All right, he’d conceded, so he had known she took lovers, but, as far as he had been aware, she did not sleep with them in their home! And finding a strange man wandering about the place, as if he belonged there, had acted like a catalyst to ten years of toeing the line for everyone else’s sake! And he’d decided that if Delia could not respect their home as a sanctuary from everything else they did apart, then he wanted no more of their marriage, so he’d moved out and filed for divorce.
No one had liked it. His parents were furious. Delia was furious because she’d quite liked the easy lifestyle their indifferent marriage offered her. And the ten-year-old Lulu had been utterly inconsolable. She’d vowed never to speak to him again, and certainly, for long, wretched months, had held tight to that vow. Then his father had had another heart attack which had proved fatal—just another burden of guilt he had to carry around with him.
It was awful, he had confessed. A chapter in his life he still had not come to terms with and would never want to repeat so long as he lived.
Which was why he was so against marriage, Roberta had concluded, and why his family still held him by the apron-strings.
‘Excuse me, madam?’
Roberta blinked, bringing her eyes into focus on the smiling hostess who was leaning towards her. ‘Would you fasten your seatbelt, please? We are about to land.’
Land? Roberta blinked again, stunned by the fact that she seemed to have managed to get herself on to the plane and through the whole journey without even remembering leaving Heathrow!
Mac! she blamed angrily. She had lost herself in her favourite fantasy called Mac.
* * *
She was beautiful as always, her slender curves clothed in a mint-green suit, and her pale blonde hair had every man in the near vicinity turning to admire her as she paused in front of the sea of faces flanking the arrivals bay. Not that Roberta noticed their interest. She was too busy reading the selection of call-cards being held up for the benefit of people like herself who were being met by a stranger.
Another of Joel’s quick arrangements. A friend of his, he’d told Mitzy to tell her, who had promised to look after her until he could get there himself. Apparently he was to act as interpreter-cum-chauffeur for any meetings she might set up with Franc Brunner. Which did not seem at all necessary to her, since Franc Brunner spoke perfect English.
But, with a mental shrug, she asked herself who she was to question the boss’s arrangements and continued scanning the row of cards, until her eyes collided with her own name, resting against the white-shirted chest of a man who, even as she walked coolly towards him, put her instincts on red alert as she read the lazy interest in his pale blue eyes.
Tall and rake-slender, the word ‘handsome’ went nowhere near describing his blond good looks. But what was more to the point was that the man knew it and, by the rakish pose he adopted when he saw her walking towards him, was the kind who fed on his looks for all he was worth.
She had that confirmed the moment she stopped in front of him and received a smile fit to burn the stockings of a lesser woman.
‘Miss Chandler?’ he enquired, with a pleasant lilt to his German accent. ‘My name is Karl Loring, and I am to be your companion for the next few days.’ With a discarding flourish of the call-card, he held out his hand to her instead.
Roberta took it. ‘Mr Loring,’ she acknowledged, ‘thank you for giving up your time at such short notice.’
‘My pleasure,’ he smiled. ‘Joel never told me he had such a beautiful assistant. I can see it is going to be my pleasure—entirely.’
The barest hint of a question in that last part made Roberta glance at him sagely. She was going to have trouble with Karl Loring if she wasn’t careful, she noted grimly. The man was a charmer, through and through. And conceited enough to expect his advances to be welcome.
‘Shall we go?’ she suggested coolly, and was irritated to watch his pale eyes begin to gleam as he heard and understood the silent brush-off in her tone. She’d only managed to whet his appetite, she realised.
Still, he had obviously decided to hang fire for the time being because all he did next was offer to carry her small weekend bag for her, then took a light grip on her arm to guide her out of the building.
His car was a sleek, top-of-the-range white BMW, and he drove into the city with smooth efficiency, happy, it seemed, to chatter on about himself without really expecting any input from her. He was apparently an interpreter by trade but, because he came from a certain social background, his large circle of friends held places of some power in the business community which meant that he had access to a lot of supposedly classified information that he was willing to pass on for the right incentive.
Money, in other words, Roberta noted wryly. And assumed he must do quite well at it, if his car and the expensive cut of his clothes were a guide.
And she supposed that his easy charm and laid-back manner worked well on a lot of people. She frowned, wondering how Joel could have been fooled into believing the image. Eyeing Karl surreptitiously, she made herself look beyond the handsome profile to the substance beneath. There was a shrewdness about those eyes, she saw, and something about the smiling mouth that hinted at an ability for ruthlessness.
Yes, she decided. This man was clever—cleverer than she had first given him credit for. His handsome playboyish manner could just be a cloak he liked to hide behind, and his lazy charm probably got him places otherwise closed to him. She could well imagine this man being dismissed by his peers as empty and harmless, when in actual fact he was a fox. A sleek, smooth, beautifully groomed but very cunning fox.
Pulling up outside the hotel, he killed the engine, then turned that sizzling smile on her again. ‘Shall we start by sharing dinner tonight?’ he suggested. ‘Maybe get to know each other a little better before we really have to put our minds to work tomorrow.’
Roberta frowned. ‘I don’t know...’ she murmured uncertainly, having no wish to alienate him, even if he could become a problem. But he was a friend of Joel’s, and Joel was her boss. ‘I have a lot of paperwork to go through if I’m to be of any use at all here to Joel.’ She posed her refusal carefully.
‘All work and no play, Miss Chandler,’ he chanted teasingly. ‘And you have this afternoon to dedicate to work. Think about it,’ he urged her huskily. ‘Perhaps by tonight you will be crying out for a little light relief from your paperwork. Why not use me, and a shared dinner, for that diversion?’
His eyes, mouth, the sheer body-language of the man literally oozed sexual charm—so much so that she actually felt herself beginning to respond to it!
And why not? she suddenly asked herself belligerently. You’re a free agent now! You can respond to whomever you please!
‘All right, Mr Loring,’ she heard herself accepting. ‘And thank you for asking me.’