Secrets: One Night in His Arms / Taken for Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure

‘I can drive,’ Sylvie protested, but to her annoyance Ran simply gave a brief derogatory laugh.

He told her dismissively, ‘No way …’ And then she was being bundled into the passenger seat of a Land Rover nearly as ancient as the one she remembered him driving around her stepbrother’s estate, and as she struggled to sit up Ran was jumping into the driver’s seat next to her and turning the key in the ignition.

‘Ran … my luggage …’ She was protesting, but he obviously had no intention of listening to her. With the Land Rover’s engine noise making it virtually impossible for her to speak over it, Sylvie gave up her attempt to stop him and subsided weakly into her seat, hunching her shoulders as she deliberately turned her head away and refused to look at him.

As he glanced at her hunched shoulders and averted profile, Ran’s frown deepened. In that pose she looked so defenceless and vulnerable, so different from the professional, high-powered businesswoman she had just shown herself to be and much more like the girl he remembered.

The Land Rover kicked up a trail of dust as he turned off the drive and onto the track that led to the Rectory.

Girl or woman, what did it matter so far as he was concerned? He cursed under his breath, his attention suddenly caught by the sight of several deer grazing placidly beside the track. They were supposed to be confined to the park area surrounding the house and not cropping the grazing he needed for his sheep. There must be a break in the fence somewhere—the new fence which he had just severely depleted his carefully hoarded bank balance to buy—which meant … There had been rumours about rustlers being in the area; other farmers had reported break-ins and losses.

Once he had seen Sylvie settled at the house he would have to come back out and check the fencing.

Sylvie winced as the Land Rover hit a rut in the road, sitting up and just about managing to suppress a sharp cry of pain—or at least she thought she had suppressed it until she heard Ran asking her curtly, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing … I’ve got a headache, that’s all,’ she stressed offhandedly, but her face flushed as she saw the look he was giving her and she realised that he wasn’t deceived.

‘A headache?’ he queried dryly. ‘It looks more like a migraine to me. Have you got some medication for it or …?’

‘It isn’t a migraine,’ Sylvie denied, adding reluctantly, ‘It’s … I … It’s a stress headache,’ she admitted in an angry rush of words. ‘I … I get them occasionally. The travel … flying …’

Ran’s mouth hardened as he listened to her.

‘What’s happened to you, Sylvie?’ he asked her quietly. ‘Why should it be so difficult for you to admit to being vulnerable … human …? What is it that pushes you, drives you, forces you to make such almost superhuman demands on yourself? Anyone else, having flown across the Atlantic and driven close on fifty miles without a break, would have chosen to rest and relax a little bit before starting to work, but not you …’

‘That may be the British way, but it’s different in America,’ Sylvie told him sharply. ‘There, people are rewarded, praised, for fulfilling their potential and for—’

‘Driving themselves into such a state of exhaustion that they make themselves ill?’ Ran challenged her. ‘I thought that Lloyd was supposed to …’ He stopped, not wanting to put into words, to make a reality, the true relationship he knew existed between Sylvie and her boss. ‘I thought he cared about you … valued you …’ he finished carefully instead.

Sylvie was sitting upright now, ignoring the pounding pain in her head as she glared belligerently at Ran.

‘Lloyd doesn’t … he isn’t …’

She stopped, shaking her head. How could she explain to Ran of all people about the thing that drove her, the memories and the fears? As a teenager she had done so many foolish things, and even let down the people who had loved and supported her; her involvement with Wayne was something she knew she would always regret.

She hadn’t known at the time, of course, just what he was. In her innocent naiveté she had never guessed that he was anything other than someone who had bought a handful of recreational drugs to pass on to people at rave parties.

When she had run away from university, though, to join Wayne and the band of New Age travellers who had invaded her stepbrother’s lands, she had quickly learned just what a mistake she had made, and she knew that she would always be grateful to Alex and his wife Mollie, not just for the fact that they had helped her to extricate herself from a situation she had very quickly grown to fear, but also for the fact that they had supported her, believed in her, accepted her acknowledgement that she had made a mistake and given her the opportunity to get her life back on track.

She and Wayne had never actually been lovers, although she knew that very few people would believe that, nor had she ever used drugs; but she had been tainted by his lifestyle, had had her eyes opened painfully to certain harsh realities of life, and after Alex had interceded for her with her mother and with the university authorities, getting her a place at Vassar where she had been able to complete her education, she had promised herself that she would pay him and Mollie back for their kindness and their love and support by showing the world and her detractors just how worthy of that support she was.

At Vassar she had gained a reputation as something of a recluse and a swot; dates and parties had been strictly out of bounds so far as she was concerned and her dedication had paid off with excellent exam results.

And now, just as she had once felt the need to prove herself to Alex and Mollie, she felt a corresponding need to prove herself worthy of Lloyd’s trust in her professional abilities. It was true that sometimes she did drive herself too hard … but the scornful verbal sketch of herself that Ran had just drawn for her quite illogically hurt.

Given that she had striven so hard to be considered wholly professional, to be capable and strong, it was quite definitely illogical, she knew, to wish forlornly that Ran might have adopted a more protective and less critical attitude towards her, that he might have shown more concern, some tenderness, some …

‘Why the hell didn’t you say you weren’t feeling well?’

Ran’s curt demand broke into her thoughts, underlining their implausibility, their stupidity, their dangerous vulnerability.

‘Why should I have done?’ Sylvie countered defensively, adding tersely, ‘I hardly think that either the Trust or the owners of the properties it acquires would thank me for wasting both time and consequently money by bringing up the subject of my own health during business discussions. You and I may know one another from the past, Ran, but so far as I am concerned the fact that we have dealings with one another in the present is entirely down to the business and professional relationship between us.’

It was several seconds before Ran bothered to respond to her unrehearsed but determinedly distancing little speech, and for a moment Sylvie thought that he was actually going to ignore what she had said, but then he turned towards her and said, ‘So what you’re saying is that it’s to be purely business between us, is that it?’

It took every ounce of courage that Sylvie possessed, and then some, for her to be able to meet the look he was giving her full-on, but somehow or other she managed to do so, even if the effort left her perilously short of breath and with her heart pounding almost as painfully as her head, She agreed coolly, ‘Yes.’

Ran was the one to look away first, his face hardening as he glanced briefly at her mouth before doing so.

‘Well, if that’s what you want, so be it,’ he told her crisply, returning his attention to his driving.

His response, instead of making her feel relieved, left her feeling … What? Disappointed that he hadn’t challenged her, hadn’t given her the opportunity to … to what? Argue with him? Why should she want to? What was it she felt she had to prove? What was it she wanted to be given the opportunity to prove?

Angry with herself, Sylvie shook her head. There was nothing, of course. She had made her point, said what she wanted to say and now Ran knew exactly how she viewed their working relationship and exactly how she viewed him. He could be in no doubt that, were it not for the fact that he was the owner of a property the Trust had decided to acquire, she would have no cause, nor any wish, to be involved with him.

Up ahead of her she could see a grove, a small wooded area; Ran drove into it and through it towards the mellow high red-brick wall and through its open gates.

The house which lay beyond them took Sylvie’s breath away.

She was used to grand and beautiful properties, to elegance of design, to scenery and settings so spectacular that one had to blink and look again, but this was something else.

This was a house as familiar to her as though she had already walked every one of its floors, as though she knew each and every single one of its rooms, its corners. This was a house, the house she had created for herself as a girlhood fantasy. A house, the house, the home which would house and protect the family she so much longed to be a part of.

Totally bemused, she couldn’t drag her gaze away from its red-brick walls, her professional eye automatically noting the symmetrical perfection of its Georgian windows and the delicacy of the pretty fanlight above the doorway. An ancient wisteria clothed the facing wall, its trunk and branches silvery grey against the rich warmth of the brick; its flowering season was now over but its soft green tendrils of leaves were coolly restful to her aching eyes.

Prior to her mother’s second marriage to Alex’s father, they had lived in a smart apartment in Belgravia—her mother had been a very social person, involved, as she still was, in a good many charities and a keen bridge player, but Sylvie had never really felt comfortable or at home in the elegant London flat. Before his death her father had owned a large house in one of London’s squares and Sylvie still missed the freedom that living there had given her.

To comfort herself she had created her perfect house and the perfect family to go with it, mother, father, daughter—herself, plus a sister for her to play with and a brother too, along with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. It had been the house that she had given most of her mental energy and imagination to lovingly creating, though. A house for a family, a house that wrapped itself lovingly and protectively around you … a house with enough land for her to have a pony. A house … The house … This house..!

Ran had stopped the Land Rover. Shakily she got out, unable to take her eyes off the house, barely aware of Ran’s expression as he watched her.

Just for a second, seeing that luminous bemused expression on her face, he had been transported back in time … to a time when she had looked at him like that, a time when …

Grimly he reminded himself of what Sylvie had just said, of the terms she had just set between them. She had made it more than plain, if he had needed it underlining, which he had not, that the only reason she was here in his life was because of her job and that, given the choice, she would far rather be working alongside someone else … anyone else.

The gravel crunched beneath Sylvie’s feet as she walked slowly, as if in a dream, towards the Rectory’s front door.

Already she knew what would lie beyond it—the soft-toned walls of the hallway with its highly polished antique furniture, its glowing wooden floors, its rugs and bowls of country-garden flowers. In her mind’s eye she could see it all as she herself had created it, smell the scent of the flowers … see the contented look in the eyes of the cat who basked illegally on the rug, lying there sunning himself in a warm beam of sunshine, ignoring the fact that his place and his basket were not here but in the kitchen.

Automatically her hand reached out for the door handle and then she realised what she was doing. Self-consciously she stepped back, turning her head away so that she didn’t have to look at Ran as he stepped past her to unlock the door.

It was cruelly ironic that Ran, of all people, should own this house that so closely epitomised all that she herself had longed for in a home as a young girl.

The front door was open. Ran paused to allow her to precede him inside but, as she did so, Sylvie came to an abrupt halt. Faded, unattractive wallpaper and chipped dark brown paint assaulted her disbelieving gaze. In place of the polished mellow wooden floor she had expected was a carpet, so old and faded that it was no longer possible to even guess at its original colour, but Sylvie suspected with disgust that it must have been the same horrendous brown as the paintwork.

True, there was some furniture, old rather than antique, dusted rather than polished, but there were certainly no flowers, no perfumed scent, nor, not surprisingly, was there any cat.

‘What is it?’ Ran asked her.