She took a deep wavering breath as she fought to get a handle on the situation. Was he saying he wanted an affair with her? Was that it? A casual fling? But of course it would be that with Conrad Quentin. He had already told her on that first night in his home that he didn’t go in for anything else.
She looked at him, so tall and powerful, radiating a dark virility that was more than a little exciting, and the hot little quiver that had trickled down her spine more times than she would like to admit in the last weeks made its presence known again. It was crazy, stupid—he was a carbon copy of David in all the things that mattered—but she was more attracted to this man than any other she had ever met or seen.
‘What…what are you saying, exactly?’ she asked at last, still nervously clutching the elegant box in her hands.
‘I want you, Sephy. I want you very badly,’ he said, as expressionlessly as if he was reading a train timetable. ‘Is that clear enough? I would like to start seeing you—out of work.’
‘Why me? You can’t,’ she protested shakily. ‘You can’t mean it.’ But suddenly she had no doubt that he did.
‘Why not?’ he asked quietly, his eyes never leaving her face for a second. ‘What’s so hard to believe about it?’
‘Because…’ She didn’t know how to put it. ‘I’m not…not like Caroline de Menthe and all your other women,’ she said somewhat helplessly. ‘They are beautiful and glamorous and they know how to… They fit in with you,’ she added weakly.
‘We’ve done the bit about your type and mine,’ he said, with a slight edge to his voice that suggested the conversation still rankled, ‘and I agree with you in essence. But…’ He allowed his voice to trail away silkily as his eyes spoke their own message.
‘But?’ she asked when the silence became screamingly loud.
‘But it doesn’t explain why I still want you,’ he said very softly. ‘You’ve got under my skin in a way I can’t explain, with your great golden eyes and touch-me-not façade.’
It was as if he was accusing her of something, and her voice was indignant when she said, ‘It’s not a façade!’
His mouth twisted. ‘Two minutes—one minute—in my arms and you’d be begging me to make love to you,’ he said with a raw bluntness that was challenging. ‘You know it and I know it. There has been something between us from the first minute you walked into this office, and that night at my home I found myself doing something I’d never done before. Seducing one of my staff. I knew what I was doing and yet I didn’t seem able to help myself, and I didn’t like that, Sephy.’
Hence the ice-man from that time onwards. Suddenly it all fitted. How he would have disliked that momentary lack of control.
‘When I kissed you we ignited. Admit it.’ His deep voice brooked no argument. ‘You wanted me as much as I wanted you but the timing was all wrong. So, I was prepared to wait.’ His head tilted slightly and the sapphire gaze became piercing. ‘And you’ve been like a cat on a hot tin roof any time I’m anywhere near you, so don’t bother to deny it.’
The arrogance was overwhelming, and for a moment she was eighteen again, in the midst of a long hot summer that had turned into a living nightmare, and it was David’s face stamped over Conrad’s. The illusion vanished as quickly as it had come but it gave her the strength to say quietly, ‘You are talking about a cheap affair, aren’t you?’
‘No, I am not.’ He shook his head firmly. ‘It wouldn’t be cheap and it wouldn’t be casual. I like you, Sephy, and more than that I respect you as a person. I’ve got to know you over the last months and I think we would be good together for as long as it lasts. How long that would be I’ve no idea, but it wouldn’t be a brief fling. However, I can’t lie to you. The things I said that night still hold.’
‘You were warning me then, weren’t you?’ She stared at him, her brain racing. ‘You were actually stating the rules of play without me realising, getting things ready for when you were prepared to make your move, and that would only be—’ she took a hard deep breath as further revelation hit ‘—when Madge was ready to come back and you didn’t need me at work any more.’
The nerve of him! The utter, absolute, cold-blooded nerve of the man! He wasn’t human; he couldn’t be.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said quickly, but she had caught the flash of disconcertion, even astonishment, in the blue eyes, and she knew her words had hit home.
‘Yes, it was,’ she said with painful flatness. ‘You told me that night at your h
ome that money can buy anything and anyone, and you thought you could buy me when you considered the time was appropriate.’
No wonder he had been so angry that morning when Jerry had given her a lift to work; he had envisaged his neat programme of events being interfered with! The thought did nothing to calm her mounting rage.
‘No doubt you saw me as a challenge,’ she continued, as more and more things fell into place. Just as David had done all those years ago. The Ice Maiden. It had been her cruel teenage nickname that had prompted the other boys to egg David on; with Conrad it was his monstrous ego. She had dared to defy him and dispute his firmly held theories and convictions so he had to prove to her and himself that he was right. He didn’t really want her; why would he, with all the stunning beauties he had at his beck and call?
‘A challenge?’ He considered the word for a second as she still faced him bravely, her chin lifted proudly and her eyes masking the deep hurt she was feeling. ‘Yes, I guess there is an element of that in the feeling I have for you, but that’s natural, isn’t it? The caveman throwback, the primeval instinct to prevail and conquer in the face of adversity, to seek that which demands its worth is recognised?’
‘You thought I was playing hard to get.’ Her voice was tight as she placed the box on the desk with careful deliberation. ‘That’s it without all the soft soap. Well, I’m sorry, Conrad, but I’m not about to prostitute myself for that—’ she flicked her hand at the box ‘—or anything else, so forget it.’
‘Prostitute yourself?’
The charm was gone, along with the cool, faintly amused expression his face had been wearing moments before, and now Sephy felt a dart of fear as she surveyed the furiously angry man in front of her. His fists were jammed into the pockets of his overcoat as though to stop them reaching out for her neck, and his jaw was set hard, muscles working under his chiselled cheekbones. There was no doubt at all she had made her point.
‘What else would you call it?’ she managed faintly. A relationship on his terms was a sterile dead-end; he had told her that. It could never progress past the physical intimacy into true caring and loving, into wanting the best for one’s partner, into tender friendship and putting another’s happiness before your own. As he had said that evening months ago, he simply didn’t know how. More to the point, he didn’t want to know how. He had his empire; he had his women; his world was just as he liked it.
He glared at her, his narrowed eyes flickering with cold blue fire, and then without any warning he reached out and pulled her into his arms with enough force to jerk her head backwards. ‘Perhaps we’ve said enough,’ he rasped angrily. ‘Maybe it’s better if I show you.’
Sephy struggled in the instant before he bent his head and took her mouth but it was useless; she might as well be fighting the Rock of Gibraltar for all the difference it made. She was captured by his arms, his lips, his tongue; the sharp lemony flavour of his aftershave combined with the power and strength of him, reminding her of all the long days and evenings when she had been closeted in this suite of rooms fighting her awareness of him as a man.