Kate Walker - Hers For A Night

‘You have a decidedly exaggerated idea of my appeal, Ms Harding,’ Lucas drawled with lazy mockery. ‘Or is it that your opinion of your own sex is so very low that you believe they have so little respect for themselves as to behave as you say?’

‘You’re a fine one to talk about respect!’ Georgia flung at him. ‘Particularly where women are concerned!’

That barb struck home, the long back stiffening in response, the dark head coming up, granite eyes blazing into hers.

‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’

Oh, damn, she’d gone a bit too far, said more than she had meant to.

‘I read the papers!’

‘And believe every word?’ he demanded cynically. ‘I gave you credit for rather more intelligence than that.’

Georgia wasn’t at all sure how to respond to the deliberately double-edged compliment, feeling as if she had been backed into a very uncomfortable corner.

‘And I have a friend-’

‘Oh, of course! And does this friend have a name?’

Georgia shifted awkwardly from one foot to another, feeling that she had been pushed into a corner yet again.

‘I promised I wouldn’t say.’

‘I see.’

The two syllables were so brutally clipped and curt that they made Georgia think uncomfortably of the sound of a door slamming shut, or the trap that she had imagined earlier snapping closed with bone-crushing force.

‘So you can throw out accusations, put any slur you fancy on my reputation, and I’m not even allowed to know the name of your informant?’

He was dangerously close to losing that famed cool. Georgia realised nervously, his potentially dangerous temper only being held in check by ruthless control.

‘You probably wouldn’t even remember her. And, besides, I don’t think your reputation—’ deliberately she gave the word a sardonic intonation ‘—needs any help from me.’

‘So that’s the way it is, is it? You’ve barely spoken more than a couple of hundred words to me and yet already you have me tried and convicted, found guilty without even so much as a chance to state my case.’

Georgia had to acknowledge that his assessment of the situation was close to the truth. The admission made her conscience prick her unmercifully, because normally she tried to be scrupulously fair.

‘And are you trying to claim that all of those newspaper reports were untrue? That you haven’t been linked with—oh, let me see.’

She listed names off the top of her head, counting each one off on her fingers as she did so. He let her get to nine before breaking in on her.

‘No, I won’t. I can’t deny that they were once part of my life.’

‘With the emphasis on once and part, I presume.’

Georgia was disturbed by her own reaction. She felt almost raw inside in response to the way he hadn’t even tried to reject her accusation of promiscuity, and yet should that bother her? If he wanted to risk his life by being so thoroughly irresponsible, then that was his own stupid business. She had no reason to be disappointed to find he was just as the Press had painted him.

‘And are you trying to say that you have never split up with a boyfriend, a lover? That you never realised that seeing someone was a mistake or that it was time to move on?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Of course not,’ he echoed cynically. ‘And I suppose that the so-perfect Ms Harding has never been dumped by someone you thought cared, someone—’

‘All right, you’ve made your point!’

‘Aha!’ Those dark eyes gleamed with unholy triumph. The eagle had swooped down on its prey with deadly accuracy. ‘Caught you on the raw then, did I?’

Hating him, though whether for his triumph or for seeing through her defences she wasn’t sure, Georgia drew a deep breath.

‘Oh, yes, all right! I’ve had my share of broken relationships.’

‘So tell me about them.’

Georgia blinked hard in shock, unable to believe her eyes as Lucas shrugged off his elegant pale grey jacket, tugging his tie loose at his throat and unbuttoning his shirt collar before settling himself in a chair. He leaned back comfortably, crossing one leg over the other with every appearance of total ease.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Tell me about them,’ he repeated, resting his head on the soft cushions and looking up, straight into her face, clearly noting the hectic colour that flared in her cheeks, the glitter of irritation in her eyes.

‘I’ll do no such thing! Just what do you think gives you the right to barge in here—?’

‘You did,’ he inserted into her tirade with infuriating calmness, adding with exaggerated care, ‘And I didn’t barge, you invited me in.’

‘But only because I had no choice! And I didn’t give you the right to pry into my life.’

Those dark grey eyes widened in an expression of carefully assumed innocence.

‘Oh, but you did, Gia. From the moment you lifted your pretty little hand in order to hid at that auction you made me part of your life, and, inevitably, that also meant that you became part of mine. Naturally, I was curious about the woman who thought that twenty-four hours of my company was worth the outrageous amount you ended up paying, donation to charity or not.’

‘No.’ Her mind flinched away from the idea of being part of his life. That was not what she wanted at all. ‘It’s a business deal—no involvement.’

But Lucas ignored her interjection and continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

‘And, of course, if you want me to act as if I’ve known you for some time, then the little I already know isn’t enough.’

‘It’s more than—’ A thought struck her, a vital question that she had wanted to ask earlier but other things had distracted her. ‘How did you find out where I lived?’

His smile was slow, lazily taunting.

‘I asked questions. You’d be amazed how many people were keen to tell me all about my new “owner”.’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Georgia growled. She was well aware of the fact that her action in bidding at the auction—for anyone, but especially for Lucas—had caused more than a flutter of interest. It wasn’t the sort of behaviour people expected of her.

‘So you know about your reputation, do you?’

If that was supposed to throw her, then she was more than happy to spoil his moment of pleasure by pulling that particular rug out from under his elegantly booted feet

‘As the Ice Maiden?’ she returned, with a coolness that made it plain where the nickname had come from, matching anything he had ever displayed. She even managed a smile, although it wasn’t reflected in her eyes in any way. ‘Of course I know.’

‘Why do they call you that?’ To her surprise, Lucas sounded as if he really wanted to know.

Georgia lifted her shoulders in a shrug that defined the subject as being totally unimportant to her.

‘They think that any woman who puts her career first and concentrates on it to the exclusion of anything or anyone else must be very strange or fundamentally frigid’

‘And yet in a man they’d admire it.’

‘Precisely.’

She wasn’t going to admit that he had surprised her, that his comment was the last thing she had expected. She had anticipated further uncomfortable probing into just why she put her career before relationships.

‘But of course you’d understand. After all, that’s how you run your life.’

‘Used to,’ Lucas corrected, continuing without any further elaboration, ‘And is this why you need an escort?’

‘Mmm.’

Georgia couldn’t quite meet those probing eyes, feeling irrationally that if she looked into them he might actually be able to see right into her thoughts and realise that the party was only part of her problem, that there was a great deal she was leaving unsaid.

‘I really think you should have dinner with me.’

‘And I really think that there’s no need for that. I can tell you all you need to know without any fuss.’

‘No, you can’t.’

‘Of course I can!’

Lucas shook his head adamantly, lounging back in his chair once more, his comfortably relaxed posture and the smug smile playing around the corners of his mouth infuriating her further.

‘Would you mind telling me just what is going to be so damn difficult about it? I really can’t see any problem at all. After all, you seem to have already started the process on your own. I mean, how did you find out where I live?’

‘As I said, I asked questions.’

‘You asked questions,’ Georgia said hollowly, not liking the idea at all.

‘And I got some very interesting answers.’

That caught her attention, though she couldn’t have said whether she was intrigued or angry at the thought of him prying into her private life.

‘Such as?’ She couldn’t help herself.

‘Oh.’

Lucas assumed a thoughtful expression, as if considering his options.

‘Such as the fact that you’re twenty-seven, unmarried, with no steady man in your life at the moment You have your own interior design company and I gather you’re building up quite a reputation.’

‘That’s not interesting!’ Georgia scoffed. ‘It’s common knowledge.’

‘It’s interesting to me.’

‘You can’t expect me to believe that! After all, you’re the one with the high profile lifestyle, the international reputation, why should you take any int—?’

‘And why not?’

Lucas startled her by getting to his feet as he spoke, coming towards her soft-footed as a cat, his eyes so deep and dark they seemed to hold hers with mesmeric force.

‘Why not?’ he murmured in a very different voice, one that seemed to wind itself around her like warm smoke, weaving through the rich strands of her hair, feathering over her skin, raising tiny prickles of awareness all over her body. ‘Why shouldn’t I be interested in—fascinated by—the most beautiful woman in the room at that charity auction? A woman whose clear, bright eyes make me think of a young doe in a forest glade, whose skin is as soft and delicate as the ripest peach.’

Reaching out with slow grace, he took her hand very gently, and entranced, hypnotised by his eyes and his voice, she couldn’t resist him, couldn’t fight against the seductive spell he was weaving. She almost believed he had the power to charm her soul out of her body like some long ago druid or shamen.

‘A woman whose hair gleams the colour of a newly opened horse chestnut, whose body could be the model for Botticelli’s Venus.’

Georgia hadn’t even noticed that he had raised her hand, lifting it the final couple of inches to meet his lips. It was only when she felt the warm, soft pressure of his mouth against her fingers that reality broke through the golden trance in which she had been imprisoned.

The burning crackle of response that flared through her nerves from that one point of contact, blazing up her arm and radiating throughout her body, made her snatch her hand away sharply. She would have been unable to ascribe the small cry that escaped her either to delight or distress with any degree of confidence.

‘Stop it!’

Her voice was high-pitched and shaking, and she cradied the hand he had kissed against her as if it had actually been physically burned.

‘I don’t want this! I—I—’

She broke off sharply, stunned into silence as Lucas grinned broadly, his eyes lighting with a devilish, totally unrepentant gleam that mocked her response for the overreaction it was.

‘Just practising,’ he murmured. ‘You said you wanted someone who could make people think that you are the centre of their universe, the sun in the sky.’