Festering Lilies (34 page)

‘Willow,' said Tom quietly. She looked up obediently and saw that he was smiling again. He raised his glass to her. She wondered what he would say and arranged her mind to accept some declaration with becoming gratitude and without betraying too many of her fears.

‘I'd still like to strangle you, Cressida Woodruffe,' he said, and her tense features relaxed. ‘But I had to come to see you. I meant what I said about not stifling you with emotion, but I needed you tonight.'

With a feeling of quite unprecedented emotion, Willow walked across the carpet to his chair. She knelt down on the floor (not even thinking that whenever Richard was in her flat any kneeling was done by him), took Tom's glass away from him and took his rugged face between her cool hands.

‘And I needed you, too,' she confessed and kissed him.

First published in 1990 by Simon & Schuster

This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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Copyright © Natasha Cooper, 1990

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