sort of town that he imagined Sarah would have found as dull as dishwater the older she became.
‘Don’t expect anything fancy,’ she warned him, as the car slowed to a halt on the gravelled drive.
‘After the build-up you’ve given your parents, believe me—I’m not expecting anything at all.’
Sarah flinched at the icy coldness in his voice.
‘I did you a favour,’ she whispered defensively, because she could think of no way of extricating herself from her lie. ‘It saves you having to pretend.’
‘There are times,’ Raoul said, before launching himself out of the car, ‘when I really wonder what the hell makes you tick, Sarah.’
He moved round to the boot, extracting their various cases, and slammed it shut—hard—just as Oliver, released from the restrictions of his car seat, flew up the drive towards the middle-aged couple now standing on their doorstep to throw himself at them. Sarah was following Oliver, arms wide open to receive their hugs.
Raoul took it all in through narrowed eyes as he began walking towards the house. Her father was stocky, his hair thinning, and her mother was an older version of Sarah, with the same flyaway hair caught in a loose bun, tendrils escaping all over the place just as her daughter’s did, and wearing a long flowered skirt and a short-sleeved top with a thin pink cardigan. She was as slender as her husband was rotund, and she had Sarah’s smile. Ready, warm, appealing.
So, he thought grimly, these were the people she had decided to disabuse. Two loving parents who had probably spent their entire lives waiting for the day their much loved only daughter would get married, settle down … only to hear that the getting married and settling down wasn’t quite the kind they had had in mind.
Making his mind up, he walked towards them. The smile on his face betrayed nothing of what was going through his head.
‘So nice to meet you …’ He slung his arm over Sarah’s shoulder and pulled her against him, feeling the tension in her body like a tangible electric current. Very deliberately, he moved his hand to caress the back of her neck under the tumble of fair hair. ‘Sarah’s told me so much about you both …’ He looked down at her and pressed his thumb against the side of her neck, obliging her to look up at him. Her big green eyes were wary. ‘Haven’t you, sweetheart …?’
What was he playing at? Whatever it was, he was managing to blow a hole in her composure.
The gestures of affection hadn’t stopped at the front door.
Yes, there had been moments of reprieve during the course of the afternoon, when Oliver had demanded attention and when she’d gone into the kitchen to help prepare the dinner with her mother, but the rest of the time …
On the sofa he was there next to her, his arm along the back, his fingers idly brushing her neck, while he played the perfect son-in-law-to-be by engaging her parents in all aspects of conversation which he knew would interest them.
She realised how much she had confided in him about her background, because now every scrap of received information had come home to roost. He quizzed them about her childhood. He produced anecdotes about things he remembered having been told like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat. He recalled something she had said in passing about her father always wanting to do something with bees, and much of their time, as they sat at the dinner table, was taken up with a discussion on the pros and cons of bee-keeping, about which he seemed to be indecently well informed.
Even if she had told her parents the truth about their relationship they would have been hard pressed to believe her based on Raoul’s performance.
He engaged them on every level, and when she showed signs of taking a back seat he made sure to drag her right back into the conversation—usually by beginning his remark pointedly with the words, ‘Do you remember, darling …?’
Every reminder brought back a fuzzy familiarity that further undermined her composure. He talked at length about the compound in Africa, and revealed what she had known from that random communication she had glimpsed ages ago—that he contributed a great deal to the compound. He listed all the improvements that had been made over time, and confided that he had actually employed someone to oversee the funding.
‘Those were some of the most carefree months in my entire life,’ he admitted, and she knew that he was telling the absolute truth.
The complex, three-dimensional, utterly wonderful man she had fallen deeply in love with was well and truly out of the box in which she had tried, vainly, to shove him. Holding back the effect he had on her was like trying to shore up a dam with a toothpick.
The bedroom in which they had been put—her old bedroom newly revamped, but with all the mementoes of childhood still in evidence—did nothing to repair her frayed nerves.
She was as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof when, at a little after ten, they were shuffled off upstairs—because surely they must be exhausted after that long drive from London?
‘And don’t even think about getting up for Oliver,’ her mother carolled as Sarah was leaving the kitchen. ‘Your dad and I want to spend some time with him, so you just have yourselves a well-deserved lie-in! Lots planned for the weekend!’
Sarah crept upstairs to find Raoul already showered and waiting for her on the bed, where he was sprawled, hands folded under his head, wearing nothing but for a pair of dark boxer shorts. Instantly all thought left her head. Her body reacted the way it always did: liquefying and melting, and already anticipating the feel of his fingers on it.
But her emotions were all over the place, and she informed him that she was going to take a shower.
‘I’ll be waiting for you when you return,’ Raoul told her, following her with his eyes as she disappeared into the adjoining shower room, which was small but perfectly adequate.
She reappeared twenty minutes later. He watched her walk towards him, wearing nothing, and swiftly whipped the duvet over him—because a man could lose his mind at the sight of that glorious body, with its full, pouting breasts and smooth lines, and his mind was precisely what he needed at this very moment.
Sarah slid under the covers and turned towards him, covering his thigh with hers and splaying her fingers across his broad chest.
The shower had helped cool her down, but there was still a desperation in her as she slid further on top of him and felt the rock-hardness of his erection press against her. With a soft moan she parted her legs and moved sinuously against the shaft, her body aching and opening up for him. As the sensitised, swollen bud of her clitoris rasped against him she had to stop herself from groaning out loud.
Raoul shuddered, fighting the irresistible impulse to spin her onto her back and sate his frustration by driving into her.
‘No,’ he said unevenly.
Sarah wriggled on top of him. ‘You don’t mean that,’ she breathed, panicked by that single word.
She dipped her head, covered his mouth with hers, felt him groan as he kissed her back. Hard. He flipped her onto her back and straddled her so that he could carry on kissing her.
Sarah arched away. Her breasts ached and tingled. She wanted the wetness of his mouth on her nipples, suckling them, driving her crazy. She desperately needed to feel his mouth
