The Seduction Trap

‘It doesn’t offer much hope for the village if he’s strapped for cash, does it?’ she commented quietly.

Her poor mother. What conditions would she be living in? More than a little apprehensive now, Tessa unthinkingly bent and vigorously massaged her aching thighs and calves. When she straightened, throwing back the wings of pale blonde hair which had fallen across her face, she found herself the subject of a languid appraisal.

Time to withdraw gracefully, she thought, recognising that maybe she’d chatted for too long and had been over-friendly. In the old days before her transformation, it wouldn’t have mattered.

‘That’s the trouble with long journeys on a road-bike,’ she said briskly, thinking she ought to explain away her massage. ‘Muscles begin to seize up.’

‘Yes.’

He said no more. But somehow he imbued that one word and the expression in his suddenly velvety eyes with more sensuality than she would have believed possible.

Tessa lifted a hand to her lips in a hasty defensive movement, wondering why he was staring at them so intently. The reason became clear when she felt her mouth. It seemed soft…and her lips had parted in a definite pout! Startled, she made sure her wayward mouth behaved itself by giving it something ordinary to say.

‘I’ve driven miles,’ she said. And she felt more than a little disconcerted by her staccato delivery. ‘From Roscoff. This morning,’ she added, hoping to redeem herself by sounding perfectly normal.

Astonished, she registered that his entire body had seemed to contract a fraction, as if she’d said something of significance. ‘You came over on the Plymouth-Roscoff ferry?’ he enquired sharply.

She hesitated, puzzled by his interest. ‘That’s right. Why?’

‘I’ve been to Plymouth. You live in an interesting place.’ He offered this banal piece of information with a show of great charm. But his eyes bored into hers disconcertingly.

‘Plymouth’s in Devon. It’s my nearest ferry point, but I actually live in Cornwall,’ she corrected him, with the pride of the Cornish. ‘Just…’ Her voice faded. What was it about the tenseness of his body that made her want to clamp her mouth shut? Reluctantly Tessa finished her sentence. ‘Just across the river from Plymouth.’

‘The town of Saltash?’ he asked. She nodded warily. ‘An attractive part of the world,’ he purred. ‘The river there has some of the qualities of the Dordogne, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, yes. Absolutely.’ Tessa pointedly drew her driving gloves from her pocket. She couldn’t help a grin. ‘They’re both wet.’

He chuckled, as if amused by her evasion. ‘Are you here on holiday?’

Caution put her on her guard again, though she couldn’t have explained why. ‘Kind of.’

‘There’s a lot to see and do, if you’re staying near here.’ And he zapped her with a disarming grin of encouragement.

Dragging her eyes away from the dazzling white teeth, she firmly transferred her gaze to the clay-tiled roofs of the apparently deserted village and drew on her leather gauntlets.

He was making conversation. He was bored—perhaps without a female companion for the evening.

Even while she tried to explain away his keen interest she sensed something else behind the plausible charm. Perhaps she was being over-sensitive, but his manner made her feel uneasy. After all, they were alone in a fairly isolated place, with no one in sight, and she’d be an idiot to prolong this conversation.

Determined to tell him nothing more, she produced a polite but cool smile. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said, and added with finality, ‘Well, I’d better be going. Someone’s expecting me. Goodbye.’

‘Safe journey,’ he called softly after her. ‘Be careful, driving in the dark.’

She’d be at her mother’s house before long. Tessa turned her head briefly to say so. ‘Oh, I won’t be—’

She saw the keen flash of triumph in his eyes and stopped herself in mid-sentence. Devious man! She’d as good as admitted that she wouldn’t be driving in the dark. He’d goaded her deliberately! Though what he’d do with the knowledge that she didn’t have far to go, she couldn’t imagine.

‘I won’t be frightened of the dark,’ she finished innocently, and couldn’t resist adding, ‘I brought a night-light and my teddy bear.’

His laughter accompanied her as she prepared to get back on her bike. Somehow she couldn’t move naturally. Even though her back was to him, she knew she was under close scrutiny because her spine tingled.

With a casual movement she swung onto the bike and flung back her hair, ready to hook on her helmet. A vital awareness of her own slender throat and the faintly abandoned tilt of her head made her jam the helmet on quickly and slam down the visor.

One neatly booted foot released the stand and her slim body dipped in a supple movement as she lifted the choke. Then she punched the ignition, leaned forward and waited edgily for the revs to pick up.

A furtive glance in her side mirror told her that he was copying down her numberplate. Glory be! What for? As she watched in amazement he reached for his mobile phone. Calling up the gang? Tessa laughed at the idea but gave a little shiver of apprehension nevertheless, and drove off in a flurry of dust without another backward look.

The encounter had disturbed her and made her edgy. She sighed. His behaviour would have to remain a mystery— unless he deliberately tracked her down! Unaccountably her hand faltered on the throttle and she hastily made a correction.

It had been a strange meeting—one she would remember for a while. And because of it she was almost dreading the reunion with her mother. In addition to the initial awkwardness she was expecting, now she felt really worried about her mother’s present circumstances.

Tessa drove up the hill to the village at a slower speed than necessary, deep in thought. Whenever she’d shown resentment or anger in the past, and hinted that her mother had been selfish, her father had denied it. He’d explained that it had been his fault, that his inadequacy had driven Estelle away. Over the years, his insistence had made her believe him.

She crested the hill. Ahead of her was a small medieval arch leading into the village. It occurred to her that her mother might have contacted them only because she was in trouble.

Tessa tried to feel generous. Her father was willing to forgive. So would she. Whatever her mother’s financial state—or her living conditions—it wouldn’t matter. They’d be together. And they’d natter till the small hours then go out to buy boxes of throat lozenges and natter some more. There would be someone to confide in at last. A woman, with a woman’s sensitivities and emotional experience.

It would be wonderful to unburden herself. Eventually she’d tell her mother about her problem with her weight— though she wouldn’t say that she’d ballooned from the age of five, when her mother had left home, because she had found comfort in cakes and sweets. That would be tactless.

Nor would she say that she’d felt deprived of love, since her father had been too wrapped up in his own loss to realise that his daughter was suffering too.

But she’d be able to talk about how the kids at school had called her names and made her cry till she’d learnt a few defensive measures—mostly an ability to joke about herself. But it hadn’t taken away the misery of always being the last to be chosen for a team, or of spending most of her break-times hanging around the teacher on duty.

As an adolescent she’d apparently been invisible to boys, and she had never felt more alone than when she’d met her classmates out walking with their boyfriends. Boyfriends had been unattainable for her, and so she’d wanted one desperately. Now that her trim figure drew men like a magnet and she could have her pick of them, she wasn’t particularly interested!

She smiled wryly. Her face softened, the lines in her forehead ironing out as she remembered the gaiety in her mother’s voice.

‘After you’ve been here a few days,’ her mother had said during her surprise telephone call the previous week, ‘perhaps you’d keep an eye on my house and holiday lets for a couple of weeks while I pop over to England. I can’t leave my holiday cottages, you see, but I’d love to see your father again.’

Once she’d got over the shock, Tessa had been thrilled speechless. And there had been tears of joy in her father’s eyes when she’d relayed the message.

She tried to recapture that happiness she’d felt for her father as she drove into the deserted village square. Battling with confused emotions, she parked her bike against the massive stone base of a pillar supporting the roof of an open-sided market hall with fascinating medieval rafters.

Off she went in search of the Rue Boulangerie, half expecting to see her mother beckoning from a window.

Tessa’s excitement and nervousness mounted.

Half an hour later she was trudging disconsolately back down a narrow, stepped street, her leather jacket slung over one shoulder. She’d explored the whole village in vain. Tiredness flowed over her in dizzying waves as she came in sight of the square. Her cropped top clung to her sweating body. Her feet hurt, her neck ached and her stomach rumbled. An irrational dread nagged at her mind that she’d come on a wild-goose chase.

And, to cap it all, there was the dreaded Citroën convertible parked in the square—as large as life and twice as unwelcome!

‘Blow it!’ she muttered in dismay, hastily flattening herself against a wall.

The man she’d met earlier was walking beside a high wall in the direction of a pair of ornate wrought-iron gates. No, not walking. He was striding, with an oddly grim and angry expression, as though he’d snarl at anyone who stood in his way and kick them aside.

What a change in his manner! she thought. No longer suave, elegant and charming, but a totally different man altogether. And therefore not the sort to be trusted.

He held a large iron key in his hand and she realised he must live—or lodge—here, in this very village. She perked up. He’d know where The Old Bakery was. She’d have to ask, like it or not.