Just Once. Susan Napier

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СКАЧАТЬ thinking that she had let herself go? Kate felt faint at the thought. Then she realised that she was still holding her breath and let it out in a little huff of relief, sucking in a fresh supply of oxygen to chase away the dizziness. The sudden reinflation of her lungs caused her breasts to further test their close confinement, and she was mortified to feel a stitch pop.

      It wasn’t only the dress, it was her own skin she no longer felt comfortable in, she tormented herself. And if he dared to ask if she had gained weight since he had last seen her, he was going to get a faceful of hot tea!

      Perhaps he sensed her violent impulse because he rocked back on the hind legs of his chair with a lazy, placating smile, taking a long, leisurely gulp from his mug before resting it on his chest.

      ‘Bright, splashy colours suit you rather well in this setting. That dress makes you look very much the part…’ he trailed off suggestively and she obligingly snapped at the bait.

      ‘What part?’

      ‘The young, frivolous holiday-maker out looking for trouble.’

      ‘I’ve never been frivolous in my life,’ said Kate, offended.

      He compounded the offence with a mocking grin that creased the sunfolds at the outer corners of his eyes. ‘Sorry, perhaps I should have said “carefree”…’

      A lot he knew! ‘And I’m not “looking for trouble”, either,’ she added, far less sincerely.

      ‘No? What about your handsome young fisherman?’

      ‘What?’ She took a moment to trace the origins of his non sequitur. ‘That was a joke.’

      ‘Was it?’

      His cynical response make her hackles rise. ‘You know it was!’

      ‘Do I?’ He lowered his chair with a thud and leaned forward on the table, the amusement wiped from his face. ‘Because it’s not as if there’s anything to hold you back from experimenting. We never promised each other total fidelity, did we, Kate?’

      Her heart stuttered. Experimenting? Was that what he was doing?

      ‘We never promised each other anything at all,’ she forced out evenly. ‘But I think at the very least we owe each other a certain degree of respect and consideration.’

      ‘You mean we should be discreet about our indiscretions?’ he commented drily, his dark eyes intent on her still face. ‘I thought I was…’ His shrug encompassed their surroundings. ‘A cosy little hideaway “far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife”…how much more careful can a man be?’

      Trust Drake to frame a paralysing statement in a poetic quotation, but Kate was inured to his clever verbal games. She battled the crushing pain in her chest to try and work out what he was playing at, because there had to be an angle. He was brutally honest, but rarely deliberately cruel—and never towards Kate. However, she had never breached the unwritten rules of their relationship before…

      It was almost as if he wanted her to be furious with him, to rant and rave like a jealous fishwife and insist on being the only woman in his life. Ah, yes…that would give him the perfect excuse to push her away, to end their affair before it threatened to become anything more complicated.

      It struck her that a cosy little hideaway was the perfect place to commit a discreet murder!

      ‘Well, you could do your—experimenting—offshore,’ she advised, visualising him sinking to the bottom of the bay with an anchor slung around his neck. The satisfying mental picture brought a chill smile to her pale lips.

      He shoved away his cup and got restlessly to his feet. She could see that her contrived calm was having the desired effect. ‘Aren’t you going to finish your tea?’

      He looked down at her, his heavy-lidded eyes burning with frustration, his mouth smudged with sullen temper. ‘No, thanks. Melissa’s probably waiting for me.’

      With or without the robe? Kate nodded understandingly. ‘Right. You’d better hurry home to reassure her, then. You wouldn’t want her to think you were over here firing up your Bunsen burner for an alternative study.’

      His eyelids flickered.

      ‘Of course, I’m sure you’ve already made it clear to her that she’s not unique or in any way important in your life. It’s always best to be up front about these things, isn’t it, Drake?’

      Tension pulled the skin tight over the bones of his face. ‘We agreed, right at the beginning, that we didn’t want any messy emotional scenes—’ he grated.

      ‘I’m not the one making a big scene,’ Kate cut him off before he said anything irrevocable. She got up and began rinsing out the mugs under the running tap, speaking to him over her cold shoulder. ‘I just asked for some sugar, remember? You were the one who came haring after me bristling with ridiculous suspicions and flinging out all sorts of dramatic allegations. You should chill out, Drake, and stop making such a big deal of it. Instead of wasting all that energy worrying about what I’m doing just go back to living your own life. We’ll be neighbours for a month, that’s all. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse…you’ll hardly even know I’m around…

      ‘And if you wouldn’t mind leaving the rest of that sugar—I think I feel like pancakes for dinner!’

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘MUMMY, look at me!’

      The chain on the swing squeaked as Kate swung higher, rocking her small body on the splintery wooden seat to get more speed, stamping her shoes against the hard-packed ground on the down-swing to propel herself up into the wild blue sky.

      ‘Look at me, Mummy!’ Her white dress fluttered, her hair spraying out around her head as she rushed through the air, her excited squeals mingling with the squeak and rattle of the chain as she went higher and higher towards the impossible goal—doing a complete loop over the steel support bar. What would happen when she was upside down, she wasn’t sure, she only knew that her mother would be proud of her for doing something that only the big boys dared to try.

      ‘Mummy!’ She looked for her mummy’s proud face but she couldn’t see her against the blur of scenery. She suddenly couldn’t see any of the other children or mummies and daddies, either—she was all alone in the big, empty park and it was getting dark. There was no one cheering or clapping her brave effort, only the rusty squeak of the chain to accompany her hysterical cry as she realised that she was going too fast and there was no one there to catch her if she fell, or to stop her from flying off into space and being lost for ever. ‘Mummy? Mummy!’

      Kate jerked into wakefulness, her eyes flying open, her hands clutching for the dissolving chains and finding only wrinkled sheets. Morning sunlight filtered in around the dark curtains, painting bright stripes on the faded wallpaper. The breath rattled in her chest and the haunting squeak from the disturbing dream still echoed in her thick head.

      She groaned. She didn’t need a psychiatrist to interpret the meaning of that little vignette. Her accidental conception hadn’t stopped her mother from ruthlessly applying herself to her studies and graduating from university with first class honours. Money had been very tight and, except for during term-time lectures, there had been none to spare for day-care. Childish demands for attention had often been greeted СКАЧАТЬ