Читать книгу Hers For A Night - Kate Walker - Страница 9

‘LUCAS?’

It took a couple of seconds for Georgia to register just what had happened.

‘Lucas!’

She shook the receiver angrily, almost as if wishing it was the man himself, but of course it remained stubbornly uncommunicative, the only sound that issued from it the monotonous buzz of the dialling tone.

‘Oh, damn you! You arrogant pig!’

How dared he? How dared he just cut her off like that?

Then again, he had said to give him ten minutes, so perhaps.

She waited, scrupulous to the very last second, before she dialled the number again, her fingers tapping restlessly on the chair-arm.

‘Pick up the phone, you pig! Answer me!’

But the repetitive sound of the phone ringing on and on at the other end of the line continued unbroken until, in a fury, she slammed the receiver back into its rest, cursing Lucas Mallory savagely as she did so.

So now what? Lucas might be perfect for her plan; she had even admitted as much to him just now, blurting it out without considering the possible consequences. But if he was going to use her declaration of how much she needed him as a weapon against her, a way of manipulating the situation from the position of power that she had inadvertently put him in, then was even perfection worth all the hassle that would inevitably result?

But he was perfect. And what were her chances of finding someone even remotely like him to act as a replacement at such short notice? After all, she had already told her mother, or at least hinted that she was bringing ‘someone special’ to the party, and the thought of facing her father alone after all was a prospect she viewed without any pleasure at all.

‘Oh, damn you, Mallory!’

Her fingers clenched around Lucas’s card, twisting it as viciously as she wished she could Mr Cool’s elegant neck. But even as she did so another thought struck home, one that had her smoothing out the piece of pasteboard and reading the numbers from it once more as she pressed the buttons on her phone with urgent haste.

Of course! He’d needed the ten minutes to get home! No matter how much she might want to keep things on a strictly business footing, Lucas Mallory, the man whose nickname ‘the fastest man on the track’ didn’t simply refer to his racing career, would never consider any negotiation with a presentable female on those terms. And if she had any doubts, she had only to recall that he had described her as—what was it?

‘Oh, damn!’

Just the thought of that provocatively seductive voice murmuring the words ‘my beautiful mistress’ had distracted her so that she had pressed the wrong sequence of numbers. Drawing a deep, calming breath, she started again, concentrating fiercely this time.

‘Be there!’ she muttered as the phone began to ring. ‘Please be there!’

Tensed up as she was, it took her several unfocused seconds to realise that the sound she could hear in her left ear was not the same as the one that rang unremittingly in the right. When she finally registered that the loudest, most persistent sound was in fact her front doorbell, she got to her feet in a rush.

‘I’m coming!’ she called, hurrying down the hallway. ‘I’m sorry! I—Oh, hell!’

As always, the tight-fitting door stuck awkwardly, and she had to struggle hard to open it.

‘I’m sorry! I was on the phone, and I—Oh!’

Flustered, out of breath from her battle with the door, decidedly mentally off balance and with her hair falling in tumbled disarray around her flushed cheeks, she was ill-prepared for the sight that met her eyes.

‘What are you doing here?’

The smile that Lucas Mallory turned on her was wide and bright, perfectly composed and totally disarming.

‘Good evening, Georgia. I’m sorry I’m a bit late, but it took rather longer than I’d calculated to get across town.’

‘Longer than.?’

‘Give me ten minutes’! All the time that she had been trying to get through to him on the phone he had been on his way here!

‘Well, can I come in?’

Lucas sounded mildly amused, almost as if he knew just what she had been through in the interval between the moment he had put the phone down and his unexpected appearance. His smile broadened and Georgia had a sudden, unpleasant mental image of just how she must look—red-faced and with her hair all over the place, dressed unflatteringly in an elderly beige sloppy Joe sweater with brown cord leggings. It must be obvious that she had been very much caught on the hop.

‘Or do you want me to wait in the car until you’re ready?’

‘Ready?’ This time she didn’t care if her confusion showed. ‘Ready for what?’

The tiny quirking of one corner of his beautifully shaped mouth betrayed an impulse to respond with some provocative suggestion, but he resisted the temptation admirably, saying instead, ‘For dinner. I take it you weren’t planning on going to the restaurant dressed like that.’

The look he turned on her clothes was distinctly uncomplimentary.

‘I wasn’t planning on anything!’

With an effort, Georgia restrained herself from banging her hand against the side of her head to clear the confusion. She felt as if she was appearing in some play where the script was constantly being changed without warning.

‘And I don’t recall you asking me out!’

‘I didn’t’ The gleam in those dark eyes was totally unrepentant. ‘But it seems the obvious answer.’

‘Answer to what? Nothing seems in the least bit obvious to me. Oh, look, you’d better come in.’

Perhaps once inside, back in the security of her own familiar surroundings, she might be able to think clearly again. But, unfortunately for her hard-won composure, the first thing that caught Georgia’s eye as she led the way into the sitting room was the telephone receiver, still dangling from the edge of the table where she had dropped it in her haste to answer the summons from the doorbell.

The thought of Lucas realising that she had still been trying to get in touch with him, the possible interpretation that he was capable of putting on that fact, sharpened her voice more than she had planned when she turned to him to ask, ‘Now, why are you really here?’

‘I told you. I want to take you out to dinner.’

‘Why?’

One dark eyebrow lifted slightly at her tone, and Lucas’s mouth twisted cynically.

‘Oh, don’t worry, darling,’ he drawled tauntingly. ‘I’ve no designs on your body, delectable though it may be. Believe me, I prefer my women with a rather more approachable side to their personality.’

She just bet he did! And if that crack about her ‘delectable’ body was supposed to flatter her into seeing him in a more favourable light then he’d better think again. She had no delusions about her own appearance, and knew she was certainly not the fantasy female type. The dig about personality was likely to be much closer to fact

‘I just thought that if I was to do my job properly, then we ought to get better acquainted,’ he went on.

‘Is that really necessary?’

‘Well, I’m hardly going to convince anyone that I’m hopelessly enamoured of you if I don’t know a single thing about your background.’

‘Oh, but—’

Just when she had thought she was getting things back under control once more, he knocked her for six all over again. She really should have thought things through more thoroughly.

The truth was that all she had visualised was the look on her father’s face when she turned up at his birthday party with Lucas Mallory at her side. But now she was forced to face the fact that there was a great deal more involved in all this than she had anticipated, and involved was very definitely the word for the position in which she now found herself.

‘I can’t see you being “hopelessly enamoured” of anyone,’ she muttered, knowing deep down that she also couldn’t see him really understanding any of her private reasons for doing this in the first place. ‘But surely I don’t have to tell you things face to face? Couldn’t I just put all the facts in a letter?’

‘A business memo, perhaps?’ Lucas mocked. ‘The file on Georgia Harding: name, date of birth, address.’

The final word sparked off a whole new set of questions in Gerogia’s mind.

‘And that’s another thing. How did you know where I lived?’

His shrug dismissed her concern as unimportant.

‘Why is that a problem? I know names and addresses and a whole lot more about all my other business associates.’

‘Yes, but I’m not just—’

Too late, she saw the trap he had laid gaping widely beneath her feet, and backed off hastily, but not quite swiftly enough. Lucas had seen her reaction, she realised, seen it and noted it with a smile that was frankly predatory, making her heart lurch uncomfortably.

‘In my case I think it’s more of an invasion of privacy. If I’d wanted you to know, I’d have told you.’

‘And the fact that you didn’t tell me was far more intriguing than any more direct information, as I’m sure you must know.’

That smile had grown, lighting but not warming the darkness of his eyes in a way that made Georgia think shiveringly of a soaring eagle focusing intently on the innocent rabbit or mouse it had marked out as its prey.

‘If you’re thinking that I did it deliberately in order to “intrigue” you, then I’m afraid I’ll have to disillusion you on that score.’

She could see only too well just how it would arouse his interest, of course.

‘I mean, I can see that a man like you, who’s used to having women if not actually throwing themselves at your feet, then at least coming running if you so much as click your fingers—’

‘You have a decidedly exaggerated idea of my appeal, Ms Harding,’ Lucas drawled with lazy mockery. ‘Or is it that your opinion of your own sex is so very low that you believe they have so little respect for themselves as to behave as you say?’

‘You’re a fine one to talk about respect!’ Georgia flung at him. ‘Particularly where women are concerned!’

That barb struck home, the long back stiffening in response, the dark head coming up, granite eyes blazing into hers.

‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’

Oh, damn, she’d gone a bit too far, said more than she had meant to.

‘I read the papers!’

‘And believe every word?’ he demanded cynically. ‘I gave you credit for rather more intelligence than that.’

Georgia wasn’t at all sure how to respond to the deliberately double-edged compliment, feeling as if she had been backed into a very uncomfortable corner.

‘And I have a friend-’

‘Oh, of course! And does this friend have a name?’

Georgia shifted awkwardly from one foot to another, feeling that she had been pushed into a corner yet again.

‘I promised I wouldn’t say.’

‘I see.’

The two syllables were so brutally clipped and curt that they made Georgia think uncomfortably of the sound of a door slamming shut, or the trap that she had imagined earlier snapping closed with bone-crushing force.

‘So you can throw out accusations, put any slur you fancy on my reputation, and I’m not even allowed to know the name of your informant?’

He was dangerously close to losing that famed cool. Georgia realised nervously, his potentially dangerous temper only being held in check by ruthless control.

‘You probably wouldn’t even remember her. And, besides, I don’t think your reputation—’ deliberately she gave the word a sardonic intonation ‘—needs any help from me.’

‘So that’s the way it is, is it? You’ve barely spoken more than a couple of hundred words to me and yet already you have me tried and convicted, found guilty without even so much as a chance to state my case.’

Georgia had to acknowledge that his assessment of the situation was close to the truth. The admission made her conscience prick her unmercifully, because normally she tried to be scrupulously fair.

‘And are you trying to claim that all of those newspaper reports were untrue? That you haven’t been linked with—oh, let me see.’

She listed names off the top of her head, counting each one off on her fingers as she did so. He let her get to nine before breaking in on her.

‘No, I won’t. I can’t deny that they were once part of my life.’

‘With the emphasis on once and part, I presume.’

Georgia was disturbed by her own reaction. She felt almost raw inside in response to the way he hadn’t even tried to reject her accusation of promiscuity, and yet should that bother her? If he wanted to risk his life by being so thoroughly irresponsible, then that was his own stupid business. She had no reason to be disappointed to find he was just as the Press had painted him.

‘And are you trying to say that you have never split up with a boyfriend, a lover? That you never realised that seeing someone was a mistake or that it was time to move on?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Of course not,’ he echoed cynically. ‘And I suppose that the so-perfect Ms Harding has never been dumped by someone you thought cared, someone—’

‘All right, you’ve made your point!’

‘Aha!’ Those dark eyes gleamed with unholy triumph. The eagle had swooped down on its prey with deadly accuracy. ‘Caught you on the raw then, did I?’

Hating him, though whether for his triumph or for seeing through her defences she wasn’t sure, Georgia drew a deep breath.

‘Oh, yes, all right! I’ve had my share of broken relationships.’

‘So tell me about them.’

Georgia blinked hard in shock, unable to believe her eyes as Lucas shrugged off his elegant pale grey jacket, tugging his tie loose at his throat and unbuttoning his shirt collar before settling himself in a chair. He leaned back comfortably, crossing one leg over the other with every appearance of total ease.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Tell me about them,’ he repeated, resting his head on the soft cushions and looking up, straight into her face, clearly noting the hectic colour that flared in her cheeks, the glitter of irritation in her eyes.

‘I’ll do no such thing! Just what do you think gives you the right to barge in here—?’

‘You did,’ he inserted into her tirade with infuriating calmness, adding with exaggerated care, ‘And I didn’t barge, you invited me in.’

‘But only because I had no choice! And I didn’t give you the right to pry into my life.’

Those dark grey eyes widened in an expression of carefully assumed innocence.

‘Oh, but you did, Gia. From the moment you lifted your pretty little hand in order to hid at that auction you made me part of your life, and, inevitably, that also meant that you became part of mine. Naturally, I was curious about the woman who thought that twenty-four hours of my company was worth the outrageous amount you ended up paying, donation to charity or not.’

‘No.’ Her mind flinched away from the idea of being part of his life. That was not what she wanted at all. ‘It’s a business deal—no involvement.’

But Lucas ignored her interjection and continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

‘And, of course, if you want me to act as if I’ve known you for some time, then the little I already know isn’t enough.’

‘It’s more than—’ A thought struck her, a vital question that she had wanted to ask earlier but other things had distracted her. ‘How did you find out where I lived?’

His smile was slow, lazily taunting.

‘I asked questions. You’d be amazed how many people were keen to tell me all about my new “owner”.’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Georgia growled. She was well aware of the fact that her action in bidding at the auction—for anyone, but especially for Lucas—had caused more than a flutter of interest. It wasn’t the sort of behaviour people expected of her.

‘So you know about your reputation, do you?’

If that was supposed to throw her, then she was more than happy to spoil his moment of pleasure by pulling that particular rug out from under his elegantly booted feet

‘As the Ice Maiden?’ she returned, with a coolness that made it plain where the nickname had come from, matching anything he had ever displayed. She even managed a smile, although it wasn’t reflected in her eyes in any way. ‘Of course I know.’

‘Why do they call you that?’ To her surprise, Lucas sounded as if he really wanted to know.

Georgia lifted her shoulders in a shrug that defined the subject as being totally unimportant to her.

‘They think that any woman who puts her career first and concentrates on it to the exclusion of anything or anyone else must be very strange or fundamentally frigid’

‘And yet in a man they’d admire it.’

‘Precisely.’

She wasn’t going to admit that he had surprised her, that his comment was the last thing she had expected. She had anticipated further uncomfortable probing into just why she put her career before relationships.

‘But of course you’d understand. After all, that’s how you run your life.’

‘Used to,’ Lucas corrected, continuing without any further elaboration, ‘And is this why you need an escort?’

‘Mmm.’

Georgia couldn’t quite meet those probing eyes, feeling irrationally that if she looked into them he might actually be able to see right into her thoughts and realise that the party was only part of her problem, that there was a great deal she was leaving unsaid.

‘I really think you should have dinner with me.’

‘And I really think that there’s no need for that. I can tell you all you need to know without any fuss.’

‘No, you can’t.’

‘Of course I can!’

Lucas shook his head adamantly, lounging back in his chair once more, his comfortably relaxed posture and the smug smile playing around the corners of his mouth infuriating her further.

‘Would you mind telling me just what is going to be so damn difficult about it? I really can’t see any problem at all. After all, you seem to have already started the process on your own. I mean, how did you find out where I live?’

‘As I said, I asked questions.’

‘You asked questions,’ Georgia said hollowly, not liking the idea at all.

‘And I got some very interesting answers.’

That caught her attention, though she couldn’t have said whether she was intrigued or angry at the thought of him prying into her private life.

‘Such as?’ She couldn’t help herself.

‘Oh.’

Lucas assumed a thoughtful expression, as if considering his options.

‘Such as the fact that you’re twenty-seven, unmarried, with no steady man in your life at the moment You have your own interior design company and I gather you’re building up quite a reputation.’

‘That’s not interesting!’ Georgia scoffed. ‘It’s common knowledge.’

‘It’s interesting to me.’

‘You can’t expect me to believe that! After all, you’re the one with the high profile lifestyle, the international reputation, why should you take any int—?’

‘And why not?’

Lucas startled her by getting to his feet as he spoke, coming towards her soft-footed as a cat, his eyes so deep and dark they seemed to hold hers with mesmeric force.

‘Why not?’ he murmured in a very different voice, one that seemed to wind itself around her like warm smoke, weaving through the rich strands of her hair, feathering over her skin, raising tiny prickles of awareness all over her body. ‘Why shouldn’t I be interested in—fascinated by—the most beautiful woman in the room at that charity auction? A woman whose clear, bright eyes make me think of a young doe in a forest glade, whose skin is as soft and delicate as the ripest peach.’

Reaching out with slow grace, he took her hand very gently, and entranced, hypnotised by his eyes and his voice, she couldn’t resist him, couldn’t fight against the seductive spell he was weaving. She almost believed he had the power to charm her soul out of her body like some long ago druid or shamen.

‘A woman whose hair gleams the colour of a newly opened horse chestnut, whose body could be the model for Botticelli’s Venus.’

Georgia hadn’t even noticed that he had raised her hand, lifting it the final couple of inches to meet his lips. It was only when she felt the warm, soft pressure of his mouth against her fingers that reality broke through the golden trance in which she had been imprisoned.

The burning crackle of response that flared through her nerves from that one point of contact, blazing up her arm and radiating throughout her body, made her snatch her hand away sharply. She would have been unable to ascribe the small cry that escaped her either to delight or distress with any degree of confidence.

‘Stop it!’

Her voice was high-pitched and shaking, and she cradied the hand he had kissed against her as if it had actually been physically burned.

‘I don’t want this! I—I—’

She broke off sharply, stunned into silence as Lucas grinned broadly, his eyes lighting with a devilish, totally unrepentant gleam that mocked her response for the overreaction it was.

‘Just practising,’ he murmured. ‘You said you wanted someone who could make people think that you are the centre of their universe, the sun in the sky.’

That grin widened, became positively malevolent.

‘And if I can convince you, then I can convince anyone.’

‘Convince-—rs; The word cracked disastrously in the middle as the reality of just what he was saying hit home to her. ‘You—!’

She couldn’t say which was worse, the skill with which he had duped her, or the nagging ache around her heart that told her he had only been able to deceive her so easily because some weak, foolish part of her had actually wanted to believe his extravagant protestations. No, not wanted, she hastily corrected herself, but she had listened to them with more attention than was wise.

Instead of which, every ounce of common sense, every trace of self-preservation she possessed should have screamed at her to reject Lucas’s attentions out of hand After all, she knew it was the type of thing he must do to almost every girl he met, and as such it was the last thing on earth she wanted. But somehow, even as she formed it in her mind, the stern admonition didn’t quite ring true.

‘But your reaction was a little lacking in enthusiasm,’ Lucas persisted, apparently blithely unaware of her withdrawal. ‘You’ll need to be a lot more relaxed, more responsive, if we’re ever to have anyone believing we’re a couple.’

The last word caught on some raw spot in Georgia’s strangely vulnerable heart, tugging at it sharply so that she had to struggle to ignore it.

‘It’s only for a few hours! Just for the party!’

‘A few hours can seem a very long time in the wrong company. And I presume that if this party means travelling to Yorkshire, then it also involves the necessity for an overnight stay. Unless, of course, you plan on doing a Cinderella act and disappearing as soon as the celebrations are over. If we’re going to keep up this farce for a day or so, and put on a performance that appears even halfway credible, then we’ll have to look as if we’re comfortable in each other’s company, as if we’ve been together for some time.’

Once again Georgia’s heart gave that uncomfortable little kick, making her draw in her breath on a sharp, uneven gasp.

‘We have to work on this face to face. So come on, Gia…’

His voice had softened again, becoming huskily cajoling.

‘What harm could dinner do?’

Shockingly, disturbingly, it seemed that gentleness could break through her defences more swiftly and easily than any more forceful approach. Georgia found herself considering both his question and the invitation behind it with unexpected seriousness.

‘I—’

But somehow the act of opening her mouth, of forming the single syllable managed to shake her out of the sense of weakness to which she had almost succumbed. Not for nothing had Lucas reminded her of her father, she reflected bitterly. Like her parent in her childhood, and others since, he wanted it all his own way, and to hell with anyone else.

She wasn’t going to be bulldozed into doing as he wanted! She wouldn’t let him take charge in this way, wouldn’t surrender control to him. If she did then he would take over completely, make her play by his rules, and that was not how she wanted things to be at all.

‘No,’ she said firmly, feeling as if she had just taken a hasty step backwards from a carefully baited trap over which her unwary foot had been hovering. ‘I told you, I want no personal involvement in any of this. It’s strictly business, and nothing more.’

Her sharp tone had Lucas’s grey eyes narrowing dangerously, the muscles in the forceful jaw drawing tight around his mouth and thinning it to a hard, slashing line.

‘Strictly business,’ he snapped. ‘Fine. But even in my business deals I try to give the best I can, and to do that I’ll need to know all the facts. If you can’t-’

Abruptly he broke off, shaking his dark head before swinging away from her, looking round for his discarded jacket.

‘No, this isn’t going to work,’ he told her, snatching the expensive garment up from the chair on which it lay and pulling it on, the controlled force of his movements betraying his mood and the difficulty he was having in keeping his anger at her prevarication in check. ‘It’s been a mistake from the start, so let’s just call the whole thing off before we make matters worse. We’ll say goodbye now and put it down to experience.’