A Perfect Night Read online

  'An accident?'

  'Yes,' she insisted. 'Louise jumped to the wrong conclusions about... about us...I...'

  She stopped. How could she explain just why she hadn't totally and immediately corrected her twin. 'I tried to tell her, but it...it wasn't easy...' She hung her head. 'She feels uncomfortable with me sometimes, guilty almost because she's...because she has Gareth and their life together and it's hard to make her understand that I'm happy as I am.'

  'She wants you to be like her, part of a couple—

  settled...' Seb interrupted her, adding intuitively, 'And so it was easier to allow her to think that her assumptions were correct.'

  'Yes. Yes, it was,' Katie agreed. 'I never dreamed that she would tell anyone else or that...'

  She stopped and shook her head. 'I couldn't believe it when my mother started talking to me about you...about us, as though... I should have admitted the truth then, I wanted to... I knew how angry you'd be once you got to hear about i t '

  'I was angry,' Seb admitted brusquely. 'But that's no excuse for what I did... Why didn't you stop me...tell me?'

  'Perhaps I didn't want to,' Katie told him honestly, her eyes clouding a little with the pain of her private thoughts.

  She wasn't being totally honest with him. Katie knew that. She hadn't told him the truth about why she had allowed Louise to believe they were involved with one another. But how could she tell him without exposing herself to even more humiliation and, anyway, how could she tell anyone else about her feelings for Gareth when she hadn't told her twin? And now, if she told him about Gareth, could she then go on to admit that, despite the longevity of her love, despite what she had believed to be the strength and permanence of it, the moment Seb had touched her she had been overwhelmed by such a compulsive urgency, such a white-hot burn of desire that it simply hadn't been possible for her to think of anything or anyone else?

  She gave him a direct look and said quietly and ruefully, her mouth curving in a semi-self-mocking smile,

  'Perhaps I was beginning to feel that my virginity was getting dangerously close to the end of its shelf-life. But I wanted you Seb... I can't explain why or how and I wasn't even thinking about my virginity, I wasn't capable of that kind of logic, of any kind of reasonable thinking... I can't explain why or what... I just...'

  She stopped, her eyes momentarily shining with emotional tears as she admitted with painful honesty,

  'Yes, perhaps I should have warned you...told you...or stopped you...but...'

  'But...' Seb prompted her when she fell silent and bowed her head so that all he could see was the top of it

  '...but I didn't want to,' Katie repeated huskily as she lifted her head to meet his gaze. 'I had no idea that sex could be so...so...'

  '...so dangerous,' Seb offered sardonically.

  'So total,' Katie amended as she added bravely, 'I'm not going to allow myself to feel guilty or ashamed about what happened or about the way I felt, Seb. I,..it was...it was wonderful,' she told him recklessly, the words little more than a shy whisper of sound as her face grew pink and she looked away from him.

  'Wonderful!" Seb repeated explosively. 'Have you any idea! None of this should have happened. None of it.

  You and I...'

  '...don't even like one another. I know...' Katie agreed sadly. 'Maybe that's the way passion is, I don't know. Perhaps you would be able to say better than me.'

  'You think so?' Seb shook his head. 'What just happened between us was as much of a "first time" for me as it was for you. I don't make a habit of allowing myself to lose control like that and I certainly don't enjoy knowing that...'

  He stopped, shaking his head while Katie suggested practically, 'Well, at least no one other than ourselves need ever know about it. Tomorrow I'll explain to my mother that Louise got it wrong and...'

  She tensed as Seb suddenly moved abruptly away from her pulling the disarranged bedclothes over his lower body.

  His rejection of her and his patent lack of interest in what she was saying hurt her more than she liked having to recognise and the warmth and happiness that had followed their lovemaking was quickly being replaced by a sense of loss and loneliness.

  'If you want...' she began stiffly and then she saw the way he was looking at her body and she knew immediately and exactly just what it was he did want and her face burned bright scarlet with a heart-stopping mixture of shock and excitement.

  Excitement because Seb still wanted her, because the reason he had reached for those concealing covers was because his body was reacting to the proximity of hers, because...

  Before she could stop herself or even think critically or sensibly about what she was doing she heard herself whispering softly, 'Seb, please stay with me tonight... all night...'

  'Stay with you...'

  His voice was slurred and gruff as though his throat was hurting him somehow. Fascinated Katie watched as he closed his eyes and swallowed, her whole body shivering in mute reactive awareness of the strong tide of need which was already building to threaten their de-fences.

  'Yes. I want you to,' she told him. 'I want you...' She gave him a brief look full of female knowledge as she reminded him, 'After all, I'm not a virgin anymore now.'

  She could see the heat leaping in his eyes as immediately and dangerously as though she had thrown a lighted match onto petrol. When he reached for her his *

  skin felt like hot satin and when she touched him he cried out, suffering the eager exploration of her hands and then her mouth until his whole body was racked by seismic shudders of uncontrollable reaction.

  'Stay with me' she had begged him and he did, through the tumult of her own hungry desire and beyond it, holding her through the night as she slept.

  What the hell was happening to him? Seb asked himself defeatedly. He had come to see her tonight intent only on demanding an explanation from her, furiously angry with her and now... He looked down at where she slept in his arms. Now he knew that ridiculously, illogically, he never ever wanted to let her go.

  'Stay with me' she had asked and in doing so he had somehow rewritten all the rules he had laid down for the way he intended to live his life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  'COFFEE...'

  Sleepily Katie opened her eyes and then sat bolt upright in her bed as she saw Seb standing in the doorway to her bedroom, fully dressed and holding a mug of fragrantly scented coffee.

  Wide-eyed, she watched him as he walked towards her without waiting for her response. Less than a handful of hours ago, as the dawn had started to lighten the sky, she had woken him from his sleep whispering to him that she wanted him. She blushed now to recall just how wantonly insistent she had been and just how femininely persuasive as she had eagerly caressed his body. Not that he had needed very much persuasion. She winced as she moved and felt her own body's sharp response to the intensity of the long hours of lovemaking they had shared.

  'You don't have to stay now,' she told him huskily as she took the mug of coffee from him and avoided looking into his eyes. 'You must want to get back to your own place...you must have things to do...'

  'Well yes,' he agreed, informing her laconically, 'I do have some telephone calls to make and I shall certainly need a change of clothes before we meet your parents for lunch. Your mother called.'

  'What?" Katie sat bolt upright in bed.

  'She rang earlier while you were still asleep. I answered the phone,' Seb told her matter-of-factly.

  Katie stared at him as though she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

  'My mother rang and you answered the phone?'

  'Mmm...' Seb agreed.

  'What did she say? What did you say?' Katie began wildly. 'Oh, but this is awful. Now she's never going to believe that you and I aren't...'

  'That you and I aren't what?' Seb asked her ironically.

  'That you and I aren't lovers...but we are!'

  Nonplussed Katie looked at him.

  'But that was private,' she told him
huskily when she eventually found her voice. 'It was...' She stopped.

  'It was what?' Seb probed, but Katie shook her head.

  How could she tell him that what they had shared, what she had experienced was for her, even in the sharp clear light of morning—even knowing logically what she did know—something so special...so mystical, that she knew that even if she could she would not have changed a single heartbeat of it?

  Every thought, every image she had ever had with Gareth as her lover had been completely extinguished by the heat of Seb's passion, extinguished and obliter-ated.

  'None of this should be happening,' Katie told him helplessly. 'You shouldn't... You don't... My parents think we're a couple, but we're not...'

  'No,' Seb agreed, 'but then I could hardly tell your mother that when she telephoned and learned that I was here, could I? What would I have said? Yes, I've spent the night in bed with Katie but that was all it was...just a night in bed...'

  Katie's face drained of colour as she listened to him.

  If they knew the truth her parents would be so shocked, so shamed by her behaviour.

  As he watched the emotions chase one another across her mobile face, Seb reflected inwardly that he was going to be in big trouble if she found out that he was the one who had suggested to her mother that they should all meet for lunch and that he was the one who, by the tone of his voice and the careful words he had used, had made it clear to Jenny Crighton that he and Katie had spent the night together, rather than her assuming it.

  Tradition might have it that it was the woman who trapped the man into a relationship with sex and not the other way around, but last night had proved to him, if he had needed any proof, just how unreliable tradition actually was. Katie might have been a virgin but there had been no shrinking hesitancy, no fear or apprehension, no holding back or coyness in the way she had responded to him, the way she had given to him.

  Early that morning, while she had slept, he had gone for a solitary walk along the river needing the time alone to make sense out of the jumble of thoughts and emotions jostling for supremacy inside him.

  As he had walked he had admitted that he would be a fool to pretend that he had not known even before last night, just how strong and dangerous his feelings for her actually were. You simply didn't get so hyped up and angry about a person who didn't matter, and he certainly wouldn't have had the kind of physical reactions he had had last night without... As he paused to watch a pair of swans with their offspring he had been forced to recognise a truth he had been hiding from himself all along.

  Right from the very start, the very first time he had seen her, Katie had had a profound effect on him. The anger, the intensity he had experienced that very first time he had seen her had been too strong, too alien to his normal behaviour pattern. It was as though at some deep-seated buried level his senses had locked on to her, reacted to her, and he had suppressed that reaction. What was he trying to say to himself, that he had fallen in love with her and then gone into denial?

  Well, he certainly hadn't been in any kind of denial last night, had he? he had mocked himself.

  As he had watched the swans he had acknowledged that while he might love Katie, she most certainly did not love him.

  No, but she wanted him. His body had quickened fiercely and hungrily in response to this thought and his need to turn round and go straight back to rouse her from her sleep and take her in his arms had been so strong that the effort of controlling it had made him grunt out loud in protest at his own pain.

  As he walked back towards the house, he was ironically aware of how the whole of his life had come full circle. He and Sandra had married, confusing their physical desire for one another with love, but now that he had actually come face to face with the real thing, now that he actually knew love, he could see so plainly the world of difference that separated what he had felt then with what he felt now. But if he had made the mistake of committing himself to a relationship based on physical desire once he wasn't about to do so again. Katie deserved better. She deserved not just to be loved, and he most certainly did love her, but to know love, to feel it, experience it, share it for herself.

  He had walked back into her apartment fully intending to make it plain to her that he had no expectations, that what had happened was an isolated incident, over and done with, when the phone had rung and he had answered it and without even knowing himself what he was going to do he had subtly confirmed to her mother that they were lovers, trapping Katie in her family's expectations and his own love. He was old enough to have known better, old enough to have done better by his love and by Katie herself.

  'This can't be happening,' Katie was whispering plaintively as she nursed the now cold mug of coffee he had brought her. Perhaps it shouldn't be happening, but it quite definitely was and contrary to her expectations, instead of accusing her of messing up both their lives, Seb seemed to be totally relaxed about the whole situation.

  I wasn't the one who started it,' Seb reminded her wryly.

  Katie frowned. No he wasn't and she had only herself to blame for the situation she now found herself in—and in more ways than one.

  'I'll ring my mother and cancel lunch,' she told Seb quickly but, instead of greeting her suggestion with approval, an expression she found hard to define crossed his face then he shrugged and told her curtly,

  'If you wish.'

  Ten minutes later when he had left to return home Katie decided that she couldn't fathom him out at all.

  But was she any more capable of understanding herself than she was him? Last night her behaviour had been completely out of character. So much so, that even though she was now on her own she still blushed to recall some of the things she had said—and done!

  She telephoned her mother as soon as she had showered, explaining with her fingers crossed behind her back that Seb wasn't going to be able to make it for lunch as he had realised he had some work he had to attend to urgently.

  'In fact,' she began, taking a deep breath, suddenly determined not to end the telephone call until she had told her mother the truth, but before she could do so her mother was saying quickly, 'Darling, I have to go, there's someone at the door. Never mind about lunch, we'll fix something for another day, and besides,' she laughed gently, 'I'm sure that you and Seb would much prefer to be on your own...'

  She would certainly like to be on her own Katie admitted, completely and totally on her own. Dressing quickly she picked up her bag and her car keys. She needed time to think, time to let the reality of what had happened sink in fully.

  While Katie was hurrying down to her car, Seb was getting out of the shower. As he padded naked across his bedroom he caught sight of Charlotte's photograph.

  She had been telling him with increasing insistence that it was time he fell in love and remarried. She had taken an immediate liking to Katie. Look at the way she had reacted to that gypsy girl's ridiculous prediction. Seb froze and closed his eyes, muttering a pious prayer-cum-plea beneath his breath as he suddenly remembered what, in the heat of last night's passion, he had so recklessly forgotten.

  He knew he had a clean bill of health so what they had done, while irresponsible, was not hazardous, but from the point of view of potential conception... There were modern methods, though. Safeguards... As he hurried towards the door the telephone rang. He hesitated and paused and then quickly reached for the receiver, his heart starting to thud with anxiety as the leader of the field trip Charlotte had been attending the past week explained that there had been a small mishap and that she had suffered a fall.

  'They're keeping her in hospital to check that she isn't suffering from concussion,' he explained to Seb, 'but I can assure you that there's nothing for you to worry about.'

  'Where is she? Which hospital?' was Seb's uncom-promising response.

  Before he left he telephoned Katie's flat, waiting for her to answer for several minutes before hanging up. He couldn't delay any more, not with Charlotte in hospital.
/>   He would have to ring Katie later on his mobile and warn her of the danger he had left her exposed to.

  Later, Katie couldn't explain, even to herself, what had prompted her to do what she did or quite how or why she was on her way, virtually at a moment's notice, to Brussels. She'd made a brief telephone call to her twin to warn her that she was coming, and another and even more muddled one to her mother, disjointedly explaining that she was at the airport and on her way to her sister and that she didn't know how long she would be gone.

  'It will only be for a couple of days,' she reassured Jenny. 'Tell Dad and Livvy that I'm sorry to spring this on them, but...'

  On the other end of the line Jenny simply listened. It was totally unlike Katie to behave so impulsively, but she couldn't help but be glad that the rift she had seen slowly growing between the two girls was now being mended. If Katie needed her twin enough to drop everything to fly over to her then Jenny knew that Louise would be there for her.

  'She's gone where?' Jon demanded in astonishment when Jenny broke the news to him of Katie's unplanned visit to her twin sister.

  'It will only be for a few days. It's just a short break,'

  Jenny soothed him while he sighed in exasperation and then smiled ruefully at her.

  'I certainly hope so. We're hellishly busy at the moment. What on earth brought this on?'

  When Jenny simply looked at him he gave another rueful paternal sigh and guessed.

  'Love trouble!'

  'A small crisis of confidence I suspect,' Jenny told him.

  'In Seb?' Jon frowned. He might not be either a possessive father nor the type who became vehemently verbally proactive on behalf of his children—right or wrong—but he was nevertheless very protective of them.

  'If that's the case then I should have thought she'd be better off without him.'