Expectant Mistress

‘I can. I am!’ Trish said with a grin. ‘My toes were folded underneath my feet like a Japanese geisha’s. Another ten minutes and I’d have been launching into a chorus of Madame Butterfly’

‘Why?’ Louise was frowning, trying to make the connection. Her tone hardened to an icy slash. ‘You’re not being abandoned by your lover because you’re unsuitable, are you?’

Trish’s mouth dropped open at the bitchy little dig.

‘It was a joke,’ Adam said tightly, his eyes glinting. ‘Trish makes them all the time Don’t read any more into it.’

The two women studied his closed face thoughtfully Then Louise turned back to Trish.

‘Adam thinks a lot of you,’ she said, as if explaining Adam’s rebuke. ‘You.. got him through a bad time.’ She seemed unable to leave the subject and was plainly jealous of Trish’s involvement with Adam.

‘She was incredible,’ he replied, before Trish could speak. ‘She fussed over me when I came out of my study after a fourteen-hour day—that was when I was trying to build up the business—and had me laughing and relaxed before I even had a drink in my hand.’

‘I’m a clown,’ Trish said hastily, wondering how Adam could be so insensitive—and Louise so beautiful yet insecure.

‘Optimist,’ corrected Adam ‘And a wonderful cook. She even coaxed Christine to eat, by presenting food appealingly ’ He smiled. ‘Or in an amusing way. Do you remember those ridiculous hippo-shaped fish steaks?’

Trish laughed. ‘Ridiculous or not, you ate four!’ she teased, jabbing him in the chest. Then she felt the frosts of Alaska descending on her from Louise’s direction and eased off her sudden familiarity with Adam. ‘Sad times bring you together,’ she excused hastily. ‘Don’t imagine I’m Wonder Woman. Far from it! I had more disasters on my catering course than anyone. I’d trot into the ward, tell anyone who’d listen about my latest howler and they’d all laugh. My boyfriend,’ she said, deliberately lowering her voice to a loving husk and looking gooey, as though her knees went weak at the thought of him, ‘says that’s my second-best asset.’

‘The first being?’ clipped out Adam, with a distinct lack of amusement.

‘None of your business,’ she retorted spiritedly, without glancing at him. She gave Louise a conspiratorial grin. ‘That’s between him and me I’ve known Tim since we were knee-high to a pair of sea boots,’ she explained.

‘How quaint. Are you getting married soon?’ asked Louise, warming to Trish by the second.

‘We thought November, when the visitor season is over,’ lied Trish, crossing her bare legs since her fingers were otherwise occupied with Petra’s shoes. ‘And you?’ she managed, determined not to be dog in the manger.

There was a moment’s silence. ‘Oh, you know how it is. Pressure of work and so on. We’ll fix a date when we can,’ Louise said with an unconvincing attempt at being offhand. ‘We’re up over our heads in work. Fall-out from the millennium time bomb, you know. Lord knows when we’ll find a nanosecond to organise the wedding, let alone a honeymoon.’

Bombs? Trish didn’t know what Louise was talking about. ‘It sounds very stressful,’ she said sympathetically, thinking wistfully of her island, the slow pace of life, and the endless skies and dancing turquoise seas, so clear that the seabed could be seen through fathoms of water.

Her face had become dreamy, its lush sensuality knife-jacking Adam back to the past. He had kissed those smoke-dark lids, felt the flicker of her thick black lashes beneath his lips, held that strong and work-lean body in his arms and marvelled at the sexual energy trapped there poised, waiting eagerly for him to unleash it.

A surge of passion ripped through his body, startling him with its intensity. He all but shook from the effort of not grabbing her, throwing her over his shoulder, storming up to his room and making mad, reckless love to her till he’d got her out of his system.

Shocked by the unexpectedness of his arousal, he invented a polite excuse and latched onto the party organiser, close by. It took several minutes of boring chit-chat about canapés and staff problems before his desire receded. Finally he felt able to walk again.

With a practised ease, he ended the chat and strode purposefully away, not stopping until he had left the party and was safe in the cool darkness of the walled Victorian garden. Leaning back against the smooth bark of a plane tree, he lifted his head to the night sky, his eyes dark and brooding as guilt and fury possessed him in equal measures.

Louise had been rude. unnecessarily cutting and superior. It was a side of her he’d never seen before. And Trish had dealt with it in her usual generous, tolerant way. Just as well. He would have sprung to her defence otherwise

So it wasn’t finished, then. He frowned.

There were no stars in the vast, velvet canopy. The city lights cast too strong a glow. But he knew they were up there. Seeing Trish again—radiant and beautiful, with that appealing inner sweetness and the humour which made him glad to be alive—had wiped away the veils which had obscured his vision. She’d sparkled like a star in that room. Unique, dazzling, soul-liftmg.

But he had no business to be thinking of her. This occasion was his public commitment to Louise. He was acting like a barbarian with his brains in his trousers’ Hell, he despised himself!

He needed to take some action. Drag Louise off to bed, maybe? His wry grin eased his tension slightly. Louise would be appalled if she couldn’t take off her make-up beforehand. Whereas Trish...

His eyes narrowed. From the moment he’d woken that terrible morning four years ago, and found she’d gone without saying goodbye, he’d put her out of his mind. It was the way he dealt with strong emotions. In his youth he’d perfected that useful technique. Unknown to him, however, Trish had found a little space in his mind in which to nestle.

And now she was back, filling his every thought with a vengeance because he knew what an incredible woman she was. Adam felt the hunger for her, the admiration, filling every part of his heart.

The hardness of his mouth softened and his whole body stilled. Trish had played a large part in easing Christine’s last moments. Happy, and smiling at something Trish had said, his wife had whispered, ‘My love to Stephen... Goodbye, Petra, sweetheart.’ Then her voice had faded and he’d just caught her final words: ‘Darling!’ and ‘Love’ and ‘Trish’. Then she’d slipped quietly away and he’d known that Christine had found peace at last.

At the time he’d wanted to hold Trish in his arms, to thank her with a heartfelt hug. But he’d never dared. Because he’d known very well that there might be more in his regard for her. He had recognised what she could mean to him one day Besides, she was young, and deserved someone of her own age It wasn’t impossible to keep the lid on his need—or so he’d thought, till that moment when he’d almost made love to her.

Adam scowled, hating himself for his momentary lapse. Turning, he raised his hand to slam it into the tree hard enough to hurt. At the last minute he controlled his anger and placed his palm carefully on the patterned bark, as if testing his ability to override his feelings by sheer willpower.

He’d had no right to paw her. She was naturally kind and compassionate. He’d read more into her actions than he should have done. She had a good and loving heart which encompassed everyone in her path Petra, himself, Christine, all the inhabitants of the hospice—And what had he done? Overstepped the mark and scared her off. Clumsy, arrogant fool!

He leant his, forehead against the trunk, needing to think, to calm his emotions and to regain his equilibrium. But he didn’t have the time. Every second of his life was spoken for. He and Louise had built the company up and now their responsibilities were overwhelming them both. They’d spent so long in the office together that it had made sense to extend their partnership to their non-existent personal lives.

At least with Louise he wouldn’t ever be vulnerable. She would never be able to hurt him and he would never lose control of himself. Without warning, his long-buried teenage memories surfaced and pain tightened his mouth. Ruthlessly he overcame it by crushing his car keys in his hand till he all but cried out. He was damned if he’d let his emotions be tested to destruction again!

A footfall sounded, soft and barely discernible. Looking up, he saw the barefooted Trish making her way thoughtfully down the silvered path between shrubs gleaming in the moonlight. His heart leapt and sank in quick succession. Carefully he commanded his racing pulses to subside. And they did.

‘Escaping my party?’ he accused laconically.

Trish jumped in surprise, looked embarrassed, and then tossed her gloriously shaggy black hair in an appealing gesture of freedom which caught so brutally at his heart.

“Fraid so! They’re all talking a foreign language in there!’ she declared. She remained—to his relief—a safe yard or so from him ‘Cell merge, bullets, and hyper-link... I wanted to scream!’

Adam chuckled. There it was again. Laughter. He felt less hassled already. ‘It’s a narrow little world,’ he admitted, reining himself in ruthlessly.

‘Like mine,’ she conceded, inspecting her perfect honey-coloured toes. ‘We really are living on different planets, aren’t we?’

He thought at first that she didn’t sound too happy about that. But she was smiling brightly, dazzling the darkness with her lovely laughing mouth, so he knew he’d been deluding himself.

Determined, however reckless that might be, to prolong this brief interlude alone with her, he said wryly, ‘My planet’s hurtling into chaos.’

She nodded. ‘That bomb?’ she asked uncertainly, widening her beautiful sapphire eyes. ‘I know you’ll think I’m stupid, but I didn’t understand the reference. You haven’t joined the bomb-disposal squad in your spare time, have you?’

Adam wondered if he could—should—spin out the explanation, or cut it short and get back to the party. No contest. Here there was a peace of sorts. And Trish. What the hell?

‘I don’t have spare tune,’ he reminded her. ‘No, the millennium time bomb is to do with the way some older computers were programmed, especially the large mainframe ones used by councils and corporations.’

He hesitated, disconcerted by her intentness. It was as though she was mesmerised, her huge eyes, beneath that ludicrous fringe, framed by spiky black lashes. Incredibly lovely, he thought, a little lurch of his heart warning him that he must be staring. But he longed to touch each faint laughter line around her sparkling eyes and work out how many laughs it had taken to produce each one.

‘Go on,’ she said, into the soft night.

To keep his hands from reaching out, he folded his arms firmly across his chest. Her gaze slowly passed over its curve, her lashes fluttering, her mouth emitting a faint sigh. An electric current switched on every nerve in his body. He wanted to kiss those drowsy, parted lips. Run exploratory fingers up the inside curve of her fabulous bare legs. It would take for ever—but it would be a journey worth making.

He sucked in his breath sharply, aware from the straining of his body that he wanted more than that. Appalled, he frowned and tried to drive out all lustful thoughts.

‘The date system,’ he said briskly, ‘was set up on the assumption that it would always be nineteen-something—1959, 1990, and so on. Suddenly everyone realised the millennium was due and panicked.’

He stopped, running out of breath. Because all he could think about was her lithe, shapely body writhing beneath his hands—