The back of her thighs hit the computer table and she pulled her scrambled wits together as he halted, his whole body bunched with furious aggression.
‘No!’ His appearance had rendered her split-second decision redundant, but she wanted him to know what it would have been. ‘No. I—I didn’t even know there was a phone in here. I was just looking for the photos—the other ones you said you had—’
‘I also said you were gullible,’ he sneered. ‘The only photos I had, you tore up—except for my personal favourite, of course…’ He wasn’t wearing his eye-patch and even his sightless eye seemed to blaze with sparks of angry golden life as he smiled savagely at her bitter chagrin.
‘I was thinking of having it blown up and framed before I send it to Marvel,’ he taunted. ‘It’ll have so much more impact that way. Perhaps I should even call him myself, give him a blow-by-blow account of how much pleasure I got from having his chaste bride-to-be mounted…’
She flinched at the crudely insulting double entendre. His volcanic rage seemed wildly out of proportion to the condescending amusement, even wry admiration, with which he had greeted her other failed attempts to thwart him.
‘OK, OK, so I took the keys because I wanted to steal from you and snoop among your secrets,’ she flared, fighting back with her own fortifying anger. ‘I thought I might find something I could use to help persuade you to let me go. What’s so terrible about that? You snooped through my life—’
He stiffened, his expression hardening to granite.
‘And, tell me—if I suddenly agreed with everything you said? If I handed you your precious settlement contract and said all debts were cancelled—what then? Would you be able to walk away and forget that any of this ever happened? Would you still marry Marvel on Saturday?’
For a heartbeat Vivian ached to be selfish and trust to his sincerity. ‘Why don’t you let me go, and find out?’ she said warily.
She knew instantly that she had made a serious mistake. His jaw tensed and colour stung his cheekbones as if she had delivered him a sharp slap across the face. Oh, God, had the offer been genuine?
‘I wouldn’t tell anyone, if that’s what you mean,’ she said quickly, hoping to repair the damage. ‘Nobody back home has to know about any of this. It’s still not too late—’
‘The hell it isn’t!’ Turning away from her, he jerked his head towards the door and grated, ‘Get out!’
Was he ordering her out of the room, or his life? She moved hesitantly past him. ‘Nicholas, I—’
He sliced her a sideways glance of fury that stopped the words in her mouth. ‘Frank said you were changing for dinner. Don’t make a liar out of him.’
Then his voice gentled insidiously. ‘And, Vivian…?’ Her fingernails bit into her palms as he continued with dangerously caressing menace, ‘If I ever catch you here again, you won’t find me so lenient. Be very careful how much further you provoke me tonight. I’m in the mood for violence…’
‘If I ever catch you here again…’ He wasn’t sending her away! Vivian was shocked by the turbulence of her relief as she shakily made her way up to the room where she kept her meagre selection of clothes.
Deciding it might be deemed further provocation not to obey his thinly veiled command, she quickly put on a fresh blouse, the cream one she had worn the day of her arrival, and changed her sneakers for her low-heeled shoes. The trousers, she decided with the dregs of defiance, could stay—she could do with their warmth around her woefully trembly knees.
The kitchen had been transformed in her absence. It was no longer a bright, practical workplace; it was a shadowy corner of a private universe, lit only by twin flickering candles set on a table laid for two. A casserole dish sat in the centre, flanked by a bottle of red wine and two glasses. Nicholas, she discovered with an upsurge of her heartbeat, was still wearing his white robe—a spectral
white phantom floating at her out of the darkness.
‘What happened to the lights?’ she asked sharply. ‘Where’s Frank?’
There was a brief gleam of teeth from the phantom and a movement of his head so that she could see that the dark triangle of his eye-patch was back in place, his vulnerability well-masked. ‘I’m conserving generating power,’ he said, in a tranquil tone of reason that sent a frisson down her spine. His silky calm was like the eye of a hurricane—she could feel the energy swirling around it. ‘And Frank’s already eaten. He’s in his bedroom. Why? Did you want him for something?’
The innocent enquiry made her seethe. He knew damned well why she wanted a third person present! Frank was no use as a buffer tucked away in his little concrete bunker down the hall.
It was pure nerves that made her blurt out as she sat down, ‘I’m not sleeping with you tonight!’
He sat across from her, leaning his chin on his hand so that his face moved forward into the flickering pool of light, his eye gleaming, a tiny candle-flame dancing like a devil in the hot, black centre. ‘What’s so different about tonight?’
She was hypnotised by the devil. ‘It just is, that’s all.’
‘Do you mean that you’re more aware of me as a man than you were last night?’ he murmured.
She didn’t think that was possible! ‘An angry man,’ she qualified stiffly.
‘I’ve been angry with you before. Usually you just fling my temper back in my teeth.’
‘Usually you behave with more self-control.’
His smile was darkly knowing. ‘Maybe it’s not my lack of control that you’re worried about. Don’t you trust yourself in bed with me any more, little fire-cracker? Afraid I might have lit your fuse?’