woman at last. Claire bit her lip now, balling her hands into two tight fists of angry rejection. She was already a woman; she did not need a man—any man—to reinforce that fact, and most especially she did not need Brad to reinforce it.
She had no idea why on earth she had dreamed about him like that and her face burned in the darkness as she could feel the heat of desire, her dream of him affecting her still… echoing through her body…
When Sally had talked about her marrying again it had been easy for her to shake her head and say sedately that she was happy as she was.
No needs or desires had ever troubled her celibate sleep, and a comment made by another woman friend, when they had been having lunch together one day—that the young waiter serving them had a fantastic body—had left her feeling slightly shocked that her friend should have noticed and inwardly relieved that she herself had not.
Of course, there had been occasions over the years when she had felt uncomfortable with the knowledge that her own sexuality—or rather the lack of it—was so out of step with the times, but during the years of her marriage her life had been a very busy one. John had, in his own way, been a very quietly strong-willed man, and his confidence in the way their marriage worked had made it easy for her to ignore her own doubts about her lack of sexual desire.
Before now, at thirty-four and a widow, she had felt herself safe on the small plateau of security that she had thought she had found. There had, of course, been men who had shown signs of sexual interest in her, but she had gently and tactfully made it clear that she felt no corresponding interest, and the last thing she had ever expected to happen was that she should so unwontedly and inappropriately develop a personal sexual awareness of a man.
As she continued to stare into the darkness she felt as though a part of herself had suddenly betrayed her, become alien to her… and, because of that, somehow out of her control. Dangerously out of her control, she acknowledged, blushing as she fought to ignore certain memories of just how enthusiastically and passionately she had not just responded to Brad in her dream but actually initiated the sensuality between them.
Another shudder tormented her body, her skin now chilled by the cool night air, but her heartbeat was starting to return to its normal rhythm. Tiredly Claire lay down again, closing her eyes and willing herself to go back to sleep, but this time without dreaming about Brad.
Claire smiled ruefully as she reread Sally’s postcard. It had arrived in the morning’s post and showed an idyllic view of a soft white half-moon beach and an impossibly azure sea—’the view from the veranda of our beach-side bungalow’, Sally had written.
They were honeymooning in the Seychelles and their hotel, according to Sally’s ecstatic card, was every bit as wonderful as the brochure had promised.
Typically, though, as well as reassuring Claire that she was wonderfully, blissfully happy, Sally had added a cryptic postscript to her message, teasing Claire about the fact that she had helped to catch her wedding bouquet.
‘Remember,’ she urged her stepmother, ‘you want a man you can have all to yourself, not one you’ve only got a share in.’ A reference, Claire knew, to the fact that she had not been the only one to catch the wedding bouquet.
The arrival of Sally’s card had helped distract her thoughts away from Brad and the disruption he was causing in her life. Nonetheless, when she heard a car pulling up outside her whole body tensed, and it was a relief to discover when she went to the door that her visitor was Irene.
‘I’m just on my way to the supermarket and I thought I’d call to see if you needed anything,’ her sister-in-law informed her as she came in. She gave a small sigh. ‘Poor Tim; he hardly slept at all last night. Claire… if Brad should happen to mention anything about the company to you—’
‘Oh, I’m sure he won’t,’ Claire interrupted her.
‘Well, maybe not, but he is, after all, over here on his own and you do have a way of… Well, people do tend to confide in you… and the two of you will be spending quite a lot of time together…’
Claire stared at her.
‘No, we won’t,’ she protested. ‘We’ll hardly see one another.’
‘He’ll be here at mealtimes… in the evening… you’ll be having dinner together,’ Irene pointed out. ‘I mean, that was one of the reasons he wanted to live somewhere en famille, so to speak—because he didn’t want the anonymity of dining alone in a hotel restaurant.’
Eating together… Claire swallowed nervously.
Later, as she walked across the kitchen, the American cookery book that Irene had given her caught her eye. Glaring irritably at it, she suffered an unfamiliar surge of rebellion.
If she had to feed Brad, then at least she could exercise some form of control over the situation by feeding him food of her own choice.
Determinedly she walked towards her freezer and removed the ingredients she wanted.
John had always praised her cooking. He had liked old-fashioned, simple home-made food, and over the years Claire had found ways of adapting recipes so that she was able to satisfy his taste for the food he remembered his mother making and also ensure that the meals she served were nutritious and healthy.
She had been particularly pleased with her version of his favourite beef-steak pie. That was as traditional a British dish as you could get, especially when served with her light-as-air dumplings and garden-fresh vegetables.
Pumpkin pie and pot-roast it wasn’t, but it had been Brad’s desire, his decision, to live ‘en famille’, as Irene had put it, and part of that, as far as she was concerned, meant eating the food she chose to serve.
She was too busy to be aware that it was gone eleven o’clock until she happened to look and see that it was almost twelve. Frowning, she lifted her hand to her face, depositing a smudge of flour on her cheekbone. The phone rang and she tensed. Somehow—she had no idea how—she knew that it was Brad who was ringing.
Reluctantly wiping her hands on her apron, she went to lift the receiver.
As she had known it would be, her caller was Brad.
‘I’m just ringing to apologise for being late,’ he told her. ‘Unfortunately there was a slight problem here at the warehouse. Will it be all right if I come round now, or will that be inconvenient?’
‘Now will be fine,’ Claire confirmed, proud of the way she managed to keep the trembling in her body out of her voice.
Reaction set in after she had replaced the receiver, though. It was gone twelve now; would he expect her to provide him with lunch? All she had been intending to have was some left-over soup and fresh fruit. And what exactly, anyway, did he mean by saying that he wanted to live as part of a family? Hopefully, and if the hours that Tim worked were anything to go by, she wasn’t going to have to see too much of him, and when she did…
Tonight, when they discussed the terms of his stay with her, she would just have to make it plain that as far as she was concerned the less contact there was between them the better.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS almost one o’clock when Brad finally arrived. Opening the boot of his car, he removed a couple of suitcases and carried
