by Penny Jordan
The man was an idiot...a total blockhead. Star was still fuming half an hour later as she slipped between the cool, fresh sheets of her hotel bed. He had to be to have behaved the way he had.
She knew that he had been turned on, aroused, when they were sharing that passionate kiss; she had felt the unmistakable hardness of his body against hers.
When sleep eluded her she thumped the pillow angrily, refusing to admit that it wasn’t so much Kyle’s calm expression of his lack of any desire to take things to their natural sexual conclusion that was keeping her sleepless and furious as her own unwanted excess of desire.
How could she, a sophisticated, experienced woman in her mid-twenties, who had had no trouble at all in remaining celibate for over two years, suddenly want one man so much that her body ached as painfully as though she had succumbed to a virulent fever?
With a small, fierce groan she closed her eyes angrily, willing herself to go to sleep. She had a busy day ahead of her tomorrow, starting with an early-morning meeting with Brad, and that was what she ought to be concentrating on, not some pathetic apology of a man whose claim to some hypothetical high moral ground was simply a cloak to conceal his real lack of libido.
It was just over half an hour’s drive from the hotel downtown to the lakeside home that Kyle had bought when his distribution business had first become successful.
A little further up the lake and rather more isolated than Brad’s home, the clapboard house had virtually been on the point of falling down when Kyle had bought it.
He had done most of the restoration work himself, enjoying the challenge of not only practically rebuilding the old house but also scouring the neighbourhood for the replacement materials he had needed to do so.
It had amused him the previous summer to be approached by the features editor of a local prestige publication who wanted to run a piece on the house and the restoration work he had done on it.
It hadn’t just been his home that the features editor had shown an interest in either. She had been an attractive, vivacious brunette with a sensational sense of humour to match her equally sensational figure and Kyle had had to remind himself pretty sternly of the vow he had made to himself.
An ambitious college graduate, she had made it plain that all she was looking for was a summer romance before she headed for New York and fame. But he had done the New York thing and discovered that, after all, he was really a small-town guy at heart, with small-town values and beliefs and, if he was honest with himself, which he tried to be, happily content that that should be so.
Friends teased him about the fact that he lived alone in what was so obviously a family home, but he simply smiled good naturedly, laughing with them.
Only Kyle really knew how important his home was to him and how much he had felt in need of somewhere that was his own, of roots, of stability and continuity, after the confusion and pain of his early childhood.
Knowing that he had too much on his mind to sleep, he parked the car and walked down to the lake following the shoreline, his mouth quirking into a rueful smile as he recalled the angry insult that Star had flung at him outside her bedroom door.
If only she knew. Not since his turbulent teenage years had he experienced such an overwhelming surge of sexual desire.
Just standing there in the hotel corridor kissing her, he had already, in his imagination, removed her clothes, stroked the satiny softness of her skin, felt the soft feminine tremble of her body as he cupped the warm, full globes of her breasts, marvelling at the contrast between their creamy satin fullness and the dusky rose-brown of their areolae and the taut nipples that crested them, just as he had already felt the way she’d moved against him, her eyes closing, her body swaying and straining closer to his hands and mouth as he gave in to his desire to touch and taste the sweet femininity of her.
He knew exactly how it would be. How she would cry out in sharp pleasure as he kissed the quivering softness of her throat and then moved lower over the creamy slopes of her breasts and lower still until a taut nipple was his captive, drawn into the hot suckle of his hungry mouth, he equally its prisoner as he felt himself yield to the sensual power of his desire for her.
Yes, it had been a long time since a woman had affected him so intensely, so overwhelmingly, so sexually... and so emotionally.
There had been a moment after he had released her when he had looked into her eyes and seen beyond the outraged anger of her pride to the hurt bewilderment behind it and had had to fight with himself not to step forward again and take her in his arms and hold her there.
If he had done... If he had done, right now his body wouldn’t be aching so hard that he was practically grinding his teeth with the intensity of it. But there was more to being a man than satisfying a sex urge... Much more, even if Star Flower did not appear to think so.
One day he would... He had already turned round and started to retrace his steps, but now abruptly he stopped and stared out across the lake’s deceptively placid surface. One day he would what?
Right now he ought to be thinking of ways of calming the situation. Tomorrow morning, when Brad formally introduced him to Star and told her that they were going to be working together in Britain, she wasn’t going to like it; she wasn’t going to like it at all.
CHAPTER THREE
‘AND one vital aspect which I’d particularly want you to focus on in any campaign is the reliability not just of our systems but, even more importantly, of their installation and maintenance.’
Star raised one eyebrow as she swiftly made a brief note of what Brad was saying to her. She had done her homework very thoroughly indeed before coming over to the States to meet with him and that homework had included interviews with those who had already had Brad’s company’s air-conditioning systems installed. A complaint from many of them had concerned the delays and problems that they had experienced in getting the systems installed and running efficiently.
‘Is something wrong?’ Brad asked her thoughtfully now, seeing that raised eyebrow.
‘From what I’ve heard, there seems to be a problem with the installation and back-up system in Britain,’ Star told him unhesitatingly. ‘And, that being the case, I wouldn’t have thought it was a good idea to focus any PR campaign in that particular direction.’
‘We have had problems in that area,’ Brad agreed, ‘which is one of the reasons why I’m hiring you to come up with a campaign which will improve our image in that area...’ He paused as his intercom buzzed, excusing himself to Star whilst he answered it.
‘Yes, that’s fine, Jan,’ Star heard him saying warmly. ‘Tell him to come right through.
‘I am aware of the problems and I have taken steps to correct them,’ Brad continued to Star, ‘and for that reason I’ve asked a friend and business associate of mine, who owns a highly successful business over here, to help us out by going over to Britain and seeing what he can do to improve things over there, so far as the installation and service side of things is concerned...
‘I’ve actually asked him to call by this morning so that the two of you can meet. You’ll like him. He’s—’ Brad broke off as the door opened. ‘Ah, Kyle!’ Star heard him exclaim warmly. ‘Good... Come in and meet Star.’
‘Star...’ Brad began as Star fought to control her consternation.
But Kyle forestalled him, saying calmly, ‘Star...Ms Flower and I have already introduced ourselves to one another.’
They might have introduced themselves to one another, as he had put it, but he had certainly made no mention of who exactly he was, nor of the fact that there was every chance that they were going to have to work together, Star fumed as she gave him a glitteringly insincere smile.
Now she understood what had motivated him last night. Quite plainly, knowing who she was, he had decided that he didn’t want to become sexually involved with her, to allow her to have any kind of upper hand or control of the situation when he knew that they were going to have to work together.
&n
bsp; She, regrettably, had not had the benefit of that particular piece of information, and if she had done...
‘I’m sure that the two of you are going to work very well together,’ she heard Brad saying.
She could feel Kyle looking at her, almost willing her to look directly at him, but she refused to do so, keeping her gaze fixed rigidly instead on a point several feet away whilst she said with as much calm as she could muster, ‘I understood that I would be working with Tim Burbridge.’ She was referring to a relative of Claire’s. ‘I thought he was in charge of the British side of your distribution network.’
‘Yes, he is,’ Brad agreed, ‘but, as you’ve already mentioned yourself, there have been problems in establishing the standard of installation and back-up service we pride ourselves on giving our customers, and as Tim would be the first to admit, whilst he has no problem selling the units to customers, he is finding it difficult to recruit the right kind of technical people to follow through from his sales, and that’s where Kyle comes in.
‘Not only does Kyle have a firsthand knowledge of just how our units should be installed and maintained but he has also built up States-side the very best installation and service team we have ever used.’
Star’s mouth twisted in a slightly cynical smile as she listened to Brad singing Kyle’s praises.
‘The British employee’s psyche and attitude to work is not necessarily the same as an American’s,’ she announced coolly. ‘What works here in America will not necessarily work in Britain,’ she said challengingly, looking directly at Kyle for the first time, the warning look in her eyes telling him that what had happened last night was now in the past and that he would be a very foolhardy man indeed if he tried to make any capital out of it now.
‘That’s true,’ he agreed, answering her, ‘and I appreciate that there will be certain...cultural difficulties to overcome...’
‘Which is, hopefully, one of the ways in which you will be able to help Kyle find the right approach,’ Brad intervened.
Star’s eyebrows lifted as she pointed out coolly, ‘I’m a PR consultant, not a sociologist.’
‘Yes, but you’ve already highlighted our main area of weakness,’ Brad was quick to tell her, ‘and I suspect you’re far too intelligent and independent a woman not to have formed certain conclusions and views on how the problem can best be resolved.’
What Brad was saying was no less than the truth but his praise immediately made Star feel wary and suspicious. Men did not, in her experience, praise women unless they wanted something in return.
Brad and Kyle were obviously close friends and she wondered suspiciously if it was, perhaps, in their minds to place any blame for any potential failure on Kyle’s part to achieve the same success in Britain as he had done in the States on her shoulders, or rather on the shoulders of her PR campaign. It was not, after all, unheard of for men to use such tactics—gamesmanship, they called it; plain underhand was a more honest description in her book.
‘It’s my job to promote the company from a PR point of view,’ she told Brad firmly. ‘Or at least that’s what I understood the contract I signed earlier to say.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Brad agreed politely. He looked slightly puzzled, causing Star to wonder if she might have misjudged him and even been guilty of a little paranoia, but where men were concerned a woman couldn’t be too careful, she reminded herself. Look at the way Kyle had withheld from her the fact that he already knew that they were going to be seeing each other again.
‘I know you’re flying back home today,’ Brad told her, ‘but Claire wondered if you’d time to have lunch with her and Sally before you left. She said to tell you that she’d pick you up at your hotel at noon.’
There was really no way Star could refuse. Sally was, after all, her closest and oldest friend and during her turbulent teenage years her home and her stepmother had provided Star with the kind of warmth and stability that her own home life had lacked.
Ten minutes later, as she left Brad’s office, she couldn’t bring herself to look directly at Kyle. Gritting her teeth, she walked past him, her head held high.
All right, so he might very well have stolen a march on her and was no doubt right now enjoying that sensation—enjoying knowing that he had rejected her, enjoying the superiority and sense of power he probably felt that gave him—but she was damned if she was going to give him the satisfaction of letting him see that she was aware of his triumph.
‘Come on, the champagne’s already on ice,’ Sally announced, pouncing on Star as she walked into the hotel foyer. ‘You did sign the contract, didn’t you?’ she asked, frowning slightly as she saw how grimly preoccupied Star looked.
‘Yes, I signed the contract,’ Star confirmed.
‘Star, what is it, what’s wrong?’ Sally began, confused. ‘I thought you’d be over the moon. You said yourself that this would be the biggest contract you’d had; you were so excited about it and—’
‘It’s nothing... Just a bit of jet lag,’ Star lied, forcing herself to smile. What was the point, after all, in advertising her sense of ill-usage? Sally wouldn’t really understand. She had never shared Star’s feelings about the perfidious nature of the male sex.
‘Claire’s waiting for us in the dining room,’ Sally explained, taking hold of Star’s arm as she added, ‘No, not this way. We’ve got our own private dining room courtesy of Brad. He’s a darling, isn’t he? But then American men are sweeties, aren’t they? Just look at Kyle...’ Sally closed her eyes and gave a small, ecstatic sigh of deeply feminine approval.
‘If it wasn’t for Chris, I think I could fall for Kyle in a big way—a very big way,’ she emphasised. ‘He’s got that something about him that tells you you could rely on him utterly and completely, hasn’t he? You just know that he’s the kind of man who would always be able to get a taxi and produce an umbrella when it rains.’
‘Oh, yes, irresistible,’ Star replied sarcastically, trying to hold onto her temper as she listened to Sally eulogising on Kyle’s supposed virtues.
‘You don’t like him, do you?’ Sally guessed. ‘But Star—’
‘Personally, I prefer my men a little less homey and a little more sexy. All right, then, a lot more sexy,’ she told Sally recklessly. ‘And—’
‘Oh, but Kyle is sexy,’ Sally interrupted her to protest. ‘He’s very sexy,’ she insisted. ‘Anyway, enough about him. How did your dinner date with that guy go last night?’
Star murmured something non-committal, her expression clearly revealing that she didn’t want to talk about it.
‘Look, Star,’ Sally said gently as she saw the familiar stubbornness tighten Star’s mouth and recognised the look in her eyes, ‘I know how you feel about men and I do understand, but just because your father—’
‘Just because my father what?’ Star demanded dangerously.
Sally gave a small sigh and tried again.
‘Not all men are the same. Look at Chris...and Brad...and James... And Kyle is—’
‘The kind of man who claims he can only have sex with a woman he feels emotionally bonded to,’ Star interrupted her savagely, and added vehemently, ‘He’s lying. I know it and I mean to prove it, to make him—’
She stopped speaking, abruptly aware that she had been letting things get out of control and allowing herself to be swamped by her emotions.
‘Star,’ she heard Sally appealing softly, but she refused to respond to her friend’s plea, turning her head away when Sally suggested gently, ‘I can see that you and Kyle obviously haven’t quite hit it off, but don’t you think you could be overreacting a little bit...? He really is one of the most genuine men...people I have ever met and everyone else, including Brad, has a very high regard for him; he says he’s the most honest and straightforward man he’s ever known—very highly morally principled and completely a man of his word, whilst, at the same time, always having the ability to see the other person’s point of view and to treat them compassionately.’
/> ‘Brad would think that—he’s another man,’ Star sneered, her body stiffening in rejection of what Sally was trying to tell her.
But, even whilst her body language was challenging Sally to continue to oppose her, inwardly her stomach had started to churn in a long-familiar mixture of pain and fear made highly toxic by a generous inclusion of panic as she fought to hold onto her beliefs and her self control.
A long, long time ago she had first experienced that same volatile cocktail of destructive and painful emotions when listening to her mother denouncing her father. Then she had fought fiercely to deny and reject what her mother was saying, convinced that she was wrong, that her father loved them—that he would never leave them, and she had been wrong.
But she was not wrong now. She was not wrong about Kyle.
And somehow she would find a way of proving, not just to herself but also to those like Sally who doubted her judgement, that she was right.
Somehow she would find a way of exposing Kyle’s hypocrisy for what it was. It would be her own personal crusade, her own private war.
‘Well, perhaps Kyle just isn’t your type,’ Sally was saying diplomatically, obviously anxious to smooth things over. ‘According to Brad he’s an idealist and a romantic. It’s a shame that there isn’t anyone special in his life,’ she added musingly. ‘I suppose the kind of woman that would be most likely to appeal to him is someone soft and gentle, someone he could cherish and protect, and that’s not you at all, is it?’
‘No, it certainly isn’t,’ Star agreed shortly.
‘Well, we’ll just have to see if we can’t find him someone suitable at home,’ Sally chattered on. ‘Any suggestions?’