Secret Passion

She swallowed hard. ‘I have too.’

‘Can we do it again?’

‘Me slaughter you at tennis?’ She attempted to tease, her palms damp with tension. How could she not see him again when she enjoyed being with him so much! He made her laugh, was genuinely interested in what she had to say, made her feel very much alive and aware of what was happening about her. She hadn’t felt so alive since—she couldn’t care for this man, she realised desperately. ‘I don’t think so,’ she told him harshly. ‘It wouldn’t be a good idea to mix business and—and pleasure.’

‘You have enjoyed being with me, then?’ His eyes were narrowed, those ominous grooves in his cheeks appearing and disappearing, as if he couldn’t decide if he were angry or not.

‘Who doesn’t enjoy winning?’ She deliberately misunderstood him.

His mouth tightened, the grooves very much in evidence now. ‘There isn’t going to be a loser between us, Aura. We can both win, if you’ll only let us.’

‘I really do have to get back now,’ she told him lightly. ‘I don’t like to leave my mother alone for too long.’

‘The subject of my taking you out again is closed?’ he rasped.

‘Yes.’

‘Very well.’ He nodded abruptly, switching on the ignition. ‘But I’m not going to lose you now I’ve found you.’

Why did that sound so much like a promise, and not a threat?

CHAPTER THREE (#u0a695ac5-d2e6-5482-8f2c-9ba99d5e945d)

THE next day he came to the shop to buy everything he needed for a ‘naturally healthy diet’; the day after that he came in to tell her how much healthier he felt already and to deliver some magazines he had thought her mother might enjoy reading; the day after that he arrived with an article he had found on additives that he thought might interest her.

He was pushy in the nicest possible way, possibly because he knew she wouldn’t accept anything else; she was sure he wasn’t usually quite this obliging, always making sure he never stayed long enough that she had to ask him to leave. It was as if he were making a place in her life for himself without making her feel any pressure, and she knew she was coming to look forward to his daily visits in spite of her dire warnings to herself that she shouldn’t.

‘Is James coming over this evening, dear?’ her mother asked eagerly over their early dinner.

Aura had been waiting all day for him to turn up at the shop, intending to tell him that the visits had to stop. When he hadn’t arrived she had been disappointed instead of relieved, and that made her angry. ‘I have no idea,’ she dismissed tautly. ‘But if he does I won’t be here!’

Her mother blinked at her vehemence. ‘Has he done something to offend you?’

Only become a necessary part of her life. And she wouldn’t, she couldn’t accept him into it. James might not be a married man, but there was too much danger attached to going out with him, and it didn’t just come from her innocent involvement with Adrian.

‘No,’ she assured her mother lightly, rewarded by her mother’s serene expression. ‘I just told Helen that I would go over to see her tonight, Simon’s away on business and she could do with a little company.’

‘That will be nice,’ her mother approved. ‘I often think you don’t get out enough. Especially now that Adrian——’

‘Whatever you do don’t ever mention Adrian to James,’ she said frantically as she realised her mother was one way James could find out she had once dated his married partner, albeit unknowingly.

‘As if I would, Aura,’ her mother reproved gently. ‘James seems to be a very possessive man to me; I doubt he would like to hear about the men you saw before the two of you met.’

She frowned. ‘Mummy, I hope you aren’t reading more into James’s visits to us than is actually there?’

Her mother gave one of her more serene smiles. ‘Of course I’m not, dear.’

Now why didn’t she feel reassured by that assurance? Possibly because her mother had shown a decided preference for James from the first, and because his kindness to her mother was something he genuinely felt and not just something he affected for her benefit. Between the two of them she could find herself involved in a situation that could only spell disaster!