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having skipped lunch and only having had a very light breakfast.
She had eaten it on the balcony outside her room looking over
the green hotel gardens, with their palms and orange trees and
glinting among them the rectangle of bright blue which was the
hotel pool.
Now that Alex was going to be okay she felt a trifle stupid
about the way she had over-reacted to the news of his illness. She
had always told herself that she wouldn't get hysterical over such a
thing; it was humiliating to realise that when a crisis did strike she
had behaved exactly as her mother had always done whenever
Alex caught so much as a cold. Obviously it wasn't so easy to
reason yourself out of instinctive reactions learnt at your most
impressionable time of life. Love and fear seem to be inextricably
linked at some level, she thought, making her way back to the
hotel. It wasn't a comforting idea.
She changed into her new swimsuit, went down to the hotel
pool and swam for an hour in the impossibly blue water, which
was crowded with other hotel guests; while others sat about under
striped sunshades sipping drinks brought to them by white-clad
waiters from a poolside bar. The heat began to drain out of the
vivid sky, Susanna climbed out of the pool and put on the white
towelling robe she had found hanging on the inside of her
bathroom door. She went back up to her room and had a shower,
dried her hair vigorously with a towel and then lay down on her
bed for another hour to read a paperback she had bought in the
hotel shop. She could not concentrate on it, she was too tired. Her
eyelids dropped, the book dropped from her hand and she drifted
off to sleep.
She woke when someone tapped on her door. Half asleep she
swung off the bed and went over to open the door, expecting to
see a maid. It was Niall.
Susanna stared dumbly, not believing her eyes. He gave her a
quick, searching look which held anxiety.
'Are you ill? What is it? You're so white.' He moved to hold
her as she swayed, her ears full of a roaring which deafened her,
and her body lay defencelessly against his.
He picked her up and walked into the room, kicking the door
shut behind him. Susanna was icy cold with shock, her heart
seemed to beat very slowly as her head lay against Niall's broad
shoulder. He carried her to the bed and laid her down, sitting
beside her, rubbing her hands and watching her with a frown.
She smiled waveringly, the roaring in her ears subsiding, and
the beat of her heart speeding up. 'I was fast asleep when you
knocked I must have got up too fast and turned dizzy.'
'Have you eaten lately?' His cool fingers closed round her
wrist, the fingertips pressed into her pulse, but he was looking
casually at her skimpily covered body and Susanna was suddenly
a scalding pink, the hot colour pouring up her face as she realised
that she was naked under the brief white towelling robe. The belt
was very loosely tied and the robe gaped open over her breasts.
She nervously pulled it together and Niall's black brows lifted
mockingly.
'Your heart's behaving very erratically it was beating very
slowly a moment ago, now it's very fast.'
'It was a shock, opening the door, seeing you I didn't expect
you, what are you doing here?' She was talking rapidly, almost
stuttering out the. sentences.
'Did you eat any lunch?' Niall asked and she impatiently shook
her head.
'I wasn't hungry. I thought you had an important business
appointment today?'
'I did, I managed to rush through the discussions by lunchtime.
Did you have a good breakfast?'
Her mouth indented. 'Why the obsession With my meals? I
had orange juice and coffee and a croissant. You still haven't told
me why you're here.'
'How's Alex?'
'Much better, thank you. He's responding to the new drug
they're giving him.' She tensed as Niall brushed a damp coil of
hair back from her face, his fingers lingering to trail down her
cheek.
'You seem to have caught the sun,' he murmured and she
looked away from him towards the open window where the dark
blue night pressed, breathing softly, like a crouching animal.
'It's getting dark, we'd better put the light on.'
He did not move, but his hand softly caressed her throat and
the blue vein under his stroking fingertips pulsed hotly, betraying
her agitation. 'Why have you come?' she burst out, shivering.
'Don't tell me that you were worried about Alex, you don't even
like him, he's no concern of yours.'
'Anything that matters to you is my concern,' he said and the
cool statement took her breath away.
'Can we stop pretending, Susanna?' he murmured, leaning over her
with one hand on the other side of her body, his arm barring her
from any chance of escape. 'I'm in love with you, and you're well
aware of it.'
Her brown eyes darkened, their pupils deep pools, of lustrous
black, her lips trembled, her breathing was fast and unsteady. She
didn't speak because she couldn't, her throat had closed up and her
mouth was dry.
'You're not surprised to see me,' Niall said in a low, deep
voice. 'You know how I feel, I've made it plain enough. I'm not
giving up and I'm not going away.'
'I won't have an affair with you,' Susanna muttered, her eyes
lowered.
'I see marriage or nothing?' he said, laughter in his voice. 'I
hadn't expected you to be so conventional.'
'Convention has nothing to do with it! I don't want to marry
you, either I don't want you in my life, in any capacity.' She felt
the stiffening of his body but didn't look at him. 'I'm not looking
for a lover or a husband. I prefer being single and independent, I'm
very happy as I am. I don't want to get involved with you.'
'You're too late, Susanna you already are involved with me,'
Niall said and she looked up, then, shaken, her face betraying her
vulnerability. He looked down into her eyes, unsmiling, wry.
'Aren't you?'
She shook her head mutely.
'You aren't in love with me?' he insisted and she swallowed,
her eyes moving away again.
'This is a ridiculous conversation, I'm not being cross-
questioned as though I was a witness in a court case.' She tried to
sound irritated, derisive.
'Look at me and tell me you aren't in love with me,' he merely
said. 'You can't, can you, Susanna? Lies stick in your throat. I'll
always know what you're feeling, your eyes give you away even
when you won't answer. You're almost brutally - direct when you
do talk that's one of the things I love most about you, that
straightforward honesty of yours.'
She slackened, giving a long sigh. 'Niall, listen to me I'm not
a domesticated animal. I like being alone for most of the time, I
don't want to end up like my mother, living through my family and
having no life of my own. I'm selfish, I love my work and I get too
absorbed in it to be bothered with the ordinary running of a house. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]