Expectant Mistress. SARA WOOD

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ she nodded. In the absence of such a possibility, she could at least turn the conversation instead. ‘Is Stephen here?’ she asked politely.

      Even he, her old adversary and Prince Pain in the Neck, would be a welcome sight at this moment. She needed an excuse to get away from this ego-destroying conversation.

      ‘Leeds University. Studying medicine,’ said Adam shortly.

      ‘Brainy.’ Trish looked suitably impressed.

      ‘You nursed, didn’t you—in the hospice where Adam’s wife was?’ Louise persisted.

      Adam’s tension increased but Trish giggled at the unlikely scenario. ‘Me? No! I earned money evenings and weekends working in the kitchens as a skivvy, dropping pans of spaghetti, knocking the chef’s hat into the cream of mushroom soup—’

      ‘And kept my wife and everyone else in the hospice in gales of laughter, recounting your mishaps,’ Adam said softly. ‘You made the last months of Christine’s life there bearable.’

      There was a deep gratitude in his tone. Louise’s green eyes became strangely washed out. Trish realised that Petra was right; Adam’s fiancée had heard too much too often about Trish Pearce

      ‘Nice to have a cheerful little friend of Petra’s around,’ said Louise patronisingly. Her voice wobbled, reducing the impact of the cutting remark.

      Trish shifted uncomfortably, wobbled too, on Petra’s diabolical heels, and found herself lurching sideways. Adam grabbed her. Their eyes met. Blazed. Lit fires.

      Glittering ebony. Searing sapphire.

      No, she thought desperately, wishing the world would level itself out again. She was reading his message incorrectly. He was probably warning her not to rock any boats, not to mention what had happened between them.

      ‘Nearly became intimate with the carpet then!’ she cried merrily. ‘I’ve got to take these shoes off before I break an ankle or get a nosebleed from the altitude!’

      Reaching down, she yanked off the stilted shoes and straightened up again with them in her hands.

      Louise looked startled at such wanton behaviour as Trish waved them in triumph ‘You can’t go barefoot here!’ she cried in horror, as if it were a social sacrilege.

      ‘I can. I am!’ Trish said with a grin. ‘My toes were folded underneath my feet like a Japanese geisha’s. Another ten minutes and I’d have been launching into a chorus of Madame Butterfly’

      ‘Why?’ Louise was frowning, trying to make the connection. Her tone hardened to an icy slash. ‘You’re not being abandoned by your lover because you’re unsuitable, are you?’

      Trish’s mouth dropped open at the bitchy little dig.

      ‘It was a joke,’ Adam said tightly, his eyes glinting. ‘Trish makes them all the time Don’t read any more into it.’

      The two women studied his closed face thoughtfully Then Louise turned back to Trish.

      ‘Adam thinks a lot of you,’ she said, as if explaining Adam’s rebuke. ‘You.. got him through a bad time.’ She seemed unable to leave the subject and was plainly jealous of Trish’s involvement with Adam.

      ‘She was incredible,’ he replied, before Trish could speak. ‘She fussed over me when I came out of my study after a fourteen-hour day—that was when I was trying to build up the business—and had me laughing and relaxed before I even had a drink in my hand.’

      ‘I’m a clown,’ Trish said hastily, wondering how Adam could be so insensitive—and Louise so beautiful yet insecure.

      ‘Optimist,’ corrected Adam ‘And a wonderful cook. She even coaxed Christine to eat, by presenting food appealingly ’ He smiled. ‘Or in an amusing way. Do you remember those ridiculous hippo-shaped fish steaks?’

      Trish laughed. ‘Ridiculous or not, you ate four!’ she teased, jabbing him in the chest. Then she felt the frosts of Alaska descending on her from Louise’s direction and eased off her sudden familiarity with Adam. ‘Sad times bring you together,’ she excused hastily. ‘Don’t imagine I’m Wonder Woman. Far from it! I had more disasters on my catering course than anyone. I’d trot into the ward, tell anyone who’d listen about my latest howler and they’d all laugh. My boyfriend,’ she said, deliberately lowering her voice to a loving husk and looking gooey, as though her knees went weak at the thought of him, ‘says that’s my second-best asset.’

      ‘The first being?’ clipped out Adam, with a distinct lack of amusement.

      ‘None of your business,’ she retorted spiritedly, without glancing at him. She gave Louise a conspiratorial grin. ‘That’s between him and me I’ve known Tim since we were knee-high to a pair of sea boots,’ she explained.

      ‘How quaint. Are you getting married soon?’ asked Louise, warming to Trish by the second.

      ‘We thought November, when the visitor season is over,’ lied Trish, crossing her bare legs since her fingers were otherwise occupied with Petra’s shoes. ‘And you?’ she managed, determined not to be dog in the manger.

      There was a moment’s silence. ‘Oh, you know how it is. Pressure of work and so on. We’ll fix a date when we can,’ Louise said with an unconvincing attempt at being offhand. ‘We’re up over our heads in work. Fall-out from the millennium time bomb, you know. Lord knows when we’ll find a nanosecond to organise the wedding, let alone a honeymoon.’

      Bombs? Trish didn’t know what Louise was talking about. ‘It sounds very stressful,’ she said sympathetically, thinking wistfully of her island, the slow pace of life, and the endless skies and dancing turquoise seas, so clear that the seabed could be seen through fathoms of water.

      

      Her face had become dreamy, its lush sensuality knife-jacking Adam back to the past. He had kissed those smoke-dark lids, felt the flicker of her thick black lashes beneath his lips, held that strong and work-lean body in his arms and marvelled at the sexual energy trapped there poised, waiting eagerly for him to unleash it.

      A surge of passion ripped through his body, startling him with its intensity. He all but shook from the effort of not grabbing her, throwing her over his shoulder, storming up to his room and making mad, reckless love to her till he’d got her out of his system.

      Shocked by the unexpectedness of his arousal, he invented a polite excuse and latched onto the party organiser, close by. It took several minutes of boring chit-chat about canapés and staff problems before his desire receded. Finally he felt able to walk again.

      With a practised ease, he ended the chat and strode purposefully away, not stopping until he had left the party and was safe in the cool darkness of the walled Victorian garden. Leaning back against the smooth bark of a plane tree, he lifted his head to the night sky, his eyes dark and brooding as guilt and fury possessed him in equal measures.

      Louise had been rude. unnecessarily cutting and superior. It was a side of her he’d never seen before. And Trish had dealt with it in her usual generous, tolerant way. Just as well. He would have sprung to her defence otherwise

      So it wasn’t finished, then. He frowned.

      There СКАЧАТЬ