Guilty Love (Completed)

Chapter Thirty

Gareth inhaled the delicate fragrance of his tea. "Mmmmm, just what I need." He took a biscuit and bit into it. "These are nice, try one yourself. Anyway, I think you can start looking forward to leaving here, Linzi. I reckon Ritchie Calhoun will be on his way to Florida by now. Mind you, I kept my eyes peeled while I was coming here, to make sure he wasn't hanging around near the house or following me. But there was no sign of him. So give it a few more days and then you can risk coming back."

Linzi nodded, she was not yet ready to feel safe, though. "I'll see. How's the shop? What have you sold since I left?"

"The long-case clock," Gareth said, half triumphant, half sad. "It went for five thousand more than we paid for it, so that was a good profit."

"But you'll miss it," Linzi said sympathetically. "You spent weeks working on that clock!"

Gareth grimaced. "Yes, but never mind. I bought a very interesting watch yesterday, Swiss, late nineteenth, never seen one like it before. I'm going to have to do lots of research before I touch it. The winding mechanism is broken but I think I can mend it."

He drank his tea, looked at the kitchen clock. "I'm afraid I'll have to go, Linzi. I have to get back to take over from Mum, she's going to see an old man who wants to sell a collection of nineteenth-century miniatures, mostly portraits, a few paintings of houses."

Linzi saw him to the gate and before he left gave him a warm hug and a kiss. "Thanks for coming, Gareth."

He held her with one arm around her waist, smiling down at her. "You're welcome, sweetheart. What are cousins for?"
"I'm very lucky to have you and Aunt Ella, I know that. Give her my love and tell her I'm very grateful for all the trouble you've both gone to for me."
"Look after yourself, it would probably be safe for you to go out more now, but stay in this area, don't go into Stratford or Warwick, just in case he's still hanging around."

Gareth drove off and Linzi watched him go before going back to her mowing. When she had finished she went indoors, had a shower, put on a sunny yellow bikini top which left her midriff bare and matching yellow shorts which ended high up on her thigh, exposing long, slim legs beginning to take on a smooth tan. She had been able to do some sunbathing every day, she had been here because they were having a burst of very warm weather, unusual in May in England. She collected a historical saga she was reading, her Walkman and a selection of cassette tapes and went into the garden to sunbathe on a lounger. Before she setlled down, she carefully smoothed suntan oil into those parts of her which were exposed to the sun, slid dark glasses on to her nose, put on her headphones, then lay back with a sigh.

She was playing a compilation tape of her own mixing on her Walkman, her favourite songs by top groups. The music surged in her ears and she half listened while she tried to read.

She didn't have any concentration. She kept remembering what Gareth had told her, the story of her book driven out of her head. She stared at some late bluebells showing among the trees in the wood like a blue mist. Would Ritchie follow the false trail to Florida? Surely he wouldn't bother?

Why did it still make her stomach cramp with fierce excitement every time his image came into her mind?
Oh, stop thinking about him, then! she told herself, looking back at her book.

A shadow suddenly fell across the page. With a sharp indrawn breath she looked up, fear in her blue eyes.

"RITCHIE!"

For a second she didn't believe he was real. She had dreamt about him so often lately -- hot, erotic dreams which made her Twist restlessly in her bed. Was this another one? A crazy daydream, her unconscious conjuring up what she most wanted, most dreaded?

Ritchie was looking into the sun, he tilted back his head to look at her through his black lashes, his grey eyes hard and glittering as they roved over her sprawled body on the lounger, the brief bikini top which showed so much of her firm breast, the smooth skin of her midriff, the long bare legs.

He was no dream, day or night variety. He was real, it was Ritchie standing there a foot away from her. For three years she had lived with the fear of seeing him again. Now he was here, and her throat closed in panic.

She leapt to her feet to run back into the cottage. Before she had taken a step, Ritchie's hand closed round her arm and tethered her. He looked down at her lazily, his mouth twisting.

"Where do you think you're going?"

She stared up at him in dazed confusion, a nerve beating against her mouth. "Let go of me!"

He laughed and her blood ran cold. He had changed, beyond belief, this was a very different man. Harder, his face honed to razor sharpness, older, a touch of silver at his temples which hadn't been there before, a look in his eyes that terrified.

He was wearing black jeans, a thin pale blue cashmere sweater which left his throat bare and clung to his muscled chest, made it obvious that he was wearing nothing underneath it. She could see every contour of his lean body and looked away, swallowing. "How did you....?" she whispered and he gave her an icy little smile.

"Find you? Simple. I had a detective trailing your boyfriend."
"Gareth isn't my boyfriend! He's my cousin."
"My detective took a picture of the two of you kissing," Ritchie told her coldly.

She hated the thought of someone secretly watching them, filming them and her face flushed defiantly. "I kissed his cheek! So what? Cousins do kiss! I'm fond of him!"

Ritchie sat up slightly, pulled a Polaroid snapshot out of his jeans pocket, looked at it, shrugged, held it up for her to see. "I believe you, that's a very insipid kiss. Don't ever get fond of me." He threw the snapshot away, the breeze took it and blew it over the hedge. Arched over her, he looked down at her again, with hard, insolent eyes. "I want a lot more than an insipid kiss."

Stiffening, she tried to outstare him. "You shouldn't have come here! I don't know the terms of your parole, but I think you could get into trouble for bothering me, so go away, now, before I call the police!"

He laughed without humour. "And how will you do that? You have no neighbours, you don't have a phone!"

She bit her lip. How had he known that?  He read the question in her face and drily told her.

"My private detective did some checking. I know who owns this cottage, that she's the one in Florida, that your family lied to me when I visited them." His mouth twisted. "They looked me straight in the eye and lied like experts."

She refused to apologise for that. "They did it to protect me!"

His face was harsh. "They're right, you need protection!" he agreed in a voice like the lash of a whip. "But they aren't here to give it, are they? We're all alone here, Linzi."

Fear made her flinch and he saw it in her face. His eyes brooded on her for a second, and she really began to get scared then because he wasn't the man she had worked for all those months. Something disastrous had happened to him in the three years since they'd last met.