Читать книгу By Request Collection Part 2 - Шантель Шоу, Natalie Anderson - Страница 39

THE little art gallery was peaceful and soothing on Grace’s jangling nerves now that Beth had closed up for the day and gone home; Grace needed peace as much as she needed some sleep after a day doing battle with the likes of Seth Mason.

Left to her unexpectedly four years ago by the father she’d scarcely known, the gallery had been a run-down little shop selling artists’ materials, and had come with a sitting tenant in the flat above and a whole load of debt.

Never a fan of Matthew Tylers’ for abandoning his daughter as he had, Lance Culverwell had urged Grace to give it up.

‘It will only bring you heartache, child,’ she could still hear her grandfather saying. ‘Which is all that man ever brought you while he was alive.’

But something deep down inside Grace hadn’t been able to let the gallery go and, refusing any help from her grandfather, she had started to pay the outstanding mortgage herself. Which had seemed quite feasible until Culverwell’s had started getting into difficulty. Then her grandfather had died, leaving everything to Corinne, and Grace had been forced to give up the bright, modern apartment she had been buying and move into the rather dowdy and suddenly vacant flat above the gallery in a much more modest part of town.

Struggling to meet the cost of her planned refurbishments for the flat and gallery, she’d looked like losing both. But her father’s paintings, virtually unnoticed while he had been alive, had already started to gain unexpected popularity, as had his sculptures, several of which Grace had seen change hands in various auction houses for surprisingly high prices over the past couple of years. But it had been that one special bronze of Matthew Tyler’s that had brought all her fears for her gallery to an end, helping her to clear her debts and carry out her renovations after it had sold to a telephone bidder and fetched a mind-blowing sum.

So, even if Seth Mason had taken Culverwells from under her nose, at least this gallery was hers, she thought fiercely, looking around at the fine paintings and ceramics. Lock, stock and barrel!

The fact that she had had to part with what the art world claimed was her father’s prize piece to achieve it brought on those familiar feelings of regret, as well as a whole heap of conflicting emotions whenever she thought about her father.

With tears threatening to sting her eyes, she tried to banish any sentimental feelings towards Matthew Tyler from her mind.

Just looking at that little figurine had always made her feel sad—and angry too—hadn’t it? she assured herself. Anyway, she’d had to sell it to stay solvent, and that was that.

The phone was ringing in the flat as she started up the stairs.

Exhausted from the day, she considered leaving the answering machine to take the call, but as it hadn’t cut in by the time she crossed the lounge she picked the phone up, then wished she hadn’t when Seth’s deep tones came disconcertingly down the line.

‘Just checking that you’re in and planning on an early night,’ he remarked with that infuriating audacity that had Grace instantly snapping back.

‘No, as a matter of fact I thought I’d pop up to the West End, take in a show and then do a bit of clubbing for a few hours. I’m tired, jet-lagged and, if you hadn’t noticed, my grandfather’s company was taken over today! A company that’s been in my family for over fifty years!’ The emotion she had managed to rein in downstairs now welled up in her again, clogging her throat, making her voice crack from the struggle she was having to keep it in check. ‘Of course I’m getting an early night. I’m not quite as robotic as you obviously expect your workforce to be.’

‘Or as well, by the sound of it. You sound distinctly nasal,’ he commented, much to Grace’s alarm. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let him know that it was taking every resource she had not to break down after the day she had had. ‘You aren’t sickening for anything, are you? A cold, perhaps?’

‘As if you’d care!’ She had slammed the phone down before she even realised what she was doing, and stood there, staring at it, shaking with rage.

How dared he? How dared he try to control her private life as well as her business affairs? she fumed as she continued to stare at the phone, both apprehensive and fired up, waiting for it to start ringing again.

Relieved when it didn’t, yet feeling strangely as though she’d been left hanging by ending their conversation in the way she had, she went back across the tastefully though minimally furnished living room, kicking off her high-heeled shoes as she did so. They weren’t designed for a day in the office any more than her trainers would have gone with the executive image she had been particularly keen to cultivate today. But her pumps had been in the suitcase which she’d instructed the taxi driver to bring on to the flat this morning in her haste to get to the office.

Now, going into the bedroom, she slipped off her clothes, pulled her hair free of its pins and was just reaching for the champagne-tinted robe she’d tossed down onto the bed when the bleeper in the hall announced that there was someone at the front door.

‘Who is it?’ she asked into the loud speaker, shrugging into her robe. She didn’t feel up to seeing anyone tonight.

‘Seth. Seth Mason.’

Grace’s heart instantly lurched into a thumping tattoo. Had he just been round the corner when he’d phoned? ‘What do you want?’

‘Can I come up?’

She wanted to say no, but her tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth, and before she was fully aware of what she was doing she was pressing the button that opened the door to the street.

Hearing his steady tread on the stairs, Grace couldn’t get over how her hands were shaking as she fumbled with the belt of her robe, only just managing to secure it as those footsteps stopped outside the door to her flat.

‘What do you want? she demanded, wondering how he could look as fresh and vital as he had that morning, while stepping backwards to admit him since his dominating figure promised to quash any refusal to do so.

Surprisingly, he was bringing her suitcase up from the passageway. She’d been too tired to bother carrying it up tonight.

‘I thought you’d had a pretty tough day.’ Pushing the door closed behind him, he stooped to put the suitcase down in the little hallway, his cologne drifting disturbingly towards her. ‘I felt something of a peace offering might be in order.’ It was only then, as he straightened up, that her brain registered the bouquet of predominantly white-and-yellow flowers he was holding.

‘Where did you get these?’ She wasn’t ready to be placated as he handed them to her. ‘Late-night shop at the supermarket?’ And instantly she regretted her caustic and rather childish remark when he made no reply.

The bouquet was fragrant and beautifully arranged and the name of an exclusive florist on the wrapping caused her eyebrows to lift in surprise.

Had he been planning to come round with these much earlier? Was that why he had telephoned just now—to check that he wasn’t going to have a wasted journey?

‘You think that this makes everything all right?’ she uttered waspishly. ‘That I’ll be bowled over by an apology and a few expensive flowers?’

‘I’m not trying to bowl you over.’ His tone was self-assured, his jaw cast in iron. ‘And it certainly isn’t intended as an apology.’

Of course not. She laughed. ‘No. How stupid of me,’ she bit out, swinging away from him into the lounge.

‘Why is it,’ he asked, following her, his voice suddenly dangerously seductive, ‘that when I’m around you you’re always in a state of undress?’

An insidious heat crept along her skin, making her heart beat faster, her nerve-endings tingle.

Why? Grace similarly wondered and, caught in the snare of his regard, felt that same throb of tension that she’d felt from the very first instant their eyes had clashed eight years ago.

‘Perhaps because I didn’t invite you up here in the first place,’ she returned heatedly.

Seth’s mouth curved in an indolent smile. His senses absorbed the translucent quality of her skin; those blue eyes that could make a man drown in his own longing for her; that rather proud nose that mirrored her attitude towards her subordinates and made him want to drag her to her knees; that full, slightly pouting mouth. He wanted to taste that mouth until he was drugged by the potency of all it promised him, devour it with his own until she was begging him to take her as she had all those years before.

He saw her as she had been then, naked except for that web of lace across her pelvis, offering herself to him like a beautiful, abandoned spirit of the sea. He had never known a girl as passionate as she had been, although he’d known enough in his time. When he had dropped her off the bike outside her grandparents’ house that night, she’d seemed to leap at his suggestion to meet him the following day. He’d felt sick to the stomach when she hadn’t turned up, although he’d waited for hours on that beach. And the day after that, when he had bumped into her in town, she’d treated him like he hadn’t existed. No, worse—like he was scum. He had been just someone with whom to amuse herself, he thought with his mouth hardening. Just a substitute until she could get back to her richer, stuck-up friends back home.

For a long time afterwards all he could think of was of getting his own back—having his revenge on the Culverwell family for the humiliation they had caused him, and for the hardship they had inflicted on his mother and his foster siblings as a result. Well, now he had, he thought grimly. And it wasn’t over yet!

He noted the way she was clutching the flowers to her breast as though to conceal the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. But he could see that all too clearly from the way her nipples protruded tantalisingly through the satin robe, and he had to clench his fingers to control the urge to rip it from her body and replace it with his aching hands instead.

‘You had your hair cut,’ he commented with an unaccustomed dryness in his throat, thinking, as he had done when he had seen her again in the flesh that morning, that the mid-length silky cloud that gently brushed her shoulders added a sophistication that hadn’t been there eight years ago.

Poignantly she said, ‘I grew up.’

And how, he thought. Feeling the uncomfortable constriction of his clothes below waist level, he was annoyed at how she could still affect him without even trying.

‘Why have you come?’ she demanded, but Seth noticed that those eyes he had drowned in all too willingly eight years ago were wary, as though she were afraid of him—or, amazingly, herself.

‘I was naturally concerned,’ he said against his better judgement. She had sounded ghastly over the phone. Now he could see the dark circles under her eyes that no amount of make-up could conceal. She had to be tired, and she was most certainly jet-lagged. But there was something else. Something that caused that same bleak look about her that he had noticed when he had strode into her office that morning, which surprisingly had caused a slight pricking of his conscience, making him feel less a conquering hero and more like a heel for what he had done. ‘I thought I’d come and see for myself that you were all right.’

Grace wanted to respond with some cutting jibe, but the events of the day had taken their toll. She had no more energy left to fight him tonight.

‘Well, now you’ve seen me,’ she murmured with her shoulders slumping, the bouquet hanging heavily at her side. She felt fit to drop, and as she made to move away from him she tripped over one of the shoes she had left lying on the carpet and would have stumbled if he hadn’t been there, reaching for her.

‘I don’t need your help,’ she said despite herself as his long, tanned hands pressed her down onto the sofa, disposing of the flowers on the table beside it.

‘Well, that’s just too bad, because you’re getting it.’

His forcefulness, his proximity and his pine-scented cologne made her weak with a heady excitement that quickly turned to panic when he came down beside her on the settee.

‘Who invited you to sit down?’ she croaked, breathless from the force with which her heart was thumping.

‘Your good manners,’ he drawled, half-amused.

His droll remark would have drawn some retort from her if she hadn’t been so keyed up, debilitated by the hot sensations that were pulsing through her.

Desperate to distance herself from him, she was all for leaping up.

As if he could read her mind, though, his arm suddenly sliced across her middle, preventing her precipitous flight.

Grace’s gasped breath seemed to lodge in her lungs, every part of her burning with the fire that strong arm was igniting in her as its warmth penetrated the fine material of her robe. His other arm was stretched across the back of the settee, setting her head spinning in a whirl of fear and wild anticipation.

If he kissed her…!

Surprisingly, though, he made no other move to touch her beyond keeping her there.

Rigid with tension, her breasts rising and falling sharply, she breathed, ‘What do you want from me, Seth?’

She caught his sharp intake of breath and wondered if that arm lying across her could feel the hard pulse that was throbbing away inside her.

‘I believe I once asked the same question of you.’

Yes, he had, she remembered, recoiling from the reminder, because they both knew what it was she had wanted—and, heaven help her, still wanted—from him. In spite of the ruth-lessness in his desire for revenge, in spite of all he had taken from her, because she couldn’t deny it now.

Sexually, she was as attracted to him as she had ever been. More so, if that was possible. But it was just her flesh that was weak. It meant nothing beyond that, and she had to keep reminding herself of that. Seth Mason was a dangerous man and she’d be a fool if she were to allow herself to fall into his honey-tongued trap. Because that was all it was, she decided—the flowers. The apparent concern. Just ways of wearing her resistance down until he could claim the ultimate prize for himself: her surrender to his powerful sexuality. And what then? she wondered, shuddering.

She longed to put a safe distance between them, and common sense alone prevented her from making any sudden moves. That would have had the same effect as a mouse trying to escape the clutches of a prowling jungle cat, she realised hopelessly, knowing by instinct alone that if she attempted it then that arm would tighten mercilessly around her—and where would she be then?

Instead, her fine features ravaged by her darkest emotions and the things that she must never, ever tell him, and with her eyes fixed on a pastoral watercolour on the far wall that she had bought for next to nothing at a car-boot sale, she asked, ‘Just how much persuasion did it take on your part to get Corinne to hand over her share of the company?’

‘What is it you want me to say, Grace?’ He inhaled deeply, sitting back, mercifully withdrawing his arm as he did so. ‘That I’m sleeping with her?’

Unable to help herself, she sent a swift glance towards his hard-hewn face, breathing normally again now that he had released her, or as normally as it was possible to breathe in his devastating sphere. ‘Are you?’

His lashes came down, veiling the perfect clarity of his eyes. ‘You think I’d kiss and tell on any woman I bed?’

She laughed, a humourless sound strung with tension, as images of him naked on that beach, and as he would be in bed now—his long limbs entwined with others that were paler, more submissive in their passion—rose to threaten her far-too-vulnerable defences. ‘Are you trying to tell me you have scruples?’

Seth’s mouth compressed. ‘No more than you.’

She turned away from him, her chin lifting in spite of the reminder. A cold feeling seemed to settle right in the place where his arm had lain.

‘Does it matter to you, Grace?’

‘What?’

‘Whether I’m sleeping with her or not?’

‘Hardly,’ she sneered.

He laughed softly, the warmth of his breath stirring the fine hairs at her temple, making her stiffen. ‘Such protestation!’ he mocked. ‘I just wonder why the lady deems it necessary to deliver it with such force.’

‘I would have thought that was obvious.’ She leaped up now, dreading that she might have given him cause to suspect how her body reacted to him against her will, against her rational thinking. ‘You’re despicable!’ she breathed.

His mouth moved carelessly. ‘Shouldn’t you be saying that to those closer to home?’

He meant Corinne—and Paul.

Turning wounded eyes in his direction, she noticed the grace with which he moved, brought his tall, lithe frame to his feet.

‘She sold you down the river, Grace.’ His words were hard, blunt, unsparing. ‘So did your precious Harringdale.’

‘He isn’t mine,’ she flared, hurting, wondering how he—how both of them—could have pulled the plug on her and left her and the company to the mercy of a man like Seth Mason. ‘It’s over between us—as you so subtly pointed out at that launch party. It was over months ago.’

‘Ah, yes. What really happened there? Did you just get tired of him?’ he asked, sounding bored suddenly, while ignoring her barbed accusation. ‘Or were you as butterfly-minded and fickle as Harringdale said you were? What was it?’ His thick brows pleated as he pretended to search for the words which were obviously at the forefront of that shrewd, keen mind. ‘“Grace Tyler’s only interested in having fun and when that wears off, which is surprisingly quickly, so does her sense of loyalty”.’ His mouth compressed. After all, hadn’t he been on the receiving end of what could only be described as her capricious behaviour? Perhaps he did have reason to think badly of her, she accepted painfully. But that was all in the past.

‘I don’t think my relationship with Paul is any of your business,’ she murmured, catching her breath after the hurtful remarks her ex-fiancé had made to the press when she had broken off their engagement only a few weeks before their wedding. Wearily, she added, ‘Perhaps you’re just too influenced by what you read.’

‘Perhaps,’ he concurred, without sounding wholly convinced. ‘Perhaps Harringdale was just being spiteful, in view of the way you jilted him. Or perhaps he was right. Perhaps loyalty and respect are two things you still need to learn.’

His words had an ominous ring to them. ‘Believe that if you want to,’ she objected, so tense that she flinched as the clock on the mantelpiece suddenly struck the half hour. ‘Just like every sensation-seeking journalist I’ve come across, you’ve got your own prejudiced opinions and nothing I say will change them.’

‘Try me.’

‘Why?’

He didn’t answer, but his eyes were so commanding in their intensity that she found the words slipping away from her before she could stop them.

‘If you must know, it was something I drifted into with Paul as much as anything else. I thought we had a lot in common, so it seemed like a good idea for the two of us to get engaged and to merge our business interests. It was what both our families wanted, my grandfather in particular.’ She couldn’t forget the hints Lance Culverwell had dropped, the silent but eternal pressure he’d applied to see her settle down with the heir to the Harringdale fortune.

‘And, with dear Granddad out of the way, you didn’t have to.’

‘No, strange though this may seem to you, I consider principles to be more important than doing something just because it’s expected of me.’

‘Really?’ Dark, winged brows lifted mockingly. ‘And when did you first cultivate that admirable virtue?’

‘You can scoff all you like. It’s true.’

‘And your stepmother?’

‘Step-grandmother,’ she corrected with emphasis.

The look he sliced her left no doubt that he had picked up on that unintentional censure in her voice, and his mouth pulled at one corner, as though he were weighing up the age difference between the ex-model Corinne Phelps and Lance Culverwell, questioning the whole viability of the match.

‘It’s peculiar how sex drives a man—or a woman, for that matter—isn’t it, Grace?’

She regarded him warily. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning he wasn’t prepared for someone from my background to soil the pedigree of his precious family, but he had no such qualms when it came to himself and a woman who didn’t mind being photographed in some of the more, shall we say, graphic newspapers.’

‘What my grandfather found out after they were married had no bearing on his judgement. And we aren’t all like you, Seth Mason. My grandfather didn’t marry Corinne for…’ She couldn’t even bring herself to say it, hating having to listen to someone else voicing the doubts about Lance Culverwell’s good judgement that she had harboured in silence, alone. ‘He married her because he was lonely.’

Those steely eyes seemed to strip her to the soul. ‘If you believe that, then you still haven’t grown up, Grace, despite all your claims to the contrary. He might have advocated high standards and good breeding—which he obviously found in the woman he spent most of his life with—but at the end of his life he was no more immune than any other man to the wiles of a pretty gold-digger who has about as much refinement as a bag of raw cane-sugar.’

‘Coming from someone as basic as you, that’s rich!’ she shot back, hating him for saying these things to her. ‘All I can say to that is that it takes one to know one.’

From the anger that flared in his eyes, she realised she had hit a raw nerve.

Scared by the fury she had provoked, she started to move away, but he was too quick for her, and she gave a helpless little cry as he caught her, dragging her into his arms.

Her robe had slipped off one shoulder and, tugging it off the other so that her arms were trapped inside it, he pulled her towards him before his mouth came down hard on hers.

She struggled in his grasp, protesting little sounds coming from her captured lips, but her wriggling only made him more determined, his mouth growing more insistent in its demands.

Her fruitless movements caused her robe to separate. She could feel the rasp of his suit against her stomach, her thighs, her naked breasts.

She groaned again, only this time it was the muted sound of desire. She hated him and yet she wanted him! How sick was that?

The revelation shocked her even as she realised that he had recognised it too.

In response his arms came around her, pulling her into the hard warmth of his body, his mouth leaving hers only to force her head back for his teeth to graze with humiliating purpose over the far too sensitive column of her throat.

Sensations ripped through her such as she had never known for eight long years. Why him? she asked herself savagely, clenching her teeth against all that he was doing to her. Was he destined to be the only man that she could ever respond to?

Hating herself for her weakness, fingers curling tensely against the shoulders of his jacket, she battled with the traitorous responses of her own body so that she was standing breathless and trembling with her eyes closed when he finally lifted his head.

His face was flushed, his mouth taut from the desire he was holding in check, but his eyes were unmistakably smug.

Even so, he seemed to have a struggle drawing breath before he said in a voice that was softly mocking, ‘Where are those principles now, Grace?’

‘You bastard.’ Her lashes parted to reveal the self-loathing in her eyes. ‘Was that why you came here tonight?’ she demanded shakily, pulling out of his grasp. ‘To try to humiliate me?’ Her hands were trembling so much she could scarcely do up her robe.

‘If it’s of any consolation to you, Grace, humiliating you wasn’t my intention.’

‘No? Exactly what did you intend? To try and soft-soap me with your supposed concern for my welfare, and hope that that and a few well-chosen flowers would have me falling at your feet?’

‘Just let me remind you, Grace, that there were two of us involved in that kiss—and you responded to me. As for my takeover of Culverwells, one day you might just thank me for stepping in when I did.’

‘Never!’

‘Never say never,’ he ridiculed. ‘So, we can do this the easy way by being civil and trying to get on…’

‘Giving in to your assaults, you mean?’

‘Or we can go on just the way we’re going,’ he said, ignoring her remark, ‘And keep up this pointless war. It makes little difference to me.’

‘You started it,’ she said, and couldn’t help cringing at how childish that sounded even to her own ears.

‘Oh, no. You began it, my love.’ The endearment made its mark, but only because he spoke with such lethal softness. ‘Way, way before I’d done anything to earn your contempt.’

‘But now you have earned it, so will you just please leave?’

Stooping to pick up his car keys, he didn’t stay to argue, only turning as he reached her sitting-room door.

‘Get an early night. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,’ he informed her with all the blandness of an employer to a subordinate.

A couple of seconds later she heard him close the hall door after him. Biting back tears of frustration, Grace spotted the flowers still lying on the table and, picking them up, hurled them across the room in the direction that he had gone.