With a quick gesture, she brushed the treacherous tear away and sprang to her own defence. ‘I’m dead beat and I’m hungry, and I’m worried about finding my mother before it’s too pitch-black to see further than my nose!’
‘You have a night-light and a teddy bear for comfort,’ he reminded her, his mouth curved in mocking lines.
Callous brute! She planted her hands on her slender hips in challenge.
‘And you know where her house is. Whatever your feelings for my mother, you might show some courtesy to me, since I’ve done nothing to earn your disapproval, have I? So I’d appreciate it if you’d give me directions,’ she finished assertively.
He appeared to be giving that some thought. ‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you there,’ he said at last. And the gleam in his eye as he studied her flat stomach and sensually sheathed thighs suggested that he welcomed the opportunity to prolong their acquaintance.
Tessa took a wary step back. It didn’t seem a good idea to go off with this arrogant male to heaven knew where. ‘Directions will do. Left, right, straight on—that’s fine by me.’
‘The route is too complicated,’ he said blandly. ‘You’d get lost. I’d worry that your teddy bear might lose out on his seven hours of shut-eye.’
‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ she muttered crossly. ‘I’m too ready for a comfortable armchair and a bath to start trudging around and doing mimes on foreign doorsteps. I’ll get my bags.’
He came with her to her bike, insisting on helping her to remove the panniers. There was a silly, polite tug-of-war, then she gave up and allowed him to sling them on his shoulder. She debated whether to put her jacket on, but she felt so hot and flustered, and she decided that she wasn’t going to be intimidated into doing something against her will.
Then, feeling rather like a submissive chattel, she followed in his tracks, blanking out everything but putting one foot in front of the other, each step mercifully one closer to her mother’s house.
A SILENCE fell between them as they wound their way up a narrow, stepped street she didn’t remember seeing before. They passed a couple of large townhouses with mullioned windows and then a half-timbered cottage, whose walls were bright with highly scented climbing roses and honeysuckle. Tessa’s nostrils were swamped with the heady perfume and she couldn’t resist pausing to stick her nose in the velvety petals of a dark red rose.
When she straightened and looked around, she had the unnerving impression that they were the only two people for miles. Not even a dog barked. The rays of the late evening sun burned with a final, merciless intensity on the deserted street and she could feel the heat rising from the stone steps and walls, enveloping her in a suffocating blanket. Scary.
‘Where is everyone?’ she asked in a hushed voice, scanning the shuttered houses.
‘Finishing their evening meal. Then they’ll go to bed.’ Guy frowned slightly. ‘Most of the young people have moved away because of the lack of opportunities. There isn’t much activity here of an evening.’
‘You can say that again! Is it far?’ She sighed, sure that her legs would give up at any moment. ‘These steps are murdering my calves. I’m just about done in. And starving. I think I should have eaten about four hours ago,’ she added mournfully, quite forgetting the chocolate snack.
‘It’s only around the corner. Allow me,’ he said, with a show of great courtesy.
One large male hand moved firmly around her waist, supporting her. Or that was presumably its intention. In fact it made her feel even more unsteady, because his fingers lay on her bare skin beneath the cropped top—oh, what a mistake that had been!—and seemed to have made connections somehow with her entire nervous system.
The pressure on her spine increased. She could feel the warmth of his palm heating through to her very bones. A strange squiggle raced unheeded through a previously unknown route which ran from her breasts to her toes and made an embarrassing stop on the way, warming her loins with an alarming insistency. Tessa blushed, because she knew perfectly well what that squiggle meant.
She’d spent five years yearning for the unreachable David. Years of dreams and longings and imagined kisses which had built up in her mind till she’d felt delirious if he so much as looked at her—which he rarely had, because then she had held no attractions for a handsome man.
But this—this was a revelation. A total stranger was walking her to her mother’s door, and fire was coursing through her entire body as if she were hell-bent on imminent surrender!
Despite her tiredness, her eyes burned with that fire. Her skin tingled. Parts of her which ought to have known better were alert and ready for action. It was too awful! Had she lost her inhibitions along with her weight? More to the point, did the unnervingly sexy Guy know that her body was responding to some wayward call of nature?
She stole a nervous glance in his direction, found his warm, contemplative eyes on her, felt unable to look away because of a sudden dizziness—and stumbled on a broken step. In a purely reflex action he caught her up in his strong arms. And it was harder than it should have been to drag herself free.
Unhappily, she lifted the thick fringe of lashes which shaded her anxious forest-dark eyes. They asked him the unspoken question. What’s happening?
‘Sorry,’ she whispered distractedly, and even more stupidly said, ‘I’m so tired. I tripped.’
‘Did you?’
That wasn’t really a question at all. It sounded horribly like the cool carelessness of a man who was so used to women throwing themselves at him that he treated them all with scant respect. She flushed again, indignant with herself—and with him for making assumptions.
Desperate to prove her sublime indifference to his insidious charms, she said stiffly, ‘Look, you don’t need to come any further. Just point in the general direction. I’ll find it on my own.’
‘No. I’ll take you to the door.’ There was no room for argument in that tone. ‘You’re almost asleep on your feet.’
‘That’s why I tripped,’ she persisted stubbornly, squirming with mortification when he neglected to agree with her.
Looking ahead, she saw nothing but the steep rise of steps as they twisted and turned up the hill. It occurred to her that surely, no bakery would ever have set up shop this far from the centre. Suddenly suspicious of his motives, she bit her lip, wondering where he was taking her.
‘Rue Boulangerie,’ he announced, and pointed to a lane half-hidden on her left.
‘Oh!’ She’d misjudged him. They’d arrived! Tessa’s whole body slumped against the wall in sheer relief. ‘That’s wonderful! You’ve no idea how grateful I am! Thank you. Thank you!’
Her beatific smile apparently startled him. For a breathless moment he stared down at her, his expression puzzled. Then, ‘Let’s make sure your mother is in,’ he suggested with silky smoothness.
‘Of
