I’ll be seeing you then, lass,’ and stepped rigidly back as though every inch of his body were covered in painful bruises. When he had gone, Adrian shut the doors firmly behind him, surveying Liadan with a cool regard as if the intimacy they had shared had never even taken place.
‘I’d find a vase to put those in and get on with lunch if I were you. My editor’s coming to see me this afternoon so I’m going to be pretty tied up for the rest of the day.’
Liadan had trouble swallowing down her shock and outrage—at his cavalier treatment of George as well as at the cold disdain with which he all but ordered her back to work. She felt as though she were having a bad dream. Her hands were clutching the daffodils too tightly, and her candid blue eyes couldn’t disguise her hurt and disappointment.
‘Did you have to speak to George so roughly? The poor man is obviously going through agonies over his son.’
‘The poor man’s son assaulted you in my house!’ Adrian snapped back through gritted teeth. ‘I would be perfectly within my rights to sack him too, under the circumstances!’
Unable to bite back the gasp that came to her lips, Liadan stared in disbelief. ‘You wouldn’t be so cruel, surely? George has worked here a long time and as far as I know he’s done a wonderful job. Where would he go? What would he do?’
‘That’s not my concern.’
‘Then what is your concern, Adrian, if you don’t mind my asking?’ Clutching the flowers tightly to her chest, Liadan finally couldn’t halt the flow of anger that was bubbling up inside her. The man wasn’t an automaton…he had to feel something, didn’t he? It wasn’t human not to feel anything at all. ‘All I can say is that it must be very cold in that empty place inside your chest where your heart should be. You seem to think you can protect yourself from every bit of hurt and trouble by shutting off all your feelings and emotions like a tap. But nobody can pretend not to feel things, Adrian. Not even you!’
‘I don’t have time for this pointless conversation. Just get on with your work, will you, and leave my feelings out of this?’ With a contemptuous glare that made Liadan feel as if an icy wind had just swept over her, he strode away as if the matter were completely at an end.
He hadn’t been able to concentrate on a damn thing that Lynne Scott, his editor, had said and he certainly couldn’t share in her excitement that, in her opinion, his current work in progress was going to be his biggest and most lucrative book yet. Truth to tell, Adrian had fallen completely out of love with the damned thing. When he should have been all fired up because he was so very near the graphically gruesome shock ending he’d been planning on, all he could think about was his lust for his pretty housekeeper.
Making love with Liadan had been amazing. The sexual drought he’d deliberately imposed upon himself after the messy entanglement with Petra couldn’t have been more thoroughly or satisfyingly brought to an end as it had been last night in Liadan’s cottage. Whenever Adrian closed his eyes—even briefly—all he could see were those sensuously darkened blue eyes of hers, all her feelings bruisingly laid bare as she gave herself to him over and over until he was sated.
To speak to her as coldly as he had done, to treat her almost with contempt when she had so readily jumped to George’s defence this morning, had been both despicable and unforgivable. But Adrian was still furious about that whole business with Steven Ferrers, uncontrollably enraged that Liadan