Читать книгу The Rich Man's Royal Mistress - Robyn Donald - Страница 6

FROM the window Hawke watched Melissa stride into sight, tall and lithe and confident as a young goddess, her wide shoulders and long legs emphasising the graceful curves of breasts and hips. The glowing light of the setting sun played like a nimbus around hair the colour of dark honey, tied back to reveal the striking contours of her face.

A severe goddess, he decided—more Minerva than Venus. But then, he’d always preferred the challenge of intelligence to overt, eager sexuality.

Something stirred into life inside him, a lazily predatory instinct that startled him.

He ignored it. Desire could be inconvenient, and over the years he’d learned to manage it.

He’d known from their first meeting four years ago that Melissa Considine wasn’t a suitable candidate for an affair. Apart from the fact that Gabe was a good friend, she simply wasn’t his type; refreshingly down-to-earth, she exuded a simple, straightforward innocence that suggested a charming lack of experience.

However, because he never took anyone on trust, he had run a search on her during the day. Interestingly, it had turned up precious little; perhaps that innocence was real.

Or perhaps, he thought cynically, noting the subtle, sexy sway of her hips as she turned to look at the mountains, she’d just been remarkably discreet.

He could have contacted his head of Security, who’d probably have been able to dig deeper, but for some reason he hadn’t.

Still, he’d found out a few things. He ticked them off as he watched her come towards him along the lakeshore. Her father had died when she was nine, her aristocratic French mother five years later. She’d gone to a top-grade boarding-school in England, a finishing school in Switzerland. With an excellent degree in marketing under her belt she was now taking her master’s at a prestigious university in America. So she had a good brain—probably a first-rate one.

She stooped to pick up some small thing. Hawke’s eyes narrowed and the tug of hunger sharpened into a goad when she straightened and an errant little breeze moulded the thin material of her jacket around her magnificent breasts.

Heat kindled in his loins. Damn, he wanted her…

Tough, he told himself ruthlessly. She was only twenty-three, ten years younger than he was, and she’d been sheltered all her life. He shouldn’t have asked her to dinner. Hell, his one experience of an ingénue—an actress-debutante who’d developed a crush on him with no encouragement whatsoever and made a damned nuisance of herself when he’d let her down as gently as he could—had taught him not to take anyone at face value.

Young she might have been, but Lucy St James had thought nothing of weeping all over the tabloids about an affair that had never happened. He liked his lovers experienced and too sophisticated to demand any more than a passionate affair; that way, when they parted no one got hurt.

Just lately, however, he’d been thinking it might be time to consider marriage.

But not, he told himself caustically, watching Melissa stare out across the lake as though searching for a lover in the gathering dusk, with someone he’d asked to dinner purely as a courtesy to her brothers.

And that was a lie.

The invitation had been a direct result of the dance they’d shared almost a year ago. Until then she’d been Gabe’s younger sister, notable only for her height, her coltish grace and her reserve.

Don’t forget her eyes, his photographic memory prompted—heavy-lidded and topaz-gold, set under fly-away brows. And the mouth that made him wonder if she ever let her full lips relax into lush sensuousness.

Skin like magnolia petals, and a voice all crisp coolness on the surface but with an intriguing hint of huskiness…

Hawke said something succinct and irritable beneath his breath. All right, so for some reason she’d stuck like a burr in his memory, and that dance in Provence was still as fresh and new as it had been the following day.

Probably because he’d never danced with anyone who’d stayed so silent, practised no tricks, merely followed his lead as though caught in some bewitched time out of time!

He hadn’t wanted to talk either, in case words shattered the tenuous enchantment that surrounded them that night. Content to waltz with her in his arms, he’d watched her grave, absorbed face, the soft mouth tender as though she’d strayed into a dream…

It had been an oddly moving experience, so moving that he hadn’t gone near her for the rest of the night. Although, he remembered, he’d known when she and her brothers left the ballroom.

He walked out onto the stone terrace, disconcerted at his satisfaction when she turned as though his presence had impinged on some sixth sense. After a moment’s hesitation she came towards him.

Hawke drew in a sharp breath. His previous thought that she looked like some goddess of old came back to him; instead of the unsophisticated student he knew her to be, she projected a potent physical radiance.

Her smile, tentative and fleeting, banished it instantly, thank God.

Quelling the slow growl of sexual hunger in his gut, he said more sternly than he’d intended, ‘Good evening, Melissa. I’m glad you could come.’

‘Thank you,’ she said a little breathlessly.

Once they were inside he held out his hand. ‘Can I take your jacket?’

‘I…Yes, thank you.’

After the crisp coolness of the air outside the room was warm, but she felt oddly reluctant to surrender her outer layer. The silk of her top felt suddenly thin and too revealing, the fake jewels obvious and cheap.

Nevertheless, she’d look a total idiot if she wore the jacket all evening. And Hawke clearly wasn’t in the least interested in what lay beneath it; a swift glance revealed no emotion at all in the forceful features.

His closeness, emphasised by the light touch of his hands on her shoulders as he took the garment, produced gentle tremors of tantalising energy through her. The world froze, suspending them in a fragile bubble of silence and stillness so that her senses lingered obsessively on each tiny, heart-jerking stimulus.

A faint, almost subliminal scent, masculine and wholly disturbing, set her pulse rate soaring. Did his hands linger on her shoulders as though staking a claim she didn’t dare recognise?

No, she told herself sternly, while her body swayed slightly and she had to control an urge to hyperventilate. Of course not; he was merely being polite.

And she was behaving as foolishly as a fifteen-year-old in the throes of her first crush!

He dropped her jacket onto the back of a chair. Masking her dilating pupils with her lashes, Melissa took a swift step away and tried to reassemble the shreds of her self-confidence by examining the table with a professional interest.

The staff had done him proud, setting the white damask with flowers from the warmer North Island—rich apricot and cream roses with a softly intimate perfume. Wine glasses sparkled in the light of candles, and the silver gleamed richly, burnished by the gentle flames.

‘I hope you’re enjoying yourself here,’ she said laboriously.

OK, so pedestrian was all she could summon, but she was damned well going to stick to the conventions.

The problem was, she didn’t want to, and she had the feeling that Hawke Kennedy wasn’t a man who thought much about convention at all.

‘Very much,’ he said gravely.

A molten undercurrent of anticipation robbing her of caution, Melissa looked into Hawke’s enigmatic eyes. ‘I believe you went heli-skiing today.’

And could have bitten out her tongue. Now he’d think she was keeping tabs on him.

Not that he showed it. ‘And thoroughly enjoyed it,’ he said, a faintly cynical tone bringing helpless colour to her skin.

The guide who’d accompanied Hawke to make sure he didn’t ski over a bluff on the way down the mountain had told her there was nothing he could teach his charge about skiing in the Southern Alps.

‘Or anywhere. Good as a professional,’ Bart had said admiringly.

Melissa wasn’t surprised. Hawke Kennedy breathed the sort of competence that attracted instinctive trust.

‘Interesting guy, too,’ Bart went on. ‘Good company, although he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. You should have heard him lay into a snowboarder who thought he had right of way. Never raised his voice, but the kid came away with one less layer of skin. He’ll remember his manners from now on.’

Through her lashes Melissa watched Hawke go across to a tray on a sideboard. He moved with the spare, relaxed grace of an athlete, his big body supple and strong and sexy.

Something shockingly hot and wild twisted inside her. She looked away and started to speak in a voice she expected to sound bright and conversational. To her surprise each word emerged with a husky intonation.

‘You were lucky with the snow. Spring is definitely here.’ She stopped, swallowed and pinned a small, desperate smile to her lips. ‘The forecasters are saying that this will be the last dump of powder for the season.’

‘Almost certainly. I ordered champagne, but would you rather have something else?’

‘No, thank you.’ Already dizzy at just being there, she watched him open the bottle with the minimum amount of fuss, and pour the wine into two crystal flutes.

Handing her one, he said with a smile made dangerous by a hint of challenge, ‘Here’s to meetings.’

Stop fantasising, Melissa told herself sturdily. He is not flirting with you. Or if he is, he probably does it with everyone, including elderly dowagers.

Especially elderly dowagers…

Acknowledging the challenge with a lift of her chin, she raised her glass. ‘To meetings.’

Like her, he barely sipped the delicious liquid before saying, ‘Come and sit down and tell me how you’re getting on here.’

Flames shot up in the huge stone fireplace as she settled into a chair and watched Hawke take the opposite one. He leaned back like a king on his throne, and looked across at her, the austerity of his angular features increased by a trick of the firelight. Melissa felt like the logs in the fire—burning with a mixture of sensations.

Sedately she said, ‘Fine, thank you.’

But that didn’t satisfy him, and before long she was telling him about her experience at the lodge, relishing it when she made him laugh a couple of times. In the next half-hour she found herself settling into something perilously like ease, keenly stimulated by his sharp brain and wide knowledge. Several times she was surprised to catch herself laughing; to her bemused astonishment, she discovered that they shared a similar sense of humour.

The peal of the doorbell interrupted that.

‘Dinner,’ Hawke said, getting to his feet.

Startled, she realised that she’d drunk most of her glass of wine. Not that she could hold the champagne solely responsible for her heightened senses; when she heard Hawke’s voice as he spoke to whoever had delivered the dinner, her insides clenched and that fire smouldering in the pit of her stomach flamed more brightly, burning away another layer of self-control.

This swift, uncompromising attraction had to be based on nothing more than his appearance. She had no idea of his character beyond what she’d read in the newspapers—that he was a brilliant, hard-headed businessman who enjoyed beautiful women.

And who had broken several hearts.

So it appeared that she was one of those shallow women who judged men by their looks. If their positions were reversed, she’d despise him. She despised herself.

Yet he was more than a handsome man. She blinked fiercely, trying to clear her mind of the exhilarating haze that clouded it. The sound of the door closing refocused her churning thoughts, and she realised with an odd jolt that while the two of them had been talking over their wine night had fallen outside, enclosing the lodge in darkness.

‘I’ll pull the curtains,’ Hawke said from behind her.

She took a deep breath and got to her feet. ‘You don’t have to pull them. Look, there’s a button by the door—press it and they’ll close automatically.’

Before she could get there he’d found the button and the drapes swept across the windows, obliterating the lake and the mountains, cocooning the room in warmth and an intimacy that suddenly seemed much too intense.

Melissa came to an uncertain halt, wishing for the thousandth time that she had more poise, yet feeling alive in a way she’d never experienced before. Poised on a knife-edge of stimulation, she felt as though the last half-hour had altered her in some fundamental way.

Rubbish, she told herself sternly. It’s infatuation, just like the monumental crush you had on that French pop star—hormone-driven and mindless.

Her mouth twisted wryly. For a birthday treat, her brother, Marco, had organised a meeting with that singer. Talk about instant disillusion!

He’d been six inches shorter than she was, and resented every inch of that difference. Awed and worshipful, she’d barely been able to articulate, but the mockery in his eyes had stung. The only reason he’d been polite was that Marco owned a massive number of shares in the huge musical empire that held his contract.

Then he’d sworn at a fan who’d approached with an autograph book. And later that evening Melissa had overheard him describe her to a friend.

‘A giraffe with no style,’ he’d said scornfully. ‘But one has to be polite to the rich men—and their clumsy sisters!’

OK, so she could smile now, but at the time she had been cut to the quick.

This had to be the same sort of temporary reaction. Perhaps she should have expected it; she was a late developer. Most of her friends had already moved on from their first affairs to embark on other, hopefully more satisfying relationships, while she’d been far too cautious to allow anyone close to her. Her mother had warned her against fortune hunters prepared to overlook her height and lack of beauty for the lure of access to her brothers.

She had enough self-esteem to make sure that didn’t happen! But the fact that she’d never fallen in love was because she’d never met anyone who reached her brothers’ standards.

Now she wondered if she had.

‘Come and eat,’ Hawke said smoothly.

He put her into her chair, and served a superb soup made from green peas and lettuce.

Melissa picked up her spoon and said, ‘The chef will be pleased you ordered this—it’s one of his specialities, and he says most New Zealanders refuse to eat cooked lettuce.’

‘I’m afraid I followed my own inclination when I ordered; I knew I’d be hungry after a day on the mountain, so I made sure of a solid, sustaining meal.’

When Melissa smiled a small dimple winked into existence beside her mouth, calling attention to her lips. Sheened by a sheer film of colour into pure sensuousness, each small smile sent reckless impulses through Hawke.

He defied any man to look at that mouth and not imagine just what it would feel like on his body. His reacted to the thought with violent appreciation not unmixed with a dangerous craving.

Possibly she’d noticed, because the dimple disappeared. She said primly, ‘The lodge specialises in hearty meals because so many of the guests spend their days on the mountains or fishing the river. But because they often bring their wives, it also caters for the appetites of those who decide to spend the day in the spa.’

The soup was delicious, as he’d expected, but although it disappeared from his plate he barely tasted it; he was too busy enjoying the open, delicate greed with which she demolished hers. Did that frank appetite denote an equal enjoyment of sex?

Hawke reined in his enthusiastic body. She had an untouched air; with two heavyweight brothers he suspected that any suitor had been met with an intensive grilling that would put off all but the most determined. Even during the fuss last year when Gabe Considine’s broken engagement had occupied the front pages of every tabloid in the world, little had been printed about her.

So—no lovers?

A heated pleasure caught him by surprise. Last night he’d detected a latent sensuality, an aura of unrealised—and possibly unsuspected—passion in her.

Pity he wasn’t going to be the one to tap into it.

He said casually, ‘How long do you plan to be here?’

‘I leave at the end of the week.’

‘Snap. I’m staying until then too.’

Melissa’s heart jolted, and the knot of anticipation in her stomach tightened. Was that a decision he’d just made?

It was probably part of his charm to keep his full focus on his dinner partner, but Melissa found it intoxicating. Her confidence flowered, spiced by sharp awareness and his interest. She drank very little of the superb Riesling he poured to accompany the next course, a meatloaf surprisingly redolent of Asian flavours and scents, but excitement burned through every cell in her body.

Candlelight flickered lovingly over his bronze face as he leaned back in his chair and surveyed her with an ironic quirk of his brows. ‘So where do you want to be in five years?’

She laughed. ‘Probably working in some hotel chain to get the practical knowledge I’ll need to make a success of Gabe’s vision.’

‘Aim high,’ he advised. ‘You should be at executive level by then, or managing your own tourist venture in Illyria. And I thought it was your vision, not your brothers’?’

Without hesitation she said, ‘It was my idea. I don’t think Gabe is quite sure I’ll make it happen, but I will.’

Yes, she would, he thought, noting the determined angle to her jaw. ‘Would you have thought of making a career in that field if it hadn’t been for Illyria?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We were brought up to believe that it was our duty to help the principality in any way we could. My father never forgave himself for being out of Illyria when the prince was overthrown; all his life he did what he could for his country and his people.’

Did that include marrying a half-French, half-American heiress, Hawke wondered cynically, to keep him in the style to which he’d been accustomed? Not that it had been an ideal match; although there had never been any prospect of divorce, it was fairly common knowledge that her mother had indulged herself with a string of lovers.

He watched Melissa sip the wine, and that disturbing, rash attraction geared up another notch. She’d been brought up in a milieu where both parents had pragmatically made the best of an unsatisfactory marriage, staying together while seeking what private happiness they could in discreet affairs.

Did Melissa have the same outlook?

She looked up and caught him scrutinising her. Colour burned along her cheekbones and her tawny-gold eyes darkened. A hot satisfaction took him by surprise as he watched the muscles in her slender throat quiver.

When he looked at her with those half-closed green eyes and an enigmatic smile, Melissa’s mind shut down. Summoning her best imitation of her mother’s social manner, she asked, ‘Did you grow up in this area of New Zealand?’

‘No,’ he said, and the iron control was back like a slap in the face. ‘I come from north of Auckland.’

Determinedly Melissa asked questions about the country’s northernmost area, slowly relaxing while they picked up the strands of conversation.

By the end of the evening those oddly tense moments had been smoothed over, although Melissa knew she wasn’t ever going to forget them. He fascinated her, his incisive intelligence stimulating her into a conversation that almost—but not quite—blotted out her overwhelming physical response to his formidable, almost arrogant male authority.

But she took the first chance to get away, saying with what she feared was a too obviously regretful note in her voice, ‘I’ve had a lovely evening, but I should be going.’

He didn’t try to dissuade her, rising to his feet in a swift, lithe movement. ‘I’ll see you to your room.’

‘Oh, no,’ she protested. ‘There’s no need. It’s not far away—just in the staff quarters on the other side of the building, and I can walk through the lodge to get there.’

‘So?’ he said, and smiled at her, and the urgent, driving beat of sexual attraction blazed bright and hungry through her body.

Because she didn’t trust her voice, she contented herself with a half-shrug and a nod of acceptance.

The summons of the telephone startled both of them. He frowned. ‘Excuse me. That will be an emergency.’

‘I’ll wait outside.’

‘Nonsense.’

But she walked through the door into the wide corridor that joined the suite to the rest of the lodge. The lighting was muted to showcase the immeasurable splendour of the scenery, so she pretended to study the mountains while she waited.

Hawke joined her less than a minute later, carrying her jacket. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, dark eyes unreadable.

‘I hope it wasn’t a real emergency.’

He shrugged and said obliquely, ‘Time will tell.’

Instead of handing her the jacket, he held it out for her to put on. Swift blood scorched her skin and she felt profoundly grateful for the dim lights. How many other women had shivered with pleasure and heady anticipation at the closeness the small, intimate courtesy allowed?

Plenty, she thought scornfully.

He said, ‘Are you cold? I’d rather walk outside than through the lodge.’

So they wouldn’t be seen?

Stop this right now, she commanded that cynical little voice inside her. He’s been perfectly polite the whole evening and now he’s going to make sure you get back to your lonely bed because he’s a protective alpha male. That’s all.

‘I’m not in the least cold,’ she told him brightly.

Together they walked out into the night, its spring crispness tempered by a hint of the summer to come. Melissa glanced up, startled to see Hawke scan the grounds with the swift, far-from-cursory survey of a warrior.

‘It’s perfectly safe here,’ she protested.

‘Nowhere is perfectly safe,’ he told her as he took her arm. ‘The world is full of predators.’

She shivered, partly because his touch fired every nerve cell in her body, but also because she knew he was right. Although she’d never been forced to endure a bodyguard’s constant presence, after Gabe and Sara cancelled their engagement her life had been made hideous by importunate reporters and photographers whenever she’d set foot outside the campus.

She loved the feeling of anonymity in this distant corner of the world.

‘The security is excellent,’ she reassured him.

‘It had better be,’ he said uncompromisingly.

Silently they walked beside the lake until she indicated the screen of trees that hid the staff quarters from the main lodge. ‘My temporary home. Thank you for a very pleasant evening.’

In spite of the prosaic subject, her voice sounded too low and breathy.

A breeze swept over the lake, bearing the scent of this uplifted land with it—the cool savour of green rainforest, of ancient rocks and snow, of distance and isolation. Illyrian mountains had been traversed by men for untold thousands of years; humankind had left their stamp on their flanks, wearing tracks, cutting forests, making farms. Until less than a thousand years previously these southern mountains had known only the call of birds and the sounds of wind and water.

Melissa shivered, awed by the sublime indifference of the natural world to the small creatures who thought they ruled it.

‘You’re cold,’ Hawke said, and released her so he could shrug out of his jacket. Before she realised what he intended to do he dropped it around her shoulders.

‘No, no,’ she said, confused and charmed, trying to struggle free of its warmth and that sexy, purely male scent that set her pulse skipping. ‘It’s only a short distance—I’ll be fine.’

Hard hands clamped onto her shoulders. He didn’t hurt her, just showed her his strength. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said as though speaking to a child.

‘But you’ll get cold,’ she protested, adding foolishly, ‘And you’re a guest here!’

He laughed softly, the reflected starshine from the lake highlighting the forceful contours of his face.

‘Under this sky that doesn’t matter at all,’ he said, uncannily echoing her thoughts of a few minutes previously.

Something in his tone stopped the breath in her throat. With a stripped, ruthless smile that set her heart pounding, he finished, ‘To the mountains I’m just a man. And you’re a woman.’

Astonishment and a keen, fierce anticipation froze Melissa. Wide-eyed and incredulous, she watched him bend his head, only closing her eyes when she was certain that he was going to kiss her.

His mouth was warm and seducing. Unable to think, she held her breath, her lips softening without volition under the light pressure of his.

Later she thought that neither of them moved during those first seconds. She was aware of a turmoil of sensation—the comfort of his jacket around her shoulders, the heat of his mouth on hers contrasting with the freshness of the air, the subtle clamour of desire in her blood.

And then everything was consumed in a surge of frantic, almost agonised need.

Hawke lifted his mouth, but only for a fraction of a second. Before she had time to anticipate rejection he gathered her close against his big, athletic body and his mouth came down on hers again.

He took the kiss with an intensity of hunger that plunged her into a world she’d never experienced—a place of stark, raw passion that shut down everything but the primal urge to lose herself in it. For the first time in her life Melissa understood desperation.

Everything dwindled, narrowing to focus on this man and the heated, dangerous sensations his kisses summoned from her eager body. She couldn’t have resisted even if she’d wanted to; her bones had dissolved and the only thing she wanted was to stay locked like this in Hawke’s arms.

But eventually he raised his head and rested his forehead on hers. The sound of his breathing mingled with hers, harsh and impeded as though they’d run a marathon.

In a rough, driven voice, he said, ‘If we don’t stop this right now I’m going to make a huge mistake.’