“You're a fool if you get involved with her,” said Foley's friend Mark. “Look at the damage she's caused already.”
Foley knew this was true. Indiana Sedon was a total liability and he had done the one thing he had always previously avoided – fallen in love with an all-time loser, someone surrounded by tragedy and misfortune.
What had happened to him? What did he think he was doing putting his career and even his life on the line for someone who could make him feel lower than a garden gnome and, at the same time, fill him with such tenderness and desire he kept on forgetting how maddening she could be?
But then Indiana wasn't any too pleased by her own passion for Foley. He was a neanderthal, ill educated, limited, and haunted by a past he would never speak about to anyone, not even her. How could such a thing have happened and what was she going to do when every day she felt herself needing him more desperately than she had ever needed anyone before?
The sooner she put a stop to Foley the better, especially when he found out what she really wanted from him and how she intended to go about getting it. Why was it so difficult to tell him goodbye? And all of this meant nothing beside the danger she was in, the trap she had walked into and the fact that only Foley could protect her.
EXCERPT
Disobeying her own rules,
she remained in his arms, lost and bewildered, barely understanding what she
was doing and why his orgasm had affected her in a way quite differently from
her own. His climax made her tender, made her want to become part of him and
get him to love her.
Unlikely, she told
herself. Lose that schoolgirl’s dream.
He fell deeply
asleep, his face pale, and she watched him. From now on she wanted to
invigilate every passing moment of his life so that he could never leave her.
But that was impossible. This was the wrong man, and she must put an end to the
affair. Otherwise, the hurt would become more acute and she would be unable to
play her music, mourn for poor Jack or even survive. This was a wrong choice
and she should not have made it.
All that rubbish about
only enjoying sex and not falling in love. That was nonsense. Who could live
and love in such a way? Nobody could, the rules were flawed and stupid and she
blushed as she remembered what she had said to Foley in her pompous little
voice, in this same bedroom an hour earlier.
Very gently she
disengaged herself from his arms and crept away like a thief. In the spare room
she lay down, every nerve tingling from the emotions she had just experienced
and, to her dismay, every part of her yearning to return to his embrace.
This wouldn’t do at
all. She had only got to know him the day before yesterday and she tried to
order her thoughts as she lay there under the cold sheets of the spare bed,
shivering from the chill and desire. On the shelf stood a row of Britton’s
antique lead soldiers— personal
possessions, she supposed. Had they come from Foley’s childhood or did he
collect them?
Her chances of
winning this man were hopeless and she had decided in advance she must be cool
and controlling if she were to achieve any mastery over her own feelings and
his. But the greater her need for him became, the less she would be able to
control herself in his presence and she would be bound to flare out or become
awkward or worse, let him see how much she was beginning to love him.
With Jack it had been
different. She had been secure in his response to her extravagance of feeling,
her passionate love for him and her rages at his occasional infidelities. But
this man was guarded, wary. He had suffered, had been hurt. Those scars on his
body meant there would be inner scars as well which he was too proud to show
anyone. Whatever horror lurked in his past life to make him hide so deeply
within himself put him beyond her reach and she would have to win him without
appearing even to want him.
He was considerate,
passionate and loving but he would never love her or any woman, unless that
woman was clever. She would have to be cunning and deceitful, make him imagine
she didn’t care, run the risk of hurting him, simply in order to stay with him.
And did she want that? Was he worth the effort?
All her previous
plans for dealing with Foley stood in disarray. What had happened tonight
robbed her of her plan never to fall in love with him.
I should be with him
now,
she thought, trying to control the tears. I should nurse him, cherish him,
smile when he smiles, get what I want from him. But he can’t love me like that,
and after tonight maybe I shall never lie in his arms again.
J S Goubert lives in East Anglia and has published several previous books under different pseudonyms and a number of short stories. Indigo Eyes is her first romantic novel.
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