reaction to him was hardly that of an experienced woman; and she doubted that he would be very impressed by the inept fumblings of her early teenage years, dismissing them with the same mocking contempt that he would use to decimate her lies, if she was foolish enough to speak them.
‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘but it won’t happen again, Adam. I don’t want to see you again….’
‘You haven’t been asked,’ he reminded her tauntingly, adding. ‘I can let myself out. Sleep well won’t you?’
He had been gone for over ten minutes before Brooke could rouse herself sufficiently to go down and let Balsebar out of the kitchen. The dog was patently aggrieved, almost as though it was her fault he had been incarcerated there in the first place. Which in a way it was Brooke admitted, opening the back door to let him out. In the cool darkness of the autumn evening her skin heated betrayingly—thank goodness she was never likely to see Adam Henderson again she reflected, as Balsebar emerged from the garden and followed her inside. She wouldn’t let herself think about what might have happened if he hadn’t recognised her virginal inexperience. His mood hadn’t been kind when he had manhandled her into the bedroom and she shivered, recognising that he could be a very dangerous enemy if he chose to be. But not her enemy; not anything in her life except an error of judgment she had made which had had potentially embarrassing repercussions. Know your own limitations my girl, she chided herself as she locked the back door … don’t jump into deep water like that again. Now it was difficult to conjure up the feeling of antagonism that had urged her to confront him in the first place; in fact the entire episode, from meeting him to his leavetaking tonight, already seemed to be part of a dream; totally unreal and inappropriate to her normal everyday life.
Forget him, she urged herself as she prepared for bed. Forget him, and concentrate on how you’re going to support yourself from now on.
The Lodge was hers outright and she had a bank balance of some few thousand pounds. That her solicitor thought she was mad to donate what was left of the purchase money from Abbot’s Meade to the local children’s hospital she knew quite well, but they were doing research there on all forms of children’s cancer and from the conversations with her uncle’s doctor Brooke knew how badly they needed extra funds. She could get herself a job; she was old enough and intelligent enough to support herself, unlike those poor children. A job … she sighed … she would have to start looking round, although she suspected that Sam was right when he said that a secretary of her calibre was hardly likely to find a suitable position locally.
Not even to herself was she prepared to admit that she might be using her mental busyness concerning her lack of employment to cover deeper and even more disturbing thoughts. That Adam Henderson had affected her as no man had ever done before, she could not deny, but she certainly wasn’t prepared to admit that there was anything especially significant in the fact that he had done so; it had simply been a question of fate running with him and against her, and she doubted that he was ever likely to have exactly that dynamic effect on her ever again.
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