Untamed. Carole Mortimer

Rick resting his forehead momentarily on hers before moving away from her completely. ‘I’d better go—or I won’t want to,’ he added ruefully. ‘I’ll call you, okay?’ He touched her cheek with gentle fingertips.

      She swallowed hard. ‘Okay.’

      With one last rakish grin he was gone, leaving Keilly wondering if she had imagined it all, if Rick Richards had just been a wonderful dream. But the tingle all over her body told her he couldn’t have been, and when she undressed the slight redness to her breasts where his beard had scraped her more tender skin more than convinced her that he had been real.

      But would he really come back or had she just been an interlude to him? Worse still, would she find a story about herself emblazoned across some newspaper in the next few days, Rick Richards’ personal—very personal, interview with the woman who had scorned at Rod Bartlett?

      Oh God, Rod Bartlett! She had forgotten about him the last couple of hours. There was a possibility—even if only a very remote one—that Rod Bartlett could come back here. How was Kathy going to react to that?

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘I’LL have to leave town! I’ll have to emigrate,’ her cousin and closest friend groaned. ‘Oh, Keilly, what shall I do?’ she wailed.

      She didn’t have an answer for her, felt too awful herself to be able to tackle anyone else’s problems, even Kathy’s. In payment for her over-confidence about how healthy she was she had been in bed with the flu the last two days since Rick’s departure! She had woken the following morning with a throat that felt like sandpaper, and a head that ached so much it felt as if it were about to split open, the coughing and sneezing coming later, along with the hot flushes and cold chills.

      Kathy had called to see her this afternoon, although Keilly still felt far from up to seeing visitors, but knowing she would have to tell her cousin about Rod Bartlett’s proposed visit. As she had known she would be, Kathy was almost hysterical at the thought of it.

      ‘He may not come,’ she blew her nose noisily, armed with her second box of tissues in as many days, her nose a bright unattractive red. ‘Rick only said it was a possibility.’

      Kathy still looked worried, her beautiful face marred by the deep frown to her brow. Her hair was the colour of golden sunlight, long and glowing just past her shoulders, her figure tall and willowy, her choice of clothes always impeccable, the cream tailored suit and rust coloured blouse with its tied-bow neckline suiting her perfectly, making the brown of her eyes look like deep sherry. Kathy was as beautiful inside as she was out, and Keilly had loved her as a sister from the moment she had come to live here. She wished there was something she could do to help her cousin now, but there wasn’t.

      ‘Did this Rick talk as if he really knew?’ Kathy chewed on her bottom lip, uncaring that she removed the dark orange lip-gloss in the process.

      She shrugged. ‘He seemed to have contacts in the right places.’ She had kept her mind clear of thoughts of Rick, not allowing herself to even think about him and the way she had behaved with him on the beach. She hadn’t expected him to telephone her immediately he got to London, but this was the third day after his departure and still he hadn’t called. But at least she had been reassured by the fact that no story appeared about her in the newspapers. If that could be reassuring. She still doubted that she would ever see him again—and that was what she didn’t want to think of. ‘And he knew the woman who did the original Rod Bartlett interview.’ She had no doubt that Rick knew a lot of women, with his easy charm and ability to make the woman he happened to be with feel like someone special in his life he was sure to!

      She had thought a lot of her own response to him, and she was no nearer to fully understanding her reaction to him. Oh she knew her fiery response had been the result of an experienced lover, she just didn’t understand why it had happened with Rick, a complete stranger until that night. Other men she had been out with in the past had shown the same physical experience, but always with them she had been able to say no. Her refusal not to let their relationship go any further had only been a gesture on her part, they both knew he had been the one to decide they shouldn’t make love. That was what worried her. She wanted Rick to come back, and yet she feared what might happen if he did, feared her own fate could be that of her mother’s.

      Kathy gave a worried sigh. ‘What will I do if Rod does come back here?’ she frowned. ‘How will I face him?’

      Her eyes widened indignantly. ‘I would have thought it would be the other way round,’ she said archly. ‘He was the one who seduced you, remember?’

      ‘Well of course,’ her cousin dismissed shortly. ‘But that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing for me.’

      Keilly could understand that, could still remember Kathy’s distress on her wedding morning six years ago. She had been her cousin’s only bridesmaid, had been helping Kathy get out the snowy white dress she was to wear that afternoon when the other girl had suddenly burst into tears.

      ‘It’s no good,’ she cried. ‘I can’t go through with it.’

      Keilly had held her consolingly, smiling her understanding with this sudden attack of nerves. ‘It’s all right, love,’ she soothed. ‘All brides feel like this.’

      ‘No, they don’t,’ Kathy wailed. ‘Oh God, I wish I were dead!’

      ‘Kathy!’

      ‘Well I do,’ her cousin stood up to move restlessly about the room, ‘I love Peter so much, and I—I have no right to marry him.’

      ‘Of course you do——’

      ‘No, I don’t,’ Kathy shook her head, her hands clenched tightly in front of her. ‘I have no right to wear white today either.’

      Sixteen-year-old Keilly had frowned her puzzlement. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘You can’t be that innocent!’ Kathy snapped. ‘It’s usually only virgins that wear white, so it must be obvious that I’m not one!’

      Keilly stared at her in stunned disbelief. The two girls had been the best of friends for the last nine years, had confided everything in each other, and never once had Kathy said anything like this before. ‘You and Peter——’

      ‘No, not Peter and me,’ her cousin groaned her unhappiness. ‘Do you think I would be in this state if it were Peter who had been my lover?’

      Keilly paled. ‘Someone else…?’

      ‘Yes,’ Kathy sat down heavily.

      She swallowed hard, finding it difficult to take all this in. ‘But you and Peter have been going out together for years, when could you have— When you were at college in London!’ she suddenly realised. ‘Is that when it happened, Kathy?’

      ‘Yes,’ her cousin groaned, her eyes shadowed with pain. ‘He was so good looking, so—so fascinating. All the girls were after him,’ she revealed shakily. ‘I could hardly believe it when he singled me out for his attention.’

      ‘But who was he?’

      ‘Rod Bartlett,’ Kathy revealed with trembling reluctance.

      ‘The film star?’ she was astounded at the idea.

      ‘He wasn’t then, at least only in a small way. He was just starting out, the parts he was being given getting better all the time. He used to live here, Keilly, don’t you remember?’ She didn’t wait for an answer but continued tautly. ‘That was how I became friendly with him in London. We were introduced at a party, one of those parties where everyone just turns up whether they’re invited or not. Rod found it amusing that we came from the same town and had never really known each other. He may never have realised I existed when he lived in Selchurch,’ she remembered bitterly. ‘But I certainly knew him. All the girls did; he was popular even then. I thought I was in love