‘Genista! Pretty and unusual. Like its owner.’
‘You find me unusual?’ She was back on safer ground now—the accepted give and take of flirtation.
‘You’re right,’ her companion drawled, pulling her closer. ‘Pretty is too tepid a description. You’re an extremely beautiful woman, Genista, and I don’t want to spend the rest of the evening sharing you.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
Several people were watching them; in fact they had been the centre of a good deal of covert speculation as soon as they started to dance together. Genista could see Greg glowering at them from the kitchen door. She, personally had few doubts about what Luke had in mind; the same thing her father had had when he met her mother and Richard when…. But no, she was not going to think about Richard now. She would let her companion dig his own grave and then she would derive immense pleasure from watching him fall into it.
‘If I told you, you’d probably have me certified. I think you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ The hooded eyes were gleaming with a warmth which made Genista grateful for the fact that they weren’t alone. Luke Ferguson was no callow boy, but a sophisticated male animal—and it showed.
‘And for that I should have you locked up?’ The verbal sparring was merely a prelude to the real purpose of the evening and she felt a tiny frisson of fear run down her spine when she saw the look in Luke’s eyes. The desire burning there was real enough; too real, and just for a second, before dismissing the thought as pure imagination, she wondered if she had set a match to a fire she would be unable to control.
When the music stopped he released her reluctantly, and Genista let him slide his arm around her shoulders to pull her close to him as they left the floor. She was behaving in a way which was totally out of character, but he did not know that. No doubt he was used to women acquiescing eagerly to his every suggestion. She was only surprised that he hadn’t already insisted that they went back to his flat. He was in for a rude—and very public—shock when he did, she told herself grimly. His eyes, which had seemed almost black across the width of the room were, in reality, very dark grey, ringed with a slightly paler grey, and the desire she could see smouldering in their depths seemed to be his only vulnerability.
Greg came over to them, his arm draped round the blonde typist Genista had seen watching Luke earlier. Greg’s eyes were faintly bloodshot and Genista guessed that he had had too much to drink.
‘Well, well,’ he drawled. ‘What’s all this? Has our ice maiden melted at last? You are a lucky man, Luke. Genista is one very choosy lady.’
‘You’ve had too much to drink, Greg,’ Luke told him evenly. ‘Why don’t you take him away and make him a cup of black coffee?’ he suggested to the blonde.
Quite a few people were watching them discreetly. Genista had been wondering how she would deliver the body blow which would deflate for all time Luke Ferguson’s inflated ego, and all at once she knew. He turned to her, his fingers trailing down her cheek in a caress which parodied tenderness, the desire burning in his eyes plain for all to see.
‘If you’re ready to leave?’
He really was an excellent actor, she marvelled. His voice had held just the merest suspicion of a faint tremor, as though he were having great difficulty in controlling his overwhelming desire to be alone with her; as though he actually felt more for her than merely a fleeting need to assuage a momentary desire and reaffirm his belief in his irresistibility to her sex.
‘Leave? With you?’ She arched her eyebrows and managed a cool trill of laughter. ‘My dear man, you’ve been entertaining company, but not that entertaining. I expect far more from a m
an than that before I allow him to take me anywhere.’ She turned her back on him, and smiled at Greg. ‘Be a darling, Greg, and get me another drink, will you?’ He was too drunk to argue. Well aware that everyone was watching them, Genista turned back to Luke, almost as though the gesture were an afterthought, her expression mockingly bland as she suggested, ‘If you’re lonely why don’t you ask Mary to go with you? You’d love Luke to take you home, wouldn’t you, Mary?’
The blonde girl glowered angrily at her, ignoring Luke, as she tossed her head disdainfully.
‘I’m not so short of a man that I need your cast-offs, thank you!’
Her departing flounce was rather spoiled by a slight wobble as she turned on excessively high heels, but otherwise her performance could not have been bettered had Genista written her script personally.
Luke was watching her with eyes that were suddenly smouldering like a volcano on the point of eruption, but Genista ignored the warning signs to say sweetly, ‘Still here? Can’t you take a hint?’
‘That’s what I thought I’d been doing ever since you walked in here,’ he snarled back at her, all the earlier traces of pseudo-tenderness gone. ‘You’ve been leading me on all evening, and now you turn me down flat. I want to know why, Genista.’
She hadn’t been expecting this. She had thought that her refusal to leave with him would have been enough to make him disappear without another word.
‘You do?’ Somehow she managed to appear calm. ‘Oh dear! I do so hate hurting people’s feelings. You’re a very attractive man, Luke,’ she added sweetly, ‘but you’re just not my type.’ She looked him up and down assessingly, a little surprised at her own ability to slip so easily into her new role. It was obviously true that there was a little of the actress in all women, although she seriously doubted her ability to give a repeat performance. Already her legs were beginning to feel distinctly shaky. There was something about the menacingly silent way in which Luke was regarding her that made her wonder if she might not have been wiser merely to have been satisfied with her initial success at putting him down, without trying to add any further gilding, but it was too late for second thoughts now. She had gone too far for those!
‘Oh?’ The solitary word was ominously quiet. ‘When did you discover that fact? When I didn’t accompany my offer to take you home with the promise of something more tangible if you spent the night with me?’
It was by a supreme effort of will that she prevented herself from hitting him. The cynical gleam in the charcoal grey eyes made the blood rush to her cheeks, but from somewhere she found the self-control to clench her hands into two small fists and say icily, ‘There isn’t enough money in the world to compensate me for having to endure a night in your bed. I can’t think of anything that would fill me with more revulsion.’
‘No?’ Luke’s voice had gone thick with rage. ‘Then you’re short of both imagination and memory. You were all but inviting me to make love to you there and then when we were dancing. If that was revulsion you felt you’ve got a damned funny way of showing it!’
When she didn’t say anything his eyes suddenly darkened suspiciously, his fingers biting into her wrist as he grasped it, hauling her against him. ‘You set me up, didn’t you?’ he demanded harshly. ‘You deliberately led me on, fully intending to humiliate me, didn’t you, you little bitch! God, you must be sick!’
Their onlookers had lost interest in them now and were drifting away. No doubt they thought Luke was still pleading with her to go with him, Genista thought wryly, nursing her aching wrist, when he turned without another word as he headed towards the door, leaving her standing alone.
‘Phew, you were taking a bit of a risk, weren’t you?’ Jilly Holmes, Greg’s secretary commented to Genista ten minutes later when Luke had gone.
Genista liked Jilly, they got on well together. She wrinkled her nose and shrugged. ‘Serves him right. He shouldn’t go round expecting females to fall at his feet with delight just because he deigns to smile at them.’