Cinderella After Midnight
Lilian Darcy
She had the dream dress, the shoes…and a secret. For "Lady Catrina" was really plain, poor Catrina Brown–and she didn't belong at the glamorous ball she'd so boldly crashed. Cat's mission was desperate, yet success seemed within her reach. Until her gaze met Patrick Callahan's across the crowded room. The handsome millionaire bachelor was everything she despised in a man–wasn't he? Trapped in his heated stare, Catrina knew Patrick saw through her flimsy disguise. Come midnight, would he expose her masquerade…or would this magical night last until dawn–and beyond?
It was midnight!
“I’m sorry…good night, Patrick. I have to go!” Catrina fled through the doors and into the lobby.
“Wait, Cat!”
“No. Patrick, I’m late….” She pushed open the outer door and ran into the humid June night. But he was still behind her.
“Stop! You can’t leave like this, when we’ve—when I have no idea who you really are.”
Cat didn’t listen. Couldn’t listen. Her skin was still alive and hot from the way they’d touched. But she had no illusions about what Patrick Callahan felt, even if he did.
Skittering down the steps, she felt her spike-heeled shoe come loose. It hurt. Why hadn’t she felt that before? Deliberately, she kicked the shoe off and left it on the step.
Like Cinderella.
Dear Reader,
September is here again, bringing the end of summer—but not the end of relaxing hours spent with a good book. This month Silhouette brings you six new Romance novels that will fill your leisure hours with pleasure. And don’t forget to see how Silhouette Books makes you a star!
First, Myrna Mackenzie continues the popular MAITLAND MATERNITY series with A Very Special Delivery, when Laura Maitland is swept off her feet on the way to the delivery room! Then we’re off to DESTINY, TEXAS, where, in This Kiss, a former plain Jane returns home to teach the class heartthrob a thing or two about chemistry. Don’t miss this second installment of Teresa Southwick’s exciting series. Next, in Cinderella After Midnight, the first of Lilian Darcy’s charming trilogy THE CINDERELLA CONSPIRACY, we go to a ball with “Lady Catrina”—who hasn’t bargained on a handsome millionaire seeing through her disguise….
Whitney Bloom’s dreams come true in DeAnna Talcott’s Marrying for a Mom, when she marries the man she loves—even if only to keep custody of his daughter. In Wed by a Will, the conclusion of THE WEDDING LEGACY, reader favorite Cara Colter brings together a new family—and reunites us with other members. Then, a prim and proper businesswoman finds she wants a lot more from the carpenter who’s remodeling her house than watertight windows in Gail Martin’s delightful Her Secret Longing.
Be sure to return next month for Stella Bagwell’s conclusion to MAITLAND MATERNITY and the start of a brand-new continuity—HAVING THE BOSS’S BABY! Beloved author Judy Christenberry launches this wonderful series with When the Lights Went Out… Don’t miss any of next month’s wonderful tales.
Happy reading!
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor
Cinderella after Midnight
Lilian Darcy
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Books by Lilian Darcy
Silhouette Romance
The Baby Bond #1390
Her Sister’s Child #1449
Raising Baby Jane #1478
* (#litres_trial_promo)Cinderella After Midnight #1542
LILIAN DARCY
has written nearly fifty books for Silhouette Romance and Harlequin Mills and Boon Medical Romance (Prescription Romance). Her first book for Silhouette appeared on the Waldenbooks Series Romance Bestsellers list, and she’s hoping readers go on responding strongly to her work. Happily married with four active children and a very patient cat, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do—including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and traveling. She currently lives in Australia, but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family.
Once upon a time there were three sisters who didn’t believe in fairy tales….
For more than three years, they lived in a run-down trailer park. Not many handsome princes there. Things got better when they found a fairy godmother—Pixie Treloar. She had a house for them to live in. Still, the sisters believed in their own hard work more than they believed in rich men and princes and knights in shining armor.
Then one sister, Catrina, met wealthy Patrick Callahan at a society ball…. Would she learn to believe in fairy tales after all?
Contents
Chapter One (#u4c5182d0-35f0-594d-8322-98958907d250)
Chapter Two (#u9fbe4504-c91a-50eb-aa0d-cfe3e2493726)
Chapter Three (#ub91d0545-fd38-54e0-9324-721b6f7e5c56)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
“I have located the target, Number One.”
The deep-toned, disembodied words floated through the air like a silk scarf on a breeze. The hiss of skate blades across freshly resurfaced ice punctuated the sentence. An elegantly clad skater made a graceful turn, swished past Catrina Brown once more and said in a tone of even deeper significance, “Repeat, Number One, I have located the target.”
Catrina, who was feeling nervous, lost patience.
“Jill Brown!” she hissed quickly, “Will you quit treating this like a spy movie and just tell me where he is? There’s no one within five yards of us right now. Who’ll hear above the music? And if by some miracle someone did hear, don’t you think ‘I have located the target’ sounds just a teensy bit more suspicious coming from a waitress, than ‘Would you care for a drink, ma’am?”’
Jill’s face fell. “Oh…I was enjoying that,” she said.
A neat flick of her hips scraped her blades sideways into the ice and brought her to a halt beside Cat. She balanced a tray of sparkling drinks in fluted glasses expertly in one hand.
“Well, I wasn’t,” Cat answered. “You’ve gotta help me blend in, Sis. That’s your role. Pixie did a brilliant job with this dress, and that was hers.”
Cat’s sixty-two-year-old cousin Priscilla Treloar, known to everyone as Pixie, could sew like a dream. She had been the wardrobe mistress for a well-known national ballet company for more than thirty years until her health slowed her down and she’d had to give up work. She had insisted that the perfection of Cat’s dress was one of the key elements in the success of this evening’s plan, and Cat suspected she was right.
She fingered one of the dress’s narrow diamanté shoulder straps. Apart from the straps and a matching diamanté edging around the bodice, the gown was plain black, and depended for its glamorous effect on the figure-hugging simplicity and perfect fit of its cut and line.
Beneath the full black skirt, the occasional peeks of layered silver lining were tantalizing. If you didn’t look very closely, the imitation silk could have easily passed for a designer original. There were more than a few of those here tonight.
“My job is to be Lady Catrina, and I’ve got the aristocratic accent down perfectly thanks to half a lifetime of watching British sitcoms,” Cat continued, her confidence rebounding a little. “I can do this. I know it. All you have to do is tell me which table Councillor Wainwright is sitting at, and I’ll zero in. This whole thing is too important for us to mess it up by treating it like a game, Jilly. We can’t have Cousin Pixie lose her home.”
The warmth in the way she used her mother’s cousin’s lifelong nickname betrayed the love Catrina and her two stepsisters felt for Pixie, even though Pixie was not a blood relation to Jill and Suzanne.
Jill had come back down to earth at Cat’s words.
“I’m sorry. You’re right,” she said, then switched her tone suddenly as a pair of new arrivals at the Mirabeau on Ice ball came past. “And I can particularly recommend the Mirabeau sparkling white….”
“Why, thank you.” Graciously, Cat took a glass, as prompted, gripped the stem in her fingers and left her pinky aristocratically curled.
“He’s at the corner table on the far side of the champagne fountain,” Jill said, as soon as she was able to speak safely. “With a group of several other people.”
“I’d better get on over to him, then.”
“Yeah, because he’s not known for staying out late, according to our dossier.” Jill grinned. Despite Cat’s lecture, the word dossier had rolled off her tongue as if she said it every day. Then she looked guilty and apologetic. “I’m sorry, Cattie.”
This time Catrina waved it aside. “Just wish me luck, okay?”
“Oh, huge luck, Lady Catrina. Huge! This is equally important to all of us.”
“And you’d probably best not speak to me for the rest of the evening, unless you have to.”
“Gotcha. See you later, then.”
Jill swished over to a nearby table to offer her drinks tray as more designer-clad guests trickled in. Cat was left with a tingle inside and a glow on her cheeks that she recognized as the effect of adrenaline. It wasn’t nerves anymore but a buzz of exhilaration and confidence.
I’m going to be good at this. I’m going to convince Councillor Wainwright to vote against the proposed rezoning at the council meeting in August, and he won’t have a clue this was planned.
She walked around the rink, using the carpet laid on top of the ice. She had to think herself into the role of Lady Catrina Willoughby-Brown, jet-setting member of the British aristocracy, and skates were a complication she didn’t need tonight, since she wasn’t the talented skater that Jill was.
The Madison County Ice Rink looked incredible tonight, a far cry from its usual mundane self. In the center of the rink was an enormous, flowing champagne fountain and some towering ice sculptures based on the works of famous artists—Rodin, Michelangelo, Moore.
Next came a specially erected polished and sprung wooden dance floor in the shape of a large O. A wide outer ring of ice accommodated the on-ice staff and any of the guests brave enough to put on skates. Finally, edging the rink were lantern-lit tables set on carpet.
The surrounding bleachers had been removed for the night to make room for platforms set with two more tiers of gorgeously decorated tables. The rink’s floor-to-ceiling windows were frosted over with lacy patterns, and the walls were draped in black fabric.
Overhead there were chandeliers, mirror-balls and spotlights, all in the colors of Mirabeau wines, which ranged from pale straw gold through soft rose to a dark crimson. On a large dais at one end there was a band playing lively dance music.
Catrina shut all of this out, however, focused on her quest.
Yes, there was Wainwright, as Jill had said. Councillor Earl P. Wainwright, to be precise. He was seated with a group of six others, four of them men, at one of the best tables on the ice. Cat had her strategy mapped out in advance and she didn’t hesitate.
First she waved to an imaginary acquaintance two tables farther on, then allowed her attention to be caught by the man sitting just to Earl Wainwright’s left, as if in sudden recognition. Changing course abruptly, she bore down deliberately upon the total stranger. She had her brimming glass of Mirabeau sparkling wine in hand and a glittering smile plastered in place.
But then, unexpectedly, the stranger’s eyes met hers for just a moment. Her hand jerked a little, and she spilled several drops of wine. He was already watching her, which she hadn’t planned for. It almost shattered her focus. His strong body was draped lazily in its seat, and there was a tiny smile on his face, just tickling the corners of his mouth. For some reason she felt confused and self-conscious and…
Don’t think about him, she coached herself quickly. He’s not remotely important. He’s part of your strategy for the first minute of this, that’s all.
“Alasdair!” she trilled at him in her round-mouthed regal accent. She didn’t let those dangerous blue eyes of his catch and hold her now. Instead, her gaze darted between a thick hairline, firm lips and a strong chin. “Fancy seeing you here! How marvelous! How absolutely marvelous!”
“Uhh…yeah,” answered Patrick Callahan, CEO of Callahan Systems Software and reluctant guest at the ball tonight. “Marvelous.”
He watched with appreciation and some alarm as a very shapely behind, clad in rustling black, slid smoothly into the empty seat beside him.
He’d had half an eye on the woman as she approached. Maybe a little more than half an eye, if he was honest. He was caught at this table by two or three people who might prove to be valuable clients for Callahan Systems in the future, and he was trying extremely hard not to be bored.
Trying hard, also, to understand why he found the prospect of the evening ahead such a chore. Most people would have looked forward to it.
Mirabeau was a California wine company that had hit on a novel marketing strategy. In several large cities across the United States, Mirabeau on Ice balls were taking place tonight. The buzz of publicity was deafening. By invitation only, the guest list for each ball was made up of an intriguing mix of the wealthy, the influential, the famous and the notorious.
Patrick wasn’t quite sure how Callahan Systems had earned its pair of tickets. Having one of its founding partners, i.e., Patrick himself, named last year as Philadelphia’s Most Eligible Bachelor by a well-known local magazine had probably helped. The fact that he’d briefly dated, in quick succession, both the Wentworth Hotels heiress and the stunningly glamorous ex-wife of a senator couldn’t have hurt, either.
He would have turned the invitation down if his brother Tom hadn’t reminded him of the networking opportunities. But he’d flatly refused to bring a date. He wasn’t involved with anyone at the moment. He was never involved with anyone for very long. And the idea of creating expectations in some casual female acquaintance by inviting her tonight didn’t remotely appeal to him.
No, if Tom wanted him to network, he’d prefer to attend the ball alone.
Somehow, the role of chief schmoozer at Callahan Systems had devolved almost exclusively onto Patrick over the past couple of years, since Tom’s marriage. With their younger brother and business partner, Connor, also about to take on the yoke of wedlock in September, the situation would no doubt get even worse. For some reason, Tom refused to understand that events such as these were no longer a source of pleasure to Patrick.
Maybe that’s because you haven’t actually explained the fact to him, said an annoying little voice inside his head. Tom had no idea about the vague dissatisfaction Patrick had been feeling with his life just lately, nor the unacknowledged envy he felt for his brothers’ rewarding personal lives.
“Okay, so if you don’t take a date, you’ll be able to cruise to your heart’s content,” Tom had predicted. “I bet Abigail Wakefield will be there, and Diane Crouch, Lauren Van Shuyler…”
“Cruise? I thought I was supposed to schmooze! Anyway, Lauren doesn’t fit that category. She’s a friend.”
“Cruise, schmooze,” Tom had said, ignoring the issue of Lauren Van Shuyler. “You’re a capable man. You can do both.”
Subject closed, apparently. And now here he was, schmoozing on the outside while his inner spirit was a million miles away.
So he had welcomed the approaching lightweight distraction of this fair vision in black and diamanté at first, before he had any idea that she would stop at his table. But when their glances had connected just now, he’d felt something—a mysterious, intuitive quickening of interest. Not the sort of thing he normally admitted to, and it had spooked him.
“But I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake about who I am,” he began. Why was he reluctant to disillusion her?
Then he saw that she had realized her mistake, too.
She clapped her hands dramatically to her mouth, then let them fall again. “Oh, I am most frightfully sorry!” she gushed. “I thought you were Alasdair Corliss-Bryant, an old friend of mine from the Gloucestershire Hunt. But I can see now that of course you’re not.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Patrick answered. It was a formula response. He was aware that, on his left, local councilman Earl P. Wainwright, one of his schmoozing options for the evening, was now listening with eager attention to the new arrival. Hardly surprising. Miss England was gorgeous.
Patrick made a cool-headed assessment.
Maybe not quite as cool as he would have liked.
She was about thirty-five years too young for Wainwright, but that didn’t seem to concern the man. Untamable blond hair framed her face, and her eyes shone like brown sugar melting with butter in a hot skillet. She had long lashes, a glove-tight dress, full lips and a fabulous figure.
Of course, he’d seen it all before, Patrick quickly decided. Of course he had! He’d seen it bigger, better and sexier.
Still, he was intrigued. Not by the packaging but by the motivation. No one else had been watching her performance as she sashayed past. That it was a performance, and not at all genuine, Patrick was already quite certain. And this made him wonder about a few things.
Why, for example, had she pretended to recognize him? That recital about Alasdair Double-Barrelled-Moniker and the Whatsit-shire Hunt was too complicated. He was annoyed that she had chosen such a strategy. Overly elaborate. Unnecessary.
He frowned.
Wouldn’t it have been a lot simpler just to trip over the carpet and lunge at his knee? A woman like this surely wouldn’t begrudge a spilled glass of champagne and a dry-cleaning bill for his suit in a good cause, would she?
And why the phoney British accent? It was good. Very good. None of the vowels had slipped. Still, he was in no danger of believing it to be genuine. He’d learned in business never to take anything at face value. So…why?
He considered the issue, enjoying the fact that his mind was engaged now.
Presumably it was the Most Eligible Bachelor thing. He regretted the publicity that had given him, now. There had recently been a couple of how-to books written expressly for gold diggers. Maybe this was all written down in black-and-white in chapter four. “Capture his attention by pretending to be a card-carrying member of the British aristocracy.” Lady Catrina Willoughby-Brown was the name she’d selected for the evening, apparently.
He examined his options with a degree of relish. Challenge her at once? She deserved it, but for some reason he was tempted to play along with her game.
He had just decided on this second option when he made a very disconcerting discovery. Astonishingly, he, Patrick Simon Callahan, aged thirty-six, with a net worth upwards of twenty million dollars and still climbing, and a not-insignificant quantity of personal appeal as well, was not Lady Sugar-Eyes’s target at all.
“Councillor Wainwright, I’m so pleased to meet you,” she gushed, ending the round of formal introductions. Patrick hadn’t paid much attention to any of it until now. He slumped back in his seat, pushed aside by the sheer force of her determination.
“Lady Catrina, it’s an honor,” the councillor replied earnestly. “I love your country. I visit England every chance I get. In fact, you may know some friends of mine…”
“Oh, really? How marvelous!”
She was leaning past Patrick. On display was a tastefully moderate yet very alluring quantity of silky-skinned cleavage. Fixing her warm, liquid brown eyes on Councillor Wainwright, she nodded encouragement at the man’s words, denied knowledge of his old friends, and offered some no doubt fictional names of her own. Lord Peter Devries? The Honourable Amanda Fitzhubert?
For some reason, the very appealing effort that she was putting into hunting completely the wrong quarry immediately irritated Patrick up to the eyeballs. What was it that mom had drummed into him and his seven brothers as children? It had been one of the more annoying sayings of an otherwise excellent and well-beloved parent.
“If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”
He now discovered to his horror that he agreed wholeheartedly with these prim words of mom’s. If a woman was going to be a fortune hunter, if she’d gone to all the trouble of shimmying herself into that delectable, form-fitting dress, gate-crashing this event, inventing an upper-crust identity, perfecting the accent and wangling an introduction, then she should at least be good at it. She should aim high. She should choose the right man.
Him.
Leaving aside any other considerations, such as age, physical endowments and suitability of temperament, Patrick was streets ahead of Councillor Wainwright where it really counted to a woman like this.
In the bank.
It wasn’t that Patrick himself measured his masculinity in financial terms. He didn’t come from a moneyed background, but from a good, solid family in which other values—honor, love and Christian charity—took precedence.
Occasionally he was cynical about those values, but deep down he believed in them. He’d started to realize just lately that one of the reasons he still wasn’t outrageously in love and blissfully married like his brothers Tom, Adam and Connor, was because he just couldn’t respect or love a woman to whom money and possessions and regular appearances in magazine gossip columns were the be-all and end-all.
The pity of it was that when you were widely known as a rich young gun in the world of computer commerce, you attracted such women—beautiful and sophisticated women, many of them—in droves. The fictitious Lady Catrina was clearly one of them. That was strike one against her. The fact that she was doing it all wrong was strike two.
So there was no excuse at all for what Patrick said next.
“Would you like to dance?” His abrupt question cut right across the honeyed conversation taking place between Earl Wainwright and Lady Catrina.
The latter turned to him with a frown. As well she might. His interruption had been extremely rude.
Still, Patrick was astounded to hear himself apologize. He felt his neck grow hot inside his collar. “I’m sorry. When you’ve finished your conversation, of course.”
“No, no…!” Wainwright waved a paternal hand. “Take her, my dear old chap.” Like cheap gilt, some of the fake accent and British vocabulary had rubbed off on him.
“Please, Councillor Wainwright, do finish your story,” Lady Catrina cooed.
She hadn’t even glanced at Patrick, who was now pressed hard against the back of his seat by her single-minded determination to lean across him. Her bare, lovely shoulder was turned to him, so close that he could have nuzzled it with his lips if he’d wanted to.
Not that he did, he reminded himself.
“Heavens, no, Earl! The story’s not very interesting,” said one of the women farther around the table. She was watching Lady Catrina suspiciously. “Do go and dance, you two!”
The woman was dressed magnificently in chartreuse beaded satin, and her cheeks were rosy-bright from champagne. She looked to be about fifty-five, and it suddenly clicked. For heaven’s sake, this was Darlene, Earl Wainwright’s wife!
Patrick wanted to coach his gold-digging, pseudo-British friend, “Get real! Sheesh, woman! You can’t make a play for the man in front of his own wife!”
Perhaps Lady Catrina had realized this herself. Trying unsuccessfully to disguise her reluctance, she stood up.
“Dancing! How splendid!” she exclaimed unconvincingly. She tossed a frown back at Earl Wainwright, then apparently accepted the inevitable and took a step towards the ice.
Patrick glanced down at her spiky black heels. “Better take my arm, I think. We have to navigate that ice.”
“There are escorts for that,” she told him absently. “On skates. Here.”
She reached the edge of the carpet and was joined by a bladed male. A skate bunny took Patrick’s arm and helped him skitter across to the comparative safety of the wooden dance floor. Now he was face to face with her, and the music was slow. He took her into his arms.
Inwardly, Cat was still cursing the stranger. What had he said his name was? Patrick something. Callahan, that’s right, “Managing Director of Callahan Systems Software,” someone had said.
It wasn’t important. The only reason she’d accepted his invitation to dance was because it would have drawn too much attention if she hadn’t. She certainly didn’t want to upset innocent Mrs. Wainwright any more than absolutely necessary.
She tallied up the details of Patrick Callahan’s incredible good looks with less warmth than she’d have shown in assessing the shape and size of a Christmas tree in a wintry sale yard. Yeah, sure, he had it all. The height, the build, the hair, the shoulders, the Grecian nose and jaw, the healthy tan on his skin, the air of confidence, assurance and bone-deep entitlement.
He was the kind of man she detested, no doubt about that. An upmarket version of how Barry Grindlay must have been fifteen or twenty years ago. Barry Grindlay, the sleazy developer who was poised to bulldoze sweet, frail Cousin Pixie’s family home the moment the rezoning of lower Highgate Street went through in the middle of August. Barry Grindlay, who had no intention of paying Pixie market value for the place if he could possibly help it. Barry Grindlay, who refused to accept the fact that Pixie didn’t even want to sell in the first place.
In other words, Patrick Callahan was…had to be…arrogant and totally ruthless in his wealth and good looks. He had that sense of unquestioning entitlement written all over his face. He was the type who’d do anything for money, Cat was quite sure. And he undoubtedly believed that money could do anything for him, including pick up any woman he wanted, close any deal he wanted, buy any opinion he wanted.
In contrast to Grindlay, however, the CEO of Callahan Systems Software wasn’t important enough in Cat’s life to take the trouble of loathing. All she had to do was get this dance over and done with as smoothly as possible.
Doable. Easy.
He took her hand and held her in the middle of her back, and they began to waltz. Cat was thankful for Jill and Pixie’s dance lessons over the past couple of days. Patrick Callahan had done this before. He didn’t make the clumsy man’s mistake of trying to cover too much ground at once. They just pivoted gently in one spot, in three-four rhythm, leaving him plenty of time to gaze intently into her eyes.
Which, for some reason, he seemed keen to do.
They didn’t talk at first. Cat had to concentrate very hard in order not to start muttering, “one, two, three, one, two, three,” under her breath.
Patrick’s eyes were mesmerizing, she soon discovered. They were bluer than the reflection of a clear summer sky in a mountain lake, blue enough to put both Mel Gibson and Paul Newman into serious therapy. And there was a warm and very appealing glint of curiosity in them that drew her own gaze.
It made her want to ask, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Since she refused to express any interest in the man whatsoever, she didn’t say it. Instead, each time they circled, she craned her head to glimpse Earl Wainwright to make sure she didn’t lose track of him. It was frustrating at first.
If only I was dancing with the councillor instead…
But then Patrick eased her a little farther out onto the floor and other bodies got in the way. Cat couldn’t see Councillor Wainwright anymore. She suppressed a sigh, surrendered her impatience for the moment and hoped desperately that the dance would end soon.
Chapter Two
Patrick felt the stifled movement of Lady Catrina’s sigh, and his curiosity surged once more.
Her body had been quite a distraction. There was something about this woman. She was lithe, supple and smooth in his arms. Her body was slim but strong and healthy. There was a warmth and sparkle to her that he hadn’t expected to find, an aura about her that suggested she lived her life to the fullest.
He couldn’t put his finger on it. Did it come from her eyes?
Well, no, apparently not. When they rested on him, they were cool and bored, and when they moved elsewhere, they were frustrated and impatient, which gave him a sour sort of feeling in his gut that he couldn’t quite identify.
His hand rested against the black fabric at the back of her simple, swishy dress. He could tell it wasn’t silk. Her skin would undoubtedly feel much, much silkier. He was a little startled to catch himself in the wish that the back of the dress was lower, so that he could discover the texture of her skin with his fingers.
Was he attracted to her, then, despite his cynicism?
Hell, yes! And he couldn’t understand why he didn’t have more control. He’d already decided exactly what sort of a person she had to be, and he wasn’t impressed.
All the same, there were things about her that didn’t fit…like the scratchy feeling on the heel of her hand, another item on a growing list of things he hadn’t identified yet. What on earth was that?
And this gown intrigued him. The fabric was cheap, yet his eye told him the gown was beautifully made, fitting her like a designer original stitched by a professional to her unique measurements. And that was a contradiction, because if she could afford a made-to-measure garment, why couldn’t she afford silk?
Since this was a far safer issue than the complicated matter of his unwilling…and growing…attraction to her, he focused on it and began to challenge her subtly.
“I hadn’t expected to come across a certified member of the British aristocracy at this event,” he murmured. “What brings you to Pennsylvania?”
“I’m staying with some friends,” she said, without hesitation. Without blinking, either, he noticed.
“They’re here tonight?” He knew they wouldn’t be.
“No, they were ill at the last minute and couldn’t come.”
Yeah, right!
“How sad!”
“Yes, it was a frightful pity.”
“Frightful,” he agreed.
“So I’m here on my own.”
“Where did you meet these friends? Here in the U.S.?”
“No, in Gstaad last winter. We were all there for the winter sports.”
“Gstaad? I didn’t think anybody went there anymore,” he commented. He was making this up on the spot, knew only that Gstaad was a winter resort somewhere in Switzerland, but he wasn’t disappointed in her reaction.
“Oh, well, I know,” she answered far too quickly, and he couldn’t help appreciating the agile movement of her mind. “But of course, um, that’s its great advantage. One simply can’t stand to be crowded into some too-too fashionable resort where everyone only goes to be seen.”
“No, I imagine one would find that very trying,” he said. If she had picked up on his parody of her accent and word choice, she didn’t let on.
The music ended, and he felt her begin to pull out of his arms as if she couldn’t wait to get back to Wainwright. Afraid of being found out?
Pretending not to notice her movement, he tightened his arms around her and said very smoothly, “We’ll have another one, shall we? The night’s young yet. Plenty of time to…” Deliberately he trailed off, and she fell into the trap.
“To what?” she said.
“I was hoping you’d tell me.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
“No?”
He shrugged, in no hurry to get to the point. It was much more interesting to do this slowly. The music began again, another waltz. On the ice, professional skaters were whirling around in glittering costumes with flaring skirts. A faint mist arose from the cold white surface.
On an impulse, Patrick asked her, “So, what do you think of the way they’ve set all this up tonight?”
“Oh, they’ve done a terrific job, don’t you think?” she answered at once, and her face lit up. The accent got a little wobbly, but she didn’t notice and he didn’t care. Her eyes were warm, dark pools and her cheeks were pink.
“The whole thing’s incredible,” she continued. “I could never have imagined they’d make it look so good, when it…uh…must normally be so bland. They must have worked incredibly hard. The sculptures are beautiful, and the lights, and the costumes. And I hate to think who was up on ladders for hours frosting all those patterns on the glass. I love it!”
“But of course you’ve attended this sort of function many times before,” he reminded her gently, knowing perfectly well that she hadn’t.
Jaded jet-setters didn’t express such enthusiasm in his experience. Nor did they spare a thought for the anonymous workers who had toiled to prepare their pleasures. He’d never met one who wasn’t entirely and selfishly oblivious to such details.
So who was she?
She didn’t seem like a fortune hunter. There was a sincerity about her…which was a ridiculous word to choose when even the name she’d given him was phony. She had to be about as sincere as a computer-generated telephone message.
“Oh, of course,” she was saying quickly, the accent back in place and more plum-in-the-mouth than ever. “But this actually compares rather well to the Ascot Ball, and…uh…and so forth. I’m pleasantly surprised.” She faked a well-bred yawn behind her hand, then shot a little glance up through her lashes to gauge his response.
He had to hide a smile. Hell, she was a cute little liar!
Is that champagne going to my head? he wondered.
It was a long time since he’d enjoyed dancing this much. Normally, it was something he put up with. He considered it a matter of business etiquette if the occasion was professional, or a form of foreplay if it was private. But tonight…with her…it felt great.
“I like the dinosaurs, by the way,” he said.
“The—? Oh. Right.” The tip of her tongue darted nervously to the corner of her soft, lovely mouth, and she gave a jerky little nod.
He hid another smile of satisfaction and amusement. He’d managed to identify the scratchy feeling on the heel of her hand, finally. A Band-Aid. Just now, he had sneaked a look and had discovered that it was the kind made for children, printed with red, blue and yellow dinosaurs.
Another tiny clue as to who she really was, another thing to pique his interest. Wearing a Band-Aid like that, she had to spend a lot of time with kids. It didn’t fit the character she was trying to portray, and she knew it, which accounted for her nervous reaction to his discovery. Strangely, it didn’t seem to fit the fortune-hunter stereotype, either.
“Will you be staying long?” he asked now.
“No, I don’t expect so,” she said quickly. “I’ll leave as soon as I can. I have to, uh, be somewhere else later in the evening. You know, one’s busy social whirl.”
“You’re talking about the ball. I meant staying in Philly.”
“Oh. Right,” Cat repeated thinly.
Drat! Again!
It was as if a cloak had slipped. She gathered her artificial role around herself once more and cursed the dropping of her guard. It kept happening, when she’d been so confident that she had it down pat. There was something about Patrick Callahan that was way too distracting.
And he was way too observant, as well. That darned Band-Aid! Yesterday evening, she’d cut her finger at the twenty-four-hour child-care center where she worked, slicing some fruit for the kids’ late-night snack. She had meant to exchange the dinosaur Band-Aid for a plain one today, but had forgotten in the flurry of getting ready.
“How silly of me!” she trilled with an effort. “Of course you meant this wonderful city of yours. But I’m afraid I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Somehow I thought you might be,” he murmured. “Flying first-class?”
“Naturally. To Paris.”
“Wonderful. Where do you usually stay when you’re there?”
“Oh, just an exclusive little hotel downtown.” She gave a vague wave, which accidentally brushed his neck. It was warm, and suddenly she caught the waft of a musky male scent, a mixture of him and his soap, released by the brief brush of her fingers. “You wouldn’t know it,” she finished hastily.
“Probably not,” he agreed. “Interesting, though. I’ve never heard anyone refer to Paris as having a ‘downtown’ before.”
“No, well, I didn’t know if you knew the city or not,” Cat said, trying to infuse a note of arrogant condescension into her tone. Paris didn’t have a downtown? How was she supposed to know that, since she’d barely been out of Pennsylvania?
The man was really starting to make her nervous. That glint in his eye. That little smile that came and went in his face. It drew her attention far too often to his extremely kissable mouth.
Yikes, no! Not kissable! Good gosh! Note to self: No more Mirabeau champagne tonight!
“I know Paris,” he was saying. “I was wondering if you do.”
“Well, of course I do!” she claimed, then added with sketchy logic, “Didn’t I just say I’m about to go there?”
“So you did.” Again, he smiled at her, creasing all the tiny laugh lines on his face in a way that made him look far less intimidating, far more human. Then he slowly pulled her closer so that she had no choice but to rest her head against his shoulder as they danced, and there was that fresh, musky scent again.
She could feel his legs, now, getting tangled in the layers of her dress, and his arm was no longer safely in the middle of her back but much farther round, in the curve of her waist, just below her breast. As they moved, she could feel the weight of her fullness there, nudging softly against his hand. It didn’t feel anywhere near as unwelcome as she wanted it to, and she was melting inside. Was he flirting with her?
A silence fell. She would have spoken, only she was too afraid of saying something that would betray herself to him, too afraid that she had betrayed herself already.
Darn it, she knew she had! He had guessed who she was—or at the very least, who she wasn’t—and he was playing along with her.
Instead of hating him for it as she should, she found herself responding at first. Responding to that little half-smile of his, as if they shared a delicious, creamy, edible secret, instead of a secret that could blow her whole plan to smithereens if he revealed it to Councillor Wainwright.
How much, exactly, did he know? The detailed truth about who she was? Surely not!
Not the fact that she’d been kicked out of her home by her mean-spirited stepmother Rose six years ago, the moment she hit eighteen. Not the fact that her stepsister Jill, almost the same age, had been kicked out right along with her because Jill was pregnant and unmarried and the baby’s well-heeled, well-connected father didn’t want to know about it.
Not the fact that Jill’s older sister Suzanne had refused to remain in a house where her sisters weren’t welcome, so that all three of them, plus Jill’s little son Sam, had ended up struggling to survive in a no-hope trailer park for several years.
Yes, a trailer park, and not the kind where the other residents troubled to grow flowers and put drapes in their windows.
Thanks to Cousin Pixie, that life was behind them now. Cat was well on the way to completing her nursing degree and she was loving it. After turning her back on a career as a show skater following a disastrous six weeks in Las Vegas earlier in the year, Jill was training in computers and administration while she worked in the ice-rink office part-time. Infiltrating tonight’s ball under deep cover had been her idea. Suzanne had recently gotten her degree in library science. They each had hopes for the future. Still, they counted their pennies every single day.
Patrick Callahan knew Cat had as much right to call herself Lady Catrina Willoughby-Brown as she had to claim she could fly. But did he know how important this evening was to her? Did he know it wasn’t a game or a scam? Did he know that she and Pixie, Jill, Sam and Suzanne would all lose their home if he blew her cover tonight?
Of course he didn’t, and even if he did, if he’d somehow guessed why she was targeting Councillor Wainwright so assiduously, she doubted that he’d care. His type never did. From bitter experience, she knew this all too well.
There was a whole roll call of such people who’d impinged on her life. Curtis Harrington III, the Ivy League college boy who’d fathered Jill’s son. Barry Grindlay and his ruthless devotion to the bottom line. Her stepmother Rose, too, had given Cat many an unintentional lesson about the gulf that separated the privileged and the strugglers of this world.
The dance came to an end at last. Patrick led Cat from the floor, his fingers linked loosely through hers, and she was so relieved that this was ending that she didn’t spot his intention until it was way too late.
He’d taken her back to Earl Wainwright’s table and suggested cheerfully to the councillor, “That was fun. Why don’t you and Mrs. Wainwright take a turn now? There are a lot of couples out there now.”
Mrs. Wainwright’s eyes instantly lit up. “Oh, Earl. Why don’t we? He’s right. It isn’t just young people, and they’re playing our sort of music.”
Seconds later, Cat had to watch her elusive quarry stumble across the ice under the escort of a seventeen-year-old skate bunny. Patrick sat back in his seat, meanwhile, openly enjoying her poorly disguised chagrin.
“They’re serving more supper,” he said, then gestured at Jill, who was swishing by with a tray of filled plates.
She came to an elegant halt—she really was a beautiful skater!—and laid two plates down in front of them with a beaming smile. This quickly turned into a confused glare at Cat when she thought Patrick wasn’t looking.
Why are you wasting your time with this guy? the glare said.
Cat gave a tiny frown back and shook her head, as if to say, “Believe me, I’m trying to shake him off!” then Jill swished away with her tray once more.
“She skates well,” was Patrick’s comment.
“Yes, she does, doesn’t she?” Cat began warmly, then corrected her tone quickly. “That is to say, she seems more skilled than most of the people one sees on the outdoor rink at Gstaad.”
“Ah, we’re back to Gstaad,” Patrick murmured.
He tortured her without mercy as they ate. Cat hated herself for appreciating every moment of his cleverness. Never once did he say straight out that he knew she was a fraud. That would have been too easy. But he broke her cover again and again.
He trapped her and let her go again like a cat toying with a mouse, and she almost begged him, “Okay, you win. Call management and get me thrown out, if you’d enjoy the sight of my humiliation. I won’t bother to tell you why it matters so much. You’d only shrug.”
But he didn’t make his first move, and in the end she didn’t ask him to. Instead, she held desperately to the faint, fading hope that it would turn out all right. What other choice did she have?
Some minutes later, however, the Wainwrights came back, and despite Mrs. Wainwright’s suspicious glare, her husband gallantly whirled Cat away to dance at last. Patrick, surprisingly, didn’t interfere.
Suddenly, when she’d really believed all hope was lost, it was easy. Oh, it was so wonderfully easy! Here she was, out on the dance floor with a perspiring councillor, who was like putty in her hands.
One eager question from him about her ancestral home led her smoothly into the subject of chemical contamination of the poor, dear ancestral trout stream and consequent tragic demise of the poor, dear ancestral trout.
The councillor’s open-jawed interest in everything she said then allowed her to run on about the charming bed-and-breakfast mansion she was staying at in upper Highgate Street, and how the owner of the bed-and-breakfast was very concerned about the proposed rezoning of one block of lower Highgate Street, where, she understood, the houses had been built on the sight of a former tannery.
The ground, according to the bed-and-breakfast owner, was hopelessly contaminated from the tanning chemicals below the surface of added top soil and rock fill, and it would be a tragedy, quite simply a shocking, frightful tragedy, if the contamination—not known about by the general public, by the way, because it had been hushed up—was brought to the surface through reckless bulldozing by developers.
In any case, the heritage value of the old Victorian houses on that particular block was, “like my own ancestral estate of Dungrove Castle,” absolutely priceless and must on no account be sacrificed to the frightful greed of commercial interests.
“Lady Catrina, you are absolutely right,” said the councillor eagerly. “You couldn’t have known this, of course, but environmental contamination and deliberate hushing up of its presence is one of my most strongly felt issues, and it’s the most amazing coincidence that I should meet someone like you who shares my concerns.”
He took a moment to mop his brow with a big, plaid handkerchief, as if the fluency of his oratory was exhausting him, then said, “As for the heritage values, of course I wish we, here in the United States, had the sensitivity of you British nobles in that area. Rest assured, however, that this city—as well as you personally, my dear—”
He really did have a very pleasant smile, Cat noted.
“—can count on my influence in council to hold these forces of darkness at bay, and council is going to know that at the very next meeting, because I am not going to hold my cards to my chest any longer. The rezoning in lower Highgate Street is off!”
The music ended at that moment, and a very breathless Councillor Wainwright escorted Cat off the floor and back to the table.
Before he reached it, he was waylaid by his wife Darlene, saying urgently, “Earl? Earl! Grab that waitress. She’s missed our table, and I’m ready for my supper. Those canapes wouldn’t have fed a bird. Earl? Go after her!”
He loped off obediently in the wake of the waitress, almost forgetting about the ice in his eagerness. His wife, evidently not trusting either his persistence about supper or his immunity to any of the beautiful women here tonight, followed him.
Cat turned from the councillor and reached the table, her success glowing in her face and making her smile helplessly.
She’d done it. She had actually done it! Pixie’s home and the other gracious Victorian houses in lower Highgate Street were safe, as were the other families who lived in them. Seven and a half weeks from now, when the vital council meeting was due to take place, sleazy Barry Grindlay would have no more reason to try and con poor, frail, simple-hearted Pixie out of her one and only asset.
Now, if she could only find Jill, tell her the good news and get out of here…
“Pleased about something, Lady Catrina?” said Patrick’s darkly amused voice just a few feet away.
Cat dropped into her seat, knocked hollow by the man once more. Everyone else from this table was dancing or greeting friends, and he sat here alone. His long body was draped in his seat in a lazy sprawl and just one corner of his mouth was lifted in a smile.
Of course she hadn’t forgotten about him. Somehow she suspected she wasn’t going to find it very easy to do that, even after this event was over. His voice, his smile, the feel of his arms around her as they danced, his clever way with words and the searching, half-amused, half-cynical look in his blue eyes were all things that would haunt her, waking and sleeping, for weeks. And there was another quality to him, as well. Or maybe it was a quality in the air between them. Either way, she couldn’t put a name to it.
But at least until a moment ago she had kidded herself that his involvement in her evening was done.
It was instantly apparent that he didn’t agree. When she stammered out something inane about a frightfully pleasant conversation with Councillor Wainwright during the dance, he laughed aloud. It was a complicated sound, more than the simple expression of amusement.
“While there’s no one else around,” he suggested, leaning forward, “let’s be a little more honest about this, shall we?”
“Wh-what do you mean?” she said, although she knew quite well.
“You have about as much right to call yourself Lady Catrina Willoughby-Brown as I would have to call myself Prince Patrick of Kalamazoo,” he answered. “Sorry, Lady C, but I’ve blown your cover. I know why you’re really here, and I’m not going to let you get away with it….”
Chapter Three
“Unless,” Patrick continued in a less threatening tone, “you agree to spend the next couple of hours with me.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. He’d already beaten off several ambitious young beauties while “Lady Catrina” was dancing with the councillor.
Beaten off. The expression fitted. They were like mosquitoes. Persistent and annoying, with buzzy little voices and blood-sucking intent. For a moment, the notion of spending time with a gold digger who hadn’t targeted himself was appealing, but that moment soon passed.
To find her briefly fascinating was one thing. To open himself up to having her chase him was something very different.
Because if she was any good as a fortune hunter, she’d soon work out that he was a better target than Wainwright. He’d then have to endure the tedium, and the disappointment of listening to her simper and coo as she tried to draw his interest. Just another mosquito….
“Don’t,” she begged, in answer to his impulsive demand, and he was surprised out of his complacent remorse when he heard the real anguish in her voice.
Also, for mercy’s sake, what was happening to those big brown eyes? Were those actually tears making them glisten?
“Please don’t,” she went on, her voice shaky. “I mean, I assume you’re connected somehow with the council or the zoning authority, or whoever, but…but…Oh, damn, why am I begging?”
She dropped her head so that her mass of gorgeous hair fell forward like an avalanche of silk and screened her emotion-filled face.
“As if begging is going to do any good!” she muttered. “If you’re serious about that bargain of yours, of course I’ll spend two hours with you. To think you’d ruin or spare people’s lives on the basis of some faint interest in my company!”
“Actually, I’m viewing you more as a kind of insect repellent,” he drawled, masking his true reaction to her dramatically changed mood.
“Insect repellent?”
“Here comes another mosquito now.”
“Patrick!” squealed Tiffany de Saint. “Patrick Callahan! It’s been a hundred years!”
She minced up to the table on impossible heels and bent to kiss him, offering a deliberate glimpse of breasts that had been professionally inflated to more than generous size. When she straightened again, Patrick noted that not a hair on her blond head had moved, it was so stiffly styled.
He didn’t know what favor she’d called in to get a ticket this evening, but she certainly wasn’t here on the strength of service to charity, public profile or talent. He only knew her because she’d worked as the personal assistant to Anna Tarrant, a publicity consultant he’d dated for a while. She’d lost that job after sleeping with one too many of Anna’s married clients.
Running into people like Tiffany was one of the things that made Patrick regret the litany of short-lived relationships with interesting women that formed his past. He now found that he knew too many people, and too many of those people he didn’t like.
“Hi, Tiffany,” he said. “Meet Lady Catrina Willoughby-Brown.”
He slid an arm around Lady C’s shoulders and saw Tiffany’s face tighten. Her baby-blue eyes narrowed and went as hard as two diamonds above a rectangular smile that she couldn’t sustain.
“Lady Catrina,” she echoed. To her credit, she recognized defeat at once. “I’m just so utterly thrilled to meet you.” Her voice was like damp cardboard. Seconds later, she had moved on.
“See,” he said to Lady C. “Mosquito repellent.”
“Yes, I see,” she answered at once. “But if you think that makes it any better, I—I don’t agree. Just because you have your own agenda. What are you doing? Selling your silence? It’s…it’s…just wrong!”
The phony accent had disappeared completely, replaced by pure, native Philadelphian, and either she hadn’t even noticed or she didn’t care anymore. It appalled Patrick to see how upset she was. Hell, she was shaking! He could see it and feel it, beneath the arm that he still had draped lightly across her shoulder.
“Hey!” he said urgently, straightening and taking his arm away. “Hey, Lady C!”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What should I call you then?”
“Just Cat, okay? No…” She shook her head, quickly changing her mind, and he saw the Wainwrights returning with their steaming supper plates. “Can you stick to Lady Catrina, please, as if you believed me? Please! Or else, if this means anything to you, five of us will lose our home.”
“What?”
“Grindlay won’t leave my cousin alone. He’s trying to trick her into selling so that when the rezoning goes through he can get in first and develop the land. She’s vulnerable and often gets confused. We can’t ever trust that he won’t find a way to get to her. This was the only thing we could think of, and now…I need the bathroom,” she finished abruptly and hurried off before the Wainwrights reached the table.
Patrick sat back in his seat in stunned silence, his neck and face burning and his hands ice-cold.
What was that about? Sheesh! Who was talking about anyone losing their home? She had truly called his bluff just now, and she was too upset even to know it.
Clearly, he’d gotten something majorly wrong. She wasn’t here, like Tiffany de Saint, to catch herself a rich boyfriend at all. She had targeted Earl P. Wainwright for another reason entirely. His mind made rapid, accurate leaps of logic. Councillor Wainwright. She’d talked about a rezoning…
The puzzle fell into place in a sketchy sort of way. She had used this ball to gain access to Wainwright and influence his vote on the local council over a zoning issue that affected her home, and evidently she was sure she’d succeeded after her dance with the affable councilman. Patrick remembered the sweet relief on Cat’s face a few minutes ago when she’d returned to the table.
Without knowing the full story, he nevertheless approved. He knew a little about the workings of the local council in this particular obscure corner of Greater Philadelphia. In his opinion the council was way too fond of rezoning at the drop of a hat, making a mockery of sensitive city planning and development.
But the success of the plan, he calculated, had to depend on Wainwright continuing to fall for that British aristocrat thing, and this was why Lady C had been so upset to think of Patrick blowing her cover.
She’d fled to the bathroom to repair her makeup, while he was left feeling like a complete heel. He’d pictured her as a brazen gold digger, and he’d enjoyed the idea of exposing her. To him, it had been a bit of unusual entertainment for the evening, while clearly to her it was anything but.
Who was she? She had guts, imagination and flair, that was for sure, to attempt such a flamboyant scam. He was the only person who suspected she wasn’t who she said she was, and that was only because—
Wham! The realization hit him in the guts.
It was only because from the moment he saw her he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. This had made him a witness to her occasional slips. And now that he understood her a little better, his interest was stronger than ever. He hadn’t felt so immediately and totally fascinated by a woman for a very long time.
He sat there, toying with the rest of the food on his plate, impatient in every cell of his body for her to get back so he could learn more.
In the bathroom, Cat cooled her reddened eyes with wet tissue then set about patching up her makeup. She didn’t do a good job, but maybe it didn’t matter now. Maybe nothing mattered. She’d thought earlier that she had won the gamble of this saucy scheme, and instead she was hanging by a thread that Patrick Callahan could snip any time he chose.
And for some crazy reason—she didn’t really buy the “mosquito repellent” thing; there was more to it than that—he was going to allow her companionship to buy his silence.
Just her companionship?
Oh, no. Uh-uh. Of course not!
It clicked.
The bargain Patrick Callahan undoubtedly had in mind was the one that would take place after the party. The one where she would sleep with him in return for his continued silence.
The CEO of Callahan Systems could probably get access to the private phone number of any city councilman in eastern Pennsylvania just by calling in one tiny favor. He could blow her story any time he liked. Would he do it just because she turned down the offer of his bed?
Cat calculated for a few minutes, her mind spinning. She had to decide if there was a warm, selfless human heart beating away somewhere in there beneath Patrick Callahan’s good-looking exterior, with its aura of success and entitlement. And if there was such a heart, she had to appeal to it. She had to get him to care….
Maybe she’s not coming back, Patrick started to wonder.
He shifted restlessly in his seat and tried not to crane his neck in the direction of the bathroom, looking for her. He had totally lost interest in the conversation at the table, lost interest in anything other than Lady C, and he knew that his brother Tom would be most disappointed in the schmoozing element of the evening.
As for the cruising…
Lauren Van Shuyler stopped by his table for a chat. She was an old friend. He’d done quite a bit of business with her father’s company, and he genuinely liked her. But there was an inner sadness to her these days, and she’d never been a woman he could flirt with. A couple more women made their interest evident, in a similar style to Tiffany de Saint, but for some reason the very idea of even talking with them…let alone dancing, flirting, taking them home…wearied him beyond belief.
“Hello…”
His head shot up. It was Cat, smiling halfheartedly down at him. No, Lady Catrina, he corrected himself. He owed it to her to think of her that way. She was back from the bathroom, and he had been so busy brooding on the probability that she’d left the ball altogether that he hadn’t even noticed.
“Hi,” he said carefully.
She slipped into the seat beside him, her tentative smile still in place. “I hope I wasn’t gone too long.”
“Well, I did think about sending out a search party,” he drawled.
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey…” He frowned. Something was different. She had her chin held high, and she had “Lady Catrina” patchily in place, but she looked scared, and her sugar-brown eyes were full of uncertainty.
Wainwright and his wife were dancing again, and no one else at this large table had a starry-eyed fascination with the British aristocracy, so they weren’t taking much notice of either him or Lady C.
Patrick said to her quickly, “Let’s dance. I’m afraid you missed dessert.”
“I don’t care. Dancing’s fine.”
She got up obediently, almost timidly, and again he wondered, “What’s happened?” Then he found that he’d said it aloud.
“I—I don’t know what you mean,” she stammered, accent back in place.
They didn’t wait for the escorts over the ice. Instead, he just grabbed her, and they skittered across to the dance floor. He could feel the tension making every muscle in her body brittle and hard.
“You’re acting different,” he said when they reached the dance floor. “At first, earlier tonight, you couldn’t stand me.” He grinned. “And I kind of liked that.”
“Sure you did!” She raised one eyebrow. “I did,” he insisted. “It was…an experience I haven’t had very often.”
“Uh-huh,” she nodded slowly, understanding. “It would be, I guess.”
“You’re not slow on the uptake, are you?”
“Not generally.”
“Then you got upset,” he said, continuing his recap of the shifting balances between them. “And, Cat…”
“Lady Catrina,” she reminded him.
“Lady Catrina,” he parroted obediently, “I’m so sorry I rattled you like that. You have to believe that!” He took both her hands and squeezed them, brought them up to chest level and clasped them inside his palms.
“Are you?” She narrowed her eyes and searched his face, as though gauging the depth of his sincerity was really important to her.
It was, he realized. Of course it was!
“Oh, good grief, I know what it is!” he said, looking down at her. “You think if you’re not…nice to me now, then I’ll call security, or something. And if you’re not even nicer to me later, I’ll have a tiny little word in Wainwright’s ear and waste all of your careful planning.”
“And you’re telling me you won’t? Puh-lease! Try and make it convincing!” Suddenly, all the spirit and fire and determination was back. She pulled away from him and Patrick felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. Damn, but she had courage! Class, too.
“Of course I’m telling you I won’t!” he said. “Hell, what kind of a man do you think I am?”
“A rich one.”
He didn’t even dignify the cynical interjection with a reply and went on as if he hadn’t heard her, “Do you really think I need to resort to cheap blackmail to get a woman into bed?”
“Some men would find that amusing, whether they needed to or not,” she answered coolly.
With her pride back in place, she wasn’t going to give him an inch. Which was brave of her, considering what she thought he might do to her plan.
“Well, Lady C, believe me, I can find a lot better ways to amuse myself than that,” he told her, his voice rising in his effort to get through to her.
And, damn it, he was going to get through to her! he vowed, not stopping for a second to consider why it was so important.
He gripped her by the shoulders, rounding his hands softly over those warm, smooth knobs of muscle. Then he looked into her eyes as if he could hypnotize her into trusting him. All around them, dancers gyrated or spun, and colored lights swathed the darkness with their dazzling beams.
“Catrina—and will you please damn well let me leave off the Lady!—you have to trust me!”
“Why?” she demanded simply.
“Because—because you have no choice, my lady,” he repeated, now with total confidence. He could see the logic of it in his head like a game of chess. “Either I’m a complete scum who’ll blow your cover to Wainwright because you won’t sleep with me tonight.” The wicked part of him made him add, “By the way, I’m right in that, aren’t I? You won’t sleep with me tonight?”
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