His Most Exquisite Conquest: A Delicious Deception / The Girl He'd Overlooked / Stepping out of the Shadows
Robyn Donald
Elizabeth Power
CATHY WILLIAMS
A Delicious DeceptionRayne Hardwicke has an old score to settle. Arrogant playboy Kingsley Clayborne built a billion-dollar business at the expense of her father’s career, and she wants justice… but a part of her also wants more!The Girl He’d OverlookedBeautiful girls have always been a part of James Rocchi’s life – so he’d never really noticed Jennifer, the plain girl next door… But when a season in Paris transforms her into a stylish woman with tempting curves, James is determined to make up for lost time!Stepping Out of the ShadowsMarisa Somerville may have a different name, but Rafe Peveril would know those siren green eyes and lush lips anywhere. So why does she keep insisting they’ve never met? She might deny knowing him but she can’t deny how she responds to his touch…
His Most Exquisite Conquest
A Delicious Deception
Elizabeth Power
The Girl He’d Overlooked
Cathy Williams
Stepping Out of the Shadows
Robyn Donald
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#u3e1c8641-3b02-54a3-87b9-602c3cdf5c5e)
Title Page (#ue89a5194-f169-5bbc-b765-8506ef3696e4)
A Delicious Deception (#u8bca15b7-eed3-5514-be84-d4e7977faed5)
About the Author (#u8ea1f203-1d28-5e27-b9fc-74a698fefdec)
Dedication (#ub17f8dfd-2223-5b7e-b0a7-5f280e4ea535)
CHAPTER ONE (#ub8fca985-20d5-53fa-83bc-de1b652ce874)
CHAPTER TWO (#uf4e6dc25-794a-58f5-a447-3199f12467f3)
CHAPTER THREE (#u5642dc7a-ff5c-5984-baf4-da3073b38364)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u6ce85dd0-f438-5bd6-a191-c0f7c24496dc)
CHAPTER FIVE (#uc754eb97-7606-56d0-a392-1946e1f0fb70)
CHAPTER SIX (#u4c816324-ca8c-5057-9595-9d7e9372bba4)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u7d5f57ce-3e8e-5832-906b-c85f1f5fada6)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#uc3a6b9b2-d250-5ecf-b6e7-3a49aaf9dc16)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
The Girl He’d Overlooked (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
Stepping Out of the Shadows (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
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 ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
A Delicious Deception (#ulink_542477ee-eb5f-52b7-adaf-c212e7c11e23)
ELIZABETH POWER wanted to be a writer from a very early age, but it wasn’t until she was nearly thirty that she took to writing seriously. Writing is now her life. Travelling ranks very highly among her pleasures, and so many places she has visited have been recreated in her books. Living in England’s West Country, Elizabeth likes nothing better than taking walks with her husband along the coast or in the adjoining woods and enjoying all the wonders that nature has to offer.
For Alan—
with love and fond memories of Monaco.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_23a27bcf-766a-53b9-9390-82690fc45880)
THE tread of confident footsteps echoed across the sun-warmed tiles of the terrace—the tread of a man whose presence spelled danger.
Even without turning around, Rayne guessed who he was and could sense a desire in him to unnerve her.
No, it was more of a determination, she decided, with every cell alert, tensing from the fear of being recognised—an assurance that whatever this man wanted, this man got.
‘So you’re the little waif my father plucked off the street, who’s showing her gratitude by deigning to drive him around.’
She had been looking, from her vantage point through the balconied archway, out over coral-coloured blocks of high-rise apartments, some with roof gardens, others with pools that seemed to throw back fire from the setting sun. But now she ignored the glittering sea, the palace on The Rock and the sun-streaked cliffs that were a feature of this coast—but particularly of this rich man’s playground that was Monte Carlo—swinging round instead with her blazing hair falling heavily over one shoulder and her body stiffening from the derisory undertones of the deep English voice.
His clothes were tailored to perfection. And expensive, Rayne decided grudgingly. From his pristine white shirt and dark designer suit, to the very tip of his shiny black shoes. A man whose cool, sophisticated image masked a deceptively ruthless nature and a tongue that could cut with the deftness of a scythe.
For a moment she couldn’t speak, stunned by how the years had given him such a powerful presence. Recent newspaper photographs, she realised, had failed to capture the striking quality about him that owed less to his stunning classic features and thick black hair that had a tendency to fall across his forehead than to that breath-catching aura that seemed to surround his tall, muscular frame.
‘For your information, I’m twenty-five.’
Why had she told him that? Because of the condescending way in which he had referred to her? Or to assure him that she was a woman now and not the shrieking eighteen-year-old he had had to deal with that last time they had met.
The cock of a deprecating eyebrow told her he had taken her response in the way that his calculating brain evidently wanted to. That she was more than eligible to bed his father, and that she was probably planning to do so—if she hadn’t already—with purely mercenary motives in mind. But there wasn’t a glimmer of recognition in those steel-blue eyes …
‘And he didn’t pluck me off the street,’ she corrected him, allowing herself to relax a little. ‘We were both victims of a spiteful ploy to relieve me of my possessions. I came to France—and then Monaco—for a break, and I was left with no credit cards, no money and nowhere to stay.’ Why did she feel she had to justify herself to him? she thought with her jaw clenching. Because she hadn’t been sitting in that pavement café just by coincidence? Because as an experienced journalist who had researched her subject thoroughly beforehand, she knew exactly where Mitchell Clayborne would be? ‘Your father very kindly offered me a roof over my head until I could get things sorted out.’
That wide masculine mouth she had always thought of as passionate compressed in a rather judgemental fashion. ‘A bit remiss of you not to have booked ahead.’
Why did every word he uttered sound like an accusation? Or was it just guilt making her imagine things? The dread of being found out?
‘My mother’s been ill for the past year or so. Now her condition’s stabilised she took up her friend’s offer to go away for three weeks, and so I decided to just take off.’ It had seemed like a good idea from the security of the little rented Victorian house she still shared with her mother in London, although she knew that Cynthia Hardwicke would have thrown up her hands in horror if she knew the real reason her daughter was taking this trip. ‘I had somewhere to stay until that morning.’ She shrugged and didn’t think it worth bothering to tell him that her friend, Joanne, who now lived in the South of France with her husband, and whom she’d been planning to spend some time with, had been unexpectedly descended upon by her sister and her three young nieces, so that Rayne had had to politely offer to move on before she was asked. ‘With the holiday season barely started, I didn’t envisage too much problem checking in somewhere.’ Except that she hadn’t reckoned on being robbed before she’d got the chance. ‘I’d hired a car for the day, stopped for a coffee and … well … you obviously know the rest.’
He knew what his father had told him, but Mitch was clearly biased, King thought, and he could see why. Despite referring to her as ‘little’ just now, this woman was—what? Five feet six? Five seven?—with a good figure. And quite striking, too, with that Titian red hair. Or did they call that auburn? Her skin was creamy, complementing big eyes set just wide enough apart for his liking and a particularly full mouth a man could easily get carried away by. And there was certainly nothing waiflike about that air of confidence about her which, being as shrewd a judge of people as he was, did seem rather too assertive for a woman without an agenda. He wondered what that agenda could be, as he recalled how Mitch had said he’d picked her up.
Apparently his father had been leaving his usual lunch venue last Wednesday, alone because, as cantankerous as ever, Mitch had that morning had a barney with the latest chauffeur King had engaged for him and sent the man packing.
Rigid to routine, it was typical of Mitch that he’d refused to change his plans or wait for another member of staff to drive him into town, and had taken the old Bentley—which had been modified for him to use—himself. Not that he thought his father wasn’t capable. But it was inadvisable for a sixty-seven-year-old man of Mitch’s prominence to be out without proper security, even for one who wasn’t so physically challenged. After transferring himself into the car—always a struggle for him—outside the café and folding up his wheelchair, the wheel he’d taken off was snatched from under his nose in broad daylight. It just went to show how susceptible he was. It also proved how easily his stubborn independence could be taken from him, and would have been if this supposedly ministering angel King saw before him hadn’t leapt up and given chase.
He affected an air of effortless charm. ‘It seems I should be thanking you for looking out for my father, Miss …’
‘Carpenter. Rayne Carpenter.’
It wasn’t her real name. Well, not entirely. It was her mother’s maiden name and the name Rayne had used in the small provincial newspaper she used to write for. But then introducing herself as Lorrayne Hardwicke would only have earned her a one-way ticket out of there, she thought with a little shiver, even though she had been planning to tell his father exactly who she was in the beginning. At first … before those thieves had intervened and thrown all her well-laid plans awry.
‘You’re the best reporter I have, but you’ve got to come up with a story!’ her editor had told her six months ago, before he’d been forced to let her go when her mother’s worrying illness and inevitable operation had forced her to take too much time off.
Well, she could come up with a story! she thought now, with her teeth clamped almost painfully together. It was one exposé she wanted, and one everyone would want to read. Except that this one was personal …
She saw a muscle twitch in the man’s hard angular jaw as he came closer—close enough for her to catch the scent of his cologne—as fresh as the pines that clothed the steeply rising hillside.
‘I’m Kingsley Clayborne. But everyone calls me King,’ he told her, holding out a hand.
I know who you are!
Her confidence wavered. She didn’t want to touch him. But fear of his checking up on her if she showed any sign of unease or aversion to him forced her to plaster on a bright smile. Taking the hand he was offering, she found herself responding before she could stop herself, ‘I’ll bet they do!’
Feeling her slender hand tremble in his, King let his fingers find a subtle path across the blue vein pulsing in her wrist. He noted the way it was throbbing in double-quick tempo. There was something about her eyes too. Deep hazel eyes flecked with green, which were darkly guarded as they fixed on his. But fix on them they did, with a contention that was as challenging as it was wary, and which mirrored the superficial smile on her beautiful bronze-tinted mouth.
He knew his father could take care of himself. He was a man of the world, for heaven’s sake! But Mitch was also vulnerable to a pretty face, and therefore to unscrupulous gold-diggers—and this Rayne Carpenter was one hell of a cagey lady.
Even so, he wasn’t blind to the long, elegant line of her pale, translucent throat, or the way it contracted nervously beneath his blatant regard. Any more than he could fail to notice that her breasts—the cleft of which was just tantalisingly visible above the neckline of her chic but simple black dress—were high and generously proportioned. Quite a handful, in fact.
Hell! He was surprised by how acutely his body responded to the femininity she seemed to flaunt without any conscious effort, especially when his keen mind was telling him that Miss Rayne Carpenter was definitely one to watch. But there was something about her …
Some memory tugged at his subconscious like the fragment of a dream, too elusive to grasp, but still powerful enough to deepen the crease between his thick, winged brows, compelling him to enquire, ‘Have we met before?’
Beads of perspiration broke out over Rayne’s body, as tangible as that strong hand that was clasping hers, prickling above her top lip and along the deep V between her breasts.
She gave a nervous little laugh and said, ‘I hardly think so.’
She wasn’t sure whether he had let her go or whether she had been the one to break the contact, but as her hand slipped out of his she realised that she was desperate to take a breath.
Deep inside her something stirred. Resentment? Dislike?
What else could have produced this overwhelming reaction to him that had her blood surging, not just from his question, but from the unwelcome and disturbing touch of his hand? After all, anything she might have felt for him he had killed off a long time ago, she assured herself caustically. But it had been more than a touch, she reasoned, despising him—as well as herself—for the way he was making her feel.
With one simple handshake she felt as though she’d been assessed, undressed and bedded by him, because behind that probing scrutiny that had trapped the breath in her lungs there had been a fundamental appreciation of a man for a woman. Yet there was still no sign of recognition …
Her breath, marked with trembling relief, shivered shallowly through her when he accepted her denial of having met him before. But then everyone she met nowadays who hadn’t seen her since she was a teenager remarked on how much she had changed. Seven years ago she had had no real curves and her hair had been short and spiky, as well as a different colour. And back then, of course, she would simply have been known as Lorri …
‘Those thieves must have reckoned on your being a definite pushover, don’t you think?’ he remarked smoothly. ‘For the three of them to have targeted you so precisely?’
She took a step back, finding his dominating presence much too stifling, his question baffling her even as it warned her to be on her guard. ‘I’m sorry …?’
‘I mean that they must have noticed you taking more than a passing interest in my father to be so certain you’d rise to their bait when they took that wheel and rush off and help him as you did.’
Could he hear her heart hammering away inside her?
‘I don’t like seeing anyone taken advantage of,’ she said pointedly, and then, with barely concealed venom, ‘for any reason.’ Now, with her head cocked to one side, she demanded, ‘What exactly are you insinuating, Mr—’
‘King.’
Perhaps ‘Your Majesty’ would please you more!
She had to bite her lower lip to stop from crying it aloud. He was rich and powerful now. As well as ruthless, she decided bitterly.
Even then, all those years ago, when she’d crashed in on the ugly scene between him and her father, she had seen a side to him she hadn’t realised he’d possessed. A steel edge to his personality, coupled with a determined lack of scruples for a young man who, while still only twenty-three, had been forced, through his father’s accident, to learn the ropes quickly so that he could pick up the reins of a company about to explode on the world.
‘I couldn’t help but take an interest in him—or in what he was doing, certainly!’ she breathed now, hating him for the part he had played in destroying her father, while warning herself that nothing would escape this man’s notice or bypass the keen circuits of his cold, intellectual mind. ‘I was struck by the way he’d overcome his obvious difficulties to be able to drive himself around like that. I wasn’t aware that admiring someone’s capabilities actually constituted a crime.’
‘It doesn’t.’ His smile seemed to light his face like the evening sun lit the rooftops of Monte Carlo, leaving her struck by its transformation from a dark enigma to one of pure blinding charm.
Rayne’s throat worked nervously. Was he backing off?
‘As you’ve probably been told, my father’s chauffeur left … rather suddenly. Hence the reason he was without a driver, although, I should say, thanks to you, that that breach has been miraculously filled.’
She nodded, ignoring the sarcasm lacing his words.
Her heavy hair moved softly around her shoulders, King noticed, the warmth of the evening light turning it to flame.
His thick black eyelashes came down as he followed the rivers of fire to where they ended just above her contrastingly pale breasts. ‘I gather you didn’t lose everything at the hands of those criminals.’ A toss of his chin indicated the clothes she was wearing, but the way those appraising blue eyes slid down her quivering body invested even that innocuous statement with disturbing sensuality.
‘My clothes were in my car.’
‘And they didn’t take your keys?’
‘No. They were in my jeans pocket.’ With her cellphone, she thought—mercifully!—although she didn’t tell King that. She had taken it out of her bag to text her mother just minutes before Mitchell Clayborne had emerged from the hotel restaurant next to the café the other day, and she had been immensely relieved that she had. It meant that she had been able to cancel her credit and debit cards and report the crime to the police in the privacy of the hired car, while leaving her cellphone number with them in case of any developments—so nobody would be ringing and asking for Lorrayne Hardwicke on her host’s landline.
Tilting her head, she viewed the formidably attractive heir of Clayborne International with her throat dry from a raw sexual awareness and enquired, ‘Do you interrogate all your father’s house guests like this?’
His mouth tugged on one side as he moved over to the granite-topped table on the terrace and poured himself some coffee from the silver pot a manservant had brought out a little while ago. A masculine hand—long-fingered and tanned—queried whether he should pour some for her.
Rayne shook her head, dragging her gaze from the stark contrast of an immaculate white cuff and dark wrist to note that he added no cream or sugar to his cup.
‘But you’re not just a house guest, are you?’ he remarked wryly. ‘You’ve insisted on working while you’re here until you get your affairs straightened out, which makes you an employee of sorts—albeit a rather unconventional one—and my father doesn’t engage anyone these days without consulting me.’
And that just showed who was ruling the Clayborne empire now, she thought, resenting the authority he exuded as well as that brooding magnetism and forcefulness of character that lent his features a strength and quality that went way beyond mere handsomeness. ‘You must excuse me if you think I’m being overly cautious.’ She watched him drink through the steam rising from his cup and then set the fine china down on the table with cool economical movements. ‘But, as I’m sure you’re aware, my father is a very wealthy man.’
So are you, she supplied silently, remembering how amazed she had been to read that article that reported him as being higher up Britain’s Rich List last year even than Mitchell Clayborne. That it was at her father’s expense that the Claybornes were in that enviable position was something she refused to dwell on. She was aware, though, of the numerous enterprises King was involved in outside their technological empire, and reluctantly accepted that a man of his drive and determination would succeed at anything he turned his hand to. She looked at him askance and with a confrontational note in her voice queried, ‘Meaning?’
He made a careless gesture with his hands. ‘A beautiful young woman. An obviously rich but vulnerable older man whose ego needs a bit of boosting. An unlikely prank-turned-robbery in the midst of a crowded café. You must admit it couldn’t be a more finely tuned scheme to play on the older man’s sympathies and to get you into this house if you’d engineered it yourself.’
The colour already touching her cheeks intensified on a surge of guilt because, of course, she had been waiting at that table specifically for his father’s appearance, but not for the reasons his sceptical guard dog of a son was suggesting!
Still trying to deny the heat coursing through her veins from his remark about her being beautiful, she retorted, ‘That’s preposterous!’
‘Is it?’ He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, bringing her attention unwillingly to the hard lean line of his pelvis until, shocked at where she was looking, she dropped her gaze down over his intimidating stance and long, long legs. ‘It isn’t unheard of.’
‘Except for one thing, King.’ They both glanced in the direction of the shaky, gravelly voice, accompanied now by the unmistakable squeak of the wheelchair approaching. ‘She didn’t want to come.’
It was true. She hadn’t at first. When those thieves had left her with nothing but a car with a virtually empty fuel tank, no money or credit and no place to stay, she had been uncomfortable enough with Mitchell Clayborne’s gratitude for returning his property without his offer of assistance when he realised the loss and inconvenience that helping him had caused her. After all, she’d been lying in wait for him solely for one reason: to confront him with who she was and to threaten him if necessary with exposure in the papers if he didn’t come clean and admit the wrong that both he and King had done to her father. To try and prick his conscience—if he had one!—where Grant Hardwicke had failed, because Mitch Clayborne and his son had taken something more precious from her family than a simple wheel! But he’d seemed so shaken up by those morons running off with it that it hadn’t been the time or the place. Besides, she’d only been waiting at that café because she knew she would never have got past this villa’s impregnable security if she had tried to see him here, so, after her initial hesitation, she’d decided to grab the opportunity she was being offered with both hands.
After all, the Claybornes owed her family big time, she’d decided, and all she had to do was bide her time until she had got her credit cards sorted out, enjoy a bit of luxury for a night or two and then, when her host was feeling better, she’d come clean and tell him who she really was. But it hadn’t worked out like that.
‘Hear that, King?’ Mitchell Clayborne brought his chair out into the scented dusky air, warm still even though the light was fading. His iron-grey hair, combed straight back, was still thick like his son’s, but his face was more harshly etched as his lined blue eyes clashed with the brooding intensity of the younger man’s. ‘I said she didn’t want to come.’
Despite the gathering shadows around the pale stonework of the house, Rayne saw a fragment of a smile pull at King’s sensual mouth.
‘Your discretion becomes you,’ he remarked quietly. His eyes said something quite different, though, she was sure, as they swept over her tight, tense features—as did the scarcely concealed scepticism with which he spoke.
Did he know? she wondered with her heart banging against her ribs. Had he guessed who she was and was just playing with her? Or did his only beef about her stem from the fact that she hadn’t come through his stringent security system? Been passed to him first for his cold and calculating assessment?
‘Leave her alone, King.’ Mitchell was pushing himself over to the table as King reached for the cut glass decanter beside the coffee pot and poured some of its golden contents into a matching tumbler. ‘Can’t I enjoy a bit of female company without you vetting her like she was some filly with a dubious pedigree?’ Mitch took the glass from the man who was more than thirty-five years his junior, and yet whose influence and power in the corporate world was more respected and deferred to even than the older man’s these days.
King’s shoulder lifted and a sudden last shaft of sunlight, piercing through the trees that decked the hillsides, splintered colour from the crystal decanter in his hand. ‘Of course.’ Replacing its stopper, he put the decanter back on the table with a dull thud. ‘But be it on your own head, Mitch. I’m not going to be riding this one.’
Rayne’s back stiffened from the double entendre as she watched him walk away, looking every bit as proud as the man in the wheelchair, but exuding an air of such uncompromising autonomy that lesser men, including his own father, could only hope to aspire to.
‘He doesn’t like me,’ Rayne observed dryly, her confident manner concealing how uncomfortably sticky he’d made her feel beneath her light clothes. Had he picked up on the fact that she was hiding something from them? Or was her guilty secret letting her imagination run away with her?
‘You’ll have to excuse my son. He suspects every woman who happens to give me the time of day,’ Mitch told her. ‘Especially if she’s young and pretty. Usually he manages to frighten them off before the dust has time to settle under their feet.’
‘That’s pretty selfish of him.’ Rayne’s eyes lingered in the direction the other man had gone, her jaw tightening in rebellion.
‘He has no reason to be. With a physical and intellectual package like that, they all wind up wanting King anyway.’ He gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Well, who would want an old fossil like me?’ He started to cough, the contents of his glass threatening to slop over the side. As Rayne moved forward to take it from him, he waved her impatiently aside. ‘But what’s a man to do?’ The terrace lights had come on, taking over from the sun that had dipped behind the mountains and glinting on the crystal he lifted to his mouth, draining it in one swift gulp. ‘He calls it protecting my interests. Here—’ he thrust the empty glass in her direction ‘—pour me another one, will you?’
Rayne looked at him dubiously. He was already looking rather florid. She’d also learned from his late-middle-aged and amiable Swiss housekeeper while she’d been there that Mitchell Clayborne had high blood pressure as well as a heart condition, which was why Rayne had been hesitant to tell him who she was and why she was there. ‘Do you think you should?’
‘For heaven’s sake, girl! You have the audacity to question my actions while you’re a guest in my house?’
‘I didn’t mean to.’ Nor did she want to find herself worrying over someone who had treated her father so abominably. It felt like a betrayal, somehow. But her father’s ex-colleague and business partner seemed world-weary and surprisingly bitter, she had decided over the past few days, guessing that it was probably because of his disability, although having an heir as forceful and dynamic as King couldn’t help. But she was getting used to her host’s outbursts, startling though they were, and so she took the glass he was handing her and poured him another drink.
‘You’re behaving just like King,’ he persisted. ‘And while he’s excused through blood, I won’t take it from anyone who isn’t. D’you understand?’
‘Perfectly,’ she breathed with mock deference as she handed him his refill, and caught a surprising glint of warmth in his watery blue eyes. ‘If you don’t need anything else,’ she tagged on, uncomfortable even with fraternizing with him because of what he had done in the past, ‘I think I’ll get an early night.’
He smiled, gesturing her away with his glass, his angry mood dispelled. ‘Good idea. Oh, Rayne …’ Stopping before the open door that separated the luxurious living quarters from the terrace, she turned round with the scent of a potted gardenia trespassing on her senses. ‘About King … Did you do something to antagonise him before I came out?’
Her heart skipped a nervous little beat. ‘No. Why?’
‘I haven’t seen him quite so … intense before.’
She shrugged, trying to shake off the feeling of exposure she had sensed under those steely-blue eyes, trying not to remember how she had felt in the past. ‘Perhaps he had a hard day.’
‘Nonsense. He thrives on hard work and pressure where lesser mortals crack up and fall by the wayside.’
‘He sounds like a dynamo.’
‘He is.’
‘Even dynamos can break down.’
‘If you think that, then you don’t know King.’
Don’t I? she thought bitterly, but said, ‘Obviously not.’
‘But you will,’ he said, seemingly with some relish. ‘He’s going to be around for a while.’
‘That’s nice.’ She was finding it difficult keeping her voice light, making out that she didn’t care one way or the other, while her insides were screaming with guilt and resentment and a whole heap of worrying doubts over what she was getting herself into.
‘And Rayne …’ About to step inside, keen to escape to her room, Rayne glanced reluctantly over her shoulder as Mitch called to her again. ‘Be nice to him,’ he advised with just a hint of caution. ‘For both our sakes.’
I’ll fall at his feet, shall I? she suggested silently. Like I’m sure every nubile woman he meets probably does!
Her face ached from her forced smile as she got out, ‘Of course,’ aware that she was suddenly in danger of finding herself in way over her head, even as she told herself that she refused to be intimidated by King’s arrival. He might look like the stuff of every woman’s dreams, she accepted grudgingly, as the spacious interior of his father’s summer retreat, which had astounded her with its elegance and luxury ever since she’d been there, now felt as though it was swallowing her up. And if just a compliment from him or the most casual of physical contact—like shaking hands with him, for goodness’ sake!—made her pulse quicken a bit … well … it was only her hormones working, wasn’t it? She was only human, after all! But she’d come to Monaco to try to right the wrong that had been done to her father and she had no intention of letting a man like King—or her uncontrollable hormones—stand in her way!
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d14f49d2-8b30-5174-9339-b1fff8db6101)
THE shapes and tones and hues of Monte Carlo took her breath away, as they had been doing every time she’d looked down on them from her bedroom balcony over the past few days. But this morning, with the sun still low enough to have turned the sea to gold and wrapped the distant mountains in a haze of heat, this wakening resort seemed, like her, to be holding its breath, before offering up its vibrant heart to another day of wealth and glamour and total luxury.
Rayne grimaced at the comparison because she hadn’t come to Monaco to indulge herself. But while she was here, she thought, noticing how the trees on the steep ascent of the hillside above the house were touched with the same flame gold as the water in the harbour, then at least she could appreciate the scenery.
The only blot on her immediate horizon, she decided, was King.
She’d been careful before she’d embarked on this trip to do a little research into where he would be, and right now he should have been attending some week-long charity function in New York. After all, King didn’t live here. He had some luxurious pad in London, and she’d heard that he and his father didn’t always see eye to eye.
What he was doing here, she didn’t know, only that it was going to be difficult enough confronting Mitch with who she was and why she was there, but with that six-foot-something of potent manhood thrown into the mix, the prospect was no less than unnerving.
He was hard, ruthless and clever. He was also suspicious, which left her feeling as though every secret she harboured was under threat of being exposed to him, while every feminine cell in her body reacted to his raw sexuality with a strength that left her shocked and ashamed.
She’d thought such wild reactions were the predilection of teenage girls. Because he had affected her then—seven years ago—although he’d scarcely spared more than a passing glance her way. A wheat-blonde, spiky-haired teenager with purple-shadowed eyes and lipstick. An experimental and pathetic Lorri Hardwicke, whose nevertheless deeply buried secret had been an excruciating crush on the firm’s youngest and most dynamic recruit who, not long out of university, was already being primed for directorship.
She had wanted him from the first instant she had nearly collided with him as he was coming out of the office one day when she had been meeting her father for lunch, and from that moment she had woven all sorts of wild fantasies around him.
Young and guileless and between jobs, introduced to him only briefly, she’d jumped at the chance to help out in the office for a couple of weeks when one of the typists was on leave. It had offered her a chance to be near King, after all. But he’d scarcely spoken to her and, like Mitch, he had spent a lot of time out of the office. And when he was there she’d watched him from a painful distance behind her frosted glass partition, imagining a golden future when he would suddenly realise she was there, waiting in the wings for him to notice her, ask her out and initiate her into the sophisticated art of making love. Because with a man like him, she had decided, without any doubt in her fixated young mind, lovemaking would be no less than an art.
Even after she’d left, she still kept hoping. That was until the evening he had come round to the house and shattered all her dreams. Made her hate him with an emotion all the more intense because of what it had replaced.
Bitterly her thoughts drifted back to that night seven years ago. It was just a few weeks after her father had had a row with Mitchell Clayborne and walked away from their partnership—with devastating repercussions.
She had been to the gym and had cycled home in the rain, coming in to hear raised voices, her father’s thin and defensive, King’s deep and inexorable.
‘You’re the thief, Grant Hardwicke! Not my father! Stay away from him. Do I make myself clear? Leave him alone or you’ll have me to deal with!’ It still made her shudder to remember his cruel, icy threat. ‘Believe me, after this you won’t know what hit you if you ever dare show your face at our house or at the office again!’
Towering over Grant Hardwicke, King had been standing in the hallway of the modern detached home her mother had so prized, while her father had seemed to visibly diminish before Rayne’s eyes. His features blanched and strained, she had seen Grant grab the doorframe as though it was too much of an effort to support himself under the weight of the younger man’s hostile and verbal attack.
Soaked to the skin, hair flattened by the rain, she’d flown at King like a drenched sparrow as he’d come striding back across the hall.
‘Don’t you dare hurt my father!’ she’d sobbed, lashing out at him, her flailing fists ineffectual against the impenetrable wall of his body. ‘I’ll kill you first! I will! I’ll kill you!’
‘Calm down, Lorri …’ He had referred to her by name. It was the first time she could remember him using it, much less showing her any attention, but then it had been only to catch her flying wrists and thrust her aside as if she were an unwanted toy. ‘Don’t waste your hysterics and your childish little threats on me,’ he’d warned with particular brutality to her teenage pride. ‘Save them for someone who deserves them,’ he’d snarled savagely. ‘Like your father!’ He had slammed out of the door with his hurtful and puzzling words burning in her ears.
‘It’s about that software, love,’ Grant Hardwicke had breathed brokenly when she had rushed over to him. He’d looked drained and exhausted as she’d helped him onto an easy chair. ‘Mitchell’s saying it’s company property and King’s backing him up. I’m afraid they’re determined to keep it. I’ve lost everything, Lorri. Everything.’ She had never forgotten the desperation in her father’s voice.
‘But it’s yours, Dad. You wrote it!’ Rayne remembered stressing, as though that had counted for anything where the Clayborne men were concerned. It was software he had written especially for the medical profession. One he had said would benefit a lot of people—because her father was like that—caring and generous. It was something he had produced for the common good. It was his baby. His brainchild, which he’d conceived and worked on and slaved over in his own time before he had ever joined forces with Mitchell Clayborne. But Mitchell Clayborne had stolen the credit for it, launching it under his own company flag with the full knowledge and support of his equally unscrupulous and ambitious son and heir.
Her mother had been out at a line-dancing class that night and Rayne was glad she had because it was the first and only time in her life she had seen her father cry. Her strong and devoted father, who had always been her rock and the backbone of his family, reduced to tears in losing all he’d worked for. But he had no proof of his copyright for that software he had written, and the Claybornes had gone on to prosper unbelievably because of it, while Grant Hardwicke’s troubles had only increased.
Because of his age, he had found it impossible to get another position. He’d started drinking, which made him ill, and then he was made bankrupt, which in turn meant her mother having to lose her lovely home.
Rayne was certain that all her father’s problems had started that night she had walked in on King’s unmitigated venom. A venom that had had a poisoning effect on her family, virtually destroying everything that had been good about it, everything she’d loved.
What she had felt for him had been unreal, Rayne thought bitterly, mocking herself now. A teenage fancy, as insubstantial as mist, killed off by his pulsing anger and his verbal brutality towards her father, even before she’d realised how unscrupulous he was. As well as defending Grant, she knew now that in striking King that night she had been giving vent to the loss of all her young dreams. But long after the anguish of that night had receded, it was the physical power of him and those firm hands on her body as he’d put her from him that had lingered in her memory …
She came downstairs now with half a hope that, in spite of what Mitch had said, perhaps his son’s visit might have been a flying one and that he might have been called away on some vital company business during the night.
That was until she saw him striding in through the front door in a short-sleeved white shirt that exposed his tanned, muscular arms and dark suit trousers hugging his powerful hips and her heart seemed to stand still before vaulting into a double-quick rhythm.
‘Good morning, Rayne.’ He was tie-less, she realised, with her gaze instantly drawn to the bronze skin beneath his corded throat. The white T-shirt she had teamed with her jeans suddenly felt too snug for her breasts as that steely gaze burned over her. ‘I trust you slept well.’
She hadn’t, but she said in a tight little voice, ‘Very, thank you.’ In fact she had been waking up all night, going over that scenario with him on the terrace, aware that it was absolutely imperative that she confront his father about that software before King had a chance to work out who she was.
Consequently, the bruised-eyed-looking creature who had stared back at her from the mirror this morning as she’d swept her hair up into a loose knot left her feeling quite bedraggled in contrast to King, who looked as fresh and energized as the morning and ready to take the world on those wide, powerful shoulders.
‘You’ll be pleased to know you won’t have to drive my father into town as you were planning to do this morning,’ he said smoothly, those keen eyes seeming to assess her every reaction. ‘He decided to leave early and, as I was up, I drove him in myself.’
The front door was open and she could see the huge bulk of the Bentley parked there on the drive. A short distance away, the sleeker, more powerful beast of a black Lamborghini stood gleaming in the bright morning sun.
‘You didn’t need to do that. I mean …’ her eyes strayed towards the carved wooden door concealing the lift that would have borne Mitch down in his wheelchair. ‘… he should have called me.’
‘Oh, I think I did.’
Meaning what? Rayne’s throat contracted nervously from the way he was looking at her. That he was protecting his father from her supposedly mercenary clutches? Or was his sole intention to get her alone? And, if so, why? To interrogate her further?
Mentally, she pulled back her shoulders, telling herself that he was just trying to unsettle her. That he’d hardly be likely to discover the truth about her just so long as she kept her head.
‘In that case …’ she flashed him what she considered would look like a grateful smile ‘… I’ll go and get some breakfast.’
‘I think you might be disappointed there.’
Stopping in her tracks, she glanced up at him with her brow furrowing. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I instructed Hélène not to bother. I’ve given her the morning off.’
A cloud of wariness darkened the green flecks in her eyes. Why had he done that? Had he realised who she was and was planning on giving her marching orders while his father was out of the way?
A smile illuminated his strong features like the sun burning through the haze of the mountains she’d been admiring earlier, making her pulse quicken in infuriating response. ‘As it was such a lovely morning I thought I’d have breakfast out. I also thought you might care to join me.’
Oh, did he?
‘No, really. That’s very nice of you,’ she blurted out, even though ‘nice’ was definitely not a word she would have applied to Kingsley Clayborne, ‘but …’
But what, exactly? She couldn’t claim she never ate breakfast after what she had just told him. Nor could she inform him that she didn’t like him, and that if she had to choose between sharing breakfast with him or with a pride of lions, she’d take the pride of lions.
‘I … I need to stay here for when your father needs to be picked up,’ she hedged, wishing she didn’t sound so defensive.
‘He won’t. Not until later. If you haven’t discovered it yet, you’ll soon learn that my father is a creature of unwavering habit. Always reliable, but sometimes tiresomely predictable.’ Which was how she had managed to meet him that day outside that café. ‘He’s doing some business and then playing chess with a friend and won’t be ready to come home until mid-afternoon. Any change in those plans and he’ll ring me. That’s settled then,’ he declared when she procrastinated too long, having run out of reasonable excuses. ‘And I can assure you …’ his tone had changed in a way that sent a cautioning little shiver through her ‘… I’m not trying to be nice.’
‘I’m glad you told me.’ She sent another forced smile over her shoulder as she obeyed his gesture for her to precede him through the front door.
‘No,’ he called out as she moved towards the Bentley, ‘we’ll take mine.’
A skein of unease uncoiled in Rayne’s stomach after she’d crossed the tarmac and pulled the door of the Lamborghini closed behind her.
This sleek and powerful machine with its cream leather-scented interior represented major success. Arrival. It was also Kingsley Clayborne’s territory. With its smooth engineering wrapped around her and the cushioning curves of the passenger seat seeming to suck her in, she felt uncomfortably under his influence, as though her own power and control had suddenly been considerably reduced.
‘Relax,’ he advised, sensing her tension, obviously thinking it stemmed from something else altogether, she realised, when he tagged on, ‘I might be renowned for my love of power, but I’m not altogether insensitive to those riding alongside me.’
Was that what he thought? That she was afraid of how fast he might drive this thing? Or was he talking about a different kind of power altogether? Because she didn’t doubt that he enjoyed being in command. Of himself. Of others. And of his multi-billion, multi-national company. Because, where the Clayborne empire was concerned, it was common knowledge that he had been the one taking all the major decisions for some years now.
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ she said, her voice overly bright, and kept her eyes trained on the panoramic views from the window on her side so that they wouldn’t stray to the movement of muscle beneath the dark cloth spanning his thigh, or be pulled by the flash of gold from the slim watch on his wrist as he changed gear with that masculine hand.
‘It’s stunning, isn’t it?’ he remarked, aware, as her eyes drank in the scenery from the awe-inspiring sweep of the road. A road that ran all the way along the French Riviera to the Italian coast, she remembered reading from a travel brochure before she’d left England. Someone had called it the most romantic road in the world.
Feeling as though the Lamborghini were a bird and that they were travelling on its wings, they soared above terracotta-roofed houses dotted amongst tree-smothered cliffs, above church spires and tumbling hillsides that plunged down to the rugged coastline and the sea.
Above them the Alps presided, white-capped and as ageless as time. And just a little bit unnerving, Rayne decided, although not as unnerving as when King suddenly pulled into a surprisingly deserted lay-by. Her mind raced with the instinctive knowledge that Kingsley Clayborne would never do anything without a reason, and that that reason wasn’t just to enjoy the view.
‘What are you imagining?’ he enquired mockingly, wise to the half-wary, half-questioning look she shot him. ‘That I brought you up here to seduce you?’
She gave a tight little laugh. ‘No. Why? Did you?’
Dear heaven! Had she actually said that? Obviously her nerves were getting the better of her, she thought, in letting her tongue run away with her.
He laughed. ‘No.’ The engine died under the portentous turn of the ignition key. ‘Of course, if you were hoping I was …’
Every nerve in her body seemed to pull like overstretched rubber bands. There was a time, she thought, when she was young and blinded by his looks and his devastating persona, that her heart would have leapt in wild anticipation of what he might be planning, not thumping in screaming rejection as it was doing now. Or was it? she startled herself by wondering suddenly, deciding not to go there.
Turning to him with her cheeks scorched scarlet, she said pointedly, ‘Are you always so sure of yourself?’
He laughed again, under his breath this time. ‘Are you?’
Her own question, lobbed back at her, left her speechless for a moment.
With his bent elbow on the steering wheel, a thumb and forefinger supporting his chin, his thick lashes were drawn down as he studied her reflectively, giving her every ounce of his attention. Dear heaven! What she wouldn’t have given for this much attention from him seven years ago!
Berating herself for even thinking along those lines, unable to meet his eyes, she still couldn’t stop herself appreciating his classic and magnificent bone structure, the chiselled sweep of his forehead and cheekbones, that proud flaring nose, that tantalising dent in his chin …
‘I’m just finding it hard,’ he expressed, shocking her back to her senses, ‘determining why any woman would accept a strange man’s hospitality—even if he is driving a Bentley—unless she’s either very foolish or hoping to gain something out of it.’
Of course. Rayne bit the inside of her cheek.
‘I suppose in normal circumstances I wouldn’t even have considered it,’ she told him, finding her tongue. ‘But in view of his age and the fact that he said he had a house full of staff to look after me, I thought I’d be perfectly safe.’
‘And were you aware of who he was?’ he enquired. ‘Before he brought you home with him?’
Rayne’s heartbeat increased. Be careful, she warned herself. He doesn’t know who you are. Just breathe normally. Keep your cool.
‘I knew the name, certainly … as soon as he said it.’ She gave a nonchalant little shrug. ‘Who wouldn’t? Who doesn’t know the name of the man who gave MiracleMed to a grateful medical profession?’ It was an effort to smile. To pretend to believe what everyone else believed about Mitchell Clayborne. ‘He’s a very clever man.’
That firm mouth twisted contemplatively. Such a cruel yet sensual mouth, she decided, in spite of her dislike of its owner. Crazily, she wondered how many women had felt the pressure of it, known the power of this man’s unrestrained passion.
‘Yes,’ he breathed, ‘but I meant before those delinquents sidetracked you into chasing after them.’
Rayne gave herself a mental shake. What the hell was she thinking about? she berated herself.
Unconsciously now, she brought her tongue across her top lip. She hated lying, even on her father’s account. ‘Are you still suggesting I planned for someone to rob me so I could play on your father’s sympathies and wheedle my way into his house for some financial benefit?’ she queried, her voice cracking slightly because she wasn’t being straight with him, even if it was for reasons other than he was implying. ‘If you think I’m interested in your father’s money, then all I can say is you’ve got a very overstretched imagination!’
He laughed softly, unperturbed by the rising note in her voice.
‘And I could suggest that the reason you don’t like women taking an interest in your father,’ she went on heatedly, with a sudden surge of pity for Mitchell Clayborne that surprised her, ‘is because you might lose all you stand to gain if he reciprocates!’
‘Hardly,’ he said with a tug of that sensuous mouth.
Because he was involved in so many other enterprises besides the company his father had founded and in which her own father had played such a major part, a man of King’s calibre, determination and unwavering command, she accepted rather grudgingly, didn’t need to rely on anyone or anything, least of all the prospect of inherited wealth.
‘Let’s eat,’ he said, restarting the engine, the cutting edge of his gaze picking up on the way her lovely breasts rose and fell.
But with what? he wondered. Relief?
As his success depended on his keen ability to sense any subtle changes in mood or behaviour—both in his business rivals and in his own workforce—his experience had served him well, and it didn’t let him down now.
Rayne Carpenter portrayed all the characteristics of a woman who wasn’t being entirely honest, he decided, pulling away. And yet what could she be hiding if it wasn’t a very determined plan of action to ensnare Mitch? He had seen his father preyed upon before—several times—but once in particular, and with disastrous consequences, and he’d be hanged if he’d stand by and let Mitch bring such devastation down on himself again.
No, he decided, with sudden inexorable purpose. The thing he had to do was to keep her away from his father—at least until he could check her out. And the best way to do that was to claim all this dubious young woman’s time for himself.
He had some time on his hands as his second-in-command had taken over his commitments in the States, and he had already promised himself a short break when it was over. He had never had any difficulty seducing any woman he put his mind to seducing, and with this one, he decided grimly, conscience didn’t even come into it. If she was the sort of woman who was out just to prey on Mitch, then the prospect of even richer pickings with him should get her opportunistic juices flowing nicely.
It was an unfortunate choice of words, and one which was making his mind work overtime as he imagined her hot and compliant, moist with the honeyed heat of desire. He felt his body’s hard response as he imagined freeing those beautiful breasts from their restricting cups and moulding them to his hands, feeling each sensitive tip blossom as he took it into his mouth.
He shook away his errant fantasies, trying to pull himself together. It was probably because he hadn’t had a woman in his bed for some months, he decided, that his body was behaving like a rampant adolescent’s now. Still, he couldn’t deny that the prospect of stripping this unsuspecting little gold-digger bare—and in more ways than one—excited him immensely.
The café to which he took her was situated in a pedestrian thoroughfare, paved in the same peach and cream tones as the buildings which flanked it. Baskets of flowers—red and purple and pink—decorated ornamental street lamps, while luxuriant foliage grew in abundance outside the shops and cafés. There were orange trees, Rayne recognised, growing beneath the artistically wrought balconies of the buildings, whose pastel-coloured shutters and breath-catching architecture were a testament to human creativity, in contrast to the awesome cliffs that formed a mighty backdrop behind the buildings that stood at the head of the elegant avenue.
‘Here we are,’ King invited, pulling out a chair for her, the smile he gave her appreciative of her wonderment in spite of what he had been thinking about her earlier.
A little later, drinking coffee with home-baked rolls spread thickly with locally made jam, Rayne was relieved when King’s conversation touched only on things like the area and the recent airways strike. Safe, casual topics, she decided gratefully, until he suddenly enquired, ‘Do you usually take your holidays alone?’
Instantly she tensed up. That almost criticising note was back in his voice and now that he’d brought the conversation back to a personal level, she had to remind herself to be on her guard.
She thought of Matt Cotton, whom she’d been seeing on a purely platonic level for a year or so before they had parted six months ago. He’d been the only man she had ever considered getting serious with—serious enough to go on holiday with, at any rate. But after their relationship had moved up a notch, the first weekend she had slept with him when they had gone away together, she’d been so disillusioned by his suggestion that they move in together ‘to see how it goes’ that it had come as quite a shock to her to realise that she wanted more than Matt was offering. What she wanted was the sort of relationship that her parents had enjoyed. A lifelong commitment inspired by love and trust and respect for each other—and she intended to settle for nothing less.
Considering King’s question now about taking her holidays alone, and feeling that she was still on the end of a subtle line of interrogation, she enquired pointedly, ‘Would you have asked me that if I were a man?’
The arching of an eyebrow as those compellingly blue eyes tugged over her assured her that she was anything but.
‘If you were my woman, I wouldn’t be happy with you roaming around a strange country on your own.’
‘But I’m not your woman, am I?’ Bright emeralds fastened on steel as she met his gaze, reminded by the raw sensuality with which he was looking at her of how much she had once longed to be just that. The woman he drove home, undressed and adored in long, exotic nights of pleasure, while she writhed on his bed, allowing his lips and hands licence to every hidden treasure of her body.
Shockingly her breasts burgeoned into life without any warning, their weight heavy and aching, their tips excruciatingly tender against the full cups of her bra.
Surely she didn’t still want him in that way? Not now. Not after the way he had supported Mitch in treating her father as he had, when all he had been trying to do was claim what was rightfully his.
‘That’s right—you’re not,’ he stated, causing her to flinch from the way he managed to make it sound as though she was the last person he’d ever consider taking to bed. Which was ludicrous! When she would have rejected any overtures from him with every fighting cell in her body! ‘And you haven’t answered my question—which wasn’t intended with any lack of political correctness or offence to your femininity. Do you usually take your holidays alone?’
Fighting off a barrage of conflicting emotions, she shrugged and answered, ‘No, not usually. But as I told you last night, my mother’s been ill.’ Very ill, she appended silently, thinking of the operation and the treatment that Cynthia Hardwicke had had to go through during the past year. ‘There hasn’t been much time for holidays. But when her old school-friend invited her over to her villa, I realised I was on my knees from all the months of worry and that I was desperate for a holiday too. I’m ashamed to say it, but I think it hit me even harder than it hit Mum,’ she found herself admitting to him. ‘You can’t possibly imagine the unbelievable strain it can put you under when something like that happens to someone you love.’
A dark shadow seemed to cross his features. ‘Oh, believe me, I can,’ he assured her grimly.
She frowned, and then almost immediately realised. Of course. He was talking about his father.
‘What happened to Mitch?’ she enquired unnecessarily, because she remembered her parents telling her in the past. But a stranger wouldn’t know, would she? Rayne reminded herself. And that was what she was as far as King Clayborne was concerned. A stranger.
‘A road accident,’ he said, and his words were hard and clipped. ‘It deprived him of his mobility—and of his wife.’ Your stepmother, she nearly said, but didn’t. She wasn’t supposed to know, was she?
‘That’s dreadful,’ she empathised, because hearing it again—and so many years on—didn’t make it any less tragic. She couldn’t understand though why he sounded quite so … what? Bitter, she decided.
‘What about you?’ Putting down his cup, the inscrutable mask was firmly back in place again. ‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’
Rayne shook her head.
‘And your father?’
‘What about him?’ she enquired, sounding unintentionally defensive.
‘You haven’t mentioned him.’ The glance he shot her was a little too keen.
Rayne felt tension creep into her jaw. ‘He died—just over a year ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
No, you’re not, she thought acridly. But you will be! You and your father! I can promise you that!
Because she was certain that it was her parents’ financial difficulties following her father’s bankruptcy, and then the shock of his unexpected death from a heart attack that had made her mother ill. That was when she had vowed to right the wrong that the Claybornes had done to her family. After all Cynthia Hardwicke had been through, though, Rayne didn’t want to do anything to worry her. But with her mother having been persuaded to go off to Majorca, Rayne had been able to come away without too many awkward questions being asked.
‘So what do you do when you aren’t running around this country picking up strange men?’
She ignored the deliberate snipe. ‘I type a little.’
‘You type?’
‘Well, a lot, actually.’ Well, she did, didn’t she?
‘Are you saying you’re a PA?’
She chewed on the inside of her mouth, trying not to compound the lies. ‘No. I’m freelance.’
‘You work for an agency?’
She shook her head. ‘For myself.’
‘Typing.’
She didn’t know why he sounded so disparaging. ‘That takes up a fair proportion of my work.’ Which was true, she thought. It did. ‘What’s so strange about that?’
‘Only that you strike me as a woman who would have carved out a more determined career path for herself.’
Rayne was glad he couldn’t detect how her deception made her heart skip a beat. ‘I have.’ She saw the question in the heart-stopping clarity of his steel-blue eyes and letting her own slide away, told him trenchantly, ‘Seducing rich elderly men!’
His mouth twitched at the corners as though he were trying to assess the authenticity of her remark.
‘I think it’s time we left,’ he stated blandly.
The journey back was an uncomfortable one, not because of King’s driving, because he handled the Lamborghini like a dream. But since leaving the café he had barely said two words to her and now, motivated by the view from the ribbon of road that displayed the whole sweep of Monaco below them, Rayne tried to lighten the mood a little by remarking, ‘This scenery’s unbelievable. So is this weather! Was it as lovely as this in New York?’
‘Who said I was in New York?’
Mistake! Rayne admonished herself, feeling those perspicacious eyes roving over her like a hawk’s, waiting for her to show any weakness; waiting to pounce.
She shrugged and said as nonchalantly as she could, ‘Mitch.’ She could hardly tell King that she’d run a check on him before she’d been stupid enough to come here. Because that was how she was beginning to feel, she realised, despairing at herself. Utterly, utterly stupid!
Consoling herself with the thought that she was worrying unnecessarily and that it was only her jumpiness and her overreacting that was creating suspicion in his mind, she ventured to say carelessly, even though it was a lie, ‘He led me to believe you were over there on some business or other.’
‘Did he now?’
She saw his hands tighten on the wheel, the knuckles whitening above those long dark fingers. But surely Mitch would have known where he was, wouldn’t he? She swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling dry.
‘Do you come and see him often?’
‘Not as often as I should. And I wouldn’t be here now if Hélène hadn’t contacted me to tell me Mitch wasn’t feeling his best, and also happened to mention the attractive young chauffeuse who had very surprisingly stepped in and taken Talbot’s place. I got here as soon as I could, and I’m glad I did.’
‘Why? Because you don’t trust me?’
‘Men in our position can’t afford to trust anyone.’
‘That’s pretty cynical. Is that what money does for you?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘So why flaunt it? I mean this car. The Bentley. All those houses you probably own. If you don’t want to attract the wrong sort of people you could always drive a Mini.’
‘But then I wouldn’t be enjoying the benefits of all I worked for.’
All my father worked for! she wanted to scream, and had to bite her tongue to stop the words from tumbling out.
‘And is that all you work for?’ She couldn’t keep the disdain out of her voice as she added pointedly, ‘Lamborghinis? Homes in England, Switzerland and who knows where else? Relaxation aboard exclusive yachts?’
‘You’ve really done your homework, haven’t you?’ He was frowning as he directed a sidelong glance her way, making her realise she had said too much.
‘I only know what I read. What everyone reads,’ she tagged on quickly, not wanting him to guess how avidly she soaked up any information about him—and always had.
‘It isn’t just my money that’s bothering you, is it, Rayne—if Rayne’s even your real name,’ he speculated, causing a little shiver to run through her as he operated the remote control switch and opened the gates because they had reached the house. ‘It’s something much more fundamental than that.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! I don’t even know you,’ she prevaricated with colour suffusing her cheeks as the car growled through the gates towards the exclusive villa standing in its prominent position, high in the hills.
‘Maybe not,’ he agreed, pulling up outside and cutting the engine, then making every nerve in her body zing as he threw his door open and added with nerve-racking purpose, ‘But I think the time has come to change all that.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a55a9369-c57e-5905-aea3-83af596b8fed)
‘YOU’VE got it all wrong!’ Rayne threw over her shoulder, flying ahead of him into the villa. Her blood was pounding in her ears, her racing heart making her sound as though she’d just run five miles.
‘Have I?’ King demanded grimly, the strength of his own hormones putting a flush across his high cheekbones. ‘I’m not a callow youth, Rayne, and if your story holds any water—as I’d like to believe it does—I can’t think of any other reason why you constantly feel the need to antagonise me.’
Oh, dear heaven …! She stopped dead, breathing hard, her lashes coming down over her eyes, because he could see it, even though she was refusing to. But how could it be this strong, she wondered hopelessly, when she despised him as much as she despised Mitchell Clayborne? It was as if all of her pent-up teenage frustrations about him had rushed back and were screaming to be dealt with. But how could he be so astute? How could he tell?
Dry-mouthed, she touched her tongue to her top lip as he turned her round to face him.
‘You terrify me,’ she said, startling herself, because surely that was Lorri speaking. The hapless kid who had adored him from a distance, and who would have died for him, given half the chance. Not the mature twenty-five-year-old who knew him for what he was and hated him with every trembling bone in her body.
‘I know,’ he acknowledged sagaciously. ‘But it’s yourself you’re afraid of, Rayne. The fear of an involvement that wasn’t in your plans. Well, believe me, my beautiful girl, the thought of what you’ve been doing to me since I got here—and what you can still do to me—terrifies me, too.’
She laughed, but her throat felt clogged. ‘You? Terrified?’
‘Does that seem so strange?’
‘No, just inconceivable,’ she responded, wishing her credit cards were sorted so she could tell him where to go and just get the hell out of there. As it was, she felt like a butterfly caught in a fly-trap whose promise of the sweetest pleasure only hid danger beneath. Her head was spinning and her legs felt weak, while every organ in between was throbbing with the almost uncontrollable need to reach for him, pull him down to her and drown beneath the pleasure of his ravaging mouth, breathe in his heady, far too tantalizing cologne.
‘Why? Because I’m a man? And obviously a very experienced one at that?’
‘Something like that.’ She didn’t know what she was saying any more. Couldn’t seem to tell him where to go, or drag herself away from him—even if she’d wanted to. Because that was just it, she realised suddenly. She didn’t.
‘I might be a man of the world, but I’m willing to bet you could give me a run for my money.’
Was that what he thought? Rayne swallowed, guessing that he would probably laugh if she told him how few sexual encounters she had had in her lifetime.
‘And that’s your experience speaking, of course.’
‘Of course.’
Well, that’s where you’re wrong! she wanted to fling at him, wishing she had the nerve to play along with him and do what some other women in her position might do. Flatter his ego and enjoy a brief spell of the pleasure he could give her, then watch his anger explode when he found out who she really was and realised she’d made a fool of him. Oh, to hurt him as he’d hurt her! Hurt her father when he’d joined Mitch in taking what had never been theirs to take! But common sense warned her that men of King Clayborne’s character couldn’t be hurt, and that even to entertain such a tempting idea was no less than crazy.
Instead she said, ‘Well, dream on, King. I didn’t come here to have a fling with you or anybody else, and you’re very much mistaken if you think I did!’
‘Not intentionally, no.’
Pulling herself out of his disturbing sphere, she viewed him warily from under her lashes. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ she challenged shakily.
‘I’m sure you didn’t intend to charm your way in here only to find yourself fighting an attraction that is bigger than you are. Bigger than both of us, if I’m honest. But you’re giving off pheromones, Rayne, that no man this side of ninety could possibly ignore. And quite simply, darling, I wouldn’t dream of insulting you by pretending to ignore them. And if you refuse to accept the effect you’re having on me, I’m sure you’re way too experienced not to acknowledge this.’
It was inevitable what was going to happen. But even that acknowledgement couldn’t have prepared her for the onslaught on her senses when his head dipped and his hard masculine mouth finally covered hers.
It was like two universes colliding. A barrage of riotous emotions and sensations that rocked her to the very core of her femininity, driving everything from her mind but the need to be kissed and stroked and caressed by this man and this man alone—because she still wanted him, much, much more than she had ever wanted him before, and with a hunger that excited and thrilled her even as it appalled.
And he wanted her too …
She didn’t have to be experienced to recognise the rock-hard evidence of just how much as his arm tightened around her, locking her to him, and shamelessly she realised that that was what he had been referring to a moment ago, rather than just the inevitable joining of their hungry, ravenous mouths.
With a small murmur, which was half-need, half-despair, she wound her arms around his neck, glorying in the sensations that his six-feet-plus of power-packed masculinity sent coursing through her as she moved convulsively against his hard warmth.
‘Can you deny it now, Rayne?’ His voice was hoarse, a ragged whisper against the softness of her cheek. ‘What is there to lose in admitting that you want me every bit as much as you’ve made me want you?’
And just how much he hadn’t even realised until now. He’d had women in his time who’d given him pleasure and to whom he’d given pleasure in return. But that was all it had been. Pleasure. This girl, however, had a way about her that excited him and made his anatomy harden to such an extent that it hurt.
But why? Why, when to seduce her had been a cold, calculated plan? When he’d intended to remain detached and—if he was honest with himself—to have her begging, virtually down on her knees, for him to take her?
Well, that just showed him, he thought, mocking himself for his lack of immunity, his inability to stay unaffected, when all he wanted to do right now was rip off her clothes and carry her up to the nearest bed and feel her warm softness closing in around him, her body bucking beneath his as he drove into her.
Steady on, King …
He was breathing raggedly as he lifted his head.
‘So what’s it to be, Rayne? Your bed or mine?’ He was amazed at how cool—how indifferent—he managed to sound.
There was nothing cool, though, or indifferent, about the hand that was suddenly making contact with his left cheek, taking him so unawares he nearly overbalanced.
‘How dare you!’ Rayne found she was trembling so much she could hardly get her words out, realising that it wasn’t just his effrontery that was responsible for her impulsive action. It was also aggravated by the knowledge that she had invited what had happened between them every inch of the way, so that her anger was directed more at herself and her abandoned response to his kiss rather than at him.
‘I’m sorry. I could hardly help jumping to what I believed was a very natural conclusion,’ King expressed, holding his smarting cheek, deciding that he had rather overstepped the mark. Nevertheless that still didn’t stop him from enquiring mockingly, ‘Are you usually prone to bursts of violence?’
‘You drove me to it!’ It was a small wild cry, born of her despair over responding to him in the way she had, and for striking him, which she was thoroughly ashamed of now.
‘You drove yourself to it,’ he said quietly. ‘Firstly by refusing to acknowledge that there’s definitely something between us, and then in not doing so, suddenly finding yourself way out of your depth.’ His mouth moved in a kind of contemplative half-smile. ‘I’ll just put it down to frustration, shall I?’ he remarked, his eyes skimming over her in a shaming reminder of what had just transpired.
‘Put it down to whatever you like!’ she breathed, shocked by the passions he could arouse in her and, pivoting away from him, she fled up the stairs, wanting only to crawl into a hole and pretend that none of her shameless behaviour had ever happened.
In the privacy of her room she sank down on the sumptuous bed, dropped her head into her hands and groaned.
Whatever had come over her? Not only to throw herself at him as she had when he had had the audacity to kiss her, but then to slap him like that afterwards as though it had all been his fault. Being quite honest with herself, she was forced to admit that he was right. She had wanted him to kiss her. Wanted it like she had never wanted anything. A man who had hurt her father and, with Mitch, had as good as destroyed her family. Was that why she had hit him? Was it all part of the need for retribution? Or was King Clayborne simply always destined to bring out the worst in her?
Angry tears burned her eyes, but they were tears of remorse and scorching shame too. How could she have responded to him so easily, and without so much as a conscience? Without any thought for what the Claybornes had cost her parents. Was she really that weak? She padded over to the en suite bathroom to try and scrub the taste of King Clayborne off her mouth, promising herself, as well as both of her parents, that she would never let it happen again.
And if he did find out that she had been lying to him?
She shuddered, closing her mind against that intimidating scenario. That was something she definitely refused to think about on top of everything else.
The florist at the other end of the line seemed to be taking forever to deal with the order Rayne was trying to telephone through.
‘And the name on the card?’ she asked mechanically, in heavily accented English.
‘I explained to the lady I spoke to first that I haven’t got a card, but she said it would be all right if I brought the cash down before you close this afternoon. My name’s Lorrayne Hardwicke,’ Rayne told her, sending anxious glances towards the closed door.
She had come in here to the study to make a couple of calls and to try and sort out a birthday bouquet to be sent to her mother. She’d wanted to do it from the privacy of her own suite, but the maids were changing the bed and giving the rooms an extra fine clean today, and time was getting scarce if she wanted her mother to receive her flowers in the morning.
‘I’m afraid I cannot process the order unless we receive the credit or the money … what is it you say? Upfront,’ the woman emphasised, remembering. ‘I’m sorry, mademoiselle, but those are the conditions.’
‘But your manageress distinctly assured me it would be all right,’ Rayne despaired. She hadn’t missed sending her mother flowers on her birthday since she was eighteen, when things had started really going downhill for her parents. And OK, she couldn’t pay with a card, but she had a small amount of cash that she had earned from chauffeuring Mitch around, and the florist had said it would be all right.
‘My manageress has just left for the afternoon. I will try and get hold of her and ring you back if you will give me your number. What did you say your name was?’
‘Lorrayne Hardwicke.’
‘Can you spell that, please?’
Rayne darted another glance towards the door as she heard voices on the other side of it.
‘I’ll call you back,’ she said quickly, snapping her cellphone shut a fraction of a second before the door opened and King walked in.
‘What the …?’ His smile for whomever he had been talking to outside was wiped away by surprise at seeing her sitting there behind his father’s desk.
‘My room’s being cleaned and I needed to make a couple of calls,’ she told him croakily, not sure what was disturbing her most. Nearly being caught red-handed blurting out who she really was, or the visual images of what had happened between them earlier in the day. ‘Of course, if I’m intruding …’ She was already swivelling back on the studded leather chair.
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
In fact he was looking at her over what seemed like an acre of polished mahogany as though he was imagining her naked and spreadeagled across it. Or was that just what her own wild imaginings were conjuring up? She slammed the lid down on her errant thoughts before they could manifest themselves on her face. ‘I … I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘Evidently not.’ He’d been to pick up Mitch at his own insistence, and had come in here to find his pen to sign some letters his secretary had faxed through while he was gone. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be acting as though I’d just caught you rifling through the silver cabinets.’ A distracted smile twisted the sensuous line of his lower lip. ‘Perhaps that’s it,’ he declared airily, pocketing his pen. ‘Are you looking for something, Rayne?’
‘No.’ At least that much was true. If she had been, it would be for the evidence that would prove that MiracleMed was her father’s. She knew, though, that she didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of finding it here in this luxurious Mediterranean retreat, if in fact any proof existed at all.
‘If you must know, I’m just a bit peeved because I was trying to order some flowers for Mum,’ she told him, gripping the padded arms of the chair, which she seemed to have become rooted to ever since he had come in, ‘but it seems you can’t even breathe these days if you haven’t got a credit card.’
He nodded. ‘Make the call,’ he advised. To her stunned surprise, he was taking his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Make the call,’ he reiterated, taking out a credit card.
‘I … I couldn’t possibly,’ she stammered, blushing to her roots as she realised how her statement must have sounded. As though she was asking him to help her. ‘I didn’t mean I wanted you to …’
‘What’s the number?’ he asked, ignoring her embarrassment.
Seeing how determined he was, she quoted it from the piece of paper she’d jotted it down on earlier.
‘Now what is it you want?’
With a little shrug, feeling indebted, uncertainly she told him. He dealt with it swiftly and effortlessly. And not only that—in fluent French!
‘And the recipient?’ he enquired, reverting to English to ask her.
Cynthia Hardwicke, she almost said, realising only just in time that that would blow her cover good and proper. ‘Address it to “Mum,” care of …’ Casually she filled him in with the name of the friend her mother was staying with. ‘And the message is simply, Happy Birthday. Love from Rayne.’
It took him just seconds, it seemed, to supply the florist with his own details, his voice deep and confident, its dark rich timbre sending an unwanted tingle along Rayne’s spine.
‘Thanks,’ she murmured when he had finished, unable to look at him as she came around the desk. ‘I really wasn’t asking you to do that. I can let you have the cash.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ he said, his tone surprisingly reassuring, the sudden touch of his hand on her shoulder bringing her startled gaze to his.
She looked instantly wary, King thought, noticing the guarded emotion in the green-gold depths of her eyes. They were, quite simply, the most beautiful eyes he had seen on any woman he’d ever met, but there was some other emotion behind the wariness that was defying him to touch her. Sadness, he was startled to recognise. Deep-buried, but not altogether concealed. And he knew in that moment that somehow—somewhere—those eyes had penetrated his consciousness before. Last week? Last year? He gave a mental shrug. Perhaps it was only in his dreams.
‘We got off to a bad start.’ He was surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. Was it because his hormones had kicked in again, causing him to harden from the warmth of her body through her thin blouse? Or was it the dark and heady mixture of her perfume? ‘I thought it might be sensible if we were both to try again.’ Otherwise she’d get away from him, he was sure, and he’d never lost a woman he’d set his heart on having in his life.
‘Try?’ she ventured croakily, realising why she had never stood a chance against his potent masculinity as a teenager. He was really quite amazing. With those dynamically dark looks. In the way he spoke. The way he carried himself. As if he owned the world. Which he probably did. Or a fair proportion of it anyway, she thought cynically, resenting him for how rich he was, how influential, and for making her wish that she was spreadeagled over that desk with him …
‘To be civil to each other,’ she heard him saying. ‘I’ll accept that your reason for being here is all above board. And you …’ He was massaging his lower jaw with his free hand. ‘You’ll promise to keep your hands to yourself.’
Wings of colour touched her cheeks from his all too shaming reminder of how she had struck him. ‘As long as you promise to do the same with yours.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
Rayne felt her throat constrict. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He smiled silkily. ‘You know very well.’
Yes, she did. The last thing she wanted was for him to spell it out, but it seemed he was going to anyway as he went on.
‘Calling a truce, unfortunately, isn’t going to put paid to the fact that there’s a definite chemistry between us, Rayne, even if you do want to deny it. But a woman doesn’t respond to a man the way you responded to me unless she wants that man to make love to her. Even if she is, as I’d very much like to rule out, a woman with some other agenda.’
‘I got carried away—that was all,’ she said quickly, hating to admit it but desperate to quash any adverse notion in his mind about her reasons for being there. ‘So. I find you attractive.’ Who wouldn’t? ‘But we don’t always give in to what our baser instincts are telling us to do, do we? I’m sorry I reacted in the way I did.’ She was referring to striking him. ‘I was just a bit wound up, that’s all. Unprepared …’
‘For what happened between us?’
She nodded.
‘And are you still unprepared?’
No, she wasn’t, she realised, because even this conversation with him was turning her on, making her body zing with a host of traitorous impulses.
‘I can deal with it,’ she said huskily, wishing she could tear herself away from him, but she couldn’t seem to do it.
‘Can you?’ When she didn’t respond, too sensually aware to answer, coolly he suggested, ‘Let’s see.’
As he was speaking he’d positioned himself on the edge of the desk. Now, as his arm snaked around her tiny waist, Rayne lost her balance and shot out a hand to steady herself, gasping as she made unwitting contact with the hard, bunching muscles of his thigh.
The intimacy sent shock waves coursing through her body. She could tell from King’s sharply drawn breath that it was having a devastating effect on him too.
‘Heaven help me if you weren’t sent here just to drive me out of my mind!’ he rasped before his mouth came down to plunder the warm, willing cavern of hers.
This time she didn’t stop to think because the scent and sound and feel of him were driving her insane for him and suddenly she was utterly lost to the eager and hungry demands of her own body.
When he tugged her blouse open and pulled a lacy cup down over her full, high breast, she arched her back, angling her body in sweet invitation to him to take the hard throbbing tip into his mouth.
Proud of her femininity, she writhed between his thighs, thrilling in his strength as he used them to clamp her to him, while he continued to drive her crazy by suckling harder at her breast.
Unlocking her womb, she thought crazily, as sensations spiralled downwards to the most secret heart of her, making her hot and moist in readiness for the hard penetration of his body.
‘Deny it all you like, you’re going to be my woman, Rayne. You are my woman. Understand?’ he breathed raggedly against the sensitised hollow of her ear. ‘Otherwise why would you let me do this?’ His fingers found her other breast, making her gasp and strain against him as he tormented the sensitive bud. ‘Or this?’ His other hand slid down her body to clasp her buttock, caressing and moulding, its heat searing through her thin trousers before it moved possessively round to cup her aching femininity. ‘Why?’ he demanded huskily. ‘If you can’t accept that, too?’
She wanted to protest. She knew she should. But how could she? she demanded chaotically of herself. When she knew she had been made for this! That she was his and always had been, and that even if her mind recognised the treachery of acknowledging it, her body wouldn’t listen.
But she had to make it listen …
He’s your enemy. So what does that make you?
Dredging up every ounce of self-discipline that she could muster, she wrenched herself away from him.
‘I don’t want this!’ she choked, dragging the back of her hand across her mouth.
‘Really?’ Still perched on the edge of the desk, he was breathing as heavily as she was. ‘Then you’re putting up a darn good show of convincing me otherwise.’
‘I don’t care what you think.’ Which was a joke, she thought distractedly, even as she said it. Because, for some strange reason she still did. ‘I don’t want to get involved with you.’
‘Why not? When it’s so patently obvious that we could be good together?’ He looked hot and flushed and still so obviously aroused. ‘Are you in a relationship with someone else?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped, straightening her clothes with faltering fingers.
‘So you aren’t,’ he deduced correctly.
Because wouldn’t it have been the best way of keeping him at bay, she thought, realising it too late, if she had said she was?
‘So what was it, Rayne? A disappointing attachment?’
You could say that! her heart screamed bitterly, because there had been nothing that had shamed or disillusioned her more than her reckless crush on him.
‘I just don’t go in for casual sleeping around.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ he responded deeply, his eyes fixing on her with a dark intensity. She looked really quite shaken, he thought, wondering why, when in every other way she seemed so much a woman of the world. ‘For what it’s worth … it doesn’t rank very highly with me, either.’
‘Hah!’ Despite her brittle little laugh, she couldn’t help wondering if he was telling the truth. She wanted to kick herself for hoping that he was.
‘You really have a very low opinion of me, don’t you?’ he remarked, running a long tapered hand through his thick hair. She was surprised to notice that it was trembling slightly.
So even the high-and-mighty Kingsley Clayborne was human!
She wondered why she was even allowing herself to grant him any concessions, and put it down to the fact that she was so affected by him—by what she had allowed him to do to her—that she was still too unsettled by it to feel anything.
‘Why should it matter to you what I—’ she began as she was smoothing back her hair, but broke off when a stick prodding the door he’d failed to close brought it flying open. Both of them had been too otherwise preoccupied to hear the wheelchair approaching.
‘King? Rayne? Oh, there you both are!’ Mitchell Clayborne’s colour was unusually high as he manoeuvred his chair into the room and Rayne guessed he’d been doing too much, against his doctor’s orders.
‘King, I wanted you to retrieve the book I dropped down behind the bedside cabinet but, since Rayne’s here, she can do it for me and perhaps read a little to me. Have you finished with her?’
King’s eyes were speculative as, on his feet now, he regarded her from his superior height, looking totally unfazed by what had just happened between them.
‘Yes, I’ve finished with her,’ he told his father.
Reluctantly inhaling his scent, keen to get away, Rayne brushed past him, although she could tell from that slight compression of his devastating mouth that what he was really saying was that where she was concerned he hadn’t even begun yet.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_cc1ed112-af46-58a7-ad77-7ff57766bc31)
THE following day Rayne decided to escape from the house for a while, needing some time to decide what she was going to do.
She was uncomfortable associating with the people who had wreaked such devastation on her family, but she couldn’t see what else she could do. She didn’t want to leave there without the evidence or admission that she was determined to secure for her father’s sake.
She had started asking Mitch questions last night while she had been reading to him—very subtly, and supposedly innocently. Like how he had begun in business. And when exactly had he hit upon the idea for the MiracleMed software. How he had felt when it had taken off.
‘King must have been very proud of you,’ she’d ventured, assessing his reaction, looking for any change in his hard, world-weary features, any note of guilt in his gravelly voice.
He’d seemed all right at first. But then he’d grown more and more agitated, even when their conversation had reverted to more casual topics. As well he should have! Rayne thought bitterly.
He’d looked so unwell, though, and had sounded so breathless that her conscience wouldn’t allow her to ask any more leading questions.
‘I think you should go to bed,’ she had advised worriedly, ringing the bell to summon one of the male members of staff to help him. She was frustrated, though, that yet another day had gone by and she was still no nearer to realising her goal.
Now, this morning, he had sent for her and told her that he didn’t need her services today, and so she’d decided to take herself down into the town for a proper look around.
‘You’ll need some of these,’ he’d told her from his bed, pressing a whole wad of banknotes into her hand.
Shocked and embarrassed, she had thrust them back at him. ‘I can’t,’ she’d protested, appalled at taking money from anyone—let alone someone she despised so much.
‘Don’t be silly. How do you think you’re going to get around and buy the odd souvenir?’ he’d demanded of her gruffly. ‘With those big bright eyes and that naturally winning smile?’
Shrugging off his compliment, she had to accept that he was right. Being robbed hadn’t exactly left her in a position to be proud.
‘I’ll pay you back,’ she’d promised resolutely, not only for his benefit, but for her own. She didn’t like being in this man’s debt any more than she wanted to like him, but he was making it very hard for her not to do either.
Now, coming down into the hall, her heart sank when King appeared, looking dynamic in dark blue corduroys and an ivory-white shirt that left his forearms bare, just as she was asking one of the maids in her somewhat limited French if she could call her a cab.
One fluent instruction from him in the girl’s own language had the young maid almost bobbing in compliance before she cast a swift glance at Rayne and darted away.
‘What did you say to her?’ Rayne enquired, puzzled, because it certainly didn’t sound like anything as simple as ordering a taxi.
‘I told her I’d take care of it,’ he replied succinctly and without any of the mental disturbance that just the sight of him was producing in her.
‘I don’t need you to rescue me from every difficult situation,’ she assured him with a slight tremor marking her words, unintentionally conveying to him how unsettled he was making her feel.
‘Nevertheless … you’ve got me.’ There was triumph in the clear blue eyes that drifted lazily over her tie-waisted chequered blouse and white cut-offs. ‘Now, where did you want to go?’
‘Nowhere in particular,’ she said, being deliberately obstructive. She wanted his help even less than she wanted his father’s, and she certainly didn’t welcome how her body was responding just from the way he was looking at her. ‘I was just going to do a bit of sightseeing—and without having to worry about the car,’ she told him, wishing he’d just take out his phone and order the cab he’d said he’d deal with.
But with a hand at her elbow, sending her thoughts spinning into chaos, he said, ‘In that case, I’ll be more than delighted to show you around.’
She wanted to protest. To tell him that she was going out because the strain was proving too much, being in this house with her father’s bitterest enemies and not feeling able to tell them who she was. But mainly, she decided, it was because of King himself. Because he disturbed her equilibrium so much and made her feel so ashamed of how he made her feel every time he came near her that she wanted to put as much distance between him and herself as she possibly could.
But with King Clayborne, she was discovering, argument was futile.
Consequently, it was with a raging awareness of him and a mind that was far from relaxed that she allowed him to drive her into town.
She was relieved, though, when he kept the conversation light. Impersonal. Not touching on any awkward topics. Like why he made rockets go off inside her every time he touched her. Or why she pretended not to want to go to bed with him, when every betraying cell in her body assured him that she did!
Instead, he acquainted her with the lesser-known facts about Monaco as they drove down through its flower-decked streets which, earlier in the season, formed the circuit for the world-famous motor racing Grand Prix. And he gave her an insight into the country’s history and its royalty, making it interesting for her. Making her want to know more as she listened to his deep and sensually caressing voice, remembering how it had warmed and excited her all those years ago.
‘Did your mother receive the flowers?’ he asked as he finished parking the Lamborghini in a space he had had no difficulty finding.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Rayne responded succinctly.
‘Did she like them?’
‘Probably,’ she answered minimally again.
She caught the curiosity in his eyes and in the faint smile that touched his hard yet exciting mouth, and she knew she had to explain. He had paid for them, after all.
‘When I rang Mum earlier, the friend she’s staying with said she was still asleep. She offered to wake her to show them to her, but I thought it best not to disturb her. After what she’s been through, she needs to get all the rest and relaxation she can.’
‘She must appreciate having such a thoughtful and caring daughter,’ he commented, taking the keys out of the ignition.
‘She deserves no less,’ Rayne expressed, absurdly warmed by what had been no less than a compliment from him. ‘She’s always been there for me.’
‘You’ve been fortunate in having such a good relationship with your mother.’
‘Didn’t you with your mother?’
The question slipped out and she didn’t know why she had asked it. He could have had seven doting mothers for all it meant to her.
‘My parents divorced when I was five. My father got custody. I only saw my mother on a few occasions after that. She preferred rearing horses to rearing children. The last I heard, she was living on a stud farm with her third husband somewhere in Colorado.’
Rayne shrugged. ‘That’s a pity,’ she said, meaning it.
In answer she saw the firm masculine mouth compress. ‘Not really. I went to boarding school, which was best for Mitch and for me. I learned how to be self-sufficient-independent—from a very early age, which stood me in good stead, as it turned out.’ He wasn’t actually spelling it out, but Rayne didn’t need to ask to know that he was talking about Mitch’s accident. ‘I don’t know whether I would have been so equipped to handle everything that was thrust on me if I’d had the type of family life that most people take for granted. I think it’s true what they say. That what you’ve never had, you never miss.’
Rayne didn’t wholly agree with that. After all, if he had had a bit more maternal love perhaps he wouldn’t have been so ruthless and insensitive towards other people. Like her father, she thought achingly, her teeth clamping together as she looked away.
‘I was lucky,’ she murmured half to herself and in a tone that emphasised the whole poignancy of her loss. ‘Dad was always there too and he was quite simply the most caring, understanding and honourable man I’ve ever met.’
‘Quite a happy family, then?’ He sounded quite cynical, and Rayne wondered why. Was it because he hadn’t known that sort of stability himself? Being packed off to boarding school. Being made to feel abandoned—although he hadn’t said so—by both his parents.
She could almost have felt sorry for him, except that King Clayborne wasn’t the type of man to inspire pity.
Even so, against all the odds, she was surprised to find herself enjoying his company as he guided her around the Principality. She even found herself laughing at something he was saying as he brought her across the tree-fringed square that gave onto the wide imposing frontage of the palace.
Pale and majestic with its crenellated towers, it was once the home, Rayne reminded herself, of the beautiful actress of the nineteen-fifties who had been plucked out of Hollywood and brought here by her prince, only to steal the hearts of his people.
In fact there were photographs of her adorning shop windows all over the town, Rayne had noticed, still a lure for the tourists even so many years after her death, a beautiful legend whose name had become synonymous with Monaco.
‘It must have been like a fairy tale for her,’ Rayne whispered a little later when she saw yet another image of the princess in the latest shop window they were passing. ‘To win not only a prince’s love—but a whole country’s.’
‘Even a country that is less than five hundred acres across.’
She pulled a face and smiled, amazed at how small an area Monaco took up, amazed too by King’s knowledge of it.
‘And you? Do you believe in fairy tales, Rayne?’ he asked, his voice suddenly strung with mocking amusement.
‘Fairy tales?’ She pretended to be considering it as she looked up at him askance.
‘Happy ever afters. Two people living side by side and loving each other until death they do part.’
‘Well, it’s obvious you don’t,’ she lobbed back, noting the cynicism with which he’d said it. But then, after the way his parents’ marriage had broken up, she supposed she could understand why.
‘I know what Mum and Dad had,’ she murmured almost reverently. ‘All right, it wasn’t exactly a fairy tale. They had their ups and downs. But they loved each other, and knew they always would.’ And they had instilled in their only daughter the importance of the qualities that kept a marriage strong. Love, trust and faithfulness. It was something she strongly believed in and it was something she staunchly refused to allow anyone to dismiss lightly. Even King Clayborne. ‘You were just unlucky,’ she said, moving away from the window and the image that had sparked off this unwelcome conversation with him in the first place.
The cathedral. The palace. The exotic gardens. They did it all. He even showed her the amazingly palatial building of the famous casino, although they didn’t actually go inside.
It wasn’t until they got back into the car that Rayne realised she’d switched her phone off before going into the cathedral and had forgotten to switch it back on. She chastened herself for letting everything go out of her mind simply because she was with King.
She started when her phone began to ring almost as soon as she had switched it on.
‘Lorrayne?’ Cynthia Hardwicke said when Rayne put the phone to her ear.
Immediately Rayne tensed up. King hadn’t yet switched the car’s engine on. Could he have heard the way her mother had addressed her?
Trying to sound normal, she wished her mother a happy birthday when she had finished enthusing about the bouquet Rayne had sent her.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ she breathed, relaxing a little, relieved to hear her mother sounding so buoyant. She envisaged Cynthia Hardwicke, with her grey-tinged auburn hair freshly tinted for her holiday, starting to regain the weight she had lost, her skin—usually as pale as her own—beginning to bloom again beneath a welcome Majorcan sun.
‘Like them? I can’t tell you how much they’ve brightened my day! But why did you have the message signed “Rayne”, love?’ She gave a little chuckle. ‘Weren’t you thinking?’
Catching her breath, Rayne cast a surreptitious glance at King.
He was scanning through various menus on his own phone. Checking appointments and deleting texts, she decided, her eyes drawn to that strong, steady hand that had driven her nearly mindless for him yesterday.
He still hadn’t started the engine, letting her take her call.
Killing time, she suspected, while he waited for her to finish. Nevertheless, she knew that although he was displaying all outward signs of being courteous and respecting her privacy by appearing otherwise engaged, that sharp brain of his was probably attuned to every agitated response she was uttering.
‘I couldn’t have been. I’m sorry,’ she added quickly, because she certainly didn’t feel happy being forced to deceive her own mother. ‘But you’re all right, are you?’ she asked uneasily, having sensed a flicker of interest from the man beside her since uttering that apology, even though he still appeared preoccupied with the obvious running of his business.
‘Of course I am,’ Cynthia Hardwicke assured her, although there was a curious note in the disembodied voice. ‘But are you? You don’t sound yourself, darling. Is anything the matter?’
‘No, of course not.’ She laughed to try and convince her parent that everything was as it should be, to try and behave normally.
‘Are you with someone?’
Rayne could feel herself growing hot and sticky from her toes upwards.
‘Who is it?’ Her mother persisted in wanting to know.
Rayne hesitated before replying. ‘It’s just a friend.’ Involuntarily, her gaze strayed to King and his heart-stopping profile. It exhibited forcefulness overlaid with unstinting sensuality. Authority and energy, harnessed with a magnetism that had the drawing power over a woman that the moon had over the tides. But he had obviously picked up the gist of the conversation because his mouth was twitching now in what she could only describe as sensual mockery. He clearly didn’t regard her as a friend, any more than she considered him one. Though for plainly different reasons where she was concerned!
‘I thought I knew all your friends,’ Cynthia pressed. Which was true, Rayne thought. She did. ‘You’re sounding pretty secretive. That’s not like you.’
‘It’s no one of any significance,’ Rayne stressed, already regretting the comment when she saw the way King was looking at her as she wound up the conversation and rang off.
‘Why didn’t you tell her about us?’ he enquired, turning all his attention towards her now.
‘There is no “us”,’ she reminded him tartly, feeling the heat of shame creeping up her neck and into her cheeks when a masculine eyebrow lifted in obvious dispute.
‘No? Not when I only have to touch you to send your hormones rocketing through the roof? I’d say that was significant enough to constitute an “us”.’
He’d also taken her out to breakfast that first morning. Showed her around Monte Carlo and bought her lunch today. Not to mention making his credit card available to pay for her mother’s birthday bouquet!
‘I’m sorry about the way I described you,’ she felt she had to offer, even if his reasons for helping her might be purely self-motivated. ‘But I had to put her off the scent.’
‘The scent of what?’ he asked smoothly.
‘That I’m here.’
‘In Monaco? Or with me?’
‘Both,’ she answered truthfully now. ‘She thinks I’m staying with my friend in Nice. If I told her I was in Monte Carlo on my own, she’d worry.’
‘And if you said you were with me?’
‘Then I’d have to explain how I came to be in Mitch’s house in the first place, and she’d worry even more.’ No, more than that. She’d have a fit, Rayne thought, shuddering to think what Cynthia Hardwicke would say if she knew that her daughter was hobnobbing with the family who had ruined her husband. Another shiver went down her spine as she thought of how easily she could become involved—especially with King—if she didn’t watch her step.
‘You don’t think she’d approve of you picking up older men?’
‘I didn’t pick him up,’ she reminded him, stressing the point. ‘I meant I’d have to tell her how I’d had my belongings stolen. With losing Dad so recently, Mum gets worked up about things and imagines something terrible’s going to happen to me. If she thought I needed her in any way, she’d be over here like a shot, and I couldn’t risk letting her do that.’ Even if the Claybornes hadn’t been in the picture. ‘She needs her holiday a hundred times more than I need mine. I don’t intend doing anything that would spoil it for her.’
‘That’s very commendable,’ he murmured, the sound rumbling deeply from his chest. ‘You love her very much, don’t you?’
His observation was, like his eyes, so direct and probing that she looked quickly away without answering, ashamed to let such a hard-headed character as he was see the welling emotion she had to fight to control.
King couldn’t take his eyes off her tight, tense features—the perfect structure of her forehead, the pert nose with those slightly flaring nostrils, the gentle curve of her cheek.
This girl was a real enigma, he decided, with his face a study in concentration. On the one hand she seemed guarded and extremely defensive, which aroused his natural suspicions, especially since he’d taken her as a gold-digger. Definitely like someone with something to hide. Yet on the other hand she spoke about and behaved towards her mother as though she would give her life for the woman if she had to, which didn’t quite tie in with the hard-headed opportunist he was prepared to think she was. He was finding, he realised, that he harboured very conflicting opinions about Rayne Carpenter, and it wasn’t in his nature to be confounded by anyone. And on top of that there was still this strong and nagging feeling of having known her before …
‘We all do things according to what our consciences tell us we should do, don’t we?’ she suggested meaningfully, wishing she could control her tongue and not let her emotions run away with her until she was ready to hit him—and his father—with the truth.
‘Should it prick my conscience that every time you come within a yard of me I want to take you to bed?’ he said softly, fondling her hair. ‘Or that you want me to against your own better judgement?’
The space between them was suddenly charged with so much electricity it was as if someone had lit a whole boxful of fire-crackers and Rayne’s heart started hammering in her chest.
‘Can we drop this subject? Please,’ she breathed emphatically.
Her breath seemed to stick in her lungs as his arm came across the back of her seat, bringing him closer to her.
‘Have you never heard the expression “He who pleads is lost”?’ he murmured with his smile predatory, his lashes thick and dark, shielding his eyes as they rested on the fullness of her trembling, slightly parted mouth.
When his lips touched hers it was only to make contact with the outer corner of her mouth, a contact that left her craving the full onslaught of his kiss, made her grasp the seat to stop herself from twining her arms around his warm, muscled torso as he lifted his head.
‘What’s wrong, Rayne? Can’t you accept the consequences of what you’ve got yourself into?’ His voice was quite steady, not ragged with sexual desire as she’d imagined it would be. In fact there was a note of hidden danger in the very choice of his words.
‘I wasn’t aware I’d got myself into anything,’ she uttered tremulously, knowing he was still suspicious of her, still vigilant, even if she had imagined that softening in him just now, because she had, she realised, telling herself now that she had been a fool to do so.
‘Then you obviously need convincing,’ he said.
She expected him to demonstrate exactly what he meant, but he didn’t. Instead he simply started the powerful car and drove them back to the villa.
So what had he meant by that? she wondered when, once there, he left her to her own devices, abandoning her to deal with some business in the study. Did he intend to keep her on tenterhooks—make her wait until her guard was down before proving his point to her again? That she couldn’t resist him. Or had he guessed the secret she was keeping from him and Mitch and was merely luring her into a false sense of security until such time as he disclosed what he had uncovered?
And that was a very unfortunate pun, Rayne decided with a grimace because, if she wasn’t careful, she was in danger of him not only guessing who she really was before she was ready to tell him, but also of winding up in his bed! And wouldn’t that be a double victory for him? She shivered just from the thought of it, although even self-loathing couldn’t temper the excitement that heated her blood every time she considered him being her lover.
‘I don’t think you should be doing this,’ Rayne counselled, watching Mitch manoeuvring his chair along the wooded path where he had insisted she bring him today. ‘Getting out so early so as to give everyone the slip is one thing, but persuading me to bring you over such uneven ground as this—’
‘Will you shut up?’ Mitch said, carrying on ahead of her, his hard mottled hands on the wheels pushing him stubbornly to his goal.
The trees thinned out, making Rayne gasp, not only from the sheer danger of the cliff edge just below them, but at the panorama of nothing but glittering sea and sky that had suddenly opened up in front of them.
‘Can you show me anything better than that?’ Mitch challenged, waving a hand towards the view. ‘I used to come here a lot when I was young. It’s where I proposed to my first wife.’
‘King’s mother,’ Rayne said tentatively.
‘Did you know she left me?’ He gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Of course you did. Everybody knows it. Everyone knows I’m not the easiest of men to live with.’
Rayne glanced down at him, noting something that sounded remarkably like regret in his voice. Did he still miss the woman who had deserted him and their five-year-old child? Miss her still, even though he’d finally found someone else to take her place?
‘As a boy, King blamed himself for his mother leaving us. For leaving him,’ Mitch was saying, much to Rayne’s surprise. ‘It hardened him. Made a cynic of him. Especially where marriage and family is concerned. We never could form the bond we should have formed. He was already a man by the time I met Karen.’
‘Your second wife?’ A woman half his age, who had died so tragically when their car had come off the road, Rayne reflected, although it was King she was reluctantly thinking of. King, the child who had lost a mother, even though she was still alive. And King the man, who was left scarred by the desertion. Left hard and uncaring. Unable to trust …
Mitch nodded and started to cough. ‘Here. Help me with this thing, will you?’ he spluttered.
He was having difficulty opening the zip of a leather pouch he’d brought with him. When she gave it back to him, he swore when he looked inside.
‘What’s wrong?’ Rayne asked him anxiously.
‘Does anything have to be wrong?’ he wheezed, turning his chair with such angry force that it lurched sideways, lodging one wheel in a grassy hollow.
Rayne shot over to grab the handles, trying to pull it free.
‘I can’t move it!’ she gasped, finding the man’s bulk and the awkward angle of the chair too much for her inadequate strength. To add to that, Mitch’s breathing was beginning to worry her.
‘I’m going to ring King,’ she said quickly, taking out her phone when her attempts to dislodge the chair proved ineffectual.
‘No! We don’t need him,’ Mitch protested to her dismay.
‘I’ll have to,’ Rayne told him, too frightened by the danger of the situation to be intimidated by him, even if every bone in her body rebelled at having to explain to King.
He answered her call on the second ring, his voice deep and strong, the voice of a man who could take on the world and come out fighting.
‘King! It’s Mitch! We’re …’ Quickly she acquainted him with their exact location. ‘He’s got his chair stuck in a rut and he seems to have come out without his medication. It’s for his breathing. I think it’s—’
‘I know where it is,’ he rasped, and that was it. He was on his way before she even had time to cut the call.
Rayne couldn’t have been more grateful when she heard the throb of the Lamborghini’s engine. Through the trees she saw the car practically skid to a halt and she went weak with relief when King leapt out and raced towards them without bothering to close the door.
‘Thank heaven you’re here!’ she breathed.
It was with immense gratitude that she relinquished the handles of the chair into his stronger and more capable hands.
‘Keep clear of this,’ he ordered, and with his efficient and determined strength managed to bring the man and his chair back onto even ground.
How effortlessly he had saved the day, Rayne marvelled, with tears of relief biting behind her eyes now that the ordeal was over.
‘You should never have brought him out here,’ he admonished after he’d overseen Mitch take his medication and was now pushing him back to the car. ‘Or at the very least you should have told me where you were going.’
‘He didn’t want me to,’ Rayne argued, refusing to be the whipping boy for two very indomitable males.
‘Then you should have refused to drive him. Or at least used your own initiative to let me know where you were going.’
‘It wasn’t her fault.’ Mitch sent a scowling upward glance back over his shoulder at his son. ‘And stop talking about me like I wasn’t here. That isn’t like you, King. Anyway, I wanted some freedom. I get sick and tired of people fussing over me. Rayne doesn’t fuss over me,’ he expanded surprisingly, without looking at her as she trooped along beside them, still feeling shaken, and now unjustly chastened, by King’s flaying tongue.
‘I really didn’t know he was going to get me to drive him here,’ she admitted, trying to placate him, sensing he was still angry with her after he had got his father and his chair back into the Bentley and was now moving back to his own car. ‘But I couldn’t go against his wishes and tell you he was going out. He’s got so much pride, King. Almost as much as you,’ she tagged on by way of an accusation, surprising herself by defending Mitch. ‘He feels humiliated asking you to do the simplest things he used to do himself,’ she uttered with angry tears welling up in her from those frightening moments when she’d been hanging on to that chair, sick with worry over Mitch Clayborne’s state of health. ‘Have you never felt humiliated by anything?’
She looked like a warring goddess, King thought, seeing her eyes dancing like splintering emeralds and her tousled red hair falling wildly round her shoulders as her beautiful body squared in decisive challenge against him. But those tears were genuine, and the fierceness with which she was standing up for his father touched him in a way he didn’t want to be touched.
One stride was all it took and he was reaching for her.
‘It’s all right,’ he reassured her, enfolding her in his arms and feeling her slender body shaken by sobs. ‘It’s all right. There’s no harm done,’ he murmured into her perfumed hair.
It seemed so right to cling to him, Rayne thought, steadied by his hard warmth. He seemed so dependable and strong. So much so that she wanted to stay there with her head resting against his shoulder while she breathed in his very masculine scent and felt the heavy beat of his heart drumming against hers.
But that was just a flight of fancy because of all she’d been through this morning, she told herself. Because she needed someone and he just happened to be here.
‘I’ve got to get Mitch home,’ she said huskily, pulling herself free, and tripped across to the Bentley without a glance back.
In her room the following evening, Rayne paced the tastefully patterned tiles, reflecting on the previous day’s events.
That episode with Mitch had been scary, but so had those traitorous feelings she’d experienced during those few crazy moments in King’s arms.
Sexual attraction was one thing. You didn’t have to know or even like someone very much to feel its unmistakable and often dangerous tug. But what she had felt when King had shown that tender and more understanding side of his nature yesterday had been thoroughly more bewildering and complicated.
She was there to get an admission—and through the tabloids if Mitch refused to comply with what she wanted—and getting emotionally involved with King Clayborne wasn’t on her agenda. Even if Mitchell Clayborne thought it should be!
‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Rayne?’ he had asked her after she’d pulled out of King’s arms and climbed into the Bentley yesterday.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she’d refuted, knowing full well he was referring to the embrace he had just witnessed between them.
‘Pity,’ he’d expressed, although that unusual glint in his watery blue eyes had assured her he didn’t believe her. ‘You’d be a good match for him. He needs someone who’ll stand up to him once in a while, and I must admit it would be no hardship to me if you were to stick around.’
Which she definitely wasn’t going to! Rayne thought now, with the same stab of guilt she’d felt yesterday in realising that she was unintentionally getting herself caught up in Mitch’s affections.
She was getting far too involved with both men, and she had never intended that, she thought despairingly. The longer she stayed, the more she was becoming embroiled in their everyday lives, their worries, their concerns and, where King was concerned, she didn’t even have to spell out the problem to herself there.
Quite simply, that crazy fever she had been suffering from as a hapless teenager had returned in full force, threatening to consume her with its intensity because she had no protection against it. His cruel words and actions then should have immunized her for life, and she thought they had until she had met him again the other night. How he made her feel was like an ever-changing strain of some deadly virus that couldn’t be controlled, and the second time around it was even more potent and deadly than the first. It didn’t help either, telling herself that she was a woman now and therefore should have known better. Known how to ride the torments of this lethal attraction until it passed. Because it wouldn’t, she was shocked to realise. Because the only drug that would alleviate her symptoms was in the full-blown act of his possession of her. And then the relief, she thought, would only be short-lived, because once she had allowed herself to cross that line with him she knew she would never be able to have enough of King Clayborne. Like a drug, after its effects had worn off, the symptoms would return until she could indulge herself again, which would mean taking him into her until she could feel his power and his energy filling her up and seeping into every clamouring cell of her body, by which time she would be a hopeless addict.
No, she resolved, coming to a standstill at last on the beautiful pale Indian rug and making her decision.
First thing in the morning, she determined with a sudden painful contraction of her stomach muscles, she was going to let them both know exactly who she was and what she was doing there.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_07f34954-954c-5446-b046-33ad0d35c3c7)
‘MONSIEUR CLAYBORNE? Non, he is not up yet,’ the housekeeper informed Rayne when she enquired where he was. ‘And Monsieur King …’ Hélène Dupont always referred to him as that, Rayne noticed, as though to call him simply ‘King’ would somehow detract from the respect she felt he commanded ‘… I believe he is still giving an interview on the terrace.’
‘An interview?’ Rayne queried, her curiosity aroused.
‘It’s to do with the documentary he is sponsoring. The one about clean water for some African villages. I believe he is heavily committed to that. They rang early. It was unexpected,’ Hélène told her before concluding, ‘I think he will be about half an hour more.’
‘Thanks,’ Rayne responded, her smile strained, her insides knotted up, as they had been almost continuously since she’d made her decision to tell the truth, so much so that she’d scarcely slept last night.
Finding out about the charitable work that King was involved in didn’t make her feel any better about deceiving him. In fact, it made her feel a whole lot worse.
She hadn’t, until now, even considered him having a compassionate side. Not really compassionate. Not until he had comforted her on that cliff-top the other morning. But then hadn’t he seen to it that her mother got her flowers when she was having difficulty ordering them? And rushed back from New York as soon as he’d been alerted to his father’s state of health?
But then again, perhaps his main reason for coming back from New York was to suss her out, Rayne reflected disparagingly. After all, he’d already been forewarned that she was there. And as for the flowers? Well, he wanted to get her into bed, didn’t he? And there could be other reasons for wanting to help people less fortunate than oneself. Like the publicity, for starters.
With his influence and money he could easily afford to help fund an irrigation programme for people in Africa. And it wouldn’t do his company’s image any harm at all to have favourable deeds associated with the Clayborne name.
And now she was being as cynical as he was, she thought, in willing herself to believe those things about him when, had she not known him better, and particularly after what Hélène had told her, she would have said he was a man of principle—a man who wouldn’t stoop to stealing another man’s intellectual property and helping to ruin his life.
But he had, she thought bitterly, standing there at the foot of the stairs and closing her eyes against the truth. That Kingsley Clayborne, the man who had broken her heart as a teenager and who now had her craving his attentions with every weak, betraying cell in her body, just wasn’t the man she wanted him to be.
Half an hour later, Mitch still hadn’t put in an appearance and King was still tied up with his visitor on the terrace.
Coming downstairs again into the deserted opulence of the sitting room, Rayne could still hear their muted voices drifting in from the sun-soaked terrace. The male interviewer’s tones were rather even and uninteresting in contrast to the deeper, richer modulations of King’s.
How could any woman not find herself drawn to him and in the most fundamental way? Rayne wondered, listening to him. When everything about him was unadulterated perfection? The way he looked, the way he conducted himself, the way he dressed. That sexy yet authoritative voice that had the power to make every woman he spoke to go weak at the knees.
Then there were the other traits of his personality, too. Determination and drive and that restless energy about him that made up the whole man, and amounted to a pretty formidable package which made him impossible to ignore.
In fact it gave her goosebumps all over her body, just as it was doing now. Goosebumps and a multitude of nervous flutters in her stomach from the thought of what she had to do and the consequences of what telling him the truth might be.
Hearing the scrape of chairs on the terrace, accompanied by phrases that warned her that the interview was drawing to a close, suddenly Rayne lost her nerve. Wasn’t it Mitch she should be confronting first anyway?
She had almost reached the stairs when she caught the sound of the men’s footsteps across the tiled floor and she quickened her own, keen to get away before they reached the hall.
‘Oh, Rayne …’ Too late, the honeyed resonance of King’s voice drifted towards her, lifting the hairs at the nape of her neck, exposed by her loosely piled-up hair. ‘Have you seen Hélène?’
‘Not for some time,’ she said shakily, turning round, her breath locking from the impact of his dark-suited executive image, from his poised elegance and commanding stature.
Why was it that other men seemed to diminish beside him? she wondered with painful awareness. She had only a fleeting impression of his younger, shorter companion because her gaze was held—against her will, it seemed—by the steel-blue snare of King’s.
Beneath her simple white top and jeans, her body pulsed from the pull of his powerful magnetism and it wasn’t until he broke the contact to say something to his tawny-haired visitor that Rayne, remembering her manners, turned to speak to the man.
As she did so, her greeting, like her smile, died on her lips and Rayne could feel her blood starting to run cold.
‘What are you doing here?’ the interviewer asked.
‘Do you two know each other?’ King enquired with a rather quizzical expression.
Rayne wanted to deny it, her mind chaotically processing what the chances were of the journalist who’d come to interview King being someone from her past. And not just someone. But Nelson Faraday!
‘We worked together,’ she admitted when she could wrench her tongue from the roof of her mouth, hoping against hope that the slick-talking journalist wouldn’t give her away, not before she’d had the chance to do it herself.
‘In what capacity?’ King asked, still wearing that interested smile, but behind the urbane veneer Rayne could sense every sharp instinct honing in like a stalking tiger’s.
‘I was the office junior,’ Rayne put in quickly. ‘When I started, Nelson here was already destined for greater things.’ So great that she’d packed him up after only a couple of evenings out with him because she hadn’t liked his cut-throat methods of reporting. But this man knew more about her than was comfortable. In fact, it was downright mortifying, Rayne thought, in view of where she was and who she was with.
‘You’re too modest,’ her ex-colleague told her, much to Rayne’s overriding dread and dismay, because it was clear the man had picked up on her reluctance to talk. She could tell he was assessing what she might be doing in this billionaire’s pad and, from the way his eyes took in both her and King, knew that his mind was already working overtime. ‘She might have been the office junior when she started out on that provincial little rag, but everyone could see she had the nose of a bloodhound and that once she’d got going there’d be no one to touch Lorrayne Hardwicke for sniffing out a scoop.’
It was clear Nelson Faraday was still holding a grudge, Rayne realised, horrified, her eyes darting guardedly towards King.
There was tension in his jaw and in the sudden granitelike mask of his features. His cheekbones seemed to stand out prominently beneath the olive of his skin.
‘Oh, dear …’ The other man was putting up a good show of looking shamefaced, because he couldn’t have failed to notice the atmosphere that had grown cold enough to freeze the heat of the Mediterranean day. ‘Did I say something I shouldn’t have?’ he remarked with an award-winning performance of mock innocence.
‘No, of course not,’ Rayne put in quickly, wise to Nelson Faraday’s tactics and to what he must be thinking. That she was either romantically involved with Clayborne’s dynamic helmsman or she was there to dig up some dirt on the family. Which was too close to the truth, she thought, with her heart frantically pumping.
‘You certainly didn’t,’ King remarked with a pasted-on smile, the cynicism with which he said it making Rayne shiver.
‘Well, it’s lovely seeing you again, Lorrayne.’ The younger man was backing away, his eyes suddenly wary beneath the implacable steel of King’s. ‘I’ll forward a copy of the article to you, sir.’ Nelson was lapsing into total deference, as he always had with his most prized interviewees, and King Clayborne had to be among his most prized of all.
‘You do that.’ King’s tone was clipped, lethally low.
His anger was roused and she was about to bear the brunt of it, Rayne realised, knowing she deserved no less. Knowing she should have told him—told them both—from the start.
Like a coward, though, as soon as the other man had left, she started towards the stairs, wanting to get away from King until he had calmed down.
‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ Strong fingers suddenly clamped onto her wrist, preventing her precipitous flight up the stairs. ‘So you’re Lorri Hardwicke. Well, well.’
‘Let me go!’ She could feel his white hot anger pulsing against her as those determined fingers tightened relentlessly around her soft flesh. ‘I was going to tell you! Both of you!’ she gasped as he pulled her towards him.
‘You were? Well, that’s very magnanimous of you!’ he scorned. ‘And when exactly were you going to do that? When you’d got your “scoop”, or whatever it is you’re after? What exactly is it you’re after, Rayne?’ His face was livid, his voice so dangerously soft that with one fearful yet furious yank she managed to pull free.
‘What was rightfully my father’s!’ she shot up at him, massaging her wrist, numb from the pressure he’d applied.
‘And what is that?’ he breathed equally softly, every long lean inch of him powerfully intimidating, like a dangerous adversary she’d been unfortunate to cross. Well, he wasn’t going to intimidate her!
‘You know very well!’ There were family loyalties at stake here. ‘You stole that software from him! You and Mitch! You knew MiracleMed was his and you stole it!’
‘And you, my dear young woman, have been very much misinformed if you think you can make a serious allegation like that.’
‘I haven’t been misinformed! I know the hours he put in—at home, as well as in the office. And don’t speak to me like that. I don’t need to be patronized by you!’
‘Just the pleasure I can give that beautiful body when it suits you.’
‘No!’ Shame washed over her like scalding water.
‘Don’t deny it, Rayne. You’re as enslaved by your desire for me as I am for you. Or was that all part of the act?’ he tossed at her roughly.
‘No!’ What could she say? How on earth had they got on to this? ‘That … that just happened,’ she stammered, stepping back as he moved nearer, knowing that even now, if he touched her, she would have no defence or resistance against his particular brand of humiliation. And it would be humiliation. He’d make certain of that.
‘I’ll bet it did! And I’ll bet you’ve been laughing all the way to the bank in thinking I was so taken in.’
‘You were never taken in.’
‘Maybe not. But Mitch was. So what is it you want?’ he demanded. ‘Money?’
‘That’s the only thing that matters to people like you, isn’t it?’ She was near to tears, but tears of anger and frustration which had been bottled up for so long. ‘Well, it might surprise you to know that some of us put honour and respect before making ourselves rich at other people’s expense.’
‘Really?’ A masculine eyebrow arched in obvious derision. ‘There didn’t seem to be much honour and respect in the way you engineered your scheming little way into this house. Those thieves didn’t take your passport, did they, Rayne?’
His question, so direct and demanding, seemed to suck the air right out of her body. King Clayborne might be a lot of things, but a fool wasn’t one of them.
‘No,’ she answered, inhaling again. ‘It was in the glove compartment of the car with my driving licence.’
‘And your credit cards? Where have they been while Mitch and I have been financing your every requirement? Your meals. Trips into town. The flowers for your poor ailing mother?’
The disparaging way he referred to Cynthia Hardwicke sent anger coursing through Rayne in red-hot shafts.
‘My mother has been sick! Very sick!’ she retorted fiercely. ‘And don’t you ever dare to refer to her illness like that again! And my credit cards were stolen! They took my bag. My traveller’s cheques. All my money. Everything! It was only when Mitch jumped to the conclusion that I’d lost my passport as well and invited me back here that … well … that I let him think so. I felt he owed it to me. Or to Dad at least.’ And it was her father who had said that windows of opportunity didn’t just open on their own—that you had to create them. ‘I needed to talk to him but I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and it just seemed like the perfect chance I’d been waiting for.’
‘I’ll bet it did! So what have you been hoping to gain out of all this if, as you say, you’re far too honourable to contemplate blackmailing him with the threat of selling some cracked-up story to the papers? Are you in league with this Faraday character? Is that it? Was that why he turned up here so coincidentally today?’
‘That was only coincidence,’ she retorted with bright wings of colour staining her cheeks. ‘And I wasn’t going to blackmail Mitch. I was hoping—if I could talk to him—let him know who I was and what my father went through—that it might prick his conscience in some way. That I might be able to appeal to his better nature.’ Hotly then, she couldn’t help adding, ‘I didn’t imagine for one moment I could ever appeal to yours!’
‘So why didn’t you tell him who you were? Right away? The day you got here?’ he interrogated, ignoring her last derogatory remark about himself. ‘Or was the prospect of sharing a house with such a newsworthy name too much for your journalistic instinct to pass up?’
‘I didn’t because he seemed so shaken up after those lads had taken his wheel,’ she answered, ignoring him in turn, even though she was railing inside at his high-and-mighty attitude, ‘I didn’t want to do or say anything that might have upset him even more. And the day after that he still wasn’t well.’ And then you arrived, she remembered with her mouth firming in rebellion, although she didn’t tell him that. Didn’t let on that she feared and regarded him with far more respect than she feared and regarded his father, not least because of the frightening strength of her attraction to him. ‘And then when Hélène said he had a heart problem and high blood pressure …’ Her shoulder lifted in a kind of hopeless gesture. ‘I didn’t want to be responsible for making him ill.’
A thick eyebrow was lifting again in patent scepticism. ‘Do I detect a conscience, Rayne? Surely not! And you’ll have to excuse me,’ he tagged on, with no hint of apology in his voice. ‘It’s Lorri, isn’t it? But then it’s difficult keeping up with the change of identity.’
‘It isn’t a change of identity. Rayne Carpenter’s the name I write under,’ she said, admitting it now.
‘Why? So that your victims won’t know who you are when they read the sensationalist dirt you’ve managed to dredge up about them?’
‘I don’t write that sort of news story.’ Chance would have been a fine thing! She had never got beyond covering house-fires started from flaming chip pans and local demonstrations about library closures, whatever Nelson Faraday had led him to believe. ‘I only write the truth.’
‘Or your warped version of it.’
‘Is it warped to expect some credit for my father’s work? I’m not after any personal or financial gain, whatever you may think.’
‘No. Just making strong allegations about a man who isn’t well enough to defend himself. Well, I’ll defend him, Lorri. And you’ll find I’m not half so weak—or so smitten—as my father is. Grant Hardwicke did a lot of the work on MiracleMed. I believe I’m right in saying that. But he did it under a corporate umbrella.’
‘Which was what you told him the night you came round and threatened him!’ she reminded him. ‘And just for wanting recognition for what was rightfully his! He created that software long before he ever joined forces with Mitch. He just didn’t have the resources to launch it. He was honest and hardworking and never cheated or lied to anyone in his entire life. And you made him ill,’ she uttered, aggrieved, and with such painful emotion in her voice it was difficult to breathe. ‘You and Mitch! He might still have been alive today if you hadn’t!’
Though she was saying it, some small part of her acknowledged that it wasn’t strictly true. That there were other events that had contributed to the strain her father had been under. Like his bouts of drinking that had only made their family life harder. And the way he’d seemed to lose the will to do anything—even look for a job towards the end—which had only added to his increasing sense of worthlessness.
‘I admire your loyalty to your father,’ King surprised her by expressing. ‘But I didn’t see him as quite the paragon of virtue you obviously did. We’re all human, dearest, and Grant Hardwicke could be as opportunistic and self-motivated as the next man.’
‘That’s a lie!’
‘Is it?’ King’s mouth was a tight, inexorable line. Looking back, he still couldn’t believe the man’s crocodile tears when he’d told him about Mitch’s accident. But then he hadn’t been crying for Mitch—his closest friend and colleague. All he’d been concerned about was his own personal losses and all he might have stood to lose if his accusations of theft had ever been brought to the public’s notice. ‘Far be it from me to want to hurt you, but I can be every bit as ruthless as you’re accusing me of being if—’
He broke off abruptly as a flushed-faced Hélène suddenly came rushing down the stairs towards them, her features looking pinched within their frame of greying bobbed hair. ‘Oh, monsieur! You had better come quickly. It’s Monsieur Clayborne!’ Her hand went to her chest. ‘He has the pain …’
King was springing away from them without any further prompting, taking the open staircase two steps at a time.
He was already at his father’s bedside when Rayne raced up to Mitch’s room with the housekeeper close behind her. One look at the elderly man who was sitting on the edge of the bed, still only half-dressed, revealed that he was in extreme pain.
‘Call an ambulance!’ King directed urgently towards Hélène.
While the housekeeper was summoning help on the bedroom telephone, Rayne hurried over to the bed.
Oh, please! she prayed. Let him be all right! Don’t let it be my fault that this has happened!
‘He needs to lie back,’ she instructed, sensing that this was one occasion when King needed someone’s help and advice, with all her basic first aid training rushing to the fore. And when he looked at her questioningly, ‘It’s all right. I know what I’m doing,’ she assured him, suggesting how he could help, already plumping pillows and generally helping to make his father as comfortable as she could. Now wasn’t the time to tell him how she had taken a first aid course after her father had died, when she’d read how anyone could make a difference in a medical emergency.
Glad that at least she hadn’t contributed to this situation by actually telling Mitch who she really was, she watched King through eyes suddenly blurry with relief, gently easing his father back against the pillows, catching his deep, low murmurs of reassurance—despite his own concern—as he tried to put the older man’s mind at rest.
Oh, to have him speak to her with that depth of emotion! She felt a surge of longing that was quite out of place in the current situation, or within the bounds of anything approaching logic. Why did she want anything more from him other than—as he’d pointed out to her downstairs—the pleasure her body craved from him? Surely she wasn’t allowing herself to think of him in any capacity beyond that? Because if she were, she warned herself harshly, then she was being a total fool.
The ambulance didn’t take long to arrive.
‘Can I come with you?’ Rayne appealed to King, hot on his heels as he flew down the stairs while the medical team were bringing Mitch down in the lift.
‘You?’ he emphasised, his expression a contrary mix of surprise and blinding objection. She had been quick to help his father, King thought. And she looked concerned. Genuinely upset. But with a woman—particularly this woman—who could tell? ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he told her succinctly, leaving her staring after his dark retreating figure and feeling as though she had been slapped in the face.
‘What is it, King?’ Mitchell Clayborne was staring at his son’s broad back as King in turn stood staring out of the window of the private clinic. ‘God knows I haven’t been the best of fathers, but I would have thought the news that I’m not going to be consigned to the history books just yet would have made you a bit happier than you seem.’
Sighing heavily, King dragged himself away from an absent study of the clear evening sky, his mouth pulling down on one side at his father’s dry remark. Mitch certainly sounded better, and his breathing was easier than it had been a few hours ago, but he had no intention of causing the man any undue distress.
‘It’s nothing that can’t wait,’ he answered.
‘And it’s nothing that I’m not man enough to take—even wired up like a puppeteer’s blasted dummy! Tell me.’
It was clear to King that the man would be more likely to die of a heart attack from being kept in suspense rather than from being told the truth.
‘It’s about Rayne,’ he breathed, the air seeming to shiver through his nostrils.
‘What about her?’ Mitch brought his head off the mountain of pillows, suddenly looking alarmed. ‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’
King nodded. He couldn’t believe how fond of her his father had become.
‘What, then?’ Mitch demanded with considerably less than his usual strength.
King hesitated, but only briefly. ‘She’s Lorri Hardwicke,’ he stated, drawing another deep breath.
Mitch stared at him for a long worrying moment before closing his eyes.
‘Shouldn’t I have realised it!’ he exclaimed somewhat breathlessly at length, with an unusual tremor in his gravelly voice.
‘Do you know why she’s here?’
‘I think I can guess,’ Mitch returned. ‘But tell me anyway.’
‘She’s saying what Grant said all those years ago. That Claybornes took the credit for MiracleMed when it really belonged to him. In short, she’s accusing us—but you in particular—of, at best, gross professional misconduct and, at worst, outright theft.’
Had he gone too far? King wondered anxiously, wanting to kick himself for telling him when he saw the pain that darkened Mitch’s eyes and heard the way his breathing had suddenly became more laboured.
‘She’s right, King.’
‘What?’ Above the sound of footsteps hurrying along the corridor outside and the intermittent bleep of Mitch’s monitoring machine, King’s response was one of almost inaudible shock.
‘I did steal that software.’
King’s face was sculpted with harsh lines of bewilderment. ‘What are you saying?’ he whispered, his face turning pale, his mouth contorting in revulsion and disbelief.
‘It’s true,’ Mitch admitted heavily. ‘I know you thought I put a lot of my own time into it, but I didn’t. I’m glad it’s out. I’m glad you know, King. It’s been hell keeping it to myself—and from you in particular—all of these years.’
For once King found himself unable to think straight. Had he really heard Mitch correctly? Was his own father admitting to being a thief? Was that what had been gnawing away at him for so long? Making him so bitter?
‘You let me—let everyone—believe he produced the whole thing in the company’s time. Or a large part of it, anyway. Under Clayborne’s corporate umbrella!’ King reminded him roughly.
‘It was his word against mine—and he had no proof.’
‘So you took it on yourself to call it yours? Another man’s intellectual property!’ King stared at his father, appalled. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that you might be robbing him of his livelihood? That he had dependants? A wife and a daughter?’
‘So she’s come after me,’ Mitch murmured, sounding far away, as though he wasn’t listening. ‘After all these years! What a sparky little thing.’
‘She’s deceitful!’ King rasped, feeling his earlier anger brewing, although he wasn’t sure any more whether to be angry with her as well as his father, or just with himself. ‘What I hadn’t realised until now was that you were. My own father!’
He swung away towards the window again, massaging his neck, sightlessly watching the glittering sky mellowing with the lateness of the day. He didn’t want to be speaking to his father like that. Not while he was so unwell.
He hadn’t wanted to speak to Rayne as he had either, but the shock of discovering who she was with the knowledge that he had not only been ensnared by her beautiful face and body, but had also been made a fool of into the bargain had been much too much for his masculine self-esteem to take all in one go.
He couldn’t forget though how fiercely she had defended Grant Hardwicke, standing up for him with all the loyalty and determination of a loving daughter. Nor could he forget the emotion in her face when she had asked him if she could come here today and he had point-blank refused to let her. After she had helped his father, too. After she could so easily have turned away and not got involved. Although she hadn’t, he reflected, even though only minutes before she had been accusing Mitch of committing the worst possible corporate crime against her father. And in that, he thought, with his big body stiffening, she had been right … ‘King?’
The weak appeal had him reluctantly turning to regard the semi-reclining form on the bed, the tension so gripping in his shoulders that he thought his spine would snap.
‘Why?’ he demanded of his father, his strong features ravaged by a complexity of emotions. ‘Why did you do it, damn you? Why, Mitch?’
Amazingly, there was contrition and sadness too, King noted, in the watery blue eyes looking out of his father’s loose-skinned, rather florid face. ‘Do you—of all people—really need to ask?’ He looked away, towards the ceiling and the metal curtain track that ran around his bed, sighing heavily. ‘You know why.’
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_79c64529-b1a0-5458-ad90-ef739452c96b)
THE sky was changing from molten gold to burnished crimson.
In the grounds surrounding the house and on the forested hillside the crickets had struck up their shrill evening chorus, while in the distance, way below, Monte Carlo was waking up for the night.
From the terrace, her hand on the sun-warmed stone of the balustrade, Rayne watched the lights gradually come on in the hotels and apartments, and in the cafés and bars along the coast.
A thousand stars shining almost as brightly as the planet whose light seemed to be winking at her above the dark pointed spear of a cypress tree. One lonely star in a flaming universe, Rayne thought, which was how she felt right at that moment since Hélène had taken herself off to her rooms at least an hour ago, and Rayne hadn’t heard anything from King since he’d left with his father and the paramedics that morning.
A sharp breath escaped her as she heard the low growl of a car turning in through the gates, which she couldn’t see from the house as it was hidden by trees, and the next second saw the Lamborghini coming along the drive. The car drew up and her heart leapt when she saw King get out and hand his keys to a member of staff to garage it for the night.
She heard their muffled voices, King’s low and congenial, the other man’s infused with courtesy and yet genuine respect for his mega-rich, mega-influential employer. King was his employer, she had no doubt about that, since Hélène had told her that he oversaw most of his father’s affairs these days.
She had tried ringing his cellphone several times to find out how Mitch was, but if it wasn’t engaged it had been on voicemail. The one message she had left around lunchtime, asking King to call her, hadn’t been answered, and Hélène hadn’t been able to tell her anything beyond the fact that Mitch was still having tests.
Watching King’s dark head disappear under the portico, she waited, breath held, for him to come into the house. A few moments later she swung round with her heart leaping absurdly as she caught the sound of his light footsteps moving towards her over the terrace.
‘How’s Mitch?’ she asked without any preamble.
Bracing herself for some sarcastic response about her caring, his appearance, nevertheless, made her whole body go weak.
He was still dressed in the white shirt and dark suit trousers he had been wearing that morning, but his jacket was hooked over one shoulder. He was tie-less now and his shirt with the two top buttons unfastened was unusually crumpled. His hair looked as if he had been raking it back all day, but now there were dark strands falling loosely across his forehead as if he had finally given up trying to control it. His strong jaw was darkened by a day’s growth of stubble and there were dark hairs curling over the open V of his shirt.
Never had she seen him look so dishevelled, Rayne realised. Nor so utterly and sensationally male.
‘He had an angina attack. It wasn’t a coronary.’ The relief with which he informed her of that was almost tangible.
‘So he’s going to be all right?’
His eyes tugged over the golden slope of her shoulders beneath the shoelace straps of her dress, and Rayne felt as if the fine white chiffon would melt beneath the searing steel of his eyes.
‘Do you truly care?’ he murmured, so softly that she might have misheard him as he tossed his jacket unceremoniously down onto one of the heavily cushioned dining seats.
‘Of course I care. I left a message,’ she told him a little sharply, ‘but you didn’t answer.’
Because he hadn’t known what to say to her after their antagonised scene this morning. Hadn’t known then—when he was at the hospital—or now—when he was faced with the reality of telling her—exactly how to deal with the things his father had told him.
He merely dipped his head in acknowledgement of what she had said.
‘They’re keeping him in for observation, but hopefully he’s going to be all right.’
He looked so weary—devastated, almost, Rayne would have said—that she had the strongest urge to go over and put her arms around him in the way he’d done with her the other day. Tell him that she understood the anguish in having a sick parent—of losing a parent, even—but she held back. This was King Clayborne, after all. Hard. Impervious. Impenetrable. And he had found her out in the web of deceit she’d been weaving ever since she’d been here. He’d have no sympathy for her. Or any member of her family.
Steeling herself against that imperviousness with her head held stiffly, she enquired, ‘Have you come back to ask me to leave?’
‘No.’
No? Surprise pleated her forehead. ‘I thought you wouldn’t be able to get rid of me fast enough.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he admitted with a heavy sigh.
Rayne’s frown deepened. ‘What’s changed your mind? Or do you just want to keep me here to extract some sort of payment from me for lying to you?’
He came over to lean on the balustrade, looking out towards the sea beyond the twilit city. He chuckled softly, an almost self-derisory sound. ‘What sort of man do you imagine I am, Lorrayne?’
She couldn’t answer at first because all the replies that sprang to mind weren’t very complimentary. And because he was so near that she could feel the power of his masculinity emanating from him, smell the faint hint of his animal scent beneath the lingering traces of his cologne.
‘Tough. Determined. Implacable.’ Her mouth pulled slightly as she finished reeling them off.
He made another self-deprecating sound down his nostrils as he angled his body towards her, his forearm resting on the still warm stone. ‘Why do I get the impression that those adjectives were carefully chosen from the best of a bad bunch?’
Because they were, she thought, but remained silent this time.
‘You also thought I was grossly unscrupulous in being party to some treacherous and probably very unlawful act against your father,’ he stated, straightening up, ‘but I want you to know categorically now that I wasn’t.’
Strangely, she believed him, Rayne realised, shocked. But there was no room for anything other than truth in the deep intensity of his voice, nor, she accepted with a pulse-quickening heat stealing through her as she brought her head up, in the disturbing clarity of his eyes.
‘And Mitch?’ She looked quickly seaward to avoid his penetrating gaze, fixing hers on the light-spangled silhouette of a cruise ship moored way out in the distant harbour. ‘Did you tell him who I was?’
Her voice was infused with resentment, King noted. Something she had held against Mitch—against him—for years. ‘He knows who you are,’ he disclosed.
‘And what did he say?’ She looked up at him again now, her lovely face pained and accusing. ‘Did he admit that MiracleMed was Dad’s? And that he snatched it from under his nose?’
King took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t quite like that, Lorri.’
‘No?’ Her head was tilted in rebellious challenge and her hair was as fiery as the Monte Carlo sunset. ‘How was it?’ she bitterly invited him to tell her.
King glanced away, way down across the scintillating Principality, watching a stream of red tail lights form a blur of colour along the highway following the curve of the coast.
This day had wreaked havoc on him, if any day could. First finding out that Rayne was Lorri Hardwicke. Then Mitch’s suspected heart attack. And, to add to all that, those soul-sinking moments at the clinic when he’d believed his father was the worst kind of criminal. But Mitch’s sin had been a moral one, rather than anything illegal. Even so, it still offended King’s sense of propriety to realise that Grant Hardwicke had been treated so unfairly. And it wasn’t going to be easy telling his daughter the truth when, either way, she wasn’t going to want to hear the answer.
‘Your father signed an agreement with Mitch just after they went into partnership together, to the effect that any work done for the company while they were directors of the company would be to the benefit of the company. I know. I’ve read the clause in that agreement. I had my secretary email it through to me today. Your father was the technical whiz-kid, but was lax when it came to business dealings or keeping vital records. If he hadn’t been, he would have registered his right in that software prior to signing that agreement, but he didn’t, which was a pity,’ he said, sounding as though he meant it. ‘And much to his cost, as it turned out.’
‘And that’s it?’ she queried in protest. ‘He signed his rights away and it’s a pity! Why? Because it made Claybornes so much money!’
‘Lorrayne, stop,’ King advised gently, understanding her pain, her justified anger and bitterness. He wished he hadn’t learned from Mitch today that he could have acknowledged the other man’s concept of that software and that he had chosen not to. It had been an act of vengeance against a man who had been his friend and whom he had wound up hating. ‘No one could have quite foreseen the impact that MiracleMed would make after it was launched.’
‘But it did!’ she complained. ‘And Dad never received any credit for it!’
‘And, believe me, no one regrets that more than I do,’ King said somberly.
He didn’t add that, for what it was worth, Mitch now regretted it too. That would be like openly admitting his father’s wrongdoing, and if Mitch wanted to apologise to her then it was up to Mitch to do it himself.
He didn’t know why his father had suddenly burdened him with this today, unless it was because he’d feared he was going to die and wanted to get it off his chest. But at least he could understand now why his father had become so bitter, and how shouldering such a weight of remorse could have contributed to making him ill.
‘OK. So there’s nothing I can do about it now,’ she accepted grudgingly, ‘because it was all signed, sealed and delivered legally! But that doesn’t alter the fact that your father came by that software immorally and very conveniently, after that quarrel he obviously instigated, which made Dad walk out. And I know it wasn’t Dad’s fault, because Dad never quarrelled with anyone!’
‘For heaven’s sake, Lorri, stop being so naïve!’
‘Naïve?’ She gave a brittle little laugh. ‘You think I don’t know my own father?’
‘Apparently not.’
She sent a sidelong glance up at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she bit out with her eyes narrowing.
‘It means that, much as I believe my father exercised his rights under that agreement—whether ethically or otherwise—I also believe that it’s time you, my misinformed little kitten, heard a few home truths about what really broke up their partnership.’
‘I already know that,’ Rayne tossed back assuredly. ‘It was professional jealousy. He knew what Dad had created was going to be worth a fortune and he wanted to reap all the rewards for it himself!’ She couldn’t believe she was saying things like this about Mitch Clayborne. The man who had taken her in. Offered her food and shelter and a safe haven to get her affairs sorted out when she’d found herself virtually stranded so far from home.
‘Jealousy, maybe. But not so much professional as deeply personal, I imagine,’ King was saying with a grim cast to his features. ‘My father quarrelled with yours because of the affair Grant was having with Mitch’s wife.’
‘You’re lying!’ She couldn’t believe King could dream up something so despicable.
‘Am I? Then why do you think there were never any proper claims made by your father to try and secure the rights to his software?’
‘Because you threatened him! I was there when you did it!’ she reminded him passionately.
‘And you think that was enough to stop him pursuing any claim against the company if he thought he could have, unless he hadn’t something to hide?’
She wanted to protest, but his words rang with something so akin to the truth that they left her speechless. There were times when she had wondered why her father hadn’t fought harder to try and get the rights to MiracleMed into his name. Sometimes she had begged him to, but he hadn’t, and she’d thought it was because he just hadn’t had any fight left in him.
‘I came round that night—rightly or wrongly—to tell him to stay away from my father. I had very little else on my mind except that my stepmother had been killed and that Mitch was more than likely to be in a wheelchair for life. He’d known about the affair for weeks, which had led to Grant leaving the company. But it was the shock of being told by Karen that she was leaving Mitch to run away with your father that caused him to lose control of the car that night and swerve into that tree. He was going to leave you, Lorrayne. You and your mother. The dear, devoted husband and father.’ The censure which dripped through his words was evidence of just how little respect he had for Grant Hardwicke—or the institution of marriage. ‘Did you really not know?’
Mortified, Rayne could only stare up at him. Finally she made a small negative gesture with her head.
How could it be true? Her parents had loved each other, she reflected achingly. Or had King been right in calling her naïve? Had Cynthia Hardwicke known? Been aware of her husband’s infidelity? But no, she couldn’t have been!
Painfully, she recalled her mother’s constant assurance that it was Grant’s memory that had given her the strength to fight through her recent illness. So what would it do to her now if she found out that all that love and devotion she’d thought he’d shown her had been just a sham? It would destroy her!
‘I’m sorry I’ve had to be the one to destroy all your illusions about love and commitment, my dearest.’
‘I’m not your dearest.’ She wasn’t ready yet to accept endearments from him after he had opened her eyes so cruelly.
‘Maybe not,’ he conceded which, contrarily, hurt her even more, ‘but you’re feeling bruised and cut up about it, naturally.’
How do you know how I feel? she wanted to fling at him, but bit the words back. It wasn’t his fault that everything she’d believed in seemed to have crumbled to dust within the space of a few short minutes, even if it felt like it right at this moment.
She turned away from him, her hands resting limply on the top of the balustrade.
‘He lied,’ was all she could say, staring out at the darkening sea, hurting so much she didn’t think she’d live to trust anyone ever again. ‘To me. To Mum …’
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured deeply. And, after a few seconds, ‘Passion makes us do the most unprincipled things,’ he said.
Didn’t she know it!
‘It’s the second strongest animal force in the universe.’
‘Only the second?’ she uttered disdainfully.
‘Perpetuation of the species.’ His tone was flat—unsentimental. ‘Preceded only by self-survival.’
He made it all seem so cold. So basic.
He laughed rather harshly when she told him so. ‘Isn’t it?’ he suggested with unyielding scepticism.
‘Is that all you think love is for?’ she challenged, wondering how she had got on to this subject with him as she faced him again. ‘Just to create babies?’
‘Yes, but then we aren’t actually talking about love, are we … Lorri?’
He caught her hand, his fingers strong and warm, but angrily she tugged out of their grasp.
‘Don’t call me that!’ It was her father—her father, whom she had loved and trusted and looked up to, who had first started using that name. Everyone else had simply called her Lorrayne. ‘It’s Rayne to you!’
Which suited him fine, King thought, having been used to calling her that. It suited the woman she had become and who had changed so dramatically from the thin and stammering—at least with him, he remembered wryly—little scarecrow whom he’d known as Lorri, and who had graced the office for a time with her quiet presence.
‘Then don’t hate me, Rayne, for simply acquainting you with the facts.’
‘I don’t hate you.’ Hate was just the flip side of a coin that suggested far too intense an emotion than she was prepared even to think about. ‘Why should I hate you?’
‘For knocking your gallant knight down off his horse?’
‘I’m getting used to it,’ she murmured with unshed tears in her eyes. Her emotions were too raw at that moment to stop herself from tagging on, ‘After all, you did it to me once before.’
A frown knitted his brows as his gaze probed the moist hazel-green of hers.
‘I was mad about you,’ she admitted, not caring what she said any more.
‘I know.’
His deep revelation shocked and surprised her. Had she been that obvious?
‘You noticed me?’ she breathed, having never beyond her wildest teenage dreams ever dared to hope.
‘You were a child,’ he remarked succinctly.
‘I was eighteen!’
‘As I said—a child,’ he repeated with a soft chuckle, lifting her chin with his forefinger, his thumb lightly brushing her pouting lips. ‘A little girl with big hungry eyes …’ Because he knew now why those eyes had kept tugging at something inside him ever since that night he’d walked in and saw her standing here on the terrace. ‘Huge hungry eyes,’ he continued, ‘that I remember thinking even then that one day some man would drown in. But which right then belonged to a love-sick teenager whose main reason for agreeing to help out in that office, I suspect, was to try and make me want to take her to bed.’
‘I wasn’t love-sick,’ she denied with embarrassed colour flaring in her cheeks, overwrought from the feelings that had been building in her for hours because of his keeping her in suspense, because of his opinion of her father. Because she had been aching to see him—and talk to him—all day when she should have been hating him, convinced as she had been of just how ruthless he was. And when all she wanted him to do right now—and from the first moment she’d seen him walk in here tonight—really was to take her to bed. ‘Anyway, if I had been, it wouldn’t have worked with you, would it,’ she murmured with her blood suddenly pounding in her ears because the touch of his hands sliding lightly across her shoulders and down over her bare arms seemed to be setting her insides on fire. ‘Most of the time you ignored me.’
‘I wasn’t knocked out by spiky bleached hair and dark purple lips and eyes,’ he stated with his mouth moving wryly. ‘And what would you have preferred me to have done? Taken you over my knee for even thinking about it with a man way out of your age group?’
‘You were only twenty-three!’ she reminded him, breathless from her galloping emotions, wanting to run away from them—from him—and all the things he was saying that was sending a reckless excitement leaping through her. ‘That’s only five years.’
‘And those five years made a world of difference,’ he said sagely.
Which they would have, she accepted in hindsight.
Riveted by a desire that was stronger than her will, she looked up at him now to ask in a voice that was huskily provocative, ‘So what are you saying? That I’m too young for you?’
She heard the sharp catch of his breath above the chorus of crickets and, from the lights that had just come on around the terrace, saw the sensuous pull of his lips before he answered thickly, ‘Not any more.’
Common sense should have told her to stop this insanity before it got too far out of hand but, as his mouth came down over hers, it was already too late.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_2592b24b-db74-5d47-8f25-18b7cbfbb85f)
AS KING wrapped his arms around her, Rayne felt herself melting against him.
His jaw rasped against hers where he hadn’t shaved since that morning, but she rejoiced in its roughness and in his hard warmth that was driving every last trauma—of the day, of the past week and of the longer past—from her mind.
The only thing that mattered was him—here and now, the desire that had her clinging to him, as the only sure, secure thing in her crumbling universe.
She had wanted this—so much! Wanted it now a thousand times more than she had ever wanted it before. It was as if all the feelings she had had for him as a teenager hadn’t died but had been shut away inside her, brooding and intensifying so that now they overwhelmed her like a flood, gushing through her from her toes upwards and spreading along every nerve and sinew of her being.
He had called her a child then, but she was a woman now and she wanted to prove it to him, angling her body so that her needs were obvious—the craving for his hands against her naked flesh.
He read her like a book, following each silent sentence her body was conveying to him as long tanned fingers slipped the fine straps off her shoulders so that the chiffon bodice rippled like a waterfall down over the betraying fullness of her breasts.
King groaned deeply in his throat, his body hardening from her perfect femininity. He felt like ravaging her, driving them both wild in his need to blot out all the things that Mitch had revealed to him today. To lose himself inside the warm, slick wetness of her glorious body. But he forced himself to exercise all his powers of restraint, knowing that she wouldn’t thank him for that.
This woman needed to be handled with kid gloves, her beautiful body served and pleasured with the skill and tenderness it deserved.
She had deceived him, it was true. But only because she’d believed him to be party to a gross misdemeanour against her father—a father who hadn’t been wholly worthy of her trust and fierce loyalty. Nevertheless, the fact that she had deceived him made him glean a delicious thrill in inflicting some sensual punishment upon her in making her wait for all her body—and his own!—craved.
Dipping his head, he drew the hard peak of one pink begging nipple slowly into his mouth, taming the urge to pull her against him as his strong hands rested on the firm, gentle curves of her straining hips.
He was driving her crazy, Rayne thought headily, clutching at his shoulders, wanting to rip off his shirt, feel the hardness of his muscles and his hair-roughened chest against her breasts.
‘Easy,’ he advised softly, his breath fanning the wet swollen tip he had just released from its torturous pleasure. ‘What is it you want? Show me what you want.’
Maybe she should have been embarrassed, she thought distractedly, but hunger had stripped her of all inhibitions, so that now she had no qualms about doing as he’d asked.
Thrusting her neglected breast towards him, she uttered a deep, guttural sob when his mouth closed over it, sending sensations plummeting down through the centre of her body.
‘Is this it?’ he broke off to murmur against the pale fleshy mound after a few moments. ‘Is this what you want?’
No, I want you! All of you! Around me! On top of me! Inside me!
She heard her brain screaming out those phrases and couldn’t believe that any man could reduce her to thinking them. But this wasn’t any man, she assured herself hectically. This was King.
His hands on her hips were warm and firm, yet still holding her away from him when all she wanted was to feel him, feel the evidence of just how much he wanted her.
But he was controlling the pace, she realized, wanting more of what he was doing to her and yet crazy for this particular sensuous torture to end as he burned a slick, hot path between the valley of her breasts with a teasingly slow caress of his tongue.
‘I hate you, King Clayborne,’ she groaned.
She could say it now. Now, when the conflagration of need that was burning inside her raged so fiercely that there could be no turning back because what was there to lose? He knew how much she wanted him. Needed him.
‘No, you don’t,’ he murmured thickly against her ribcage.
He knew that too, she accepted helplessly, because she couldn’t fool him any more than she could fool herself. But to express what she was feeling in any other way would be no less than sheer folly, she realised, despairing at herself for wanting—needing—him so much.
With a deep groan from the depths of his throat he caught her to him then, and from that moment he was no longer in control.
Hungrily his mouth captured hers, their breath mingling, tongues blending in an urgent mimicry of the ultimate outcome of where all this was leading, as Rayne let her head fall back in wanton acquiescence to all that was about to happen.
They were equal now. Mouth to mouth. Pulsing body to pulsing body. Locked in the most fundamental act between a man and a woman.
Below them, beneath the darkening Mediterranean sky, Monte Carlo pulsed with a life of its own but they were oblivious to it, the sound of their impassioned breathing like an extension of the exotic chorus outside.
His teasing had backfired on him, Rayne realised with her heart singing. He was desperate to make love with her, a scenario she had only ever dared to dream about seven years ago. But now it was happening and the reality was sending shock waves of pleasure through her body way beyond any she could ever have imagined.
With a small sob of need and urgent trembling fingers, she tugged at the buttons of his shirt.
His chest was bronzed and beautifully contoured, as she had imagined it would be, the feathering of hair that ran down and disappeared inside his shirt igniting a fire in her as she ran her hands across it.
‘You’re beautiful.’ It seemed as natural to say it as it did to breathe, as very softly she pressed her kiss-swollen lips to his heaving chest. He smelled of pine and a masculine musk that acted like an aphrodisiac on her already heightened senses. His skin tasted slightly salty when she brought her tongue across the hard wall of muscle and bone.
‘Not nearly as beautiful as you.’
Did he really think that? Or was it just sex talking? How could she compare with the super-model type of woman his name was usually linked with? At that moment, though, she didn’t care—only that he was with her. Like this.
‘Take this off,’ he urged raggedly, already tugging her dress down over her hips. ‘I want to see you. All of you.’
Before she could murmur an objection, having thought about his type of woman and feeling extremely self-conscious about not living up to all he expected her to be, the whisper of fabric was nothing more than a pool of light around her ankles and she was standing there in nothing but her flimsy white sandals and a white lacy string that left very little hidden from the dark intensity of his gaze.
‘King,’ she breathed, hiding her sudden embarrassment against the warm hard wall of his shoulder. Gently, though, those warm strong hands held her away from him.
‘Let me look at you,’ he exhaled in a way that was half an entreaty, half a command.
Allowing it, she stood stock-still and closed her eyes against the starkly visual images of what she knew he would be seeing. Red hair cascading like a dark waterfall over one shoulder, the urgent rising of pale breasts with their rosy tips still hard and turgid from his exquisite attentions.
She wondered if he’d think as she did. That her breasts were slightly too full for her tiny waist and the less curvy flare of her hips. But he was smiling when she opened her eyes, the smile of a man well gratified with the gift he was being given.
He reached out then, cupping the undersides of her breasts as tenderly as if each were a rare treasure, and Rayne gave a small moan, her lashes coming down over her eyes against the excruciating pleasure that ripped through her lower body as his thumbs lightly stroked the sensitised peaks.
‘Look at me.’
She didn’t want to! How could she stand here like this and let him see the naked longing in her eyes? Face him, knowing that her body was betraying the extent of her need of him? But his voice was as much her master as the sensations that were holding her in thrall and very slowly her lashes fluttered apart.
He looked flushed and tousled and as much a slave to his desire as she was, she realised, feeling the burn of his gaze like a brand on her body as it slid leisurely down over her rapidly rising breasts and ribcage, over the flat plane of her belly to the white triangle of lace at the apex of her creamy thighs.
‘Such loveliness should be rejoiced in. Worshipped,’ he emphasised heavily, his massaging hands leaving her breasts to follow the same path down over her midriff, her hips and her trembling thighs before coming to rest on the taut mounds of her bare buttocks, the beauty he had just spoken of with the heat of his desire bringing him finally to his knees.
Rayne gazed down on his thick dark hair as his hot mouth sought the heart of her femininity, concealed behind the last barrier of her string.
His moist heat burned into her, mingling with her hot wetness through the wisp of lace, and Rayne plunged her fingers into his hair to clutch him to her and with a groaning need thrust her throbbing centre hard against him.
He groaned his satisfaction as she squirmed above him.
‘I think we can dispense with this, don’t you?’ he murmured huskily.
His smile was excitingly sensual when he tilted his head to look up at her, although the strong masculine face was flushed with the desire that was making his eyelids heavy and lent his mouth the brooding look of a man in the grip of passion.
Rayne sucked in her breath as his fingers made short shrift of removing the little scrap of nonsense. His hands were dark and long and extremely masculine against the smooth, silky sheen of her legs.
Blindly she saw him toss her string down alongside her dress.
Both scraps of nonsense, she thought, if she’d imagined that either could protect her from her own weakness for him, or from his potent masculinity and his determined, exciting hands.
His clothes were unbelievably arousing on her nakedness as he pulled her to him and, where she had tugged his unbuttoned shirt out of his waistband, his chest hair rasped deliciously against her swollen breasts.
‘Oh, King …’ Involuntarily, she was wriggling against him, wanting even closer contact. She had never felt more wanton or more feminine.
‘Easy, darling,’ he said softly, and though she knew that the endearment might have been used with any woman he had been making love to, she was too driven by her need for him to be anything but happy to pretend that just for tonight she really meant something to him. ‘Don’t you think I feel it too?’
In fact he had never felt so hot or so hard in his entire life, King realised, with such an intense burning throb in his groin it was almost akin to pain.
He hadn’t intended this when he had come back from the clinic tonight, bearing the brunt of two men’s total disregard for each other. Or having to tell Rayne—while personally appalled at Mitch’s lack of ethics—that, legally, she had no claim against his father, and then to go on and shatter all her illusions about love and loyalty into the bargain. But it had been a hell of a day and he needed to lose himself in the pleasure of everything she was offering. And heaven help him if he was behaving like a sex-starved teenager! But this lovely woman couldn’t begin to know just how much pleasure it was going to give him to make love to her.
Claiming her mouth once more, he ground his hips against hers to show her just what she was doing to him and laughed softly into her mouth—a satisfied sound—when she gasped from the evidence of his arousal and pressed herself against his hardness in answering need.
Dragging his mouth from the drugging warmth of hers, it was only to rasp against the perfumed silk of her hair, ‘Come to bed with me.’
Her murmur of acquiescence was muffled by the depth of her wanting, but he understood.
Cupping her buttocks to lift her, he felt her warm eager legs wrap around him and, like that, somehow they made it up to his suite of rooms.
Monte Carlo was a blur of lights through the panorama of the open windows, its busy Corniche a blazing snake that led sinuously who-knew-where? Just like where making love with this man would be taking her tonight, Rayne thought distractedly, although she was in far too deep now to care.
From over his shoulder, on The Rock on the south side of the harbour, she glimpsed the palace, floodlit as a beacon against the dark velvet of the night.
Clarity against confusion. The thought rang through her brain. Like common sense against a wild, abandoned pleasure such as she had never known.
As King laid her down on the bed, she let the pleasure take her over—the excitement of him removing his clothes, the hard shadowed potency of his thrusting manhood and the heart-leaping anticipation as he came down to join her.
She reached for him at once and knew the heady thrill of touching him intimately for the first time.
‘Go easy,’ he advised raggedly and she could tell from his laboured breathing how close he was to losing control. ‘I don’t want to waste this. I want to savour every minute of these hours with you.’
That it sounded like the prelude to something final, she didn’t even want to think about. She couldn’t think anyway because, in moving away from her to remove her sandals, he was suddenly employing his tongue to trace a slow sensuous trail along each thigh.
Except that now he had found the secret parting between them and, lying there, breath held in shuddering anticipation, she almost screamed with pleasure when his teasing tongue flicked across her ripe swollen bud.
She had had just two lovers in her life, but she had never permitted such intimacy, and now she knew why no other relationship had ever been enough for her. Because there was only one man she wanted! Only one man she had ever wanted. And she knew that after tonight she would be spoiled for any other man who ever came after King.
As he drove her mindless with his mouth, her hands clutched the soft fabric of the coverlet beneath her to try and stem the tide of pleasure that was building in her. A small guttural murmur escaped her. She didn’t want to climax yet.
‘What is it? What is it you want, Rayne?’ he murmured with his lips softly brushing the soft flesh of her inner thigh. They left a slick trail of warmth where they’d touched, moist from the nectar of her body.
You! her mind clamoured, begging, silently appealing to him. It’s all I’ve ever wanted—for so long!
Too unsure of him to actually say as much, she used the language of her body to show him by reaching down to entice him back across her.
‘Ah, is that all,’ he said softly and, even in the grip of passion, she realised, there was still room for sensual teasing in his voice.
As he reached across to open the drawer of the bedside cabinet, it hit her that he was continuing to call her Rayne. Rayne, not Lorri, because Lorri, the girl he had once ignored—silly, trusting, naïve Lorri—was gone, killed off by the crumbling of everything she had trusted and believed in. By the harsh reality of life as it really was.
King’s muttered oath as he pushed closed the drawer he had been groping in suddenly woke Rayne to what was wrong.
‘Don’t you have any?’ she asked breathlessly and a little coyly, despite how far their intimacy had come.
‘I thought I did.’ He let out a frustrated sigh and then, with a wry pull of his mouth, ‘It’s been a while,’ he admitted to her.
Later, Rayne would glean some comfort from that statement. Right now, though, all she felt was frustration, agonizing and raw.
‘I’m sorry, Rayne.’ She was lying there with her hair spread like dark fire across his pillow, her beautiful body flushed from the fever-pitch he had brought her to, and which was mirrored by the febrile glitter in her slumberous eyes. ‘I should have checked.’ He swore again, quite viciously this time. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said, noticing the anguish on her lovely face. ‘Or you’ll make me lose my mind and all my principles will be shot to the winds, and I’ve no intention of putting you at risk like that.’ He meant from an unwanted pregnancy. She could see the effort it was taking for him to honour those principles he’d spoken of. His face, as he drew away from her and sat up, was ravaged by his own frustration. Even in the dim light she could see the flush that darkened the skin across his cheekbones, and his darkened jaw appeared clenched against his thwarted sexual desire. But there was a bleakness to his superb profile that made him look vulnerable and weary.
Of course, she thought, reasoning through the depths of her wanting. He had been worrying about Mitch all day …
With her heart going out to him, she wondered how she could ever have doubted that he was anything other than trustworthy, and that that integrity he was showing her now would extend to every aspect of his life. And her intuition must have recognised that for her to have still found herself so attracted to him, even when she’d wanted to believe the worst about him.
She wanted to tell him she was sorry she’d misjudged him so completely, but she was still too aroused and racked with need for him to speak. She laid tentative fingers on his forearm. ‘It’s all right,’ she assured softly, with wild impulses leaping through her from the sensation of his skin beneath her fingers. ‘We don’t need one.’
‘You’re protected?’ The disbelief that chased away some of the shadows from his face was worth a month of birthdays, Rayne thought, smiling shyly, too aroused to tell him why. That weeks ago she’d been given the Pill to correct her erratic cycle, thrown out of kilter through worrying about her mum.
‘We’ll be perfectly safe—I promise,’ she breathed, her simmering desire beginning to bubble over again just from caressing the superbly contoured muscle of his upper arm. It felt firm and solid. As solid as the rest of his body as he came down to her again, causing her to gasp from the weight and power of him, and then from a breath-catching expectancy as he gently parted her legs.
But he didn’t enter her right away. Instead, with his hot, hard flesh merely nudging at her moist softness, he treated her to a torturous game of re-arousal that had her sobbing at the ecstasy of his tormenting lips and hands until she spread her legs fan-like and raised her hips uninhibitedly to his in a frenzied and unequivocal invitation to him to take her.
And that was more than he could take, she realised, gasping and overcome by sensation when one long, hard thrust had him sinking deeply into her eager warmth.
Pushed over the limit, she started to climax at once, bucking and sobbing until she was nothing but an abandoned mass of writhing sensations, propelled to greater and greater heights by King’s driving and increasingly deeper penetration.
Her zenith when it came was a starburst of colour and spell-binding pleasure in which she felt she was being catapulted to another planet. And then the moment came when King’s own climax burst and he was flowing into her, joining her with him and to him, sending the earth spinning off its axis as they floated together—one mind and one body—in some glorious parallel universe.
When she awoke, she was alone in the big bed and the blinds were drawn up to reveal the cloudless Mediterranean blue sky.
She was in a very masculine room, with plain soft furnishings and heavy designer furniture, in contrast to the pale and more delicate fitments of her own room.
Her stomach flipped now as she remembered what had transpired, the tender spots on the most intimate places of her body an exciting reminder of a long and rapturous night.
Now, though, remembering why she had come here and all that had transpired yesterday, she wondered just how wise she had been in letting it happen.
The Claybornes had as good as destroyed her family—or at least Mitch Clayborne had, even if Grant Hardwicke had brought it on himself in incurring Mitch’s wrath by planning to run off with his wife. But Rayne’s mother wasn’t aware of that, and Rayne vowed she would do her best to keep her from ever finding out. However, where King was concerned, her mother still believed, as Rayne had, that he was just as guilty as Mitch of stealing her father’s work. So whatever would her mother say if she knew how little it had taken for her daughter to wind up in bed with King? She’d be horrified and hurt beyond belief, Rayne thought, as she would if she knew about Grant’s affair. And how could she explain to her mother that King had played no part in hurting her father, when she didn’t think Cynthia Hardwicke would even survive knowing the whole truth?
All she could do, she reasoned, was not tell her mother anything—not even let her know that she had been here.
As for Mitch Clayborne …
Turning over in bed, she let out a low groan. She didn’t think she could stand the embarrassment of ever facing him again.
She was just about to step out of bed but, hearing the door opening and realising she was entirely naked, she slipped back in, pulling the single sheet up over her breasts.
Despite her concerns, her heart leaped to see King striding in wearing a white dressing gown and leather slippers. He had combed his hair, but his unshaven jaw was even darker this morning and his tanned chest and legs contrasted deeply with the robe.
‘You slept well,’ he commented, and his smile was so warm that all her worries were in danger of melting like the winter’s last snows. ‘Hélène’s cooking breakfast, but I thought you might like a glass of orange juice to revive you,’ he said.
Thanking him, Rayne took the crystal glass and drank from it gratefully. She couldn’t believe how thirsty she was—or how hungry. Obviously making love with him had stirred her appetites, she realised, in more ways than one.
‘King … About last night,’ she began when she came up for air, hardly able to look at him after all they had shared.
‘What are you going to tell me?’ He looked at her knowingly. ‘That it shouldn’t have happened?’
‘Something like that,’ she murmured sheepishly, finishing her juice.
‘Too late, my sweet. It did.’ He sounded fatalistic as he removed the empty glass from her hand. ‘Not once—but twice—’ his mouth was pulling sensually ‘—if I remember correctly. So what excuse are you going to give me for virtually ripping off my shirt and then nearly driving me out of my mind with your wicked ways?’
The dark intensity of his eyes was making her throb in every intimate part of her that he had made his own, which meant that her ‘wicked ways’, as he’d called them, still weren’t satisfied. Because she still craved him, and even more so as she remembered every tender caress of his skilled and wonderful hands and the burning heat of his mouth on the most secret places of her body.
In a voice tremulous with desire she said, ‘I didn’t rip off your shirt.’ And because this whole scenario was too embarrassing for her she said, ‘I think I should go.’
‘Go?’ He frowned. ‘Go where? To the bathroom? Or home?’ he enquired flippantly.
‘Home, of course,’ she responded seriously. ‘It’s much too embarrassing to stay here now that Mitch knows who I am.’
‘Is that the only reason?’ he purred with sensuality curling his fantastic mouth again and, before she could answer, too ashamed to know how to respond, he said, ‘He’s expressly requested that you stay. So do I. In fact, I insist upon it.’
‘Insist?’ Rayne echoed with her rebellious nature surfacing through her unquenchable desire.
‘All right, then. I invite you to stay,’ he amended.
‘Why?’
‘Because I think you must be feeling a little overwrought and probably much too tired after … last night,’ he reminded her with his irises darkening, although he was still smiling, ‘to be in any fit state to go anywhere.’
‘I’m surprised, after all you called me yesterday—deceitful, lying, naïve—’ she took a warped pleasure in reminding him equally ‘—that you should even care.’
‘Of course I care.’
A glimmer of something deep inside her responded too eagerly to that heavily breathed statement. A throwback to her teenage years. That was all it was, she told herself chaotically.
‘You’re under my roof,’ he went on, surprising her because she’d thought it was Mitch’s house. ‘I wouldn’t want to be responsible for driving you out.’
‘Your roof?’ she enquired obliquely, while reluctantly processing the fact of his merely feeling responsible for her.
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘No.’ Nothing about him surprised her.
‘My roof. My house …’ her breath caught sharply as the mattress suddenly depressed beneath his weight ‘… and my bed.’
His voice was arousing in itself, even without the things he was saying, and she thought of those couple of lovelorn weeks she had spent in his office, listening to his voice from behind that glass partition, wondering what it would be like to hear it roughened by desire.
‘If Hélène’s getting breakfast, we don’t have time,’ she said breathlessly because he was already turning back the sheet, making her whole body scream in anticipation.
He laughed softly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, pressing his lips against her forehead, and his voice was so soft she had to close her eyes because she couldn’t deal with the depth of feeling it aroused in her, ‘I think we do.’
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_e029ebc6-7815-57d3-ba53-b7b4c364da89)
RAYNE decided she had to go and visit Mitch at the clinic as soon as possible, since it had all come out now, who she was and why she was there.
She didn’t feel like seeing a man who had used the terms of a signed agreement as a payback to ruin his ex-partner because, no matter how bad or naïve a businessman Grant Hardwicke had been, that was what Mitch had effectively done. But although she was still in shock over the things King had told her about her father, she still felt she owed it to Grant Hardwicke to hear the facts first-hand from Mitch himself.
At King’s insistence, Rayne allowed him to drive her to the hospital, where a handful of reporters who had learned of Mitch’s condition leaped on them like locusts as soon as they arrived at the main doors.
‘Is it true, Mr Clayborne, that this health scare of your father’s is more serious than the clinic is saying?’
‘Is there any improvement in his condition?’
‘Does this mean Clayborne shares in all areas are set to rise further with the expectation of your taking outright control?’
Questions came thick and fast, with microphones being thrust towards them, so that Rayne realised just how influential and newsworthy the Clayborne name was.
‘You’ve heard the clinic spokesman’s statement. My father’s condition is stable,’ King answered, pressing forward unperturbed, taking it in his stride. ‘I’ve nothing more to add.’
‘Mr Clayborne!’ a female journalist shouted over the jostling heads. ‘Can we deduce from your arriving here accompanied this morning …’ her gossip-hungry gaze fell pointedly on Rayne ‘… that your relationship with super-model Sophie Ringwood is well and truly over?’
Rayne gave a small gasp as a flashbulb suddenly went off in her face.
‘No comment,’ King said, his arm coming instinctively around her.
Rayne was glad of his shielding strength, turning her head into the immaculate pale jacket covering his shoulder as the camera flashed again before he hustled her inside the building.
‘I’m sorry about that.’ His face was grim as they came into the bright modern efficiency of the airy clinic. ‘It comes with the territory, I’m afraid.’
‘Naturally,’ Rayne returned, breathless from all the commotion, feeling the sudden loss of his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t think she could ever get used to living life in the spotlight as he obviously had, she thought, trying not to dwell on what that reporter had said about his super-model girlfriend as he guided her towards a waiting lift.
‘Remember he’s ill,’ King warned when she refused his offer to accompany her into Mitch’s room as they were stepping out of the lift, insisting on going in alone. ‘And it won’t do either of you any good to get into a stew.’
‘As if I would!’ she breathed. ‘Unlike your father, I do have ethics,’ she added under her breath as a passing nurse, looking interestedly at King, gave Rayne the remainder of her smile.
The stark reminder of just how attractive he was to the opposite sex, coupled with nerves over how she was going to broach the subject with Mitch, made her look flushed and uneasy as she steeled herself to enter the man’s room.
It was light and beautifully furnished, with only the bleep of a machine and other necessary equipment around the bed where Mitch was lying, propped up by pillows, reminding her that this wasn’t some luxury hotel.
‘How are you?’ she asked with genuine concern, despite everything. He looked less florid and much more relaxed than she’d seen him before.
‘No need for preliminaries, child.’ Still his impatient self, he was waving her concern aside. ‘You can see how I am. Alive! And you, I believe,’ he went on, his watery blue eyes unsettlingly direct, ‘have something you want to say to me.’
‘All right, then.’ Now she wondered why she had been worrying about exactly what she was going to say, but she should have known how much he was like King. Love them or hate them, the Clayborne men always made things easy by cutting to the chase. Always taking command. Well, like it or not. She could do that too! ‘Why did you do what you did to my father?’ she demanded with her breasts lifting rapidly under the light fabric of her flattering yet simply tailored shift. ‘I don’t care how many agreements he signed. You could have acknowledged that MiracleMed was his concept and you didn’t.’
Mitch’s mouth twisted as though he was considering how best to answer. ‘Did King tell you that?’ he enquired. ‘That I could have done the decent thing and decided not to?’
‘No. He didn’t have to,’ she murmured torturously, guessing that Mitch must have told him that yesterday, which was why King had looked so … what was it? … devastated, almost, she decided, when he had returned from here last night. But he hadn’t told her because, of course, he would have wanted to protect his father, even though deep down he must have been shocked and thoroughly appalled. She didn’t know how she knew that. She just did.
‘Oh, I know about your … wife.’ It hurt excruciatingly to say it. To have to accept that her father had been having an affair. ‘And yes, King did tell me that. But surely that wasn’t enough reason to …’ She couldn’t go on. Pain and resentment, anger and betrayal—it was all there in the anguish marring her face.
‘Have you ever been in love, Rayne?’ The man’s tone had softened as his silver head tilted to study her. ‘No, don’t answer that.’ His breath seemed dragged from him. ‘That wasn’t any excuse. But Karen was the only woman I’d loved since King’s mother deserted me—deserted both of us—for an Australian rancher. I couldn’t bear it when I saw the whole thing happening again. I was demented with anger—and jealousy.’ His voice sounded even more gravelly than usual from his emotion. ‘I figured that Grant had stolen from me—and something that no amount of money could buy—although I’ve realised since that I was half-crazed and too dim to see that she’d only married me for my money. I thought I was justified in taking something that belonged to him, but it’s haunted me all these years in having done that to a colleague and a friend and, for what it’s worth, I am truly, truly sorry.’
Feeling rooted to the spot, Rayne didn’t know what to think—to say. What could she say? she demanded of herself, hurting unbearably.
With tears burning her eyes, her emotions riding high, she did the only thing she could.
She fled.
Only to bump into something warm and solid as she rounded the corner at the end of the corridor.
‘What the …?’
King’s hands were steadying her, his eyes scrutinizing her face and, seeing the tension and the tears she was battling to control, he said merely, understandingly, ‘Come on.’
They were out of the building before she had even realised it.
The reporters were still there, eager for news of a budding romance.
King, however, shouldered his way through them, ignoring their intrusive questions until, finally, and much to Rayne’s relief, he brought her—unmolested, but feeling the worse for wear—back to the car.
‘Would you care to tell me about it?’ he invited when they were on the road again in the exclusive, quiet haven of the Lamborghini.
‘No,’ was all she said.
To her relief, he didn’t press the point. Silently, she thanked him for that.
Maybe in time she would forgive Mitchell Clayborne, she thought, sinking against the luxuriously padded pale leather upholstery. And even forgive her father. But right then all she could do was sit there with the sun filtering through the tinted windscreen, staring sightlessly out at the palm-fringed road and the glittering waves of a teal blue sea, wishing she had never come to Monte Carlo, wishing she could simply escape.
And perhaps King was wise to exactly how she was feeling, she speculated, surprised when, without a word, he took her for a long drive along the dramatically sculpted coast.
Above them, pastel-coloured houses seemed in places to cling precariously to cliff ledges among the forested mountains, while parasol pines, their branches spread with welcoming shade, grew abundantly amidst fig and date palms, interspersed with vibrant splashes of colour from the Mediterranean flowers.
She was beginning to feel better by the time he pulled onto the harbourside of an ancient port lined with a mixture of fishing boats and dinghies and exclusive yachts. A row of craft shops, galleries and cafés had been converted out of the old buildings beside the quay.
‘Watch your footing,’ he cautioned when they were out of the car, taking her hand to guide her safely past tethered ropes and crates of provisions being loaded onto vessels that amazed her with their sheer size. But it was those cool fingers around hers that left her breathless, with a sharp thrill running through her as she thought of the passion they had shared both that morning and the previous night.
His yacht was moored at one end of the ancient harbour and, after he had settled Rayne on board, leaving her brewing coffee in the well-equipped galley, King popped back to the quayside shops for some provisions.
The coffee had just brewed when Rayne heard him step back on board.
She was reaching up for two mugs in one of the modern cupboards just as he came down into the galley. His arm going around her waist made her gasp, as did the arrangement of white perfumed blooms he was holding against her breast and which were filling the air with their heady fragrance.
‘Roses!’ She laughed in breathless surprise.
‘A peace offering,’ King told her, ‘for being such an overbearing oaf—and for jumping to all the wrong conclusions.’ And when she looked enquiringly over her shoulder with a velvety eyebrow raised, he said, ‘Mitch’s previous record with a woman young enough to be his daughter resulted in devastating consequences. You couldn’t blame me for being on my guard.’
‘On your guard?’ She gave a censorious little laugh. ‘You’ve been like a prowling tiger!’
‘Because I knew you were hiding something,’ he said. ‘You confirmed that the first morning when you said Mitch had told you I was in New York, because Mitch hadn’t known. But also, I suspect, because I wanted—’ He broke off, exhaling heavily as he pulled her back against him. ‘Correction. Want you myself.’
Want. Nothing else, Rayne forewarned herself as every nerve leapt in response to the lips that were suddenly caressing the sensitive skin exposed to him by the slashed neckline of her simple shift.
‘I just didn’t want to be turned out before I was able to speak to Mitch. That’s why I didn’t tell the truth,’ she murmured with a sensuous little shudder because of what he was doing to her.
‘If you’d come to me—explained how you felt—I’d have at least looked into it,’ he told her softly against her cheek now. ‘Instead, I was left to pre-judge.’
‘Without knowing anything about me,’ she scolded gently. ‘And you still don’t know anything about me. Or very little,’ she tagged on, with colour appearing along the crest of her cheekbones as she reminded herself that after last night and this morning, physically, at least, he knew her very, very well.
‘Don’t I?’ He was smiling as though hugging some secret he wasn’t prepared to share with her. Or perhaps, she thought, he was just remembering their time in bed together too …
‘All right, so I rip men’s shirts off and then take advantage of them when I’ve got them at their most vulnerable,’ she conceded jokingly, loving the heat of his hand through the fine fabric of her dress and the warm strength of him pressing into her back.
Seriously, though, she couldn’t help thinking about how shattered he had looked when he had returned from the clinic last night, after what had been an obviously gruelling day. Shattered, not just from worrying about Mitch, but by the things Mitch must have told him. Realising he’d been wrong about her, too, probably hadn’t helped lessen the load.
‘If that was taking advantage of me, then I can’t wait for the next time,’ he drawled, and pretended to double up when she gave him a gentle nudge in the ribs with her elbow.
‘You’re right. Enough of this or we’ll starve,’ he said, laughing, as she took the flowers and stood them in the centre of the dining table that curved around its seating area next to the galley. ‘And then I do have an hour or so’s work to do,’ he apologised. ‘But first …’
She hadn’t realised it until then, but in his other hand he had been clutching the strap of a square insulated cooler, which he lifted up now onto the counter beside the cooker.
‘Oysters in Madeira with cheese sauce for starters,’ he told her, opening the bag and looking very pleased with himself. ‘Fresh tuna steak—to be seared, of course—with salad and crusty bread and fresh raspberries and passion fruit coulis to follow.’
‘Goodness!’ Rayne laughed, realising she’d been expecting something far less exotic. ‘When you go to town—you go to town!’
But of course he would, she thought, watching those long deft hands unpacking the carefully selected items. A man like Kingsley Clayborne would never do things by half measures.
‘Oysters and passion fruit? Aren’t oysters supposed to be an aphrodisiac?’ she remembered with a sidelong provocative glance up at him. ‘As for passion fruit … what sort of afternoon are you planning?’
‘If you keep looking at me like that, not a very productive one,’ he responded with a feral smile.
‘And don’t tell me …’ she laughed again, thinking how wonderful it was to feel so at ease with him ‘… Clayborne’s shares will drop like a stone and the whole global workforce will be on the dole because the company’s CEO stopped to enjoy himself for a while.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ he replied dryly, although there was a hint of seriousness in his voice that made her realise how hard he worked and how dedicated he was in what he did, which helped provide a living for so many thousands of people across the globe.
‘So how did you come by all this stuff for such a gourmet meal?’ Rayne asked. After all, he hadn’t been gone that long.
‘The owner of that restaurant over there …’ this with a sideways toss of his head towards the quayside ‘… is a very good friend of mine. I rang him earlier and told him to expect me.’
‘You …’ dark horse, she finished silently, warmed by the knowledge that he’d been planning all this even before they had left the clinic. Probably even the roses too.
She couldn’t remember much of what they talked about during the meal, which they ate out on the lower deck under the awning. Their conversation was light and casual and surprisingly easy. Then afterwards, with the dishwasher humming away in the galley and King working in the salon on his laptop, she lazed on the upper deck in her burgundy satin bra and panties because she didn’t have her bikini with her.
Listening to the deep resonance of his voice, hanging on every word he uttered as he conducted his international business over the phone and arranged meetings, her gently tanning body pulsed from the memory of their lovemaking, and throbbed in reckless anticipation of what might be to come.
Her cellphone rang while she was lying there. She didn’t recognise the caller as anyone she knew, answering it rather uncertainly.
‘Hello, Lorrayne,’ Nelson Faraday began. ‘I got your number from an old associate of ours …’ He named a mutual colleague with whom they had worked on the same paper and with whom Rayne still sometimes kept in touch. ‘He told me your mother had been ill. I hope she’s feeling better.’ Preliminaries over with, he dived straight into the reason why he was ringing her. ‘I understand you were seen looking more than chummy with Kingsley Clayborne. Want to tell me about it?’
A trickle of unease ran through Rayne like a paralysing poison. ‘No.’
‘Just good friends, eh? Or is there far more to your being here with him than meets the eye?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said tremulously, knowing this man could spell trouble for her.
The journalist chuckled softly, without a trace of humour. ‘Don’t you? You have a short memory, Lorrayne.’
‘If you think I’ve forgotten the methods you use to dig up your stories, then trust me—my memory’s as long as an elephant’s!’
Laughter came again, a little more sincerely now. ‘That sounds more like the fiery creature I knew. Look, I think we should talk. How about meeting me for drinks at the Café de Paris?’
The man had to be joking! ‘How about barking up some other tree, Faraday? I’ve got nothing to say to you. Goodbye!’
She found she was shaking as she cut him off and tossed down her phone on the sunbed.
‘What’s wrong?’ King asked, choosing that exact moment to emerge from the lower deck.
His shirt was partially unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and with those light beige trousers moulding themselves to his hips and very muscular thighs he looked no less than utterly magnificent.
‘Nothing,’ Rayne fibbed, trying to restore her agitated features into some semblance of order.
‘Nothing?’ He glanced down at her cellphone, dark brows knitting together. Numbly, she wondered exactly what she might have said and how much he might have heard.
‘Just someone ringing up enquiring about Mum,’ she supplied, which was partly true at any rate. She even managed a smile.
‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’
The concern lining his face with that strong hand on her shoulder had the effect of melting her worries like butter over a hot stove.
‘Of course,’ she murmured, tilting her head back, her smile genuine this time, her peach-tinted lips inviting—craving—the pressure of his.
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