hands lifted involuntarily, her fingers raking his hair, firming their link. Not that there was a need for such firming. She couldn’t back away from this.
This magic.
It was a feeling so intense it seemed she was almost out of her body. Transformed into something she’d never been, or if she had she’d long forgotten. A girl, a woman who could melt with pure desire.
For just a moment she let herself fall. She let herself be swept away, feeling how she could feel if she were a girl again and life was before her and she didn’t know what happened to women who surrendered control.
Kelvin had called her an ugly cow—over and over until she’d believed it totally. But maybe…just maybe he was wrong.
This was delicious, delectable, dangerous… Seductive in its sweetness. Overwhelming in its demands. For he wasn’t just kissing her; he was asking questions she had no hope of answering; he was taking her places she had never been and had no intention of going.
But she was going there.
No. She was Jill Shaw, solidly grounded nursing director of Crocodile Creek hospital. She recalled it with a tiny gasp of shock. Her hands shoved between Charles’s chest and her breasts and she pushed back.
He released her immediately, leaning back so he could see her in the moonlight. He looked as surprised as she did, she thought shakily. As out of his element. The great Charles Wetherby, shocked.
‘I don’t think…’ She tried and then had to try again for her voice came out a squeak. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’
‘Kissing?’
‘Anything,’ she managed. She was still squeaking. Oh, for heaven’s sake… She was a mature woman. It had just been a kiss.
Yes, but what a kiss. If a kiss could wipe a woman’s logic away as this one had… If a kiss could make her feel beautiful…
She wasn’t beautiful. She had to get her bearings. She had to be sensible.
‘We don’t want anything to happen?’ Charles queried, and she bit her lip.
‘Certainly not.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘We’re too old.’
‘Hey! Speak for yourself.’
‘I didn’t mean…’ She swallowed. ‘Charles, maybe I need to say… I just don’t want…’ Another swallow. Another attempt. ‘I’m not going to be what you might call a jealous wife. I don’t know what you do now…’
‘For sex, you mean?’ he asked, and affront had given way to bemusement.
‘I don’t need to know,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I mean… I don’t even know…’
‘If I can?’ he said, still bemused. ‘I can.’ Damn him, he was enjoying her discomfiture.
‘That’s…that’s good. I guess. So if you want to…’
‘If I want to then you’ll permit it? But not with you?’
‘Just because you kissed me doesn’t mean I’m expecting…’
‘What if I want to?’
‘You don’t want to,’ she said flatly. ‘Or, at least, I don’t. Look, it was a very romantic evening, for which I thank you. I love my ring.’ She glanced down at it, a moonbeam caught it at just the right angle and she saw fire. ‘I really love my ring. But what we’re doing is practical.’
‘You don’t find me—’
‘Don’t ask,’ she snapped. ‘It’s ludicrous.’
‘Of course it’s ludicrous,’ he said, and the trace of laughter died from his voice as if it had never been.
What…? Oh, God. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she whispered, mortified.
‘Of course you didn’t.’ He turned back to the wheel and flicked the engine into life. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t touch you again. It’s time we were home.’
‘Charles…’
‘It’s OK,’ he said wearily. ‘As you say, we’re too old. Let’s go and pick up Lily and tell her she has two very respectable prospective parents.’
Jill shrank back into the passenger seat and felt about six inches tall. She’d never meant to infer she found Charles’s disability offensive. Or even a bar to…well, to anything.
It was just that she didn’t want anything. She didn’t want contact at all.
She surely didn’t want to risk those sensations coursing through her that threatened to undermine the control she’d fought like a wildcat to regain after her marriage. She never wanted to be exposed again.
She should apologise to Charles. His face was set and grim, and she could lighten it. She could make him smile.
But…but…
Did she want him to smile? Not when they were alone, she thought frantically. Not when she was dressed like this, when she was wearing his ring. Not when his smile made her feel vulnerable and exposed and terrified.
No. Better to sit here, rigid, on the far side of the car, to school her expression into passive nothingness.
Like a cold fish.
She’d heard one of the younger nurses call her that once, and she’d thought, Good. That was how she wanted to be thought of. Emotional nothingness.
But she had a daughter. Or she’d have a daughter once this marriage took place. How could she be a cold fish with a daughter?
‘Keeping ourselves only unto ourselves except for when we’re with Lily,’ Charles said.
‘You understand,’ she whispered, humbled.
‘We’re birds of a feather,’ he said.
‘Charles, I am sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. ‘It was me who kissed you. I was overstepping the boundaries. It won’t happen again.’
Lily was asleep when they arrived at Cal and Gina’s. Cal heard the car and brought her out to them. She was slight for her age, a wiry, freckled imp with a tangle of brown-gold curls and a smattering of freckles, just like Jill’s. She woke as Jill buckled her into her car seat but she made no demur. She was accustomed to this. Even when her parents had been alive, their love affair with rodeos meant she was very adaptable.
‘Goodnight, sleepyhead,’ Cal said, ruffling her tousled curls before he stepped back from the car. Then he smiled at Jill. He lifted her ring hand and whistled.
‘Congratulations.’ He hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.
