it. Would you like to come with me?’
Shiny-eyed and flushed with delighted happiness, Verity nodded.
‘Good,’ he told her. ‘I’ll pick you up at nine, if that’s okay.’
Once again Verity nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Silas was still holding her hand and she had to tug it before he released it, giving her a rueful smile as he did so.
Of course, she didn’t do any work for the rest of the day, nor did she sleep that night.
Three outfits were tried on and discarded before Silas arrived to pick her up, and she blushed betrayingly at the appraising look he gave her as he studied her jeans-clad figure and the neat way the denim hugged her small firm bottom.
Jeans. How long had it been since she had worn a pair of those? Verity wondered grimly now, as the rest of her underwear joined the items she had already put away.
She had acquired a couple of pairs from Charlotte, designer labelled and immaculately tailored.
‘You could have taken these with you,’ Verity had protested when Charlotte had handed them over to her.
‘What? Wear Lauren where we’re going? Do you mind? The jeans I’ll be wearing now are a pair of sturdy 501s,’ she had told Verity, her face breaking into a wide grin as she had caught sight of the raised-eyebrowed look her friend had been giving her.
‘Oh, 501s. Poor you,’ Verity had commented dryly.
‘Well, they might be “in” fashion-wise but they are also ideally designed for working in and, besides, the Lauren ones are too tight. I can barely move in them. They’ll fit you much better—you’re slimmer than I am right now.’
Jeans. Verity went to the wardrobe and pulled them out, touching the fabric exploratively, smoothing it beneath her fingertips.
The jeans she had worn on that first date with Silas had been a pair she had bought from her allowance. Thus far, she had not worn them in front of her uncle, knowing that he would not have approved. He had been a rather old-fashioned man who had not liked to see women wearing ‘trousers’—of any kind.
Courteously Silas had held the door open for her on the passenger side of his small pick-up. The inside of the vehicle had been spotlessly clean, Verity had noticed, just as she had noticed that Silas was a good and considerate driver.
The gardens they had gone to see had been spectacularly beautiful, she acknowledged, but she had to admit that she had not paid as much attention as she ought to have done to them, nor to Silas’ explanation of how the borders had been planted and the colour combinations in them constructed. She had been far too busy studying how he was constructed, far too busy noticing just how wonderfully dedicated to her task nature had been when she had put him together with such spectacular sensuality. Even the way he’d walked had made her heart lurch against her ribs, and just to look at his mouth, never mind imagining how it might feel to be kissed by it…by him…
‘What’s wrong? Are you feeling okay?’ Silas asked her at one point.
‘I’m fine,’ Verity managed to croak, petrified of him guessing what she was really feeling.
He had brought them both a packed lunch—far more tasty and enjoyable than the meal she had prepared for him the previous day, Verity acknowledged, assuming, until he told her otherwise, that his mother had prepared it for them.
‘Ma? No way,’ he told her. ‘She believes in us all being self-sufficient and, besides, she works—she’s a nurse. My two brothers are both married now and I’m the only one left at home, but Ma still insists on me making my own packed lunches. One thing she did teach us all as a nurse, though, was the importance of good nutrition. Take these sandwiches. They’re on wholemeal bread with a low-fat spread, the tuna provides very important nutrients and the salad I’ve put with it is good and healthy.’
‘Like these,’ Verity teased him, waving in front of him the two chocolate bars he had packed.
Silas laughed.
‘Chocolate is good for you,’ he told her solemnly, adding with a wicked smile, ‘It’s the food of love, did you know that…?’
‘Want me to prove it?’ he tempted when Verity shook her head.
He enjoyed teasing her, he admitted later, but what he enjoyed even more, he added, was the discovery that beneath her shyness she possessed not just intelligence but, even more importantly, a good sense of humour.
They certainly laughed a lot together that first summer; laughed a lot and loved a lot too.
She could still remember the first time he kissed her. It wasn’t sunny that day. There was thunder in the air, the sky brassy and overcast, and then late in the afternoon it suddenly came on to rain, huge, pelting drops, causing them to take refuge in the small summer house several yards away at the bottom of the garden.
They ran there, Silas holding her hand, both of them bursting into the small, stuffy room, out of breath and laughing.
As the door swung closed behind them, enclosing them in the half-light of the small, airless room, Silas turned towards her, brushing her hair off her face. His hands were cool and wet and, without thinking what she was doing, she turned her head to lick a raindrop off him, an instinctive, almost childish gesture, but one which marked the end of her childhood, turning her within the space of an afternoon from a child to a woman.
Even without closing her eyes she could still visualise the expression in Silas’ eyes, feel the tension that suddenly gripped his body. Outwardly, nothing had changed. He was still cupping her face, they were still standing with their bodies apart, but inwardly everything had changed, Verity acknowledged.
Looking into Silas’ eyes, she felt herself starting to tremble—not with cold and certainly not with fear.
‘Verity.’
Her name, which Silas started saying inches from her face, he finished mouthing with his lips against her own, his body against her own. And there was nothing remotely childish about the way she reached out to him—for him—Verity remembered; nothing remotely childish at all in the way she opened her mouth beneath his and deliberately invited him to explore its intimacy. They kissed frantically, feverishly, whispering incomprehensible words of love and praise to one another, she making small keening sounds of pleasure against Silas’ skin, he muttering rawly to her that he loved her, adored her, wanted her. Over and over again they kissed and touched and Verity felt incandescent with the joy of what she was experiencing; of being loved; of knowing that Silas loved her as much as she knew she loved him.
They weren’t lovers that day. She wanted to but Silas shook his head, telling her huskily, ‘We can’t…I can’t…I don’t have…I could make you pregnant,’ he explained to her, adding gruffly, ‘The truth is I would want to make you pregnant, Verity. That’s how much I love you and I know that once I had you in my arms, once my body was inside yours, there’s no way I could…I want to come inside you,’ he told her openly when she looked uncertainly at him, explaining in a low, emotional voice, ‘I want to have that kind of intimacy with you. It’s man’s most basic instinct to regenerate himself, to seed the fertility of his woman, especially when he loves her as much as I love you.’
‘I…I
