The Devil and Miss Jones. Kate Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ gentle touch was the most mind-blowing of all. It was warm and soothing, easing the restless stinging in her nerves and making her feel as if she were melting from the inside out. She wanted to turn her face into his hand, rest her cheek more firmly against his palm and just let the feelings of tension seep away.

      She expected that those big hands would fumble with the task before him. That at least he would tug at some of the pins, twisting them free. She knew that she would have done that herself, particularly if she was impatient to have the job done as she sensed that he was. He might have himself carefully under control but there was a tautness in the long powerful body next to hers that communicated the fight he was having to do so. She recognised it from the tension in her own body.

      What was it he had said? That he had just taken off, leaving everything behind. Leaving what behind? And where? That accent didn’t belong here on the moors of the north of England. And the tanned olive skin, the polished jet hair marked him out as someone as alien to this landscape as if some sleek, powerful jaguar had suddenly stalked the mist soaked hills. Just the thought made her gasp in reaction.

       ‘Qué?’

      Carlos had caught the tiny indrawn breath, pausing in this task, the deep green eyes going sharply to her face and locking with her widened grey ones.

      ‘Am I hurting you?’

      ‘Oh, no. No.’

      ‘Hurting’ was not the word for what was happening to her. She only knew that all the nerves in her stomach were tangling into tight, uncomfortable knots, and the stinging sense of tension might have ebbed away but only to be replaced by a new hot, tingling sensation, running like electricity over her skin. A yearning that was uncoiling deep inside and that made her want to reach out to this man. Be closer to him. She wanted more of that touch. More of him.

      ‘I want to get out of here.’

      With you. She only dared let the words echo inside her head; too afraid, too unsure to actually let them out into the air. She didn’t know what she would be unleashing if she did.

      ‘So let’s do this…’

      Carlos’s eyes locked with hers, lingering for a darkly revealing moment, before he bent his head again, turned his attention back to the task in hand. And it seemed that with each pin that was eased from her hair, tossed with the tiniest sound of metal hitting tarmac onto the road, something in her mood, her body, her whole life lightened and eased. She felt the knots untangling from her nerves, the tension leaving her muscles so that she could stand taller, straighter, easier. Something of the horror and the pain that had slashed at her soul seeped away, filling her with a new sense of anticipation and hope.

      ‘So, your wedding—just why did you run out on it? What did this guy do to you?’

      She didn’t know if he was asking to distract her from the time it was taking to free her from the veil or because he really wanted to know but because she couldn’t see his face and, more importantly, he couldn’t see hers, she found it surprisingly easy to answer him.

      ‘Why did I turn round and get out of these as fast as I could, never looking back?’ she asked, trying to bring her chin up in defiance, adopt an I-couldn’t-care-less attitude that she felt might not be fully convincing.

      ‘You have to admit it’s not the usual way these things go. Normally by this time the bride and groom would be…’

      ‘Gazing into each other’s eyes as they made their loving vows? So are you feeling sorry for my poor, deserted groom, now that his wife-to-be has run out on him? Well, don’t—he’ll be more than happy having hot, passionate sex with my chief bridesmaid—that is if he hasn’t already exhausted himself shagging her on the bed we were supposed to have shared tonight.’

      ‘The bastard did that?’

      A blazing sense of outrage was like a wildfire in Carlos’s voice and his hands tightened in her hair, twisting sharply so that she caught back a cry of pain. But in the same moment that she felt the small discomfort in her scalp, she also knew a sudden rush of relief mixed with a surprising bubble of unexpected delight. He cared enough to be angry at what Gavin had done. His outrage was like a balm to the wounds she’d carried with her from the Hall. Some of them at least.

      ‘I walked in on him—on them—while they were hard at it. I walked out again pretty damn fast,’ she added with brittle flippancy. ‘I don’t think they saw me—they were… totally absorbed. I managed to get out of the place without anyone seeing me and after that I just ran and never looked back.’

      Until she had reached the road across the moor and, too tired and too cold and miserable to go any further in her stupid wedding finery, she had stopped on the verge and tried to hitch a ride.

      She wasn’t going to tell him the rest. She couldn’t yet even bear to look at those other words for herself and take in just what Gavin had said. She hadn’t even been a woman to him—not a real person, just a source of a future income.

      ‘I’d like to deal with this snake. No man should treat a woman that way. You should let me take you back there.’

      ‘And do what?’ Martha challenged, finding the disgust in his voice almost too much to bear. ‘Storm into the Hall, all guns blazing, and challenge him to a duel? No, thanks! That way everyone would know exactly why I’d pulled out of the wedding—just how badly humiliated I’d been—instead of just thinking I’d got cold feet at the last moment.’

      A raw, bitter laugh bubbled up in her throat, almost choking her. She’d had pretty cold feet by the time he’d found her. She could swear that it was only now that they were fully thawed out.

      ‘Which actually was the truth. And I’d much rather that Gavin think that I’d walked out on him before I found out how he’d been spending the hours before our wedding. He’ll never know for sure whether I caught him with his pants down or not—’

      And would never have the cruel satisfaction of knowing that she’d heard herself described as someone he would have to lie back and think of the money when he slept with her.

      ‘That’s definitely the way I prefer it. Besides I can fight my own battles, thank you. I’ve been doing it for long enough.’

      ‘How so? What about your family?’

      ‘I don’t have one. I never knew my father—he ran out on my mother as soon as he knew she was pregnant, so it was always just the two of us. Three years ago, Mum was diagnosed with liver cancer—she died last summer.’

      And it had been in the aftermath of that loss that on an uncharacteristic impulse she had bought the winning lottery ticket that had changed her future. If only she could have done that earlier so that she could have made her mother’s last months more comfortable. If only she hadn’t spent those years isolated as her mother’s carer so that she had no experience of life and men that might have helped her realise just what Gavin was up to, see past the pretty lies he told her.

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      His words were kind, as was his tone, but Martha still found that they made her tense in nervous apprehension. If he made a move towards her, if he touched her, perhaps tried to take her into his arms to express his sympathy, then she would shatter, go to pieces, and she had no idea how she would ever put herself back together again.

      But СКАЧАТЬ