Free Unexpected Pleasures by Penny Jordan Page B

had been a neighbour of his aunt and uncle’s who had alerted him by telephone to Ritchie’s illicit party.
    He had arrived there to find the living-room full of drunken teenagers, rock music blaring out so loud he suspected that, sober, their eardrums could not have withstood it.
    Unable to find Ritchie, he had automatically gone upstairs, searching his cousin’s bedroom first, only alerted to the fact that someone was in his aunt and uncle’s by the light shining beneath the door.
    Ritchie had been standing beside the bed, fully dressed, when he walked in, but Rosie...
    He gripped hold of the steering-wheel as the echoes of the emotions he had felt then surged through him.
    She had been lying motionless in the bed, sated by his cousin’s lovemaking, he had thought, her clothes in disarray. He couldn’t remember actually moving across to the bed, only the look on her face as she turned and saw him.
    The savage jealousy which had possessed him had sickened him. If she had wanted so desperately to experiment with sex, what the hell had made her choose his cousin? he had wanted to ask her...
    Why hadn’t she come to him?
    But he had already known the answer, of course. She barely even knew that he existed. She probably believed herself to be in love with his cousin and, knowing that Ritchie was shortly leaving the country, that she was unlikely ever to see him again, she had wanted to consummate that love.
    Later he was glad that the width of the bed had separated him from Ritchie, otherwise, he suspected, he might not have been able to control the savage murderous impulse which had possessed him.
    That he had been jealous—blindingly, achingly, tormentedly jealous—of his cousin had been one thing and bad enough; that he should have physically wanted to punish him, to destroy him almost, because of that jealousy had been another.
    He remembered the terrified white-faced look Rosie had given him once she had pulled her clothes on; then he had thought it was that she had recognised what he had been feeling... Now...
    He glanced at her. Her eyes were open now, but she was looking away from him, out of the window.
    To discover that she had not gone willingly with Ritchie as he had believed, to hear her say that her drink had been deliberately spiked, that his cousin had deliberately planned to hurt and humiliate her...to hear her accuse him of being a part of the reason why she had said nothing...nothing...of what had happened...had made no complaint...no protest...
    And this afternoon he had seen in her face confirmation, if he had needed it, of just exactly what she did feel about his cousin.
    Why had he been so blind? Why hadn’t he realised then...?
    Why hadn’t he questioned events more deeply? Why, out of his love for her, had he not somehow known what she had chosen to keep hidden from him...from everyone...?
    When she had needed him most, when she might have turned to him as a confidant and a friend, through his own behaviour he had caused her instead to turn away from him, to believe that he despised, condemned her.
    Even if he had not loved her he could never have done that. She had been a child...a baby still.
    But she had not been a child the day he had gone to see if there had been any repercussions from her relationship with his feckless cousin. Then she had been all woman, cold, distant, remote, while her eyes blazed her defiance and bitterness.
    He had thought then that she had somehow blamed him because Ritchie had gone, never coming close to realising what she was really feeling.
    But he knew now!
    His face hardened as he turned into the private road that led to the small, exclusive development of houses of which his own was one.
    Rosie, turning her head to protest again that she had no wish to go home with him nor to listen to anything he might want to say, saw his expression and, shocked by the harshness of it, instead said nothing.
    She was still suffering the effects of her run-in with Ritchie, she