by Susan Napier
Duncan had half risen in his seat as he spoke and Kalera let out an inward sigh of relief at the prospect of his departure, but instead of leaving he bent over to heft the bottle from the silver ice-bucket standing on the other side of the table. His mouth kicked up as he read the French label.
‘As usual, only the best will do, huh, Steve? Shall I get the waiter to bring another champagne glass so that I can toast your good luck? Better still, let me buy you another bottle to show there’s no hard feelings. Give those gossipy old trouts out there a disappointment!’
He sat down again and made a small flourish with his fingers which must have been a pre-arranged signal, for a wine steward immediately came trotting up with a chilled bottle of the same vintage and a third crystal flute.
If his final comment was meant to be a threat, then it worked beautifully to his advantage. Stephen’s quick glance around the room told Kalera that, much as he would have liked to reject the offer coldly, he was a hostage to his own good manners. He wasn’t going to allow the rest of her evening to be spoiled by allowing them to become embroiled in an unpleasant scene.
They watched as the last of the champagne from the old bottle was poured into Duncan’s glass and the new one deftly opened.
‘To Kalera…’ said the brazen interloper, singing his glass softly against hers and looking deep into the mysterious grey depths of her eyes. ‘May you get everything you desire in this world. And to Steve—’ He turned, and this time the clash of crystal sounded out like the ring of swords. ‘May you get everything you so richly deserve.’
Stephen suddenly seemed impervious to insult, his smile redolent with triumph as he inclined his head.
‘Thank you, Duncan. With Kalera as my wife I’m sure I will,’ he said smoothly. ‘I won’t apologise for stealing her away from you because I don’t think you appreciated what a quiet gem you had in your possession until she told you she was leaving Labyrinth…for me. You took it for granted that working for the great Duncan Royal must be the most important thing in her life. Well, now you know that it’s not—so don’t think you can buy her back with a bottle of champagne and a few glib compliments because you can’t. She isn’t for sale!’
Kalera’s hands fluttered in silent protest, aghast at Stephen’s unnecessary defence of her integrity. If he was trying to avoid a scene he was definitely going the wrong way about it. Didn’t he realise that telling Duncan he couldn’t do something was the equivalent of throwing down a gauntlet?
But, instead of responding to the irresistible challenge, Duncan’s eyes flickered down, concealing his expression under a thick screen of sable lashes.
‘Speaking of gems, I see you’re wearing your brand-new engagement ring, Kalera,’ was his meek reply. ‘May I see?’
She lifted her hand, surprised to find it was clenched into an involuntary fist, and he mimed a silent whistle at the sight of the large diamond solitaire.
‘That’s quite a rock. A lot bigger than the one Harry gave you, but since love’s not measured by the carat I guess that doesn’t mean much, does it?’
Stephen was incensed. ‘That’s an incredibly tasteless and vulgar remark!’
Duncan appeared so remorseful that Kalera knew it was a sham and was horrified by a brief and wholly inappropriate urge to giggle. ‘I’m sorry, I know comparisons are odious. It’s just that—well, until today Kalera was still wearing Harry’s ring and I have difficulty imagining her with another man.’ He shook his head reminiscently. ‘They were so well matched. I really liked Harry. You never met him, Steve, but he was an all-round nice guy. An incredibly tough act to follow.’ He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.
At last!
‘Forgive me, Kalera,’ he said, his politeness forcing her to look up into his unconvincingly humble face. ‘I’m compounding my sins, aren’t I? I didn’t mean to upset you by summoning up memories of your first husband, tonight of all nights…’
Liar! He meant to do whatever it took to wreck the romantic mood of their evening. But his plan had backfired as far as Kalera was concerned, because she knew that Harry would have wanted her to be happy.
So she smiled serenely and murmured that of course she wasn’t upset, only to have Duncan give her another lesson in the subtle art of brinkmanship.
‘As usual you shame me with your graciousness. But I won’t accept that I’m forgiven until you honour me with at least one dance before I go.’ He indicated the small, intimate dance-floor occupied by several couples barely moving to the smoochy blues of a small jazz band. ‘I doubt that I’ll be invited to your wedding so this might be my only chance to dance with the blushing bride. You don’t mind, do you, old boy?’
Stephen patently did mind, but Duncan was already stooping to cup Kalera’s elbow, applying a secret pressure of his fingertips that made her jump to her feet with apparent alacrity, the nerves in her paralysed arm going crazy and tiny pinpoints of white light dancing dizzily in front of her eyes.
Before she could recover from the momentary disorientation, Duncan’s cunning grip shifted and she found herself propelled into irresistible motion with every appearance of eagerness, leaving Stephen floundering in startled disapproval.
As they moved away from the table Duncan turned his head and asked conversationally, ‘Have you told him yet?’
Aware that they weren’t fully out of earshot, Kalera stiffened her spine and voluntarily quickened her pace, missing the smirk that Duncan threw over his shoulder.
‘Told him what?’
‘About us.’
She could feel Stephen’s suspicious gaze boring into her back.
‘There’s nothing to tell!’ she denied vehemently.
‘No?’
‘No!’
They reached the edge of the dance-floor and Duncan swung her lightly into his arms.
‘You must lead an astonishingly eventful life if you think that crawling naked into a man’s bed and begging him to make love to you is “nothing”. Somehow I don’t think that Stephen would take the same liberal view. Don’t you think he has a right to know that, far from being unappreciative, I’m fully aware of each and every intimate facet of his quiet little gem?’
CHAPTER THREE
THE strength in Kalera’s legs melted away and if Duncan hadn’t had his arm anchored around her waist she would have sunk ignominiously to the ground. Her long fingernails dug into the soft velvet of his jacket, scrabbling for purchase as she stumbled along, knocking her slender knees against his long legs.
Anyone watching would think that she had never learned to dance, she thought feverishly. But she and Stephen had often danced together and if he was still watching them he would be wondering what on earth was going on. When she went back to the table he would ask what they had been talking about and if she didn’t want to create a terrible turmoil in their relationship she would have to lie…
‘Oh, God!’ She moaned, her head wilting towards a gold-embroidered lapel, her temples tightening at the mere thought of the complications that could ensue. An exotic scent teased her nostrils and she dimly recognised the cologne that the staff had given their boss the previous Christmas, and which she had been despatched to select and buy. She had thought the sharp, spicy fragrance with its lingering, sensual undertones might have been designed with Duncan in mind, and now it seemed even more potent, uniquely personalised by the natural musk of his skin.
Duncan’s hard palm pressed against her back, bracing the centre of her limp body against his hips as he guided her around the floor in a semblance of grace. His thighs pushed insistently against hers, nudging them into sluggish action, his leading hand tucked close to his shoulder, keeping her torso nestled against his chest. At six feet four he towered over her, but he was nevertheless surprisingly light on his feet.
‘Keep moving. You’re doing fine,’ he murmured encouragingly, his breath stirring the hair above her ear. ‘I won’t let you go…’
That was what she was afraid of!
/> ‘Why are you doing this?’ Her whispery groan trickled out from between pale lips.
‘What—dancing?’ said Duncan, deliberately misunderstanding her as he deftly side-stepped them past an elderly couple. ‘We danced together once before…three years ago, at that party you and Harry gave that first Christmas you worked for me, remember? You and Harry had just moved into a new flat and you invited all your new colleagues from Labyrinth to a housewarming. You didn’t expect the boss to turn up too, but I did, and when Harry was dancing with someone else I danced with you—out on the tiny balcony, under the stars, because it was so crowded inside…’
She recognised his technique, having witnessed it often enough in the office. Her head jerked up, away from the illusory comfort of his broad shoulder. ‘You’re trying to distract me,’ she accused, before she realised that perhaps she should be thanking him.
He grinned unrepentantly. ‘Is it working?’
‘No.’ But her feet were beginning to glide more smoothly as she reluctantly recalled the party in question.
She had felt flustered when Duncan had suddenly appeared at the party, alone, when everyone else had brought partners or dates, and she had felt even more uncomfortable during their dance when he had resisted her polite efforts at normal conversation. Having only worked for him for a few weeks, she had attributed his silent abstraction to boredom but now that she knew him well she recognised that he had probably been brooding over a bug in one of his programs, shutting down the rest of his faculties to concentrate his higher-brain function on the problem.
He had held her close that night, too, but so lightly that she hadn’t felt trapped or overly aware of the intense masculinity that nowadays she found almost impossible to ignore…
At the time she had also been astonished that Duncan and Harry had hit it off so instantly and so well. They were so radically different from each other…Harry placid and content—some people called him dull—grounded in his strong family values and blessedly ordinary in his dreams and ambitions; and Duncan, the emotional whirlwind, eternally restless and unsatisfied, living life with a greedy enthusiasm that verged on defiance and seemingly incapable of committing himself to any lasting relationship with a woman.
Although Harry had been eight years younger than Duncan, to Kalera he had seemed decades ahead of her boss in maturity. Yet the two men had seemed to connect in some way that she had never quite understood and even though they hadn’t seen each other very often they had maintained an easy friendship from which she was excluded, since it largely consisted of Harry trying to teach Duncan how to play golf, a game to which Kalera privately considered her boss was temperamentally unsuited, although as usual he had refused to admit defeat and the intermittent lessons had continued right up until Harry’s death.
‘That party was the first time I held you in my arms,’ Duncan continued, and Kalera suddenly became ultra-conscious of the physical intimacy of their conversation, the way his thigh was sliding between hers as he pivoted their swaying bodies, his solid hips rocking rhythmically against her pelvis. ‘And it was all very chaste and innocent, thanks to the fact you were a very married woman, but the last time…’ He looked down at her, his eyes sultry with secrets, his voice dropping to a throaty purr. ‘Eighteen months ago…now, that wasn’t innocent at all…’
‘And we both agreed that neither of us would ever mention it again!’ she choked, hating the flush that swept across her skin as she averted her face from his. How dared he seek to taunt her with something she had tried so desperately to forget? ‘You promised that we’d pretend it had never happened—’
‘But that’s all it ever was, Kalera—a pretence. You and I both know it did happen. You can’t wipe out the truth simply by ignoring its existence. At the time, I’ll admit, it seemed to be the wisest course, but circumstances change…’
‘What circumstances?’ she asked, trying to pull together her shattered thoughts, furious with herself for letting him catch her off guard.
‘Well, now you’re no longer a vulnerable, grieving widow, wallowing in guilt over the fact that your sexuality survived your husband’s death. If sleeping with Stephen doesn’t make you feel like the adulteress, then I guess that lets me off the hook, too—’
Familiar as she was with his love of shock tactics, Kalera still gasped as her eyes whipped up to meet his, her husky voice as icy as her face was hot. ‘How dare you?’
Her veil of hair flared out as he spun her around in a flamboyant turn, drawing their clasped hands down against his chest to avoid bumping elbows with other dancers. ‘As a former lover who was made to feel as if I had scarred you for life, I feel I have a right to a certain interest,’ he said piously.
‘You and I were not lovers,’ she corrected him fiercely, her pupils shrinking into tiny pinpoints on ghostly grey backgrounds.
‘You’re arguing over semantics, Kalera.’ He smiled into her angry face. ‘We came as close as two people possibly can to making love…the only thing missing was the final act of penetration, which was somewhat superfluous in any case, since we’d both already had the supreme satisfaction of—’
‘Duncan!’ Kalera’s spluttered protest was accompanied by a frantic squeeze of his fingers and a furtive check of the faces in the immediate vicinity, but luckily no one appeared to have overheard his scandalous words.
‘I suppose if you hadn’t had an orgasm you wouldn’t have felt so guilty afterwards,’ he continued, in defiance of her quietly agonised attempts to hush him. ‘You could have persuaded yourself that you endured rather than enjoyed, that I had abused your trust and taken advantage of you, whereas it turned out that I was the one being used and abused.’
Somehow she had to stop him from saying those awful, awful things out loud. ‘I wasn’t using you—’
‘Not consciously, I’ll allow you that, but it seems highly convenient that you didn’t decide that what we were doing was wrong until after you had everything that you wanted from me. I wonder, would your new lover have been as gracious in the same circumstances?’
‘He’s not my—’ She snapped her teeth shut, appalled at what had almost slipped out.
Navy eyes gleamed like polished silk. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, his voice soft with an infuriating lilt of amused triumph. ‘You’ve agreed to marry the man and you don’t even know what he’s like in bed? I would have thought Golden Boy would have been anxious to dazzle you with his prowess—’
‘Unlike you, Stephen doesn’t happen to think that sex is all there is to a relationship!’ Kalera tried to quell him with a haughty glare and instead found herself captive to a lambent fire smouldering in his gaze.
‘Not all—but certainly a large part. You can have lust without love but I don’t think a healthy love can exist without a spark of elemental lust and you two don’t exactly light up the room with each other,’ he murmured. ‘Although I suppose if you’re marrying for practical reasons rather than love…’
He was fishing and she knew it, but she couldn’t help snapping, ‘Of course Stephen and I love each other!’
‘Do you?’ Duncan’s scepticism was like sandpaper on her nerves.
‘I have been in love before,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I do know what it’s like!’
His face seemed to go taut, his eyes narrowing. ‘Are you saying that Prior makes you feel the way that Harry did?’
His incredulity gave Kalera the uneasy feeling that she was being backed into a corner she couldn’t see. ‘Yes—no—’ She sounded wishy-washy even to her own ears. ‘It’s totally different—you wouldn’t understand.’
He was not to be so easily dismissed. ‘Try me.’
The harshly pitched invitation seemed redolent with deeper meaning. ‘I have no intention of discussing it with you—’
‘Why? Because Golden Boy wouldn’t like it?’ he jeered. ‘Does he have you so thoroughly under his thumb already, Kalera?’
‘No—because I value my privacy,’ she corrected him. ‘You have
no right, whatever was—or was not—between us in the past, to try and manipulate me into confiding in you. I’ve had enough of that kind of thing in my life.’ The last tumbled out as something of an afterthought as she looked for their table, trying to catch a reassuring glimpse of Stephen waiting there for her, but even on tiptoe she wasn’t tall enough to see over the other dancers blocking her view.
‘What do you mean—what confidences has Prior been trying to weasel out of you?’ Duncan’s dark brows steepened in suspicion, his hand tightening on her lower back. ‘I told you that he was operating a hidden agenda.’
Kalera’s reference had had nothing to do with Stephen but she was tired of having to defend herself.
‘If this is another lecture like this morning’s, about my being such an infatuated idiot that I wouldn’t notice the bug over the bed for the louse who was in it—you can stop right there!’
He didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Well, how was I to know that you’d refused to sleep with him? You implied that Boy Wonder had swept you off your feet—and into bed was the obvious assumption!’
‘Obvious to you, maybe, but thankfully Stephen is more refined. And anyway, I haven’t refused,’ she was unable to resist flinging at him. ‘It’s just that neither of us wants to rush things. We both happen to be enjoying the process of courtship…’
‘I guess sleeping with the enemy while you were still working for me would have been too much like another act of pseudo-adultery,’ he said slyly.
Kalera flicked her chin up. ‘That had absolutely nothing to do with it!’ she declared, wondering how he managed to home in on her doubts with such unerring skill.
‘Absolutely, huh?’ He tilted his head and the outrageous earring danced provocatively in her sight, reminding her how much Duncan loved to flout the conventions, and how successful he was at goading others to forget their polite inhibitions.