Maybe she wasn’t even awake yet at all. Maybe this whole ghastly week was just one, ultra-long, insanely bad dream…
‘Having trouble concentrating, Vivian?’
‘My head…’ she muttered, hating herself for showing such weakness in front of him.
‘Perhaps you’d like some hair of the dog? Champagne seems to do wonders for your mood. Makes you very… co-operative.’
Vivian stiffened. ‘It wasn’t the champagne, it was whatever vile stuff you put in it,’ she growled raggedly.
‘You mean the chloral hydrate?’ He met her accusing glare without a flicker of remorse. ‘I assure you, it’s a very respectable sedative—the drug of choice for a whole generation of spy novels. Hackneyed, perhaps, but very effective: tasteless, odourless, highly soluble and fast-acting. You might feel a little hung-over for a while, but there won’t be any lasting physical effects—at least, not from the drug…’
She wasn’t up to interpreting any cryptic remarks. She was having enough trouble trying to establish the most obvious facts.
‘Where am I, anyway?’ she croaked, looking around the small, cheese-wedge-shaped room.
‘The lighthouse. I’m in the process of having it converted into living-space. In fact, you might say this is the penthouse suite.’
Vivian winced as his words reverberated like a knell of doom inside her fragile skull. She lifted her other hand and massaged her painfully throbbing temples, desperately trying to remember how she had ended up in bed with her worst enemy—a man who ten years ago had accused her of murder and Janna of complicity, in words that had burned the paper on which they were written with their vitriolic spite.
Her fingers pressed harder against the distracting pain as she asked the question that should have been the first thing out of her mouth.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘If you mean physically, rather than existentially, at the moment I’m just enjoying the view.’
He wasn’t referring to the window behind her, Vivian realised, as his gaze slid several points south of her pale face, where it settled with a sultry satisfaction that made her belatedly aware of a growing coolness around her upper body.
She looked down, and gave a mortified shriek as she saw that her chest was as bare as his—more so, since she didn’t have a furry pelt to cloak her firm breasts, thrust into lavish prominence by her unconsciously provocative pose. All she had to hide behind were her freckles, which were scant protection from his mocking appraisal. In the split second before Vivian whipped her arms down, she was shamefully aware of a tightening of her pointed nipples that had nothing to do with the invisible caress of chilled air.
Flushed with humiliation, she snatched at the bedclothes, tugging the sheet up to her face as she cringed against the rough wall behind her. Outrage burned away her drug-induced lethargy as her blush mounted. All the time that they had been talking, Nicholas Thorne had known that Vivian was unaware of her semi-nudity. While she had been seriously struggling to communicate, he had been encouraging her to flaunt herself like a floozie, savouring the anticipation of her inevitable embarrassment!
She skimmed an exploring hand down under the covers and found to her deep dismay that all she had on were her tiny bikini panties.
‘What happened to my clothes?’ she demanded furiously, sweeping a blurred look around the room. The bed, a small bedside cabinet and a strange, triangular clotheshorse in the centre of the room appeared to be the only furniture. No closet or clothes, masculine or feminine, appeared in evidence.
‘Don’t you remember taking them off?’ he asked, shifting to fold his arms casually behind his head, his leg brushing her knee under the covers and making her jump.
‘No, I do not!’ she gritted back fiercely. ‘I remember you taking them off.’
Her fingers tightened their grip on the sheet, her eyes blazing green fury
above the white veil of cotton as it all came rushing back in vivid detail. He had been kissing her, gloating over her helplessness, and it was only because of his insidious drug that she hadn’t fought him tooth and claw!
But she wasn’t helpless now, she thought grimly. He wanted a run for his money and that was what he was going to get!
After all, that was the reason that she had knowingly walked right into the jaws of his meticulously baited trap.
Her plan was beautifully simple: by presenting Nicholas Thorne with his prime target at point-blank range, she would draw his fire long enough to exhaust or at least appease the machiavellian lust for vengeance that was compelling him to treat anyone and anything that Vivian loved as a pawn to be used against her.
‘Did I?’ His surprise was patently mocking. ‘Goodness, how shocking of me. Are you sure it wasn’t just a wishful fantasy?’
‘The last person I would want to fantasise about is you!’ She whipped the sheet down to her chin, raking him with a look of furious contempt. She was prepared to take anything he dished out, as long as he left her family alone. The success of her whole mission hinged on his never finding out that she was a willing self-sacrifice.
‘You lured me here under false pretences. You drugged me and took off my clothes!’ she hissed at him goadingly.
‘Only the ones that were superfluous to requirements,’ he replied blandly.
‘What in the hell do you mean by that?’ She bristled like a spitting ginger kitten, all kinds of wild scenarios exploding through her scandalised imagination.