CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS after nine before Georgie managed to escape. Even then, it was amid a flurry of complaints from Didi, who didn’t think that the Mini was anywhere near up to the job of delivering Georgie back to her house without developing some sort of terminal allergic reaction to the snow between Greengage Cottage and the village centre.
While Pierre looked at her thoughtfully from his position of superiority lounging against the kitchen sink with a dishcloth in one hand in an attempt to appear helpful, Didi did her best to persuade Georgie to hang on just for an hour or so and they could give her a lift back in the Bentley.
It had taken all her non-existent acting skills to turn down the offer while still managing to look as though nothing would have delighted her more, to edge towards the door without looking too desperate to get away.
But she had done it and now here she was, back in her own space and with the entire day to herself because Didi and Pierre were going on their shopping trip and wouldn’t, thank the Lord, be back until late afternoon.
The snow had stopped falling and, although it was still freezing cold, the skies were a bright, unbroken blue and the sun was glittering, already melting the blanket of white that had looked so pretty earlier on. Georgie quietly prayed that the cold, fine weather would continue, which would mean that their meal out at one of the local restaurants could go ahead. In a threesome, there would be no chance of anything getting out of control.
When she thought about what had happened, she actually had to lean against something and close her eyes.#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#
Not only had he touched her, but she had wanted him to, had virtually begged him by surrendering all attempts at self control. Had she even protested? She couldn’t remember.
She threw herself into a frenzy of activity. She cleaned her house from top to bottom, which left her pleasantly exhausted by lunchtime, and then she began work on patching up the Santa Claus costume, which was in threads after years of use by old Mr Blackman, their regular Father Christmas who visited the kids at school and did his ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’ act, complete with sack of toys that the parents bought making sure that nothing was more expensive than a couple of pounds. He would be on display in a few days time and the white beard was beginning to look a lot worse for wear, like a rug that had been walked on too many times. With the telly blaring in the background, she could effectively lose herself in the minutiae of patching and darning and sprucing up.
Not that the images of Pierre touching her didn’t penetrate the ferocity of her concentration. They did. His mouth at her breasts, his hands touching her, that glorious feeling of wanting to surrender to an unstoppable force. It had been like nothing she had ever felt before. Stan had been a gentle lover. Pierre, on the other hand, had overwhelmed her, turned her into a person she barely recognised.
She had been expecting to hear from Didi at some point and she did. At five-thirty her telephone rang and Didi, obviously on a high after a successful shopping trip with her son, barely sounded like the flat, lifeless woman she had been less than a fortnight ago. Her words were tripping over each other as she described the beautiful lunch they had had at one of the local hotels, the fantastic tea of fresh scones and clotted cream, the shops they had gone to in search of presents and Christmas tree decorations. Georgie tried to picture Pierre shopping for presents and Christmas tree decorations and found that she couldn’t, although, really, thinking about it, her assumptions of him had been crumbling fast. How was she to know whether he adored tramping through shops before regaining his energy with a couple of hearty scones and cups of tea? Where were all those useful categories into which she had-pigeon holed him? Where was the good-looking but essentially boring, humourless, condescending workaholic? Nowhere much in evidence, thereby proving conclusively, she thought, that she was rubbish when it came to deciphering people and, more importantly, the opposite sex.
Furthermore, where was she? Where was the fun loving, good natured girl who had been so sure of being in control of the situation she had impulsively and foolishly generated? Where were all her reliable feelings of healthy antagonism towards him? She certainly hadn’t been feeling too antagonistic that morning as she had succumbed to the massive sexual power she had never suspected him of having.
‘The weather has cleared up beautifully.’ Didi was now chattering merrily away. ‘So we thought we’d go to Chez Zola as planned. Terribly formal compared to yesterday, I know, and if you’d rather we just stayed in—’