Читать книгу Red-Hot And Reckless - Miranda Lee - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

BEN scooped up this week’s copy of the Sunrise Gazette from the floor then kicked the front door shut behind him. He stripped off the wrapping, tossed the rolled paper onto his favourite armchair for later perusal, then strode out into the kitchen to stuff the shrivelled ball of plastic into the bin.

He grimaced as he reached for the whisky bottle which was sitting in readiness on the starkly white kitchen counter. His other hand up-ended the clean glass which sat next to it. Unscrewing the cap on the bottle, he poured himself a well needed measure.

What a day! What a life! Wall to wall bulldust!

He loosened his blue silk tie with a frustrated yank then retrieved a tray of ice from the fridge, plopping several cubes into the straight Scotch. He was scowling as he snatched up the glass.

Strange. He had always thought being a big-city lawyer would make him supremely happy. He’d have money and kudos. People would look up to him and think he was someone. Women would fall at his feet.

Well, he certainly had money. Corporate law paid very well. How else could he have afforded this snazzy unit overlooking Sydney Harbour? Or the sleek black Saab 9000 CD Turbo which occupied one of his two private car spaces in the underground car park, twenty storeys down?

He gulped down a large swallow of liquid tranquilliser, then frowned at his need for it.

A top-flight legal eagle earned more than most doctors these days, and Ben’s six-figure salary satisfied his craving for monetary success. But he hadn’t been basking in too much community admiration lately.

The status of lawyers worldwide had slipped somewhat in the past ten years. In a recent poll, public opinion had had them just above politicians and used-car salesmen. People generally thought of lawyers as shysters and rogues who charged exorbitant fees for services which were often ineffectual and inefficient.

The law firm where Ben worked as a junior partner was actually very effective and efficient, but very, very expensive. The rate per hour for a consultancy alone was exorbitant. Once a client actually hired them, the costs began to soar. Certainly they got results, which perhaps justified the high fees. Ben appreciated the adage that you only got what you paid for. It was the petty but hidden charges which rankled.

When he’d noticed yesterday that they’d started billing clients two dollars for every miserable photocopy, he’d seen red. But when he’d pointed out this questionable charge to one of the senior partners this afternoon, he’d been told curtly and coldly that crusading lawyers worked for Legal Aid, not one of the largest and most successful law firms in Sydney.

‘Maybe working for Legal Aid might not be such a bad idea,’ Ben muttered into his drink, feeling quite dissatisfied with his professional life at that moment.

Admittedly, he could not complain over his private life and his score rate with the opposite sex. There were an incredible number of beautiful women in Sydney who obviously weren’t as discriminating as the public over where or how you earned your money, as long as you drove a great car, dressed in even greater suits and took them to the greatest restaurants.

Over the past few years Ben had dated a steady succession of society beauties and career colleagues, plus the odd sprinkling of unashamedly ambitious gold-diggers. In a weird kind of way he rather preferred these last steely-hearted souls, because he empathised with what drove them to be so accommodating.

Poverty.

Or an aversion to it.

Ben knew about being poor. And he didn’t plan on being poor ever again. Or being without a pretty woman on his arm. It was just a pity his choice of profession hadn’t won him the personal esteem and respect he coveted as well.

‘Still,’ he muttered as he lifted the straight Scotch to his lips once more, ‘two out of three ain’t bad. Stop griping, Ben. Would you rather still be living with Gran back at Sunrise Point? Every time you become disgruntled with your life, think about the life you once had—living with a crotchety old lady on a ramshackle farm, being treated by everyone in town—and at school—as an outsider. And, worst of all, being looked down upon by the one girl you so desperately wanted.’

Amber Hollingsworth...

Ben’s top lip curled as he thought of her—as he still did far too often. What an insufferably spoiled, self-centred little snob she’d been!

But so bloody beautiful. The type of girl boys like him could only dream about. Blonde, of course. With hair down to her waist, legs up to her armpits and perfect, perky breasts which had jiggled tauntingly as she walked along.

And what a walk that had been! A cross between a wanton wiggle and an arrogant strut. That prettily pert nose always up in the air, her slender shoulders well back, her spine straight, but her hips swaying seductively from side to side as those long legs propelled her along.

There hadn’t been a boy in school—or a man in town—who hadn’t stopped to watch Amber Hollingsworth walk by.

Except me, Ben recalled, with the beginnings of a rueful smile.

Oh, he’d watched. But surreptitiously. Sneakily.

He’d never stopped and gawked. He would never have given the bitch the satisfaction.

And she had been a bitch. To him. But only to him.

To all the other boys at school, butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth. She’d been so sweet to them, flashing that megawatt smile of hers, widening those falsely innocent big blue eyes and fluttering those impossibly long, curling eyelashes.

All he’d got from the first day his gran dropped him off at school, the day after his sixteenth birthday, had been pitying glances, soon followed by scornful comments.

‘Really, Ben. Don’t you own any other clothes?’

‘Really, Ben. I don’t know how they do things down in the city, but up here we wear deodorant.’

‘Really, Ben. Didn’t your mother teach you it’s rude to stare?’

He scowled as he thought of that one time she’d caught him doing just that. Staring at her.

It had been a year or so after the welfare department had sent him to live with his gran. On that particular summer’s day Amber had been lying on the grass under a tree in the school grounds during the lunch-hour. It had been very hot, and she’d undone the top two buttons of her white school blouse. From where Ben had been sitting on a nearby bench he’d been able to see all of her cleavage and most of one of those perfect breasts, inadequately encased in expensive white lace.

Ben had been pretty sure she’d known he was ogling her all along, and had even shifted her body slightly to give him a better view. Finally, when he’d been totally engrossed in drooling over those luscious curves, her head had snapped round to catch him in the act. He hadn’t looked away, as he might usually have done. He’d just kept on staring.

For a split second he could have sworn she’d blushed—although it might have been the thirty-five degrees centigrade warming her cheeks—but then she’d tossed her hair back, lifted her nose and delivered that scathing reproach about his mother and his rude staring.

Ben had hated her from that moment. Hated her and wanted her at the same time. He’d vowed to get even with the high and mighty Miss Amber Hollingsworth if it was the last thing he did.

His need for revenge, however, had not been as great as the other, far more basic need she’d evoked in him—as had been demonstrated the night of their graduation ball.

He hadn’t taken a partner. Not because he couldn’t find one, but because if he couldn’t take Amber Hollingsworth, he wouldn’t take anyone. Such had been his obsession with her.

Actually, there had been several girls in class who would have happily been his partner—not to mention his latest girlfriend. By then, at nearly nineteen, Ben’s tall, lean frame had filled out nicely, and some of his female classmates had suddenly seemed to find his looks quite sexy.

Ben had cut his sexual teeth on their unexpected and quite brazen willingness during his last two terms in high school. But none had held his interest beyond a couple of encounters. For one thing he hadn’t had enough money to date a steady girlfriend. For another he’d quickly grown to despise their easiness.

Despite her overt sensuality and nymph-like beauty, Amber Hollingsworth had still been a virgin. Everyone in school had known that. If she hadn’t been, her latest boyfriend would have shouted his success to the rooftops and beyond.

Chris Johnson had thought he was God’s gift to girls, with his sun-streaked blond hair and bronzed torso. Sunrise High’s best surfer had reputedly made out with every half-decent-lookirtg bird in school, and had set his sights on the prize of prizes—the beautiful blonde daughter of the richest man in town.

So far, without much success, it had seemed.

Ben had set out to look as good as he could that night. It had been a matter of pride, not hope.

He’d saved every cent for weeks from what he’d earned selling free-range eggs door to door after school, and had hired a proper formal outfit. A smart black tux, a dazzling white shirt and a crisp black bow-tie. He’d even bought new black shoes. He’d also had his unruly black waves professionally trimmed. Gran had pronounced him very handsome indeed as she drove him to the school hall in her rusty old pick-up truck.

Amber had looked more beautiful that night than he’d ever seen her. Her dress had been virginal white, yet very sexy. Just down to her knees, with a floaty skirt and a tight top with tiny straps over her shoulders.

Ben hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. He hadn’t bothered to hide his feelings this time, letting his crazed but usually controlled desire off the leash for once, gobbling her up with a hungry gaze which no girl could have mistaken.

She hadn’t mistaken it. And she’d looked back. Long, agitated glances which had carried an intriguingly fearful quality, as though she hadn’t wanted to look back at him, but couldn’t help herself.

Her reluctant but compelling interest had stirred a wildly reckless confidence in Ben. When her boyfriend had abandoned Amber to go to the men’s room around midnight, Ben had sauntered across the dance floor towards her.

‘Come for a walk with me,’ he said, his words not a polite request but a blunt order. He often adopted an arrogant attitude with girls these days, and, perversely, it seemed to work. But he’d never dreamt he would talk to Amber Hollingsworth in such an offhanded fashion. Usually just her presence could deflate his confidence, though not a certain part of his anatomy. At this very moment, every single part of him was raging with a wild desire.

Her lovely blue eyes widened. She might have tossed her hair, but it was up, with long tantalising tendrils curling around her beautiful face.

‘Who do you think you’re talking to, Ben Sinclair?’ she retorted, though shakily. ‘I’m not one of those little sluts you’ve been running around with who let you do what you like down behind the gym.’

‘Just shut up and do as you’re told,’ he muttered, and, taking her hand, curled his fingers forcefully through hers. An electric charge raced down his arm—and up hers, judging by the look on her face.

‘Come on,’ he insisted, and began pulling her through the throng of gyrating dancers. Several of their graduating classmates stared after them.

Ben suspected he might have Chris Johnson to contend with the following day, but he didn’t care. At that moment Amber was meekly following his lead, and looking just a little bewildered by her own submissive behaviour. Ben was quite blown away by the dizzying feeling of power charging along his already dangerously heated bloodstream.

He didn’t take her behind the gym. He took her down behind the staff block, which was further away. It was also darker. He drew her into a recessed doorway and pressed her up against the smooth wooden door. He could hardly see her face in the darkness, but he could smell her heady perfume and feel her trembling body.

He didn’t say a word. He just started kissing her. And touching her. All over.

She didn’t stop him. In fact she was soon actively aiding and abetting him. Kissing him back, touching him back. She couldn’t seem to get enough of him.

His own fierce arousal quickly transformed to a passionate resolve. He would be her first. He would show her how much she meant to him, how much he’d always wanted her.

And ten minutes later he was doing just that, doing it while they stood there in that darkened doorway, doing it with a startling and shocking ease. She clung to his shoulders and whispered his name as he surged deeply—and unimpeded—into her.

There was no protest or cry of pain from his supposedly virginal victim, only a low moan of the most ecstatic pleasure. She began moving on him with an amazingly practised skill, squeezing and releasing his flesh as no girl had ever done to him before.

Stunned and stupidly distressed, he’d immediately withdrawn, standing there in a speechless state as he tried to come to terms with his shock. Her only reaction was a dazed groan of disappointment at having her satisfaction snatched away from her at the last moment.

His own far more crippling disappointment suddenly found voice in his tongue, and he tore strips off her in words which he could not remember afterwards. He only knew he called her all sorts of names. He didn’t mean most of them, of course. It was his hurt talking. He’d been a fool to put her on such a pedestal.

But she had the last word anyway. She put the seal on what he meant to her and how she really felt about him...by not saying anything. By turning up her nose and simply going back to the ball and dancing with Chris as if nothing had happened. She looked right through him when he came back inside. When he kept staring at her, she laughed, then curled her arms much more tightly around Chris’ neck.

He’d been shocked. And shattered. He’d never known a girl could be like that. Ruthless. Unfeeling. Cruel. He had heard that laugh in his head for years, repeatedly imagining how that evening had ended for her, wrapped naked in Chris’s arms, giving him all she’d given Ben. But much, much more.

Ben shuddered at his masochistic thoughts, forcibly snapping his mind back to the present. He hadn’t thought about Amber Hollingsworth in such depth for a long time. God knew why she still haunted him. She wasn’t worth thinking about. Females like her were only good for one thing.

Ben strode back into his living room, and there, waiting for him, was his hometown paper, the one which kept him in touch—not only with Sunrise, but with Miss High-and-Mighty herself. It had told him about her marriage to an American playboy all those years ago. It had informed him of her divorce and return home three years back.

Ben had hoped her homecoming after her divorce was only a temporary thing, but when her father had had a stroke early last year Ben had been shocked to read in the paper that Amber had taken the helm of Hollingsworths—a most unlikely event, considering she had never been academically minded. At school she’d been more interested in her hair and her nails than in computers or business studies.

But clearly she’d found her feet being a minor tycoon, and she meant to stay. A week before Christmas he’d read in the Gazette about her grand plans for a shopping and cinema complex for the area.

Her ongoing presence in town was one of the reasons Ben had avoided going home last Christmas. His gran always dragged him along to church, and the thought of running into Amber there, as he seemed to every Christmas, had been enough to make him accept Brenda’s invitation to spend the Christmas break with her and her family.

A mistake, as it had turned out. Even putting up with another disturbing encounter with Amber would have been preferable to enduring four days with Brenda’s incredibly snooty family. They made the Hollingsworths look poor by comparison. And almost normal. Seeing the real Brenda in action—my God, she actually called her parents Mumsy and Daddykins!—had dampened his ardour for her in bed, and he hadn’t taken her out since.

Why was it, Ben wondered, that he knew nothing would ever dampen his ardour for Amber Hollingsworth? She could be as bitchy as she liked. As snobbish. As promiscuous. As ambitious. Anything, really. And he would still want her.

Ben glared down at the rolled up paper. He conceded that it was this ongoing obsession with Amber Hollingsworth which made him keep on subscribing to this pathetic rag. Why couldn’t he get over his masochistic fascination with the female? Why couldn’t he bear to sever the link once and for all by cancelling his subscription and never returning to Sunrise Point, not even at Christmas?

It seemed that such a final action was beyond him. For one thing he could not hurt his gran by never returning to the farm. She was a right pain in the neck, but she had been good to him when he’d desperately needed someone. If it hadn’t been for his gran’s support and encouragement, he probably would have ended up on the other side of the law.

Ben accepted that this coming Easter—which was less than a month away—he would drive back to Sunrise Point and sit in that damned church again, dreading yet aching to see his eternal torment one more time.

He drained the last of his drink, placed the empty glass on the coffee table, scooped up the paper from his armchair and plonked himself down. With angry sweeping movements, he spread the paper out on his lap.

The headline jumped out at him, and then the photo of his gran. His heart began to thump as he read the story, a mounting fury sending his blood charging hotly around his body. But along with the fury was frustration. Why hadn’t his Gran told him? Why hadn’t she rung?

He practically ground his teeth as he thought of Amber Hollingsworth, smugly thinking she could sweet-talk a seemingly defenceless old lady into parting with her home and land. For a pittance, no doubt.

Well, she didn’t know his gran, did she? Amber thought she could have anything she wanted, when she wanted it, simply because she’d been born rich and beautiful. Her motto in life was, ‘I want. And what I want, I get. And when I don’t want it any more, I get out’.

He felt sorry for that poor bastard who’d married her. No doubt she’d led him a merry dance. She’d led every male who cared about her merry dances. Chris Johnson had been given short shrift straight after that graduation ball. He’d been no longer wanted once the richest man in town gave his darling daughter a fancy trip around the world. Chris had bad-mouthed Amber around town for months afterwards, finally revealing the true nature of their relationship. His opinion of her was no higher than Ben’s own.

Ben clenched his teeth hard in his jaw. He’d denied her instant gratification once, and, by God, he’d make sure she didn’t have it this time, too.

No way was Ben going to allow his Gran to sell that land to the Hollingsworths. He’d buy the useless damned farm himself, if need be! The time for getting even with the Princess of Sunrise Point had finally arrived.