‘She is Lady Sarah Hanson,’ she provided the answer whether he knew it or not. ‘A woman with pure blue aristocratic blood running through her veins. She would die rather than see her son align himself with a woman with my reputation.’ Her soft mouth twisted on that little truism.
‘Lady Sarah also suffers from a chronic heart condition,’ she went on. Most of this was the absolute truth—most of it. ‘Todd is strong—tough—but draws the line at killing his own mother.’ She gave a helpless shrug. ‘Your Susie doesn’t stand a chance against a love like ours, Mr DeSanquez,’ she concluded, ‘and you would be doing her a bigger service by telling her that, rather than trying to blackmail me.’
At that she got up, mentally crossing her fingers that she’d managed to swing it. He was certainly not as confident as he had been, nor—oddly—as contemptuous of her as he studied her thoughtfully.
‘No.’ He shook his dark head and her heart sank. ‘You are wrong. I have seen the way he looks at my cousin, and no matter what you believe about his feelings for you Hanson gazes at her like a man angrily frustrated in love. Whatever hold you may have on him, and I do not deny it is there,’ he conceded, ‘I think it is time—perhaps more than time—that both you and Hanson learned to forget each other.
‘I saw the way you were with him the other night, watched the seductive way you utterly bewitched him, seducing him with your promising smiles and the sensual brush of your exquisite body.’ Contemptuously his gaze raked over her. ‘Susie has a chance with him with you out of the way,’ he concluded. ‘She stands none while you are around.’
‘So what is your plan?’ she scoffed at him deridingly, her mind tumbling over itself in an effort to find the hidden key that would stop all of this. ‘To keep me here tonight and tomorrow night and the next and the next in the hopes that it will blacken me in his eyes? Didn’t you hear a word I said?’ she sighed. ‘Todd doesn’t care what I do or who I do it with! He will forgive me for you and he will forgive me for breaking my contract with Cliché!’
‘Then you have a rather big problem on your hands, Miss Lacey,’ he countered grimly. ‘Because if you do not find a way of convincing him that you care nothing for him any more then I withdraw my support for his magazine. So now what do you suggest that we do?’
Catch twenty-two. Annie felt her heart sink in her breast.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I SEE I have managed to silence that quick little tongue of yours,’ he taunted when the silence stretched out between them. ‘But I would appreciate a suggestion as to how we overcome the stalemate we seem to have created.’
‘I don’t have one,’ Annie admitted dully, eyes lowered so that he wouldn’t see the frustration glittering there.
‘I see,’ he said silkily. ‘Then it seems to be up to me to find it for you. That is, of course,’ he then prompted, ‘if you are prepared to do anything to save Hanson from ruin?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, with a numbness that encompassed her whole being.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he drawled aggravatingly, coming to lean over her, bracing his hands on the arms of her chair. ‘Was that a yes? I did not quite catch the word.’
‘Yes—it was a yes!’ she flared, her fingers clenching into tight fists of frustration on her lap. ‘I’ll do anything to save Todd from ruin!’ Then, on a sudden flood of tears that blurred her beautiful eyes, she choked, ‘Anything, damn you—anything!’
It was odd, but the tears seemed to throw him. His eyes widened, shocked surprise showing on his lean face before he suddenly jerked away from her as if those tears held poison in them and he was afraid of dying if they so much as touched his skin.
But anyone who knew Annie well would also have known that when tears flowed from her eyes so did her temper burn up to counteract them, and she jumped from her seat, those same tears glistening with a wretched, bitter anger.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ she demanded shrilly. ‘Strip naked in public in the hopes I’ll make him despise me? Or simply cut my own throat and put a quick end to all poor Susie’s problems? Or maybe,’ she went on while he just seemed to stand there struck by her sudden explosion, ‘you would like me to strip naked in public and cut my own throat? That should do it!’ she concluded thickly. ‘Put a neat if messy end to the whole bloody lot!’
‘Swearing doesn’t help,’ he said, as if that one expletive was the only part of what she’d thrown at him that had actually meant anything at all.
‘Hah!’ she choked, her temper almost shooting right out of the top of her head, then disappearing suddenly when she began to see the black humour of the situation. Here she was, offering to top herself for that cat Susie’s sake! She couldn’t believe that she could be sunk so low!
‘I do not think we need take such drastic action—on either point,’ he added calmly.
Or was it calmingly? Annie focused her eyes on him at last, wary of the expression on his face that was neither gleeful nor, as she would have expected, contemptuous, but strangely—
No. She spun her back on him, arms wrapping tightly around her body in an age-old gesture of self-defence. She refused so much as to put a word to what her senses had told her that new look in his eyes meant!
‘Then what the hell do you want me to do?’ she muttered thickly.
There was a silence behind her that made the fine nerves lying along her spine prickle. She closed her eyes tightly, refusing—refusing to listen to what her senses were screaming at her. It was impossible. No man could find it arousing to have a woman swap insults with him! No woman could find it arousing to spar with a man like him!
Yet—
Oh, God, if he touched her now…And she could feel him fighting the urge to do just that, feel it with every instinct she possessed buzzing in warning that he was—
‘You must convince Hanson that I mean more to you than he does.’ The words came from a throat roughened by the battle he had just fought with himself and won. ‘You must make him believe that I am the man who has managed to take his place in your heart!’
Annie had to swallow to clear the tension from her throat. ‘And how am I supposed to do that?’ she asked, without turning to face him. She didn’t dare.
Didn’t dare.
Another loaded pause shifted the tension upwards another notch. Then he said quietly, ‘In two weeks Hanson will arrive here at my invitation. You will first convince him that you and I have become—passionate lovers, then I will hand him an envelope which will supposedly contain the photographs he desires so much. But before he has a chance to open it you will take it from him and rip it in two.’
‘What?’ That made her turn, her blue eyes dark with confusion as she levelled them at him. ‘But what is that going to prove?’ she gasped.
‘It will prove that your love for me means more to you than your love for him, because you are prepared to ruin him rather than lose me. You see,’ he went on, turning slightly to pick up his glass, ‘I will have issued you with a decision to make. You can save him and lose me, or ruin him and have me. You will, of course, choose me.’
‘But—I thought the whole point of all of this was not to ruin Todd?’ she choked, utterly bewildered now.
‘No—no,’ he denied. ‘The whole point of all of this is to pay you back for the ruin you have wrought in others’ lives and to get you out of Hanson’s life,’ he corrected. ‘And your taking away his best chance at success at the eleventh hour should alienate you completely,’ he decreed with grim satisfaction.
‘But will also lose you my agreement to co-operate,’ she said. ‘Or have you forgotten that I’m only doing this for Todd’s sake?’
‘No.’ He shook his dark head. ‘I have not forgotten. But you seem to have forgotten my cousin Susie waiting in the wings to step neatly into your shoes. Co-operate, and she will convince me to let her take your place. Susie will wear the Adamas collection for Cliché’s European launch, save Hanson from ruin and receive his undying gratitude in the interim. Refuse to
co-operate,’ he added smoothly, ‘and I will simply keep you here out of harm’s way until the very last moment—then pull out of the deal—’ he gave an idle shrug ‘—leaving him with nothing—nothing to fall back on. You understand?’
Understand? Oh, yes, she understood, Annie thought bitterly. Susie gets everything at Annie Lacey’s expense.
‘My God!’ she breathed. ‘You’re worse than Svengali, aren’t you? And what happens to me once this little charade is all over?’ she asked. ‘Am I supposed to keep my mouth shut about the way you and Susie plotted this whole thing against me? Because I won’t, Mr DeSanquez,’ she warned him angrily. ‘And by then Cliché will be launched and you won’t be able to hurt Todd!’
His answering sigh was harsh and driven. ‘Why can you not possess enough simple decency to see without the threats that it is time you let go of Hanson—for his sake if not your own?’
‘You talk to me about decency,’ she countered scathingly. ‘Where is yours while you stand here threatening me like this?’
‘You need teaching a lesson,’ he muttered, but she knew that her words had got through to him because he dropped his gaze from hers.
‘Not in Susie Frazer’s name, I don’t,’ she denied. ‘And you’re wrong to do this to me and wrong to do this to Todd simply on the evidence of that silly, deranged woman!’
Wrong thing to say, Annie realised as anger flared into his vivid green eyes and he took a threatening step towards her. ‘You will take that back!’ he insisted, thrusting his dark face close to her own.
For once he looked and sounded completely foreign—hard and dark and frighteningly alien, his anger so palpable that she could almost taste it. Annie quailed inside but refused to show it, her blue eyes clinging defiantly to his.
‘I will take nothing back!’ she spat at him. ‘In your arrogant self-righteousness you like to believe that I’ve sinned against your rotten family when in reality it is they who’ve sinned against me!’
‘Sin?’ he repeated. ‘You are sin, Annie Lacey. With your siren’s body and your lush, lying mouth.’
‘The lies are all yours, Adamas,’ she threw back. ‘And what do you think it will do to Susie’s chances when Todd finds out what a lie this whole thing actually is?’
‘And you intend to tell him so?’ he demanded.
Annie stood firm in her defiance. ‘What do you expect me to do once this is all over?’ she snapped. ‘Crawl into some dark corner and pretend I no longer exist? I have a life waiting for me out there, Mr DeSanquez. You can put it on hold for a few short weeks but not for ever! And, my God, I vow that the first thing I’ll do with that life is save Todd from Susie’s calculating clutches if it becomes the very last thing I am able to do!’
His anger shot up another notch, sent there, she suspected, by sheer frustration with her for defying him like this. ‘By telling Hanson the truth?’ He was demanding confirmation.
‘About your lies? Yes!’ she declared.
His hand whipped out, curling threateningly around the back of her neck. ‘Then we will have to make the lies the truth,’ he gritted, moving close so that his body pressed along the full length of hers. His breath was warm against her face, his green eyes glowing with a new and terrifyingly readable light. ‘I shall bed you if I have to, Angelica Lacey,’ he told her huskily. ‘I will take your beautiful body and drown in its sinful lusts every night for the next two weeks if you continue to insist on telling the truth.’
‘No,’ she protested, trying to move away from him. The heat from his body was having a strange effect on her own, burning it, bringing it to life, disturbing all those delicate senses she had always so thoroughly locked away.
‘Why not?’ he whispered. ‘Why not make the charade the truth? Two weeks is a long time for a woman like you to go without a man. And I find I am man enough to be—receptive to your charms. Why not?’ he repeated, almost as though he was trying to convince himself rather than her. His mouth lowered to brush a tantalising caress along her cheek. ‘I can feel you trembling,’ he murmured. ‘I can feel your breasts throbbing against my chest, smell the sweet scent of desire on your skin. You want me, Angelica.’
‘No—’
‘Yes,’ he insisted. ‘As much as I admit to wanting you.’
‘No—’ she denied again, trying to pull free because he was conjuring up all kinds of sensations that were totally, frighteningly foreign to her.
‘You want proof?’ Reaching down, he took hold of her tightly clenched hands and grimly prised the fingers apart before forcing by sheer superior strength her tense palm to press against the hardening muscle between his thighs. ‘Proof,’ he muttered, and captured her shaken gasp with his hungry mouth.
For a few blinding, ecstatic moments Annie let herself sink willingly into the embrace, some small, sensible corner of her brain telling her that this had been coming from the moment they’d met the night before, that the violent exchange of words had merely been a vent for…this—this sudden greedy need to feel his mouth on hers again, to feel his body pulse against her, know his touch, his taste, the texture of his tight, tanned skin.
But it was only for a few hectic moments, then an icy darkness began closing her in—the darkness of bad memories, of man’s physical power over woman and his ability to subdue her if she dared to protest.
And suddenly, instead of the warm, coaxing mouth of the man kissing her now, she was being stifled by the hot, wet pressure of another mouth—a cruel mouth—and cruel hands that hurt as they touched her. Hands which had her crying out, fighting for breath, straining to get free, struggling—struggling so desperately that she didn’t even know that she was flailing wildly at César DeSanquez with her fists, didn’t realise that he was no longer kissing her but frowning down at her, no longer holding her in an embrace but trying—unsuccessfully—to stop her from landing blows on his surprised face.
‘Angel—’
It was all she heard. Not the full ‘Angelica’ he had actually said in husky concern but ‘Angel’ as Luis had husked at her—‘Angel. I have a real angel in my bed.’
‘No!’ she ground out, and managed at last to break free, her blue eyes wild as she turned like a terrified animal and ran.
Ran out of the open windows across the veranda and down the wooden steps. Ran—ran with no idea where she was running as her feet took her across the springy grass still warm from the long day’s sun. It was almost dark outside now, but she didn’t notice—didn’t notice anything as she made her mindless bid for escape.
She came to a halt only when the balmy water of the Caribbean lapped around her thighs. Breathless from running, panting with fear, she lifted her dazed eyes to the miles of coral-washed water laid out in front of her and at last felt reality return.
Not Luis Alvarez but César DeSanquez. Not the darkened bedroom of a plush London penthouse but a Caribbean island basking in the embrace of a beautiful dying sun.
‘Oh, God,’ she choked out thickly. ‘Oh, God.’ And, limp-limbed suddenly, she dropped like a weighted sack onto her knees, then as the water closed in a lazy, silken swirl around her heaving shoulders she put her hands to her face and wept.
Whatever he would do about her stupid flight she didn’t consider, but certainly she didn’t expect him to come wading into the water after her, his dark eyes tight with fury as he hauled her angrily to her feet and began dragging her back onto dry land again.
It was only later that it occurred to her that it might well have looked to him as if she were trying to drown herself. Whatever, it gained her no sympathy whatsoever—no hint of remorse as he muttered something harsh and Spanish beneath his breath then picked her up in his arms and carried her back up the garden towards the house.
His step hardly altered as he carried her up a flight of steps that led up the outside wall of the house and along the upper balcony into a room where he dropped her onto her unsteady feet before stalking off towards what she vaguely assumed was a bathroom.
Becaus
e this was a bedroom, she realised on yet another rise of panic—a bedroom with two full-length windows standing open either side of a huge coral-pink covered bed.
‘Get those wet things off!’ He came back with a fluffy white towel. Annie started, her blue eyes huge in her pale face as she stared blankly at him, unable to move a single muscle in case she fell down again.
With another Spanish curse he began stripping off her clothes, the bite of his fingers quelling any attempt she made at trying to stop him. She was shivering violently, though with shock rather than cold. Her top came off and was thrown down on the soft coral-coloured carpet, her arms wrenched away when they automatically crossed over her breasts. With rough hands he unclipped her bra and sent that flying too.
Then, as she stood there still half-numbed by her mind-blowing reaction to his kiss, the towel landed around her shoulders and he was kneeling in front of her, dark face stem as he ruthlessly began to strip the dripping wet skirt from her, followed instantly by her briefs.
‘You stupid fool,’ he bit out hoarsely. ‘What made you do something as crazy as that?’
She didn’t answer—couldn’t. She just stood there huddling into the towel and shivering so badly that her teeth chattered. He cursed again, turning angrily away, and began wrenching off his own sodden clothes. His trousers landed on top of her skirt, the sleek, lean flanks of his buttocks flexing as he stripped away his briefs and sent them the same way before spinning back to face her, arrogant in his complete lack of modesty and misreading her new, white-faced stillness as indifference to his exposure while he railed at her once again.
‘I should throttle the lovely life out of you for doing something as stupid as that!’
With another rasping sigh he turned and walked back into the bathroom while Annie stood staring after him, mesmerised by those exposed buttocks rippling as he moved. He came back with another towel, his face no less angry as he stripped his shirt over his head and slammed it down onto the floor.
The Morning After Page 7