Ким Лоренс – A Secret Seduction: A Secret Until Now / A Sinful Seduction / Secrets of a Shy Socialite (страница 21)
He threw her a lazy smile. ‘You’re a back-seat driver.’
Angel didn’t respond. They had just topped the crest of the hill and she was staring at the scene revealed in front of her. The pristine sand was as silver white as the Hebrides, the long waving grass behind it dotted with wild flowers, and set in the middle of the green rippling carpet was a white marquee and pitched under it was set a long table. Two figures were unloading items from the four-wheel drive vehicle parked close by.
‘If I’d known I would have dressed.’
She half expected the couple who were unloading food to wait on them, but they drove away after a quick word with Alex. As she watched them vanish and responded to the light touch between her shoulder blades that made her conscious of every prickling inch of her skin she realised just how alone they were.
She gave a laugh to cover her nerves and approached the shaded table covered with a white cloth laid with silver and crystal.
‘This is your idea of a picnic?’ It might be some people’s idea of a seduction scene. Discounting the possibility and the flip of excitement low in her pelvis, she was sure that he wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble for nothing. The question remained—a lot of effort, but why?
‘I don’t like sand in my food.’
‘You could always concrete over the beach.’
‘An idea, but I have to think about my eco credentials.’
‘Especially as they’re so profitable.’
The muttered response drew a thin smile from him. ‘You are, as always, eager to assign the worst possible motives to my actions.’
She opened her mouth to deny this charge and closed it again, her eyes sliding from his as she mumbled, ‘I can be a cynic.’
‘If you’re interested in all things eco you might like to look around my house sometime.’
Following the direction of his gesture, she frowned, seeing only a grassy hill above the high-tide mark, but then a glint of light reflected off glass caught her attention.
‘Goodness!’
‘Yes, it’s easy to miss at first, isn’t it?’ The architects had fulfilled their brief and made the structure blend in with the landscape, but they had gone one step further—they had made it part of the landscape.
Excavated into the hillside, his sanctuary with its turf roof and no manufactured walls was invisible from most angles, but the clever design meant that every room was flooded with light from the massive glass panels that faced the sea.
‘You live there?’ It was not the power statement that she had assumed any home of his would be.
‘I stay there occasionally. It suits my needs, but it is not equipped for entertaining, hence...’ He gestured to the table.
‘Won’t you sit down?’ He pulled out one of the chairs and, feeling both awkward and anxious, she took her seat.
The first fifteen minutes did not give her any insight into him as a person. His conversational skills were as she had expected but he managed to avoid any personal questions, instead turning them back on her. It was deeply frustrating.
‘You do not care for seafood?’
Angel, who had been pushing her food around her plate, set her fork down and decided the best approach was a direct one.
‘Why did you ask me here? Not to talk about the food, I’m sure.’ Nibbling on her lower lip, she caught hold of one of the crystals that weighed down the cloth, rolling it between her fingers.
‘Why did you come?’ he countered.
She set her elbows on the table and stared across at him. ‘Do you always respond to a question with another question?’
His brows knitted as he forked a large prawn into his mouth. ‘I am resisting the temptation to say pot, kettle, black.’
‘Not very well,’ she inserted sourly.
‘The answer to your question is, yes, I do, when the answer interests me.’
‘I was bored and hungry.’
‘You haven’t eaten much.’
‘I’m watching my weight.’
‘Do you ever worry about your part in the message that the media sends out to young girls?’ His tone was deceptively casual but the eyes that met hers were anything but.
‘Message?’
‘The pressure to achieve an impossible level of perfection, like the women they see in the magazines. The message that equates beauty with happiness. Of course, I was forgetting you have a daughter of your own. I’m sure you are well aware of the pressures facing young women.’
She stiffened, her heart beating fast as she twisted the linen napkin between her fingers. He knew, somehow he knew! Or he thought he knew....
‘Jasmine is not a woman. She’s a child.’
‘True, but they grow up so quickly and I believe that anorexia sufferers are getting younger and younger.’
She shook her head, angry now, and got to her feet. Looking down at him lessened the feeling of being a mouse being toyed with by a large feline. ‘Why are you suddenly so interested in my daughter?’
He laid his own napkin down with slow deliberation, holding her eyes as he got to his feet. ‘Because I had this idea... It’s crazy, but in my experience those are the ones that it pays not to ignore. So I did a little research and a few surprising things came up, like the fact that your daughter was born eight months to the day after we spent the night together and there was no one before.’
‘Or after.’ Did I really say that?
He didn’t react, but she could feel the emotions rolling off him.
Angel didn’t blink; she didn’t breathe. She shrugged and struggled to hold on to her manufactured calm.
‘So you want to know if you’re Jasmine’s father? Couldn’t you just have come out and asked? Did it really require all this elaborate stage-managing?’
‘It occurred to me that you might be waiting for the right moment to tell me...?’ He had really tried hard to think of this from her point of view but her expression was not saying she appreciated the effort. He had been her only lover.... Only... He experienced a stab of sheer primitive possessive satisfaction, and breathed out, letting the air escape in a slow, measured sigh.
‘I thought I’d provide it.... I thought if you were relaxed—’
‘You thought you’d get me drunk,’ she countered, pointing to the second bottle in the ice bucket. ‘And trick me into saying things!’
The comment hit a raw nerve. First she threw his consideration back in his face, now she tried to make herself the victim. ‘I shouldn’t have to trick you into anything. If I’ve got a bloody child I have a right to know.... I have a right to know her!’ It was the first time she had heard him use Russian but she was guessing she wouldn’t find the translation of what he snarled in any phrase book.
As angry now as he was, she heaved in a taut, angry breath of her own. What did he know? Parenthood wasn’t a right—it was a privilege!
‘Rights? You have no rights! You see Jasmine only if I say so, and I don’t. I came here wanting to find out if you were the sort of person I want in Jasmine’s life, the sort of person who would be good for her to know. Well, now I do know, and you’re not. I wouldn’t have you near my daughter...for...for...anything! You’re a manipulative bastard who treats people like chess pieces... You’re the last father I’d choose for my daughter.’
Breathing hard like duelists, they stood either end of the table facing one another, firing angry words, not bullets, though the words could inflict considerable damage and once they were out there they were impossible to retract.
Even though she was still furious Angel was already beginning to regret the things she had said.
He leaned forward, his hands flat on the table, and fixed her with an icy blue arctic stare. When he spoke it was in a voice that was several decibels lower than the hot words shouted in the heat of the moment. Cold, considered and chosen to inflict the maximum level of fear.
Angel was seeing the man that made powerful men tremble with fear.
‘You have picked the wrong man to challenge. You will not keep my daughter from me. Attempt to prevent me seeing her and it will be me you come begging to for visitation rights. If you have a skeleton... If you have a bone fragment in your cupboard I will find it and my lawyers will use it.’ He hardened his heart against her pale, stricken expression and added, ‘You started this, but I will finish it. That much is a promise.’
Without another word he walked away.
Angel didn’t react. She just stood there, frozen. She roused only at the sound of an engine and she turned in time to see him vanishing in a cloud of dust.
He had driven away, leaving her stranded.
Not quite able to believe the situation she found herself in, she looked from the dust cloud to the food and wine spread out and with a laugh she slumped down into the chair.
‘At least I won’t starve.’
She was still sitting there twenty minutes later when one of the men who had earlier been laying out the food appeared. If he found the situation strange nothing in his manner suggested it as he framed his meticulously polite question.
‘Are you ready to return to the mainland?’
She was ready to kiss the feet of her rescuer but she was much more circumspect in her icy state, and responded to the respectful enquiry with a nod and a smile.
ALEX PULLED THE car over after a mile, leaning his elbows across the steering wheel. He thought he knew every inch of the island but he struggled to get his bearings as he pushed his head back into the padded headrest and looked up through the open roof at the trees that blocked out the sun.