She stormed into the kitchen. Hating her own helplessness at not being able to evict him, she spooned coffee into the percolator and broodingly set two mugs on the table.
A sensation feathered the back of her neck. She looked round to see him standing at the kitchen door.
His regard was thoughtful. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘That makes two of us. I don’t know why you picked me.’
‘At the risk of sounding repetitious, I’ve already explained that I’m not looking for the most beautiful woman in the world, nor the most sophisticated, but someone with a certain quality—which you do possess. Something rare and elusive that almost defies definition. But that’s not what mystifies me. Rather, I’m puzzled by your attitude. The aversion is so thick I could cut it with the daggers your eyes keep throwing in my direction.’
Gulping with relief that he’d only noticed her aversion, she said, ‘You’re not harking back to that again, are you?’
‘Yes. I don’t like mysteries, and I’ll keep at this one until it’s unravelled.’
‘I . . .’ She looked away. ‘I just don’t like being hounded.’
A square finger came out to touch her chin, tilting it upward. ‘Does it seem as if I’m hounding you? If I am, I wasn’t aware of it. I don’t like being thwarted, so perhaps what’s driving me could be called hounding you. So, sorry to disbelieve you, but I’ve no other option. I know that you’re reacting to something else entirely. I’ve never encountered such deep anger in anyone before, not without my doing something to earn it.’
Why didn’t she tell him and watch him squirm? What exactly held her back she would never know, but a strange self-protective instinct was advising her not to. Her hand sought a lock of her hair, tugging it as if self-induced pain would atone for the lie. ‘I’ve already told you, you’re imagining things. I have no feelings about you either way. I neither like nor dislike you.’
That response didn’t erase the bafflement from his face. ‘It isn’t as if I’ve made a pass at you. I’ve never laid a finger on you in that way.’
He was surveying her in a searching manner, his disturbingly handsome countenance etched by grim thought. She wouldn’t have believed that an expression could alter a face so much. When he smiled, even if the smile was mocking, his face exuded charm. That air of faint amusement, she thought, must come in handy to screen what really was going on in his mind, an asset in both the private and business spheres of his life. It was better than the poker face so many top executives assumed, because instead of instilling wariness, it was mesmerically disarming. All this enabled Lindsay to glimpse the underlying strength of his personality. He had said he didn’t like being thwarted, and this was painfully apparent. The forcefulness and dogged determination of his character were as blatant as a banner. This man, once crossed, would make a dangerous adversary. His frown caressed her with coldness. Yet even as fear coursed through her, she was overwhelmingly conscious of him in a different, more physical, sense.
‘Not so much as a finger,’ he said, holding his finger aloft and poising it in line with her face. Her iced blood warmed, then grew cold again as apprehension held her in its grip. It was almost a relief when the threat became reality and his finger descended on her cheek.
She might not have been as experienced as the majority of women her age, but neither was she a quivering adolescent who had never been touched. Still, no man’s hand on any part of her had ever sent such sexual awareness through her body. Her skin pulsed with currents of feeling.
His finger rested for several heartstopping seconds where it had lit, then slowly, as though savoring her skin, moved down her cheek. It occurred to her that the sensitive fingertip must be absorbing some of the feeling it elicited. The sudden, ragged intake of his breath confirmed that suspicion, much to her dismay.
‘So that’s it! It isn’t what I’ve done, but what I haven’t done!’ he blurted.
‘Of course it’s not that,’ she said crossly, her voice half strangled by the emotion swelling in her throat.
It stunned her that his innocent touch sent more fire through her than she could ever have imagined possible. It was steam heat, earthy and primitive. Perhaps most humiliating to Lindsay was Nick Farraday’s reason for touching her. It wasn’t that they had finally rid themselves of the company of other people, whose presence had handcuffed his desires. Nor had he spent the evening looking at her with adoring eyes, panting for the moment when at last they were alone. This was a cold, experimental probe to find out something. Well, they had both found out something. She now knew the full extent of her vulnerability to him. And he was proceeding under the mistaken notion that he now knew the reason for her mood: he had thought she found it irritating that he hadn’t tried to make a pass.
What could she do? That question was made irrelevant by the awareness of what he was about to do. But in the state of shock that seized her she couldn’t summon the energy to deflect the hands reaching out to trap her wrists and bring her forward.
Coming alive to what was happening, she knew that she had to find means to put up a fight. She pulled hard to free her wrists, but their freedom brought neither satisfaction nor relief, because he simply shifted his arms until they circled her. She wriggled frantically to avoid contact with the muscled wall of his chest. As the gap between them started to close, the grim mouth above her twisted into a devilish grin, mocking her futile efforts.
‘Well, well! So I was right about the wild and wanton inner you.’ An excited gleam pierced the blue intensity of his eyes. ‘This is what you want, so why are you resisting? Are you wrestling with me to add some spice?’
‘Most certainly not!’ she screamed at him, furious that everything she did goaded him still further.
She was fighting not only him, but the weakness attacking her limbs. She was losing ground fast. He wasn’t the first man to get his arms ’round her, but he was the first who had ever made her vibrate as though charged with electricity. The feeling washing through her was frightening in its intensity. Trying to resist it was as futile as punching air. Suddenly she knew she didn’t want to pull away from the tormenting closeness; she wanted to lose herself in it.
His mouth straightened again, not because he had ceased to be amused, but because a smirking, cat-lapping-cream grin did not go with what he had in mind. As his lips lowered to hers, she knew that this wasn’t going to be an ordinary kiss. She knew it because nothing about this man was ordinary. His lips teased across hers, and again the electricity tingled through her, making her quiver. She was pressed so close to him that he could feel every reaction of her excited, desire-weakened body.
He wasn’t holding her quite so fiercely, because it was no longer necessary. There was a sensuous lightness in the fingers trailing a delicate course down her back. She was pressed close of her own volition. This bodily rapport, she thought even in the passion of the moment, was what had been lacking in previous encounters with men. She had wondered why her relationships with men never developed into something deeper and more meaningful. She realized now that the fault had been in herself, in her lukewarm reaction to their advances. Nick Farraday was here showing her what had been missing.
As his mouth left hers a deep sigh rose from her throat, composed of a tangle of feeling which her scrambled brain couldn’t immediately decipher: anger, anxiety, regret, and a sense of deep pleasure at the thought of so much untapped joy. If a kiss could do this to her, what would it be like if he made passionate love to her? The picture that flashed across her mind, showing her explicitly what was entailed in ‘passionate love,’ turned her knees to water. Shock flooded her eyes at the direction her thoughts had taken.
She sent him a furious glance. She hated him for doing this to her: for the tingling of her nerve-ends, for the blood scorching her cheeks at the rapid flight her imagination had taken, and for the resulting chaos churning in her head.
‘I think you’d better go,’ she said in a voice that shook with a million
unshed tears.
‘You’re holding out on me about something. I’d give a day of my life, to know what.’
‘I’d give a day of my life never to have met you today. I’d gift wrap it in your precious white and gold and give it to some other unsuspecting female. Except that I don’t hate anyone enough to do that.’
‘You’re crazy. What gives with you?’
‘Good night, Mr. Farraday,’ she said doggedly.
She thought he wasn’t going to leave. He stood glaring at her, frustration clouding the brilliance of his eyes, giving no intimation of what he intended to do. He picked up her hand. For a stunned moment she thought he was about to go through the formality of shaking it good-bye, which would have been the height of absurdity. But then his other hand came up to unroll her fingers. He trailed one of his own fingers along the center of her palm. Even as her whole body rocked at the sensuality of that action, his head lowered and he touched the spot with his lips. She shuddered with an intensity of feeling unlike any she had ever experienced.
He said something, tossing out the name of his confidential secretary, Barbara Bates, who would arrange any further dealings they had.
‘Will you phone?’ he inquired.
‘No.’
He didn’t utter another word, just left on that inconclusive note. She was as winded as if she’d been picked up and hurled forward by a hurricane. She felt that her destiny was no longer in her own hands, that her determination no longer counted.
For long moments after the door had closed after him she stood where she was, shivering uncontrollably, her heart gripped by a strange chill, her face and body flushed by the shock of having known herself for twenty-two years and now not knowing herself at all. This sensual awakening was the most profoundly disturbing thing she had ever known. She would have welcomed it with joy, she would have been twirling round with stars in her eyes and hugging herself in bliss, had her emotions been unlocked by any other man. How could she respond like this to Nick Farraday? Of all the men in the world, why did it have to be he? If only she could shut out the awareness he had magically opened to her and throw the key into the garbage, where it belonged. Why had she come alive for him? It was too bitterly ironic.
She turned and crossed to the sink. She turned on the cold water and held her hand palm upward under the jet, in the forlorn hope that it was possible to wash away the burning imprint of his lips. She threw out the coffee they hadn’t drunk. Instead she made herself a cup of hot chocolate. But that too went untasted and was eventually rinsed away.
She was a long time in getting to sleep. Thoughts tossed about in her mind. The Nick Farraday she had met didn’t match the impression she had gotten from her brother. She had never properly analyzed it before, but in thinking about it now she realized that Phil’s description had had the flavor of jealousy, particularly where it concerned Nick Farraday’s easy conquests. That thought had never entered her mind before, because it had been inconceivable to think her brother could have been envious of Nick Farraday’s success with women.
Phil had had the best wife a man could wish for in Cathy. A very feminine woman, Cathy was soft and gentle, with an understanding of his volatile moods and his need to breathe which had left Lindsay in awe. Knowing her brother as she did, Lindsay had been afraid that he wouldn’t easily come to terms with marriage, that it might be too rigid a lifestyle for him. But Cathy had been good for him; she had provided the steadying influence which he needed without stifling him, and she had kept a constant heart and a cozy home, bliss for any man who carried the responsibility of a demanding job. Lindsay knew that her brother had felt lucky to have Cathy’s love, had felt that the women who fell so readily into Nick Farraday’s arms were attracted to the power of a name and vast wealth. But she now knew firsthand that this was not so. If Nick Farraday hadn’t had a cent to his name it wouldn’t have made any difference; women would have knocked each other out of the way for the privilege of being with him. Not that that state of affairs could ever have come about. Moreover, Nick Farraday was no gigolo. He wouldn’t take anything from a woman but what the woman was willing to offer. And even if he hadn’t had a cozy, well-established business to fall into—something else Phil had niggled about—he would still have made his mark in life. His drive and his vigor and his razor-sharp brain would still have taken him to the top.
* * *
London was wrapped in the mist of a pearly gray dawn before Lindsay managed to close her eyes. As a result she was late in getting up. Despite the need to rush, she knew she wouldn’t be able to give her best if she didn’t revive herself with a shower and snatch a hurried breakfast of toast and coffee.
She managed to get a cab with little difficulty, but the traffic was so intense that it would have been quicker to jog, a thought that prompted her to ask the cabbie to stop several blocks short of the agency. She didn’t exactly sprint, but her stride matched the brisk pace of the city, and on pushing open the door of her office she collapsed on her chair, winded.
She was still getting her breath back when Jim Bourne buzzed her. ‘You in yet, Lindsay?’
‘Just. Sorry I’m late.’
The favor she usually found in his eyes wouldn’t excuse her tardiness, because he was a stickler for punctuality. Lindsay swallowed at hearing Jim say, ‘It will make up for all the times that’s happened at the other end of the day.’
It was true that Lindsay often stayed at her desk after closing time, but no mention had been made of this before, and she glowed at being appreciated. ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’
‘I notice a lot of things I don’t comment on. Come in, will you?’
‘I’ll be right there.’
But the step that took her into his office was less enthusiastic than her voice. Lindsay knew that Jim Bourne would want to know all about the previous night, and she wasn’t looking forward to relating even the bit she could tell him.
‘Won’t be a minute,’ Jim said, not looking up from his scribbling. She had never known anyone who could write with his speed. At the same time he waved his hand to indicate that she should sit down.
When he looked up, his eyes couldn’t decide what emotion to express. She saw dry humor, annoyance, wonder and exasperation. ‘Barbara Bates, Nick Farraday’s secretary, has just been on the phone.’
‘Oh, you know, then?’ That was one hurdle over, at least.
‘She said you had to report this morning for tests. Miss Bates gives very little away, but the way your presence is demanded says all.’
‘I don’t know why Nick Farraday picked me to promote his new product. It’s utterly ridiculous. When I woke up this morning I was hoping I’d dreamed it.’
‘No dream, and it could be a nightmare for me, having to replace you.’
‘I told Nick Farraday that I wasn’t interested, and that I wouldn’t show up for the tests.’
‘You what?’
‘You don’t have to bellow at me,’ Lindsay said softly.
‘I didn’t think I’d heard right. No one in his right mind turns Nick Farraday down.’
Lindsay could have said that that was true. She hadn’t been in her right mind since meeting Nick Farraday. Instead she said firmly, ‘I did.’
‘Much good it’s done you. A car is coming for you in—’ he checked his watch—‘just under half an hour.’
‘Do I have to go?’
She was thinking of the implied threat Nick Farraday had made, and something of this recollection altered her voice. Jim Bourne picked up on it. For the first time in their acquaintance, his earthy-brown eyes, symbolic for her of what the good earth stood for, a stability which you could trust to never let you down, did not quite meet hers. ‘That guy wields a lot of power, Lindsay.’
‘I know, but . . .’
‘What have you got against him? And don’t say nothing, or that you dislike his type on principle, because it’s obvious that it’s something more, something pretty deep-rooted which is going to ruin the
chance of a lifetime if you’re fool enough to let it. Do you know what you’d be passing up? The last time they went to town this way was to launch the Delmar Woman line.’
Delmar Woman, in its attractive aquamarine packaging, included an array of cosmetics and toiletries that could be found on almost every fashionable woman’s bathroom shelf, including Lindsay’s. Introduced with tremendous fanfare, the line had been an instant success, and sales had risen steadily over the years until it had eclipsed its fiercest rivals in popularity.
‘The budget will run into millions of pounds. The coverage will be worldwide. Paris would be at your feet. Rome would romanticize your name. I know you’ve always had a hankering to go to Hawaii, because you’ve told me so. Well that, and many other glamor spots you’d never have dreamed of seeing, will be within your reach.’
‘You’re wasting your breath, Jim. The icing on the cake doesn’t seem as sweet when you consider the inedible bits that have to be swallowed to get to it,’ she said with quiet determination.
‘You make it hard on a guy,’ he grunted. ‘The fact is, I don’t have the muscle to take on Farraday.’
‘That doesn’t sound like you, Jim.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ His forehead furrowed in thought as he considered that truth. If she knew the man at all, he was searching for a way out that wouldn’t bruise his ego. ‘I enjoy a contest and normally, no matter what, I’d be in there fighting if I thought I’d have a ghost of a chance. But this time, even if the odds were more even, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference; I’d still take a back seat. I couldn’t live with my conscience if I thought I was in any way responsible for making you miss a golden opportunity. Anyway, what inedible bits?’
Irrespective of whether or not she wanted to tell him, she knew she had to. On top of that, she wanted to spill out all the invective and bitterness bottled up in her. Then, perhaps, Jim Bourne would be able to get her out of this predicament.
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