Bittersweet Love - Cathy Williams [30]
She smiled at him and cleared her throat. ‘Here we are,’ she said with a little cough. ‘I…I really don’t know what came over me just then.’ She sighed heavily and sat on the bed, hoping that he wouldn’t sit next to her.
‘Nor do I,’ Eric said. ‘You’re the last person I would have expected to rush into anything like this.’
Natalie stared at him, alarmed. ‘Don’t get the wrong idea, Eric,’ she said quickly, in a high voice. ‘I don’t want…I didn’t mean to let you think that…that…’ Her voice trailed off and she looked at him hopefully to fill in the gaps in what she was trying to say.
‘So why are we both here now?’ he asked logically enough and Natalie shrugged her shoulders helplessly.
‘Kane Marshall,’ she said in a faltering voice, ‘thinks that I’m…that I haven’t got a clue about…anything. I suppose I just sort of rebelled on the spur of the moment.’
‘You care that much about what he thinks of you?’ Eric looked at her curiously and she flushed.
‘Of course not! It’s just that…’
He waited for her to finish but what more could she say without inadvertently telling him much more than she wanted him to know? She miserably trailed her finger along the ornate embroidered bedspread, and finally muttered, ‘I don’t want to sleep with you.’
Eric laughed ruefully. ‘Thank you for being so blunt.’
Natalie looked at him, scarlet-faced. ‘I’m sorry, I really don’t mean to be offensive…’
Eric sighed and then said in an amicable enough voice, ‘Go and get dressed, Natalie, before you tie yourself into even more knots. I get the message. You wanted to prove something to Kane Marshall, but that’s it. Don’t worry. At least you’ve stopped me from making a fool of myself.’
Was he angry? Natalie wondered, looking at him. He didn’t appear to be too overwrought, but maybe he was clever at hiding his emotions. Whatever, there was no sense in dragging the whole discussion out. She had dug herself a pit and then willingly stepped into it, so all she could do now was make the best of the situation.
And Eric was as sympathetic as she could have wanted him to be, which would have been an insult if it wasn’t instead such a huge relief. He made sure that the conversation was as impersonal as possible, scrupulously afforded her as much time as she wanted in the bathroom, and after a while some of that nervous panic began to leave her. She was more or less her usual calm self, at least on the surface, by the time she was dressed and ready to make her way downstairs.
Eric was still in the bathroom and rather than wait for him she made her own way to the kitchen, quickly looking over the food, which smelt delicious, listening to O’Leary’s complaints about being too old for this sort of flash catering, and generally making sure that every-thing was going to run smoothly. It was the normal routine when she attended one of these weekend work parties, and she could handle it all with her eyes closed.
She was walking towards the lounge when she felt Kane’s presence behind her. She had not heard him, but she knew that he was there because the hairs on the back on her neck stood on end and she got that slightly breathless, alert feeling that came over her whenever he was around.
She turned around to find him staring at her, lounging against the wall. He must have been in one of the down-stairs rooms, and seen her as she had walked past. He was dressed formally in a deep grey, impeccably tailored suit, and Natalie thought that she had never seen anyone look quite so devastating in her life before.
Did he have any idea just how physically attractive he was? Probably. That didn’t worry her, but what did worry her was what he might be thinking now about her, after what Anna had told him. Did he think that she was about to collapse in a dead faint at his enormous sex appeal?
‘Hello,’ she said, not moving towards him and making sure that her voice did not betray her emotions.
He grinned and remained where he was. Then, very deliberately, he let his eyes wander the length of her body, only slowly returning to meet her face, which