That Tender Feeling by Dorothy Vernon Read Free Book Online

containing her lightly enough to make that possible, but she didn’t seem able to instruct her legs to take the first positive step. A dark enchantment was enfolding her that she couldn’t—or wouldn’t, because she didn’t want to—flee from.
    â€˜No, Rusty.’
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜I was going to say, if you’re so minded, you’re at liberty to share it with me. Of course, it’s a comparatively small bed for a man of my build, so you may have to face the consequences. If I kick out, you won’t have much room to squirm away.’
    Even as she looked at him in horror, both repelled and fascinated by this unbelievable conversation, his jaw thrust out aggressively. ‘I was only joking.’ His frown deepened. ‘There’s something about you, always was even when you were a scrap of a child with huge condemning eyes, that provokes me to torment you.’
    His hands dropped away, and he took the stride back that she should have taken, and this gave her free passage. The door, her escape route, was but a few shaky steps away. She looked back over her shoulder at him, but he was busying himself with rinsing out the mugs at the sink, and so his expression was denied her. Damn! She should have done that menial task. To be employed at something so everyday made him seem too human, and it suited her purpose to regard him as a monster.
    â€˜Good night, Rusty,’ he said, not turning around but keeping his back to her, his voice a deep and commanding dismissal.
    â€˜Good night,’ she said, and took the giddy swirl of her emotions up the stairs.
    No way was she going to risk any more challenging involvement this night, and so she made her way to the master bedroom. The bed there wasn’t made up, but she knew where the necessaries were kept and soon rectified that.
    Surprisingly, in view of all that had happened, she fell almost instantly into a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER THREE
    If she thought she was going to spend the remainder of the night undisturbed, she was in for a rude awakening. And that was exactly what she got.
    A voice, or voices, roused her. She struggled up through the blanketing mists of sleep to the bemused awareness of an argument in progress. Sliding cautiously out of her bed, she tiptoed stealthily to the door, opening it a crack. No one was in the hallway at the top of the stairs, or the passage, for that matter. The talking had now stopped, and there was an uncanny quiet. She wondered if the voices had been in her own head. Had she been having one of those terribly realistic dreams that seem too true not to have happened?
    Shrugging her shoulders, she was gently easing the door shut when the hysterical mumblings started up again. This time there was absolutely no doubt in her mind. This terrible discord of sound was coming from the small room at the end of the passage where Heathcliff was sleeping. Even though he had corrected her that his name was Cliff—he’d always hated being called Heathcliff—she thought that he would always be Heathcliff to her. She was racing down the passage in a flash; her hand was actually on the doorknob before a thought struck her that hastily jerked it back. What if her first assumption that he was ill was incorrect?
    Just for supposition, what if he’d had someone with him when he had returned this evening, a lady friend who had waited in the car and had been let in when she went to bed? No. He wouldn’t have resorted to secrecy. He would have brought his woman in openly. He was his own master and could bring home whom he liked. In any case, these weren’t lovemaking moans. He wasn’t groaning in pleasure but in distress.
    This time her hand did not draw back from the doorknob, and within seconds her flying feet had taken her to his bed. He had drawn back the curtains before getting in, and the moon washed across the greenish-gray pallor of his face, highlighting the sharp angles of his