Читать книгу Ransacked Heart - Jayne Bauling - Страница 6

‘CAN you believe it, Maria? The two of us together again!’

Maria McFadden turned sparkling eyes on the fair man who called himself Florian Jones.

‘You might not be sounding quite so enthusiastic this time next week,’ she cautioned him laughingly.

‘I won’t let you rain on my parade,’ he retorted. ‘We were always good together.’

The tiny inner frisson of unease that silenced her laughter was unexpected, and she hesitated before responding, examining the message of her senses and dismissing it. Somehow Florian’s words must have summoned the memory of that first time they had worked together, long years ago, and that sensation of a shadow falling on her had come from the past.

Her stilted smile reappeared, placing a dent at one corner of her mouth, but she warted a few seconds longer, making sure that the ghost had retreated again. This was Taiwan. Her present and her foreseeable future lay here, and they looked good.

Taipei itself looked beautiful from the high balcony on which she and Florian stood, by night a glittering bowl from which the hum and roar of its mind-numbing traffic rose to compete with the sounds of the party going on in the large room behind them.

‘But this time I’ll be your boss. The job may go under different titles on different stations around the world, but essentially that’s what I’ll be from Monday on. even if you do earn more than me.’ No longer haunted, Maria offered the eventual reminder mischievously, and Florian grinned.

‘In a sense,’ he allowed carelessly.

‘Oh, you’re the star,’ she conceded mockingly, currently in a mood to indulge his ego. ‘But not tonight, my friend.’

‘No, it’s your night,’ Florian agreed generously.

‘And as the party is for me, let’s get back to it,’ she suggested happily. ‘It was sweet of Giles to think of it.’

‘The real boss, when you remember that commercial radio is about money,’ he emphasised. ‘And sweetness doesn’t have much to do with it, my love. You’re an important lady, now that we’re getting so competitive. Someone told me that even the ultimate big boss himself was planning to look in this evening—probably to inspect your body and soul, now that he owns them.’

‘You’re exaggerating as usual. I never committed those when I signed my contract.’

‘Nevertheless, we’re talking ownership here,’ Florian insisted as they turned towards the open door. ‘He owns us, the studios from which we broadcast and the building they’re in, although by now he must have recovered whatever his original investment was several times over. You have to hand it to the man. He’s only thirty-four, and he’s done the same thing all over the Far East, taking over struggling and usually amateur or pirate radio stations like this one once was, and putting in people like me who pull commercial sponsorship because we draw listeners. His other interests are all sound-orientated too; he owns recording studios all over the region, for instance—that sort of thing, with the emphasis on sound as a commodity. Big bucks, darling. I guess we could call him a sound entrepreneur.’

‘That’s what radio is all about—sound.’

Maria paused in the doorway, surveying her new colleagues and their partners, a handful of them local people but mainly men and women from all over the English-speaking world, because radio people had a gypsy tendency to move on every few years. You met up again every so often, as she and Florian had done now. The Taipei job was only unusual in that it would be a new experience to work in a country where English was not the official language, but the presence of a large population of Westerners, the bulk of them American, ensured high listenership figures even with the competition provided by the existence of other English-language stations.

Maria had loved radio with a passion from early childhood, her faith in its power to survive unimpaired through all the years when television threatened to make it obsolete, and justified now that it was enjoying an upsurge in popularity in so many countries, thriving new stations almost daily news at present.

‘He’s here,’ Florian observed from just behind her.

A question died unspoken as she saw him. Her heart stopped, and when it beat again the shadow had returned, if shadows had weight, because this one oppressed her, but only momentarily. Then she was able to take the mental step that brought her out into the light again.

Her eyes blazed.

Once he had possessed the power to disturb her, but no longer. Now there was only hatred left.

The extent of her fury disconcerted her fleetingly, fully alive and as fulminatingly intense as ever, despite all the years that had gone by since she had last felt like this.

‘That’s Luke Scott, Florian!’ she said sharply.

‘Sure, didn’t Giles ever mention him?’ Florian was surprised.

Maria’s tenderly passionate mouth tightened. Did Florian think she would be here if the name had occurred in the almost six months of correspondence between her and Giles? But perhaps he did. Florian was renowned for many things, but sensitivity wasn’t among them.

‘No, and neither did you,’ she said tautly, her party mood a distant memory. ‘Florian, don’t you remember? That—that man had me fired from that very first job, the one you organised for me back in South Africa when I left school!’

‘Hell, I haven’t thought about that station in years.’ Florian laughed and shrugged. ‘There are always so many firings in radio that it hardly seems a big deal any more.’

‘It was a big deal to me at the time,’ Maria snapped, her tolerance of his perpetual self-absorption vanished along with her brilliant mood.

‘Oh, come on!’ he began to protest easily.

‘Don’t you remember the way he did it?’ Maria’s eyes were pure topaz. ‘It was after that weekend gig in Zimbabwe—but I seem to remember that you took two weeks’ leave immediately after that, so perhaps you never knew. It wasn’t the usual rationalisation procedure, believe me! I arrived at work on the Monday and was handed a cheque and my personal belongings at the desk in the foyer and was then escorted out by Security. It took me a week to get myself together again, and by the time you got back from leave I’d left Johannesburg because there weren’t any jobs for me there. The subject never came up when our paths crossed in Sydney three years ago, did it? God, Florian! And my father——’

‘Well, as you say, a rationalisation process was under way. There were loads of retrenchments,’ Florian reminded her indifferently as she broke off, choking on complex, raging emotion. ‘If you remember, Luke Scott was with us for six months as a favour to the station’s director-general, who was a friend of his, because our listenership figures were dropping and we were losing advertising. He had carte blanche as long as he revived our fortunes—luckily he knew I was the station’s biggest asset. You were just a junior, a sort of Girl Friday with no qualifications, hoping to learn the ropes.’

‘I needed that job. It was paying for my Communi-cations course.’

‘Does it matter now? You made it in radio without it,’ Florian pointed out carelessly.

Maria shook her head angrily, aware of the futility of trying to explain the dilemma she had faced all those years ago to a man whose self-centredness precluded his ever having had to make a choice between his own interests and someone else’s.

Her eyes had remained on the tall, casually dressed man at the other side of the room, noting that little had changed in six years. He still held himself with the easy confidence she remembered, his dark head carried at an unconsciously arrogant angle, and he still had that polish to him, the patina of success.

He had been talking to a tall girl with white-blonde hair, but suddenly he turned his head slightly and looked straight at Maria, and every muscle in her body clenched in furious, shocked resistance. Reason said he couldn’t possibly have any recollection of a nine-teen-year-old nobody he had once caused to be dismissed from her first job, but the knowledge of her bones was stronger.

Luke Scott remembered her.

‘I thought he came to us from Hong Kong that time? But he’s English originally, isn’t he?’ she prompted Florian, as if she could alter the truth by uncovering an error.

‘Hong Kong is where he’s based. I told you, he has interests all over this part of the world. We don’t usually get this much hands-on attention from him, but I suspect that Cavell Fielding has something to do with his presence as he’s lending us her talents for the launch of our new look—or sound, I should say. The blonde. She’s his Hong Kong operation’s media liaison chief. Well, that’s her official, public position. Unoffi-cially and privately——’

‘Ah, Maria!’ Giles Estwick, the Englishman who handled the station’s financial affairs and commercial deals, had appeared at her side. ‘I was going to give the two of you a few more minutes out there, but if you’ve exhausted old times you can come and meet Luke Scott.’

‘I must find Nicky,’ said Florian, and drifted away.

A dangerous sparkle of anticipation in her eyes, Maria drew her shoulders back and walked across the room with her host at her side. There were women present who were more beautiful than she was, notably the blonde beside Luke Scott and Nicky Kai, the world-famous Taiwanese ex-model, but the languid sway of Maria’s hips above long slim legs drew attention, as did her unusual colouring, an exotic combination of olive-toned skin, streaky brown and blonde hair and eyes that could be anything from copper to amber, depending on her mood.

She was aware of Luke Scott watching her, but heedless of anyone else. Dark grey eyes, Celtic eyes, were ironic, as was his smile as Giles made the intro-ductions, including Cavell Fielding, and Maria returned it with her own piquantly imperfect smile.

‘But we’ve met before, haven’t we, Mr Scott?’

She was driven by a need to get in first, her mood openly aggressive.

‘Of course.’ He was urbane, and very slightly taunting. ‘Although I don’t recall that we ever actually spoke to each other.’

Maria laughed, a lovely liquid sound, but it required an effort of will to lift her hand and place it in his outstretched one, and resentment surged as his fingers closed round it briefly and were removed.

Shaking hands with the enemy. The distaste she experienced was so intense that she felt dizzy for several seconds.

‘I was too much in awe of you to utter in those days,’ she confessed, lightly dismissive and matching the subtle mockery of his tone.

It was a palatable version of the truth, and one she had spent years working at believing. Six years ago she had been tongue-tied in his presence, and terrified by the strength of her reaction to him, her fear manifesting itself physically, stopping the breath in her throat, tensing her muscles and making her nerves leap every time he moved or spoke to anyone, and the rare occasions on which his glance had strayed idly in her direction, it had actually hurt her. It had been as if he came from another, alien world, beyond her experience or comprehension, a glamorous, glittering man who made her think of diamonds, so hard and sharp were the edges of his personality.

‘This was in South Africa about—what?—six years ago,’ he told Giles and Cavell. ‘Your first job, wasn’t it, Maria?’

‘It didn’t last long,’ she said drily. ‘Yes, Florian Jones had organised it for me.’

‘And since then the two of you have got together in Australia once, and now again in Taiwan, of course.’

The contempt, or criticism, was probably hidden from the others, but Maria was acutely aware of it, and incensed.

‘I got him the Sydney job,’ she vouchsafed with delicate emphasis.

‘And since Sydney she’s been in Wellington, gaining experience as a programme manager.’ Giles was under-standably intent on selling her appointment to their real boss.

‘So Taipei isn’t even a promotion.’ Luke sketched a smile, his tone still laden with mockery.

‘Just a change,’ Maria asserted blithely, hating him—hating him.

‘And a challenge? Cavell is co-ordinating our media campaign, and she’ll want to discuss it with you—won’t you?’ The quick smile he directed at Cavell was utterly different from the one Maria had just received. ‘But right now, if you don’t mind, Giles, I think Cavell should meet Penny Seu Chen so that they can sort out Maria’s schedule for the next few days, as I doubt if Maria has had time to familiarise herself with it yet. Penny is here, isn’t she?’

It was so skilfully effected that Giles and Cavell were metres away before Maria realised what was happening. She looked at Luke and he looked back at her, a stretched quality to the silence between them.

Dear God, why should she still find him so disturbing after all he had done to her?

The deep grey eyes were shadowed, but she didn’t miss the glitter in their depths as they skimmed her vivid party make-up and party clothes, brief ivory skirt revealing the length of her legs, the matching top moulded to proud breasts, the emerald of the silky, fringed shawl tied tightly about her waist a bright splash of colour between the two.

‘And what are you planning to do about Nicky Kai?’ he asked her very softly.

‘I gave up worrying about Florian’s women years ago,’ she responded automatically, her cynicism where Florian’s personal affairs were concerned so complete it had almost become tolerance. ‘Not that I was aware that there was a problem there. Mr Scott——’

‘Then maybe you should start again,’ he cut her short. ‘Nicky honed her fighting skills in the toughest business in the world, modelling in Paris and New York, and she’s not ready to move on yet.’

It distracted Maria from the attack she had intended to launch.

‘I’m not here to steal Florian from Nicky.’ It was scathing.

He shrugged indifferently, but contempt lurked in his eyes.

‘Then perhaps you don’t mind sharing, the way you once shared him with the little South African girl who was having such a miserable pregnancy when I was there trying to breathe some life into that Johannesburg radio station six years ago.’

Stunned, Maria drew a sharp little breath. Then her face hardened.

‘Is that why I lost my job?’

‘You lost your job because the station was losing money and you were superfluous.’ It was brutal, devoid of apology. ‘There was no discipline, and too many niches had been conveniently created for too many friends, lovers and other attachments. You were a financial drain.’

She laughed sceptically. ‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me that the manner in which I was dismissed was standard procedure?’

‘Desperate situations require desperate remedies. But why is it still important? Parting you from Jones that time doesn’t seem to have curtailed your ongoing little adventure—not that I thought it would.’

‘That job was the adventure,’ she remembered, but he had deprived her of so much more than just adventure.

‘Somehow I suspect that emotion is clouding your memory of that period,’ Luke returned incisively. ‘Jones was very much part of the adventure. Wherever he was, there you would be, hanging around even when you weren’t on duty——’

‘I was learning about radio!’ Maria cut in furiously.

‘You even tagged along to that concert in Harare when he was one of the compères,’ Luke recalled.

Maria’s eyes glowed amber, and hostility held her rigid outwardly. Inside, she was shaking with rage.

‘And that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? The way I was dismissed? It had nothing to do with whether I was redundant or not. You’d passed judgement on my morals and decided to punish me for something you could only have had the vaguest idea about. I’d just like to know from what sort of position you assumed the right to do so, Mr Scott. Have you led such a pure life yourself?’ Smouldering now, her eyes strayed significantly in Cavell Fielding’s direction.

Disgust made his lip curl.

‘Probably not so pure, but at least I’ve stayed clear of triangles,’ he retorted flatly.

‘Lucky you!’ she mocked.

‘Luck hasn’t come into it,’ he contradicted her arrogantly. ‘Just good judgement.’

Her laughter was taunting. ‘I didn’t see much evidence of it when you were dealing with me!’

‘No, I didn’t misjudge you, Maria. There was no chance of my doing so, the way you were flaunting your relationship with Jones—and you haven’t learned a thing since then,’ Luke added contemptuously. ‘You got together again in Sydney a few years ago, I’m told, and here you are a third time. I didn’t think you’d be that stupid, but I was curious enough to consent when Jones brought your name up with Giles Estwick when we started thinking about looking for a new programme manager six months ago.’

‘What a shock for you when I accepted the position,’ Maria snapped. ‘What are you going to do now? The contract I signed legally binds the station as much as it does me. I suppose you weren’t around and you realised too late what had happened.’

He laughed. ‘But I wanted it to happen. I have plans for you, Miss Maria McFadden. Haven’t you realised yet?’

She didn’t want to understand him, but heated recognition rippled through her as she stared at his mouth, as unwillingly fascinated by its sensual curve as she had been six years ago, when all her breathlessly adored heroes had suddenly become prosaic and petty with the advent of the man from Hong Kong.

‘What do you want?’ It wasn’t the question she had meant to ask.

Instead of answering it, he gave her an ironically considering look. ‘You’ve got a lot more to say for yourself these days, haven’t you?’

She flung him a savage little smile. ‘Does remembering how awed I was give you a thrill? Was it an affirmation of your power? I was nineteen—of course I was in awe of you. I’d never met anyone like you, and the fact that there was a rumour that you were newly in mourning for your father just added to the mystique, because I was young enough to find tragedy romantic.’

For a time she had even innocently believed that Luke’s father’s recent death had been responsible for the anger she had sensed in him, until she gradually grew aware that it was something personal, directed at her, his dealings with most of the station’s personnel characterised by charm, his impatience with any inadequacies purely professional.

‘Hardly in mourning,’ Luke asserted distastefully, his features hard with something akin to rejection. ‘The man had died and I was getting on with my life.’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve realised since that you weren’t like the rest of us ordinary human beings who are unfortunate enough to be troubled by feelings like grief and guilt.’ It was bitterly resentful, her hatred burning high as she remembered the months running into years that it had taken for her to convince herself that the guilt she had felt after her own father’s death was a self-destructive trap and just one more wrong done to her by Luke Scott. ‘But I was an innocent in those days. There you were, come to save our pathetic little radio station, and just about the first thing you did was scoop that concert in Harare, and at the height of the cultural boycott, because you’d emphasised our independent nature. We were actually presenting it in conjunction with that soft-drinks company, our three best DJs the compères.’

‘And you came along for the ride?’

‘Since Florian could hardly have taken his wife with him when she was so sick all the time.’

‘I understand that he’s still married to her?’

A shadow crossed Maria’s face. ‘Yes.’

Luke’s mouth curved derisively. ‘It didn’t bother you six years ago, so why should it now? Nicky Kai doesn’t mind.’

She flung up her head, rage blazing in her eyes. ‘You seriously believe it, don’t you? That I was having an affair with Florian? And that I want to get together with him again now?’

‘Not forgetting your reunion in Sydney.’ He shrugged expressively. ‘Why not, if the two of you are so good together? You were congratulating yourselves on the fact earlier, I know.’

It took her a moment or two to realise what he was referring to and remember Florian’s words out on the balcony.

‘Eavesdropping!’ she accused him caustically.

There was something cruel about his smile now. ‘Don’t worry—any more intimate reminiscences escaped me, as I discovered a strong disinclination to hear the sordid details of your relationship.’

‘Then why raise the subject now?’ Maria countered. ‘You can’t have any real scruples about our supposed affair or we wouldn’t be working for you, so I can only assume that you’re making this personal attack for the sheer hell of it, because you once got a kick out of disapproving of me—despising me—and you’re trying to recapture the thrill of it all.’

The grey eyes glittered. ‘You and Florian Jones are employed because you’re both good at what you do——’

‘Thank you,’ she inserted tartly. ‘As it happens, that’s what Flo was referring to when you overheard us, Mr Scott—our professional relationship. So if you don’t mind, let’s keep this conversation equally professional, please.’

‘When what’s between us is so personal?’

The tone was silkily challenging, and Maria’s heart jumped in startled recognition before instinctive denial asserted itself.

‘There’s nothing personal between us.’

‘You owe me, Maria,’ Luke added intently.

‘I owe you nothing!’ she retorted tempestuously. ‘If anything, the reverse is true. You owe me, Mr Scott, except that nothing can ever compensate for what you stole from me six years ago.’

‘I didn’t steal anything from you, and what you lost, you had no right to in the first place.’ He was remorse-less, but his voice had dropped to a silken taunt as he went on, ‘But tell me what you think it is I owe you, Maria. I’m interested to hear.’

‘You’ve got nothing I want.’ Maria was scornful.

His smile was blistering. ‘You want.’

‘Other than this job,’ she added challengingly, some perverse part of her almost wishing he would attempt to deprive her of it so that she would have something real, present and immediate to fight him for.

‘Which you have. This time I’m not letting you off so lightly—which is what I was actually doing when I had you dismissed from that other one,’ he stated outrageously.

‘Hardly!’

‘I could have destroyed you six years ago,’ he continued.

‘And didn’t you just do your best?’ Bitterness rose. ‘My job—’

‘I’m not talking about your dismissal or even the fact that it parted you from Jones, and I think you know it.’ The claim was confident. ‘I’m talking about the way things were between us. As I say, I could have destroyed you, or so I thought at the time, but you’ve turned out to be a lot tougher than I had imagined…not vulnerable or confused at all. This time I don’t have to restrain myself; I don’t have to be merciful. I know what you are and that you can cope.’

‘With what? Being destroyed by you?’ she quipped wildly.

‘Weren’t you listening? I’ve realised that you neither required nor merited consideration. Nor do you now, and this time you won’t get it.’ Luke paused deliber-ately, his eyes holding hers. ‘You’re not stupid and you’re not innocent, Maria. You knew what it was all about six years ago—what was happening.’

It was as if she was bound by silken cords, soft yet irresistibly strong. Maria couldn’t move her head or even lower her eyes, and time had slipped. She was nineteen and choked by the immensity of her reaction to this man, unable to breathe or stir, and panicked by the conviction that Luke was seeing into her secret self, invading, bent on vandalising and stealing. Every time he looked her way, that frightening compulsion went sweeping through her, the urge to let him look, let him absorb her until nothing was left and she no longer existed as a separate, individual entity. She was a confident, outgoing girl who usually interacted quite happily with people of either sex and any age, but she was reduced to silence in Luke Scott’s presence, so deeply did he disturb her.

A trick of time. She was twenty-five, her hormones under control, her identity secure and her spirit her own, safe from thieves. She showed Luke her smile.

‘Weren’t you listening to me earlier? Yes, I know what was happening. You were a romantic figure, come to restore our fortunes. The awe I felt was probably the first phase of hero-worship—the sort of thing some people call a crush. Oh, it was uncomfortable.’ She gestured mockingly. ‘And confusing, since I never reached the stage of identifying my affliction. Maybe I do owe you something after all. If you hadn’t made me hate you, it might have gone on for months.’

‘Ah, hatred.’ Luke was smoothly reflective. ‘Much more comfortable.’

‘And it lasts.’ Maria looked straight at him with hard eyes. ‘I still hate you, Mr Scott.’

‘Then call me Luke, as there’s a certain intimacy to hatred. It’s a very personal thing,’ he taunted. ‘And there you were, insisting that there’s nothing personal between us.’

‘You must have hated me too!’ she flared, caught, and angry enough to show her resentment, past and present. ‘All right, your claim that I was superfluous is probably valid, so why wasn’t I made redundant in the usual way? Let go, as the euphemism has it? There’d have been no comebacks for the station. I didn’t belong to a union, I didn’t know anything about my rights then, and I know now that I didn’t have any in that particular case…But you actively made my dismissal a punishment.’

‘You must have thought you merited punishment, for the idea to have occurred to you at all.’

‘The way I was dismissed ensured that it occurred to me,’ Maria asserted tightly. ‘Except that I had no idea what I was being punished for.’

‘Because you felt no guilt about what you were doing?’ Luke probed inimically.

‘My supposed affair with Florian?’ Maria just man-aged to keep her voice low. ‘Even if you hadn’t been way out there, you had no right to make something from my personal life the grounds for dismissal.’

‘The method of your dismissal,’ he corrected her. ‘You were due to lose that job anyway.’

‘You admit it, then? That it was personal?’

‘We’ve just been agreeing that what’s between us is personal, haven’t we?’

‘Only in the most negative sense, and only then, not now.’ Maria was defiant.

Luke laughed with genuine amusement, but something hard and unyielding still lay behind the surface gleam in his eyes.

‘More than ever now. As I say, you owe me something, and if you’re determined to go on pretending you don’t know that, I’ll be delighted to tell you what it is some time soon, but not right now. We’re attracting too much attention. In fact——’his upper lip curled

fastidiously as he paused thoughtfully ‘—in fact, if we didn’t have our professional connection to serve as camouflage, I don’t think I’d care to be seen with you. It’s just a pity we don’t live in the era when a man could set his mistress up somewhere and know she’d be there waiting for him whenever he felt the urge to see her, but was never, ever seen with her in public.’

Immobile, barely breathing, Maria didn’t speak for several seconds. Then she said tightly, ‘I’m not your mistress.’

‘No, but you’re going to be.’

This time her silence was longer. She had known, hadn’t she? Oh, yes, she had recognised the sexual awareness that was the dark other side of Luke’s hostility—and had tried to ignore it, but it was impossible to go on pretending it didn’t exist now that the preliminary skirmishing was over and he was referring to it openly.

Apprehension was a physical pang, the ensuing denial a wash of red-hot feeling. Never!

The thought was frantic as she dragged a desperate breath into her lungs. She hated Luke Scott, so——

Just say no.

Maria suppressed rising panic that was fatally laced with hysteria. Where had that stupid slogan come from, the facile answer of those who thought there were easy solutions to all the world’s problems? Nothing was that simple.

The way he was looking at her——

‘When I’m so cheap and nasty?’ she jeered, a soft acknowledgement of the contempt with which he was regarding her.

‘Cheap,’ he granted her ruthlessly, and smiled as she glanced in the direction of Florian, who was now dancing energetically with the exotically lovely Nicky Kai. ‘No, Jones won’t be rescuing you, even supposing Nicky is into sharing. He can name his price and I’ll pay it because he’s a brilliant jock, but that’s it and he knows it.’

In a happier moment, Maria might have laughed at the idea of Florian troubling to rescue anyone from anything.

‘I don’t need rescuing.’ She lifted her chin. ‘No one has mistresses any more.’

‘I know, but what other word is there? We’d both balk at “lover”. People just get married or live together,’ Luke went on relentlessly. ‘But those don’t apply to us as they imply a sharing that’s total, and there’s only one area of my life that I can bring myself to share with you.’

The insult enraged her.

‘Unfortunately there isn’t a single square inch of my life I want to share with you,’ she told him levelly, the mad, febrile fluttering of her heart a private weakness.

‘This time I’m not considering you,’ Luke returned callously, and produced a brilliant smile. ‘Come, let me introduce you to people. Who haven’t you met yet?’

As they moved around the room, Luke introducing her to the people with whom she would be working, Maria struggled to put his threats out of her mind and minimise her own reaction to him, both six years ago and now. Whatever she had felt at nineteen, hatred was all that was left now, and hatred ought to impart strength. Luke Scott meant nothing to her; he couldn’t do anything to her if she refused to let him.

But she remained disturbed, acutely aware of him at her side and only grateful that he despised her too much to allow himself to be seen touching her in public.

Even the convention of a hand at her elbow would have been intolerable. That was how much she hated him.

She glanced at him, almost hopefully, but the impact of his virility and arrogance remained undiminished, and her fingers curled into her palms, painted nails slicing the soft skin. He was quite simply devastating, a combination of grace and power, allied to the pride implicit in strong, superb facial bones over which dark coppery skin was stretched tautly. He was clean-shaven, although a faint darkness marked his jaw at this hour; inevitable with his colouring, she knew, her eyes moving upwards to his jet-black hair and then—a betrayal of herself—down to where the open neck of his shirt provided tantalising glimpses of subtly gleaming flesh shadowed by softly curling dark hair, all so emphatically masculine.

It was a dangerous moment, fascination obliterating resentment, but when Luke suddenly turned his eyes her way again, the contempt Maria saw in them restored hatred.