by Kay Hooper
She made a smothered sound like the muted whimper of an animal in pain, both small hands lifting to push against his chest. Her mask was cracking, but he still couldn’t read the depths of her darkened eyes. For all he could tell she was just furious.
He was furious, at himself as well as her. He knew she was a heartless bitch, and everything she’d said in this room only confirmed what he knew—but he still wanted her. The hunger he felt was so intense it had been gnawing at his control from the moment he’d looked up and seen her. Fighting that, he had needled and mocked her, trying savagely to make her reveal her true colors so that he could see the truth and be cured of this bitter craving for her.
But it hadn’t worked. And once he had held her hands in his, the response of his body to just touching her had pushed aside everything except his painful struggle against it. He had forgotten her ludicrous plan to find the Hapsburg Cross and her frosty refusal to even consider selling him Allan’s notes.
“Let go of me,” she said huskily, pushing against his chest. “Get out of this house.”
He laughed, the sound harsh in his ears. “You forgot to say please. And you, of all people, should know you’re more apt to get what you want if you say please. I like hearing you plead with me, Spencer. It almost makes up for feeling like a fool when you jilted me.”
She went still, gazing up at him with enormous smoky eyes he couldn’t read. “That was ten years ago,” she said, her voice still husky. “I’m sorry for what happened between us, but—”
“Between us? Nothing happened between us. You didn’t even have the guts to face me once you’d made up your grasping little mind to run off with Cabot. I suppose I should have been grateful that you at least sent my ring back to me since it was a family heirloom, but I find it hard to forgive you for leaving Allan to break the news to me.”
She flinched visibly, and he almost shook her because her look of pain and regret was so real he almost believed it. “I was only eighteen,” she said with a tinge of despair in her voice. “I was afraid to face either of you.”
“Afraid, hell. You just took the easy way out, honey, and left the mess for daddy to deal with. But you made a bad mistake, didn’t you? Cabot might have been besotted, but his family’s pure steel, and it didn’t take them long to toss you out on your pretty bottom without a dime. I’ve often wondered—didn’t you know then that I was the better catch? Or were you just convinced that he’d be easier to handle?”
Spencer stared up at him mutely, unable to deny that because it was partly true. Not that she’d wanted to handle Reece, but he had appeared simpler and less complicated than Drew, all his emotions on the surface—and his love had seemed so real. She had felt sure of herself with him, at least then, in the beginning. Reece’s intense, passionate emotions had convinced her that to be loved so totally was far better and less painful than to love a man she didn’t understand and was half afraid of.
Drew smiled cynically at her silence. “You should have married me, you know. I might have divorced you as quickly as Cabot did, but I probably would have paid for the privilege of being rid of you.”
Under the hands gripping her shoulders, he felt her slump a little, and saw bloodless lips quiver in a starkly white face. Unblinking gray eyes were as blind as fog and held the same desolate chill.
“Lucky for you I did marry someone else,” she whispered, her hands sliding away from his chest to hang loosely at her sides. “Think of all the money you saved.”
The oddest sensation came over Drew as he stared down at her. It was a feeling he’d known before, countless times, but always and only when some object had been placed in his hands, its age or authentication in dispute. In every case he had felt the way he did now, as if a bell went off inside him, and the clear or discordant note of it told him what he needed to know. Yes, it’s the real thing. Or no, it’s a fake.
Now that bell was loud inside him, almost jangling, the harshly dissonant sensation too strong to ignore, and his recognition and understanding of it was completely involuntary. She isn’t what I think. Somehow, I’ve got it wrong.
He had learned to trust his instincts when it came to objects, but he had never depended on that when it came to people. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever experiencing the reaction to anything but inanimate objects. And he didn’t trust it now. His mind and his emotions told him what she was, and he’d believed too long to let go of the certainty easily. His instinct for detecting the genuine, no more infallible than any other ability, had been deceived by her, that was all.
She was good, he acknowledged, staring down at that pale, beautiful face. She was so good that for a moment he had felt as if he’d kicked something defenseless and vulnerable. And she’d done it so easily, like turning on a switch that worked his emotions. It made him furious that he had let her get to him, if only for a moment. He wouldn’t make that mistake again, he promised himself savagely.
He wouldn’t let her make a fool of him twice.
But she had infected him years ago, her sweet, false smile lodging itself like a painful dart in some place deeper than his flesh, and for years he had let himself believe her betrayal had cured him of the hunger for her. Now he knew it wasn’t true, knew that she’d have the ultimate triumph of destroying him unless he could rid himself of the poison of wanting her.
“I can’t go back and change anything,” she was saying now, her voice little more than a murmur.
“Very affecting,” he drawled. “You should take to the stage if all else fails.”
She shook her head a little, as if in bewilderment, then said tiredly, “Think what you like. If you’ve said what you came here to, I wish you’d leave. It’s late. It’s too late for any of this to matter.”
“There’s just one more thing,” Drew told her, his hands tightening on her shoulders as he began pulling her toward him.
In the blankness of her eyes panic stirred, and her body tensed as she saw or sensed his intentions. “No—”
“I made the mistake of treating you like the innocent virgin you were supposed to be ten years ago,” he said tautly, “and all I got for it was a slap in the face. You’re treacherous and selfish and predatory, Spencer, but I didn’t know that then and you got under my skin.”
She felt like some small creature frozen in dread as it gazed at the hawk diving toward it, all her instincts shrieking for her to run, to get away, yet she was held immobile by something greater than terror. His hands were on her back now, relentless, and she gasped when he suddenly jerked her against him. His body was hard, and even through their clothing she could feel a heat that was almost feverish emanating from him. It seemed to seep into her flesh, her muscles, melting her resistance so that her body molded itself to his with instant, stunning compliance.
She was shaking her head unconsciously, and felt one of his hands slide up her back until his long fingers tangled in her hair. His hand was rough and abrupt, scattering the pins restraining her thick hair so that it tumbled loosely around her shoulders, and then holding her head steady. He was staring at her fiercely, narrowed blue eyes burning so hot that she felt scorched by them, one hand pressing her lower body tightly to his until the unmistakable hardness of his arousal shocked her senses.
“I know what you are now,” he muttered. “But it doesn’t matter. Your tricks don’t work on me anymore, and this time I’m calling the shots. You were promised to me years ago and I intend to collect the debt.”
“What?” She could barely get the word out, so stunned by the ferocity she could see and feel in him that she could hardly think. If his cool sophistication had daunted her years ago, this strangely intense and implacable determination she saw burning in his eyes made her feel utterly helpless.
His laugh was short and harsh. “Oh, I don’t want a wife, sweet, so don’t think you’ve found another poor bastard you can try to bleed dry. All I want is you in my bed—for a while.”
“No—” Her instant, whispered denial was cut off
when his fingers tightened in her hair, drawing her head farther back. It wasn’t painful, but she felt another queer shock when she realized that he could hurt her very easily. He was almost a foot taller and twice her weight, his arms steely around her—and he was angry, he was so angry.
“Yes,” he said with flat certainty, his head beginning to lower toward hers.
Spencer closed her eyes as his hard features filled her field of vision and made her dizzy. She was quivering in his grasp like a trapped animal, her mind crying out silently against this. Both her arms were pinned to her sides, and she knew she wouldn’t have been able to escape him even if they’d been free, because he was too strong to fight.
Then his mouth closed over hers, hard and hot, and it was like an electric jolt of pure raw sensuality. She had never in her life felt anything like this, and it was all the more shocking because she could feel it now with him. Everything else, all the confused, painful emotions, were submerged beneath waves and waves of sharp, heated pleasure. She couldn’t fight the sensations any more than she could fight him, her mouth opening helplessly beneath the pressure of his. A convulsive shiver rippled through her when his tongue probed deeply, and she was suddenly very conscious of her breasts flattening against the hard planes of his chest as her body sank limply against him.
He had been gentle with her before, his kisses soft and his embraces light—careful, she realized now, of her inexperience and youth; at the time, she had seen detachment rather than restraint, and since he hadn’t seemed to care deeply about her it had made her own unexpressed yearning feel somehow wrong.
Now there was no doubt of his desire, and even though Spencer knew that at least part of that passion was meant to punish her, she couldn’t help but respond. When his hold on her shifted slightly, both her arms lifted as if by instinct to slide inside his suit jacket and around his lean waist.
He kissed her as if he were taking what belonged to him and demanding even more, the force of his hunger unrelenting and overwhelming. But he didn’t hurt her. She was, on some dim level of awareness, surprised by that, because he could have hurt her so easily and because he seemed bent on doing just that.
Then, suddenly, Drew lifted his head, and his voice was little more than a hoarse rasp when he said, “Look at me.”
Spencer forced her eyes to open, feeling dizzy and breathless. Her lips were throbbing, her whole body was throbbing, and she realized vaguely that she’d fall if he wasn’t holding her so tightly against him.
“I could take you right now,” he said. “I could pull you down to the floor, here, and in five minutes you’d be begging me to take you. I’m looking forward to that, sweet. I’ll enjoy every minute of watching you go so crazy with wanting me that nothing else matters. When the time comes, you’ll know what it feels like to be in thrall to someone else.”
She couldn’t even accuse him of arrogance or vanity in his certainty; her response had been instant and complete, and they both knew she couldn’t fight it.
The heat inside her ebbed, leaving her chilled, and her arms dropped limply to her sides when he put his hands on her shoulders and set her brusquely away from him. She felt the edge of the desk behind her, and leaned against it because her legs were shaking so badly. He was looking at her, she thought, the way a cat would look at a mouse it intended to play with before killing.
“Don’t run this time, Spencer,” he warned almost lightly. “I’d only come after you.”
She wanted to cry out. It was only your pride I hurt, not your heart—why are you doing this? But she was no longer so sure of that. What she felt in him was too intense to have its roots in wounded pride; hate came only when the cut went much deeper.
Unable to say a word, she watched him turn away from her and cross the room to the door. He was entirely himself again, the force that had washed over her numbingly now buried underneath his elegant, smoothly polished surface. Almost as if it had never existed. He didn’t say good-bye or even look back at her; he simply left the room, closing the door behind him.
After a moment Spencer pushed herself away from the desk and went around it to the chair. She sat down, looking blindly at the clutter of books, maps and notes covering the blotter.
How did the saying go? That the road to hell was paved with good intentions? Her intentions had been good ten years ago. Selfish, perhaps, and in the end stupid, but not deliberately cruel, and motivated by the blind fears and confusions of an eighteen-year-old. She had been obsessed by Drew as only the very young can be, her emotions a painful tangle of love, fear, uncertainty, passionate hunger and a miserable sense of her own inadequacies.
Only seven years older than she, he had been far more mature, and people accorded him a respect that a much older man might have envied. British by birth but American by inclination, he had grown up all over the world. His father had been known for wanderlust, packing up his wife and son at least once a year for another move, often to the opposite side of the globe, so that Drew’s schooling had been incredibly eclectic.
It occurred to Spencer now that the wanderer’s life might also have been lonely, though Drew had never shown a sign of feeling deprived in any way. Still, it must have been at the very least disconcerting for a boy to be plucked out of a school in France and dropped into one in Hong Kong, or to start the year in Spain only to finish up in Italy. A close family life could have eased those strains, but from all Spencer had heard that hadn’t been the case for Drew.
Despite the elder Haviland’s penchant for taking his family along wherever he went, he was reputed to have been a reserved and even withdrawn man. A wealthy speculator with the Midas touch, he had built up his personal fortune to a level the old and aristocratic family hadn’t seen in centuries. By all accounts, his wife had been a beautiful and languid woman, apparently content to follow her husband and with no ambition to assert herself in any way that ran contrary to his wishes.
At eighteen, Drew had left his parents somewhere in the Orient and had come to the States to enroll at Princeton; Spencer had no idea if he had done so for more emotional reasons than simply to remain in one place long enough to complete his education. In any case, he had stayed in America for the next four years, studying business as well as art, and becoming an honor student. Two months before his graduation, both his parents had been killed when their private plane crashed near London.
As far as Spencer could remember, he had never mentioned either his parents or anything about his childhood to her. She had found out what little she knew on her own, asking other people and reading newspaper and magazine accounts of the family. She hadn’t asked Drew because she hadn’t wanted to pry.
Pry! The man she had promised to marry, and she’d been so nervous around him that she hadn’t felt comfortable asking about his family.
Her feelings about him then had been so confused. She had always felt too much, her emotions surging wildly from one extreme to the next all during her earliest childhood and into adolescence; it was as if there was a storm inside her, one she couldn’t control. Then her mother had died, and at fifteen Spencer had faced the stark truth that the people one loved sometimes went away.
Like all of life’s bitter truths, it changed her, but what might have been a maturing process became instead a kind of subterfuge that, once begun, turned into a prison. She had been wrenched from the self-preoccupations of adolescence, forced for the first time in her life to provide strength for someone else. Her father had been shattered, and it had been left to her to make all the arrangements that so swiftly and relentlessly follow a death. Burying her own wild grief, she had assumed a mask of quiet confidence and had set about trying to fill the place her mother had left in the family.
Spencer didn’t regret that, but she knew now what it had cost her. She had pretended to be something she wasn’t, hiding, even from her father, her lonely fears and insecurities. Because her mother’s death had left such a gaping hole in her life, she always felt that she came up lacking in trying
to be the poised, assured, gracious woman her mother had been.
And then Drew had stepped into her life, just at the moment her self-doubt was greatest. The first emotion she could remember feeling toward him was something very like wonder; at an age to worship blindly, she had taken one look into his amused blue eyes and tumbled headlong into love. He had seemed so . . . perfect. Tall, blond, classically handsome, his deep, slow voice holding the slight lilt of the cosmopolitan and his smile charming, he had appeared to Spencer like a god.
A girl could worship a god at sixteen. She could even, two years later, promise to marry one. But by then had come the confused questions and anxieties that had churned endlessly beneath her mask. What did he feel? Why did he want her? He said he loved her, but his voice was calm and matter-of-fact, with no hint of the frantic emotions she felt. And what was it she felt? Love, yes, but nervousness, too, and when he was close she felt uneasily threatened in some way that she didn’t understand.
In the end, she had run—as much away from Drew as toward Reece. With an adolescent’s panicked confusion, she had thought that Recce’s intense, passionate, all-consuming adoration would make her happier than Drew’s restrained love.
Hindsight, as they say, is perfect. Spencer hadn’t been emotionally mature enough to recognize that Reece’s love had been as completely ephemeral as it had been violent. Like a child with a new toy, he had been devoted only until familiarity bred boredom and another new toy gleamed brightly with promise on the horizon.
She wondered now, with a sharp pang, if she would have found Drew’s love to be everything she had wanted. Looking back, she could remember how he had watched her, how his voice had changed slightly when he talked to her, and how he had touched her often even if those touches had seemed impersonal. Not a detached man, she realized now, but a very private man whose emotions, though controlled, went deep.
Tonight he had lost control. Some part of her recognized that. She was older now, and if she was still uncertain of herself she had at least learned to see other people with more clarity. She didn’t know why he had decided to come here tonight, why her selling of the emeralds had acted as a catalyst to finally release his bitterness and anger. All she knew was that his promise of physical possession had been no idle threat.