A Past To Deny
‘I’m sorry, I thought I had turned them off,’ lied Maggie, automatically avoiding the truth and all its accompanying complications…As usual, she noted bitterly as she watched him stride back to the cooker, his tall figure, now clad in jeans and a large sweatshirt, oozing casual elegance. ‘It’s all right, I’ll see to the potatoes,’ she said as he lifted the lid from the pan.
‘There isn’t much in the way of potato left for you to see to,’ he informed her baldly, stepping out of her way as she approached.
Her cheeks burning with mortification, Maggie took the pan to the sink and resignedly watched most of the potatoes disappear down it when she drained them. She returned to the cooker, her eyes studiously avoiding the tall figure now engrossed in laying the table, turned up the heat in an attempt to dry out the mush in the pan, added a lump of butter to it and attacked the lot with the potato masher.
The silence ringing in her ears like pealing bells, she transferred the potatoes to a heated bowl, relieved to find that they were now of a consistency that required a spoon, instead of simply being poured.
By the time she had everything on the table she was feeling light-headed, wobbly-legged and not in the least like facing food, despite the tempting aroma emanating from the casserole…and even less like sharing a meal with the man seated opposite her, who had amusement plastered all over his face as he leaned over and began serving.
‘Did you know Marjorie?’ he startled her by asking.
She shook her head, the Prof’s words about this being a double ordeal for him filling her mind just as they had in the moments before she had recklessly said she would stay. ‘I wish I had. Connor’s told me so much about her—she sounds a very special person.’
‘Oh, Marjorie was special all right,’ he said, his eyes momentarily clouding. ‘In a funny way you reminded me of her just now.’ He glanced up at her with an apologetic grin. ‘Though, to be fair to you, had it been Marjorie in charge of these carrots the house would have been burned to a cinder.’
Maggie felt herself relax slightly; she even managed a smile. ‘I do seem to remember Connor mentioning something about Mrs Morrison trying to ban her from the kitchen soon after they were married. But, I promise you, that was a first for me.’
‘So how did you meet Connor?’ he asked. ‘I notice you sometimes refer to him as “the Prof”, but I’d have thought you were too young to be one of his students.’
‘Actually, I was one of his students in my final year in London,’ she replied, her minding skidding away from other thoughts about that particular year. ‘I was lucky; I was a member of one of his last groups before he retired fully.’
‘Well, now I am impressed,’ murmured Slane, his eyes widening in mock awe. ‘So you made it into one of those crème de la crème groups he now and then indulged himself in before finally sliding into what he inaccurately refers to as “full retirement”.’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ said Maggie. ‘He’ll never really retire—that’s the way he is.’
‘Are you trying to change the subject?’ asked Slane, a lazy grin softening any trace of harshness from his features. ‘You know, your being one of Connor’s chosen few really does set you apart from the mob. I guess any errors made in these tests we’re about to do won’t be down to you.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ she muttered, and gave her full attention to her food, appalled by the burning, meltingly erotic sensation now churning inside her.
Shock could do terrible things, she told herself edgily, not certain that the monumental one to which she had been subjected hadn’t destroyed her mental capacities altogether.
‘I guess I should be filling you in about the tests—not that there’s much to tell,’ he said after a while. ‘But I’m not sure I could get my head round it right now.’ He glanced over at Maggie as he spoke, and for one brief moment she was certain that she saw a flash of mocking recognition in those heavy-lidded eyes; then they drooped in unmistakable exhaustion and her certainty yet again evaporated.
‘That’s understandable,’ she said, rising to clear the dishes. ‘You’ve had a lot to contend with today, we’ll leave it until tomorrow.’ Even before the words were fully out she sensed that they were a mistake. ‘There’s fruit if you’d like some,’ she added hastily as the ambiguity of her words belatedly hit her. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’
‘Just the coffee will be fine,’ he said, his handsome face drawn with exhaustion as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes barely focusing as they followed her movements. ‘So, I’ve had a lot to contend with today, have I?’ he enquired.
It was the steely note in his tone that made Maggie freeze with apprehension.
‘It was just that Connor mentioned you hadn’t been back here since his wife died,’ she stated woodenly.
‘And that’s all?’ The note of challenge was undisguised.
Maggie switched on the kettle, playing for time as she fought to control the anger suddenly blazing within her. Perhaps he was only asking if that was all Connor had mentioned…perhaps not. Mortifying in the extreme though the idea was that he might have mentally erased the passion they had once shared, the idea that he was simply playing cat-and-mouse with her made her blood boil.
Unable to contain herself, she spun round to confront him. His head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. It wasn’t the expression of weariness on his face that shrivelled the anger in her, but the anguish with which it was interlaced.
‘He said that you loved her very much,’ she stated quietly, turning away from his pain to attend to the coffee. And Connor had also mentioned his father’s death, she reflected unhappily, feeling the ghosts of what had once been a scarcely bearable anguish stir within her.
It had been six long years since her own beloved father had died, and despite the healing process of time there were still moments when she could be taken unawares and become engulfed by a suffocating sense of loss. The expression she had witnessed on Slane Fitzpatrick’s face was one with which she could not help but empathise.
‘Yes, I loved Marjorie,’ he said, straightening as she brought the coffee to the table. ‘It would have been difficult not to,’ he added, his eyes clouding over.
She had no idea what connection his coming to Ireland could have with his father, but Maggie felt certain that it wasn’t Marjorie alone occupying his bleak thoughts. Because she could think of nothing she could trust herself to say, she picked up her cup and slowly drank from it. When it was empty she rose to her feet.
‘I’ve a couple of letters I have to write,’ she said, walking over to the dishwasher and starting to stack it, ‘so I’ll just get this cleared—’
‘Leave those; I’ll see to them—you’ve waited on me enough as it is.’
‘Of course I haven’t been waiting on you,’ protested Maggie, closing the dishwasher and turning. ‘You look all in—in fact, you don’t look as though you’ll last much longer.’
His eyes met hers, another of those lazy, disturbingly disruptive grins sauntering across his lips. ‘You get off to your letters, Maggie, and don’t be deceived by appearances,’ he murmured. ‘This guy has reserves of stamina you’d never believe.’
His words poleaxed her and it was left to that other, miraculously detached Maggie to take over, mouthing a polite goodnight and urging her leaden limbs from the room.
It was only when she had closed her bedroom door behind her that her real self re-emerged and her violently trembling body sagged against the wall. There was no way that his remark could have been an innocent coincidence…It couldn’t simply be her imagination that he had just reminded her of the stamina which had enabled him to make love to her time after time that night long ago…or could it?
‘This is impossible,’ he had groaned at one stage during that passion-filled night, when insatiable hunger had flamed between them yet again. ‘What have you done to me?’
And, even though she had been sexually innocent until that same night, she had instinctively known that what was happening between her and the beautiful stranger was an impossibility.
She gave a dazed shake of her head as she straightened her still violently trembling body and then stumbled towards the bed.
That night she had needed the magic of something impossible to heal her vicious wounds…but the cure had come close to destroying her.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN she first awoke Maggie lay immobile, willing herself back to sleep, convinced that it was still the middle of the night. When her body failed to respond she checked the time and gave a disbelieving groan. As far as she was concerned, five-thirty in the morning was practically the middle of the night.
She hadn’t even had to contend with the horrors of the day before seeping slowly back into her waking mind; she had woken with those horrors fully intact And oddly enough it had been memories of her father that had filled her thoughts during the long hours in which sleep had eluded her. But other memories began stirring within her now—ones so long buried away and ruthlessly ignored that now there could be no holding them back.
His ice maiden…That was what Peter had so often called her—with what she had mistakenly read as teasing affection—and her lack of any real feelings of physical desire for him had always troubled her during those months when she had believed herself to be in love with him.
Yet, even without such feelings ever having been aroused in her, she had instinctively known that within her lay a capacity for passion that would one day overwhelm her. Crazy though it seemed to her now, she had actually managed to convince herself that, given time, it would be Peter who would eventually find the key to unlock those untapped passions…
But it had been, quite literally, a tall, dark stranger who had produced that elusive key, effortlessly unleashing in her what the man she had once believed she loved had imagined could be forced from her.
And now her knight, in his tarnished armour, lay sleeping just a few doors away from her, she reminded herself bitterly, and with apparently no recollection of their shared night, let alone any understanding of the powers his body still held over hers.
With a stifled cry of protest she sat up, shaking her head violently. She didn’t want to be a freak! What she wanted was to be able to experience in the arms of a man she loved the same rapture she had known in those of Slane Fitzpatrick. Yet, in the almost three years that had passed, she hadn’t found a man she could love, and those forbidden fires had remained dormant within her…until Slane’s lazy grin had put a torch to them.
She leapt from the bed, threw on her dressing gown and stumbled down the stairs. It was just as she was entering the kitchen that the aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafted to her.
‘Would you care for some coffee?’ asked Slane, glancing up from what he was doing. Clad in a dark velour robe, a shadowy blue-blackness on his unshaven face, he looked drawn and tired and unspeakably attractive. ‘I’ve just fixed it,’ he added, getting out more crockery before Maggie had a chance to respond.
‘Thanks,’ she muttered, sagging down onto a chair. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be up, she thought fuzzily, then decided that that was no wonder, considering what an ungodly hour it was. ‘I’m surprised you’re up,’ she added. ‘I thought you’d be catching up on sleep.’
‘So did I,’ he murmured wryly, passing her a large cup of black coffee, ‘but my body refused to play ball.’ He sat down opposite her, his eyes flickering with amusement over her somewhat dishevelled figure. ‘It’s good to have company, though. I guess you must be one of those people Connor refers to as “larks”—up with the birdies and bright as a button.’
‘Ha, ha,’ muttered Maggie, then took a swig of coffee and nearly choked. ‘God, it’s like treacle!’ she exclaimed with spontaneous candour. ‘I thought you said you only took it twice as strong as Connor.’
‘Stay put—I’ll get the milk,’ he laughed as she made to rise.
When he handed it to her Maggie filled her cup to the brim, and still it looked undrinkably black. She toyed with the idea of making herself some tea, then decided that there was a good chance that the coffee would blast her head clear.
‘I seem to remember Connor saying something about you being the person he got in to run that London shop, Body and Soul, after Marjorie died,’ Slane said, out of the blue.
‘He didn’t get me to run it,’ said Maggie, more than a little thrown. ‘In fact, even when his wife was alive I believe it was never a question of anyone running Body and Soul—they all mucked in together, and with great success. Obviously Connor could hardly step in—even apart from all his other commitments he wouldn’t have had a clue how the company functioned.’
‘Oh, I see-you had?’
‘No, I hadn’t,’ snapped Maggie, now angry. Just who the hell did he think he was, cross-examining her like this? ‘I’d just finished my degree and was still at a loose end. I’m sure it can’t be difficult for you to imagine how shattered the people were who had worked with her and loved her for so many years. All Connor asked me to do was lend a hand, so I did.’
‘What—for two years?’ he enquired with undisguised scepticism.
Shaken by how close she was to losing her temper, Maggie rose and went over to the bread bin. Battling to keep a grip on herself, she cut a couple of slices and put them in the toaster. He did remember, though clearly he wasn’t about to admit it, she told herself angrily, and this snide baiting of her he was indulging in made it plain just how negative and hostile he felt about it all.
‘Amazing though it may seem to a high-powered tycoon such as yourself,’ she heard herself saying, and had swung round to face him before she realised what she was doing, ‘there actually are businesses that operate with everyone happily mucking in and, believe it or not, manage to thrive.
‘Body and Soul might only be a natural pharmacy, but they none the less needed someone with the relevant scientific knowledge, so I suppose in that respect I was taking over from Connor’s wife.’
He was sitting at the table, his chin propped on his hands, gazing at her as though drinking in her every word.
‘My, you sound almost defensive, Maggie,’ he drawled. ‘I was just being sociable and trying to show some interest.’
‘I’m sure you were,’ she retorted from between clenched teeth as she turned back to the toaster. ‘Would you like some of this toast, or what?’
‘I’ll have a rummage through the icebox to see if I can reproduce one of Mrs Morrisons’s famous fry-ups.’
‘There’s only bacon and eggs. If you want that I can cook it for you.’
‘So can I,’ he said, the faint tinge of mockery in his tone setting Maggie’s teeth on edge. ‘I’ll even cook you some too, to prove what a sociable guy I am.’
‘That’s quite all right—I’ll do it,’ she said. The last thing she needed was to be standing around with nothing to occupy her. ‘You must be tired—what with your body clock being all askew,’ she added, just to make sure that he got the message that her cooking him breakfast was not to be the norm. ‘Would you like tomatoes with it?’
‘I’d love tomatoes with it,’ he replied, further irritating her with his mocking stress on her English pronunciation. ‘Do you enjoy cooking, Maggie?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘So, you’re just an old-fashioned girl who likes to take care of a man…I think I’m going to enjoy this stay after all.’
‘My other reason for offering to cook this is simply that I’m not at my best first thing in the morning,’ retorted Maggie, having extreme difficulty in keeping her tone in any way civil. ‘I like to have something to keep me occupied, otherwise I’m quite likely to doze off.’ She unwrapped the bacon, unable to believe the rubbish she had just spouted. ‘And that wouldn’t be very sociable, would it?’
‘I’ll have to take you at your word about how you feel at this hour,’ he murmured, ‘but from where I’m sitting you look great. You haven’t drunk your coffee…I’ll make you some fresh.’
There was absolutely no need for him to lean over and against her as he reached for the kettle, but that was what he did. Her body responded in a way that both startled and horrified her, melting to a liquid state of unequivocal sexual excitement as the heady, newly bathed masculine scent of him engulfed her.
So unnerved was she by the totality of that involuntary response that an equally involuntary shriek exploded from her as, in her panic to escape, she leapt smack into the kettle he had just lifted.
‘Now, that wasn’t very smart, was it?’ he drawled, putting down the kettle and taking her face in his hands.
‘What are you doing?’ she protested, twisting violently in an attempt to escape those hands. ‘Stop it!’
‘For God’s sake, stop being so damned stupid!’ he exclaimed, his hands tightening in a vice-like grip. ‘Your nose is bleeding.’
‘Get your hands off me!’ she cried, a note of hysteria slicing through the words as her hands tugged frantically at his arms.
‘Hell, anyone walking in here and seeing you dripping blood and freaking out all over the place would assume I was trying to kill you!’ he exploded, his eyes blazing fury as he abruptly released her. ‘Just what in hell are you playing at?’
‘What do you mean, what am I playing at?’ shrieked Maggie, unable to exert any control over herself. ‘You’re the one who’s just broken my nose with the kettle!’
‘I don’t believe this,’ he groaned softly to himself, then reached over to a roll of kitchen paper and tore off a couple of sheets. ‘Here—dab your nose with that. And for God’s sake don’t blow it.’
Maggie took the wad of paper and gingerly did as he’d said, the madness at last mercifully subsiding in her. Then she wondered just how much of a mercy it was as she found herself face to face with a blackly scowling man, the angry heave of whose chest had loosened his robe and exposed an expanse of fine, silkily hirsute darkness.
It was when her mind’s eye began casually stripping the entire robe from that magnificent body that she was reduced to considering pinching herself to end what had to be a ghastly nightmare.
‘It doesn’t seem to be bleeding any more,’ he muttered, flashing her a distinctly hostile look before grabbing a teatowel and walking over to the fridge. ‘You’d better pack this around it for a while,’ he said, handing her the towel, now wrapped around a mound of ice-cubes. ‘It might prevent it swelling.’
Now feeling an utter fool, Maggie moved towards the cooker, the lumpy towel clamped to her nose.
‘Now what are you doing?’ he demanded in weary exasperation.
‘Cooking your breakfast’
‘Don’t you think you have enough to occupy you?’ he drawled, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Forget it—we’ll go have a look at the lab facilities, then get ourselves breakfast downtown…assuming, that is, you’re up to it.’
At first Maggie was surprised at how well Slane knew his way around, then she remembered that he had spent quite a bit of time in Dublin.
‘Did you come here on holiday regularly?’ she asked after a silent battle with herself. They had exchanged barely a word since getting into Connor’s car, but a subconscious fatalism in her reasoned that, having committed herself to stay, her best bet was to try to establish at least a veneer of civility between them before she got around to confronting him. The only alternative appeared to be a descent into out-and-out war…
Besides, there was this growing, insistent part of her showing an insatiable need to find out everything there was to know about him…Not that she had any intention of indulging it to the full.
‘Not on holiday, exactly,’ he replied. ‘We did visit quite a bit, but my dad had this thing about me not missing out on the Irish half of me. I went to school here as a kid—though I went through high school in the States. I was also here at Trinity before going on to Yale.’
‘Didn’t you mind?’ exclaimed Maggie involuntarily.
‘What was there to mind?’
‘Surely it must have been disruptive—switching between the Irish and American education system like that? And what about leaving your family and friends?’
‘I was a bright kid, so the differences didn’t bother me,’ he replied. ‘I guess I was also a pretty secure one. It wasn’t as though I was packed off to Ireland against my will; I was given the choice and I couldn’t wait to live here for a while. As for family and friends, I knew they’d still be there when I got back—which was most vacations.’
Bright, well-adjusted and utterly modest, thought Maggie wryly, and that had just been the child!
‘I guess you had a more conventional childhood,’ he murmured as, with the outskirts of Dublin behind them, he speeded up along the coastal road, beside which angry grey seas sent foam-tipped waves hurtling across mile after empty mile of pale gold sand.
‘I guess you could say that,’ responded Maggie drily.
‘Oh, I see,’ he chuckled, the sound sending shock waves of heat rippling through her. ‘This is to be a “tell all” for me and a “tell nothing” for you. Great.’
Maggie bit back an angry retort, reasoning with herself that she could hardly blame him for the effect he was having on her—an effect of which he seemed, thank heavens, mercifully unaware.
‘I’m sorry if you got that impression,’ she said, trying so hard to feign normality that she ended up sounding prissy, ‘but there really is nothing to tell. I went from one school to the next, in the same town, then on to university—there’s hardly anything exotic about that…Where exactly are we heading?’
‘To a place just outside Dun Laoghaire,’ he replied, taking a sudden right turn from the coast road. ‘In fact, we’ll soon be there.’
Maggie frowned in puzzlement as with each turn they took they drove deeper and deeper into what was obviously a most affluent residential area. ‘We are on our way to a laboratory, aren’t we?’ she muttered, peering out through the rain-bleared windows at houses that were getting grander and sparser by the minute.
‘We sure are,’ he replied, with a soft laugh, as they entered what was more of a lane than a road, at the end of which stood huge, wrought-iron gates set into a massive, creeper-clad wall. He stopped the car in front of the gates, released his seat belt and opened his door. ‘Your turn to drive.’
Before Maggie could utter a word he was out and drawing aside the heavy, creaking gates.
He motioned her to remain where she was once she had driven through, and got in beside her, spraying her with droplets of rain as he shook his glossy dark head like a boisterous puppy.
‘Straight on up,’ he directed.
It was like driving through a miniature forest, and then a house loomed into view.
‘This looks more like a minor stately home than a laboratory site!’ exclaimed Maggie as they neared the impressive, ivy-clad building. ‘Who on earth owns it?’
‘Maurice Ryan—an old friend of my father’s,’ replied Slane. ‘Just follow the drive round to the back of the house and on down to that line of trees—you’ll see where to turn once we’re there. Maurice is a character and a half, but unfortunately we won’t see him—he’s off picking daisies at the end of some rainbow or other.’
‘He’s what?’ exclaimed Maggie, following the curve of the drive and bringing the car to a halt in front of a white, single-storey building, hidden from view by the trees behind which it stood.
‘Maurice is a botanist. He eats, sleeps and breaths botany. Fortunately he has vast independent means with which to indulge his passion.’
‘I take it he’s the one who’s grown this plant you’re going to test?’ said Maggie.
Slane nodded. ‘Yes, he—Ah, that must be John,’ he said as a man clad in waterproofs and wellington boots appeared from around the side of the building. ‘You might just as well stay here in the dry while I have a word with him about setting things up for the morning.’