Worlds Apart

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

“I won’t…sleep with you, Logan.”

His smile was hard-edged. “I’d as soon have you wide awake.”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Caryn’s voice was ragged. “You can joke about it all you like, but I’m serious!”

“Who’s joking?” He was looking at her now as if he were seeing her for the first time— and not particularly liking what he saw.

KAY THORPE was born in Sheffield, England, in 1935. She tried out a variety of jobs after leaving school. Writing began as a hobby, becoming a way of life only after she had her first completed novel accepted for publication in 1968. Since then, she’s written over fifty and lives now with her husband, son, German shepherd dog and lucky black cat on the outskirts of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, England. Her interests include reading, hiking and travel.

Worlds Apart

Kay Thorpe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

THE sea was way out at present, the evening tide not due to turn for another hour or so, although when it did it came in fast.

Caryn headed away from the town, carrying her shoes in her hand in order to feel the sand gritting between her toes. Living on the coast was one of life’s compensations as far as she was concerned. She always felt sorry for those who only saw the sea infrequently.

As always when she came down here at this time of day, this time of year, memory came flooding back fullforce. She wasn’t sure why she continued to do it—unless it was to keep the hatred alive in her heart. At sixteen she hadn’t known what it was to hate, until Logan Bannister had taught her. Even after two years, the hurt of it could still constrict her throat.

Lost in the past, she neither saw nor heard the horse approaching, only becoming aware when it was almost on her. She stood rooted to the spot as the man astride the big chestnut brought it to a halt in front of her, gazing up at him in disbelief. Her mind was playing tricks on her; it had to be!

Steely grey eyes slid over her, taking in every detail of her piquant features under the heavy crop of blonde hair before moving on down to linger for a lengthy moment on the jut of her firm young breasts beneath the thin cotton of her shirt. A muscle jerked faintly in the welldefined jaw line.

‘Hello, Caryn,’ he said, coming back to her face. ‘You’ve grown up.’

‘It happens to us all,’ she responded with an effort, fighting the shock. ‘Some faster than others.’

The muscle jerked again, and his hands tightened momentarily on the reins. His smile was brief and wry. ‘You’ve also acquired a sharp tongue.’

‘Only where I consider it merited.’ Caryn was surprised by her own turn of phrase. She drew herself up to her full five feet four and slid her hands into her jeans pockets, unaware of how the movement emphasised the slender curve of her hips. ‘How long are you home for?’

One dark brow lifted. ‘Is it important to you?’

‘Not to me,’ she claimed, ‘but it may be to Margot.’

‘I hardly think so. She married Duncan Ashley.’

‘On the rebound. After you ran out on her!’

Sensing the animosity simmering in the air, the chestnut made a restless movement, brought under control by the firmness of the hands holding the rein. Logan Bannister slid a leg over the animal’s back and dropped lithely to the ground, tall and leanly muscled in the tailored breeches and fine white shirt. His shoulders were broad and powerful, his forearms tanned the colour of old teak beneath their light coating of dark hair. His face was tanned too, skin stretched taut over hard male cheekbones. Looking up at him from her eight or more inches disadvantage, Caryn felt every nerve in her body tense anew.

‘One thing we should have clear,’ he said softly. ‘I never at any time gave Margot grounds to believe we had a future together. If she thought otherwise, then I’m afraid she was mistaken.’

Blue eyes flashed. ‘You mean she was just one more scalp to your belt!’

Anger flared in the grey eyes and just as abruptly faded, replaced by a weary acceptance. ‘You don’t have to remind me. I’ve lived with it this last two years.’

‘You think I haven’t?’ This time there was no attempt at concealment. ‘For all you knew—or cared—I might have been pregnant!’

‘If you had been I would have heard about it,’ he said.

‘And done what?’ she demanded. ‘Come back and married me?’

His lips twisted. ‘I’d have faced whatever music I was called on to face, but I doubt if marriage would have been seen as the ideal solution by anyone at the time.’

Caryn drew in an unsteady breath. He was so much in control of the situation, so utterly unrepentant. When she found her voice again there was venom in it. ‘There are no circumstances in which I would have considered marrying a rapist!’

‘Rapist?’ The tone was ironic. ‘I don’t seem to recall having to use any force.’

She flushed hotly, only too well aware that the word had been ill-chosen. ‘Seducer, then,’ she substituted, rallying her forces with an effort.

‘But from which side did the seduction come?’ The question was dangerously soft and silky. ‘You were so eager for my kisses, for the touch of my hands—for anything and everything I wanted to do to you. Did you make one attempt to stop me?’

‘Swine!’ Her voice choked off. Blinking back the hot, fierce tears, she turned blindly away.

‘Caryn, wait!’ He was right behind her, seizing her by the shoulder to spin her back towards him. There was regret in the grey eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘Why not?’ she asked huskily. ‘It’s true. I threw myself at you.’

‘But I didn’t have to respond,’ he said. ‘If I’d packed you off home that night the way I should have done, it would never have happened. I was the one at fault, not you.’

She was silent, gazing up at him, conscious of the burning warmth of his fingers reaching through to her skin—those same fingers that had once caressed her with such tender passion; her breasts tingled at the very memory of it. He aroused the same feelings in her now as then, she acknowledged, distressing though it was to admit it. Only it made no difference to her hatred of him.

‘Let go of me!’ she said through her teeth. ‘I can’t bear you to touch me!’

He did so immediately, standing back with hands raised in a gesture of defence, expression wry. ‘All right, then, I won’t. Just listen to what I have to say.’

‘There’s nothing to say,’ she fired back at him. ‘Nothing I’d want to hear—unless it’s to tell me you’ll be leaving again tomorrow.’

Logan was silent for a long moment, studying her face, his own blanked now of all expression. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ he said at length.

‘Then if not tomorrow, when?’

It was another moment or two before he answered, still giving little of his thoughts and feelings away. ‘I’m home for good—or at least for the foreseeable future.’

Caryn felt her heart give a painful lurch before settling back down to a steady if somewhat faster beat. ‘I thought you had business interests overseas,’ she got out at last.

‘So I have,’ he acknowledged. ‘And still shall have. My partner will continue to run the stud farm in Australia, while I take over here.’

‘I’d have thought,’ she said, ‘that the time to do that would have been after your father died last year. Assuming, of course,’ she added pointedly, ‘that you weren’t actually disinherited.’

Broad shoulders lifted. ‘Let’s just say there was a condition I wasn’t prepared to fulfil at the time.’

‘But now you are?’

‘Now I must.’ He paused, eyes reflective as they dwelt on her face. ‘My mother has less than a year to live. I intend to see she has everything she wants—whatever the cost. She wants me here, so I stay. I’m sorry if that doesn’t meet with your approval, but I really don’t have any other choice.’

Caryn bit her lip. There was no way she could oppose that statement. Logan was home, and she would simply have to grin and bear it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘About your mother, I mean. Can nothing be done?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing that hasn’t already been tried. It’s a form of leukaemia, arrestable for a time but incurable in the long term. It’s all downhill from here.’

‘She knows the prognosis?’

‘Of course. She insisted on it.’ His smile was brief. ‘She was always the brave one.’

Caryn knew the woman only by sight. The Bannisters moved in a different social circle. If Margot Sinclair’s younger brother hadn’t invited her to that party two years ago, she would probably never have met Logan either.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I really am. It must be dreadful to know you’re going to die.’ She hesitated, searching for some way of extricating herself from this whole situation with a degree of dignity. ‘I’d better be getting back,’ was all she could come up with. ‘Mom will be wondering where I got to.’

‘How are your parents?’ Logan asked as she began turning away, and she looked back at him with reluctance.

‘They’re fine.’

‘Good.’ For a brief moment he seemed to hesitate, as if about to say something else, then he shook his head and swung himself back up into the saddle, holding the animal on the spot for a moment to lift a hand in a brief salute.

Caryn stood gazing after him as he cantered off in the direction from which he had come. It was still there. Just the same. Hatred was no barrier, it seemed, against physical attraction. She could remember as if it were yesterday that heart-jerking moment when she had looked up into those grey eyes for the very first time.

At sixteen, her emotions had been so intense, so immediate, so indiscriminate, his fifteen years’ seniority no obstacle. To Logan neither, it had turned out, but only up to a point.

With Whitegates only a couple of miles up the coast, and Barston the nearest town, there was little doubt that she would be seeing him around in the weeks and months to come, disturbing though that fact might be. She would simply have to learn to live with it.

Home was no more than a ten-minute walk from the beach in a suburb that had once been a village in its own right before earlier prosperity had spread Barston out to encompass it. It had been a very wet May and early June this year, giving no boost at all to the holiday trade on which the town depended. One of the few unspoiled coastal townships left in England, boasted the seasonal brochure with some truth, but that very lack of modernisation made the weather all the more vital to its viability as a resort.

Detached from its neighbours, and built to a cottagey style that blended well with the general Norfolk landscape, the house had been in the Gregory family for three generations. In today’s financial climate, maintenance had lapsed a little, lending the place a slightly shabby appearance due to peeling paintwork. Caryn’s father was no handyman, and he knew it, preferring to hire professionals as and when he could afford it. Caryn had offered to try her hand at the job, but he wouldn’t hear of it. No daughter of his, he said, was to go climbing ladders on his behalf.

Indoors, she followed the aroma of newly baked bread to the comfortable family kitchen, smiling at the woman washing up pans at the sink.

‘That smells good! Thank heaven for an old-fashioned mother!’

Susan Gregory laughed, pushing back a straying lock of fair hair with a soapy hand. ‘If liking to bake is old-fashioned, then that’s what I am. It wouldn’t do you any harm to learn.’

‘My hand would never be as light as yours,’ Caryn disclaimed. ‘It’s more used to hammering on a typewriter. One of these days, Taylor, Taylor and Simmerson might step into the twentieth century and acquire a wordprocessor. It would certainly make life easier.’

‘Why don’t you suggest it?’ asked her mother, and received a wry shrug.

‘I have, but the words fell on deaf ears. We “have no need of new-fangled notions”, to quote Mr Taylor senior. I don’t suppose they have while they can find someone mad enough to tackle the job as it stands.’

‘They pay you well,’ Susan responded on a faintly reproving note. ‘You’re not thinking of looking for another job, are you?’

‘In Barston?’ It was Caryn’s turn to laugh. ‘I’d be lucky to find one that wasn’t seasonal. Short of moving elsewhere, which I’ve no intention of doing, I suppose I must count my blessings.’

‘If you’d done as well in school as everyone expected you to do, and stayed on to take your A levels, you’d have had far more scope,’ her mother pointed out, not for the first time. ‘I could never understand why you finished up with such low marks in most of your GCSE subjects.’

‘Exam nerves, I expect,’ claimed Caryn with a lightness she was far from feeling. ‘Anyway, I did well enough in business college, even if the prospects round here are somewhat limited.’ She went to pick up the kettle, anxious for a change of subject. ‘I’ll make some tea. Dad’s always ready for a cup about this time.’

Her father was seated reading the evening newspaper when she took the tray through some minutes later.

‘Not going out tonight?’ he asked mildly, taking the cup she poured for him from her.

‘I’ve been out,’ she said.

‘To the beach?’ He shook his head. ‘That’s no way to spend Saturday evening. At least, it wasn’t in my younger days. You spend too much time on your own, Caryn. A pretty girl like you can’t be short of companionship.’

‘None I’m particularly interested in.’ Caryn kept her tone deliberately light. ‘Don’t worry about it, Dad. I like being on my own. Anyway, Jane will be back from holiday next week, so I shan’t be much longer. Unless she decides to get serious over Roy Gillingham, of course, in which case girlfriends have to take a back seat.’

‘She’s too young to be serious about anyone,’ John Gregory declared. ‘So is Roy Gillingham, if it comes to that. Your mother and I were both in our middle twenties before we married, which is why we’ve lasted so well. No teenagers can know their own minds.’

‘Probably not,’ Caryn murmured, steeling herself against the intruding memories. ‘I think I’ll have an early night and catch up on some reading. Mom said she’ll be through in a minute.’

Redecorated by herself only a few weeks ago in green and white with touches of pink in the curtains and covers, her bedroom somehow no longer pleased her as much. Lying on her back on the bed, gazing at the ceiling, she felt confined and restless. There had to be more to life than this day-to-day existence. Perhaps it was time, after all, that she thought about moving away from Barston. Not just to Norwich either, but further afield. There was a whole world out there waiting to be explored.

It was seeing Logan again that had brought this on, she knew. Closing her eyes, she could visualise him in detail. Remembering was painful, but she couldn’t stop herself from doing it…

‘And this is Michael’s little friend, Caryn,’ declared Margot Sinclair on an indulgent note.

Logan Bannister’s smile was slow, eyes riveting as he extended a hand. ‘Hello, Caryn.’

‘Hello.’ Her voice sounded odd, Caryn thought, hoping the warmth she could feel under her skin didn’t show in her face. She wasn’t normally prone to blushing, but then neither was she normally prone to falling in love at a moment’s notice. Logan was devastating; there was no other word for it! Not handsome in the way of her favourite film star, perhaps, yet somehow infinitely more exciting.

The fingers which had closed about hers were long and tensile, his grasp hinting of a latent strength. Without looking directly, she was aware of the crisp whiteness of his shirt cuff against tanned skin, of the glint of gold from the watch encircling one lean wrist. Having contact removed was sheer deprivation.

‘Are you in university too?’ he asked.

Margot laughed. ‘Hardly, darling! Caryn’s still in school. About to sit your GCSEs, I believe?’ she added.

‘Next month,’ Caryn confirmed with reluctance; she would have been more than ready to accept a couple of years’ promotion in this man’s eyes.

‘With straight A passes in all subjects,’ said Michael Sinclair lightly, slinging a casual arm about her shoulders. ‘Isn’t that right, angel?’

‘Hopefully,’ she murmured.

‘Good luck,’ proffered Logan, and she felt the impact of his smile once more.

‘Are he and your sister engaged or anything?’ she asked Michael on what she hoped was a casual note as the older couple moved on.

‘Not as yet,’ came the answer. ‘Although I’m pretty sure Margot has it in mind. And what she wants she usually gets.’

Caryn didn’t doubt it. A sizzlingly beautiful brunette, Margot Sinclair could probably have any man she chose. Logan must be around thirty himself, and eminently eligible. The Bannisters had a stud farm a few miles along the coast, and were said to be extremely wealthy. Logan certainly looked the part. The pale grey suit he was wearing had a cut and fit unmistakable even to her relatively untutored eyes.

She had seen him before, of course, but only at a distance when riding his horse along the beach, which he seemed to do most evenings. Having met him now, there was no reason why she shouldn’t wave a greeting in future, she thought. He might even stop to talk, although about what she had no idea. It didn’t really matter providing she got to be near him again.

Up until now, Michael had seemed so mature and sophisticated at nineteen and in his first year at university. She had been flattered by his attention at the spring dance last month, and hadn’t been reluctant to see him each weekend since, but there had never been any real romantic interest on her side. His kisses were no more than pleasant, while she imagined Logan Bannister’s to be out of this world! He was a man, not a boy. A real man!

She made sure to be on the beach the following evening around six-thirty, heart leaping when she saw him coming. He reined in at once when he spotted her, smiling down at her with every indication of pleasure.

‘I’ve seen you down here most evenings,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t know you were Michael’s girlfriend.’

‘I’m not,’ Caryn denied, and saw his brows lift. ‘I mean we’re just friends,’ she amended.

‘What else, at your age?’ Logan asked lightly. He touched his heels to the stallion’s sides, lifting a hand in farewell. ‘Bye for now.’

That was the beginning. Before too long he was not only stopping to talk to her, but getting down from his horse to walk with her while they talked about everything under the sun. Caryn lived for those moments. Unlike her parents, Logan treated her as an adult. With him she felt like an adult—a grown woman. Certainly the emotions he aroused in her went far beyond a girlish crush.

The suspicion that he might return her feelings came to her gradually, sparked by a certain look in his eyes, a certain note in his voice. Margot Sinclair might have it in sheer looks, but could she hold his interest in quite the same way with her views on current affairs, on literature and art? Could she make him laugh with her comments the way little Caryn Gregory did?

Because of Logan, she found herself reading Romeo and Juliet, which she was studying for GCSE, with new insight, identifying with the lovelorn teenager in a way she had never done before. But it was in Antony and Cleopatra that she found the real stimulation of her awakening senses. Here was a woman whose love for a man knew no bounds—a woman who saw no shame in declaring that love both in words and in action—a woman for whom there could never be any other man but Antony.

For Caryn there could never be any other man but Logan. She already knew that for a fact.

With her mind constantly in the clouds, her GCSEs were a disaster. Apart from English Literature, she doubted if she would finish up with more than Cs or even Ds for the rest. But it was a long time before the results would be through, and at present she had far more pressing concerns. Before anything, she had to know how Logan really felt about her.

Normally she would walk to meet him along the beach. This particular evening she sat and waited for him to come to her, heart thudding against her ribcage in the knowledge of what she was about to say to him. Like Antony, he would sweep her into his arms, press kisses on her lips, her eyes—everywhere and anywhere he cared to press them!

Then he was there, reining in to sit looking down at her with an expression in his eyes that told her she wasn’t mistaken.

‘Take me for a ride,’ she said, and he laughed, swinging her up in front of him, his breath warm on her neck, his body so hard and muscular at her back.

She had never ridden on a horse in her life before, but it felt so good to be up there above the sands, secure in Logan’s embrace, oblivious of the way her short summer skirt rode up her thighs. He kept the animal to a steady walk, one hand on the rein, the other about her waist. She could feel the pressure of his thighs against the back of hers, stirring her senses to a point where she scarcely knew what she was doing any more, and cared even less.

Blood singing in her ears, she took hold of his hand and moved it upwards to the region of her left breast, hearing his sudden sharp intake of breath as his fingers came into contact with the firm young curve.

‘For God’s sake, Caryn!’ he said gruffly against her hair. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’

‘Yes, I do,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t you like touching me this way?’

‘Like it?’ The words came out on a groan. ‘Of course I like it! I…’ He broke off abruptly, moving the hand sharply away. ‘I think I’d better put you down.’

He brought the horse to a halt and dismounted, reaching up to seize her about the waist, face grimly set. ‘Come on.’

Caryn allowed herself to slide down into his arms, putting her own about his neck and burying her face in his shirt-front as she found her feet. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she begged. ‘I love you, Logan!’

His whole body was rigid. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he reiterated. ‘You don’t even know what love is.’

‘Yes, I do. It’s the way you make me feel.’ She was desperate to convince him. She lifted her face to his, searching the grey eyes and seeing the look she had seen before slowly ousting the grimness. Instinctively she pressed herself closer to him, feeling the hardness of his chest against her breasts, the tingling in her nipples. Her lips were slightly parted, youthfully full and moist, trembling a little in their eagerness for his touch.

He kissed her roughly, as if in a deliberated attempt to frighten her off, but she refused to be intimidated by it, kissing him back with a fervency that took him by surprise and elicited an involuntary response. It was so different from Michael’s kisses, stirring emotions only vaguely sensed up to now, turning her limbs to jelly and starting a burning heat in her lower body.

A low groan broke from Logan’s lips as she moved instinctively against him, and he tried to put her from him. But she wouldn’t be put, clinging to him with all her strength, wanting this to continue. For a brief moment he resisted, then he groaned again and went on kissing her, pressuring her lips apart and sending quivers of excitement racing through her. He was Antony, she was Cleopatra, and they were in love. Wonderfully, intoxicatingly in love!