The Obsession Read online

  “You think so?” She scrunched up her nose and glanced back into the mirror. “I was thinking it looked okay, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “Perfect!” the red-headed saleswoman gushed. “Much better than the last one. Absolutely breathtaking.”

  The American smiled slowly, as if she understood what the clerk was about. The petite redhead wanted a sale. “I’ll take it then.”

  Ten minutes later Margaret had settled on a sensible pair of brown Camel tweed trousers remarkably similar to the first pair she’d tried on. She and Neil made their way to the cash register where even now the American and the red-headed sales clerk were chatting back and forth about everything and nothing. The redhead was extremely pert for the American was spending a great deal of money. “You will look absolutely ravishing at the Ballast party in this dress.”

  The American merely smiled. “Thanks.” She handed her a Visa card. “By the way, when does the festival begin? I was under the impression it lasted the entire month of August but apparently not.”

  “Next week,” the redhead answered as she accepted the Visa into her palm. “It lasts three weeks, not four,” she said in the way of explanation.

  Her customer sighed. “I wonder what I’ll do with myself until then. Maybe I’ll drive up to the Highlands,” she said wistfully. “I’ve never seen them before.”

  “Excellent notion.” The redhead scanned the credit card, practically salivating when it came back with an acceptance. “There’s a terrific beach resort in Strathy Point that attracts a lot of tourism.” She leaned in closer to the American and whispered confidentially as she handed her the receipt to be signed. “I’ve heard it told they allow you to strut about topless up there in the summer months.” She winked. “Sounds like a great diversion to me.”

  Neil could feel Margaret stiffen up beside him. Clearly, the redhead had unwittingly offended her sense of propriety.

  “You’re right,” the American said without pretense, “it sounds fun. What’s the name of the place again?”

  “Strathy Point.”

  She nodded. “Guess I know where I’m headed for a few days. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  The redhead waved that away as she took back the receipt. “Think nothing—oh my!”

  The American’s golden brown head shot up. She regarded the saleswoman quizzically.

  “You’re Valentina Jason-Elliot? The woman who writes those sexy suspense thrillers?”

  Neil’s ears perked up. He’d read a couple of her novels himself.

  “One and the same.”

  “I love your work! When is the next one due out?”

  The American’s face colored slightly. An effect Neil found oddly charming. “At the end of the month.”

  “Excellent!”

  A minute and an autograph later, the golden brown American with the blood-red nails made her way out of Jenners, shopping bags in tow. Neil watched her walk away, out of his life forever, and wished he’d had no reaction to that knowledge one way or the other.

  * * * * *

  “Neil,” Margaret said hesitantly, “we must talk.”

  Following her into her mum’s formal living room, he inclined his head. “By all means.” He took the seat she indicated, wondering at what this could possibly be about.

  Margaret took her time getting to the heart of the matter, picking a piece of imaginary lint from her new trousers as she gathered up her courage.

  Neil eyed her curiously, uncertain as to what he should say. “Margaret?” he prodded gently.

  She looked up, ever the nervous mouse. “Neil, I’m sorry to say this but I...” Her voice trailed off as she looked away.

  “What? What is it?”

  Her cheeks pinkened as she regarded him. “I’m afraid this isn’t working out for me,” she whispered.

  He cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon? I thought we were getting on admirably well.”

  “Oh we are,” she rushed out, her mousy brown head shooting upward. “It’s just that...that...”

  “Yes?”

  She sighed. “Neil, let me come straight to the point.”

  He nodded.

  “What are your intentions?” She went back to picking the lint from her trousers. Her cheeks scalded from pink to crimson. “Do you plan to marry me?”

  “Margaret, I—”

  “I’m sorry!” she blithered out. “But Neil I’m to turn thirty-two next week. My biological clock is ticking quite madly.” She closed her eyes, embarrassed. “So I need to know your intentions.”

  Neil knew in that moment he didn’t want to marry her. He’d been hesitant all along, not wanting to deal with his feelings on the issue, but having been backed into a proverbial corner by Margaret, he realized with crystal clarity that they would not deal well together for a lifetime. She was too churchy, too timid. He was too authoritative, too brusque—in comparison at any rate. But she was a good woman, and a woman who deserved to be given the truth.

  Neil sighed, then shook his head slowly. He reached for Margaret’s hand and took it in his own. “You are all things worthy and wonderful,” he said gently, “but I...” He took a deep breath and prepared to give her the truth she sought. “But I don’t think a marriage between us would work,” he softly finished.

  Margaret nodded, but said nothing.

  “I’m terribly sorry. Should you ever feel the desire for my company again then I’d be—”

  She held up a palm. “I’ve already wasted two and a half months of my life on you, Dr. Ross.” She was angrier than he’d ever seen her before. “I think it best if you just leave.”

  Neil hesitated for a brief moment before relenting. He stood up, looking down on her. “I wish you well, Margaret.”

  She closed her eyes. “Please just leave.”

  And so he did, feeling lecherous for the second time in the same afternoon, though for differing reasons. It occurred to Neil during the drive home that the mousy, churchy Margaret had just worked up the nerve to dump him.

  Chapter 2

  Churchy, timid Margaret had dumped him. Neil sighed at yesterday’s memory as he made his way into the University of Edinburgh and towards his office. He needed to prepare lecture notes, as classes were due to commence in a couple of weeks.

  Taking a seat behind his desk, he steepled his fingertips together and considered the state of his life. Dull was the only word he could think of to describe it.

  Neil had never been the type of man others thought of as particularly exciting. He’d known that all of his life, but until this moment the knowledge of it hadn’t exactly bothered him. He’d been a sickly but hardworking child, excelling in his studies and harboring a deep love of mathematics.

  A skinny, gawky lad, he’d reveled in the identity his school grades had given him, realizing it was the one thing he was better at than most. Firmly entrenched in the identity of nerd by the time he was thirteen, he had even begun to dress the part. He hadn’t gone ballistic, he reminded himself, for he’d always been a fine dresser. But he’d donned the spectacles instead of purchasing contact lenses and had dressed in his formal lecturer’s attire from an indecently young age.

  And now at the age of thirty-nine, there was no way of living down his geeky claim to fame. That he had grown out of his sickliness and had acquired an athletic, muscled body was of no import. People saw what they wanted to see, what they expected to see. And from the age of thirteen onward it had been expected that Neil Ross was a nerd.

  But had he done anything to expel such a notion? No, he thought grimly, he hadn’t. He’d been content in his role as the boring and reliable lecturer of mathematics, content with allowing the status quo to remain.

  Until he’d met her.

  Neil’s eyes flicked towards the bookshelf standing on the opposite side of his office. Withdrawing slowly from his seat, he made his way past the sofa he sometimes slept on when working late into the night and over to the oak structure, stopping to pick up a copy of The Scream, the late
st release of one Valentina Jason-Elliot.

  When she’d run into him yesterday, all green eyes and red smiles, he had wanted so much for her to see him as more than a boring lecturer of mathematics, as more than a sensible man in proper clothing. He had wanted her to see him as a virile male who had picked up her scent and was onto it.

  He wondered, not for the first time, just what had gone through the novelist’s mind whilst conversing with him. What had she thought of him? Or had she thought anything of him at all? Probably not.

  Neil sighed, placing The Scream on the shelf it had been occupying. He made his way back to his desk and plopped down rather unceremoniously into his seat. Running his fingers briskly through his short, dark hair he attempted to squelch the restlessness brewing inside of him, telling himself it did him no good whatsoever to obsess over a woman who didn’t so much as know his name and most likely wouldn’t care to learn it.

  Even now as he sat at his sensible desk surrounded by sensible items from a sensible lecturer’s life, he couldn’t help but to consider Ms. Jason-Elliot’s current insensible whereabouts. He knew precisely where she was, exactly what she was doing, for he’d have been deaf not to have overheard the conversation she’d had yesterday with the red-headed saleswoman.

  She was at Strathy Point. Possibly lying topless on the beach somewhere this very moment. The image caused Neil to become instantaneously erect.

  Rubbing his palm alongside the outline of his jaw, he asked himself if he had the nerve to use this insider knowledge and do something completely out of character, something like follow Valentina Jason-Elliot to Strathy Point and attempt to become reacquainted with her. A very intoxicating, yet highly unnerving prospect.

  What if, after all, she had no desire to so much as speak to him? What if he made a fool of himself?

  Neil was about to discard the notion entirely when the image of churchy, timid Margaret popped into his mind. If the mouse could find the nerve to dump him, surely he could find the nerve to pay a visit to Strathy Point.

  Indeed, Neil thought as he surged to his feet, sick to death of his boring life, tired of the status quo, why the bloody hell not?

  * * * * *

  Valentina ignored the aroused looks a few of the men on the beach were throwing her way. Her parents had been taking her to nude beaches since she’d been old enough to walk so she truly didn’t find anything all that remarkable about seeing naked bodies scattered around.

  Still, she wasn’t naive enough to believe that everyone saw life the way she did. Not every man here was present because he’d been reared by hippie parents to love the freedom of expression inherent on a nude beach. Most of them were here simply because they wanted to stare.

  Valentina found an area to herself a bit off from the other beach-goers. Spreading out a blanket on the sandy shore, she wound her hair into a top-knot and plopped down onto the blanket. Rummaging through her beach bag, she located a bottle of tanning accelerator and began working it into her shoulders and breasts. The chilly liquid caused her nipples to harden, elongated nubs of rosy flesh poking up from the puffy areolas that surrounded them.

  After she’d finished coating her arms and legs, she laid back on the blanket, her hands supporting the weight of her head. Her nipples poked further upward, their reaction to the sun causing a slight carnal aching in her belly.

  Valentina closed her eyes, her mind wandering as her face and body grew a rich golden brown from the sun’s rays. As her thoughts strayed, she found them meandering two days backward in time to that attractive-looking man she’d met at Jenners.

  The weird thing about it was, the guy really wasn’t her type. And Valentina was well aware of what her type was.

  She was used to dating musicians and artists, the sort of men that had a certain reckless air about them, who were forever jaunting off to try this new thing or that due to the sheer restlessness of their natures. Of course, Valentina admitted to herself, it was that very restlessness that had caused her last boyfriend to stray from her in the first place, taking on new lovers without even so much as a passing concern of what it might do to her on the inside.

  If there was one thing that athletic man back in Jenners could not be called, it was restless. Valentina smiled, thinking that the stranger had waited on whomever he’d escorted to the department store with an unnatural amount of male patience. If that had been her ex-boyfriend Alex, Alex would have been trying to get up the red-headed saleswoman’s skirt as a way to pass the time while waiting on Valentina to emerge from the changing room.

  Valentina’s mind wandered a bit further, wondering to herself as she was if a lack of restlessness in a man was necessarily a bad thing. She considered the patient stranger, not at all the type who looked like he came on to anything in a skirt. She idly wondered if he was patient in all areas of his life, namely in bed, then told herself she was acting like an idiot for even contemplating it.

  The proper-looking stranger was in Edinburgh, which might as well have been an ocean away since she had no idea who he was or how to find him should she try. She fell asleep a moment later, her last coherent thought revolving around whether or not the stranger had noticed her as a woman. And why in the world she should care.

  Chapter 3

  Neil walked along the beach at Strathy Point feeling a bit surreal. He couldn’t believe he’d actually entertained a notion like trotting off to the Highlands in the hopes of espying the American novelist, let alone seeing it through. But he was here now, he told himself resolutely, so he might as well make the most of it.

  The beach truly was a nude one, he noted. He felt a bit awkward in that he’d retained his swimming trunks whilst everyone around him was completely divested of clothing. This beach wasn’t a topless one as the sales clerk had suggested, but both a topless and bottomless one. He felt like an idiot.

  Neil batted his eyelashes a few times in rapid succession, the contacts he’d procured yesterday afternoon making his eyes water a bit. He was growing used to the damned things—for the most part—but conceded it had taken a few painful hours to get even this far. Well, he thought with a measure of satisfaction, should he be lucky enough to run into Valentina Jason-Elliot at least he wouldn’t be doing it in his sensible, boring spectacles.

  Neil scanned the shore of the beach for the woman in question, his gut knotting in anticipation of seeing her again. His dark gaze flicked this way and that until at last it settled upon the form of a sleeping and very nude author lying a ways off down the sandy terrain.

  He took a deep breath to steady himself, praying to heaven that he’d find the courage to approach her and awaken her. He could only hope his body cooperated and that he didn’t sustain a noticeably large and painful erection at the merest glimpse of her.

  But when he drew closer and saw that her large rosy nipples were poking up into the air, his desire to fall down beside her and suck on them sent all thoughts of retaining his control scurrying away, and he noted with grim resignation that his penis was as hard as a tire iron.

  He went down on his knees beside her, unable to believe that he, Neil Ross, had grown bold enough to approach her let alone be brazen enough to drop to his knees and ogle her body up close. He glanced around quickly, feeling a moment’s panic at being embarrassed by others should she shout at him to go away, then breathed in relief when he realized they were quite alone on this stretch of beach and her shouts would only humiliate him in front of her. Not that that wasn’t bad enough unto itself.

  Neil’s eyes fell to her face, noting at once that she was in a deep sleep. Reckless, that. He had the urge to scold her for it, thinking to himself that if he’d been any man but himself he might have taken advantage of the situation and forced himself on her.

  And then his dark eyes found her breasts and all thoughts of scolding her flew out the proverbial window. Her areolas, he noticed, were a light pink and a tad puffy. Her elongated nipples shot up out of them like two bottle rockets on velvety soft landing pads.
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  Neil took a deep breath, his erection fierce, as his gaze meandered lower and settled upon her puffed up labia. One of her knees was bent slightly, offering his vision no impediment to finding out what her flesh looked like on the inside. She kept her mons shaved bald, he noted as he gritted his teeth, thinking to himself how much he’d love to run his tongue all about the sleek folds beneath it.

  Neil stared at her cunt, wanting to suck on it, wanting to ride in it, wanting it period. As if the sleeping woman could read his thoughts and wanted to encourage them, the flesh between her thighs grew wet before his eyes, one pearly drop of fluid noticeable at the entrance.

  His eyes shot up to her breasts. They were harder then before. So hard it looked painful to him. So hard he envisioned taking them into his mouth and—

  Realization dawned.

  Embarrassed at having been caught looking his fill at her naked body, Neil’s gaze shot up and clashed with a very awake woman’s. His cheeks went up in flames as she smiled at him and like that geeky boy he’d been at thirteen he had the sudden urge to bolt.

  “Haven’t we met?”

  * * * * *

  Valentina thought she had grown too jaded to become aroused by something as simple as a man gazing at her naked body with desire. But Christ, she thought as her nipples stabbed up into the air, this man’s brooding gaze had an unnerving effect on her.

  He looked at her like he wanted to own her, like he wanted to shove his fingers up her cunt and claim it. The effect was a heady one, an arousing one, and it wasn’t just because she was being ogled in general but because she’d already realized whom she was being ogled by.

  Mr. Prim and Proper himself. The stranger she’d chatted briefly with at Jenners.