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Damn it, he was being a fool. Why didn't he just put his neck on the block and hand her an axe? He smiled, leaning back in his chair, his eyes wary as he watched her. ‘It's just that . . . you took me a little by surprise, that afternoon. You should have told me that I was the first.'

Frederica felt herself blush. She couldn't help it, and it wasn't part of the plan, but suddenly she felt mortified. Aghast, she felt a huge tear slide down one cheek. Oh damn!

She was supposed to be seducing him, torturing him, not breaking down and crying like a ninny!

Lorcan lurched out of his chair, his face pale. ‘Frederica, don't!' he cried, coming
round
the table, dragging her to her feet as she struggled, and tried to turn her head away.

He caught her pointed chin in one hand and turned her to face him. ‘Don't cry sweetheart,' he said softly. ‘Please don't. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so clumsy.' He held her to him, felt her cheek press against his chest, felt the warm salt of her tears seep through the material and dampen his skin. He closed his eyes. This was agony. So much worse than he'd ever have thought. ‘I love you.'

The words snapped Frederica's eyes open, cutting off every sensation like an anaesthetic. ‘What?' she gulped. For a moment a happiness so profound it was almost too much, ignited inside her like a flare. Then, just as suddenly, it went out. Because it was too good to be true.

Lorcan took a shaky breath. Had he really said that? But she was straining back in his arms now, looking at him with shocked, almost black eyes, and he realised that, yes, he really had said it. And meant it.

‘I said,' he repeated grimly, ‘That I love you.'

Frederica felt her legs give way beneath her. Even as she asked herself what game he was playing now, even as she warned herself this was—had to be—yet another trick, he was taking her weight, lifting her, carrying her easily to the bed.

‘Are you really so surprised?' he asked softly, kneeling down beside the bed as he
lowered
her gently on to it. One finger curled around a stray lock of curly auburn hair that clung to her damp cheek. For a long moment their eyes held.

I don't believe you, Frederica thought bleakly. But I want to. Oh, how I want to!

Lorcan shook his head. ‘Oh Frederica, what a mess I'm in.' He laughed, harshly. If someone had told him just a month ago that he'd fall head over heels in love with a much younger woman, an art forger, and a virgin, he'd have laughed himself sick at the absurdity of it. Yet now, here he was.

Lorcan took a huge breath. It was now or never. ‘Frederica,' he said softly. ‘What's on the canvas under that sheet?'

Tell me, he urged her. Oh my darling, just confide in me, and I'll tell Richard that I've made a mistake. Confide in me, and I'll see you never have to forge another work of art in your life. Trust me and I'll forgive you anything.

Frederica swallowed hard. First he says he loves you, she thought bleakly. The next he wants to see the painting. How much more proof do you need? He'd do anything, say anything. She was beaten before she'd even started.

There was only one last card she could play. One last desperate gamble.

‘Why don't you go and look?' she asked softly. And, as he went to rise, and his knees
left
the floor, she added softly, ‘Or you can make love to me.'

Lorcan's green eyes darkened. Something—some brief, incredible pain—seemed to flash across his face, as he understood.

‘But I can't do both, can I Frederica?' he whispered hoarsely.

Frederica shook her head. ‘No,' she said sadly, ‘you can't do both.'

*          *          *

Over in Hall, Reeve's angrily flushed face contorted in venom. ‘Why don't you just face it, Hendrix,' he hissed, ‘you don't understand the book the way I do.'

Their immediate neighbours, who'd been chatting happily over their lunch of cold chicken salad, slowly fell quiet as Reeve and John played out their big argument scene.

‘I know more about editing, proper, responsible editing,' John hissed right back, ‘than you could ever possibly hope to learn. It might come as a big shock to you, Reeve, but your pretty-boy looks won't get you anywhere in this business. In this business you need brains.'

Reeve half-rose from his chair, pushing it back, the sound of the chair scraping across the floorboards as teeth-tingling as chalk across a blackboard, and leaned across the table dramatically. ‘Don't think I don't know
what
you're up to, you little . . .'

‘Boys, boys,' Ray interrupted, casting their avidly agog audience a mock shame-faced look. ‘Please, don't make a scene,' he begged them, with unintended irony. ‘Now is not the time to talk about this.'

Reeve shot Ray a fulminating look. ‘Are you trying to tell me this little sod hasn't been trying to get me fired?'

‘You don't need any help from me,' John shot back. ‘Incompetence has a way of catching up with you in the end.'

‘Oh yeah?' Reeve sneered. ‘And how incompetent was it to sign up the author of the Brother Felix Stowe murder mysteries then?'

The atmosphere was now electric. Even though all the conference-goers were aware that it was an act, the two were so good that you could almost cut the animosity with a knife.

John shot to his feet. ‘That was just a fluke!' he yelled, a vein throbbing in his jaw. ‘You stumbled on to him!'

‘Stumbled, hah!' Reeve was shouting now. ‘Admit it, I hooked a big money-spinner and you didn't.'

‘That remains to be seen!' John snapped, the two actors eyeing each other balefully.

Reeve allowed his face to fall into an astonished mask. ‘Are you trying to sabotage the book John?' he asked, as if amazed at his discovery. ‘Is that why you're insisting on all
those
unnecessary re-writes? To ensure that it flops?'

‘Don't be so bloody stupid,' John snarled, but flushed guiltily. ‘I could kill you sometimes, you trouble-making little creep.'

‘Darlings, don't be so melodramatic,' Gerry drawled, right on cue. ‘Calm down and eat your tomatoes like good little boys.'

Julie laughed, again right on cue. Annis turned to her neighbour. ‘I think I prefer the modern whodunits, don't you?' she asked loudly, conversationally, like any other good-mannered woman trying to defuse an ugly scene.

Reeve and John reluctantly sat down. The show over, people began to eat again. And confidently expected to find either Reeve or John ‘bumped off' before the day was out.

*          *          *

Frederica gasped, her fingers clenching painfully in Lorcan's wheat-coloured hair as he sucked hard and passionately on her engorged nipple. She pushed her head back against the pillow in painful pleasure as his teeth nibbled her delicate flesh.

His hands found the waistband of her shorts and feverishly pushed them down, his palms cupping her buttocks, all sense of civilised man gone now as he surrendered to her, and the over-riding need of the moment. Somehow, it
seemed
to him now, that it had always been inevitable. This fall into love.

He groaned as her fingers scratched a path down his spine, her nails raking him, her soft, inarticulate cries filling his ears. He reached for his belt, fumbling with it, freeing himself as her long, slender legs looped around him, imprisoning him, demanding, urgent, her action as mindless as his.

Lorcan gasped, tried desperately one last time to draw away from her, but when she opened those dark, dark eyes, her lips parted for his kiss, and she sighed, he was lost. Finally, irrevocably, lost. He closed his eyes and buried himself within her, groaning as her tight, inner muscles encircled him. He threw his head back, his jaw clenched tight in exquisite ecstasy. Amazed, Frederica watched him, fresh tears starting in her eyes as she realised that, whatever else he was, he was hers.

At least for this moment of agony that was also ecstasy. She clung to him, holding him close, crying out as he plunged into her again and again, his lithe, hard body not hurting her, always just . . . just . . . pushing her a little higher and higher, nearer to that apex that submerged the mind like molten lava. Her heels dug into him, her breasts were hard points pressed against his chest. She felt his body leap, and he cried out her name, shuddered, and collapsed on top of her.

Frederica,
surfacing slowly, heard only the echo of her own name as she cried out his.

Eventually she opened her eyes. Reality, in the shape of a crack in the ceiling, brought her crashing back to her senses.

So, she had forced him to choose between her and the canvas. And he'd chosen her. This time. But what about next time?

She moved, sliding out from beneath him, and pulled on a long, simple dress that covered her from neck to shin. That covered the skin he'd so lovingly kissed. She shivered, feeling colder, not warmer, by the covering. She looked down on him, lying naked on her bed. Gone were the cool, classy clothes. His hair was ruffled, and his skin had the silken sheen of sweat. He had a hand over his eyes, as if he couldn't quite face the world yet.

She wanted to kill him. And love him for ever.

‘I'll be back in a little bit,' she whispered softly, and when he looked at her questioningly, murmured vaguely, ‘the bathroom.'

She went out of the door, and even walked a few steps down the corridor, before slowing to a stop.

She felt as if her heart was breaking as she tiptoed back to the door she'd purposefully left just a little ajar.

For she already knew what she'd see. The moment she'd left the room, she just knew that
he'd
leap off the bed, walk to the canvas and pull back the sheet.

She took a breath, preparing herself for the ultimate proof of his betrayal. His lies. His sweet, wonderful, marvellous lies. But when she peeped through the crack the sheet was still on the canvas, and he was still lying, gloriously naked in her bed, his hand over his eyes. Could it really be that he loved her after all?

She didn't know it, of course, but Lorcan had no need to look at the canvas. He'd seen it already. Instead he lay, satiated, throbbing with the aftermath of their lovemaking, staring at the darkness of his closed lids, wondering just what he was supposed to do now. And knowing that there was only one possible answer.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As Frederica stood in the corridor, spying on him through the crack in the door, Lorcan slowly got up, his naked body bathed in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows. She licked lips gone suddenly dry, her heart aching with tenderness as she watched him drag back on the clothes that he had discarded in such a hurry. The transformation from impassioned lover to
cool,
sophisticated gallery owner seemed less acute now. As if, miraculously, the man was merging into one entity. But was the entity her lover, or her enemy?

He ran his hand through his hair in a gesture that had become heart-achingly familiar to her by now and walked, not towards the painting, but towards the window. Frederica's heart hammered. What was he waiting for? Why didn't he check out the bait she had set for him so tantalisingly? She lingered there for what seemed like an eternity, or at least a lifetime, but he only continued to stare out of the window at the tops of the famous silver birches, his hands thrust deeply into his trouser pockets as he scanned the Oxford skyline. He looked weary, and yet tense at the same time.

Frederica's heart thumped heavily. What did it mean? Why wasn't he looking at the canvas? Eventually she pushed open the door and walked in, warning herself not to get too far ahead. Not to hope too soon.

At the sound of her footsteps on the wooden floorboards, he turned and looked at her. His hazel eyes ran over her, drinking in every detail. The glorious hair, hopelessly tangled now. The concealing dress. The blank, puzzled look in her lovely eyes. He sighed. ‘Would you like to come back to my place for a drink? There's something I'd like to show you,' he offered quietly, both of them shying away
from
talking about what had just happened.

Because she didn't know what else to do, she nodded wearily. ‘All right.'

They closed the door on the painting and the untidy bed, and walked out into the glorious afternoon. Lorcan helped her into the car and drove the Aston Martin out on to the Woodstock road. Sitting beside him, so close to him she could feel his body heat, Frederica felt dazed. She was wearing nothing but the dress and a pair of sandals. Everything about her felt battered. Her senses, her heart, her soul, even her body. But her body, at least, was content.

She supposed she should feel wickedly wanton, sitting in a sports car beside a handsome man, wearing no underwear. She supposed she should feel grown up and liberated. But she didn't. She sighed and looked out of the window, at the beautiful laburnums that were cascading yellow bunches of flowers over garden walls. She felt sick at heart and scared of the future. She loved a man who might still be planning on sending her to prison. The fact that she had done nothing wrong seemed utterly irrelevant. Lorcan heard the massive sigh she gave and glanced across at her. Her face was a picture of misery.

‘Frederica,' he said angrily, ‘What the hell are we doing?'

Frederica laughed. It was a bleak, blank
kind
of laugh. It matched perfectly the way she felt. ‘I don't know. I was hoping you might.'

Wisely, perhaps, he said nothing more until he'd negotiated the big roundabout and pulled up outside a white villa in Five Mile Drive. Leading her inside, Lorcan pushed open a door to reveal a large lounge. Acres of pale green carpet gave way to cream chairs and sofas. Cool mint-green curtains picked up the same colours on the cushions.

‘Do you want a drink? A glass of wine? Or tea?'

‘Tea would be fine,' she said quietly. Listen to them. A pair of friendly, polite, civilised strangers. But she didn't feel particularly friendly just then. And Lorcan hadn't been anywhere near civilised in his lovemaking. But at least they could be polite, she thought, and fought back a wild desire to laugh like a lunatic.