'What about the photographs? I can't handle the Hasselblad.' It was a piece of beautiful, professional equipment, technically highly complex, and she didn't begin to know how to use it. Give her a simple camera, where everything was automatic, foolproof, and she'd still probably manage to point the thing in the wrong direction!
'For pity's sake, woman!'
Annie had never heard Norman bellow before; he was obviously fed up with everything, herself included, and Luke chose that moment to enter the room, his smile easy, his husky voice holding slightly cynical undertones as he asked, 'Lovers' tiff?' He put a tube of ointment on the bedside table and glanced from Norman's petulant scowl to Annie's set features. 'Anything wrong?' He spoke mildly, as if addressing two squabbling children.
Norman muttered sarcastically, 'Not so as you'd notice. I'm stuck here for weeks and my research assistant—' he glared at Annie with disgust '—is refusing to interview Professor Rhys because she's afraid of using a simple piece of photographic equipment. The fact that I need to get this information is of no consequence, it would appear.'
Annie would have stalked out of the room at this point. He was making her sound like a selfish idiot and, in any case, she didn't want the subject of their quarrel to be discussed with the objectionable Luke. Norman was beginning to irritate her beyond endurance, but something—pride, she thought—held her where she was, had her explaining stiltedly, 'I am not refusing to do anything. I merely pointed out that the workings of the Hasselblad are a mystery to me. I am perfectly willing to interview Professor Rhys, but—'
'Well, in that case, you can both relax. Your problems are solved.' Luke rocked back on his heels, his hands negligently thrust into the pockets of his tight-fitting jeans, and Annie had to drag her eyes away from the way the dark blue material moulded the male power of his thighs.
He had changed his clothes since this morning, she noted sourly, his casual gear making him look even more dangerous, if that were possible. And she closed her eyes in hopeless resignation, grinding her teeth because her intuition—so finely tuned where this one man was concerned—told her exactly what was coming next. And huskily, lazily, he drawled the very words she'd been afraid of hearing.
'I'll go in your place, Norman. Annie can look after the interviews, of course, but I'll do the photography. I can handle your camera. No problem.'
Painfully, she wrenched her eyes open, feeling her heart lurch and bump around beneath her breastbone. Norman was making grateful clucking noises, but she wasn't listening to him. She was watching Luke's eyes. Deep, dark blue depths she could feel herself drowning in. And she was mindlessly absorbing the silent, mocking message those eyes were transmitting, a message that her terrified brain translated as, And I can handle your fiancée, too. No problem. No problem at all!
CHAPTER FOUR
'Nervous, Annie?' Luke's voice drifted over her, lazy and intimate, filling the luxurious confines of the racy car, threading her pulsebeats with dread. He was easy on the ear, easy on the eye, and could, if she let him, be easy on the senses. Oh, so easy.
'Should I be? I'm not unused to handling interviews. I am Norman's research assistant.' Deliberately she misunderstood him. He was not referring to the coming interviews. His question had been loaded with meaning, making her instantly and painfully aware of the compulsive and, on her part, highly unwelcome attraction there was between them.
'You probably should be nervous,' he admitted softly. 'You know exactly why I offered to come along on this trip.'
That was an unequivocal statement, but one she was going to twist around if she could. She watched with unwilling fascination as his strongly made yet elegant hands lightly gripped the steering wheel, and said, a shade too sweetly, 'To help poor Norman out. What else?'
'You're quite wrong.' He took his remarkable eyes from the road for a second, and the smile he gave her was intimate and knowing, shocking in its wickedness.
Her reactions to this man had been shocking her ever since she'd first set eyes on him and her insides churned around sickeningly as he told her, 'I offered because I wanted to be with you. We have a lot to say to each other—though you probably won't allow yourself to admit it. And Norman's quite capable of looking after himself. All he ever needs to do is sit back and put on his helpless academic look to have everyone around him rushing to make his life easy. It's a knack he has. He gets what he wants from life by being passive.'
'While you take the opposite course,' she couldn't help snapping. 'You actively go out and grab!'
'You could be right, at that.' Humour warmed his voice. He was impervious. Nothing she could say or do riled him, shook that monumental self-assurance of his. But his answer scared her; he was admitting his inborn, driving need actively to take what he wanted. And for some reason he wanted her. He had said so. And she, dammit, despite her principles, could so easily be taken. The shaming knowledge worried her, more than anything had ever worried her before; she felt she no longer really knew herself.
She turned her head sharply, forbidding herself the sight of that aggressive profile, the strong hands on the wheel, the too-close muscular thighs lovingly moulded by dark blue denim. Stoically, she clamped her eyes on the passing scenery, clamped her soft lips together lest their quivering alert him to precisely how his nearness affected her.
'You warned the Prof I'd be arriving in Norman's place?'
His voice was an intrusion, the question unwelcome because it needed an answer. She muttered, 'Yes, of course,' and stared fixedly through the window.
The mountains were higher now, more barren. The narrow, twisting ribbon of road snaked through the rugged pass but the powerful Ferrari treated the devilish gradients with contempt. Like its owner, she thought grumpily. Luke Derringer would take all life's obstacles in his effortless stride, mastering them with that damnably smooth self-confidence of his. Norman had told her, a hint of green in his voice, that Luke had made his first clear million before he was twenty-five. Astute buying in the hotel property market, transforming rundown near slums to classy five-star affairs which appealed to those who didn't know the meaning of a budget, had set him well on his way, and he'd been travelling upwards ever since. Single-mindedness and determination were gifts in his capable hands, gifts to be used. And if he chose to apply them to his terrifying pursuit of herself, then what chance did she have? She shuddered.
'So? Did he mind?' asked Luke, with a warning edge to his voice which eased off a touch as he added, 'You might like to know I've got ways of treating a sulky woman.'
'I'm shaking in my shoes!' she snapped right back. She wasn't sulking, merely allowing her instinct for self-preservation its head! The less she had to do with this man, the better, and that included normal civilised conversation! But she told him resignedly, 'He didn't mind at all. He was just thankful the interviews hadn't been cancelled. From what I could gather, he gets lonely. His home— Plas-y-draig—is pretty remote. The nearest inn's eight miles away and pretty basic, he tells me.'
'So that's why we're staying with him? I had wondered,' Luke commented, and Annie nodded.
'He suggested it when I arranged the interviews in the first place. It would save time, he said, and he'd be glad of the company.'
She didn't add that Professor Rhys had told her, when she'd phoned to explain that Luke would be taking Norman's place, that he had his young grandson staying with him at present. Let that, and her secret intention to spend as much time as possible in the company of either the lonely old man or his young grandson, come as one big surprise!
Pointing Luke and the Hasselblad right out of the way while she stuck to the Professor like a limpet would give her great satisfaction. Never, if she could help it, would she be alone with Luke. He would soon discover that, despite his avowed intention to have her to himself, she was quite capable of thwarting him at every turn.
The thought amused her and she relaxed her tense shoulders slightly, only to find her whole body virtually seize up as Luke turned the car on
to a gravelled stopping-place at the side of the lonely road.
'What are you doing?' Suspicion laced her voice, made it unnaturally sharp.
Luke's response was grim. 'Planning a major seduction scene, what else? Would you believe me if I said we'd run out of petrol?'
She could tell her edginess was beginning to really annoy him and was glad. Why should she be the only one to have her teeth regularly set on edge?
'I would expect you to show more originality than that,' she told him huffily, then wondered why she felt so relieved when his features lightened with an appreciative smile.
'You're learning!' he murmured.
He slewed round in his seat, taking the keys from the ignition, dangling them lightly between his fingers, his deep eyes following the contours of her face, her body—clad in a snug-fitting apple-green tracksuit.
Appalled, she felt her skin tingle, running with heat where his eyes touched her, and a hot stab of naked desire wreaked its havoc deep within her. She blushed, shamed by her body's treachery.
'The truth is that I had Joan fix us a picnic lunch.' His words were prosaic enough, but his eyes told her he had noted that betraying blush, knew the reason for it, too. 'I thought we might eat it here— if we can't find anything more interesting to do,' he told her, his eyes glinting wickedly.
Blushing again, and furious with herself because of it, she scrambled out of the car and stumbled over the gravel. He was a sneaky bastard, an egocentric sex maniac, and she was a fool for letting him affect her the way he did!
Her lips compressed, she stared at the view. From the stone parapet at the edge of the stopover the scenery was breathtaking—or would have been if her breath hadn't already been well and truly taken by that ravening wolf back there! But as Luke fetched the hamper she forced herself to concentrate on the view, and only on that.
Beneath the pale crisp blue of the arching autumn sky the valley below was picked out in shades of gold and silver. A stone farmhouse, as small from there as a child's toy, snuggled against a background of golden-leafed trees, the foaming stream that wound its shallow way along the valley floor a thread of silver. Above her, a hawk drifted, deceptively graceful and lazy but intrinsically predatory, and suddenly, at her side, was the man—just as predatory, his lazy grace a cloak that concealed deadly purpose.
Annie shivered convulsively and he lifted one eyebrow. 'Cold? Surely not.' He cupped an unwelcome hand beneath her elbow, making her veins run with fire. 'We'll eat over there.'
Using his own brand of velvet domination, he guided her through a narrow aperture at the side of the stone safety wall. She was going along with him because she had little choice, she told herself. She might be pliable in small things, she meted out reassurances to herself like a necessary drug, but not in the big things, the things that really mattered. Things like not allowing Luke to seduce her senses when she was engaged to his cousin! And in any case, she couldn't really be attracted to a man who would behave so dishonourably, could she?
So why did her entire body seem to melt, to dissolve into absurd insubstantiality when he slid an arm around her waist, his hand pressing into the soft, womanly swell of her hips as he pulled her close to the hard, lean length of him while they negotiated the narrow track?
At the base of the track a relatively level space of ground offered a place for a picnic. A place for whatever else he intended, she thought, shuddering. Plonking herself as far away from him as she could get without falling off the mountain, Annie cupped her chin in her hands, her big brown eyes fixed on the brooding mass of mountains on the other side of the valley.
Beneath her the short thin grass was crisp and carried the scent of sun-warmed rock, of living, breathing mountainside, and, in the distance, she could hear the chuckle of shallow water, the liquid note of a bird. And she wondered if she would have been so aware, so clearly aware of herself, of her surroundings, if Norman had been with her, not Luke. And knew, to her mortification, that she would not.
She barely touched the slice of quiche Luke handed her on a paper plate, and merely nibbled at the fresh tomato, its skin warm, its flesh cool and tangy. But she drained the beaker of strong hot coffee as if it might save her life.
Breaking the silence he had maintained since they had come to this secluded place, Luke remarked, 'So your mother's a celebrated actress? I knew Willa Kennedy had had several husbands, but I didn't know she had a daughter.'
Not many people did. Her mother's various marriages had been widely publicised, but her daughter had been kept well in the background. Annie didn't particularly want to talk about her mother, to think about the seventeen years spent trailing in her wake like some insignificant pebble attached to the glittering train of a shooting star. That was all in the past and, to Annie, looking back wasn't particularly productive.
She lifted one shoulder dismissively. 'Who told you?'
'Norman, of course. He also said he'd never met her.'
And that wasn't because Norman hadn't been eager to meet the world-famous actress, Annie thought drearily, but she had wanted to prepare Norman for the star's inevitable reaction to a future son-in-law. Trouble was, Norman didn't have a sense of humour. And one needed to see the funny side of Willa Kennedy in order to swallow her wiles. Because whenever a member of the male sex had shown an interest in Annie Willa had promptly snatched him away, drawn him into her own glitzy orbit, keeping him there for as long as it pleased her to do so.
It hadn't mattered; Annie had been able to handle it with a philosophical attitude rare in one of her tender years. Until Hernando Carreras had happened along in the summer when she was seventeen and then it had been different, very different…
'And apparently you only wrote and told your mother of your engagement a couple of weeks ago, and that at Norman's insistence.' The husky voice prodded her.
Bright as a button, hiding her annoyance at his probing into what was none of his business, Annie clipped out, 'So? Willa's a busy woman, and up until a couple of weeks ago she'd been totally absorbed in the new film she was making. Family demands only break her concentration.' And the news that her daughter was engaged would make her restless, restless enough to make one of her dramatic entrances, seeing the fact of a man in little Annie's life as a challenge that couldn't be resisted.
Luke was repacking the hamper, as she could hear from the rustle of foil, the clatter of beakers, the final snap as the clasp was closed. And now was the time to get to her feet, lob a smile vaguely in his direction and say that it was time they were moving because the Professor would be thinking they were lost.
But she didn't move. She was held immobile by his eyes. The way Luke made her so aware of herself, of him, was beginning to terrify her.
She regretted her lack of movement, of direction, as soon as she felt the light feathering of his fingertips on the soft nape of her neck, just beneath the glossy strands of her hair. One touch was all it needed to make her shockingly aware of his masculinity, aware as never before of her own femininity, of the inevitability of the sexual equation. One touch, that was all.
'Did Willa hurt you badly?'
An unsuspected tenderness in his voice devastated her, made her want to cry. But she had shed all the tears she was ever going to shed over Willa years ago. Besides, she didn't want this sort of closeness, not with him. He was too shallow, his needs, where she was concerned, too transitory. She said stonily, 'Of course not, Willa spoilt me rotten.' And that wasn't too far from the truth. If a good mood had coincided with her remembering she had a daughter, her mother had been known to shower her with wildly expensive and totally inappropriate gifts.
'Is that so?' His tone was soothing but faintly sceptical, and his fingers stroked, smooth warm fingers intent on discovering the delicate contours of her nape, her throat. Sliding, seductive fingers insidiously awakening something too long dormant, something she had tried to suppress.
She muttered, 'Don't,' croakily. She felt curiously weak, incapable of movement…
<
br /> Luke ignored her uselessly half-hearted protest, moving his hard body closer so that, sitting more behind than beside her, he seemed to be cradling her, his big body both protective and demanding, and all male, very much so.
She shuddered, pulling a ragged breath through flaring nostrils as his persuasive fingers splayed at the base of her throat, sliding easily, too easily, beneath the loose collar of her tracksuit top.
'No!' she muttered hoarsely as his hand unerringly cupped one firm, rounded breast, and 'No!' again as her treacherous flesh hardened, pressing an unmistakable invitation against the bone-melting warmth of his palm.
But 'Yes, oh, yes,' Luke murmured throatily, dragging her round in his arms, and his vivid eyes held hers for one splinter of time, their message quite readable, quite terrifying, before his dark head came down and she closed her eyes, blotting out everything but the sensation, the devilish assault of his kiss.
It went deep, that kiss, making her mindless. She could feel the heavy thud of his heart against the wild pattering of her own as he made a luxury of his now lingering exploration of the sweet recesses of her mouth. And she felt his body shudder, transmitting messages that were painfully sweet, and was hardly aware of the way her hands twisted in the cool, crisp darkness of his hair, her fingertips finding the warmth of his skull.
The citadel of her body was shaking on its foundations… Only one man had made the earth move for her before, and she had vowed that she would be very sure of her man before she allowed it to happen again…
Wrenching away from him took all her moral courage. She scrambled to her feet, shaking, her body hurting with fiercely denied need, her eyes feverish, defiant.
'Just keep your vile hands off me!' she flung breathlessly, disgust with herself more painful than her disgust with him. He was an opportunist, a man on the make, while she was a woman who had vowed never to pander to sexuality, never to indulge in casual lovemaking. She had chosen the safer, the more sensible path, with her eyes wide open. Very wide open, seeing both sides of the picture and making her choice.
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