by Penny Jordan
‘Met a man you want to go to bed with,’ Drake finished for her. He was regarding her with open amusement. ‘At least you hadn’t, until recently isn’t that it, Emma?’
His audacity took her breath away. Too intelligent to pretend she didn’t know what he meant, Emma fought down the angry tide of colour threatening to run up under her skin and said freezingly, ‘Your ego must be mammoth Drake. Believe me I have no desire whatsoever to…’
‘Go to bed with me?’ He said it for her, laughing openly at her expression.
On the verge of reinforcing his statement with a heated denial Emma decided to show more caution. She shrugged aside his comment with what she hoped was aplomb and said instead. ‘Look, why did you want to see me…? Was it to tell me when the photographs will appear?’
‘Only sort of.’ He pushed aside his brandy glass and leaned towards her, watching her carefully, all evidence of his earlier bantering mockery gone. ‘I have a proposition to put to you Emma. Let me explain it to you if you will before you make any comments. Now, are you ready?’
When she nodded her head mutely he said. ‘Very well. As you may know the magazine came into my hands as part of a package when I took over its controlling parent. It hasn’t been doing all that well and I confess that initially I thought it might be worthwhile trying to boost circulation but now I’m having second thoughts. For the most part my business interests lie in a different field.’ He paused and looked across at her. ‘At the present time I’m in negotiation to sell off the magazine to someone else. Negotiations have reached a very delicate stage. He wants the magazine but he’s not prepared to meet my price or terms, and I’m not prepared to sell until he does. Most importantly I want to ensure security for all the staff on the magazine before I sign anything, and that’s proving something of a sticking point.
‘My prospective purchaser is an American, I met him and his wife last year while I was in the States—although she wasn’t his wife then.’
Something in the way he said it alerted Emma, unable to keep silent she asked waspishly, ‘What was she then—your girlfriend?’
‘Something like that… Let’s just say we were… good friends. However, Giles was prepared to offer marriage and I wasn’t, so Bianca married him.’
He glanced down at the table and frowned. ‘Giles is an extremely jealous husband… very much older than Bianca too. It appears that she is very keen to resume the relationship we once had… I, on the other hand feel that it would be extremely unwise to do so, especially if I want to exact the best possible terms I can from Giles.’
‘Yes indeed,’ Emma agreed sardonically. ‘I can quite see that he wouldn’t be inclined to be particularly generous if he found out that you’d been having an affair with his wife, but I can’t see what all this has to do with me?’
‘Can’t you?’ He smiled wolfishly at her, ‘Then perhaps I’d better explain. Bianca is threatening to blackmail me into resuming our relationship by revealing to Giles that we were once lovers. If he knows that he will immediately assume that I still want her. He’s that sort of man, and almost obsessed with Bianca to the extent that in his eyes shè can do no wrong, so I thought I might try a little blackmail myself…’
Emma didn’t know what he meant, but cold fingers touched her skin as she looked into his eyes.
‘If I promise not to publish those photographs of you Emma, would you agree to pose as my fiancée for the duration of their visit?’
Her first instinctive question of ‘but why ask me…?’ was answered immediately by her own senses, a cynical smile curving her mouth as she answered herself. ‘But of course… with me you won’t have the additional worry of being blackmailed into a genuine marriage by your fake fiancée.’
‘Very astute,’ Drake agreed. ‘That was something that taxed my mind when I first decided a fiancée was what I needed to keep Bianca at bay and Giles…’
‘Unsuspicious?’ Emma supplied contemptuously. ‘I won’t do it Drake,’ she told him, making to get up, but he grasped her wrist as she did so and forced her to regain her seat. ‘I thought you might say that,’ he drawled easily, ‘but my dear have you really thought the whole thing through? Already your family and friends know you’re involved with me. Once those photographs are published they’ll assume that we’ve been lovers and that I’ve dumped you. This way at least you can have the satisfaction of ridding yourself of me when the charade is over. Besides, I can hardly believe that either your father or your new brother-in-law would relish the thought of you appearing in…’
He had her in a corner and he knew it Emma thought bitterly. She could see no way out. This man was a master when it came to manipulating people. But he couldn’t succeed in controlling his ex-mistress, she thought, so he wasn’t completely invulnerable.
‘Well?’
‘I don’t have much choice do I?’ Emma said tautly. It would be a relief to know that those photographs of her would never be published. Could she trust him in that regard? Instinct told her that she could. They were of scant use to him now and would be of even less value once he had sold the magazine. She could hardly think that this Giles whoever he was would be remotely interested in half a dozen or so shots of some English girl no one had ever heard of.
‘Not really.’ His smile was amused and that amusement stung Emma’s pride.
Lifting her head challengingly she said, ‘There is just one thing though—won’t your… friend… think it strange that you’re engaged to me?’
When he looked blank, she added acidly, ‘After all I’m scarcely up to your usual high standard of glamour… and of course, as you remarked yourself earlier, I am still a virgin.’
As she watched the skin tighten over his facial bones Emma knew she had made a dangerous mistake.
‘Luckily for you Bianca isn’t all that astute where her own sex is concerned. She sees what she wants to see. Don’t try needling me Emma,’ he warned her drily as the waiter brought their bill, ‘you might not like the results.’
CHAPTER FIVE
ONCE he had set his mind on a course, Drake obviously pursued it with a single mindedness that confirmed his adherence to discipline Emma reflected, staring bleakly at the elegant, solitaire diamond ring glittering on her left hand. He had arrived with it this morning, having spoken to her on the telephone the previous evening to warn her of his arrival.
It was just over a week since the wedding and she hadn’t seen him once during that period although he had rung her every day. Emma had known that her father was waiting for her to say something; to mention Drake’s presence in her life, and at last, last night knowing it could not be put off any longer she had gone to him and told him that she and Drake were getting engaged.
‘I didn’t want to say anything before because I didn’t want to steal Camilla’s thunder,’ she had told him awkwardly, hating the lie and the man who had made it necessary.
A little to her surprise her father had accepted her explanation quite easily. ‘You won’t want a long engagement I don’t expect, and to judge from what I’ve seen of him, neither will your young man. You always did have a good deal more fire beneath the surface than most people give you credit for, Emma,’ he had added, further surprising her and making her tense in remembered shock as she recalled how her body had leapt with sexual excitement when Drake touched her.
She could only pray that their engagement was of short duration. She wished she could appear totally indifferent to him, because she sensed that her rage against her response to him amused him, and she would not put it past him to deliberately encourage it because he was amused by her reaction. Now she knew how a wild animal felt when it was caught in a trap she reflected, pretending she was studying the awesome glitter of her ring, while in reality what she was doing was avoiding the speculative curiosity in Drake’s eyes.
He had arrived just under an hour ago, and with an old fashioned courtesy she thought both unnecessary and overdone in the circumstances, had insisted on speaking priva
tely with her father.
When they had emerged from his study both men had been laughing. Her father wouldn’t laugh if he knew the truth Emma thought angrily, but then neither would he automatically blame Drake—that wasn’t his way. He would have to analyse and consider the situation before apportioning blame. She sighed fretfully, wishing for once she might have a less objective and more emotional parent. A lot of people thought she was like him, coolly weighing the pros and cons of a situation before acting, but in reality she was not. She had only learned through bitter mistakes to force herself to do so, to take the long cool view of things before reacting.
For the first time in years Emma turned her keen intelligence inwards on herself and was mildly shocked to discover how long she’d been playing a part; been adopting a character that wasn’t really hers… or at least was only in part hers. In two short interviews Drake Harwood had stripped away far too much of that adopted character, to reveal the passionate intense woman who hid behind it, and Emma suddenly felt thoroughly frightened by that discovery.
It was the searching intensity of his glance, rather than his words that brought her out of her reverie, but she stood stock still, tense with the shock of knowing he was about to deliver another blow as she heard him saying. ‘Yes… it is rather a nuisance. I’d have preferred them to come over here, but he’s insisting that I go there, and since he’s the piper in this case I’m afraid I’ll have to pay the tune. We’ll only be gone a fortnight or so though…’
Gone? Gone where? He must have read the question in her eyes before she could voice it, because he turned towards her and said mildly, ‘I was just telling your father, darling, that we won’t have time for an engagement celebration because we have to leave for New York at the end of the week. Giles has too many business commitments to leave the States right now and Bianca has very kindly suggested that we can stay with them for the duration of our visit…’
Caution warned Emma to wait until they were alone to question him. She went through the ritual of having a celebratory drink with her father and Drake in an angry state of tension. Why had Drake changed his plans, and why hadn’t he consulted her first?
‘If you’ll excuse us, I’d like to take my new fiancée out to lunch,’ Drake said at length, standing up. Emma rose automatically herself, flinching with barely concealed temper as Drake put out a hand to touch her arm, very much the solicitous fiancé. She hated him touching her, she boiled inwardly, she hated this deceit she had been forced to enter into… she… red hot darts of awareness arrowed along her nervous system from the point of contact with his hand. She badly wanted to pull away, but with her father looking on it was impossible.
The lunch date had been arranged before Drake arrived, to give them an opportunity or so Emma had thought to finalise the arrangements for Giles and Bianca’s arrival. She had already half prepared her father for her absence.
A realist and comparatively broad-minded, she knew he would make no objection from a moral point of view, but there was still the smooth running of the parish and the vicarage to consider and with this in mind Emma had engaged Mrs Johnson, who came in occasionally to help them out, on a full-time basis.
Emma got into Drake’s car in a stony, angry silence, not speaking, not wanting to speak until she could trust herself not to let her rage boil over and swamp her.
When she felt she had some measure of self-control she turned to him and said coolly. ‘What’s all this about our going to New York?’
‘Bianca’s decision,’ Drake told her tersely. ‘So don’t go thinking it’s some clever plan of mine. I suppose I ought to have expected it. Bianca’s a master tactician and knows as well as I do the advantage of being on one’s home ground so to speak. I’ll warn you now she’ll try everything she can to cause trouble between us.’
‘She knows about our engagement then?’ Emma spoke cynically. ‘What a brave man you are Drake, hiding behind a woman’s skirts.’
‘On the contrary,’ he told her drily, ‘I prefer to consider it as fighting fire with fire. Besides, Bianca on her own I can handle…’
‘By doing what? Going to bed with her? But of course you can’t do that with her husband around and likely to find out can you?’
‘Snappy this morning aren’t we?’ he commented laconically. ‘You know you’re a better actress than I thought, for a moment you almost managed to inject a tinge of jealousy into your voice. Keep that up and Bianca will be in no doubt as to the reality of our relationship.’
For a moment Emma was too furious to respond. She had been jealous she realised on a wave of self-contempt, bitterly, hotly jealous; imagining him making love to the unknown Bianca.
‘All she has to do is to tell her husband that you and she were once lovers,’ Emma reminded him.
‘She won’t do that… Giles is a very wealthy man. No, what Bianca wants is the sense of power that being able to force me to do what she wants gives her. A lot of women are like that although they cloak their greed for power in other emotions… usually fake. Mind you, I suspect that Bianca hasn’t given up completely.’
‘How very flattering for you,’ Emma commented waspishly. ‘What am I supposed to do about it? Lie outside your bedroom door like a devoted guard?’
‘Would you?’ A wicked grin slashed across his face, his eyes sparkling deeply green as he glanced at her. ‘Of course there is an even better way you could protect me…’
Watching her frown, he said softly, ‘You could share my bed.’ Her body tensed automatically and obviously, and Drake’s derisive laughter grated across sensitive nerves. ‘Don’t worry my little virgin. I’m not about to demand the ultimate sacrifice.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ Emma snapped back, through closed teeth. ‘Because you aren’t about to get it.’
Drake’s rich chuckle worried her, but she strove to hide her anxiety from him. It sounded so lighthearted… and… and self-confident, she thought anxiously, almost as though he knew quite well just how easy it would be for her to abandon the moral code she had lived her life by and slake herself with almost feverish greed on the purely physical pleasure his body could offer hers. And that’s all it was; simply a physical need that he brought to life inside her. Deep, strong and very intense, but completely without any finer feelings or emotions to temper it.
Perhaps that was why it was so strong, Emma pondered inwardly; perhaps like a weed it needed no nourishment to grow, as love and caring did. She was shaken by the thought, shaken and cautious, so much so that she kept quiet during their meal, speaking only in monosyllables until Drake raised his eyebrows and said mockingly, ‘What’s the matter? Surely you aren’t frightened?’
That depended, Emma thought bitterly to herself. Certainly she was frightened of the feelings he aroused inside her, what sane person would not be?
‘Of Bianca or of you?’ she asked coolly. ‘I’m not a fool Drake. Of course I’m frightened. Most people are when they’re confronted by ruthlessness so intense and self-motivated that it smashes everything in its path. I should have thought you and Bianca would be well suited. So far everything you’ve told me about her makes me think she’s possibly the only woman alive who’d be a match for you.’
‘You think so?’ The smile he gave her sent prickles of awareness shivering along her spine. ‘Well there are matches and matches. However, when the time comes for me to settle down it won’t be with a woman of Bianca’s calibre. By the way,’ he added briskly, ‘before we leave I want you to come and spend a couple of days in London. I’ve booked you into the Inn on the Park. You’ll need some new clothes… a new hair-do perhaps, and…’
The way he was studying her made Emma itch to hit him. ‘I’m sorry if my looks, my clothes and my hair, don’t meet your exacting standards,’ she told him seethingly, ‘but they suit me, and I won’t change them and furthermore if they don’t suit you then I suggest you go and look somewhere else for your bogus fiancée.’
‘Temper, temper.’ His voice was mild, but h
is eyes so totally amused that Emma longed to throw something at him. ‘I didn’t say they didn’t suit me,’ he told her eyeing her in a way that made her skin tense over her bones and her muscles ache. ‘Personally I can’t think of any way I’d rather see you than without any clothes at all and all that glorious red hair spread out around you on my pillow… but it was you I was thinking of. New clothes, a new hairstyle, they all help to give a woman confidence—armour if you like…’
‘And I’m going to need it against Bianca aren’t I?’ Emma murmured, seeing the sense of his words, and too anxious to forget the images his earlier ones had conjured up to take him too much to task. There had been a photograph very like the mental picture he had just painted of her among the batch Pat had taken and her skin crawled in revulsion as she thought about him looking at it… studying her naked body…
‘No, I didn’t,’ he said calmly breaking into her thoughts. For a moment Emma simply looked blankly at him. ‘I didn’t look at the proofs Pat sent to me. They’re locked in my safe in the same envelope they came to me in.’
‘Insurance against my good behaviour,’ Emma said bitterly, not wanting him to see how relieved she was. ‘I’m surprised you don’t know each one off by heart.’
It was an inflammatory thing to say, and it was born of her own aching humiliation that they had been taken at all.
‘I’m no voyeur, Emma,’ he told her curtly, ‘we both know that if I wanted to see your naked body, it would be relatively easy for me to see—and touch—the real thing. Stop taking what happened so personally. It wasn’t. At that time I was hoping to boost the magazine’s circulation. You arrived opportunely—for me, and had you taken that job I should have published the photographs perhaps three or four months from now, when your face was known, and who knows I might have found the magazine profitable enough to retain. As it is…’ he shrugged and added warningly, ‘Don’t push me too hard. Some allowances I am prepared to make, but you fight every inch of the way don’t you?’