Читать книгу His Child: The Mistress's Child / Nathan's Child / D'Alessandro's Child - Catherine Spencer, Anne McAllister - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

HE WALKED into the office and all her dreams and nightmares came true.

Lisi felt giddy. Sick. But maybe that was just the effect he was having on her heart-rate.

Up until that moment it had been a perfect day—her last afternoon at work before she finished for Christmas. There had been nothing bigger on her mind than the arrangements for Tim’s birthday party the following day and wondering, along with everyone else, whether the threatened snow would fall.

She stared up into the cool, chiselled features and her fingers—which had been flying furiously over the keyboard—froze into stillness. But so did the rest of her—heart, body and soul. For one long, timeless moment their eyes met and she wondered what on earth she could say to him, but just the sight of him was making speech impossible.

He was as devastating as he had always been, but his body looked leaner, harder—all tight, honed muscle which even the elegant winter coat couldn’t disguise.

Instinct made her want to stand up and demand what he was doing there, to ask him how he had the nerve to show that heartbreaking face of his, but the stakes were much too high and she knew that she could not afford to give into instinct.

‘Hello, Philip,’ she said at last, astonished to hear how steady her voice sounded.

He should have been expecting it, but her effect on him took him completely off guard and the sound of her low, husky voice ripped through his defences. Damn her, he thought bitterly as he recalled her soft white thighs wrapped around his body as he had plunged deep, deep inside her, unable to stop himself even though every fibre of his being had tried. Damn her!

He felt the leap of blood, like a fountain to his senses, and it felt like being resurrected. Months which had moved into years of living in an emotional and physical wasteland and she had vanquished his icy indifference simply by the lilting way she said his name. His normally lush, sensual mouth was thin and unsmiling.

‘Why, for a moment there I thought you didn’t remember me, Lisi,’ he mocked softly.

Not remember him? She would have to be dead not to have remembered him, even if she hadn’t had the living proof to remind her every single day of her life.

She kept her face impassive, but in reality she was greedilyregistering every detail of that arrogantly beautiful face. Thinking of her son’s face and searching for heartbreaking signs of similarity—but thank God there was none. His lightly tanned golden skin was so very different from her son’s natural pallor, as were Philip’s startling emerald eyes. They made the aquamarine hue of Tim’s look so diluted in comparison.

And then her heart began to race and the inside of her mouth turned to sandpaper as painful questions began to buzz silently around her head. Why was he here?

Did he know?

The foundations of her world threatened to rock on their axis, but she kept her face as calm as his. He couldn’t know. He couldn’t possibly know!

‘Not remember you? Of course I remember you,’ she said, in as bland a voice as she could manage—she even tacked on a weak attempt at a smile as she met the emerald ice of his stare. ‘I always remember—’

‘All the men you’ve slept with?’ he challenged, unable to resist the taunt, cruelly pleased by the sting of colour which brought roses to the whiteness of her skin.

She felt heat flaring across her cheeks, but that was her only outward reaction to his remark. How blatant, to say something as provocative as that, she thought indignantly—especially when you considered his track record. And all the while looking at her with that cold, studied insolence which did nothing to mar the sheer beauty of his face.

She bit back the temptation to remind him that there had been no sleep involved. He had not wanted to sleep with her—and for very good reason. She repressed a shudder as she was reminded of what a gullible fool she had been.

Far better to change the subject completely. To find out what he wanted and to see the back of him.

‘I was about to say that I always remember clients—’ She wished that she could bite the word back. It seemed so cold and unfeeling in view of what she had shared, until she reminded herself that they had shared nothing—except their bodies.

‘Clients,’ she continued valiantly, ‘who have involved this company in as many deals as you once did. You brought us a lot of business, Mr Caprice. We sold a lot of properties through you.’

So she remembered his surname, too. Philip didn’t know whether to be flattered or not, though he was certainly surprised. He suspected that he had been just one in a long line of men she had enticed into her bed—a woman who looked like that would have no trouble doing so. Did she have a photographic memory for all their names?

He studied her—taking all the time in the world to do so—and why not? Hadn’t she haunted his memory with bitter-sweet recall? Given him the acrid taste of guilt in his mouth every time he’d thought of her in nearly four years? Even though he had tried his hardest not to think of her. Tried and failed every time.

But Lisi Vaughan had been a fever in his blood for far too long now.

His eyes skimmed over her. Time had not made much of a mark—certainly not on her face, which was probably the most beautiful he had ever seen. A face completely devoid of make-up, which gave it an odd kind of purity which seemed so at odds with her innate sensuality.

The eyes he remembered because they were icy and aquamarine—unique. Slanting, siren’s eyes, half shielded by a forest of thick, dark eyelashes, which made her look so minxy. The darkness of her lashes was echoed in her hair—deep, dark ebony—as black as the coals of hell itself and made even blacker by its dramatic contrast to the whiteness of her skin. She looked like a witch, he thought, a beautiful temptress of a witch with a body which few men would see outside paradise.

He knitted his eyebrows together almost imperceptibly. Not that her body was on display much today, but some things you couldn’t disguise—even though she had done her level best with some plain black skirt and high-necked blouse which made her look almost dowdy.

No. On second thoughts—certainly not dowdy. Philip swallowed as she moved her head back, as if trying to escape his scrutiny, and the movement drew attention to the unforgettable swell of her breasts. Her waist was as tiny as ever, but her breasts were slightly fuller, he thought, and then was punished with the heavy jackknifing of desire in response.

Lisi could feel her heartbeat growing thready and erratic. She wished he wouldn’t look at her that way. It reminded her of too much she would rather forget. Of tangled limbs and the sheen of sweat, the sweet, fleeting pleasure of fulfilment followed by the shattering pain of rejection. He had no right to look at her that way.

She quashed down the desire to tell him to get out, and forced a pleasantry out instead. He was not the kind of man to be pushed. If she wanted him out of there—and she most certainly did—then he must come to the conclusion that it had been his idea to leave and not hers.

Keep it cool and keep it professional, she told herself. ‘Now. How can I help you?’

He gave her a grim smile, not trusting himself to answer for a moment, and then he lifted his eyebrows in mocking question. ‘What a sweetly expressed offer,’ he murmured.

‘Why, thank you,’ she said demurely.

‘Do you say that to all the men?’

‘Most of them are grown-up enough not to read anything into it.’ She matched his remark with a dry tone of her own and then fixed her eyes on his unwaveringly, trying not to be distracted by that dazzling green gaze. ‘So. Are you interested in a property for sale, Mr Caprice?’

Her unemotional attitude was having precisely the wrong effect on him. ‘Oh, what’s with all this ‘‘Mr’’ stuff?’ Again he felt the sting of life to his senses, but ruthlessly he subdued them and gave a short laugh instead. ‘Come on, Lisi,’ he purred. ‘I think we can dispense with the formalities, don’t you? Surely we are intimate enough with each other to use first names?’

‘Were intimate,’ she corrected, and the heat in her face intensified as she was forced to acknowledge it aloud. ‘Past tense. Remember?’

How could he possibly forget? And wasn’t that why he had come here today—to change the past back to present? To rid himself of her pervasive and unforgettable sensual legacy. Wouldn’t a whole night lost in the scented curves of her siren’s body mean that he would be free of the guilt and the longing for ever? Sensations which had somehow chained him to her, and made him unable to move on.

He looked around the office, where the Christmas decorations were glittering silver and gold. In the corner stood a small artificial tree which was decked with shining crimson-red baubles and tiny white fairy lights.

He found Christmas almost unbearable—he had forgottenits poignant lure while he had been away. You could tell yourself that it was corny. Commercial. That all its true values were forgotten these days—but it still got to you every time.

And this was his first Christmas back in England since working in Maraban, where of course they had not celebratedthe feast at all. He had not even had to think about it.

He was slowly beginning to realise that living in the Middle East had protected him from all the things he did not want to think about. And Christmas brought with it all kinds of things he would rather not think about. Feelings, mostly. Feelings of remorse. The pain of loss and the pain of wanting. Or, rather, of not wanting. For too long now, his body had felt as unresponding as a block of ice until he had walked in here today and seen her, and now his groin was on fire with need. Damn her, he thought again. Damn her!

He gritted his teeth, his gaze moving to her hand. She wore no wedding ring, nor any pale sign that one might have been recently removed, either. But women these days lived with men at the drop of a hat and he needed to find out if she was involved with someone. But even if she did have another man—would that honestly prevent him from doing what he intended to do?

He sat down in the chair opposite her desk, spreading out his long legs and not missing the thinning of her mouth as she watched him do so. He coolly crossed one leg over the other and felt a jerk of triumph as he saw her eyes darken. She wants me, he thought and his heart thundered in his chest. She still wants me.

‘I must say that I’m surprised to see you still working here,’ he observed, looking around the office of the small estate agency.

Lisi stiffened, warning herself not to get defensive. It was none of his business. She owed him nothing, least of all the truth.

‘I just happen to like selling houses,’ she said.

‘I guess you do.’ It had been another aspect of her character which he had been unable to fault—her unerring ability to match the right property to the right client. It had been what had brought him back to this small English villagetime after time as he’d sought valuable property for a clutch of wealthy buyers. In the beginning he had always dealt with Jonathon, the owner and senior negotiator, but after a while Lisi had taken over. Beautiful Lisi, with her ready smile and soft, sympathetic manner.

Part of him had not expected to find her here. He had imagined that she would be running her own place by now—and it was more than a little disconcerting to see her at the same desk, in the same office. As if time had stood still, and she with it. He gave her a questioning look. ‘Most people would have moved on by now—to bigger and brighter things.’

And leave her safety net? Her cushion?

Her job had been the one familiar constant in those dark, far-off days when she had wondered just how she was going to cope—how could she ever have left it? ‘Not me,’ she said staunchly.

‘Why ever not?’ he asked quietly, bemused—because she had not only been good at her job, she had been ambitious, too.

She didn’t break the gaze, even though her stomach was churning over with anxiety, as if he somehow knew her secret and was just biding his time before he confronted her with it. Distract him, she thought. ‘Why on earth should my job prospects interest you?’

‘Call it curiosity,’ he told her softly. ‘Ex-lovers always interest me.’

Lisi repressed a shudder. She didn’t feel like his ex-lover—she felt like a woman who had shared his bed under false pretences before he had disappeared dramatically from her life. But she didn’t want to analyse that—not now and not with him here. Instead she took his question at face value.

‘I love my job,’ she said staunchly. ‘It’s convenient and it’s local—and there’s no reason why I should travel miles to find something which is already on my doorstep, is there?’

‘I guess not.’ But he couldn’t help wondering why she had settled for such steady small-town life when she was still so young and beautiful. His eyes were drawn irresistibly to the lush lines of her mouth, knowing that he would never be satisfied until he got her out of his system one last time.

For good.

He gave a conventional smile as he forced himself to make conventional conversation. ‘And of course Langley is a very pretty little village.’

Lisi was growing uncomfortable. She wished he would go. Just his proximity was making the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up like soldiers and she could feel the prickle of heat to her breasts. She remembered the lightning feel of his mouth as it caressed all the secret places of her body and thought how sad it was that no other man had ever supplanted him in her memory.

She cleared her throat. The last thing she wanted was to antagonise him and to arouse his suspicions, but she could not tolerate much more of him sitting across the desk from her while she remembered his love-making, the unmistakable glint in his eyes telling her that he was remembering, too.

‘You still haven’t told me how I can help you,’ she asked quietly.

Philip narrowed his eyes. He didn’t know what he had expected from her today. More anger, he guessed. Yes. Much more. And more indignation, too. Lisi looking down her beautiful nose at him for daring to reappear without warning and after so long. Particularly after the last words he had ever said to her.

Yet there was an unexpected wariness and a watchfulness about her rather than the out-and-out anger he might have expected, and he wondered what was the cause of it. Something was not as it should be.

He ran a long, reflective finger along the faint shadow which darkened his jaw. ‘You mean am I here today on business? Or pleasure?’

She gave a thin smile. ‘I hope it’s the former! Because I don’t think that the atmosphere between us could be described as pleasure—not by any stretch of the imagination.’

Oh, but how wrong she was! You didn’t have to like a woman to want her. He knew that. Liking could die, but lust seemed to have a much longer shelf-life. ‘Then maybe we should try and put that to rights.’

‘By placing as much distance as possible between us, you mean?’

‘Not exactly.’ He leaned back in the chair and narrowed his eyes in provocative assessment. ‘Why don’t I take you for a drink after work instead?’

His audacity left her reeling, and yet there had been weeks and months when she had prayed for such a proposition,when she’d tried to tell herself that what had happened between them had all been one big misunderstanding and that there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation for his behaviour.

But those hopes had soon dwindled—along with the growing realisation that Philip Caprice had changed her life irrevocably. And how, she reminded herself. He had brought with him trouble and upheaval, and if she wasn’t very, very careful—he could do the same all over again. And this time she had much more to lose.

‘A drink? I don’t think so. Not a very good idea,’ she told him in a trembling voice and then paused for effect—to try and hurt him as much as he had once hurt her. ‘I can’t imagine that your wife would like it very much. Or has she grown used to your infidelities by now?’

He stilled as if she had struck him, though he had been expecting this accusation from the moment he’d walked in. He was surprised that she had taken so long to get around to it. ‘My wife wouldn’t know,’ he said tonelessly.

‘Oh, so it all became too much for her, did it?’ Lisi sucked in a breath which threatened to choke her. ‘Did she divorce you when she found out about me, Philip? Or were there others? There must have been, I guess—I’m not flattering myself that I was something special.’

He felt the pain of remorse. ‘There was no divorce.’ His eyes were very green—colder than ice and as unforgiving as flint. ‘She—’ He seemed to get ready to spit the next words out. ‘She—died.’

Lisi registered the bizarre and unbelievable statement and flinched as she saw the brief bleakness which had flared up in his eyes.

Died? His wife had died? But how? And why? And when? Not that she could ask him. Not now. And just what could she say in a situation like this? Offer condolences for a woman she had unwittingly deceived? She swallowed down her awkwardness. ‘I’m sorry—’

He shook his head. ‘No, you’re not. Don’t pretend. You didn’t know her.’

‘Of course I didn’t know her! I didn’t even know of her, did I, Philip? Because if I had…if I had—’ She chewed frantically on her lip.

‘What?’ he interjected softly. ‘Are you trying to say that you wouldn’t have gone to bed with me if you’d known she existed?’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Of course I wouldn’t.’

‘Are you so sure, Lisi?’

She bent her head to gaze unseeingly at all the property details she had been typing up. Of course she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything other than the fact that Philip Caprice had exercised some strange power over her—the power to transform her into the kind of wild, sensual creatureshe hardly recognised, and certainly didn’t like.

‘Just go away,’ she said, her voice very low. ‘Please, Philip. There’s nothing left to say, and, even if there was, we can’t have this conversation here.’

‘I know we can’t.’ He leaned forward and the movement caused his trousers to ride and flatten over the strong, powerfulshafts of his thighs and he heard her draw in a tiny breath. ‘So let’s have that drink later and catch up on old times. Aren’t you interested to compare how the world has been treating us?’

Something in his words didn’t ring true and again she felt a frisson of apprehension. Why would Philip suddenly reappear and want to catch up on old times?

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Oh, come on, Lisi—what have you got to lose?’

Her freedom? Her sanity? Her heart? She shook her head. ‘I’m busy after work,’ she said, despising herself for being tempted all the same.

But there was something in her body language which told a conflicting story, something which put his senses on full alert—and, besides, he wasn’t going away from here until he got what he had come for. ‘How about tomorrow night then?’

‘I’m busy.’

‘You mean you have a date?’

Lisi stared at a face which held the arrogant expression of a man who was not used to being turned down, and came to a decision. She had thought that playing it polite might do the trick, that he might just take the hint and go away again. But she had been wrong. And the longer he stayed here…

Politeness abandoned now, she rose to her feet. ‘I don’t know how you have the cheek to ask that! My personal life is really none of your business, Philip.’

The fire in her eyes heated his blood, and there was answering fire from his as he echoed her movement and stood up to tower over her, thinking how small and how fragile she looked against his robust height.

‘Like I said,’ he murmured, ‘I’m just curious about ex-lovers.’

Her heart was pounding with rage and fury and with something else, too—something far more threatening—something too closely linked with the overwhelming desire she had once felt for him. ‘I don’t think that the extent of our little liaison really warrants such a flattering description as ‘‘ex-lover’’, do you?’

He wasn’t doing much thinking at all. Not now. He was entranced by the rise and fall of her heavy breasts beneath the thin white shirt and he felt an explosion of need and lust which made him grow exquisitely hard, and he thanked God that the heavy overcoat he wore concealed that fact.

‘If the term offends, then what would you rather I called you, Lisi?’ he asked steadily.

‘I’d rather you didn’t call me anything! In fact, I’d rather you turned straight around and went out the way you came in! What is the point of you being here? Do you honestly think you can just waltz back in here after all this time, and pick up where we left off?’

‘Is that what you’d like, then?’ he asked softly. ‘To pick up where we left off?’

Yes! More than anything else in the world!

No! The very last thing she wanted!

Lisi stared distractedly at the hard, angular planes of his face and—not for the first time—wished that she had more than one beautiful yet unsatisfactory night to remember this man by. And then reminded herself that she had a whole lot more besides.

Imagine the repercussions if he were to find out!

She gave a humourless laugh. ‘I outgrew my masochistic phase a long time ago!’ She looked down deliberately at her watch. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I really do have work to do!’

He remembered her as uncomplicated and easygoing, but now he heard the sound of unmistakable frost in her voice and he found himself overwhelmed by the urge to kiss the warmth back into it. And it was so long since he had felt the potency of pure desire that he found himself captive to his body’s authority. Compelled to act by hunger and heat instead of reason—but then, that was nothing new, not with her.

A pulse began to beat at his temple. ‘You don’t look too busy to me.’

Like an onlooker in a play, Lisi stared with disbelief as she saw that he was moving around to her side of the desk, with a look on his face which told its own story.

‘Philip?’ she questioned hoarsely as he bent towards her.

‘Answer me one thing and one thing only,’ he demanded.

His voice was one of such stark command that Lisi heard herself framing the word, ‘What?’

‘Is there a man in your life?’ he murmured. ‘A husband or a fiancé or some long-time lover?’

This truth was easy to tell, but then perhaps that was because she was compelled to by the irresistible gleam of his eyes. She shook her head. ‘No. No one.’

He looked down at her for one brief, hard moment and knew a moment of sheer, wild exultancy before he pulled her into his arms with a shudder as he felt the soft warmth of a woman in his arms again.

The blood roared in her ears. She wanted to push him away and yet she was powerless to move, so tantalising was his touch. Suddenly she knew just how a butterfly must feel shortly before it was impaled against a piece of card. Except that a butterfly would receive nothing but pain—while Philip could give her untold pleasure.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she breathed as she felt the delicious pressure of his fingers against her skin through the shirt she wore.

‘You know what I’m doing.’ Doing what he had been wanting to do ever since he had walked back in here again today. Doing what had haunted him for far too long now.

‘You need kissing, Lisi,’ he ground out and pulled her even closer. ‘You know you do. You want me to. You always did. Didn’t you?’

His arrogance took away what little of her breath was left, because just the sensation of feeling herself in the warm circle of his arms again was enough to make her feel as weak as a kitten.

‘Get out of here! We’re standing in the middle of my bloody office—’ she spluttered, but her protest was cut short by the ringing of the doorbell and Marian Reece, her boss and the owner of Homefinders, walked in, her smile of welcome instantly replaced by one of slightly irritated bemusement as she took in the scene in front of her.

‘Hello, Lisi,’ she said steadily, looking from one to the other. ‘I’m sorry—am I interrupting something?’

Hearing the unmistakable reproof in her boss’s voice, Lisi sprang out of Philip’s arms as if she had been scalded, thinking how close he had been to kissing her. Would she have let him? Surely not. But if she had…?

Her heart was crashing against her ribcage, but she struggled to retain her breath and to appear the kind of unflappable employee she usually was. ‘H-hello, Marian. This is Philip Caprice. We were, um, we were just—’

‘Just renewing our acquaintance,’ interjected Philip smoothly and held his hand out to Marian, while smiling the kind of smile which few women would have the strength to resist.

And Marian Reece was not among them.

Lisi had known the forty-five-year-old since she had bought out the estate agency two years ago. She liked Marian, even though the older woman led a life which was streets apart from her own.

But then Marian was a successful businesswoman while Lisi was a struggling single mother.

‘Lisi and I are old…friends,’ said Philip deliberately. ‘We go way back.’

‘Indeed?’ said Marian rather tightly. ‘Well, call me a little old-fashioned—but mightn’t this kind of fond greeting be better reserved for out of office hours?’

Fond? Inside, Lisi almost choked on the word. ‘Yes, of course. And Philip was just leaving, weren’t you, Philip?’

‘Unfortunately, yes—I have some business to see to.’ He glittered her a look which renewed the racing in her heart. ‘But I’ll be back tomorrow.’

Lisi thought it sounded more like a threat than a promise. ‘Back?’ she questioned weakly. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘Of course. You haven’t forgotten that you’re going to sell me a house, have you, Lisi?’

Lisi blinked at him in confusion. Had she had missed something along the way? ‘A house?’ He had mentioned nothing about a house!

‘That’s why I’m here,’ he said gently. ‘I’m looking for a weekend cottage—or something on those lines.’

Was she being offered a lifeline? In the old days he had done deals for rich contemporaries of his from university—they had valued his taste and his discretion.

‘You mean you’re buying for someone else?’ Lisi stared up at him hopefully.

Her obvious resistance only increased his desire for her—although maybe she knew that. Maybe that was precisely why she was batting those aquamarine eyes at him like that and unconsciously thrusting the narrow curves of her hips forward. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart—but I’m looking for a country home for myself.’

Lisi’s world threatened to explode in a cloud of black dust. ‘Around here?’ she questioned hoarsely.

‘Sure. Why not? I know the area. It’s very beautiful—and just about commutable from London.’ His eyes mocked her. ‘Sounds just about perfect to me.’

‘Does it?’ asked Lisi dully.

‘Yes, of course we’ll be delighted to find something for you, Mr Caprice,’ said Marian crisply. ‘I can look for you myself, if you prefer.’

He shook his head. ‘Oh, no,’ he contradicted softly. ‘I’m quite happy to deal with Lisi.’

Well, I’m not happy to deal with you, she thought hysterically, but by then it was too late. He was charm personified to Marian as he said goodbye, and then he took Lisi’s hand in his and held it for just a little longer than was necessary while he held her gaze.

‘Goodbye, Lisi. Until tomorrow.’

‘Goodbye, Philip.’ She swallowed, while inside her heart raced with fear and foreboding.

She stood in silence with Marian as they watched him leave and Lisi’s hands were shaking uncontrollably as the door clanged shut behind him.

Marian turned to look at her and her eyes were unexpectedly soft with sympathy. ‘So when are you going to tell him, Lisi?’ she asked softly.

Time froze. Lisi froze. ‘Tell him what?’

‘The truth, of course.’ She placed a perfectly manicured hand on Lisi’s shaking arm. ‘He’s the father of your child, isn’t he?’