Lovers Touch. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ Wycliffe … the very last man on earth she ought to fall in love with. And yet she had … instantly … on sight … and without any chance of ever recovering from the blow that fate had dealt her.

      It was just three years ago that she had first met Joss, and she would never forget that heart-stopping moment when she had come to the door in answer to its imperative summons and discovered Joss standing outside supporting her grandfather, who had fallen over and hurt himself while out for his walk.

      Joss had been wearing brief running shorts and a singlet, his dark hair sweat—slick, but still inclined to curl slightly. He had been tanned, his skin like Grania’s, naturally far darker than her own.

      The sight of him had totally overwhelmed her, and she had behaved, she suspected, like an idiot, staring at him as though she had never seen a man in her life before. Who knew what foolish dreams she might have started weaving in her head if Joss hadn’t looked at her and said coolly, ‘Yes. Shockingly disreputable, aren’t I, and hardly dressed to make the acquaintance of a lady?’ And he had stressed that last word unmercifully, making her colour up painfully.

      And she had seen in his eyes his contempt and dismissal of her; had seen how totally unattractive as a woman he found her, and for the first time in her life she had truly appreciated her Aunt Honoria’s training. As she had gone on appreciating it ever since. If nothing else, it enabled her to act out the role life had designed for her: the unmarried, unattractive daughter of the house who knew her place; and to conceal from Joss exactly what effect he had on her, or so she hoped …

       CHAPTER TWO

      BY TUESDAY the wedding marquee had been taken down, the tables and chairs packed away and the lawn restored to its normal pristine splendour.

      Nell was sitting in the library, working on her accounts. She kept these meticulously, amused to discover that she had quite a talent for bookkeeping; but unfortunately, like all her other talents, it wasn’t enough to build a career on—at least, not the kind of career that would support a house like Easterhay. For that, one needed a business empire to rival Joss’s.

      She looked again at her neat figures, her heart sinking. It didn’t matter how many corners she tried to cut, how many economies she made, she just wasn’t making enough money. Last weekend’s wedding had been the next to the last of the season. So far she had managed to keep on all the staff, but with winter approaching …

      Her grandfather’s pension had died with him, and although Joss might have come to some arrangement with her grandfather to ensure that Grania had her allowance, Nell was damned if she was going to allow him to support her as well.

      Outside, her car sparkled in the autumn sunshine. She ought to drive into Chester to collect some supplies. Her car was only two years old, an expensive model that she would never have dreamed of buying, but which her grandfather had insisted on giving her as a birthday present. Each time she looked at it, she mentally calculated how much she could get for it, but how could she sell Gramps’ last gift to her … a gift she was sure he could barely afford himself?

      He had excused his generosity, saying testily that, since he was no longer allowed to drive, she would have to act as his chauffeur, and that he was damned if he was going to be driven about the place in one of those poky modern things.

      But a Daimler … for someone in her financial position? She leaned back in the leather chair which had once been her grandfather’s. It was too large for her, and not very comfortable.

      She closed her eyes tiredly, only to open them again in shock as she heard Joss saying tauntingly, ‘Finding the old man’s chair too big for you, Nell? Just like his shoes, eh?’

      ‘Joss! What are you doing here?’

      She sat up, flustered that he should have caught her off guard. She was already all too well aware of the most comical contrast she must be to the women in his life … beautiful, expensively groomed women. She hated him seeing her when she wasn’t prepared.

      ‘It’s quarter day—remember?’

      Quarter day … of course Her grandfather still had stuck by the old-fashioned calendar all his life, and he had left intructions in his will that every quarter day she was to present her household accounts to Joss, as first his wife and then his sister had once presented theirs to him.

      ‘Oh, yes, the accounts. Well, they’re all here.’

      She got up tiredly, so that he could take her seat and study the books open in front of her. As she stood, her body reacted to its tiredness and she stumbled awkwardly, catching her hipbone on the corner of the desk. The impact sent a shock-wave of pain through her, making her catch her bottom lip between her teeth.

      She saw Joss frown, the amber eyes flaming as they always did when he was annoyed. Of course, her clumsiness would be offensive to a man used to women who only moved with elegance.

      ‘You look as though you haven’t slept in a month, and you’re too thin,’ he told her brutally. ‘What the hell are you doing to yourself?’

      ‘Nothing,’ Nell countered, adding pettishly for some reason she couldn’t define, ‘I wish you wouldn’t allow Grania to believe that her allowance comes from Gramps’ estate, Joss. It makes it difficult for me.’

      ‘You know she believes this place should be sold and the proceeds split between you?’ he interrupted her.

      Nell gripped the edge of the desk with slender fingers and agreed bleakly. ‘Yes.’

      ‘But of course your grandfather felt, as she isn’t a de Tressail by birth, that she should be excluded from inheriting from the estate. A court of law might very probably take a different point of view.’

      Nell swallowed painfully. Was Joss telling her that he shared Grania’s view that Gramps had been unfair in not leaving the house to them jointly?

      ‘Gramps wanted the house to stay with the family. He hated the thought of it being sold.’

      She had to blink back emotional tears and keep her face averted from him. She wasn’t like Grania, she couldn’t cry prettily. At Gramps’ funeral she had been too anguished to do anything more than simply watch in frozen silence. It had been Grania who wept, silent, pretty tears that barely touched her make-up, her head restling vulnerably against Joss’s chest.

      She had watched them, telling herself she was a fool for the jealousy she felt. Joss would never look at her. In the three years she had known him, the only time he had come anywhere near embracing her had been the first Christmas. He had arrived at the house on Christmas Eve to see her grandfather. Nell had let him in and his eyes had gone briefly to the mistletoe hanging in the hall, and then to her mouth as he stepped inside. Even now she could still feel her pulses flutter dangerously at the recollection of that moment when she had known he was going to kiss her.

      His mouth had been hard and warm and she had quivered in his arms, unable to hold back the sensations storming her. He had released her immediately, stepping back from her, and she was sure she had read derision in his eyes as her grandfather came into the hall to welcome him.

      He had not touched her since, and she could hardly blame him. She was not his type of woman and she never would be.

      ‘I know,’ СКАЧАТЬ