The Price of Scandal (16 page)

‘Actually—’ Her eyes connected with the predatory gleam in his and the colour flew to her cheeks. ‘Not that!’

He shrugged and smiled a dangerous smile that made her painfully conscious of the insidious progression of the liquid heat that had reached the apex of her trembling thighs. ‘Pity.’

She struggled to focus through the fog of lust in her head. ‘Look, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate at the moment and this might not seem the right time to discuss.’

It hit him then and he felt every kind of blind, besotted idiot he had always promised himself he would not be! He wanted her to be here because she had discovered she could not live without him; wanting did not make a thing so.

It was clearly much more likely that she had read the reports and she now thought he could not deliver on the promises of a life of luxury and lavish ease he had tried to sell her. It was tempting to fall back on his old protective cloak of wariness and cynicism but, looking at it logically, he was in no position to criticise.

It was logical for a woman to ensure that the man who had promised to take care of their child was able to do so.

‘I very much want this discussion now,’ he finally responded. ‘It occurs to me that you might have read the newspapers today.’

‘No, but Hannah rang me.’ She scanned his face and struggled not to follow through with the very strong hugging impulse that flooded her. ‘It’s true, then?’ She dropped her gaze, afraid of showing the sympathy that she was convinced he would automatically reject. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I am less of a catch than I was this morning.’

Neve’s bewildered gaze flew upwards. It took her a second to take his meaning. ‘Because you’re broke, you mean?’ She laughed; she couldn’t help herself.

His jaw tightened. ‘You find my straitened circumstances amusing? You have come to rub salt in the wound?’

The suggestion brought a spark of anger and hurt to her cornflower-blue eyes. ‘No. I find the idea of women demanding to see your bank balance before they rip off their knickers and scream, “Take me,” amusing,’ she retorted.

Actually, now she was seeing it the image her blunt retort had conjured did not amuse her one bit. In reality it sent a stab of pure green jealousy through her body.

‘That does not happen as often as reported.’

Her eyes fell from the amused gleam in his. ‘You have to know that women are not going to care if you’re stony broke, Severo.’

He flashed a cynical grin as his dark intense gaze moved over her upturned features. ‘I would imagine it depends on the woman,
cara
.’ There was only one woman’s attitude he was interested in and as usual she was proving as unpredictable to him as her dress sense.

He looked so sad that she moved impulsively towards him, stopping just short of the big desk he stood behind and giving an awkward shrug and shuffling her feet.

‘You look like a child who has been summoned to the headmaster’s office.’ He gave a discontented frown.

She lifted her chin and retorted, ‘I’m not a child.’ Though he showed a lamentable tendency to treat her like one—when he wasn’t treating her like some sort of gold-digging trollop, that was.

His dark lashes swept downwards as his glance slid down her body, then lifted as he made a slow return journey back to her flushed face. By this point Neve, whose core temperature had jumped several degrees, was literally shaking like someone in the grip of a fever.

‘This I am aware of,
cara
, but stop trying to deflect. Answer my question.’

Very conscious of the gleam in his eyes, she struggled to stay focused; not easy when your insides had dissolved. ‘Me! I’m not trying to do anything.’ Except keep my mind off the thought of your body naked. ‘And you haven’t asked a question—also, I wasn’t summoned, I came,’ she reminded him huskily. ‘And if you must know it wasn’t easy to get in.’

‘You’re pouting,’ he said, sounding fascinated by the discovery as he stared at her mouth.

‘You’d pout too. I thought at one point I was going to be strip-searched.’ She lifted her hands wide and asked, ‘Tell me, do I look like a terrorist or even a journalist?’

‘Hmm, you do look somewhat suspicious.’ His dark eyes glinted. ‘Perhaps a strip-search is still not totally out of the question,
cara
.’

His glance swept downwards, the throaty growl half promise, or was it threat? Making the fine downy hair on her nape stand on end.

‘So you managed to arrive fully clothed. Congratulations.’ He arched a dark sardonic brow and thought about correcting the situation.

Helpless to prevent his body from responding to the mental image of her slender, satiny curves, he cleared his throat before continuing, ‘Now I recall the question—why exactly, if not to rub salt in the wound, did you come? Was it after all to give me my answer?’

She nodded. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she admitted, her eyes sliding from his face as she looked around the room. ‘This is a very nice office.’

‘And very nice pictures on the wall, also big, but I am assuming you did not come to discuss the décor?’

Neve’s gaze kept straying to the pulse that was ticking like a time bomb beside his mouth. It was not really surprising under the circumstances if he looked tense.

‘Look, I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but it’s true money doesn’t make you happy.’ Her earnest blue gaze lifted to his face.

‘So I have heard.’ The lack of it, however, caused a lot of unhappiness. ‘I have also heard the meek will inherit the earth, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.’

‘You’re so cynical!’ she protested.

‘Guilty as charged,’ he admitted. ‘You ought to try it—it’s safer in my opinion than always thinking the best of people.’ It amazed him that he had ever compared her to Livia; the two women were poles apart in every way.

‘I’ll pass.’

‘Now there’s a surprise.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘I’m really not the gullible idiot you seem to think I am. I’m not saying it isn’t very nice to have money to buy things, but the only rich person I knew was James and money was no help to him at the end.’

‘You miss him?’ Severo felt an unworthy stab of an emotion he remained reluctant to call jealousy.

Eyes misted, she nodded agreement. ‘Look, I don’t know if this will help.’ She retrieved the envelope from her bag. ‘But you’re welcome to it.’

Severo looked from the envelope she put on his desk and back to her face. He shook his head, a perplexed frown pleating his brow.

‘What is this?’

Neve gave an awkward self-conscious shrug.

‘I’m not using it, you might as well…’ She shook her head, knowing she was fumbling the explanation, and finished crankily, ‘Open it, don’t just look at it!’

She watched as Severo did so, his actions seeming torturously slow to her as he slit the envelope with a silver-handled paper knife before sliding the contents onto his desk.

Tensely waiting his response, she watched his face through the mesh of her lashes as he read the figures, then he flashed her a hooded look through his dark eyes before seeming to read them again.

Without looking at her, he folded the paper and slid it back into the envelope.

‘Well, what do you think?’

Few things surprised Severo, but the columns of figures on the page before him did. ‘You are, it seems, a very wealthy woman.’ If Neve agreed to be his wife it would not, it seemed, be for the luxuries he could provide.

‘Yes.’ She dismissed the comment with an impatient wave of her hand. ‘But could you use it?’

‘Could I use?’ His confusion was not feigned.

‘The money.’

Astonishment washed over him as her intention hit home. He swallowed, the muscles in his brown throat working as he forced the husky question past the emotional occlusion in his throat. ‘You wish me to have your money?’

‘Well, it’s not mine…’

‘You stole it perhaps,
cara
? To rescue me from my incompetence?’

‘You’re
not
incompetent,’ she retorted sternly. ‘So don’t go all self-pitying on me because it’s not a good look for you.’

His heart twisted in his chest as he looked at her, tasting the acrid bitterness of shame in his mouth. Her generosity humbled him and the knowledge that he had ever believed her to be selfish and avaricious, that he had ever believed he could buy her love, lay like a guilty weight in his chest.

He was not worthy of the love of a woman like this, but,
Dio mio
, he would be the luckiest man alive if he had it…Did he have it?

‘Legally it is mine, of course it is.’ Her brow furrowed as she struggled to explain her feelings about the unsolicited inheritance. ‘But I’ve never really thought of it that way. I told James that I didn’t want anything—what he had already given me was enough.

‘I’ve no idea what sort of trouble financially speaking you are in. Would it be helpful until you get back on your feet? Which obviously you will.’

He was looking at her so strangely that she broke off and threw him a questioning look.

‘You believe I can recover?’

She smiled, her blue eyes shining up at him. ‘Of course you can. You can do anything you want,’ she said with total conviction.

Severo shook his head. ‘I hope so,’ he said with shaken sincerity.

‘I don’t think you’ve thought this money-giving through,
cara
. Even if I—’

Sensing his rejection of her offer, Neve interrupted. She would not allow his stupid masculine pride to ruin her plan. ‘Not
giving
,’ she contradicted, flashing a winning smile.

‘Never go into sales—it is not your thing.’

His attitude frustrated Neve. ‘This is, it’s…you can make it official, if you like. A loan?’ Hearing the rising desperation in her voice she threw up her hands and yelled, ‘I really don’t care. All that money has done from day one is cause problems!’

The anguish in her voice drew a muffled oath from Severo, who reached her side before she had found the tissue she was fumbling for in her pocket.

He produced a man-sized handkerchief and after a moment Neve took it from him and blew her nose noisily.

‘Hormones,’ she muttered, not meeting his eyes as she handed it back.

Fighting back a grin, Severo said, ‘Keep it, I have others.’

‘So will you take the money?’

Severo shook his head. ‘If I did that, Neve, people would say I had married you for your money and that would be very…hurtful?’

Their eyes met; the understanding she saw in his face made her throat ache. Tears standing out in her luminous eyes, she nodded. ‘It would, but we’re not getting married.’

‘Because I’m a failure?’

‘If you say stupid things like that I will hit you!’ she promised fiercely.

Severo threw back his head and laughed as he placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘I believe you, but you cannot stay in denial for ever.’

‘I’m not in denial, and good to know you haven’t suffered a crisis of confidence because you’re having some cash-flow problems.’ She huffed, ‘This makes sense—you can pay me back, with interest if you like, and—’

He slid a hand into her wild red curls, tipping her head backwards as he stepped hard into her, pushing his thighs against her body. ‘Shut up so I can kiss you.’

Shut up? She had dissolved the second she felt the rock-hard imprint of his erection against her belly. Before her distracted senses had even registered his throaty demand he had bent his head and was wrapping his arms around her, fitting his warm, firm mouth to her parted lips.

Neve’s slim, supple body fitted itself to his hard, lean lines as she wound her arms around his neck and moaned into his mouth, responding with wild enthusiasm to the skilful, blissful hungry pressure of his lips.

A long moment later he lifted his head and sighed deeply. ‘I needed that.’ He cupped her face with a hand, spreading his fingers along her jaw. A possessive growl of appreciation vibrated in his throat as he repeated the sentiment with even more feeling. ‘
Really
needed that.’

Breathing in a series of gasps and still not sure if her feet were back on the ground, she nodded fervently in agreement, trying not to get too carried away by his comment. The kiss was a distraction, a respite from the troubles he was facing.

‘You’re a very good kisser, Severo.’ Pretty good at everything actually.

Amusement gleamed in his eyes as he bowed his head in solemn acknowledgment of the compliment. ‘Thank you,
cara mia
.’

Aware that she was probably sending out the wrong messages with her praise, she added quickly, ‘But I still can’t marry you.’

He arched a darkly delineated brow and struggled to contain his frustration behind a sardonic smile. ‘You wish to marry a bad kisser perhaps?’ Her refusal contradicted the message her body sent him every time he touched her.

Neve refused to smile back. Instead she took the hands that were now around her waist—God, but they felt so good there—and removed them before stepping backwards, not intending to but somehow retaining a hold of one of his hands. Her knees sagged as he wound her fingers into his and lifted her hand to his mouth.

The brush of his lips over the skin of her palm sent an electric jolt through her body.

‘It’s not a joke,’ she protested, thinking, It’s torture.

‘I am not laughing.’

He wasn’t. He was looking at her with a driven intensity that made it hard for her to remember why she couldn’t marry him.

He doesn’t love you!

The timely reminder made her wince.

‘I really do understand how you feel about being a father. And you were right when you said a child needs two parents, and I agree a parent does need to put the needs of their child before their own, but I can’t…’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I simply can’t do it. I can’t settle.’

The fingers linked with her own tightened so hard that she gasped in pain. Severo gave a grimace of apology but retained her fingers in a light grasp as he jerked her towards him, causing their bodies to collide.

It was not the force of the impact that drove the air from Neve’s lungs, it was the thrill of being in close contact with the lean, hard length of him. Every square inch of her skin tingled; his sheer maleness was overwhelming, intoxicating and dangerously addictive.