So Close And No Closer. PENNY JORDAN
to change into her working uniform of cotton T-shirt and jeans. The neat skirt and top she had donned for her visit to her solicitor were clothes that belonged more properly to the period before her father’s death. She rarely wore such formal things these days, and indeed, had only put them on in the first place because she knew that her solicitor, old-fashioned perhaps about such things, would not have felt comfortable at the sight of one of his female clients clad in a pair of disreputable old jeans and a shabby T-shirt. Nevertheless, these were the clothes she now felt most at home in, she told herself, pulling the T-shirt on over her head and disturbing the smooth sleekness of her blonde hair as she did so.
She just had time to snatch a quick salad lunch before going outside into the field with her secateurs and her trug, ready to start harvesting those flowers that were at their peak. It was hard, backbreaking work, especially with the heat of the sun beating down on the back of her neck and her upper arms.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, as she straightened up tiredly, she acknowledged that she ought to have worn a hat. Her head was already beginning to ache, the pain pounding in her temples as she raised a grubby hand to massage the too-tight skin. Horatio had long ago deserted her to go and lie down in the shelter of the hedge. She thought longingly of her cool kitchen and the lemonade in the fridge there.
She was just on the point of giving in and going back to the house to get some when an all too familiar male voice hailed her. Furiously she watched as Neil Saxton climbed over the stile that separated his land from hers and came towards her, carefully weaving his way among the tall spires of her flowers.
Unlike her, he looked immaculate and cool. He was wearing a pair of white cotton trousers and a thin white cotton shirt open at the throat. His skin, like hers, was tanned, but his tan was much darker, richer. As he came towards her she felt a tiny pulse of fear beat frantically deep inside her body, and she had a compulsive urge to throw down her trug and take to her heels.
Telling herself that she was being idiotic, she remained where she was, unaware of how revealing the tight, defensive look on her face was to the man approaching her. He had learned a good deal from her solicitor this morning, and as he drew level with her Rue saw that knowledge in his eyes.
Mentally cursing her solicitor for his naı¨vete´, she said coldly, ‘If you’ve come to try to persuade me to sell my land, you’re wasting my time.’
Instead of responding to her challenge, he turned away from her and gestured over to where the neat beds of herbs nestled in the shelter of her walled garden.
‘Who buys those from you?’ he asked her thoughtfully.
Surprised into giving him a response, Rue told him, ‘Restaurants, sometimes gardeners wanting plants of their own, health food shops, and even people wanting to buy them for medicinal purposes.’
‘You’re joking.’ His amused cynicism irritated her.
‘No, I’m not joking at all,’ she told him sharply. ‘After all, herbal medicine existed long before our so-called modern drugs.’
‘Well, yes, but they were hardly as powerful.’
His self-assurance annoyed her, and she had a sudden longing to destroy it.
‘Some of them are,’ she argued firmly. ‘Take ergot, for instance…’
‘Ergot…What’s that?’ She had his attention now, he was looking at her in a direct, uncompromising way that she knew that she ought to find intimidating, but which instead for some odd reason she found challenging.
‘Ergot is the fungus on the rye,’ she told him knowledgeably. ‘It used to be used, among other things, for aborting unwanted foetuses. Unfortunately, its side-effects can be devastating. Used unwisely, it can give rise to a whole range of things from gangrene to madness.’ She saw the look on his face and laughed harshly. ‘It’s still used today as a base for migraine drugs. Doctors prefer only to prescribe it for men,’ she added drily.
‘You obviously know a lot about it.’
Without thinking, she shrugged and said, ‘It was my father’s hobby. I grew up with it, so to speak.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed grandly. ‘I think I can see why a man who’s fortune was founded on modern drugs could be interested in herbal medicine.’
Instantly Rue tensed. He had ticked her—and she had let him, fool that she was, carried away by her enthusiasm for one of her favourite subjects—into betraying herself and giving him exactly the kind of lever he wanted to pry into her most private affairs. He wouldn’t hesitate to use it, she could see that in his eyes as he looked at her.
‘Your solicitor was telling me this morning about your father,’ he added, still watching her. ‘What happened?’ he demanded abruptly when she refused to either look away or make any comment.
The abruptness of his question caught her off guard. ‘To what?’ she asked him uncertainly, not sure of the meaning behind his question.
‘To the fortune your father left you?’ he answered harshly. ‘He died six years ago, apparently a millionaire, and yet you, his only child, are now living here in this cottage, instead of Parnham Court which he left to you, and apparently earning your own living—a rather curious state of affairs, I’m sure you’ll agree.’
‘To you, perhaps,’ Rue answered him in a suffocated voice, almost totally unable to believe that she had heard him correctly. His rudeness was really insufferable. She opened her mouth to tell him as much and then, to her own shock, heard herself saying instead, ‘If you really must know, my husband gambled it away and I let him.’
She faced him proudly, waiting to see the pity and contempt form in his eyes. But, whatever feelings her words had evoked inside him, he betrayed nothing of them as he said coolly, ‘You must hate him for that.’
‘No, not really. Odd though you might find it to believe, I’m far happier now than I ever was when I was my father’s heiress. I was a spoiled, arrogant child. You could even say that I deserved everything that happened to me. There’s no way today, for instance, that I would ever be remotely attracted to a man like Julian, and certainly I’d never be stupid enough now to believe him capable of loving me.’
‘Him, or any man?’ Neil Saxton asked her quietly.
The shock of it was reflected in her expression as her eyes darkened and widened. How had he known that? How had he known of the iron that had entered her heart when she’d found out the truth about Julian? How had he known that she had sworn that never again would she allow any man to deceive her into believing he cared about her?
She fought to regain her self-control, shrugging her shoulders and saying as coolly as she could, ‘It’s true. I’m afraid I don’t have a very high opinion of your sex.’
‘Or of yourself,’ Neil Saxton told her, softly and unforgivably.
She turned her back on him then, gripping hold of her trug tightly in order to stop her hand from trembling.
‘You’re on my land, Mr Saxton,’ she told him emotionlessly, ‘and I would be very grateful if you would remove yourself from it immediately.’
‘You know, you interest me,’ he told her conversationally, totally ignoring her command. ‘It must have taken guts to establish all this—’ he waved his hand over the flowing river of colour surrounding them ‘—out of nothing. To turn yourself from a dependent child into an independent business-woman.’
Rue smiled mirthlessly at him. ‘And men don’t like women with guts, especially successful women with guts—is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
To her astonishment he laughed, throwing back his head to reveal the hard, masculine line of his throat. ‘Is that what you think?’ he marvelled, looking at her. ‘Is that the reason for this?’ He reached out and touched her tightly drawn back hair and then her make-up-less face. It was only the briefest of touches, no more than a mere brushing of hard muscles against the softness of her smooth skin,