glances met and clashed.
She wanted to disobey his order, to walk away, but she couldn’t leave, and she found herself subsiding into her chair.
After a moment, he asked softly, ‘Why didn’t you at least let me know you were safe?’
‘Why do you suppose?’
‘You didn’t think I might worry about you?’
‘I tried not to think of you at all.’
‘What about the rest of the family?’
When she said nothing, he went on, ‘They were all very upset and concerned that you’d gone without a word. Beth in particular…’
‘I’m sorry about that. I liked your stepmother.’ It was the truth. In fact, with one exception, she’d liked the whole family.
‘She had another heart attack,’ he added flatly.
Virginia caught her breath.
Seeing the apprehension on her face, Ryan said quickly, ‘A fairly mild one, thank the Lord.’
‘Then, she’s all right?’
‘She made a good recovery. Which is just as well.’
‘You mean if she hadn’t, you would have held me responsible?’
‘I do hold you responsible.’
Virginia flinched at the bitter irony. It had been mainly to safeguard his stepmother’s fragile state of health that she had chosen to run as she did.
‘Do Janice and Steven?’
‘What do you think?’
Her heart sank. Still, it was better that they should blame her, a comparative stranger, rather than know something that would almost certainly tear their close-knit family apart.
One half of her still wondered incredulously how Ryan had been able to do what he did. But perhaps he’d found it impossible to help himself? Love could be a powerful, overriding force…
As could the need for revenge.
Though more sinned against than sinning, she had wrecked all his carefully laid plans and, in his own eyes at least, had made him look a fool.
Not something a man like him would easily forgive.
She shivered.
‘You’re surely not cold?’ Ryan asked.
‘No.’
‘Ashamed?’
‘Why should I be ashamed?’
‘I can think of several good reasons. First and foremost that you treated a woman, who had taken you to her heart, in such a callous fashion…’
Perhaps, in retrospect, she should have left a note, made up some excuse for going… But, shocked and stunned, feeling mortally wounded, she hadn’t known what to say.
‘I’m sorry if it seemed that way. I never meant to hurt her…’
A shrill bleating cut through her words.
‘Excuse me.’ Reaching into his jacket pocket he produced a mobile phone. ‘Falconer… It has? Good… Yes… Yes… Be with you shortly.’
Dropping the phone back in his pocket, he rose to his feet and pulled on his jacket. ‘I’m sorry I have to leave quite so soon.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say the same,’ she informed him trenchantly.
Paying her back for her show of spirit, he came round the table and with studied insolence slipped his hand inside the lapels of her robe and cupped her breast.
Knowing that he was waiting for her to jump up and protest, summoning every last ounce of will-power, she sat still and silent.
Smiling a little, he bent his dark head and his mouth brushed hers. ‘When you’re in bed on your own tonight, dream that I’m making love to you.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ she spat at him.
‘If you’re frustrated enough, you might find it impossible not to.’
‘I’m not frustrated.’
Smiling, he rubbed his thumb over the nipple until it firmed. ‘You were always very responsive.’
Unable to stand any more, she jerked away and, dragging the lapels together, jumped to her feet. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? Or should I say, someone?’
His blue-violet eyes narrowed.
‘Charles might not be a young man by your standards, but he’s fit and in his prime. If I am frustrated I won’t need to stay that way.’
She saw a white line appear round Ryan’s mouth and, fiercely glad that he was furious, laughed in his face.
With a sound almost like a growl, he took her upper arms, his fingers biting into the soft flesh, and warned softly, ‘Don’t even think about it. From now on I intend to be the only man in your life, so if Raynor does get any bright ideas about making love to you, it will pay you to say no, and mean it.’
Dragging her right up against him, he kissed her once more. This time his kiss was hard and unsparing, rocking her to her very foundations. Then suddenly she was free.
‘Be seeing you,’ he said mockingly.
A moment later she heard the front door open and close.
Badly shaken, she went through to the hall on unsteady legs. Ryan was gone, but she noted abstractedly that her purse had been picked up and placed neatly on the telephone table.
Trembling now as reaction set in, she sank down on the bottom step of the stairs and stared blindly into space while her thoughts whirled.
Oh, dear Lord, what was she to do? Ryan’s unwelcome visit had proved at least two terrifying things: that he was in deadly earnest; and that her chances of resisting him were practically nil.
It had been that way from the start. She had looked at him and had loved him, heart and soul.
Recognising at some deep, subconscious level that he was the one she had been waiting all her life for, she had given herself to him with a joyous certainty, and the hope of a happy ever after.
But that happy ever after had been short-lived. A bare two months from its rapturous start to its bitter ending…
And now, unless she could find some way of keeping Ryan at bay, the torture would start all over again.
She would still be there, and even if his feelings for the other woman—love or obsession, call it what one will—had died, the situation would still be quite intolerable.
