Whirlpool Read online

  But suspicion nagged at her like a ghost. For a man who was going to be married, ‘Some time in the new year, when the pressure of work drops a little,’ he was showing a remarkable amount of interest in a woman who was really no more than a memory from his past.

  Was he leading her to destruction, all over again? Was there some cruel force in him that wanted to make her love him, and then rip her heart into pieces?

  She felt sick at the thought. No. No man could be so cruel. It just wasn’t possible. If she’d really thought it was, she’d have run, run as far and as fast as her legs would carry her …

  She soaped herself, rinsing away her doubts with the day’s residue. The question of Damian’s sincerity didn’t arise, because she had no intention whatsoever of falling for him again. She might be in love with him—she might stay in love with him until she was an old, old lady—but that didn’t mean she had to give him her soul.

  No, she would stay in touch with him until he had found a solution to her problems with the company. She had her doubts about that. From what he’d said this afternoon, his ideas were revolving around spending sums of money that she didn’t remotely have. Still, he was the most intelligent man she knew, and if he couldn’t come up with an answer, then no one could. And already his very shadow had sent Sir Malcolm Denison and Roderick Braithwaite scuttling for cover.

  She’d be a fool to reject his help. Caroline had been right-in this hard world women needed all the help they could get. Perhaps she should be more like Caroline … and deliberately use her femininity to keep protective males around her.

  The trouble was, Damian Holt was not so much a protective male as a big, hungry panther, licking his lips in her direction.

  When she’d finished her bath, she washed and dried her hair, and got into a fluffy sweater and velvet cord trousers, and went to see if Damian had finished his bath yet. He had, and was wearing the gown she had given him. It was big enough to cover him, but his muscular chest and throat were bare, and his dark hair was sleeked back from his temples.

  ‘Aren’t any of the clothes big enough?’ she asked. ‘I thought some of the jerseys might fit.’

  ‘Which?’ he smiled. ‘The pink cashmere or the yellow roses? At least this covers my modesty without compromising my macho image. Besides, 1like this. It smells of you.’

  She didn’t reply to that. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘No. But I’m ready to go down for that whisky now.’

  ‘We don’t have to go downstairs. There’s a fire in my parlour.’

  ‘”Said the spider to the fly”,’ he murmured.

  ‘You’re quite safe from me, Damian,’ she assured him drily.

  ‘I didn’t feel so safe this afternoon,’ he pointed out.

  She flushed at the memory, and turned. ‘Well, you’re out of danger now, I assure you.’ She led him to the upstairs sitting-room which she called ‘her parlour’.

  It was actually a television-room, with deep, comfortable settees, its walls lined with well-stocked bookshelves. Mrs Carstairs, as always, had made sure there was a fire burning brightly in the grate, and the velvet curtains had been drawn against the rainy, misty night.

  Damian looked around, his eyes taking in the telling details of the room-piles of magazines, a half-finished novel, a pile of embroidery, a box of her favourite bitter chocolates. ‘This is where you spend your evenings,’ he guessed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, inclining her head.

  ‘Sitting here, all alone, with your chocolates and your book and your television.’

  ‘You make it sound very gloomy,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘I spend some of my most contented hours up here, Damian. My life is a very peaceful, quiet one these days.’

  ‘Your life shouldn’t be peaceful and quiet,’ he said gently. ‘You’re too special a person. You should be among things that fill you with joy. Not sitting in the silence, alone.’

  ‘Everybody tells me I’m special,’ she shrugged. ‘All I want is peace and quiet. When your life’s been hit by tragedy, it doesn’t exactly leave you hankering for the bright lights. You need time to heal. I’ll get you that drink.’

  Damian’s eyes followed her as she went to the cabinet, and poured him the whisky he had asked for. She brought it over to him, and they sank down into the embrace of the deep-cushioned settee. ‘Your retreat is certainly comfortable,’ he conceded, stretching out his long legs.

  He noticed her empty hands. ‘Not having anything?’

  ‘I don’t usually drink spirits. I only had the whisky the other night to give me courage.’

  ‘Did you need courage?’

  ‘To face you, yes, I did.’

  ‘Do I scare you that much?’

  She curled her legs under her, and contemplated him, her chin cupped in her hand. ‘Do you have any idea how much you hurt me, Damian?’ she asked quietly.

  He winced. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Perhaps you thought I was still a child. But an eighteen-year-old woman is very much an adult. With an adult’s capacity to love. And an adult’s capacity to have her heart broken. I don’t blame you for making me love you. You couldn’t help that. But what you did to me that night, the way you rejected me…’ She shrugged painfully. ‘These things leave a scar. The place is still tender. When you’re around, I tend to walk on eggshells.’

  He stared down into his whisky, swirling the amber liquid slowly round and round. Then he drained the glass at a gulp, as though it were bitter medicine. ‘Yes,’ he said in a curt voice. ‘I did think you were a child, Kirby. It took me a long time to realise that you weren’t—that you had become a woman, and I was just refusing to see it. And by then you had married Keith.’ He looked up at Kirby, his eyes dark pools. ‘I’m ten years older than you. I watched you grow up. And I always loved you, whatever you may think.’

  ‘As a brother?’ she asked, her mouth dry.

  ‘I loved you,’ he said simply. ‘And I was far from blind to the way you felt about me. While you were still a girl, even when you were an adolescent, the adoration in your eyes filled me with joy. Then I began to worry.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘That our relationship was no longer good for you. That it was just the opposite, in fact-a crippling infatuation with a much older man, something that would stop you from reaching emotional maturity.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, Damian.’

  ‘During your teens I would look at you. I would see a girl who had never so much as kissed another boy. You would hardly go out with boys of your own age. You only had eyes for me … and I was a grown man in my twenties. And I would see the concern in your parents’eyes. I knew what they were thinking. That my presence in your life was too strong for your own good. They were right. Then you suddenly became not only charming and sweet, but also beautiful. You were suddenly a sexual adult, with a woman’s figure and a woman’s eyes. I just couldn’t believe that you had a woman’s mind to match.’

  ‘I did,’ she whispered.

  ‘I didn’t believe it,’ he repeated. ‘You were seventeen, going on eighteen. I was already almost twenty-eight. I knew that business was inevitably taking me to London. I knew that I would only have to ask, and you would have come with me. As my wife. I don’t think that was vanity, just certainty.’

  ‘I’d have come as your lover, Damian. As your slave.’

  ‘Slave,’ he repeated with a bitter expression. ‘Yes. That’s the word. You were enslaved. Whether to me or just to an ideal of love, I had no way of telling. I only knew that you had never so much as looked at another man. You hadn’t had a chance to! I’d been the dominant feature in your life ever since you’d worn pigtails.’

  He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘It sounds,’ he said wryly, ‘as though I’m being very big-headed about all this. But I was trying to be just the reverse. I was desperate to be responsible about you. Desperate to do the right thing for you. Not necessarily to make you happy in the short term, but to give yo
ur life a chance to expand in the long term. I couldn’t bear the thought that I hadn’t allowed you to have all the opportunities you deserved.’

  ‘The only opportunity I wanted was to be at your side,’ she said. Her fingers were twisting restlessly together, her face pale and tense.

  ‘I know. But I wanted more than that for you. That night in the summer-house—’ He drew a deep breath. ‘That night in the summer-house something happened that I’d been dreading for a long time. There was another side of my love for you, a side that had grown with your growing womanhood. I wanted you, Kirby. I wanted you desperately badly. It didn’t matter how many other women I had around me … yours was the only face I saw. Yours was the only body that I desired. I tried so hard to suppress that. I was terrified of what would happen if I ever let it control me. Once we’d become lovers there would no longer have been any logic, any responsibility. And on your eighteenth birthday, the night I wanted you to be so happy, that side of my love suddenly dominated me. ’

  Kirby’s heart was pounding like a hammer, flooding her breast with pain. It was hard for her to breathe.

  ‘Then … you did want me?’

  ‘I wanted you more than I believed possible. I remember how it started. In the garden. You were babbling some nonsense.’ His eyes were on hers, but they were looking far into the past the two of them shared.

  ‘You started crying. I took your face in my hands, meaning to say something flippant, to cheer you up. But instead I was kissing you… kissing your lips…’ He closed his eyes for a moment, his voice growing harsh and tortured.

  ‘I’d never felt anything like it before. It was so powerful that it frightened me. It seemed to be dragging me where I didn’t want to go, like—‘

  ‘Like a whirlpool,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, opening his eyes. ‘That’s what it was like. My body was trembling. I was saying words that I’d rather have bitten my tongue off than utter. We’d kissed so many times in our lives, but never like that. I desired you so much, Kirby. I was barely in control of myself. And when I finally realised what I was doing I was devastated. Incredulous that I could have been such a fool, so weak! I reacted with fury, Kirby.’

  ‘I know how you reacted,’ she said sickly.

  They were silent for a long while, Kirby sorrowfully reliving the terrible pain of that night. At last, Damian spoke again. ‘The next day, of course, 1could have come to you and apologised. But I knew that if I tried to explain I’d only end up in the same—what was your word?—the same whirlpool. Our relationship had changed for ever. It was time for me to go. Though I knew I’d hurt us both in the cruellest way, it seemed to me to be the best solution. A way of tearing us apart, so that you could follow your own destiny, and I mine. I told myself that I would give you time, time to grow up and learn your own mind. And one day, I promised myself, I’d come back to find you. But, when I did, Kirby Bryant was gone. I found only Mrs Keith Waterford, another man’s wife.’

  Kirby got up abruptly. ‘I think 1will have that whisky,’ she said.

  ‘You can give me a refill,’ he agreed wryly, passing her his glass. Her hands were unsteady as she poured the drinks. She came back to sit beside him on the settee.

  Damian raised his glass to her with a half-smile. ‘If it’s any consolation, Kirby, you’re still the most desirable woman I’ve ever known.’

  His words, and the soft tone with which they were uttered, made her flush. ‘I suppose that’s a compliment of a sort,’ she muttered.

  ‘Of a sort,’ he agreed, amused.

  She sipped the drink, making a face at the taste. ‘Well,’ she said with irony, ‘it’s always nice to know your heart was broken for your own good.’

  ‘Has anyone told you that you have a rather vinegary sense of humour?’ he smiled. ‘I suffered too, Kirby. No less than you did. Looking back, I still somehow feel I did the right thing. Had we made love that night in the I summer-house, we’d almost certainly have got married. And if we’d married then, with you still not out of your teens, we’d probably have been divorced by now, and miserable as hell. As it is, we’ve learned to appreciate each other.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ she said, raising her eyebrows in a school-marmish way.

  ‘All right. I’ve learned to appreciate you.’ He reached out to touch her soft, clean hair. ‘I can’t ask for forgiveness, Kirby,’ he said gently. ‘I only ask for understanding. And pray that out of understanding comes … something more.’

  ‘Oh, Damian,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Don’t play any more games with me. I couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘I’m not playing games any more,’ he insisted, his fingertips brushing her throat. ‘You were right when you said it was never a game. Not even six years ago.’

  ‘You made me care for you once before. Now you’re back in my life, in very different circumstances. You’re engaged to another woman, and you say things to me that make me feel…’

  ‘Make you feel what?’ he whispered.

  She couldn’t answer. He reached for her, and she melted into his arms with a little whimper, He drew her close, his mouth covering hers with tender possession, his hands sliding under her sweater to stroke the smooth skin of her back, her taut flanks, the satin ripples of her ribcage.

  She whispered his name as he cupped her breasts, holding them in his palms, his thumbs slowly circling the peaks until they stood out in a taut entreaty for attention.

  He massaged the soft curves gently, the pleasure intensifying until she arched against him, passion flowing in her like a river.

  Their embrace grew abandoned. If there had been a sense of restraint before, of doubt, there was none tonight.

  Kirby clung to Damian’s strong shoulders, her lips seeking his with blind passion. She could feel the hard muscles of his body against her, was hotly aware of his nakedness under the gown. This time, she knew instinctively, there would be no hesitation at the brink. No second thoughts to tear them apart.

  This time the maelstrom was going to pull them both into its whirling centre, and there would be no evasion.

  Her heart was racing as she responded to Damian’s kiss. Her hands cupped his face, slid down his throat, moving under the gown to claim the sinewy breadth of his shoulders, and caress the crisp, dark hair on his chest.

  He was all living muscle, taut and virile, his warm flesh unbelievably exciting under her touch.

  She brushed his nipples with her palms, feeling their hard points erect with desire, just as her own were.

  Then she ‘caressed his broad ribcage, her hands tapering down to his lean waist, pulling his gown aside to reveal his naked, muscled stomach.

  ‘Kirby,’ he said raggedly. ‘I’ve wanted you so much today. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. There’s never been any other woman for me … you know that, don’t you?’

  Her throat was tight, stopping her from uttering the foolish words that tomorrow she would have regretted.

  But right now she had never been so prepared for love, had never needed fulfilment with such a wild hunger.

  To answer him, she leaned forward, and kissed his nipples, touching the dark points with her tongue so that he groaned, deep in his chest. She could feel the potent arousal at his loins. It seemed so natural, so inevitable, that she would slide downwards, her hands preparing the way so that she could press her lips to the searing thrust of his manhood.

  His body arched at the shocking eroticism of her caress. Yes, she thought with wild exultation, he had been right. She was no longer a virgin. No longer a girl, innocent and inexperienced. She was a mature, aware woman now, and able to meet him on a woman’s terms.

  Her mouth seemed to melt around him, drawing his arousal to a fierce abundance. She felt his spine arch like a bow, felt his almost tormented response to what she was able to make him feel. Passion was a pagan altar, surrounded by flames. She worshipped with unashamed delight, until Damian’s fingers knotted in her hair, and drew her away. He did not speak. But o
ne look at his face told her what she had done to him.

  He was hers, she exulted. Hers, completely and without reservation. Whatever happened in the cold light of tomorrow, tonight Damian belonged to her.

  He stretched out among the cushions, drawing her down on to him. In the silence, the fire crackled peacefully, its warmth touching their skins. Their mouths met as their bodies pressed together, thighs entwining, hands caressing each other’s fevered skin. He pulled her jersey gently up over her head,

  exposing her naked torso. She shook her curly hair free, and smiled down at him. He smiled back into her eyes, so majestic, so beautiful.

  ‘My, my,’ he whispered, tracing the aphrodisiac buds of her nipples, ‘haven’t you grown up, Kirby Bryant… ?’