Forbidden Loving. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ bothered her. No, it was the quiet, assessing way that Silas Jardine was continuing to study her that made her feel so uncomfortable. His mouth twitched a little as she removed the bottle of champagne from Katie’s exuberant grasp, and told her as firmly as she could, ‘Katie, you know quite well that I gave up celebrating my birthday years ago.’

      ‘You may have done so, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to follow suit,’ Katie informed her, adding, ‘What time are we eating, Ma? I’m starving. I wanted to stop off on the way, but Silas said there was no way he was going to poison his insides with the stuff they serve in motorway fast food outlets. He’s even worse than you,’ she added grumbling, while Hazel gave a doubtful look in Silas’s direction, wondering how he was taking this criticism.

      A little to her surprise he seemed more amused than annoyed, his manner more that of an indulgent uncle than a passionate lover. It seemed oddly out of keeping, because this man would be a passionate lover. A tiny thrill of shock tingled down her spine, a sensation almost of actually being touched. She shivered under it, sensitively cringing from the intimacy of her own thoughts. Thoughts she had no right to have, no right at all. Silas Jardine was her daughter’s lover and not …

      Not what? she asked herself shakily. Not an exceptionally virile and male man, whose simple presence in her home was making her feel as nervous and on edge as though she were the one who was the teenager?

      It was all his fault. If he had arrived, as he had been supposed to do, with Katie, she would never … he would not … She bit her bottom lip hard.

      What on earth was the matter with her? She had seen good-looking men before, talked to them, spent time with them, without going to pieces like this.

      And she was going to pieces. She only had to look at him and she could feel herself disintegrating inside.

      This is ridiculous, she told herself firmly. She had to pull herself together. What on earth was happening to her? Surely—she could feel herself going hot with self-disgust at the thought—surely she wasn’t about to turn into one of those dreadful women who in middle age seemed to develop an embarrassing need to prove themselves by flirting very desperately and very obviously with their daughters’ boyfriends?

      Desperately she tried to concentrate on what Katie was saying to her, telling her nervously, ‘Well, I’ve made your favourite for supper: roast beef with all the trimmings and apple pie.’

      She couldn’t bring herself to look at Silas, and so, instead, she said to Katie, ‘I should have checked with you that your friend—er—Mr … doesn’t mind such plain fare …’

      When she had envisaged Katie’s ‘friend’, she had been thinking in terms of a much younger man with far less sophisticated tastes than the very obvious man of the world who was now addressing her, telling her smoothly, ‘Please call me Silas—and to tell the truth a home-cooked meal will be rather a treat for me.’

      Katie gave him a dancing look of amusement.

      ‘Don’t listen to him, Ma. He’s got females queuing feet deep, just longing to offer him all the home comforts.’

      She could just bet he had, Hazel reflected acidly to herself, and she doubted that it was just their cooking that they wanted him to sample.

      In Katie’s shoes, she suspected that she would have felt far more concerned than her daughter obviously did.

      Despite the fact that there was nothing remotely lover-like about their behaviour to one another, Katie must be very, very sure indeed of his feelings for her if she could afford to treat the subject so lightly. She looked at her daughter, rather wonderingly and wistfully. In Katie’s shoes, she doubted that she could have exhibited such self-confidence.

      It was all very well for her to tell herself that he was a very lucky man to have the love of someone as precious and wonderful as her Katie, but Katie was, after all, not quite nineteen years old, while he … Oddly enough, he didn’t look like the kind of man who needed to bolster his ego by parading a much, much younger girl on his arm, but then neither had she ever imagined that Katie would look for a relationship with a man so much older than herself, a man more suited in age to be her father than her lover.

      Guiltily she wondered if it was her fault; if it was because she had failed to provide Katie with a father that her daughter had now made the dangerous mistake of falling for this man.

      ‘How long will supper be, Ma?’ Katie pressed her.

      ‘Oh, not long—about an hour.’

      ‘Great. I’ll just take Silas upstairs and show him his room and then I’ll come down and give you a hand and we can have a natter. Which room is he in, by the way?’

      In the shock of discovering how much older than Katie her lover was, Hazel had almost forgotten her anxiety over their sleeping arrangements.

      Now they came back to her abruptly, and she discovered that it was impossible for her to look at Silas as she told Katie uncertainly, ‘I’ve put your—er—Mr … er—Silas in the spare-room; the one next to mine.’

      Why oh why was she blushing when she said that? And why of all things was she so intimately and so wrongly suddenly mentally presented with a very disturbing and highly visual image of Silas’s broad-shouldered and very male form lying beneath the covers of her spare bed, his skin tanned and sleek, his …?

      She swallowed visibly, weakly trying to dismiss such erotic and unwanted thoughts. Heavens, the man might not even have a tan, never mind …

      ‘The nursery, you’ve put Silas in my old nursery.’ Katie grinned. ‘If you can’t sleep, Silas, you’ll be able to entertain yourself reading my old books. Come on, I’ll take you up.’

      Hazel was just about to go with them, and had even taken a couple of steps towards the stairs, when she suddenly realised that they would most probably want to be alone, and that even the most caring and concerned of mothers could hardly play gooseberry for twenty-four hours a day.

      At least Katie had seemed to accept quite happily the fact that she had not put them in the same room.

      She couldn’t help wondering if Silas himself had accepted this quite as readily.

      He was a mature man, long past the stage surely of sneaking kisses, or anything else, behind the back of an ever-watchful parent.

      She froze as he came towards her, and then flushed as she realised she was standing between him and the stairs, hastily stepping to one side.

      The look he gave her unnerved her. It seemed to see right inside her skull and left her feeling as though he knew far too well just how ambivalent her feelings towards him were.

      As she went into the kitchen, determined not to stand there watching them as Katie slid her arm through his and they went up the wide flight of stairs side by side, she acknowledged miserably that the last thing she had anticipated, when she had worried over the problems attendant on this visit, was that she herself might be physically aware of Katie’s lover, and in such an intense way that it suddenly felt as though her skin had become a little too tight for her body, as though somehow her flesh had become over-sensitive and slightly sore.

      She hated knowing that she was so responsive to Silas. Hated realising that in some awful, dreadful way she was almost jealous of Katie’s relationship with him. And yet why should СКАЧАТЬ