Читать книгу Charm - Flora Dain - Страница 6

When I start round the pool the first thing I find out about getting close to Mr high-and-mighty Darnley Wolfe is that nobody gets close. I thread my way through the crowded sun-loungers, past tables humming with easy chatter and bright with designer linens, but when I reach the ring of empty tables that surrounds him a security guard with a face like a cliff bars my way.

Irritated, I turn away. Instantly another guard bars my way, this time with double-cleft chins. Unsettled now, my temper rising, I glance back over my shoulder to see a silent signal has been given, a path mysteriously cleared and Cliff Face is now waving me through. A long cool drink is being set for me at a new place at Darnley Wolfe’s hallowed table. As I approach the waitress gives me a frightened nod and scuttles away.

As far as I can tell Darnley Wolfe has remained perfectly still throughout. His signals must be telepathic. I perch on the seat facing him and quietly start to panic.

He’ll have forgotten me. It’s been a long time.

Maybe he was dozing behind his shades and not looking at me at all …

‘Ella. It’s been a while.’

He remembers. He even knows my name. Shock slams me on autopilot and I smile politely. ‘Darnley.’

It’s the first time I’ve ever said his name out loud. A faint tremor goes through me like I’m bringing something to life. Miss Normal from New England notes that he stays seated to greet me but finally takes off his shades – the politeness of millionaires.

As he does so I almost wish he’d left them on. His look is hard and cold. Any fleeting hope that something remains of our wonderful night together instantly fades. Now I must face this stunning, powerful man knowing his heart is closed. Our brief moments of passion no longer offer any way in.

And he’s still watching me.

Curious now, I open my mouth to ask him why he’s here just as his low, stirring voice cuts in with the same question. As I blurt out an answer I forget my question. ‘Ryan – that’s my ex – asked me to meet him here. He wants to talk to me about something. He said it was urgent.’

Darnley’s brow lifts. ‘He’s here now?’

I shrug. I long ago lost interest in Ryan’s movements. ‘Apparently not. They told me at the desk he’s gone out for the day. Fishing.’

‘Fishing?’ His lip twists at the corner.

With a prickle of unease I remember I never once heard Ryan mention fishing. Why now? ‘That’s what he said. Does it matter?’

‘You were involved with him the night we met?’

Colour glows in my cheeks. So he does remember.

‘Yes. But not – that was why – I’d just dumped him.’ I break off, scarlet now, and take a sip of my drink. I’m mad at myself and madder still at the collapse of my plan. What happened to walking right up, saying hi and walking away?

He’s frowning. ‘So you two are – what? Getting back together?’

‘He just wanted to meet me. I was touring anyway. I broke it off for a few days to fly down here.’ I tail off and frown, puzzled. ‘Why? Is there a problem?’

He leans back, his eyes narrow. He casually ignores my question. ‘So where is he?’

I summon my patience. ‘I told you, I don’t know. Why’s it so important? Should I call the police?’ Now I’m uneasy. I’m glad to be free of Ryan but I wish him no harm.

Darnley replaces his shades and rises to his feet with feline grace. ‘Let’s hope it won’t come to that. Perhaps you’ll both join me for dinner. Say we meet around eight, in the President Bar? If he’s late we’ll save him a place.’

He glances at his watch, hinting he’s got better things to do and dismissing any lingering notion that I feature anywhere on his map. Like it’s an afterthought, he holds out his hand and I touch it lightly, feeling a tingle from his fingers, and then he turns and strolls away.

Miss Normal’s mission lies in ruins. His spell’s as strong as ever.

* * *

The President Bar looks like a movie set, all smiling guests, hushed chatter and the clatter and chink of glasses. It’s warm here and there’s a mix of evening dress and poolside chic but the general feeling is formal. The guests look well heeled and have a kind of generous ease about them. It’s not just from crossing into a new time zone. I’m in new country here, warm with broad smiles, real suntans and vigorous handshakes. All around me easy Southern drawls reflect warmer climes and make me feel very prim and New Englandish.

After the shake-up of my encounter with Darnley this afternoon I’m now fully restored. A refreshing shower and an hour’s pampering in my room worked wonders. Afterwards I tried to call Ryan but he was still not answering so to pass the time I worked down my call-list. My parents are still on a cruise, one of my friends is off on a date and too hyper to talk any sense, and two more are trekking in the Yosemite and have a poor signal, so I gave up.

On the way down I asked again at Reception but Ryan’s still not back.

At last I make it to the bar. As I take a look around I take a deep breath, smile and make a conscious effort to relax. I’m on holiday after all and this is an adventure for me. I’ve never been this far west.

The bar’s larger than I expected. It’s more a reception area for a selection of restaurants. Tall windows open onto the palm-fringed terrace around the pool, letting in warm, scented night air from the Texas heartlands. To me it’s as exotic as the South Seas.

As I weave my way through the tables I feel a flare of excitement. My short silk dress in a plain bright colour fits well and feels good. The matching heels I stuffed in my case at the last minute make me feel tall and graceful. I’m no great hairdresser but my hair’s out on parole from its daytime ponytail and piled up loosely on my head, stray curls and wisps peeking out shyly and doing duty as decoration. I don’t wear much jewellery.

I feel heady, like I’m on a date.

As I catch sight of Darnley my heart gives a thump. He’s at the far side of the room talking with a small knot of business people. He looks handsome and distinguished in a dark suit. Cliff Face hovers nearby and I notice a few more of the stony-faced henchmen, formally dressed now and kind of blending into the crowd, their watchful expressions giving nothing away.

I can only hope they’re having fun.

The next instant Darnley looks up and sees me, sweeping me with a look that shifts the ground under my feet. Heat flares through me in a flame of arousal so acute I feel almost weak. How exciting must it be to actually date someone like this? Maybe I should have called that number after all …

But as I walk across the room to greet him I pull myself together. Everything about him warns me this man is dangerous. Something tells me he doesn’t date Miss Normal from New England without good reason, and the odd, slanted questions he fired off at me this afternoon mask some kind of problem.

He watches me draw near, once more unnaturally still. ‘Ella.’

The sensual lilt he gives to my name sends a thrill through me. The intensity of his look paints colour in my cheeks.

We find a quiet table in an alcove and toy with our drinks until the waiter leaves us in peace. I’m foolishly asking Darnley whether he’s here for business or fun – forgetting his company’s hosting some function soon so obviously he’d be here – when all at once he reaches out and runs a finger along my wrist bone.

I halt mid-sentence.

‘Your wrist is very slender.’ He’s gazing at it, his expression rapt, his attention suspended. I hold very still as he takes my hand, turns it over in both his own, slides his fingertips over my wrist and circles it with his thumb and forefinger. His touch is doing strange things to me.

The feel of his hand holding me like this is exciting but oddly his touch is not close. It’s like he’s measuring me. What’s so interesting about wrists? Is he making up his mind to say something else?

‘It was a shock, seeing you again.’ His murmur is so low I barely hear it. He might be talking to himself.

His attention is still focused on my wrist and for a few seconds he circles it with his finger and thumb. They curl round it easily, meeting to complete the circle on the soft, sensitive place at the inside where my pulse is now in overdrive.

There’s something very intense, disturbing even, about his stillness as he does this. I hardly dare breathe. At the same time I’m keenly aware that we’re in a public place, surrounded by smiling, elegant people, but for some reason I don’t understand this is a sudden and very private moment between us.

When he lifts his eyes to mine I see a brief gleam in them that fades quickly into a polite smile.

‘You were saying?’

I take a deep breath. Do I care why he’s here? The main thing is he is. And Ryan may get here any moment and then all hope of saying anything personal will be lost for ever. ‘I may have given you the wrong impression the first time we met. I’m not really the person you think I am.’

Darnley’s smile twists instantly in a sardonic gleam. ‘You thought I hadn’t guessed?’

‘I just thought you should know,’ I backtrack, stiff and a tad offended.

I expected – what? Surprise? Disappointment? His open, forceful sneer is a shock.

His anger practically flows over me in a wave of heat. I flounder, stunned as much by his sudden change of mood as by his low tone, now hard-edged and bitter.

The flash in his eyes punctures the illusion that this was a romantic moment. ‘I guessed soon after. I can’t say I’m surprised. Oldest trick in the book.’

How cruel. A stinging feeling prickles behind my eyes. I fight it back and hold my ground. ‘Yes, well, I just thought you should know. And for the record I really enjoyed it. I guess you should know that too.’

His eyes snap in disbelief. ‘You enjoyed it? So that makes it OK, does it?’

I swallow, bewildered at his cruelty but determined to finish. ‘It was – the most thrilling night of my life.’

His grin turns into amazed disbelief. ‘Thrilling? So how do you plan to top it? Raid Fort Knox?’

I frown. ‘Wait – what are we talking about here?’

His eyes burn into mine as he leans forward and lowers his voice. ‘Hey, that’s a good question. What are you talking about?’

I colour and look away.

His low murmur etches into me like acid. ‘Ah, yes, the honey-trap. That’s what made me smell a rat. I’m talking about you and your former boyfriend defrauding me of five million dollars.’

There’s an explosion between us as my glass shatters on the rim of the table and sprays vodka martini everywhere.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later we’re alone in his suite. Attentive waiters and offers of medical help have all been impatiently waved away. On the way up here shock dried the roof of my mouth and kept my blank gaze fixed on his face. Now feeling’s flooding back and I want answers.

‘Just tell me what’s going on, Darnley, please. And start at the beginning. I’m sure this is all a simple misunderstanding.’

To do him justice, he seems equally shaken. Concern furrows his face as he fetches me water when I decline brandy and start to shiver.

‘Hey, you’re cold. You’re in shock.’ He puts his arm around my shoulders as I sip and I recover quickly, his warmth and closeness bringing a glow to my cheeks faster than any spirit.

He looks worried but the barrier’s still there. I nestle closer for warmth and all at once I sense him grow still.

‘Ella, can I try something?’

I stare up at him in alarm. ‘What kind of thing?’

What now? He wants to examine my phone? Check my emails? Prove I’m a liar?

He frowns, like he has to concentrate, his face barely inches from mine. ‘I’m not sure. I just want to make up my mind about something.’

He brushes my lips with his. I sit perfectly still for a long moment as sensation rockets through me. All at once something that reignited the second I saw him earlier this afternoon flares into a forest fire and I launch myself at him. In seconds I’m pinned beneath him on the sofa and he’s kissing me deep, his tongue surging into my mouth in a full-on invasion. One hand captures my wrists and hauls them high over my head. The other dives deep into the cloth-filled spaces between us as he probes the soft warmth between my thighs. The mounds of my breasts are crushed under the weight of the pounding heartbeat drumming through the muscles of his chest.

I writhe below him, thrilled at my capture, relishing imprisonment. I offer up all the spent, frustrated passion I’ve battened down so long, burning all the more fiercely now because it had no hope of release until he suddenly unleashed it.

Miss Normal heads for home.

At last he pulls away and I remember to breathe. He sits up and helps me rearrange myself and now I feel shakier than before, for different reasons.

I smile up at him through my eyelashes before I remember he doesn’t do playful. ‘Did that help any?’

He’s still panting, his chest hauling in air like he’s just run a race and inexplicably failed to finish. He darts me an irritated look. ‘Not really. Where were we?’

‘Industrial secrets?’ I prompt, gently.

He quits the sofa like he needs more air. Briskly he pulls up a chair, sits and leans forward with his arms on his knees, his fine long hands clasped loosely between them. ‘Know anything about thermal imaging?’

I roll my eyes and he sighs.

‘OK. Put simply, it’s taking pictures of heat sources. Detects people or animals in the dark. Useful for surveillance, war-zones, hunting, riot control. One of my companies was developing a cheap, mass-produceable micro-imager that could be used in home surveillance units. Not only that but it could calibrate the image to a precise enough ratio to give an instant read-out of the likely size and type of the source. So, say your home alarm system is triggered late at night while you’re away, it would tell you or your local police whether the intruder’s a cat, or a man or a group of men, their height and weight, whether they have weapons, and then send the data to your phone so you could decide on the best response.’

This is not entirely new to me. Ryan often came over all technical – one of his few charms, as I recall. Anyway it made a change from literature. When he took the trouble to keep it simple I even managed to follow some of it.

‘Did Mitchell talk much about his work?’

‘I only know he majored in surveillance technology. I gathered that was why he joined your company in the first place. But what’s the connection?’

Darnley’s eyes narrow to slits. ‘We sacked him. He was caught passing commercially sensitive stuff to a rival. But he was part of the team developing the thermal imaging software and when he left he took the untested version and all the plans with him and immediately set up his own company to develop it.’

I frown. Ryan was always wrapped up in his work. I could forgive that – so am I. What finished it for me were tiny lies, the constant lateness and the feeble excuses. He even filched money from my bank account. But this? I shake my head. ‘I can’t believe he’s a criminal. I’ve known him since college. He’s just – self-absorbed.’

As far as I was concerned it was the upgrade that did it. She was the last in a long line of female straws.

Troubled, I scan Darnley’s stern, classical face. With a shock I see he’s looking at me intently, his expression alive with something almost like pain. ‘So – you want to find him and make him give it back, is that it?’

He’s frowning now. ‘No, I just want to give him a piece of my mind. He used our resources to work on our idea and then stole it – along with the time and effort we’d invested in it. But his version’s untested, unreliable. He won’t get far if he tries to sell it on. I want you to give it back.’

I grin in disbelief. ‘Me? It’s got nothing to do with me.’

His eyes glitter dangerously. ‘I’d like very much to believe that. But we both know there’s a little more to it than that, don’t we, Ella?’

‘We do?’ Once more the conversation is slipping away from me. Miss Normal has given up and gone home and now nothing’s normal any more. And to prove it he suddenly says something so high and wild I know I must be dreaming.

‘Yes, we do. The patent he applied for is in your name. Right now you must be worth – at a rough guess – some five or six million dollars.’