‘I was beginning to wonder whether you were coming,’ Ryan commented as their drinks were being fetched.
She hadn’t been late on purpose. A friend of Collette’s had given her a lift, and the slick, streetwise young man had had a very flexible interpretation of time, but she had no intention of letting Ryan know the agonies she had gone through when she had realised that she wasn’t going to arrive at the appointed time.
She lifted a taunting brow. ‘Unused to being stood up?’
‘Except at the altar, yes,’ he replied, punishing her temerity with a bluntness that sliced through her composed front with dismaying ease.
Jane’s face paled as she met the fierce blue gaze. ‘You weren’t...stood up,’ she choked.
‘No, but the result was the same, wasn’t it? A bridegroom rejected at the altar...’
Jane swallowed. ‘You—could have tried again—married someone else...’ she said feebly. Surely a man with Ryan Blair’s raw charisma would never have, to be alone—except by choice.
‘And who do you think I should have taken as a substitute bride?’ he sneered. ‘My secret lover, perhaps?’
It was a measure of how far she was off balance that Jane was momentarily confused. ‘You were having an affair?’ she gasped in horror. It had never even occurred to her that Ava might have had genuine grounds for calling off the wedding. Oh, God, had she put herself through all this agony for nothing...?
‘Why, yes, I thought you knew,’ he purred.
Her stuttering thoughts came to a crashing halt and colour flooded back into her pale cheeks as she suddenly ralised what he had meant.
‘If you think that I—that I—’ She floundered, at a loss for words.
‘Expected me to make an honest woman of you?’ he finished helpfully. ‘Well, it fits the scenario. Were you trying to provoke me into doing the honourable thing, darling? Is that why you did it?’
‘No! Of course not,’ she uttered raggedly. ‘You—I—we never—Don’t be disgusting.’
‘You think the honourable and holy estate of marriage is disgusting?’ he enquired. ‘What fascinating hang-ups you have, my dear Jane.’
She felt like a moth squirming on a pin. ‘I’m not your dear anything,’ she said severely, grappling for her vanished poise.
‘Oh, but you are.’ he contradicted her, his voice silky with menace. ‘You cost me very dear, Jane. In fact, you’re the most expensive woman I’ve never slept with. After our non-existent affair I was left with precious little to offer any other woman... I had to fight tooth and nail to pull myself out of the financial quicksands.’
She knew it would be a waste of breath to plead that she had never intended him to be financially crippled.
‘Money isn’t everything. If a woman loved you—’
‘Like Ava did, you mean? For richer for poorer, against lies and calumny... Oh, yes, love is the ultimate guarantor.’ He laughed harshly, bitter cynicism in every line of his face.
Jane looked guiltily away but he wouldn’t allow her to evade him so easily.
‘What’s the matter, Jane?’ he asked grimly. ‘Did you think I was going to let us pretend that it didn’t happen? It is, after all, the reason that you’re here...’
Her head snapped back. ‘I’m here because you said you had a business proposition—’
‘Ah, yes.’ He sat back again, his smile wolfish as the drinks were set before them. ‘My proposition. And you’re so eager to hear it that you’re prepared to dine with your worst enemy. I am your worst enemy, aren’t I, Jane?’
He seemed to relish the idea so much that she couldn’t resist puncturing his self-importance. ‘I look on you as an obstacle rather than an enemy,’ she said stonily.
‘A toast, then.’ He lifted his glass. ‘To obstacles.’ His eyelids drooped, giving him a deceptively sleepy, sensuous look. ‘May they soon be mounted.’
‘Surmounted,’ Jane corrected, reluctantly raising her drink.
He touched the rim of his glass delicately to hers, like the salute of a duelling foil. ‘I think I prefer my version,’ he murmured, and, holding her suspicious eyes with his, quaffed half his martini in a single swallow.
Distracted from his cryptic words by that smug masculine challenge, Jane followed suit, forgetting her intention to cautiously nurse her drink. The slug of potent alcohol exploded in her empty belly, making her blink, infusing her with an instant all-over warmth. The icy core of fear inside her melted a little. Hell, what more could he do to her that he hadn’t done already?
‘Amazing, the things that one will consider doing when one is floundering in the murky depths of despair, isn’t it, Jane?’ he mused