Levelling The Score. Penny Jordan
worry, Simon,’ she told him with acid sweetness. ‘I’m rather fussy about whom I sleep with—one has to be these days. You’ll be quite safe … I’ll sleep downstairs.’
‘Oh, well, at least you won’t be alone,’ he responded comfortingly. ‘From the signs I saw in the kitchen, it looks like a whole colony of mice have taken up residence. I suppose they must have come in from the fields.’
All her life Jenna had had an irrational fear of the small, furry creatures and now immediately she tensed, visions of an entire army of them frolicking over her recumbent form as she slept tormenting her. She shuddered.
‘You’re lying to me.’
Simon’s eyebrows rose.
‘Why on earth should I? You don’t actually think I have evil designs upon you, do you?’
Put like that it sounded ridiculous. Of course he didn’t want her, she knew that, but she also knew that for some reason he seemed to delight in tormenting her. Tormenting her? How could lying on the same mattress while securely wrapped up in her own sleeping-bag possibly torment her?
‘Look, I’m shattered. You make whatever arrangements you choose, Jenna, but if you’ll excuse me I want to get some sleep.’
‘Do you want to take the lamp or …’
Reluctantly she picked up her sleeping-bag and walked over to the bed.
Behind her she heard the bedroom door swing shut and for some ridiculous reason she felt as though she had walked into a well-sprung trap.
‘I’ll let you have first go at the bathroom,’ Simon offered magnanimously, ‘but I warn you, the water is like ice.’
It came from an underground well and Jenna shivered in remembered dread of its icy sting.
She went down to the car to fetch her overnight case, acknowledging the impossibility of using the two shaped seats as a makeshift bed. She was aching all over with tension and tiredness.
She heard Simon moving about in the kitchen as she walked in.
‘Fancy a cup of cocoa? I’ve found some at the back of the cupboard, although heaven only knows what it will taste like with dried milk.’
She was thirsty, and perhaps it would be as well if, for this one night at least, she put her resentment of him behind her.
‘Yes, please.’
‘OK. I’ll bring it up when it’s ready.’
By the time she heard his footsteps on the stairs, she was undressed and tucked up inside her sleeping-bag. It occurred to her that in anyone other than Simon she could have taken his delay as a gentlemanly acknowledgement of her modesty, but since when had Simon ever bothered to take her feelings into account over anything?
The cocoa was surprisingly good, warming her chilled hands as she cradled the mug.
Simon disappeared into the bathroom, and was gone long enough for her to finish her drink and snuggle down into her sleeping bag.
She felt the bed dip and heard the rustle of the nylon fabric as he made himself comfortable, and then the room was plunged into darkness as he extinguished the light.
Some time during the night she dreamed that she was freezing cold, ploughing through numbing wastes of snow, and then deliciously she was warm again. She smiled in her sleep, completely unaware of the fact that the reason she was now so warm was that Simon had unzipped their separate sleeping-bags and then zipped them together to provide extra warmth.
It also brought Jenna into much closer contact with his warm body as he lay against her back!
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