by Josie Litton
I was there for one purpose only, to assess if she was the proper candidate for what I had in mind. Nothing could be permitted to interfere with that.
Yet I was far too accustomed to indulging my whims to pretend that none existed where she was concerned. For the moment, they were simple and direct:
I wanted to fuck Grace Delaney. Long, hard, repeatedly, and in every possible way.
That being out of the question, I at least wanted to be close enough to hear the sound of her voice.
To inhale the scent of her skin.
To touch her.
At the thought of doing so, my body hardened. I shifted in my seat, uncertain about what should concern me more: That my usual iron discipline was in danger of slipping?
Or that I was so powerfully attracted to the woman whose life I was on the verge of changing irrevocably.
Chapter Two
My headache was worse. The stabbing pain behind my eyes made me long for a dark room and a bed to lie down on. But I wouldn’t be getting either, at least not for several hours. Meanwhile, I had to manage as best I could.
However alienated I was from my family, certain Delaney rules were still second nature to me. Chief among them: Never show weakness.
I kept that uppermost in my mind as I smiled and pretended interest in what one of the women at the table was saying. Something about the new placement firm she was using to find English-speaking domestic help.
“They’re more expensive,” she said with a shrug. “But what can you do? At least they can’t pretend not to understand when you’re telling them something.”
Her laugh made me wince. “Last month, I had a Hispanic girl spend the morning making chicken soup when all I’d asked her for was a chicken sandwich!”
“Was it good soup at least?” Will asked.
The woman looked honestly bewildered. “I have no idea. I told her to throw it out. How else is she going to learn?”
The conversation moved on but I was no longer listening. I had to get away, if only for a few minutes.
I stood and rested a hand lightly on Will’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
He nodded but didn’t interrupt his conversation with the head of a large hedge fund.
Leaving the table, I dared a quick glance around the room. Almost at once, my gaze found the stranger. He was seated at a table toward the front belonging to the event’s organizers. The body language and expressions of the men and women around him suggested that they were all excited by his presence. But I also caught the same odd sense of apprehension on their part that I had noticed in the hotel manager.
As I left the ballroom, I puzzled over that. Once beyond, I paused and took a deep breath. It was quieter in the wide, lavishly decorated corridor lined with tapestries. The pain behind my eyes eased a little.
I went on to the ladies room, relieved to find it empty except for a uniformed attendant who kept her eyes averted as she handed me a linen towel.
“Thank you,” I said, slipping a bill into the jar set discretely beside the marble-topped wash basins.
She smiled and nodded her own thanks before withdrawing.
Looking in the mirror above the sink, I grimaced. My eyes appeared huge in a face that was far too pale. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, the past few weeks had taken a toll. Since learning what I had, I’d been living on my nerves, trying to figure out what I should do and weighing that against what was actually possible.
I needed to get more rest, eat more, and in general take better care of myself. Until that happened, I had scant hope of standing up to the family and building my own life outside of its shadow, much less accomplishing anything more. I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by a man who aroused feelings in me that I was utterly unprepared to deal with.
As I moistened a corner of the towel with cold water and pressed it between my eyes, hoping to ease the pain a little, I wondered how it was that I hadn’t crossed paths with him before. Presumably, we moved in different social circles. In all likelihood, I wouldn’t encounter him again.
Ignoring a stab of disappointment, I finished up and left the ladies room. But before returning to the ballroom, I hesitated. The foyer where drinks had been served now stood cleared and empty. The flutter of a sheer white curtain hanging beside one of the tall windows caught my eye. On a sudden impulse, I went to stand beside it and drank in the fresh, cool air.
Perhaps I should leave the city for a while. Find somewhere quiet and remote where no one knew me and I would be free to decide what to do.
The moment that thought occurred to me, I frowned. Who was I kidding? Not for a moment did I believe that the family would simply let me go. As soon as they realized my intentions, they would stop at nothing to learn what was driving me away from them. If they discovered the truth--
A shiver ran down my back. I wrapped my arms around myself and stared out the window unseeingly. In a battle between myself and the family, I was almost certain to lose. Yet what choice did I have?
If I wanted to have any sort of life, I had to find a way to protect myself. But how? What money I had was beyond my reach. As for friends who might help me-- I had no illusions there. No one I knew would choose my side against the family’s.
A small part of me wished that I’d never gone home a few weeks ago, never wandered out on the terrace when I couldn’t sleep, never overheard what I had in the darkness of the night with the surf rolling endlessly against the seawall where Patrick and I had talked. Even now, I had to struggle against the cowardly urge to believe that none of it had really happened.
I knew better and I had to come to terms with that. But first I had to go back into the ballroom and pretend that everything was fine. I liked Will but his future depended on my family’s patronage. If he thought something was wrong, he wouldn’t hesitate to report it up the line.
Reluctantly, I dropped my arms to my sides and turned away from the window. At once, a bolt of shock went through me. I’d presumed that I was alone but I’d been wrong.
He was standing in the entrance to the foyer, watching me. Tall, dark, compelling, a presence like none other I had ever encountered.
My breath caught. I had the sudden sensation of being cornered by a hunter and having no way to escape. On the face of it, that was absurd. We were in the middle of Manhattan, in a luxury hotel, attending a gala that had drawn the city’s elite. What could possibly be more civilized?
Yet suddenly nothing seemed as it should be. Face-to-face with him, I could only hope that he had no idea how affected I was by his mere presence.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
For a moment, all I heard was the timbre of his voice, low with an undertone of deep stillness like water concealing rocks. Vaguely, I registered a faint accent, not British exactly, more what I associated with the top tier Swiss boarding schools.
In the next instant, my mind snapped back into gear. I cleared my throat and smiled. “Yes, I’m fine. I just needed some fresh air.”
He nodded but instead of leaving, he came farther into the room. He moved with the same easy grace I had noticed before. And he never took his eyes from me.
I resisted the urge to step back. I wouldn’t have gotten far any way; the wall was directly behind me.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.
I opened my mouth to deny that he had but there was no point trying to conceal what was so obvious. Beyond that, I didn’t believe for a moment that he regretted the effect he had. On the contrary, he was perfectly willing to knock me off balance. I suspected that he was even enjoying it.
The implicit challenge in his manner threw me. Because of who my family was, most men treated me with restraint or just kept their distance. A handful thought that by pretending not to care that I was a Delaney, they could draw me to them. I shrugged them all off.
This man didn’t fall into either category or any other that I could think of. He stood apart, unique and alone. As accustomed as I
was to dealing with powerful men, I still knew that I had never encountered anyone like him.
Instinctively, I took refuge in polite convention.
“Please don’t apologize. I was woolgathering. I’m Grace Delaney, by the way. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
I’d been trained as a child to always offer my hand when meeting someone new. But I didn’t do so now. Some flicker of intuition told me that I wasn’t ready to feel his touch.
His sensual mouth--really, it wasn’t right for a man to have a mouth that sinfully tempting--quirked as though he understood perfectly the source of my unease.
“I know who you are, Miss Delaney. I’m Adam Falzon.”
Falzon. I’d heard that name before but where? A vague memory darted through my mind. Something to do with an Art History class that I’d taken my senior year? I sensed that it was important but I couldn’t catch hold of it.
I was too busy absorbing the fact that his eyes, which I had been so curious about, were not the dark brown that I would have expected. Instead, they were a glacial blue that I had only seen before on ice floes above the Arctic Circle. They stood out vividly against the warm hue of his skin and the midnight darkness of his hair.
Whoever he was, his heritage had to include at least a few Vikings, men who had ventured from their northern strongholds to cut a swathe of pillage and conquest across the globe.
Too distracted to think clearly, I defaulted to polite chitchat. “What brings you here this evening, Mister Falzon?”
He raised a brow, as though questioning why I would have to ask. For an instant, something that I couldn’t define moved behind his eyes. The corners of his mouth quirked. A dimple appeared beside one. I stared at it in disbelief, stunned that Nature could be so completely over-the-top. To my embarrassment, I had to fight the urge to wonder what it would feel like to circle the tip of my tongue around that dimple, trace the fullness of his lower lip and--
“Penguins, of course,” he said. “I have a great fondness for them.”
I gave myself a hard mental shake and tried to focus on what he had just said. It wasn’t easy. I had never confronted desire of the kind I was feeling now and I had no real idea of how to deal with it.
Still, one word did register. Penguins? Wait… That meant I was at a charity event for…?
I narrowed my eyes. Was he…teasing me? Or more likely having a joke at my expense? That wouldn’t do at all.
“Please tell me that this isn’t the Penguin Preservation Dinner or something like that.” My voice had a tart edge I didn’t normally use. For him, I’d make an exception. “Not that I have anything against penguins. But they seem to be doing fine on their own. Movies, TV specials, merchandising deals, you know--”
He laughed, a full-throated sound that seemed to surprise him as much as it did me.
“You have no idea what tonight’s event is about, do you?” he challenged, looking at me far too intently.
“No,” I admitted. “I was dragooned into attending at the last minute. So you tell me, why are we here?”
“To raise money in support of UNESCO World Heritage Sites,” he said smoothly. “As you no doubt are aware, several are under threat from terrorist forces or have already been destroyed.”
I did know that. The dynamiting of monumental statues of the Buddha by the Taliban in Afghanistan had been universally condemned but that hadn’t stopped the continuing destruction of priceless historical and cultural treasures.
“And that interests you?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, it does,” he said. “My family is from Malta. Although we’re a small nation, we can boast of no fewer than three such sites, all fortunately well protected.”
I had never been to Malta. I knew next to nothing about it except that it was an archipelago of islands in the Mediterranean said to be very beautiful and to have magnificent beaches.
“Do you still live there?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Not as much as I would like.” As though uncomfortable being the focus of discussion, he changed it smoothly. “Are you feeling better?”
With a start, I realized that while we had been talking, my headache had eased. That he could have a soothing effect on me at the same time that I reacted to him so intensely was yet one more puzzle.
Confusion filled me. How did he know that I hadn’t been feeling well? Could he really be so attuned to me? That possibility was as daunting as it was enticing.
Quietly, I said, “Yes, I am.” With almost painful reluctance, I added, “I should go back.”
“Wait.”
I might have taken that single word as a request if I hadn’t heard the ring of command implicit in it.
I wasn’t given to making snap judgments about people. More often than not, patience and a willingness to give the benefit of the doubt yielded far better results. But with Adam Falzon the lessons that were second nature to me vanished into thin air.
Face-to-face with him, I wondered if I had ever encountered a man more naturally given to arrogance. Or one who just possibly might deserve to be that way.
Then he smiled and I forgot about all the rest as though it had been wiped from my mind.
This startled me so much that I laughed, a soft, surprised sound that captured my sense of the world suddenly tilting in a new direction. I felt almost weightless, as though all the shock and worry bearing down on me these past weeks had briefly dissolved.
He stepped closer, shrinking the distance between us to almost nothing.
My breath caught as he raised his hand. For a moment, he hesitated as though reconsidering. Whatever battle he was waging within himself was decided quickly. His knuckles brushed slowly along the curve of my cheek.
His touch was cool and light but it sent a bolt of heat through me. I had to fight the urge to bend closer into his hand, silently pleading for more.
Desperate to steady myself, I inhaled. That was a mistake. His scent filled me--finely woven wool and linen mingling with the supple aroma of rich leather. Beneath it all was a hint of his skin evoking the essence of the man himself--clean, powerful, with a subtle bite of bergamot and an even more enticing undernote that might be the faintest suggestion of musk.
“You are…” he murmured. His eyes darkened. Still touching me, I nonetheless felt him pulling away, as though he was sealing himself behind a wall that I would never be able to penetrate.
It was on the tip of my tongue to beg him not to do that when he said, “You are not what I expected.”
The statement jolted me. What did he mean? When had he conceived any expectations about me? After we both arrived and noticed each other? That must be it, yet I couldn’t shake the sense that he meant something else. Surely, he couldn’t have anticipated that I would attend the gala. Not when I’d only agreed to do so a few hours before.
The stress that had been working on me for weeks was suddenly overwhelming. I drew back, breaking the contact between us. But I didn’t go very far. His gaze still held me. As I watched, his pupils dilated, the startlingly blue irises narrowing but seeming to become even more intense in contrast to the widening pools of blackness within them.
With an effort, I said, “I’m not mistaken, am I? We haven’t met before?”
I didn’t think so but how else to explain the overwhelming sensual affinity that I felt for him, as though our bodies recognized each other on some secret, hidden level best left to the deepest hours of night and the privacy of a bed hidden away from the world?
My voice was little more than a whisper but he heard me clearly enough. A look passed over his face--frightening in its intensity yet so painful as to evoke my sympathy.
“No,” he said, almost harshly. “We’ve never met.”
Unspoken was the implication that some part of him would have preferred for that to have remained the case. Yet, I reminded myself, he had sought me out, not the other way around.
All the same, once we left this place and went our separate ways, I had no rea
son to believe that I would ever see him again.
The spasm of hurt that sparked finally compelled me to turn away. A shiver arced between my shoulder blades as I felt his gaze all along my back to the curve of my ass and the moist cleft between my thighs. My skin was flushed, all my senses heightened. The veneer of my social mask felt dangerously close to cracking.
It fell to Will to rescue me.
I must have been gone long enough to worry him. Standing in the entrance to the foyer, he took in the fact that I wasn’t alone. A frown creased his brow.
“Grace?” His gaze shifted from me to Adam and back again. “Is everything all right?”
I had to give Will credit. As young and fit as he undoubtedly was, the contrast between him and Adam Falzon could not have been starker. Whereas Will was an eminently civilized man, Falzon possessed a wild, even barbarous aura that he made no effort to conceal. Already I knew that if he accepted any rules at all, they would be strictly his own.
Yet Will didn’t back down, perhaps because at that moment he felt the force of my family’s own power supporting him. It fueled bravado in him that I had not seen before.
Crossing the room to my side, he held out his hand. “We should go back.”
I hesitated but only briefly. In a heartbeat, I reached for him as though for a lifeline and let him draw me away from the dark vortex of attraction that threatened to swallow me.
We were at the door before I dared to look over my shoulder. Falzon had not moved. He stood, his powerful, masculine presence overwhelming the delicate white-and-gold décor of the room. A dark angel, contemptuous of a false heaven.
With a deliberate note of finality, I said, “Goodbye, Mister Falzon.”
He inclined his head courteously enough but his faint, taunting smile gave me notice that my brave words would not deter him. On the contrary, they were a challenge he wasn’t likely to refuse.
I went back to the ballroom on Will’s arm, resolved to forget about everything other than the very real and serious decisions that I had to make soon. But in the same instant, I knew that my life had already veered onto a course not of my own choosing.