A Little Revenge Omnibus (25 page)

Anna’s lips parted on a small, beatific sigh. Ward’s fingertip
met the soft breath she expelled. It sent a shaft of fierce pleasure right
through his body. Anna moved her head a little, capturing his fingertip in her
mouth. Very, very slowly she started to suck on it.

Ward felt as though his insides had been turned to pure molten
pleasure. Honesty was a very dangerous aphrodisiac, he decided dizzily as Anna
gave a little moan of pleasure before starting to nibble on a second finger.

‘Have you any idea just what that is doing to me?’ Ward
grumbled despairingly.

‘Mmm... No... Why don’t you tell me?’ Anna invited
seductively.

‘Well, it might feel a little bit like this,’ Ward obliged,
instigating a little bit of seduction of his own by nibbling gently on her
neck.

‘Mmm...’ Anna sighed appreciatively, closing her eyes.

‘You know, you really do wear too many clothes,’ Ward whispered
thickly to her several seconds later as he helped to correct this sartorial
error by removing her shirt.

‘Mmm... I could say the same about you,’ Anna agreed huskily.
If Ward responded so satisfactorily to just the delicate touch of her mouth
against his fingers, then how would he react if she repeated that caress on
other more sensitive parts of his body? Anna wondered daringly.

She and Ralph had never really experimented with sex. They had
both been a little shy and almost formal with one another in their lovemaking,
but now Anna was beginning to discover a spirit of sensual adventure within
herself that both bemused and excited her. Her fingers tugged impatiently at
Ward’s buttons whilst she nuzzled the warm flesh of his throat. His skin smelled
just as it had done last night—slightly musky, warm and very, very male.

‘Mmm...you taste good,’ Ward told her, echoing her own thoughts
about him as his lips started to caress the soft curve of her breast.

Anna had no idea just how long it took them to remove each
other’s clothes; she only knew that once they had she couldn’t stop herself from
openly feasting her gaze and then her hands and mouth on Ward’s body.

Initially he was tempted to stop her. He wasn’t used to a
passive role, but Anna was gently insistent.

‘I’ve never been like this before,’ she told him quietly.

‘How do you know,’ Ward questioned her, ‘if you can’t
remember?’

‘I just know,’ Anna told him simply, and against all logic, as
he looked into her eyes, Ward believed her.

There was nothing practised or artificial about her touch, and
Ward controlled his own desire to watch her tenderly as she explored his body
with absorbed concentration.

‘Everything, all of you, is just so perfect,’ she whispered,
pink-cheeked, at one point, giving him an indignant look when Ward started to
laugh.

‘Twenty years ago I might, just might, have been tempted to
believe you,’ he said. ‘But now...’ His laugh, warm and uninhibited, shook his
body.

‘It’s true, though,’ Anna protested, injured. ‘You are
perfect—to me...’

‘Aha...’ Ward began, but Anna stopped him.

She demanded huskily, ‘Ward, were you really jealous of
Tim?’

‘Really,’ he confirmed steadily, holding her gaze before adding
truthfully, ‘Very!’

Anna gave a small loving sigh.

‘You don’t have any need to be, you know,’ she told him
frankly. ‘I never thought I’d ever feel like this.’ She paused. ‘Did you...have
there been...?’

‘No...not now,’ Ward replied promptly. ‘My mother...’ He
stopped abruptly.

‘Tell me about your family, Ward,’ Anna encouraged, her fingers
playing with the soft, dark hair that covered his chest.

‘No, there isn’t very much to tell, and no, you haven’t met
them,’ Ward answered. This was a subject he didn’t want to pursue but Anna
obviously wasn’t going to be sidetracked.

‘Tell me about your home,’ she insisted. ‘Have I seen it?’

‘No!’

Ward reached up and drew her down against his body, cupping her
face as he started to kiss her. It might be a good way of silencing her, he
acknowledged several seconds later, but it still possessed dangers of its own.
He had already told himself that, no matter what the temptation, he was not
going to succumb to it or make the same mistakes he had made last night, but
Anna’s fingertips were gently stroking down the length of his body and just the
thought of how it would feel to have them caressing the most intimate part of
him was enough to make him give a small gasp of awed awareness.

‘You’re so big,’ she told him, wide-eyed, as she touched
him.

Ward looked at her a little suspiciously but there was no trace
of any guile in her expression. In fact, if he were a vain man, he could, he
acknowledged, be very, very susceptible to the look in Anna’s eyes, urgent now
as she studied his body.

‘And you’re so...you’re so you,’ he told her thickly as he
reached out for her.

After that it was a long time before either of them said
anything remotely intelligible, although neither of them seemed to have any
difficulty in interpreting the other’s whispered words of pleasure and
incandescent delight.

‘Oh, Ward,’ Anna whispered, torn between emotional tears of
release and happy laughter as she lay trembling in Ward’s arms in the aftermath
of their lovemaking.

‘Oh, Ward, what?’ he demanded wryly.

‘Oh, Ward, I’m just so glad that you’re a part of my life, that
I met you, that you’re here with me...like...like this...’ Anna told him
softly.

Ward paused for a moment.

‘No more than I am,’ he told her gruffly.

For a moment Ward could hardly believe what he had said. His
admission had been tantamount to a declaration of love. What the hell was he
doing...thinking...feeling...?

‘Ward?’

He tensed as Anna suddenly shot up in bed, her voice anxious.
What had happened? Had she suddenly recovered her memory? Was she...?

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he asked her tersely.

‘I never fed poor Missie and Whittaker. Oh, and the lamb’s
still waiting to be cooked...’

‘Stay here,’ Ward told her masterfully. ‘I’ll go down and sort
everything out.’ He was only gone a couple of minutes, and when he came back he
was smiling broadly.

‘What is it?’ Anna demanded suspiciously as he climbed back
into bed beside her. ‘Why are you smiling like that?’

‘I think you can forget about the lamb,’ he told her jovially.
‘Oh, and Missie and Whittaker don’t need feeding either.’

Anna guessed immediately what had happened.

‘Oh, no. They’ve eaten the lamb,’ she wailed.

‘Oh, yes, I’m afraid they have.’ Ward chuckled. ‘They must have
got tired of waiting for us and decided to help themselves.’

‘Oh, but Ward, there isn’t anything for us to eat,’ Anna
complained.

‘Who needs food?’ Ward responded recklessly.

‘Mmm...who needs anything else when we’ve got what we’ve got?’
Anna agreed dreamily.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘A
ND
SO
AS
I was saying, Anna, if you could swop with me and do my next week’s Meals on Wheels rota, I would—’

Anna’s visitor broke off, her eyes rounding in surprise, her face going pink as Ward came strolling into the kitchen.

‘I’ve changed the tyre on your car. Just as well I noticed that you’d got a slow puncture,’ Ward told Anna.

‘Er...Mary, this is Ward, my...my friend...’ Anna said hastily, correctly interpreting the curiosity in the other woman’s face.

‘Oh, yes...I see... Your...friend...I didn’t know. I...er... Look, I really must be going. Nice to have met you...er...Ward...’

‘What was all that about?’ Ward asked Anna after Mary had gone.

‘She wanted me to change rotas with her for her Meals on Wheels,’ Anna told him.

Ward started to frown.

It was three days now since he had moved in with Anna and so far she had shown no signs of her memory returning—and so far, too, he had shown no signs of keeping his promise to himself and putting a safe distance between them.

In fact...

He grimaced to himself, remembering the way Anna had coaxed him last night, whispering to him, ‘It’s silly you sleeping in this bed and me having to...’

‘The consultant said you needed to rest,’ Ward had reminded her stoically.

‘Mmm...but how will you know if I get a bad headache or something in the night if we aren’t sleeping together?’ Anna had asked him teasingly.

There had been no contest, of course, and this morning he had woken up with Anna tucked neatly into the curve of his body, and then... But that wasn’t the complication which was making him frown now. Sooner or later someone was going to question his appearance in Anna’s life and he couldn’t afford to have that happen, not at this stage. When Anna got her memory back then he would be able to deal with whatever accusations she chose to make against him. After all, he had to point out her own culpability, but until then...

The sight of an oil smear on his last clean shirt reminded him of something else. Coming to a sudden decision, he told Anna quietly, ‘I need to go home for...for a few days—check my post, make a few phone calls...’

‘Oh, yes, of course...’

Even though she tried hard to conceal it Anna knew that her feelings must be showing on her face. She hated the thought of being without him and she knew she would miss him dreadfully.

‘I’d like you to come with me,’ Ward added quickly.

‘Go with you...?’ Anna’s eyes widened. ‘But what about Missie and Whittaker?’

‘They can come too,’ Ward assured her.

Go with him. See his house. Perhaps meet his friends... Anna’s heart gave a small skip of pleasure.

‘Oh, Ward, yes, I’d love to.’ She beamed happily.

* * *

‘W
HAT
’
S
ALL
THIS
about Anna and this man she’s got staying with her?’ Kelly asked Beth curiously.

‘What man? I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Beth replied as she stared incredulously at her friend and partner. ‘It can’t possibly be true... We’d have known. Anna would have told us. Besides, she just isn’t...she just doesn’t...’

Beth paused and looked at Kelly.

‘She just isn’t like that.’

Kelly knew exactly what Beth meant. It wasn’t that Anna wasn’t a desirable or attractive woman—she was—but there was an air of shyness about her, an air of...of purity, for want of a better word. Kelly acknowledged that that made it hard to imagine her even flirting with a man, never mind letting one move in with her.

‘There must be a mistake,’ Beth protested uneasily.

‘Not according to Mary Charles. Apparently she saw him up at the house when she went to see Anna and Anna actually introduced him to her as her “friend.”’

The two young women eyed one another speculatively.

‘Dee might know,’ Beth volunteered. ‘She and Anna have become quite close recently.’

‘Dee might know,’ Kelly agreed, ‘but she’s in Northumberland with her aunt.’

‘Oh, yes, of course; I’d forgotten.’

Kelly gave Beth a thoughtful look. Beth had become increasingly remote and preoccupied recently, and if Kelly hadn’t known better she would almost have imagined Beth was concealing something from her. But Beth simply wasn’t that type, just as her godmother wasn’t the type to have a live-in man ‘friend.’

‘Do you think one of us should go up and see Anna?’ Beth asked eventually.

Kelly pursed her lips.

‘Well, of course, Anna’s private life is really none of our business. However... I’ll have a word with Brough and see what he thinks,’ she offered.

‘Mmm...Brough will know what to do,’ Beth agreed.

Her godmother wasn’t a wealthy woman but she wasn’t a poor one either and, as Beth knew to her cost, there were men around who were all too eager to take advantage of a vulnerable woman. Look at the way she had deceived herself over Julian Cox, letting herself be persuaded that he loved her when all he had really been interested in was the money he’d thought she was going to inherit.

Mind you, she had certainly learned her lesson there and she would certainly never make that mistake again. The best way to treat men was with the same lack of real emotion with which they treated women. There was, after all, nothing morally wrong about enjoying sex for its own sake, about using a man in the same way that men used women... Beth gave a small toss of her head. No, there was nothing wrong with that at all, despite what a certain person seemed to think.

‘Beth, come back,’ Kelly commanded her friend wryly.

Flushing a little guiltily, Beth collected her thoughts. ‘Mary is bound to have got it wrong,’ she told Kelly. ‘The man she saw was probably just a friend of Anna’s.’

‘Mmm... I expect you’re right,’ Kelly agreed.

* * *

‘B
ROUGH
, I’
M
WORRIED
about Anna.’

Brough looked up from the papers he had been reading to study Kelly’s concerned face.

‘Why, what’s wrong with her?’ he asked her calmly. ‘If she’s not well...’

‘No, it isn’t anything like that,’ Kelly told him quickly, shaking her head. ‘It’s...well, she’s disappeared, Brough, and no one seems to know where she’s gone. I went up to the house yesterday. It’s all closed up. There was no sign of her, or of Missie or Whittaker either.’

‘Perhaps she’s decided to have a holiday,’ Brough suggested reasonably, but Kelly shook her head even harder.

‘No, not without telling someone. Oh, I wish that Dee was here,’ she told him fretfully.

‘Have you asked Beth if she knows anything?’ Brough asked her.

‘She doesn’t,’ Kelly informed him. ‘Not that there’s much point in trying to discuss anything with Beth these days. She seems to be living in a world of her own. Something happened to her in Prague,’ she stated positively, briefly switching her thoughts from Anna’s disappearance to Beth’s unusual behaviour. ‘But I don’t know what and every time I try to get her to open up to me she shuts me out. She’s worrying about something, I can tell.

‘Oh, Brough, I’m so worried about Anna. It just isn’t like her to disappear like that without telling anyone.’

Brough put down his papers and walked over to her, her distress making him frown a little.

‘She’s run her own life ever since she was widowed, Kelly,’ he told her gently.

‘Yes, I know that, and I know what you’re thinking as well,’ Kelly informed him accusingly. ‘You think I’m being irrational and overemotional. Well, perhaps I am a little, but, Brough, I can’t help worrying.’

She paused and then looked at him before announcing, ‘Julian Cox has disappeared as well.’

As she saw the look of angry distaste that crossed her fiancé’s face, Kelly wished that she hadn’t had to bring up the subject of Julian Cox. Brough had every reason to dislike the other man—they both did—and normally he was the last person Kelly would have wanted to talk about—after all, he had nearly destroyed their love—but her concern for her friend overrode her natural inclination to avoid the subject.

‘I heard it in town and Harry confirmed it. It seems he left town whilst we were away, without any kind of warning, leaving all manner of debts behind him. No one has the least idea where he’s gone.’

‘The further the better so far as I’m concerned,’ Brough told her grimly.

Harry was his sister Eve’s fiancé and cousin to Dee.

It had been Dee who had been instrumental in bringing Brough and Kelly together, and because of that Brough had decided to overlook her other and far less beneficial manipulation of people and events in her determination to win the war she was waging against Julian Cox.

‘Brough, you don’t think that Anna’s disappearance has anything to do with Julian, do you?’ Kelly asked him uncertainly.

Brough’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Surely you aren’t suggesting that Anna’s fallen for him, in view of what she knows about him—’

‘Of course not.’ Kelly interrupted him impatiently. ‘I didn’t mean that at all.’ She looked serious. ‘What I meant was, what if...?’ She stopped, unable to put into words her frightening suspicions.

‘Brough,’ she whispered, her throat dry, ‘what if he made her go with him? You know how desperate he was for money.’

‘But surely Anna isn’t that wealthy? I know she’s comfortably off, but—Kelly, what is it?’ he demanded sternly. ‘There’s something you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?’

Kelly was torn between her loyalty to her friend and her concern for her. In the end her concern and Brough’s seriousness won.

‘Dee and Anna were trying to trap Julian into betraying himself. He’d hinted to Anna in the past about needing a loan, so... Well, to cut a long story short, Anna let him believe that she had quite a large sum of money she wanted to invest...’

There was an ominous silence before Brough said quietly, ‘I see. Well, that puts an entirely different complexion on the matter. Have you spoken to Dee about Anna’s disappearance?’

Kelly shook her head.

‘No. She’s in Northumberland.’

‘Hmm... You know, it seems to me, Kelly, that there’s far more behind Dee’s desire to punish Julian Cox than she’s ever revealed to the rest of you.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ Kelly agreed. ‘I’ve often wondered myself, but...’

‘She’s never given you any hint?’

‘No, nothing. In fact—well, Dee isn’t the kind of person who encourages you to ask personal questions. I did wonder initially if at some stage Dee might have fallen for him herself, but I just can’t see it.’

‘No, neither can I,’ Brough agreed.

‘Perhaps Harry might know something; after all, he is Dee’s cousin.’

‘Well, he might, but what’s more important right now is finding out exactly what’s happened to Anna. Who else is likely to know where she could have gone, apart from Beth?’

‘Well, either Dee or yourself—but there’s still something I haven’t told you, Brough. When Mary Charles went to see Anna recently, there was a man there with her.’

‘A man?’ Brough gave her a blank look.

‘Yes. Mary seemed to think... Well, apparently Anna introduced him to her as a “friend.”’

‘A friend...?’ Brough looked blank and a little irritated. ‘What does that mean?’

‘I mean friend with a capital
F.
Which means...’

Kelly stopped. What was the point of trying to explain the nuances of female conversation to her fiancé—a mere man? Brough wasn’t listening anyway. Instead he was asking her, ‘Did this...this Mary Charles say what this man’s name was? If she did, we could get in touch with him and check if he knows anything about Anna’s disappearance.’

‘Well, yes and no. She says that Anna introduced him to her as Ward but that she didn’t give his surname.’

‘Oh, that’s very helpful.’ Brough looked exasperated. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that if Anna is having a...relationship with this man, this Ward, whoever he may be, she might have her own reasons for choosing not to discuss it or him with any of you?’

‘If that was the case she wouldn’t have introduced him to Mary, would she?’ Kelly countered, and then added, ‘Besides, that’s just not Anna; she isn’t like that. She’s shy, Brough, and...and cautious. I really am worried about her,’ Kelly told him quietly. ‘We both know how...how violent Julian can be. If something went wrong and he discovered that Dee and Anna were trying to trap him...’

‘Mmm... Well, the first thing we should do is to get in touch with Dee and find out if she knows anything about Anna’s plans and this unknown friend of hers.’

* * *

‘I
THOUGHT
YOU
said you lived in an old farmhouse,’ Anna gasped as Ward brought his car to a halt in the courtyard of the stone-built building which was both far larger and far more formidable than Anna had visualised.

‘It is—or rather it was,’ Ward told her.

It looked more like a cross between a manor house and a small fortress, Anna decided as Ward opened the car door for her, and even inside the enclosed courtyard the air was noticeably cooler than it had been back in Rye.

When she said as much to Ward, he reasoned dryly, ‘That’s because we’re several hundred metres higher here. The house was built originally by a family of rich wool merchants from York. It had been left empty for several years before I bought it.’

‘It’s rather isolated,’ Anna felt bound to point out.

They had driven for what had seemed like miles through empty countryside, climbing all the time, before reaching their destination, but Anna had to admit there was something bracing and exhilarating about the wide emptiness of the sky above them and the rolling landscape of the Dales around them.

‘Well, it certainly doesn’t encourage casual visitors,’ Ward agreed, and Anna could tell that he considered that an advantage.

If it had been her home she would have softened the austerity of the courtyard with tubs of plants and wall baskets, Anna decided as she waited for Ward to retrieve her case from the boot of his car.

‘This way,’ he instructed her, leading the way to a heavy and very old oak door.