a fret of anxiety to get home, and anyway her appetite had completely deserted her over these last few days.
She tried to say something, to reassure the shadowy figure coming towards her that she was perfectly all right, but the words wouldn’t come and she was spinning wildly in a black vortex of darkness that refused to let her go.
She was, she recognised in shocked surprise, despite all her claims to the contrary, about to faint.
CHAPTER TWO
‘BUT I never faint!’
Sara frowned, recognising her own voice. She opened her eyes and discovered that she was lying in the back of a Land Rover, and moreover that there was something hard and lumpy under her spine. She tried to move, but a pair of large male hands restrained her.
‘Not so fast, otherwise you’ll be off again. Keep still for a moment.’
‘Off again…’ What on earth did he think she was? she wondered indignantly. ‘I never faint,’ she repeated firmly. ‘And if you would just let go of me…’
She tried to sit up, to struggle against him, and gasped in shock at the way her head started to swim the moment she lifted it from the floor.
‘Keep still. You’ll feel better if you do.’
The deep voice, so calm, so authoritative, ought to have annoyed her, but for some reason it had exactly the opposite effect, relaxing her tense muscles, soothing both her body and her mind so that this time she stayed where she was, closing her eyes, conscious of the hard fingers circling her wrist, monitoring her pulse.
‘Now try breathing slowly and deeply. Not too deeply…’
Again, half to her own astonishment, she did as she was instructed, finding it easy somehow to match her breathing to the even cadences of the voice instructing her.
‘Feeling any better?’
This time, when she opened her eyes and nodded, the world didn’t spin round her but stayed stationary.
‘It’s my own fault,’ she announced as she sat up, a little more cautiously and far more successfully this time. She was, she realised, in the back of Stuart Delaney’s Land Rover. It smelled of fresh clean earth, of rain and growing things. ‘I didn’t have anything to eat before I left London.’
No need to tell him that she had not in fact eaten properly for several days, not merely several hours.
She winced a little as she had an unwanted mental vision of Anna’s soft femininity, her curves, the fluid contours of her flesh, so much a contrast to her own more angular slenderness. Thin and dried-up, that was how Anna had dismissively described her, making her feel somehow desiccated, withered, old almost, even though Anna was in actual fact two years her senior.
Men didn’t like thin women; they liked curves, softness, the ripe promise of a female body that was alluringly shaped; and she tensed a little, waiting for Stuart Delaney to make some comment about her thinness, but instead to her relief he merely commented almost absently, ‘Well, we all do it at times, when we’ve more important things on our minds. Done it myself. In fact…’
She was sitting up now, ruefully conscious of the fact that the dirty interior of the Land Rover wouldn’t have done her cream suit much good.
‘Look, I was just on my way home. I haven’t eaten myself yet. Since your parents aren’t here, why don’t you join me? Mrs Gibbons from the village will have been up today to give the place a clean. She normally leaves me something to eat, and in view of the hospitality I’ve received from your parents…’
It would be foolish to refuse his offer. This wasn’t London, where a woman had to be wary of invitations and approaches from any man on such a short acquaintance. And besides, she already knew from her mother’s phone calls how much her parents liked their new neighbour.
The alternative was remaining at home on her own, brooding, remembering…
‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind…’
‘If I minded, I wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place.’
There was more than a touch of brusqueness in his comment, but instead of feeling rebuffed by it Sara found that it was refreshing almost. He was so very different from Ian. Ian, whose charm had masked a cruelty, a callousness that had left her feeling as though she had been mauled and left sore and bleeding when a harder, cleaner blow would have been kinder.
‘Fine. I’ll follow you up to the house in my own car, shall I?’ she suggested, but Stuart Delaney shook his head.
‘No, better not… I doubt that you’re likely to faint again, but it’s best not to take the chance.’
‘Oh, but that means you’ll have to bring me back,’ she began to protest, but he had apparently stopped listening to her, and was walking to the rear of the Land Rover, jumping out and heading for the driver’s door.
Sara started to follow him. She was no stranger to travelling in the back of beaten-up old Land Rovers, and had done so on many occasions during her teens, and so she knew from experience just how uncomfortable a ride she was likely to have if she stayed where she was. No, she would be far more comfortable in the passenger seat.
As she reached the rear of the vehicle, she slipped off her high heels and prepared to struggle down to the ground with the handicap of her straight skirt, but to her amazement Stuart, who she thought had left her to make her own way out of the Land Rover, was waiting for her, calmly scooping her up in his arms.
‘Please…there’s no need for you to do this,’ she protested breathlessly, clutching her shoes with one hand and discovering very quickly that it was necessary to cling to the front of his shirt with the other.
It was very difficult to sound cool and businesslike with her head tucked into his shoulder and her fingertips inadvertently brushing the warm bare flesh of his throat.
It disconcerted her to realise how oddly aware of him she was, how very quickly and unexpectedly her breathing had altered to become shallow and quick as her body registered the proximity of his.
A look of startled bewilderment darkened her eyes, causing her to immediately close them as her body tensed against the sensations she was experiencing.
It was just the total unexpectedness of being held like this, she told herself. How long had it been since a man had picked her up and held her in his arms?
How long had it been since she had experienced this kind of male-to-female intimacy in any form at all, no matter how non-sexual?
She tried to remember, to conjure up some corresponding mental image to offset the peculiar and unwanted sensations that were causing her such discomfort and embarrassment, and could not do so.
Oh, there had been occasions in her teens…boys…clumsy, awkward kisses and embraces; but she had always been on the shy side…and then since she had met Ian…
As he felt her tension, Stuart stopped moving, and told her equably, ‘It’s OK, I’m not going to drop you. Don’t forget I’m used to carrying half-grown trees about, and if you’re thinking they don’t need to be treated
