Rival Attractions & Innocent Secretary(23)

It was a relief when she was finally able to go to bed, but sleep didn't  come easily. She was far too conscious of Oliver sleeping so close to  her.

So close physically, maybe, but so very far away emotionally and mentally.                       
       
           



       

She had to get a grip on herself before it was too late, she warned  herself. But too late for what? She wasn't merely in love with Oliver  Tennant-she loved him, which was infinitely worse. She sat bolt upright  in bed as the truth burst upon her-irrefutable and inescapable. She  loved him!





CHAPTER EIGHT


THE moment she opened her eyes, Charlotte was aware of a heavy sense of  despair. Outside her bedroom window the sun was shining, but inside her  heart everything was shadowed and dulled by the pain of knowing that she  loved Oliver.

Oliver …  Instinctively she glanced at her bedside clock. The house was  silent, so presumably he had already left. It was extraordinary that,  even knowing the folly of her emotions, even knowing that she was safer  when he was absent, that every second spent in his company increased the  intensity of her feelings, and the danger that she might somehow betray  them, she should still feel this total sense of desolation in the  knowledge that he wasn't there.

She shivered under the bedclothes, not because she was cold, but because of the feelings prickling her skin.

God knew, she didn't want to feel like this-had never imagined she could  feel like this-and, if anyone other than herself should discover what  she did feel, she thought she would die from the humiliation of it.

Restlessly she pushed back the bedclothes and got up. Her father's old  rooms had their own bathroom which had been installed when he had become  too ill to walk very far.

Her bathroom was a couple of doors down the corridor; knowing she had  the house to herself, she didn't hesitate to open her bedroom door and  walk on to the landing wearing the faded soft cotton pyjama jacket which  was her preferred nightwear. She had several of them, all of them  washed to a similar state of faded softness. Frilly nightdresses were  not for her, and when she had returned from London she had eschewed the  chain-store-bought nightshirts she had worn then in favour of the  discarded top halves of pyjamas she suspected had originally belonged to  her father, and which she had found abandoned in one of the house's  many chests of drawers.

Now, absently noticing how thin the cotton was wearing, she acknowledged  ruefully that she would soon have to replace them, but with what? She  had grown accustomed to the softness of a quality of cotton no longer  cheaply available.

Automatically, having walked out on to the landing, she followed her  normal routine of making her way downstairs to make some coffee. This  was her morning ritual, to make the freshly brewed coffee she enjoyed so  much, despite its heavy caffeine content, and then go upstairs to  shower and dress so that the fragrant brew was waiting for her when she  came back down.

The kitchen floor felt cold beneath her bare feet, her toes curling  instinctively at the chilly contact. Beyond the kitchen window, she  could see the dew-dampened outline of the lawns and flowerbeds, softened  into mystical beauty by their covering of moisture. She paused for a  moment to admire the miracle of nature, admitting how much she would  miss these simple pleasures of living in the countryside if she were  ever forced to return to city living.

Grimacing a little at the state of the kitchen, she hurried into the  pantry, and started to fill the filter machine's jug with cold water. It  was while she was doing so, her back to the door, that she felt the  unmistakable chilliness of cold fresh air, as though a door had been  opened.

Immediately she tensed, swinging round, her eyes rounding in dismayed  shock as she saw Oliver standing in the open doorway. Unlike her, he was  fully dressed in an immaculate business suit and a crisp white shirt.

'I thought you'd gone.'

The words left her throat in a husky whisper that sounded more like an apology than the accusation she had intended it to be.

'I'm just on my way. Unfortunately I couldn't resist walking round the  garden before I left.' He grimaced as he looked down at his very wet  shoes. 'I'd forgotten how wet dew can be. I was just on my way upstairs  to change my shoes when I heard you in here.'

'I came down to put the coffee on,' Charlotte told him awkwardly,  suddenly conscious of how she must look, her hair uncombed, her face  unwashed, dressed in an oversized and worn pyjama jacket that was surely  the opposite kind of nightwear someone like Vanessa would choose to  sleep in.

She stepped forward awkwardly and stopped, blinking in the full beam of  the sunlight shining in through the window to momentarily blind her. She  heard Oliver catch his breath, almost as though in shock, and her own  nerve-endings responded automatically to the sound so that she froze  where she was.

'I'd better go and change these shoes,' she heard him saying in a harsh,  rasping voice that for some reason made her throat ache.                       
       
           



       

She wanted him to take her in his arms, to hold her, to kiss her. Angry  with herself, she blinked in the strong light, and watched the movements  of his tall, lithe body, wondering bleakly at the unfairness of nature.  Why couldn't it have been content with simply giving him his  overpowering physical maleness? Why had it had to add the kind of  personality she felt so in tune with that she was helpless to defend  herself against the impact of his emotional and physical effect on her.

She heard him go upstairs, and stayed where she was until she heard him  come down again to leave via the front door, bleakly wondering why it  hurt so much that he hadn't come back into the pantry to say goodbye to  her.

Ten minutes later, when she walked into her bathroom, she thought she  knew the answer, or at least part of it, and her face turned deep pink  with embarrassment. Sunshine flooded her bathroom as it had done in the  pantry, but here in the bathroom she had the advantage of seeing in the  mirrors that lined its walls the effect that sunlight had.

The soft cotton of her pyjama jacket, so warm and bulky to her touch,  had turned virtually transparent in the strong sunshine, so that when  she stood bathed in its light the entire shape of her body, every one of  its contours and curves, could be seen quite clearly delineated beneath  the jacket, right down to the soft shadowing between her thighs and the  deep rose areola of her breasts.

From being flushed her skin drained of colour as she stared in  mortification at her own reflection. This was what Oliver had seen when  he'd walked into the pantry. No wonder he had left so quickly.

He must have thought … what? That she had come downstairs deliberately  knowing that he was there, wanting him to see her like that. Had that  been what he'd thought? Did he think she had actually … ?

Her heart was beating far too fast, a nauseous churning feeling burning  her empty stomach. She started to tremble. Why on earth hadn't she  checked before going downstairs? Why hadn't she realised he was still  there? But it was too late now for such recriminations. The damage was  done.

* * *

All day long it was on her mind, a poison eating into her, so that  several times Sheila watched her worriedly, wondering what was wrong.

'Aren't you feeling very well?' she asked at one point, causing Charlotte to lift her head from her paperwork.

'I'm fine. Why?' she asked defensively.

Sheila shrugged. 'Well, it's just that it's such a beautiful day, and you're all wrapped up in that thick woollen sweater.'

Sheila herself was wearing a very pretty short-sleeved blouse which  showed off her feminine figure, and Charlotte, who with that incident in  the pantry very much to the forefront of her mind had deliberately  dressed in the most body-muffling clothes she could find, felt her face  burn with guilt and humiliation.

In actual fact she felt almost stifled in the sweater, which was more  appropriate for cold mid-winter wear than a soft late spring day, but,  with her mind still full of mental visions of how she had looked this  morning, she had writhed in mental torment and deliberately wrapped  herself in as many muffling layers of clothing as she could endure.

'I … I didn't realise how warm it was going to be,' she mumbled, knowing  that she was flushing and hoping that Sheila would put her high colour  down to the warmth of her unseasonal clothes.

During the afternoon, Charlotte took Sophy with her when she drove out  to Hadley Court to measure up the house and to start taking details of  those items of furniture which were going to be auctioned.

Sophy proved very quick to follow her directions, and by the end of the  afternoon Charlotte was ready to acknowledge that, in doing the younger  girl a favour by giving her a job, she had probably done herself one as  well, providing always that Oliver left her with enough business to  merit employing both Sheila and Sophy.