So Close And No Closer

Without thinking, she shrugged and said, ‘It was my father’s hobby. I grew up with it, so to speak.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed grandly. ‘I think I can see why a man who’s fortune was founded on modern drugs could be interested in herbal medicine.’

Instantly Rue tensed. He had ticked her—and she had let him, fool that she was, carried away by her enthusiasm for one of her favourite subjects—into betraying herself and giving him exactly the kind of lever he wanted to pry into her most private affairs. He wouldn’t hesitate to use it, she could see that in his eyes as he looked at her.

‘Your solicitor was telling me this morning about your father,’ he added, still watching her. ‘What happened?’ he demanded abruptly when she refused to either look away or make any comment.

The abruptness of his question caught her off guard. ‘To what?’ she asked him uncertainly, not sure of the meaning behind his question.

‘To the fortune your father left you?’ he answered harshly. ‘He died six years ago, apparently a millionaire, and yet you, his only child, are now living here in this cottage, instead of Parnham Court which he left to you, and apparently earning your own living—a rather curious state of affairs, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

‘To you, perhaps,’ Rue answered him in a suffocated voice, almost totally unable to believe that she had heard him correctly. His rudeness was really insufferable. She opened her mouth to tell him as much and then, to her own shock, heard herself saying instead, ‘If you really must know, my husband gambled it away and I let him.’

She faced him proudly, waiting to see the pity and contempt form in his eyes. But, whatever feelings her words had evoked inside him, he betrayed nothing of them as he said coolly, ‘You must hate him for that.’

‘No, not really. Odd though you might find it to believe, I’m far happier now than I ever was when I was my father’s heiress. I was a spoiled, arrogant child. You could even say that I deserved everything that happened to me. There’s no way today, for instance, that I would ever be remotely attracted to a man like Julian, and certainly I’d never be stupid enough now to believe him capable of loving me.’

‘Him, or any man?’ Neil Saxton asked her quietly.

The shock of it was reflected in her expression as her eyes darkened and widened. How had he known that? How had he known of the iron that had entered her heart when she’d found out the truth about Julian? How had he known that she had sworn that never again would she allow any man to deceive her into believing he cared about her?

She fought to regain her self-control, shrugging her shoulders and saying as coolly as she could, ‘It’s true. I’m afraid I don’t have a very high opinion of your sex.’

‘Or of yourself,’ Neil Saxton told her, softly and unforgivably.

She turned her back on him then, gripping hold of her trug tightly in order to stop her hand from trembling.

‘You’re on my land, Mr Saxton,’ she told him emotionlessly, ‘and I would be very grateful if you would remove yourself from it immediately.’

‘You know, you interest me,’ he told her conversationally, totally ignoring her command. ‘It must have taken guts to establish all this—’ he waved his hand over the flowing river of colour surrounding them ‘—out of nothing. To turn yourself from a dependent child into an independent business-woman.’

Rue smiled mirthlessly at him. ‘And men don’t like women with guts, especially successful women with guts—is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

To her astonishment he laughed, throwing back his head to reveal the hard, masculine line of his throat. ‘Is that what you think?’ he marvelled, looking at her. ‘Is that the reason for this?’ He reached out and touched her tightly drawn back hair and then her make-up-less face. It was only the briefest of touches, no more than a mere brushing of hard muscles against the softness of her smooth skin, but it was still enough to make her jump back from him as though she had been burned, rage and panic warring for supremacy in her eyes.

‘You’re out of date,’ he told her mockingly. ‘At least where I’m concerned. I admire a woman with guts. She’s so much more of a challenge, both in bed and out of it.’

‘Your personal views of my sex are of no interest to me whatsoever,’ Rue ground out at him from between clenched teeth when she had recovered from the shock of his unashamedly taunting comments.

‘No, I can see that,’ he agreed, and for some reason the cool, insolent way his glance roved over her body, from the crown of her head right down to her bare toes with their unvarnished nails, made her want to turn and run and hide herself away from him. Stupidly, she had a vivid mental image of herself as she had been at eighteen, pretty and silly, her blonde hair a flowing mane, her nails long and painted, her clothes the very best that Knightsbridge could provide and her head empty of a single thought that did not concern having fun and enjoying herself.

It was too easy to blame her father for her hedonistic naı¨vete´. He had loved her and indulged her shamelessly, but he had been too old to understand the pitfalls lurking to snare such a very young and unworldly girl as she had been.

She had had very few friends of her own age, and no female relatives at all. No relatives of any kind in fact, apart from her father. She had been taught privately at home and, although her father had taken her all over the world with him and had showered her with jewellery and pretty clothes, she had had no real experience of life at all. His death when she was nineteen had come as a tremendous shock, even though it seemed that the doctors had been warning him for years that he was overdoing things.

She was his only child and sole heiress and, more scientist than businessman, he had never thought to tie up her inheritance in a way that would ultimately protect her so that when Julian…

‘I came over to ask whether you’d like to have dinner with me.’

The invitation shocked her out of her thoughts. She stared at him in disbelief.

‘Dinner? With you?’ Her mouth compressed. She was no longer an idealistic nineteen-year-old. She knew very well now that, when men paid pretty compliments and spoke falsely of love, their words were simply being used to mask other desires and other needs. Men were predators on her sex, using women to further their own aims and their own ambitions. ‘Dinner? Are you crazy?’ she questioned him sharply. ‘I’ve already told you you’re wasting your time. I have no intention of selling my home.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t as a possible purchaser of your land that I wanted to give you dinner,’ he told her, enjoying the confusion which suddenly darkened her eyes before suspicion drove it away. ‘No, it’s your expertise in the art of floral de´cor I’m interested in at the moment. Don’t think I’ve given up on getting your land, though,’ he warned her. ‘I can be very determined when I want something.’

‘I’m sure,’ Rue told him drily.

He laughed, apparently completely unabashed by the cool tone of her voice.

‘My mother is coming to stay with me in a few weeks’ time. I bought the house as it stands, but some of the rooms look a little bit dreary. I thought some dried flowers might add a slightly more welcoming touch, and I wanted to seek your professional advice and expertise.’

Rue looked at him, not sure of whether to believe him or not.

‘Of course,’ he added carelessly, ‘I quite understand if you prefer not to come up to the house. I can see that visiting it might prove too painful.’

His suggestion that she might be jealous, that she might for one moment resent the fact he was living in her old home, goaded Rue into immediate retaliation.

‘Not at all,’ she told him swiftly. ‘I don’t think I have anything on tonight. If you’d tell me what time you’d like me to call—but there would be really no need for you to provide me with dinner.’

‘It will be my pleasure,’ he interrupted smoothly. ‘I much prefer to cook for someone else other than myself. It’s so much more rewarding, don’t you agree?’

And, before Rue could hide her astonishment that such a very masculine man should actually admit to being able to cook, he turned and looked at her, his grey eyes alight with amusement. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t mind some cuttings from your herbs, once I’ve got the kitchen garden re-established. It’s in a very run-down state at the moment.’

‘Yes,’ Rue remarked absently. ‘The previous owners only visited the house on very rare occasions, and it’s been badly neglected.’

She was curious to know why an apparently single man should choose to buy himself such a large house, and on an impulse she couldn’t quite analyse she asked quickly, ‘Do you live alone, or…?’

‘Am I married or otherwise attached?’ he supplied drily, making her flush with embarrassment and irritation. ‘Neither. Just as for many another successful businessman, there never seems to have been time to establish any deep-rooted relationships, which is why I now find myself in my mid-thirties and somewhat isolated from the rest of my peer group. Everywhere I look these days I seem to see happily married men with wives and families.’

‘A wife and family shouldn’t be too difficult for a man of your wealth to find,’ Rue told him cynically.

‘That depends,’ he responded and, without waiting for her to question him, he added, ‘on how high one’s standards are. Mine are very high,’ he told her evenly, which meant, Rue reflected bitterly, that if and when he married it would be to some pretty and possibly well-born young woman whose looks would be a perfect foil for his success.

‘I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock,’ he announced. ‘We can eat about half-past eight and over dinner we can talk about the kind of floral arrangements you might be able to provide that would add a slightly softening effect to the house’s austerity.’

‘There’s no need for you to pick me up,’ Rue told him sharply. ‘Heavens, it’s only half a mile or so to walk, and besides, I do have transport.’

‘I’ll pick you up,’ Neil reiterated in a voice that warned her that he was not prepared to listen to any further argument.

After he had gone, Rue stood where she was in the middle of the field, in a daze, wondering why on earth she had been mad enough to allow him to talk her into having dinner with him. The last thing that she wanted was to spend time in his company.

She didn’t like him. Since Julian’s death and the end of her marriage, she had kept her distance from all men, but most especially from those men like Neil Saxton, from whom emanated an almost tangible aura of male sexuality. She no longer deceived herself. The pretty, girlish bloom she had once had was long gone. She was not beautiful in the accepted sense of the word, nor did she want to be.

She had no desire at all to excite male admiration, and she was certainly not so stupid as to imagine that Neil Saxton wanted her company because he found her attractive as a woman. Once, long ago, she had been foolish enough to believe that a man loved her. She had paid a very heavy price for that folly, and it was a mistake she was never going to repeat.

As she bent over her work she told herself that it was stupid to waste time thinking about Neil Saxton. If there was any way she could have got out of their dinner date she would have done so, but she had to acknowledge that he was perfectly capable of coming into the cottage and dragging her out by force if he felt it necessary.

No, she would have dinner with him tonight, and afterwards she would make it plain to him that she wanted no further contact whatsoever with him.