by Julia James
Without thinking too much about what she was doing, let alone why, she went to test it. Locked—and from the other side. A caustic smile pulled at her mouth. Oh, it was definitely time to remind herself that whatever Marc Derenz did in public in order to put out the impression that they were having an affair, in private he was obviously keeping to the arrogant warning he’d given her—not to take his attentions for real...
Well, that was a two-way message, and it was time to remind him of it! She reached for the bolt on her own side, meaning to shoot it closed. And jumped back.
The door had been pulled open from the other side, and Marc Derenz was stepping through into her bedroom.
Her eyes flashed in alarm. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
She saw his brows snap together in his customary displeased fashion, as if she had no business challenging his walking in unannounced to her bedroom. Quite illogically, she welcomed it.
It’s better to dislike him than to—
Her disturbing thought was cut short.
‘I need to speak to you,’ he announced peremptorily.
He was still in his dinner trousers, but he’d taken off his jacket and his tie was loosened. It gave him a raffish look. As did the line of shadow clearly discernible along his jawline.
Tara felt her stomach hollow. It just did not matter how disagreeable he was. Marc Derenz really should not be so bone-meltingly attractive...
And he shouldn’t be in your bedroom either.
The realisation hit her and she took a step back, suddenly aware that she was in her pyjamas. Oh, they might be modesty itself, with their wide silk trousers and high-collared cheong-sang top, but they were still nightwear.
‘Well?’ she prompted, lifting her chin. She didn’t like the way his dark eyes had swept over her, then veiled instantly. Didn’t like the way she was burningly aware that they had... Didn’t like, most of all, the way her nerves had started to jangle all over again...
‘I’ve been emailing Bernhardt—Hans’s son.’ Marc’s voice was brusque, as if he wanted to get this over and done with. ‘I’ve told him in no uncertain terms that he must make sure Hans joins us. I won’t have Celine here on her own. Even with you here to—’
‘To protect you,’ completed Tara helpfully.
Another of his dark looks was his reply, before he continued as if she had not interrupted him. ‘Thankfully Bernhardt agrees with me. He’s going to tell his father he’ll stand in for him at a board meeting so Hans can arrive tomorrow evening. It’s all arranged.’
She could hear relief in his voice, and saw a snap of satisfaction in his eyes.
‘So we just have to get through tomorrow, do we? Trailing along while Celine looks at houses?’ Tara said.
She was trying to silence the jangling of her nerves at his unexpected presence—in her bedroom, with her only in her night attire. She fought to make her voice normal, as composed as she could make it.
‘Or are you going to find a way of getting out of it? I don’t mind coping with her on my own if you want to bottle it,’ she added helpfully.
His expression darkened again. ‘No, I’ll have to come along as well. If I don’t she’ll end up landing Hans with some overpriced monstrosity!’ He gave an exasperated sigh.
Tara couldn’t help but give a laugh, though it earned her yet another darkling look. ‘I’ll take a bet she’ll go for the most garish, opulent pile she can find,’ she said, preferring to have a dig at Celine than let herself be distracted by Marc Derenz’s overpowering, and utterly unfairly impactful presence in her bedroom. ‘Gold bathrooms and crystal chandeliers in the kitchen.’
‘Very likely,’ he replied grimly. ‘Oh, hell, why on earth did he marry the damn woman?’ he muttered to himself.
‘Well, she’s certainly a looker,’ Tara conceded, still trying to make normal conversation. ‘Over-done-up, to my mind, but presumably it appeals to your friend.’
He shook his head. ‘Not Hans,’ he said. ‘The last thing he wants is any kind of trophy wife.’
Tara couldn’t keep the caustic note from her voice. ‘Are you sure? Most men like to show off the fact that they can acquire a woman that other men will envy them for.’
Marc’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is that your experience?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s pretty common in the world I come from—models are, after all, the ultimate trophy females to make a man look successful.’
Was there bitterness in her voice? She hoped not, but being with Jules had made her wary. What would a man like Marc know, or care, about men like Jules, who needed to feel big by draping a model on their arm? He certainly wouldn’t need to.
A man as rich and as drop-dead gorgeous as he is doesn’t need to prove a thing to anyone!
The thought was in her head before she realised it was there.
Then it was wiped right from her mind. Marc Derenz had taken a step towards her.
‘Can you blame them?’
There was something different in his voice, in his stance, in the way he was looking at her.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, every nerve in her body was jangling again—louder than ever. What the hell was she doing, talking to him like this? Standing here in her bedroom, wearing only her silk pyjamas, while Marc Derenz stood there far too close to her, looking so unutterably damn sexy with his loosened tie, his jacketless shirt, the hint of a shadowed jawline...
She caught the scent of his aftershave—something expensive, custom-designed, a signature creation made for him alone...
And his eyes—those deep, dark eyes—like slate, but suddenly not hard like slate, but as if a vein of gold had suddenly been exposed in their unyielding surface...
She couldn’t drag her own eyes from them...
Couldn’t drag breath into her lungs...
Could not focus on a single other thing in the universe than those dark, gold-lit eyes resting on her...
The room seemed to be shrinking—or was it the space between them?
He started towards her again, lifted a hand. She caught the glint of gold at his cuffs, echoing that same glint in those dark eyes of his that were now holding hers...holding her immobile, breathless, so she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move...
She could only hear the blood surging in her veins, feel electricity crackle over her skin, as if all he had to do was touch her—make contact...
‘Can you blame them?’ he said again.
And now there was a husk in his voice, a timbre to it that did things to her insides even as his outstretched hand reached towards her, a single finger drawing down her cheek, lingering at her mouth.
His eyes were playing over her face and she felt a kind of drowning weakness slacken her limbs. Making it quite impossible for her to move a muscle, to do anything other than simply stand there...stand there and feel the slow drift of his fingertip move across the soft swell of her lips. Only his touch on her mouth existed...only the soft, sensuous caress...
‘Pourquoi es-tu si, si belle?’ His murmur was a low husk as he lifted his other hand to slide it slowly, sensuously, around the nape of her neck, through the tumbled masses of her loosened hair. ‘Why is it that I cannot resist your beauty?’
She felt her eyelids flutter, felt her pulse beating in her throat, felt her lips parting even as his fingers splayed across her cheek, cupped her jaw to tilt her face to his lowering mouth which she could not, for all the world, resist...
Her eyelids dropped across her eyes, veiling him from sight. She was reduced only to the kiss he was easing across the mouth she lifted to his... Reduced only to the feathered silk of his touch, the hand at her nape cradling her skull, the fingers woven into her hair.
It was like that lingering wrist-kiss all over again, but a thousand times more so. A million sensations swirled within her at the sheer velvet sensuality of his kiss...
his mouth moving on hers, tasting her, exploring her. She was helpless—helpless to resist. The heady scent of his aftershave, his body, was in her senses, in the closeness of him as he shaped her mouth to his.
She felt herself leaning into him, letting her own hands glide around the strong column of his back, feeling the play of muscle and sinew, with only the sheer cotton of his shirt to separate her palms from the warmth of his flesh.
She could not stop—would not. Blood was surging in her...her pulse was soaring. She was drowning in his kiss, unable to stop herself, unable to draw away, to find the sanity she needed to find...
And then, abruptly, he was pulling away from her. Stepping away so sharply that her hands fell from him, limp at her sides, just as her whole body felt limp.
Dazedly, Tara gazed blankly at him. She had no strength—none. All her limbs were slack and stricken. Inside her chest her heart was pounding, beating her down.
She heard him speak, but now there was no husk in his voice, no low, sensual timbre. Only a starkness that cut like a knife.
‘That should not have happened.’
She felt it like a slap—but it was a sudden awakening from her deathly faint and her eyes flared back into vision, her mind into full consciousness of what she had permitted...given herself up to...
She saw him standing there, stepped back from him. There was a darkness in his face, in his eyes, and his features were pulled taut—as forbidding and shuttered as she had ever seen them.
Then, with the same sharp movement with which he’d pulled away from her, he was turning away, body rigid, his expression still tight as steel wire, walking with heavy, rapid strides to the door. Walking through. Snapping it shut behind him. Without another word.
Leaving her alone, heart pounding, lungs airless, his words echoing in her head—resonating as if it had been she who’d uttered them.
Dismay hollowed her.
* * *
Marc plunged down the staircase. Dieu, had he been insane to let that happen? Hadn’t he warned himself repeatedly that he must keep his response to her hammered down, where it could not escape?
Anger with himself consumed him. Anger he welcomed—for it blotted out more than any other emotion could, blotted out the memory of that irresistible kiss.
Well, you should have resisted it! You should—and must—resist her! She is not here for such a purpose! It would be madness to indulge yourself. Indulge her...
Every reason for his warnings to himself about the dangerous folly of letting the desire that had seized him from the first moment her show-stopping beauty had hit upon his senses marched through his head at his command.
He kept them marching. He must allow nothing else to occupy his mind. Nothing except work. That would keep him on the straight and narrow.
Gaining the hallway, he yanked open the door to his office. The Far Eastern markets would soon be starting up. They would absorb him until he was sufficiently tired to risk heading for bed. Tout seul.
His mouth tightened. Most definitely alone.
And it must stay that way. Anything else was a folly he would not commit.
Would not.
CHAPTER FIVE
TARA STOOD IN the over-hot garden of the over-ornate villa they’d just toured, feigning an enthusiasm she did not feel in the slightest. But that was preferable to letting her thoughts go where she did not want them to go. To the memory of that disastrous kiss last night.
She gave a silent groan. Had she been crazy to let Marc Derenz kiss her? Why had she let him? Why hadn’t she stopped him? Why hadn’t she told him to go to hell? Why...?
Why did I kiss him back?
That was what was so disastrous—that she’d let him kiss her. And returned it!
Angrily, she catalogued all the reasons why she had been so insanely stupid as to have let that kiss happen. Capping it with the one she’d always had to remember, ever since she’d made the mistake of trusting Jules.
Men who see me only as a model are bad news! And I won’t be any man’s trophy to show off! I won’t!
But even as she yanked that warning into her head she felt it wavering. Hadn’t she already accepted that Marc Derenz had no need of a trophy female—not with his wealth, his looks.
Yes, and doesn’t that just make him even worse? she shot back to herself. Thinking every woman in the world is after him?
She pressed her lips together. Well, not her! She had not needed that final warning from him in the slightest.
‘That should not have happened.’
And it wasn’t going to happen again—that was for certain! Somehow, whatever it took, she was going to get through the rest of this week, collect her money and get away—away from the wretched man.
Until then she had to keep going.
She put her mind back to the role she was supposed to be playing.
‘Four of the bedrooms don’t have balconies,’ she pointed out to Celine helpfully. ‘Do you think that rules this one out?’
Celine ignored her. It had been obvious to Tara that she’d been doing her best to do so all morning. Instead she turned to Marc.
‘What do you think, Marc, cherie?’ she posed with a little pout. ‘Does it matter if not all the bedrooms have balconies?’
‘No,’ said Marc succinctly, his indifference to the issue blatant. He glanced at his watch impatiently. ‘Look, would you not agree that it’s time for lunch?’ he demanded. He was clearly at the limit of his patience.
Tara found herself almost smiling, and welcomed the release from the self-punishing thoughts going round and round in her head. He was so visibly bored and irritated—and, whilst she could not blame him, she knew with a waspish satisfaction that this time it was not she who was drawing his ire. Besides, at least when he was being bad-tempered he wasn’t being amorous...
His ill humour, she noted with another caustic smile, seemed completely lost on the armour-plated Celine however. All through lunch—at a very expensive restaurant in Nice—Tara watched the woman determinedly making up to him, constantly touching his sleeve with her long scarlet nails, making cooing noises at him, laughing in an intimate fashion and throwing fluttering little glances at him...
All to utterly no avail.
He sat there like a block of stone, his expression getting darker and darker, until Tara wanted to laugh out loud. She herself was doing her level best to drag Celine’s attention towards her instead, chattering away brightly, waxing lyrical about the houses they’d viewed, the ones they might still view, obdurately not letting Celine blank her as the woman kept trying to do.
That her brightly banal chatter was only adding to the visible irritation on Marc’s face did not bother her. What else did he expect her to do, after all? She was here to run interference, and that was what she was doing. And, after all, the way wretched Celine was behaving, the whole situation was just ridiculous! He really needed to lighten up about it.
As the woman turned away now, to complain about something or other to a hapless passing waiter, Tara could not suppress a roll of her eyes at Celine’s endless plays for Marc’s attention. Then, abruptly, his eyes snapped to hers, catching her in mid-eye-roll.
She saw his mouth tighten and one of his laser looks come her way. She gave a minute shake of her head in resignation, a sardonic twitch of her lips, and for a moment—just the slightest moment—she thought she saw something flicker in the slate-grey depths of his eyes. Something that went beyond a warning to her not to come out of role. Something that she had never seen before. A flicker so faint she could not believe she’d seen it.
Humour.
Good grief, did the wretched man actually have a sense of humour? Somewhere buried in the recesses of his rock-like personality?
If he did she didn’t catch any more sight of it. After lunch was finally over Celine gushingly begged Marc to head for Monte C
arlo. With ill grace he complied, and Tara found herself glad of the excursion. Not only was it a lot better than looking at over-priced, over-decorated villas for sale, but she’d never seen Monte Carlo, and she looked around her with touristic scrutiny at the grandeur of the Place de Casino, her gaze lingering on the fabled casino itself.
‘It’s where fools go to lose their money,’ a sardonic voice said at her side.
She glanced at Marc, whose expression mirrored his disparaging tone of voice. ‘Now, there speaks the sober banker!’ she exclaimed lightly. ‘All the same,’ she added, ‘sometimes those fools come out millionaires.’
‘The winners win from the other gamblers who lose.’ His tone was even more crushing. ‘There is no free money in this world.’
‘Unless,’ Tara could not resist saying, ‘one marries it... That’s always been a favourite way of getting free money.’
Her barb was wasted. Celine’s attention was focussed only on the luxury shopping mall opposite the casino. Like a heat-seeking missile, she headed towards it. As Tara made to follow she caught a frown on Marc’s face. She presumed it was because he was now facing a prospect every man loathed—shopping with women.
Impulsively, she tucked her hand into his elbow. ‘Courage, mon brave!’ she murmured humorously, leaning into him.
She only meant to lighten him up, maybe even to catch a glimpse of that crack in his steel armour that she’d evoked so unexpectedly over lunch. But clearly his mood had worsened too much for that.
Her hand was abruptly removed and he strode forward, leaving her to hasten after him into the mall.
She gave a sigh. And a twist of her mouth. It had been stupid of her to do that. And not because it had annoyed him instead of lightening him up. Because any physical contact at all with the man was not a good idea in the least...