‘As crystal,’ he drawled unconcernedly.
‘Good,’ she nodded. ‘Because I would also like to add that you have hired my services as a portrait painter, nothing else. And if you can’t, or won’t, accept that, then I suggest you get yourself someone else for the job.’
He gave an exaggerated sigh of relief that her tirade was over. ‘You can really let fly when you want to, can’t you,’ he mused, his arms folded in front of his powerful chest.
‘When I have to,’ she corrected pointedly, hating his condescending attitude to her anger.
He quirked dark brows over mocking eyes. ‘And with me you have to?’
‘With you I’m going to,’ she told him firmly. ‘I want to make it clear once and for all that I’m not interested in being one of your little diversions. I value myself a lot higher than some rich, bored man’s mistress for a few weeks.’
‘My wealth I can’t deny,’ he shrugged. ‘But what makes you think I’m bored?’
‘What makes you think you’re not?’ she instantly returned.
For the first time since she had ever met him he gave a genuinely amused smile. ‘You’re very astute, Danielle,’ he drawled dryly. ‘I am bored. I have competent men to run my businesses for me, that leaves me to the enjoyment of life.’
‘Then it’s a pity you don’t actually enjoy it,’ she told him waspishly. ‘And leave me alone.’
‘Danielle—’
‘I’m ready to leave now, Nick,’ Audra spoke softly from behind them. ‘If you are,’ she added brittly, seeming aware of the tension between them.
‘Could you come back next Saturday at the same time?’ Danielle requested briskly.
The other woman gave her a look of glittering dislike. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
It was a warning, Danielle knew that, but she shrugged it off. ‘I believe all our business together is now concluded, Mr Andracas,’ she met his steely gaze steadily. ‘All that remains is for me to send you the bill when I’ve completed my work.’
The hardness in his eyes told her that he knew exactly what she was saying—and that he didn’t like it one little bit. ‘Very well, Miss Smith,’ he acquiesed to her unspoken desire not to see him again. ‘Goodbye!’ he rasped angrily.
She felt drained once she was alone, hadn’t missed the triumphant gleam in Audra McDonald’s eyes when Nick showed his fury with her. Danielle had a feeling the other woman hadn’t believed her non-interest in Nick earlier. Well there could be no doubt that she believed her now!
And so, hopefully, did Nick Andracas. She knew she would only be able to take so much from him, and then she would break under the strain. And if that happened she had no idea what she might do. So far she had managed to keep her hate to a cold dislike, if the coldness ever left her she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to control the hate.
* * *
‘Mmm, I needed that,’ Danielle drank some of her wine, at once feeling a soothing glow.
‘Rough day?’ Lewis sympathised, the two of them having a quiet dinner together at a popular club and restaurant.
‘Rough week,’ she grimaced, having accepted Lewis’s invitation eagerly this morning when he telephoned, glad to get out for a few hours.
‘It’s only Tuesday,’ he teased.
‘Is it?’ she sighed. ‘It seems like this week has lasted for ever.’ Not hearing from Nick Andracas was worse than his constant telephone calls. It was like waiting for the axe to fall.
‘Some weeks are like that,’ he shrugged. ‘How is the beautiful Audra’s portrait coming along?’
‘Slowly,’ she admitted heavily. ‘She isn’t as easy a subject as you would think.’
‘I warned you she can be difficult. Changed your mind about the fee?’ he mocked.
She shook her head, having had this conversation with him once before. ‘It isn’t hard that way,’ she assured him. ‘Admittedly she isn’t the easiest of people to get along with, but that isn’t what makes this difficult. If I paint her as I see her then she isn’t going to like it.’
‘Flatter her,’ Lewis advised with his usual eye for business first, art later.
‘Then she may be unrecognisable,’ Danielle pulled a face.
He laughed softly at her dilemma. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a compromise that will satisfy everyone.’
She liked his confidence in her capabilities, but she wasn’t altogether sure it was true this time; the portrait was proving to be as difficult to do as she had predicted to herself that it would.
She ran a hand across her nape as she felt a prickly sensation, unconsciously massaging the spot. But the sensation continued, so much so that she was beginning to feel very uncomfortable, wondering if she had been bitten by something.
‘Talk of the devil,’ Lewis muttered.
‘Hm?’
He nodded across the room from them. ‘Andracas and Miss McDonald,’ he murmured.
She turned sharply to find Nick and Audra seated a short distance away from them, the reason for the prickly sensation at her nape obvious now as she saw the narrowed grey eyes levelled on her. She looked away abruptly, realising she was still being stared at, still able to feel his gaze on her. The first time she had been out for weeks, the first time she had ever been out with Lewis on a social level, and this had to happen! She was beginning to get the feeling fate had suddenly turned against her.
‘What bad luck,’ Lewis obviously felt the same way. ‘I suppose we’ll have to ask them to join us.’
‘Why?’ she asked sharply.
He looked puzzled by the question, shrugging lightly. ‘It’s only polite—’
‘I don’t see why,’ she snapped. ‘They haven’t asked us to join them!’
‘Danielle—’
‘Well, have they?’ she prompted.
‘They only came in a few minutes ago,’ he explained softly.
She sighed. ‘I’d rather not eat with them, if you don’t mind.’
‘But I can’t just pretend they aren’t there.’ He obviously did mind!
‘Lewis,’ her voice was throatily soft. ‘I thought you wanted to be alone with me tonight?’
He flushed. ‘I do—’
‘Then let’s just act as if we haven’t seen them, hm?’ she touched his hand across the table.
‘But I can see them as clearly as—’
‘No, you can’t, Lewis,’ she persuaded, giving him a dazzling smile.
‘I—I can’t?’ he was mesmerised by the warmth of her smile.
‘No—’
‘Good evening, Danielle, Vaughn,’ a familiar gravelly sounding voice greeted them. ‘Audra and I wondered if you would care to join us for dinner?’
Danielle snatched her hand away from Lewis’s as if he had burnt her, looking up reluctantly at the man who now stood beside their table, her stomach giving a sickening lurch at how similar he looked in the black evening suit and snowy white shirt to the man she had first seen seven years ago. It was almost unnatural, no time seeming to have passed at all.
His eyes narrowed at how pale she had suddenly become. ‘Did I startle you?’ he asked in a puzzled voice, as if he wasn’t used to having this effect on women.
‘No more than usual,’ she answered abruptly, ‘and as you can see, Lewis and I have already started our meal,’ she refused his invitation before Lewis could accept, knowing she had to stay away from him tonight, that she was feeling too vulnerable at the moment to deal with him with her usual coolness.
‘Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind if the two of us joined you,’ he returned smoothly.
‘I—’
‘Please do,’ Lewis cut in firmly as she would have refused once again. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded in a fierce whisper as Nick Andracas crossed the room to bring Audra McDonald over to their table.
‘It must be obvious,’ she glared at him. ‘I didn’t want them to join us!’
‘Oh it was obvious, all right,’ he snapped impatiently. ‘To Andracas too!’
Her mouth twisted. ‘I’m sure he’s enjoying the fact that he got his way in spite of that!’
‘Danielle, he’s a client—’
‘I’m well aware of what he is, Lewis,’ she told him tautly. ‘And his being a client is the least important of them.’
He looked puzzled by her unusual behaviour, although he couldn’t question her further as the other couple joined them, standing up politely until they were seated.
From what Danielle could gather from Audra’s stilted manner as they ate dinner the other woman was no more eager for the foursome than she was. Only Nick seemed perfectly at ease with the arrangement, Lewis talking incessantly to try and cover the obvious silence of the two women.
Although both women declined Nick’s suggestion that they all go upstairs and dance they somehow found themselves in the smoky atmosphere of the nightclub, a table for four miraculously secured for them, despite the fact that the place was crowded.
‘Would you care to dance, Danielle?’
Her heart sank at the request she had known was coming, the last thing she wanted was to be in Nick’s arms again, for any reason. ‘I think it’s a little soon after I’ve eaten,’ she refused.
‘Perhaps later,’ he nodded, the mockery in his eyes telling her that he knew it was just an excuse, that he knew she didn’t want to dance with him, the fact that she had hardly eaten anything at all telling him she was merely prevaricating.
‘Perhaps,’ she agreed, both of them knowing that it would take a miracle for her to dance with him, or something equally as effective—and Nick Andracas was certainly that. After she had refused to dance with him the third time she could see Lewis was becoming really uncomfortable with the situation, asking Audra to dance as a diversion. With a certain amount of reluctance for leaving the two of them alone together Audra followed Lewis out on to the dance floor.
Nick moved his chair closer to Danielle’s, his leg partially touching hers under the table. ‘Alone at last,’ he mocked her desire to have nothing to do with him.
She looked at him uninterestedly. ‘It would seem so,’ she acknowledged without enthusiasm.
‘You aren’t going to excuse yourself to the powder-room, or something equally boring?’
She flushed at his mockery. ‘No,’ she answered tautly.
‘But you still don’t want to dance?’
‘No,’ she said again.
‘You’re consistent, I’ll say that for you. Or is it just that you prefer not to dance with anyone but Vaughn?’ he leant back in his chair, perfectly relaxed, smoke swirling up to the ceiling from the cigar he held in his right hand.
‘Lewis?’ her brows rose questioningly. ‘But I haven’t danced with him either.’
‘You’re having dinner with him.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he your lover?’
She was taken aback at the question, although she didn’t show it, her expression as composed as usual. ‘What if he is?’ she asked coldly.
‘I—’
‘Goodness, it’s hot out there,’ Audra complained as she and Lewis returned to the table before the music had ended.
Nick stood up abruptly, pulling Danielle with him out on to the dance floor, moulding her firmly to his body as they barely moved in time to the music.
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ she told him between stiff lips, her hands on his chest trying to keep them apart—and failing miserably.
‘I hadn’t finished talking to you,’ he told her with his usual arrogance. ‘Is Vaughn your lover?’
‘I don’t have to answer that,’ she averted her face from his.
‘Yes, you do,’ he ground out. ‘You lied to me, and no woman does that!’
Suddenly she was free of him, but they were no longer in the crowded club, Nick having somehow manoeuvred it so that they were outside on the darkened roof garden, strategically placed floodlights on the lush green plants the only illumination out there.
‘I want to go back inside—’
‘No!’ his eyes glittered dangerously. ‘You told me you didn’t have a lover—’
‘I don’t!’
‘I don’t believe you! Women are liars at birth,’ he bit out harshly, his hands firm on her arms as he pulled her closer to him.
‘Why would I need to lie?’ she demanded disgustedly. ‘To do that I would have to be interested in you enough to want to lie, and I’m not.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘No,’ she gasped her disbelief that he could still doubt it.
‘Don’t you know that uninterest is the surest way to induce interest?’ he derided.
‘Not you too!’
His eyes narrowed to steely slits. ‘Someone else accused you of the same duplicity?’
‘Your mistress!’
His mouth twisted without humour. ‘Audra is well aware of the wiles of her own sex.’
Danielle’s eyes flashed furiously, her control slipping fast. ‘Except that this is no wile, and I have no interest in what either you or Miss McDonald think of me. Now let go of me!’ she ordered through gritted teeth.
His head went back arrogantly. ‘I’ll let you go when I’m good and ready. And I’m not ready.’ His head swooped and he took her lips in a savage kiss, ravaging her with little regard for the way she cringed away from him.
‘Let go!’
‘Like hell!’ he bit out fiercely.
As he continued to kiss her, his tongue deeply plundering her mouth, Danielle was left with no will of her own, was drawn into Nick’s desires for the second time in her life. And this time she hated every moment of it, felt a cold fury passing through her. She wouldn’t be treated like just another woman he felt he could bed, she wouldn’t!
She had tried to treat him like any other client, had intended being polite to him if nothing else, but he had made that impossible from the first, was intent now on punishing her for the fact that she didn’t want him as he wanted her. But she had been punished enough in the past by this man, wasn’t prepared to accept his cold-blooded arrogance for a second time.
As she wrenched away from him and saw the cold cruelty in his face, his satisfaction at forcing her to his will, she knew she had one weapon against him. After seven long years it was time to give him back his two hundred pounds—and the humiliation that had gone with earning it!
CHAPTER THREE
‘WHERE did you two disappear to?’ Lewis frowned in the darkness. ‘Miss McDonald was furious!’
Danielle turned to look at him, Lewis driving her home from the club, the two of them leaving soon after she and Nick had returned to the table. ‘I felt like some fresh air,’ she invented. ‘Miss McDonald was right, it was hot once you started dancing.’
He pulled a face. ‘What you and Andracas were doing didn’t look much like dancing to me!’
‘Can you wonder I was hot?’ she teased.
‘Danielle—’
‘Please, Lewis,’ she sighed. ‘I can do without you too.’
‘What do you mean?’ he raised dark blond brows.
‘It’s enough that Nick Andracas feels jealous of you, you don’t have to feel the same way about him!’
Lewis frowned. ‘Are you saying Andracas is attracted to you?’ he sounded worried.
She repressed a shiver, still remembering the fury she had felt at being kissed against her will. ‘Yes,’ she answered flatly, her lack of enthusiasm obvious.
‘But what about Miss McDonald?’
‘She’s his mistress.’
‘But—I think this is all a little sophisticated for me,’ Lewis looked uncomfortable.
‘You’re wrong, Lewis,’ she told him sharply. ‘It isn’t sophisticated at all, it’s very basic.’
He tried to look a little more blase about the situation. ‘Has he told you he’s attracted to you?’
‘Incessantly!’
‘Then why did he look so angry when you both returned from the garden?’
Nick hadn’t just been
angry, he had been furious, making no secret of the fact, suggesting he and Audra leave immediately. After he had kissed her so contemptuously Danielle had made it clear to him that if he ever attempted to do it again she would see to it personally that some injury befell him.
She may have decided his despicable behaviour deserved retaliation this time, but she wasn’t going to make any of this easy for him. She had been an easy conquest for him once before, she wasn’t about to be so again, intended him to feel the humiliation of being bought when the time came.
‘Use your imagination, Lewis,’ she mocked him now.
His eyes widened. ‘You really turned him down?’ He didn’t sound as if that were possible.
‘Well of course I did,’ she taunted his dismay. ‘Have you forgotten I’m painting his mistress?’
‘No. But—’
‘Really, Lewis,’ she lightly mocked. ‘I’m shocked at this mercenary streak in you.’
He looked uncomfortable at the jibe. ‘I just wouldn’t like to upset an important client like him.’
‘Did you hear him say anything about being upset?’
‘No. …’
‘Then don’t worry so much,’ she teased him. ‘I can handle Mr Andracas.’
‘I hope so.’ But he didn’t look very convinced by her confidence.
Danielle was very sure of that confidence, knew exactly what she was doing, and why.
She left her answering machine on the next day, not going to be available to Nick if he should happen to call. He didn’t. She wasn’t too surprised, knew that his will was as strong if not stronger than her own. But she also knew how determined he could be, that he didn’t like to lose at anything he tried to do. He would approach her again, she felt sure of it.
Thursday turned out to be as unproductive where he was concerned, but still she didn’t worry. This was a battle of wills, and after seven years of waiting for a revenge that had lain dormant in her until the moment he tried to take her for a fool a second time she felt she would be the victor in this particular battle. She had patience on her side for one thing, something Nick had shown he had little of.
A Past Revenge Page 4