Susan Napier – Savage Courtship (страница 3)

He was also a very private man, reserved to the point of coldness. In fact it was that very reserve that made him an ideal employer as far as Vanessa was concerned...that and the fact that his visits to his historic house on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula were few and far between, and never without advance notification.

Until now...

Vanessa’s fingers tightened further on her cup. She had an unwelcome premonition that this visit was going to alter the pleasant tenor of life at Whitefield House completely and forever. Already her perception of Benedict Savage had been unwillingly altered. He was no longer merely her employer, he was now regrettably entrenched in her brain as a man...

He was still looking at her, and she cringed at what he must be thinking.

If only she could remember what had happened!

Unfortunately, last night was a total blank, from the time she had fallen into bed after imbibing more than her share of champagne over an early dinner with Richard, until the moment she had become aware of the sounds of dawn filtering through a window that she knew she had firmly closed the previous evening.

When she had opened her eyes and found herself almost nose to nose with her naked employer, her arm draped over his hard waist, her thigh trapped intimately between his, she had thought at first that she was dreaming. Not that she had ever had erotic dreams about Benedict Savage before; she had always felt utterly safe in that regard. He was just not the sort of man she found attractive. He was too cerebral, too dispassionate, too much of a perfectionist for Vanessa, who much preferred comfort to sharp-edged perfection.

Luckily she had been too muddle-headed to scream when the rest of her senses had confirmed the shocking reality of the bare flesh pressed against hers. She had merely frozen, terrified that her consciousness might awaken his, unable to believe that the supple male hand possessively cupping her soft breast really belonged to Benedict Savage...not to mention the steely hardness that pressed into the hollow of her thigh where it was wedged snugly between his. He might not have roused from sleep but the man in her arms had definitely not been unaroused!

Shame and disbelief had warred for supremacy in the long moments it took for her to realise that she might still be able to extricate herself from the immediate consequences of her folly. The deep, even tenor of his breathing had indicated that Benedict—Mr Savage, she corrected herself grimly, clinging to the flimsy protection that the formality offered—was still deeply asleep, and Vanessa had prayed that he would continue to remain so as she extracted herself, inch by excruciatingly cautious inch, from their tangled embrace, her eyes fixed on his sleeping face.

All had gone well until the final few seconds when he’d shifted and growled an inarticulate protest at the withdrawal of warm, feminine flesh but, blessedly, he hadn’t woken...

When she’d finally slithered off the side of the bed, taking most of the upper sheet with her, he had merely rolled further over on to his face with a groan, slinging a long, sinewy arm around the pillow she had vacated and dragging it under his ribs, pinning it there with his drawn-up knee. She had primly flung the sheet back over him and fled hastily, her mortification ridiculously intensified by the knowledge that her presence in his bed was so easily replaced by a shapeless pillow!

It had taken her all of fifteen minutes’ hard scrubbing in the shower to feel that she had washed the masculine scent and feel of him off her skin and even now the memory of it returned to haunt her.

Once again, she damned Benedict Savage for taking advantage of an innocent mistake. Why hadn’t he woken her up? Or, worse, what if he had woken her and, in an alcohol-induced stupor, she had been recklessly wanton...?

She shuddered, looking warily up at him through the protective screen of her lashes. Why on earth was he just standing there like that? Why didn’t he say something—an accusation, a joke, a request for an explanation, a demand she pack her bags and never darken his door again—anything to break this unbearable tension?

Nervously she tried to assess his uncertain mood. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was ruffled—not a very good sign for a man who always presented a perfectly groomed image, even when relaxing in private. His saturnine face had a more than usually shuttered look, his thin mouth a tight slash across the unshaven lower half of his face that emphasised the general impression of indrawn tension. However, his crisp blue and white striped shirt and dark blue trousers were immaculately co-ordinated, so he hadn’t been in such haste to track her down that he’d just thrown on the first clothes to hand.

The silence stretched on just long enough for her nerve to break under the strain.

‘Did you want me, sir?’

Too late Vanessa realised the suggestive ambiguity of the question and she had to clench her teeth to stop herself gabbling a disclaimer into the ensuing silence. Her neatly buttoned collar suddenly felt chokingly tight.

‘I...’ He released her from the torture of his sole attention, looking around the kitchen again, as if hunting for his words. ‘Er... Am I the only one breakfasting...?’

Vanessa was aware of Mrs Riley’s sidelong glance but refused to share her silent puzzlement at their employer’s uncharacteristic vagueness. She was too busy worrying over whether he was deliberately prolonging her agony or merely unwilling to humiliate her in front of the housekeeper.

‘Why...yes. Vanessa didn’t mention that you’d brought any guests with you this time...’ Mrs Riley was saying, a faint look of bewilderment crossing her face as she watched her employer’s eyes drop as he studied his stylishly shod feet with apparent fascination.

‘No, I didn’t. So...it’s just me, then...’ His inflexion rose slightly on the last word, just enough to suggest the possibility of a question. Nobody answered immediately and his gaze swivelled suddenly back to Vanessa, who wasn’t quite quick enough to banish her look of apprehension.

He scowled at her. ‘Can I see you for a few minutes in the library, Flynn?’ He turned on his heel and was almost out the door before he halted, looking back. ‘Incidentally, Mrs Riley, I’m really not very hungry this morning, so perhaps just some toast and tea...’

‘Oh, what a pity, Mr Savage, and I’ve just put a nice pot of porridge on the stove—’

‘Porridge?’ He jerked around, looking so shocked at the suggestion that Vanessa, already primed with nerves, gave a jittery little laugh and found herself once again impaled by the focus of his attention.

‘In the library. Now!’ For Benedict Savage the quiet hiss was the equivalent of a furious shout.

‘Yes, sir!’ Vanessa muttered to empty air, rising from her seat and unhooking the cropped navy jacket that was draped over the high back.

‘Well, I never!’ said Kate Riley, crossing her arms over her ample chest and shaking her grey head so that her corrugated perm quivered. ‘You’d have thought I was offering him arsenic. He always said he liked my porridge!’

Vanessa, shouldering into her jacket and procrastinating by squaring the cuffs and lapels, soothed her injured pride absently. ‘He’s probably just in a bad mood—’

‘Mr Savage doesn’t have moods—he’s always a perfect gentleman,’ Mrs Riley pointed out with inescapable truth. ‘He never gets out of bed on the wrong side but it certainly seems as though he did this morning...’

Vanessa murmured something indistinct in answer to the unfortunate metaphor and rushed out of the kitchen, pressing cold hands to her hot cheeks.

Calm down, calm down, she lectured herself sternly as she walked down the flag-stoned hall. If he fires you, you can charge him with sexual harassment. Or was he planning to charge her...? She almost moaned aloud at the thought, its absurdity eclipsed by her horror of scandal. Whatever happened, there would be questions asked because she couldn’t possibly continue to work at Whitefield. She would have to leave the place she had come to look on as a quiet, secure haven from the madness of the world. And what was she going to tell Richard? Oh, damn, damn, damn!

‘Well...?’ Thankfully Benedict Savage had not chosen to adopt an intimidating position of dominance behind the meticulously tidy antique desk that fronted the French windows. Instead he was standing just inside the doorway, one hand resting on a walnut shelf of the book-lined wall, fingers tapping involuntarily against the aged wood as she closed the door behind her.

‘Yes, sir?’ Vanessa stood straight and tall, shoulders squared against the imminent attack.

He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry if my early arrival has caused problems, but I just needed to get away for a space of time and Whitefield seemed the place to do it. The apartment in Auckland is too accessible and...’ he shrugged with a trace of diffidence ‘...well, I know that Mrs Riley gets in a tizz about these things... Just make sure she knows that I don’t expect everything to be as organised as usual...that I don’t want any fuss...’