It was all a game to him, of course, and she had no intention of letting him retire the winner, but she would have to have her wits about her because, if she knew him, then he likewise knew her. When he looked at her he took in everything, meticulously, knowing that her coolness was only a veneer.
These eight days in Paris were going to be a war of wills. If she could survive it, then she would be able to survive anything. Anyway, once back in England she would be safe from him. There were places to run to in England and sooner or later he would get bored with the chase. She refused to entertain the possibility that she would give in.
He had arranged for them to meet in one of the hotel bars at seven-thirty.
‘We could explore Paris a bit before we eat,’ he had told her, his green eyes glinting, and she had replied coolly,
‘If you like.’ There was no point in kicking up a fuss with everything he suggested. It was a waste of effort because inevitably he got his own way, and anyway she would need to conserve her energies for more subtle attacks.
What she was going to wear she had no idea. She would have felt a little silly in one of the suits, but from his description of the restaurant the black pair of trousers would not be dressy enough.
She pulled out the dress she had worn to her sister’s party and shrugged. Why not?
She spent so long thinking about him and wondering how she was going to defend herself against him that she ended up having to rush about to get dressed. She normally wore very little make-up, if any, but tonight she applied a bit of colour to her cheeks, and quite a daring shade of red lipstick. The dress needed it. It was not the sort of outfit to be worn with too much of a healthy, fresh-faced glow.
When she heard a knock on the door, she looked at it with a sudden fluttering in her chest.
‘You could at least have allowed me my last thirty minutes’ worth of peace,’ she muttered irritably, making sure that everything was in place when she opened the door.
She opened her mouth to tell him that if he wouldn’t mind waiting in the bar she would be with him shortly when her eyes opened in amazement.
‘You,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’ She fell back, and Stephen clearly saw that as an invitation to enter, because he walked in and looked around him, impressed.
‘I knew these rooms would be nice,’ he said, fingering the lacquered top of the chest of drawers, ‘but this is mind-blowing, isn’t it?’
‘Very nice,’ Claire agreed, looking at him nervously. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘What kind of a question is that? Aren’t you pleased to see me, babe?’
She looked at him warily. The last person she had expected to find on her doorstep, so to speak, was Stephen, and now that he had put the question to her she realised that she wasn’t very pleased to see him at all.
He sat down and she said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m on my way out.’
‘Dinner with the client?’ he asked, and she nodded.
‘Something like that.’
‘Lucky man.’ His eyes swept over her in an insolent appraisal. ‘I recognise the dress. It’s the same one you wore to that party your sister threw, isn’t it? I couldn’t take my eyes off you then. You have no idea how sexy you look in that little number. All come-hither but with a kind of schoolgirl freshness. Very appealing.’
Claire didn’t like the sound of this at all, and she didn’t much care for the look of him either. The amicable front she had always seen him in was gone and there was something unsettling about the way he was staring at her with those very blue eyes of his.
‘Yes, well…’ she hedged, wondering whether it would be overreacting to make a dash for the bedroom door. ‘It’s nice seeing you,’ she lied, ‘but if you wouldn’t mind leaving, I really must…’
‘I would.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I would mind leaving. I invested quite a bit of my time in you, not to mention a fair amount of money, what with one thing and another. The least I would expect is a bit more hospitality.’
She found that she was perspiring and she wiped the palms of her hands on her dress. She shouldn’t have let him come in. She should have stayed by the door instead of walking back into the room. Sitting where he was, he could easily stop her from escaping. Then she laughed nervously to herself. What was she thinking about, escaping? Stephen Hancock was an acquaintance of her sister’s. She had gone out with him, for heaven’s sake! She must have misread what he had just said.
‘How long have you been over here?’ she asked, trying a different approach, the friendly one.
‘Not long. A few hours.’
‘On business?’
‘No way. A bit of a breather before I get back to the Big Apple.’ He crossed his feet at the ankles, stretching his legs out in front of him.
He was wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, also in faded blue, and a pair of loafers. He looked like the average tourist, dressed for comfort, although she suspected that a closer inspection would probably reveal designer labels on everything.
‘How nice for you,’ she said politely. ‘And have you come with anyone?’
‘Oh, no, all this way just to see you.’
Oh, God, she thought, feeling a little sick, even though her mind refused to take in anything sinister behind his words. It was safer to accept what he was saying at face value.
‘Well, perhaps tomorrow,’ she said crisply, trying another tack, ‘if you’re still in town, we could…’
‘Not tomorrow, Claire,’ he said, standing up. ‘Now. I came all this way to be with you and I’m kinda hoping you feel the same way I’m feeling.’
He moved towards her and her eyes widened with alarm.
‘I thought I’d made my position absolutely clear,’ she said in a high, firm voice.
‘Yes, but the way I looked at it was, why would you come out with me at all if part of you didn’t want something more than a load of chat and the odd meal?’ He was standing in front of her now and she didn’t dare meet his eyes, because there was a frantic little voice in her head telling her that she was in very hot water.
‘I wouldn’t have,’ she stammered, ‘if I had known, if I had thought…’
She felt his hands on her arms with a feeling of terrified inevitability and her blood started rushing around her veins, hot and scared.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ she said weakly, squirming against him, which made him grip her harder until she had to grit her teeth together to blank out the pain.
This was getting dangerously out of control, she thought, then she almost fainted as his lips came down on hers and she found her head being pressed backwards. They stumbled and half fell on to the bed and she stuck her hands out in front of her, trying to push him away, but he was bigger than her and stronger, and in no mood to quietly retreat at the first sign of rejection.
‘No…!’ Claire cried out, as he covered her thighs with his leg. Her dress had ridden up and she wriggled in a frantic attempt to reinstate some semblance of modesty.
‘Come on, babe,’ he groaned, ‘don’t tell me you don’t fancy me. Why else would you have gone out with me?’
‘I didn’t think I was being bought, along with the food!’
He wasn’t listening. He nipped her neck with his teeth, then her stomach clenched as his hand descended over her breast and he caressed it, breathing quickly and heavily as his fingers found her nipple and he began rubbing it.
Claire pushed as hard as she could, no longer caring how much her dress had ridden up, but it was only when she dug her fingernails into his sides that he withdrew with a sharp cry of pain.
This is it, she thought, terrified. I’ve read the books, I’ve seen the movies, and digging my fingernails into this man won’t turn him into a quivering wreck. They were both breathing heavily and they stared at each other.
‘Get off me!’ she ordered, deciding to strike while the iron was hot, and she struggled up, tugging her dress down and half
expecting him to jump at her and renew his attack. ‘Get out!’ she said. ‘How could you? How could you?’
‘All right!’ He eyed her with hostility, but at least he was listening to common sense. ‘What did you expect?’ he demanded aggressively, and she took a precautionary step back as he took one towards her.
‘Out!’ she yelled and at the same time she heard James’s voice from the other side of the door, then banging.
‘What the hell’s going on in there?’
She sprinted across the room and flung open the door.
‘He…!’ she broke out, turning to stare at Stephen, who had moved towards the door but couldn’t get out because James was blocking it.
James’s eyes raked over her quickly, then they turned to Stephen and she heard a desperate whimper, then everything started spinning around and she felt herself sliding into unconsciousness.
When she next opened her eyes she was lying on the bed, and her first instinct was to stand up and make a bolt for the door.
James held her down and said soothingly, as if he was speaking to a child, ‘He’s gone. The bastard’s gone!’
‘Thank God.’ She subsided back on to the pillow and closed her eyes tight, then she reopened them and looked straight into James’s face. Underneath that consoling exterior he was as mad as hell, and she wondered what on earth he had to be mad about! She groaned and put her hand to her eyes, trying to block out the memory of Stephen all over her. She knew now that she hadn’t been in any real danger, he had stopped when he had finally got the message, but at the time she had been really frightened, scared with every last ounce of blood in her.
‘What did you do to him?’ she asked, and James leaned over her.
‘I should have knocked his block off,’ he said tautly, ‘but as it was I only got the satisfaction of shoving him out of the room because you damn well fainted. What the hell did you think you were doing letting him get into your bedroom? Didn’t I warn you about him? Didn’t it even cross your mind that you can’t just open your bedroom door to men and then expect them to behave themselves?’
‘Stop shouting at me,’ Claire said unsteadily. ‘I don’t feel very well. You were right about him, all right, I admit it, but I don’t need to have salt rubbed into the wound. How did I know that he was going to…to…?’ She couldn’t get it out. What he had done to her was so distasteful that even describing it stuck in her throat and made her want to retch.
She closed her eyes and a few tears squeezed themselves out even though she really didn’t want to cry, did she. He hadn’t actually done anything to her, after all. It could have been much worse. That thought made her feel even sicker and more tearful and she sniffed loudly, grateful for James’s presence, the way he was pulling her against him and stroking her hair with his hand.
‘You’re a silly little fool,’ he murmured brokenly. He curled his fingers into her hair and pressed her face into his neck, at which she began sobbing loudly. ‘I should have wrung his neck,’ he continued tightly. ‘No fear, though, I’ll make sure that bastard pays for what he did. I’ll make sure he loses his job. I have contacts all over the world. A word in the right ear and he’ll be eating bread and butter from now on.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ she said. It was very soporific being stroked by him. He had strong hands and she loved the way they felt caressing her hair. She realised how much she desperately missed being touched by him, and not just in a sexual way. She just loved the feel of his body. Stephen was already beginning to recede from her mind. ‘It was horrible, but he wasn’t going to… to go the whole way with me,’ she said with a catch in her voice. He was caressing her neck now and it felt glorious. ‘I mean,’ she continued, wondering what she meant. Her mind was going very fuzzy; she couldn’t seem to get her thoughts straight at all. ‘I mean he just misread the situation, and perhaps I was a little to blame. I shouldn’t have gone out with him. You’re right, I was naive.’ He was kissing her face, light little kisses that made her feel quite faint. She raised her face to his like a flower upturned to the sun, her eyes still closed. This was making her feel languorous and she eased herself back on to the pillows, hoping that he wouldn’t take his hands off her, which he didn’t.
She forgot about her fight, about the battle of wills.
‘You weren’t to blame,’ he rasped, kicking his shoes off and lying alongside her. ‘Men like that assume that paying for a meal entitles them to whatever they want from a woman.’
‘Most women would probably realise that from the start,’ Claire said gloomily. ‘They would either go out with him knowing what he wanted, because they wanted it as well, or else they would tell him to get lost from the start, which is what I should have done.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ he asked huskily.
‘Good question.’
He stroked her shoulders, then slowly contoured her body with his hand, and she sighed.
‘It wasn’t because you were attracted to him.’
‘Is that a question or a statement of fact?’ She looked at him through lowered lashes and he flushed darkly.
‘I’d like it to be a statement of fact.’
‘All right,’ she agreed, and he frowned, not liking her easy compliance. There was a brooding intimacy in his eyes, a possessiveness that made her toes curl and she smiled. Her mind felt sluggish, but not so sluggish that she didn’t realise that this was a dangerous situation, a deliberate arousal.
She was poised on the brink of surrender and the thought of it wasn’t frightening her, it was exciting her. She opened her eyes fully and looked at him. He groaned and muttered savagely, ‘Tell me that I’m the only one you want.’
‘You are,’ she admitted with a sigh and he bent his head towards hers, his mouth taking hers in a fierce kiss. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back with a desperate hunger.
His hand slipped behind her; he unzipped her dress from behind, pulling it down, and she wriggled to accommodate him.
‘Why do I feel this way about you?’ he asked against her skin.
He had earlier discarded his jacket. Now he discarded the rest of his clothes and she watched him, fascinated, as if she had never seen him naked before. She looked at the firm, hard outlines of his body, the broad shoulders, the lean hips, the long legs with their sprinkling of dark hair. He had a body that was engineered for seduction. Everything about it was sexy, and she couldn’t wait to feel it against her.
She pulled herself free of her underclothes and sighed with pleasure as their bodies met. Her breasts seemed to have swelled in anticipation of his caress and she offered them up to him, lying back as his mouth closed over one nipple and his hands massaged the fullness of her breasts. He sucked at one, then the other, and her legs parted, inviting him to explore her.
His lips trailed a path along her stomach, to her navel and then further to the warm moistness which sent a sweet electric shock through her.
She couldn’t wait. It seemed like years since she had last slept with him and now wasn’t the time for leisurely foreplay. She urged him up and as he thrust into her she moved against him, their bodies moving into a rhythm which they had perfected together.
It seemed ludicrous to think that she had ever contemplated leaving this man. Everything about him fulfilled her. She remembered that she had felt very strongly about being used, but she couldn’t summon up those principles which had been the basis of that feeling.
She wouldn’t think too hard about all that, she decided with a mixture of sadness and resignation. She loved him, didn’t she? What was the point of torturing herself by running away from the realisation that he was the only man who could ever give her what she needed?
Later, as they lay on the bed, she turned to him and said with a little laugh, ‘What about dinner? Had you booked anywhere?’
He smiled wryly and kissed the corners of her mouth. ‘I hadn’t, as it happens, but somehow I don’t think they would have kept our table if I had, do you? It’s gone e
leven. Are you hungry?’
She shook her head. ‘No, but I suspect I’ll be ravenous tomorrow morning.’
‘Yes, you will,’ he agreed, teasing her nipple with his finger and smiling as it hardened in ready response. ‘I’ve seen you in one of those morning-after states. Not a pretty sight.’
She giggled and then sighed as his finger found the other nipple.
‘We could always get room service,’ he suggested, and she murmured something incomprehensible because her brain was ceasing to function as his fingers found other areas to explore. ‘Or else,’ he said huskily, ‘it could wait.’
And wait it did, until the following morning when they sat in bed with a huge tray in front of them and tucked into hot croissants, flaky and buttery, small sultana and walnut rolls, fresh fruit and masses of coffee.
‘You know that you’ve won, don’t you?’ she said with her head averted so that he couldn’t see how much it upset her to think that her desperate love would never be returned.
‘Win? Lose? This isn’t a game,’ he muttered, pulling her beside him. ‘If I could offer you marriage and guarantee that it would last, then I would.’
‘But for you that’s an unrepeatable experience,’ she filled in lightly.
‘What do you want me to say to that? We’ve been over all this before, haven’t we? I’ve been married once, it ended in tears, and I have no intention of repeating the experience, and I’m too fond of you to set you up in a position to be hurt.’
And where do you think I am now? she wanted to ask him, but he wouldn’t think along those lines at all. Without the ties of marriage, she was a free agent. When they parted company they would do so without bitterness, because if he could then he wouldn’t understand that she couldn’t.
‘You’re so considerate,’ she said, and he didn’t answer. ‘She really meant a lot to you, didn’t she?’
‘Let’s put it this way: I tried my hand at marriage and it ended in tragedy. How much more clearly can I put it? I realise that according to certain gossip columns I’m something of an eligible bachelor, but I’d make a lousy husband. I’m not what you’re looking for, I’m just not into playing happy families. You’re a romantic, Claire. Do you think that I don’t know that? You believe in happy-ever-after, and I don’t.’
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