Читать книгу Red-Hot And Reckless - Miranda Lee - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

‘PERHAPS you don’t realise it, Amber, but, aside from that scandalous business in the paper yesterday, your father is very disappointed in you.’

Amber closed her eyes momentarily, grateful that her back was turned to her stepmother. Every time they were alone these days, Beverly trotted out some subtle criticism or other. Plus some not so subtle criticisms lately.

It hadn’t always been like that. When Edward Hollingsworth had first started dating Beverly, over ten years ago, she’d been all milk and honey around Amber. Amber had quite liked the woman, despite feeling naturally jealous that her father suddenly had no time for her at all. When they’d married, during Amber’s last year at school, she’d tried to be happy that her father had finally found someone to share his life with. His first wife, Amber’s mother, had tragically drowned only three years after their wedding, and less than two years after Amber’s birth.

Beverly had been an attractive widow in her forties back then, with a grown son of her own who didn’t live with her. She’d kept up a very convincing sweet stepmamma act even after the marriage, though Amber had always wondered whose idea it had been to send her overseas as soon as she’d left school. And she suspected Beverly had been thrilled when Amber had married an American.

It was easy to be nice from a distance. Over the telephone she’d been sweet as apple pie. But when Amber had come home to live, suddenly she could do nothing right in her stepmother’s eyes. Yet Amber had tried to stay out of her way, going every day to the office with her father and leaving the home front totally in her stepmother’s hands.

Beverly’s change in attitude had become even more marked, however, after her husband’s stroke. Clearly she had hoped that her own son, Carl—who had a business and marketing degree—would be brought up from Sydney and put in charge of the family company, which had a wide range of business interests. Hollingsworths Pty Ltd owned several shops in town, as well as all over northern New South Wales. They also had investments in holiday resorts, units, restaurants, and a lot of land.

When Edward had given the job as acting managing director to Amber, Beverly had been hard pushed to hide her resentment. When Amber had begun making a success of her new position, the gloves had really come off.

Beverly especially hated the new adult closeness which had developed between father and daughter. She was always trying to drive wedges between them. The article in the paper had provided her with a wonderful weapon over the past twenty-four hours. But it seemed it wasn’t enough.

Amber finished pouring herself a glass of white wine whilst pondering her amazing capacity for making enemies over the years. Most of the girls at school had loathed her. Her stepbrother, Carl, despised her. Her ex-husband, Chad, had tried to kill her when she’d said she was leaving him. Chris, her high school sweetheart, had never forgiven her for making a fool of him on that ghastly night.

But all of them paled into insignificance beside what Ben Sinclair felt for her. No doubt murder would be too good for Amber Hollingsworth, in his opinion.

But she wouldn’t think about Ben just now. Thinking about Ben always disturbed her far too much, and she needed every ounce of composure she owned to combat Beverly once she got on her ‘tear Amber down to size’ bandwagon.

She turned to face her stepmother, feeling oddly curious over what the woman had come up with this time. ‘Really, Beverly? In what other way is Dad disappointed in me?’

‘Just look at you,’ Beverly said, with a faint curl of her thinnish upper lip. ‘Twenty-eight years old and you’re husbandless, childless and sexless.’

Amber’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Sexless, Beverly? What on earth do you mean?’ No point in defending the husbandless and childless part. They were all too evident. And if her stepmother’s tactless remark hurt, she certainly wasn’t going to show it. Amber was a past master at hiding hurts.

‘You know very well what I mean,’ Beverly continued curtly. ‘Oh, you’re beautiful enough, I suppose, though far too thin in my opinion...’

Amber’s blue eyes moved tellingly over her stepmother’s growing bulk, but she said nothing. She didn’t have to. Beverly’s snaky remark had said it all.

‘You haven’t dated once in the three years you’ve been living at home since your divorce. Clearly you don’t care for male company.’

Amber sipped her drink as she walked slowly across the finely furnished lounge room and settled herself on the silk brocade sofa. Beverly was sitting in her usual chair, nursing a generous whisky and soda.

‘You’re wrong, Beverly,’ she said, quite calmly. ‘I like male company a lot. I prefer it, actually, to female company. I enjoy talking with Father and the other men I work with very much. As for your accusation about my dating, I’ve been out to dinner with several men this past year.’

‘That’s not what I mean and you know it,’ Beverly snapped. ‘They were just business dinners. One could not call them proper dates by any stretch of the imagination.’

‘Oh, I see—you’re talking about sex!’ Amber said bluntly, having learnt since going into business that, occasionally, attack was the best defence.

‘That’s right. I’m talking about sex. Is that a dirty word with you?’

‘Not if it’s accompanied by the word ’love’, Beverly. I’m one of those peculiar girls who needs to be in love to enjoy making love.’

And that’s the most hypocritical thing you’ve ever said in your life, whispered her conscience. A lie of the most mammoth proportions. A whopper, in fact. The most memorable lovemaking you ever experienced in your life was when love had nothing to do with it.

Amber tried to keep the hot memory of that incredibly brief and incredibly torrid encounter from tumbling into her mind. But it was impossible.

She was back there in her head, and in her body. Behind the staff block, pressed up against the darkened door, panting as Ben pushed her panties aside and entered her as they stood there.

My God, she could still remember how it had felt as he’d done it to her! She’d been consumed by a wild, hot pleasure, plus the most compelling need. How would it have felt if he’d continued? she’d often wondered since.

She hadn’t been sure why he’d stopped at first. Till he’d sneered his contempt at her.

‘You might be incredibly beautiful,’ he’d snarled, ‘and you might be filthy rich. But underneath that high and mighty touch-me-not air you’re nothing but a slut, Amber Hollingsworth. A cheap little slut! Don’t go imagining for one moment I really like you. I just wanted to show you how easily I could have you. But, quite frankly, I’ve never been partial to girls who open their legs at the drop of a hat.’

If he’d been expecting her to argue, or cry, or fall apart, he’d been sadly mistaken. Amber had always possessed a fierce self-protective pride which made her react to hurt and embarrassment—and, yes, shame —by withdrawing behind a façade, a shell of cool, even icy indifference.

People often thought her a snob at times like that—or a hard-hearted bitch—but that was not so. It was simply a survival mechanism she’d learnt as a little girl when she hadn’t had a mother to advise or protect her. In those days her father had rarely been home, leaving the childminding to paid help who hadn’t given a damn about Amber on a personal level. It had been easier to withdraw from a distressful or confusing situation than ask a virtual stranger how to handle it. Eventually it had become an automatic behaviour pattern to deal with any kind of emotional conflict.

Which was why she’d always behaved so badly around Ben Sinclair. From the first moment he’d walked into their class, when she’d been fifteen, she’d been bewildered by her feelings for him. She’d been strangely drawn to those dark, angry eyes and his intriguingly antisocial personality. She hadn’t liked him, but she’d been attracted nevertheless. Oh, how she’d wanted him to look at her, to chase after her like most of the other boys in school. When he hadn’t, she’d tried to rouse some sort of reaction by making sarcastic remarks.

On the one day she’d caught him actually staring at her, with undisguised lust in that brooding black gaze of his, she’d been in danger of self-combustion. So rattled had she been by the instant heat he’d evoked in her, she’d only just managed to hide her fluster behind another of her highly caustic comments.

There was no doubt she’d hurt him that time with her barb, for he’d glared at her with hatred in his eyes. After that encounter he had not looked at her again with anything other than contempt.

Not till the night of the graduation ball...

Dear heaven, she’d nearly died when he’d walked into the school hall that night. He’d been smoulderingly handsome in that black dinner suit. He’d looked a man where the rest of her classmates had been just boys.

And he’d looked at her as a man would have looked at her.

His very adult desire had seared across the dance floor, sending darts of fire licking along her veins. She hadn’t been able to stop glancing back at him; hadn’t been able to stop wanting him to ask her to dance. Yet when he’d finally come over, he hadn’t asked her to dance. He’d asked her to go outside with him.

She’d known what he wanted. She’d heard the recent rumours about him, how he only took girls outside from school dances for one thing.

Yet she’d gone with him. Not only gone with him, but let him. Let him kiss her, touch her. Let him do what she had never let Chris do, never let any boy do before.

Not for one moment had she even thought of stopping him. Her body had had a mind of its own. Had been burning for him. Reaching for him. Begging for him. It was only afterwards that she’d realised it hadn’t hurt. No pain at all. Only the wildest, sweetest pleasure. Her flesh had opened and closed around his as though it had had a secret agenda, as though this had been what it had been waiting for all its life.

The hurt had come later—when he withdrew, when he spat his appalling contempt at her, when she understood that he’d done what he’d done out of some kind of sick revenge for all those times she’d looked at him with seeming contempt

Naturally she’d had to protect herself from the blinding emotional pain which had threatened to overwhelm her. Dear God, she’d just given her virginity to him. And there he was, calling her a cheap slut!

Spitting back a counter-attack in words would have been not only inadequate but impossible at that moment. So she’d retreated behind her usual hard-nosed shell. She’d managed somehow to return to the dance, to find Chris and pretend she’d just been outside for some fresh air. He hadn’t found out the truth till later, when her female classmates had been kind enough to tell him. She’d steeled herself when Ben had walked back inside. She’d even managed to laugh at something Chris had said, and, when she’d looked over Chris’s shoulder at him one last time, Ben’s face had been filled with even more contempt than before.

‘The only person you have ever loved, Amber Hollingsworth,’ her stepmother sniped, snapping Amber back to the present, ‘is yourself!’

‘You’re entitled to your opinion, Beverly,’ Amber said coolly. ‘But you’re wrong. I love my father very much. And he loves me very much.’

‘Oh, I know that. Your father is a fool when it comes to his precious darling daughter. He gave you the business to run in the same way he let you trot along to work with him every day. Just to keep you happy. To make up to you for your supposedly miserable marriage and divorce.

‘As if you ever loved that Chad person in the first place!’ she raved on. ‘All he was to you was another sugar-daddy who indulged you as shamelessly as Edward did. But when his money started running out, you left him. If you cared for your father at all,’ Beverly scoffed, ‘you’d stop playing at being a tycoon and give him what he really wants. A grandchild.’

Amber was taken aback. ‘A grandchild!’

‘Yes, of course. Men like Edward like to see their line continued. Unfortunately I was too old when we married to give your father more children.’

‘Dad has never said anything to me about wanting a grandchild,’ Amber said stiffly.

‘Neither would he. But I know he would like nothing better than to see you happily married and pregnant. But you and I know that isn’t going to come about, don’t we, Amber? You were married six years and never had a baby. But there again, having a family wasn’t the aim of that marriage, was it? It was money. Too bad there wasn’t much left for a decent divorce settlement. And now...now you’ve got your sights set on other goals. You’re into power these days. Power and position.’

Amber could only stand so much. She stood up, her hand tightening around her glass to stop it from shaking. ‘Now you look here, Beverly. I’ll have you know that—’

The telephone ringing interrupted her counter-attack. Amber knew June, the housekeeper, was busy cooking the dinner, and Bill was giving her father his evening massage, so she strode across the room and out into the hallway, sweeping up the receiver.

‘Amber Hollingsworth,’ she said, her businesslike tone a reflection of the control she was trying to muster. But her temper was fairly bubbling at Beverly’s unjust accusations.

‘Hello, Amber,’ a cool male voice drawled down the line. ‘I’m so glad to find you home.’

‘Ben,’ she croaked, then swallowed to clear the instant thickening in her throat.

‘Right in one. I’m surprised you recognised my voice. Or were you expecting my call?’

‘Er...’

He laughed. It was not a warm sound. ‘You seem at a loss for words. How unlike you, Amber. I recall you were always very good with your tongue.’

At that moment, Amber’s tongue lay uselessly in her mouth. Not so that awful night, she recalled. It had danced with Ben’s in an erotic tango during kisses which hadn’t been kisses but a total seduction of her senses—and her conscience.

But of course he wasn’t referring to that.

‘The silent treatment might have worked for you in the past, Amber,’ Ben went on coldly, ‘but not this time. I’ve been trying to ring Gran, but she’s taken the phone off the hook. Why would that be, I wonder? I can only imagine she’s getting calls she doesn’t like.

‘Whatever, I’ll be leaving here first thing in the morning and should be in Sunrise by mid-afternoon. I just thought I’d let you know that if you have any ideas of threatening Gran, or doing anything at all that might be construed as harassment, then I’ll have you in court so fast it will make your head spin.’

Amber found her voice at last. ‘But I would never do anything like that!’

‘Now, why is it I have no confidence in that sweet assurance? Have you spoken to Gran since the paper came out?’

‘No.’ She’d been going to drive out today, but in the end had decided not to. She’d spent the day going over the plans for the complex and seeing if there was any alternative to putting the car park on Sinclair land. There was. But it was far too expensive. Still, it was a solution of a kind, if her back ended up against the wall. Sunrise was going to get its complex, even if Hollingsworths had to take a loss!

‘I’m surprised,’ came Ben’s droll remark. ‘I thought you’d be out there, rolling out some more honey-tongued arguments to change Gran’s mind.’

‘Believe it or not, Ben Sinclair,’ Amber snapped, ‘but when I spoke to your grandmother the other day she seemed very agreeable to the idea of selling. And my offer was very generous—triple what that land is worth on the open market. I have no idea what changed her mind, or gave her the attitude she expressed in the paper. Unless it was you,’ she added tartly.

His momentary silence surprised Amber.

‘I haven’t spoken to Gran since last Sunday night,’ he said curtly at last. ‘Might I ask when you made this very generous offer?’

‘Monday.’

‘Well, as you can see, I had nothing to do with Gran’s supposed change of attitude. Maybe you mistook her agreement in the first place. I would imagine you’re pretty used to assuming most people would do what you want, Amber. The Sinclairs must be proving a bit of a thorn in your side.’

Amber gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t think I mistook her attitude at all. Look, if you’ll be home tomorrow afternoon, I’d like the opportunity to speak to you both together. I believe, once I explain the full situation, you’ll be able to make your gran see how important this complex really is to Sunrise Point’s future. Ben, you have no idea how many local people don’t have jobs. Especially amongst the young.’

‘My God, Amber, this new you is quite a stunning change from the old Amber. She wouldn’t have given a damn about Sunrise Point’s future. After all, she couldn’t get out of the old hometown fast enough. The Amber I came to know and love certainly wouldn’t have sounded so passionate about things local and economical. I’m sure I will find it fascinating to hear your selling spiel.

‘Be at the farm at four,’ he ordered brusquely. ‘But don’t bother bringing the Hollingsworth chequebook. Because we’re not selling. Not now. Not ever.’

He hung up, leaving Amber in a state of mounting fury. Who did that supercilious, sarcastic bastard think he was? No one had left town more quickly than he had. No one was more selfish—or less socially conscious.

As for his gran, it was her land still, wasn’t it? If Amber could persuade her to sell, then Ben Sinclair could just butt out.

She wouldn’t be at the farm at four. She’d get there at three, with a damned sight more than the Hollingsworth chequebook in hand. She’d have a few other subtle enticements up her sleeve which an old lady might appreciate.

Ben wanted war? Well, he’d get war!

‘Who was that?’ Beverly demanded to know. Amber replaced the receiver and turned to face her sour-faced stepmother. Beverly wanted war too, it seemed. Still, there was no point in lying to her.

‘Ben Sinclair,’ Amber said a touch aggressively. ‘Pearl Sinclair’s grandson.’

Beverly’s eyebrows lifted, then fell. ‘Your father said he’d be in touch. What did he want?’

‘To see me. Out at the farm. Tomorrow afternoon.’

‘So what’s he like, this Ben Sinclair?’

‘Tall, dark and handsome.’

‘Really! How old?’

‘Thirtyish,’ Amber guessed. He’d been about a year older than herself, and she was twenty-nine next birthday.

‘Smart?’

‘Super-smart, and sexy as hell.’

Beverly’s eyebrows lifted some more. ‘Really!’

‘He’s also a bastard of the first order!’

Beverly blinked. ‘Goodness, Amber, I’ve never heard you speak so passionately about a man before. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re not sexless after all. Maybe you just need the right male to bring out the fire in you. I’m intrigued. I think I shall invite this Ben Sinclair to dinner.’

‘Don’t you dare.’

‘Amber, this is my home. I will invite whom I please.’

‘I think Dad might have something to say about that.’

‘I think your father will approve wholeheartedly. He always says the best place for one’s enemies is under your own roof where you can see them. I’ll go ask him.’

She swanned off, leaving Amber to smoulder all by herself.

Oh, go and invite him to dinner, she thought at last with reckless anger. I don’t care. At least that way I’ll have all my current enemies present under the one roof as well!