The Baby Scandal(29)

"How could you?" Ruth  watched stormily as Franco strolled towards the  ridiculously huge double  bed and proceeded to test the mattress. He  kicked off his shoes, rolled  up the sleeves of his shirt and, after  bouncing on the bed a few times,  lay down with his legs crossed and his  arms folded behind his head.

Incredibly  comfortable," he informed her, ignoring the look of outrage  on her face  and allowing his eyes to roam lazily over her. "Not too  hard, not too  soft. Goldilocks would have a field-day on this one. Even  with the three  bears towering over her, she'd still be inclined to  stay put."

She  was, he thought delightedly, positively vibrat¬ing with dismay at  the  way he had grabbed her mother's idea and gone along with the  concept,  lock, stock and barrel. She obviously had not the slightest  idea how  delicious she looked, standing there in the doorway, hands on  hips, body  thrust belligerently for¬ward, her blonde hair swinging  across her face  and her perfect mouth down-turned. How could any sane  man be expected  to hold a normal conversation with a woman who was so  immensely  provocative without even realizing it?


The pair of jeans,  which fitted snugly on her frame, were too long, and  had been roughly  cuffed at the bottom where there was just a sliver of  teasing, slender  ankle peeping out before a pair of inappropriately  fluffy bedroom  slippers took over. The checked shirt, which might have  looked  unappealing on any other women, radiated sexuality on this one,  and  Franco indulged himself by staring at her, taking it all in,  en-joying  every minute of his inspection.

He could well imagine her breasts  underneath, clad in one of those  functional stretchy Lycra bras she  seemed to prefer wearing, the kind  that were designed to do nothing for a  man's imagination except perhaps  squash it. But gazing at her breasts  contoured beneath the sporty  elasticized fabric had brought him a thrill  that no lacy bra on any  woman had ever succeeded in doing in his life  before. One very short  meander down memory lane and he could conjure up  the image with¬out any  difficulty at all.

"Are you going to say anything or are you just going to lie there?" Ruth spluttered, pink-faced.

"I'm just going to lie here," he replied seriously, watching as her face went a shade brighter.

When  he had first arrived at the vicarage, unan¬nounced and seething  with  what he considered well ¬justified rage, he had expected no more  than a  brief but explosive showdown at the end of which he had planned  on  leaving with his mind well and truly sat¬isfied. He had reluctantly  but  eventually given in to his insane desire to see her one last time  and  find out why she had run out on him, but he had had every intention  of  making sure that he left with the last word.                       
       
           



       

It still mystified  him that she had managed to be¬witch him right back  into feeling those  old, inconven¬ient feelings which he had spent weeks  stuffing away in a  cupboard labeled soft.

He couldn't look at her without feeling  desire, and he couldn't listen  to a word she said without being utterly  captivated by her  contradictions.

"You could always come and lie  next to me," he suggested helpfully. He  flicked an invisible speck of  dust from his trousers and said casually.  "You can't avoid the bed, you  know." He patted the space next to him.  "I'll talk to you about it if  you'd just relax a little."

With a fuming, strangled sound, Ruth shut the bed¬room door and then leant heavily against it.

You  can't avoid the bed. Did he think that she imag¬ined, for one  minute,  that she could? When it engulfed the entire room and made  looking at  anything else within those four small walls an  impossibility?

"I am very relaxed," Ruth informed him stiffly, and he grinned at her.

"If your fingers dig any harder into your sides, you'll rip your clothing."

Ruth  refused to see anything funny in his remark. She didn't know what  game  he was playing, whether he was inspired by some sick desire for  revenge  just because she had had the temerity to walk out on him, but  she wasn't  going to stand for it. Her hands might be tied, but that  didn't mean  that she was going to let him get away with murder.

"Just answer  me," she said through gritted teeth. "When you calm down."  He swung his  long legs over the side of the bed and stood up,  stretching. Then he  began to undo the buttons of his shirt.

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

Ruth  gulped. In many ways it would have been eas¬ier if she had never  seen  him naked before. As it was, her mind could provide her with all  the  tantalizing and accurate details about his body, well muscled, hard  and  lithe. She had traced its contours with her fingers often enough  to know  how helpless the sight of it would make her feel. She shifted  her eyes  away and maintained a lofty silence.


"I'm going to have a  bath," he said mildly. The drive from London was a  nightmare." He  stripped off his shirt, rummaged in one of the two  suitcases he had  lugged up with him, and extracted a white dressing  gown of the expensive  hotel variety.

She had never seen him in a dressing gown before.  Nudity was something  he was not uncomfortable with, and when they had  been lovers he had  enjoyed her watching his nakedness as much as she had  enjoyed doing it.

"Care to come? I could soap you." He threw her  a long, slow smile.  "You've always enjoyed that." His voice was low and  husky, and in spite  of herself she felt her body begin to stir at the  memory.

Another fractional tilt of the head gave him the an¬swer  to that one,  but, although she looked away, she could still see him out  of the comer  of her eye as he shrugged off the work shirt and then the  trousers and  finally his boxer shorts.

Oh, God. Ruth licked her  lips. Every muscle in her body, every pore and  vein and blood vessel  seemed to be stretched to breaking point, and a  fine film of  per¬spiration had broken out over her entire body.

"Do you  remember?" He took a couple of steps in her direction, and,  with alarm,  she realised that the dressing gown had still not been  donned. He had it  hooked over one shoulder.

"No!" Her head was now at a right  angle, but the bedroom was so small  that she couldn't help but see his  magnificent body. Nor could she fail  to notice his flagrant arousal.

"Of  course you do," he said in a silky persuasive voice. He was now   standing close enough to her that if she reached out a couple of inches   she would bump ínto him. "You'd climb into the bath, luxuriate in the   water and I would..."

"Ruth promptly covered her ears with her hands and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

"I would..."

She felt his hands cover hers and gently prise them away from her ears.

"I  would soap you all over, starting with your feet, massaging the  soles  so that you'd sink a little deeper into the water, and then..."

"I'm  not interested!" Ruth said breathlessly. She couldn't help but  hear  him, but she refused to open her eyes and see him as well.

"Oh,  yes, you are. I know you a damn sight better than you think and I  know  when your mouth is saying one thing and everything else is  screaming  something entirely different." He leaned a little closer and  spoke into  her ear. "You used to laugh because your legs would be  unsteady when you  finally stood up so that I could finish my job, so  that I could work  the soap into a foaming, warm lather and then I'd..."                       
       
           



       

"Shut up!"

"Are you getting turned on?"

"No, I'm not."

Then  I'd soap your breasts, full, slippery breasts...your nipples would  be  hard and you'd have your head thrown back as if you were offering  them  to my mouth, holding them out to be suckled."

He took one crucial step closer and his hard arousal pressed against her thighs.

Ruth  was finding it remarkably easy to remember just how wobbly her  legs had  used to feel when she'd tried to stand up in that bath. Much  the same  as they were feeling right now. She pressed herself back  against the  door, breathing rapidly.