He stopped, as though waiting for her to make some comment, and when she didn’t he continued, ‘My sister escaped at the age of eighteen by running away, far away, and getting married. And then she returned five years later, to make her peace with our parents, and in a cruel twist of fate which I’ve never understood she was killed, along with them, when the car they were travelling in from the airport crashed. I was thirteen years old.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t know what else to say.
He smiled mirthlessly. ‘It was a one-day wonder in the newspapers—“Tragic family ripped apart in horror crash” was how it was portrayed—but we were never a family in even the remotest sense of the word. Still, it probably sold a few more papers.’
‘What happened to you?’ Sephy asked softly. ‘Who looked after you?’
‘I was at boarding school when it happened and I stayed on, so it was only the holidays when I was passed round the relatives,’ he said flatly. ‘Looking back, I put them through it. I wasn’t nice to be around. I was full of anger and resentment and I let it show. Once I was eighteen and I could claim what was left of my parents’ estate after the school, the lawyers, and of course my dear relations had had their pickings for their dubious protection, I took off to see a bit of the world. Bummed around once the money was gone; got into trouble a few times; the usual.’
There was nothing usual about this man, Sephy told herself silently. If nothing else that much was certain.
‘And then I woke up one day in some seedy hotel room in Brazil and realised I’d had enough.’ A muscle clenched in his hard jaw. ‘I couldn’t remember anything of the night before and I found I didn’t recognise the lady.’ The last was very dry. ‘So I came back to England and became a respectable member of the establishment…once I’d made my first million, of course. Doors open and memories are very forgiving once you’ve made your first million.’
‘You’re very cynical,’ she said quietly.
‘I’m very practical,’ he countered evenly. ‘I know that filthy lucre buys anything and anyone; everything has its price.’
She was utterly shocked at the bald statement and her face reflected this, but the sapphire eyes were cool and unconcerned as they gazed back at her.
‘That’s not true.’ She knew that she wouldn’t even make a mark on that tough hide of his but she just couldn’t let such a remark go by without challenging it. ‘I know there are people who would sell their soul, but there are plenty more who wouldn’t, who live their lives without compromising their own personal standards.’
He looked hard into her troubled eyes, her flushed face and indignant voice bringing a mocking smile to his clean sculpted mouth. ‘What a baby you are,’ he murmured softly. ‘Either that or you walk round with your eyes shut most of the time.’
The cool ridicule caught her on the raw. ‘I am neither blind nor a baby,’ she snapped back tightly, ‘and I’m perfectly entitled to have a different opinion to you without you trying to make me feel a fool. You aren’t always right, you know.’
His eyes were midnight-blue now, and unblinking, and he wasn’t smiling any longer. Sephy remembered too late that no one—no one—argued with Conrad Quentin and got away with it, especially not such a lowly creature as a secretary. She swallowed deeply and waited for the explosion.
‘So you’re not a baby,’ he said silkily, after a silence that seemed endless. ‘You are a fully grown woman with a mind of her own.’
Sephy opened her mouth to agree and then closed it again. From the look on his face this wasn’t a good time for further sparring. She watched him warily as he walked across to stand in front of her, her honey-brown eyes opening wide as he stretched out one strong hand and pulled her to her feet.
The top of her head just reached his big, broad shoulders and every cell in her body was reacting to his dangerous proximity as his powerfully muscled chest beneath the thin silk of his shirt came frighteningly close. He kept his hold on her fragile wrist with one hand, his other snaking round her waist and pulling her in to him so the scent and warmth of him was all about her.
‘You have the air of an ingenue,’ he murmured, as she raised her face to look at him, ‘and you’re as scented and soft as any true innocent. But by your own admission you are an independent career girl with her sights set on the top of the ladder, so you can’t be all you seem, can you? It takes a tough cookie to survive in this arena we call the business world. Do you think you’ve got what it takes, Sephy, to fight your way to the summit?’
The hand which had been holding her wrist slid under her small chin as he forced her head further back so he could look deep into her eyes and his voice was uncompromisingly grim.
Sephy wanted to wrench herself out of his grasp and verbally floor him with a cuttingly cold put-down, but for the life of her she couldn’t move or speak. The magnetic quality of his dark attractiveness was enhanced tenfold, a hundredfold, by his nearness. He had loosened his tie at some point during their conversation and also undone a couple of the top buttons of his shirt—a habit of his, she now acknowledged—and consequently, with the tie askew, she could see silky dark hairs below his collarbone.
Was he hairy all over? It was a ridiculously inappropriate thought in the circumstances, but she found she couldn’t concentrate on anything but what his body was doing to hers by its closeness.
‘No, you’re not what you seem,’ he said contemplatively, as though he was thinking out loud. ‘Take your hair; I thought it was dark brown at first, but there are myriad colours in it when the light catches it and it turns to spun silk.’ The hand left her small chin to wander into the nape of her neck where his fingers stroked her soft skin thoughtfully. ‘And your eyes, liquid gold…’
She was standing perfectly still now, frozen in his light grasp and not daring to breathe as his husky voice continued, ‘And then there’s those freckles. What hard-bitten career woman has freckles these days, for goodness’ sake? Freckles belong on young, carefree children, playing in the sun through long summer days when the corn is high and the nights are endless.’
‘I…’ She had to move, to say something to break the spell he was casting over her. ‘My mother has freckles.’
‘Ah, yes, the redhead.’ He nodded as the slanted blue gaze locked with soft gold. ‘And that would explain the colours in your hair; you’re a redhead under that façade of
prim brunette.’ He made it sound wicked, indecent even, as though he had discovered she was wearing titillating erotic underwear in an effort to seduce him, and she found herself blushing scarlet.
‘And this.’ He touched her burning cheeks with a light, mocking finger. ‘I thought it’d gone out of fashion years ago, along with men giving up their seats on buses for the weaker sex and protecting the fair lady of their choice by walking on the outside.’ He smiled lazily, his eyes narrowing still more as the tip of her red tongue appeared, to moisten lips that were suddenly dry. ‘And then you had to come along,’ he added softly. ‘My stern little secretary.’
‘Your stern little temporary secretary,’ she corrected shakily, knowing she had to defuse the tensely vibrating atmosphere before— Before what? she asked herself silently. Before he kissed her? But he wouldn’t do that, not Conrad Quentin. Would he?
She was gazing at him, mesmerised, and she was sure the dark tanned face was coming nearer, the piercing blue of his eyes holding hers with a power that was unbreakable, and then…
‘The dinner, it is ready!’ Daniella’s voice called out just a second before the beautiful Italian opened the drawing room door. But, although Sephy jerked in his hold, and pushed away from him, hotly embarrassed, Conrad’s hold tightened for a moment or two before he let her go—certainly long enough for Daniella to be aware of their position.