Of course, he was an attractive man and she responded to that, as well as to his personality—that strange mixture of the dynamic and the laid-back that made him so alertly aware of everything and yet so frustratingly imperturbable at the same time, impervious to her resentment. But the thing frightening her now went deeper.
Simon had the power to hurt her. Not in all the usual ways—she hoped—but he had hurt her this afternoon. There had been that inner ache, intensifying with every new proof of his entrenched cynicism where emotional matters were concerned.
He was a cynic; she had always known it. But she shouldn’t care!
Now, putting her knife and fork together at the end of the main course, she said stiffly, ‘I’m not sulking.’
‘No, perhaps I used the wrong word. I don’t think you’re a sulker. Simmering, then? Or seething?’
‘Dead right!’ she confirmed with a glint in her eyes as his derision had the usual effect of summoning her fighting spirit.
‘Then come and dance. Perhaps you’ll calm down—or come to the boil!’ he invited her laughingly.
‘All right.’
Feeling challenged, as much by her own need to prove that she could remain immune to him if necessary as by his flippancy, she rose and went with him.
‘So you’re still cross with me,’ he prompted with lazy amusement, turning her lightly into his arms as they reached the smooth dance-floor.
‘I suppose you’re actually proud of being so devious,’ she stormed, but quietly. ‘Manipulating people, manoeuvring them around like—like…’
‘Pawns on a chess-board is probably the phrase you’re looking for,’ he supplied coolly, some of his amusement vanishing. ‘No, Fee, I was not devious, so don’t even suggest it again. I didn’t deceive you, I didn’t hide my intentions, and I made sure you knew exactly what I was doing and why, when I did my manipulating.’
‘Oh, you admit to that part of it? And what about Babs and Charles?’ Fee demanded tempestuously. ‘They didn’t know. And you call Charles your friend!’
‘You can hardly expect me to have reformed completely in so short a space of time,’ Simon drawled, not attempting to defend himself.
It disconcerted her, as did the discovery that she was shivering although the hand at her back was warm and so were the arms encircling her.
‘Do you want to?’ she questioned him warily. ‘Reform?’
Simon was silent a moment. Then he laughed.
‘No, not really,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ll suppose I’ll have to, at least temporarily.’
‘You cynical—’ Fee couldn’t find appropriate words with which to express her indignation and resentment, and yet some traitorous part of her wanted to laugh just because he was so outrageously candid. ‘You—I should have known. Oh, and, as you say, I did know you were manipulating me earlier, but being open and honest about it doesn’t excuse you, because you knew damned well that I couldn’t do anything to thwart you.’
‘Without alerting the others as to what’s going on,’ Simon qualified it for her, a slight edge to his voice.
‘Nothing is going on,’ she flared antagonistically before he could continue.
‘Something is. It’s going on right now,’ he added more softly, flattening his hand against her back, and she was aware of each individual finger and his thumb and palm, her shivering intensifying. ‘But tell me, Fee, why are you so secretive about it? You can’t be trying to protect them from the shock of realising that you’re actually an adult, independent woman, all equipped to take care of yourself, when you’ve already made a statement to that effect by insisting on getting a place of your own. So what is it? Are you ashamed of the fact that I appreciate you as that woman and not just as my assistant?’
‘How clever of you, Simon! Yes, that’s it exactly!’ Fee confirmed the charge with unusual savagery. ‘Who wants to be one of a crowd? It’s hardly something to be proud of!’
It was true, and yet Fee was slightly shocked at herself. She had never thought of herself as particularly special in any way, and she still found it surprising that a sophisticate like Simon should be interested in her, however casually, but at the same time she felt his interest as an insult.
‘Are you implying that I’m indiscriminate where women are concerned? That’s an insult to yourself as much as to me, sweetheart. In addition, I’d say I’m a damned sight more discriminating than you are in your love life. At least I keep away from married women—which makes your intolerance of my lifestyle somewhat hypocritical, don’t you think? You must have known Sheldon was married when you got involved with him.’
‘I’ve told you before, my so-called involvement with Mr Sheldon is none of your business!’ Fee was angrily emphatic. ‘And don’t try to pretend your avoidance of married women has anything to do with morality. If it had, you wouldn’t be able to believe such a thing of me so easily.’
‘I might not be able to anyway, but for the facts, Fee,’ Simon derided, eyes glinting dangerously.
‘What facts?’ The question was caustic. ‘Just because you can boast that everything written about you in the newspapers is true—although why you should take pride in it is a mystery—it doesn’t mean they get it right about everyone else every single time.’
‘Oh, I accept that details can vary wildly, but the gist is generally correct. Any story is based on at least one hard fact to begin with, even if it ends up heavily embroidered.’
‘It’s not the embroidery that bothers me, it’s the interpretation of what I suppose I have to agree are facts,’ Fee snapped.
He gave her a sharp smile. ‘And what interpretation do you place on the fact that I steer clear of married women, if you’re so convinced of my lack of morality?’
Just for a second, doubt assailed her, but she suppressed it.
‘You’re probably just avoiding trouble,’ she accused contemptuously. ‘We all know you don’t like having to consider anyone except yourself. And with a married woman you might have to, especially if she wanted to keep the affair secret, and she might well want to since you’d make sure she knew there was no chance of your actually replacing her husband. You’ve never made a sacrifice, never put yourself out for anyone, have you, Simon?’
‘I’ve never known anyone worth putting myself out for,’ he returned dismissively, impervious to her scorn. ‘As for sacrifices, I’ve always mistrusted anyone who claims to have made them for another’s sake. In fact, I have a suspicion that such claims are just a distorted form of self-congratulation.’
As always, his flippant cynicism enraged her, but at a deeper level her recognition of the emotional isolation that must be responsible for such an attitude was so appalled that she felt it as pain.
But to feel pain was to be vulnerable, she reminded herself agitatedly. She didn’t want to be vulnerable to Simon—she couldn’t afford to be.
So she said tartly, ‘All the same, I’m a bit surprised that the idea of an illicit affair doesn’t appeal to your devious mind.’
‘Oh, we’re back to the subject of my deviousness, are we?’ Simon taunted. ‘If you think about it, the deviousness was for your sake since you’re so sensitive about what’s between us. That’s why I told Babs we had work to discuss, for instance.’
‘Yes, I thought that was a lie,’ Fee agreed tautly. ‘So why am I here? Why did you want me to have dinner with you?’
‘I’ve just broken up with Loren, remember?’ His tone suggested that he found her question stupidly superfluous.
‘Oh, right, and I’m supposed to be helping you celebrate?’ Fee challenged scathingly.
‘If you like. Certainly I didn’t feel like spending a solitary evening…I can’t remember when I last spent a Saturday evening alone, unless I’ve been working.’
He sounded slightly startled by the realisation, and Fee studied his suddenly contemplative expression with reluctant interest. They weren’t so much dancing as simply swaying together, almost automatically, in time to the languid
rhythm of the music, both more absorbed in what they were saying to each other than in attempting to display any prowess as dancers, although there hadn’t been a single instant when Fee wasn’t acutely aware of the warm physical reality of Simon as well as uncomfortably conscious of her body’s hot yet shivery response to his nearness. When he had first taken her in his arms, she hadn’t known what to do with her hands, but they had found their natural resting place of their own accord after a while and now lay curled loosely against his chest.
‘Don’t you like being alone?’ she asked gravely.
Simon remained thoughtful, considering the question.
‘I never have to be if I don’t want to, so when I am it’s from choice,’ he answered her dismissively eventually. ‘And I am occasionally, at home. I’ve got a couple called Deng looking after the house and garden and security, that sort of thing, but the unit in which they live is separate from the house.’
The fact that he had obviously never given the subject much thought before disturbed Fee for some odd reason.
‘But aren’t you ever afraid that you might end up—lonely…one day?’ she ventured hesitantly, despite an unnerving suspicion that it was dangerous to care, and Simon’s eyes grew hard.
‘Don’t you start, Fee. I get enough of it from other women, the missionary types out to convert me, and naturally every one of them sees herself as the woman who is going to save me from loneliness. I don’t want that from you, and I didn’t expect it, frankly. You know me too well.’
It was Simon at his most ruthless, brutally rejecting her concern, and Fee felt herself wilting—shrivelling—until anger restored her.
‘It seems to me that you don’t know me at all, Simon, if you can imagine I was asking out of…out of some sort of self-interested motive,’ she asserted tightly. ‘But I’ll admit that it was a really fatuous question, considering that you’re right, I do know you…You’ll never have to be lonely because you’ll always be able to attract women, even when you’re old.’
‘And you’re the woman I’m interested in attracting at present,’ Simon quipped in response, and paused, amusement beginning to curve his lips. ‘My God, I believe you really were worrying about me! It’s kind of you, Fee, but wholly unnecessary, so don’t.’
‘I won’t,’ she snapped. ‘Ever again.’
‘Anyway, I’m glad you’ve stopped thinking of me as being old already,’ he went on lightly, although he hadn’t yet relaxed completely again. ‘Oh, I know you only talked like that to annoy me, but it made you seem younger and less experienced than you are. Incidentally, talking of age and youth, where does Bates fit into your life? Is he really interested in you again, hoping to take up where you left off?’
‘How would I know?’ Fee was still taut with anger which the question exacerbated, serving as a reminder of what he had once done to her and Warren. ‘Apart from a couple of phone calls, I’ve only seen him once, at the party, when you can hardly expect him to have been in a sociable mood, finding himself in the same room as you, and then when we went outside to talk you came and interrupted. We barely had a chance to say anything to each other.’
‘It sounds as if he’s shaping up to asking you out, although he seems to be a slow mover.’ Simon’s smile was stinging. ‘Just as well, because he’ll have to wait this time around. It’s my turn now.’
It was offensive, and Fee’s colour rose, while her legs seemed suddenly made of wood, her instinctive obedience to the slow beat of the music lost.
‘I’d like to go back to the table, please,’ she said stiltedly after an uncontrolled step.
‘In a minute or two,’ Simon promised her, pulling her a little closer. ‘Relax. I’m enjoying holding you in my arms, and I intend to go on enjoying it for a while…savouring the sensation. Don’t talk. Then you might enjoy it too.’
Fee had perforce to obey that last command simply because emotion was constricting her throat now. She didn’t know why she had let him upset her like this. It had just been Simon, being typically Simon; she knew him well enough not to let him get to her in that way. She ought to be utterly indifferent to anything he said and did, but it seemed that she was no more immune to him now than she had been in her teens. He still invariably disturbed and infuriated.
Simon’s hand had moved up beneath the silken fall of her hair. Her top left her shoulders and upper back bare, and his fingers were stroking lightly over her smooth skin, inscribing tiny circles, gently massaging, and Fee was conscious of a tender sensation unfurling deep within her, a sweet warmth that began to seep through her body in a slow honeyed tide. It was an acutely vulnerable feeling, because she seemed to be trembling inwardly as well as outwardly now, and she had an odd sense of herself as a vessel, receptive, absorbing, because Simon was responsible for all this sensation, introducing it to her, a magician’s potion that worked on her intended passivity, turning it to awareness and response.
Snatching a shaky breath into her lungs, Fee looked into the handsome golden face just a little above hers. His expression was slightly remote now, yet intent, as if he was absorbing with his senses some silent information, perhaps the message of his body—or hers?
That absorbed, almost withdrawn look filled her with an aching uncertainty. How could she ever know what he was feeling and thinking? How could anyone? He gave so little of himself away, his conversation usually as civilised but superficial as the life he lived, the only real feelings he occasionally revealed such things as irritation, anger and impatience, and those all essentially the product of his intellect rather than his emotions.
Oh, and why was she thinking along such stupid lines? Simon was superficial; no real, deep feeling existed behind the façade or he couldn’t live as he did. What you saw was what you got, all there was, and this yearning conviction that there had to be more was sheer wishful thinking.
Why should she want there to be more anyway, or even care if the façade really was a shield? She didn’t like him, and, as for the way he was making her feel now, she ought not to let it trouble her too much. Simon was a handsome, sexy man, possessing in abundance all the complementary qualities that made those two things irresistible—charm, ability, power, success and intelligence. They all added up to glamour. Also, he knew how to hold a woman and touch her in a way that made her feel more feminine than she had ever done before, his skill and assurance diabolically effective. He had had enough practice after all, with so many women he couldn’t give the number of his affairs, but, considering how unfairly blessed he was in most other ways, he had probably been born with that particular talent as well.
‘Simon—’ Fee stopped herself because her voice had
a gasping, drowning quality, and she knew she couldn’t manage a cool request to return to their table.
‘Things to come, Fee,’ Simon murmured whimsically.
‘No.’ Even that short word sounded ragged, and desperate.
‘Yes, because it’s happening for you too, isn’t it, my darling? You’re lovely,’ he went on musingly. ‘So slim…slender that you feel fragile, as if I’ve got something breakable in my hands, and it makes me want to make love to you very slowly and gently, for a long, long time.’
Words too, Fee reflected bitterly. They formed part of the magic he used on women—evocative, seductive words. A quiver of feeling accompanied his hand as it skimmed down the length of her delicate spine, coming to rest lightly at the small of her back, gently urging her closer.
‘Stop it!’ she demanded sharply, feeling almost frantic, terrified by the physical vulnerability he was creating so casually.
‘How can I when you’re so desirable?’
‘How can you not, when I’ve asked you to?’ she retorted waspishly.
‘Ah! She credits me with some gentlemanly principles,’ Simon joked irrepressibly.
‘I credit you with your normal share of masculine pride,’ she corrected him smartly. ‘Because I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Simon—but you were wrong, I’m not en
joying this at all. I don’t want to dance with you any more.’
‘No.’ His smile vanished abruptly, leaving his face unusually taut. ‘I don’t think I can go on dancing with you either, my darling. But on the other hand I’m not such a gentleman that I’m going to pretend to believe you and refrain from calling you a liar. You were enjoying it, Fee.’
‘I—’
Her relief as he released her was fleeting, her face stiffening as she intercepted the interested looks of a couple who were dancing close by.
‘What’s wrong?’ But Simon saw for himself and curiosity sharpened his gaze. ‘You really do hate attention, don’t you? God, that Australian business must have been a nightmare for you…And yet you brought it on yourself by choosing to pick your final quarrel with Sheldon in that Perth hotel, with the Press on the scene. Why the hell didn’t you wait until you were safely back in whatever love-nest you used in Sydney? I suppose this dislike of being stared at means I can’t even give you an affectionate peck on the cheek as befits an old family friend until we’re on our own.’
‘Since I don’t believe you feel anything like affection for me, why would you want to?’ Fee rallied, helped by the amused note in his voice, and telling herself that she was being over-sensitive when the couple were strangers, because it was quite natural for people to stare at Simon Rhodes and wonder who he was with, whether they recognised him or not, simply because he was such a magnificently vital and beautiful man.
‘You’re right there,’ Simon conceded laughingly and ushered her back to the table.
To her relief, he left personal subjects alone, talking about his plans for the expansion of Rhodes Properties, the industrial and commercial sites he was in the final stage of acquiring in Macau, and his hopes concerning Singapore.
‘That should be relatively easy but, as you know, we’ve got feelers out in Taiwan as well, and I’ve an idea that it’s one place where real difficulties are going to be put in our way.’
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