Part 11 (1/2)
She heard Helen Steadings saying some thing about them having to go. Jake moved away from her, escorting the two other women to the door, but not before Naomi had hugged her briefly and told her how pleased she was about their news.
It wasn't Naomi's fault, Rosie reminded herself while Jake was walking them to their car. Naomi wasn't the one who had drunk three gla.s.ses of wine and then proceeded to pour her heart out to Jake... to cling to him and make those small moaning sounds of plea sure which still echoed hauntingly in Rosie's own ears.
No, but she had come round here this morning and she had brought Helen Steadings with her and, but for that, Rosie might just have been able to escape without anyone knowing that she had spent the night here under Jake's roof.
All right, so there had been that small incident at the party but, alarmed as that had made her at the time, it had been nothing compared to this.
When Jake walked back into the kitchen she was still standing where he had left her. The look on her face made him ache to take hold of her and comfort her, to tell her that every thing was going to be all right. Instead he simply asked calmly, ”Would you like some coffee?”
Coffee. Rosie stared at him. How could he stand there so calmly offering her coffee after what had happened? Anger boiled up inside her, her self-control snapping.
”How could you do that?” she demanded shakily.
”How could you let them think that you and I... that... we are about to get engaged...? Have you any idea what you've done?”
Rosie could hear her own voice rising, sharpening with hysteria.
Abruptly she stopped speaking. She must not allow herself to get out of control; her own panic increased her tension, and with it her awareness of her vulnerability.
”What would you have preferred me to do?” Jake asked her quietly.
”Allowed Helen Steadings to continue to think, as she so obviously was doing, that you and I were indulging in a hole-and-corner s.e.xual fling?
Is that really how you want to be gossipped about?”
”Why should you care how people gossip about meT Rosie demanded tautly.
”You're a man; no one will think the worse of you for having a relations.h.i.+p that's merely s.e.xual ”J would,” Jake contradicted her flatly, the vehemence in his voice startling her into looking straight at him. His eyes had lost that silver warmth they had had earlier, she recognised, and were once again the cold metallic grey she remembered.
”I'm not some s.e.xual stud intent on chalking up a tally of conquests,” he told her in fierce disgust.
”My reputation is every bit as important to me as yours is to you, Rosie. I don't want to be judged as s.e.xually promiscuous any more than you do. Having people talking behind my back speculating about what kind of relations.h.i.+p we have is every bit as repugnant to me as it is to you.”
Rosie s.h.i.+vered as she listened to him. How did he know so much about her, about the way she felt, the way she reacted?
How could he know those things when everything she had done last night must surely have given him completely the opposite impression?
”But to let them think we were virtually engaged ... discussing marriage...”
Jake turned away from her, removing the filter from the coffee machine. His voice was slightly m.u.f.fled as he told her, ”Engagements can always be broken, you know... relation s.h.i.+ps allowed to quietly fade...”
Relations.h.i.+ps?
”We don't have a relations.h.i.+p,” she protested frantically, and then as Jake turned round and looked at her she felt herself flus.h.i.+ng to the roots of her hair.
There was no need for him to point out that last night she had virtually offered herself to him, inviting an intimacy she had never come anywhere near wanting to share with anyone else.
”We can't do this,” she told him in panic. '/ can't do it...”
She turned away from him, feeling her body start to shake with tension.
Logic told her that what she really ought to do now was to talk the whole thing out with him so that they could find some sensible and workable solution to the situation, but emotionally she knew that she just wasn't strong enough to do so.
She wanted to go home, to be on her own, to shut herself away from everyone and every thing to give herself time to build up her de fences, and to feel whole and safe again.
Just being here with Jake made it impossible for her to do any of those things. He under mined and unnerved her even without trying. She couldn't even look at him without remembering last night, without remembering the scent and taste of his skin, the feel of his hands on her body.
”I want to go home.”
She sounded more like a petulant, frightened child than a mature adult, she recognised bitterly as her taut demand filled the tense silence.
”If I could use your phone, I'll ring for a taxi.”
There, that sounded better, more positive, more adult. More the persona she was used to projecting on the outside world.
The inner person, the vulnerable, frightened person she had betrayed so stupidly to Jake last night, was one she always kept hidden, known only to herself, but now Jake knew about that person as well. She wanted to take back that knowledge, to wipe his memory free of it.
”There's no need for that. I'll drive you ”No.” Her denial was sharp and instant, and laced j with panic, she recognised, j ”I... I have to call and pick up my car.”
”There's no need. I did that this morning.” Rosie stared at him.
”You... But... Did any one see you?” she asked him quickly.
”It's too late to worry about that now, Rosie,” he reminded her wryly.
”The horse has already bolted.”
CHAPTER SEVEN.
experience... life had taught Rosie that the best way, the only way for her to deal with emotions and situations she couldn't control was simply to blot them out altogether, not so much to pretend that they hadn't happened, but rather to refuse to allow herself to admit that they had; and this was precisely what she was doing now, or at least what she was trying to do, she admitted as her concentration wavered from the pile of work on her desk and her thoughts slid helplessly towards Jake.
It was almost twenty-four hours since she had last seen him now. Twenty-four hours since he had driven her home and seen her courteously and safely inside her front door.
Twenty-four hours... more now, since he had publicly linked them together as a couple.
Every time her telephone rang she tensed, half afraid to answer it, but on each occasion the caller had been ringing with a legitimate business enquiry.
She had barely slept the previous night, too afraid to close her eyes in case she started thinking about Jake... remembering... But what was there to think about, after all? Just a few sorry minutes of indiscretion and stupidity, that was all, but, no matter how often she tried to tell herself that her behaviour had merely been the result of too much tension and too much to drink, that didn't stop her from being filled with shame and anguish over what she had done and from being afraid that, in some way, having once behaved so... so wantonly, she was somehow vulnerable to doing so again.
Again... No ... she wouldn't do that... couldn't, surely? She was in such a state of panic that the telephone had rung several times before she heard it. She reached automatically for the receiver, speaking into it and then only just managing to mask her surprise when she realised that it was Ian Davies on the other end of the line.
He had been reading through her proposals and projections, he told her, and had been very impressed by them. He wanted to arrange another meeting so that they could discuss them at greater length.
Quickly Rosie opened her diary, agreeing the date he was suggesting.
”Oh, and by the way we must have dinner together one evening; the four of us--you and Jake and Anne and myself.”