"Look, why don"t you come back with me and have a cup of coffee?"
She wanted to refuse but Louise refused to let her, and there was something rather comforting about letting Louise bully her affectionately, treating her almost in the same way as she did her two small daughters.
And besides, if she went home with Louise it would mean that she needn"t face Carter--at least not yet.
She spent an hour with Louise and her family, at the end of which the Alka Seltzer Louise had given her had started to take effect. She felt decidedly better, and having resolutely refused to acknowledge Louise"s teasing comments about her teenage crush on Carter, she realised now that even if she had deliberately forgotten it and even denied it, Louise was quite right. She had had the most mammoth crush on Carter, had indeed dreamed and drooled over him and had even, she blushed to recall, written his name all over her maths book.
You might be able to deceive yourself, she reflected grimly, as she drove home, but you certainly couldn"t deceive an old friend, especially not one who had shared your growing years with you.
But she had more urgent things to dwell on than her own folly.
Louise"s revelation that Carter had bought those fields had really jolted her. She had managed to push to the back of her mind Peter"s allegations against him, but now suddenly she was forced to confront them.
She drove slowly down the lane and then into the yard.
As she did so the back door opened and Carter erupted into the yard.
He looked furiously angry, so angry in fact that for a moment she almost decided not to get out of the car. And then she"re minded herself that this was her home well, at least her parents" home that Carter was the intruder and that, even worse, he was deliberately setting out to ruin her parents, and that gave her the strength to push open her door and get out.
She had scarcely put one foot on the ground be fore Carter suddenly grabbed hold of her and virtually yanked her out of her car. He was almost shaking her as he demanded to know where she had been, and yet oddly instead of feeling frightened she experienced a strange, dizzying sense of exhilaration.
"Just where the h.e.l.l have you been?" he was demanding as he shook her.
"If you think I"m going to let you walk out on me and back to him after last night " I didn"t walk anywhere," Elspeth interrupted him.
"I drove to the village to buy some Alka Seltzer."
"You drove in your condition? Are you mad?
Don"t you realise you could still be over the limit? My G.o.d, have you no sense? "
For a moment Elspeth was too stunned to speak, and then she fired back bitterly, "I might not have any sense, but at least I have some morals.
At least I"m not trying to destroy someone--at least I"m not trying to steal from them. How could you buy those fields when you know my parents need them? Peter was right--you"ve been out to cheat my parents all along. You bought those fields so that you can put them out of business."
Ridiculously she was suddenly close to tears, unbearably hating knowing that after all Peter had been right. It didn"t stop her loving Carter--nothing could do that, she recognised dismally. Carter stared at her, his mouth thinning.
"Are you crazy? I don"t believe I"m hearing any of this. I bought those fields, not for myself, but for your parents--on their behalf, in fact. My G.o.d, how could you suspect...? And to think that last night I actually thought you were finally beginning to realise. But it"s all Peter with you, isn"t it? Nothing else--no one else exists," he demanded bitterly.
"Well, I don"t know what kind of rules you live by, Elspeth, but the ones I live by don"t include onenight stands.
When I make love to a woman, even when she"s doing the asking," he added mercilessly, "it"s because I"ve already made some kind of emotional commitment to her, because I want far more from her than the brief pleasure of her body. OK, so now you"re going to tell me that it only happened because you"ve lost Peter, that you were using me as a subst.i.tute for him, but let me tell you this: no woman makes love to a man the way you did to me without feeling something, and you knew d.a.m.n well it wasn"t Peter you were holding in your arms last night. You knew d.a.m.n well it wasn"t Peter you wanted to kiss and hold you. It wasn"t Peter"s body you wanted--" " Stop," Elspeth demanded huskily, and then asked, " Did you really buy those fields for my parents? "
He gave her a hard look and said tersely, "I"m not after their business. I"m thinking of a much larger market than theirs--supplying supermarkets. I"ve already had some interest shown and I believe I can make a go of it. The reason I chose Cheshire was because of you--you, Elspeth--you! Yes, but if you don"t believe me--" She shook her head.
Too much was happening too quickly. She felt as though she were falling helplessly through s.p.a.ce with no one to help her.
"Last night," she began huskily, but Carter wouldn"t let her finish.
"Last night," he told her ruthlessly, "you asked me to make love to you and I did what any man any normal man who"s spent far too many years crazy about a particular woman would do when that same woman whispers to him that she wants and needs him. I lost control. And you may as well know that I don"t regret a moment of it. All right, so it doesn"t matter to you that I"ve wasted years of my life just aching for a chance to show you how I feel about you, it doesn"t matter that it was me who held you last night, who pleasured you, loved you. What the h.e.l.l is it that he"s got and I don"t have, Elspeth, apart from your love? I love you, for G.o.d"s sake, while he. "
Elspeth swayed giddily.
"You love me?"
"Of course I do, dammit!" Carter bellowed.
"When your parents told me that they thought you were getting tired of your high-profile city life, that they felt that you wanted to come home, I thought, at last, here"s my chance. I was on the verge of leaving the inst.i.tute anyway, and I thought, where better to settle down than in Cheshire, so that I could be near you, so that I could have a chance to show you--" He broke off, shaking his head.
"When we first met you were too young, just a girl. I couldn"t tell you."
"Carter," Elspeth demanded shakily.
"Can you think of something you could do to prove to me that I"m not imagining all this?"
Something in her voice must have alerted him to the truth. He looked at her and tensed. A muscle twitched briefly in his jaw and then he was coming towards her, taking hold of her, wrapping her in his arms, his voice husky and just a little bit uncertain as he asked against her mouth, "How about this?"
Hours, or was it only seconds later, Elspeth drew away from him, convinced now beyond any doubt that he loved her just as compulsively as she was beginning to realise she loved him, and probably had loved him for a very long time, if she had only had the wit to realise it.
"Carter?" she asked him, fiddling with the b.u.t.tons on his shirt.
"Last night, did you really...?" She whispered something into his ear and blushed as he looked at her and said softly, "Yes. Why?"
"Nothing. Well, it"s just... my memories of last night are a tiny bit hazy, and I was wondering. Do you think you could do it again?" she asked him breathlessly.
"I see. Some lover, aren"t I, if you"ve forgotten what it felt like already?" he said drily.
She smiled dreamily at him.
"Oh, no, I haven"t forgotten. I just wanted to see if it was actually as wonderful as I remember."
"Well, Mrs. MacDonald, is it still as wonderful as you remember?"
Carter teased his wife of exactly fifteen months as she lay contentedly in his arms, in the shadowed peace of their bedroom.
Their two-month-old son had been taken firmly in charge by his grandmother, who had announced that it was time that his doting parents had a little time to themselves.
"Mmm. I"m not sure." Elspeth wriggled blissfully closer to him, pretending to consider, laughter gleaming in her eyes as she suggested thoughtfully, "I don"t suppose you could do it again, could you?
Carter! Carter! " she protested, laughing, as her husband proceeded to show her that he most a.s.suredly could.
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