Undressed by the Boss (Mills & Boon By Request) (47 page)

Who did they all think they were? Just because she’d been brought up in a housing-commission house made her no less educated, no less civilised. Gran’s house overflowed with books and music. Their friends were all people who valued ideas, culture, literature …

A few people nodded or spoke to her, but most just stared curiously and moved on. To make matters worse, Tom Russell’s dark head kept turning to look at her. His every glance zinged through her like electricity, and challenged her nerves into a state of confused turmoil.

Checking to make sure she wasn’t talking to anyone. It would serve him right if she pulled the plug.

Waiters flitted by with trays of fragrant, crispy morsels, but though hungry, she hesitated to try to catch any of their eyes for fear of attracting attention to herself. She noticed a couple of Tom’s stepsisters peering her way, and made a strategic retreat, edging across the deck to a corner of the balustrade.

In an effort to blot him out of her awareness, she turned her back on him to lean on the rail and brood at the big white cruisers in the marina. But just as the fishy harbour smells couldn’t destroy the aromas of garlic bread and balsamic dressing plucking at her stomach juices, neither could the
picturesque charm of Sydney Harbour soothe her anger. The insult, the
insult
of being treated like a rich man’s second-rate accessory.

How long before lunch was served and she could escape? Soon she would need to head back to the
Clarion
to compose her copy and sort through the morning’s photos with Mike. She felt in her bag for her mobile, in hopes of sneaking a few surreptitious videos, then remembered Tom had it.

Blast. At least she’d have plenty to write about. She gave herself up to a satisfying rumination about the bombshell she could drop on Tom Russell if she had a mind to.

Why should she wait? She could have a fabulous scoop tomorrow. So let his merger fail. The man was ungrateful. Certainly, he knew how to kiss a woman, but that was where it ended. It was clear he had no idea of how to treat a girlfriend.

A pleasant male voice intruded on her reverie. ‘You look like a thundercloud. Don’t you like funerals?’

She turned to meet the enquiring gaze of a nondescript-looking man in his late thirties. He was smooth and pale, with eyes of a washed-out china blue and hair that had perhaps once been fair, but was now almost colourless, including that of his wispy little goatee. He sauntered over and placed his wineglass on the balustrade.

She replied coldly, ‘Not especially.’

She angled slightly away from him and feigned interest in the progress of a ferry chugging towards the bridge, shielding her eyes, as much to exclude him as the sunlight dancing on the water.

Undiscouraged, the stranger said, ‘Maybe they’re an acquired taste.’

To her chagrin, he leaned both elbows on the balustrade. Settling in. All she needed now was for Tom Russell to notice and go berserk.

‘I guess at your age you wouldn’t have been to many,’ he persevered. ‘Is this your first?’

‘No.’

Her cool tone drew a quick quizzical glance. Ashamed then of her unfriendliness, she unbent a little to explain, ‘My first was when my parents died. I was five.’

He cast her an appraising look, and nodded. ‘Well, after that, this must seem like a Sunday School picnic. How did they die?’

‘Late at night on an icy road. We lived out near Orange then. It was a snowy winter.’

‘Ah. Now that was tough.’ He gazed thoughtfully at her, then his face broke in a smile. She didn’t fancy goatees, but his pale blue eyes were tranquil and non-threatening, unlike Tom Russell’s. There was no chance they could burn a woman to the ground one minute then freeze her to death the next.

She allowed herself to relax a little.

His gaze lit on her empty hands. ‘Here, hasn’t anyone given you a drink? What can I get you? Wine?’

‘Oh.’ She glanced across at the party crowd. Tom was in the midst of it, inclining his dark head to catch every last syllable from a skinny brunette who was eating him up with big, dumb, worshipping eyes. He’d forgotten about her already.

Without waiting for her reply the stranger raised a finger and a waiter materialised beside them with a trayful of drinks. She accepted the chill white wine with thanks, and took a grateful sip. It dropped into her empty stomach like acid.

‘So,’ her companion said, moving closer, his pale eyes luminous with concern, ‘what happened to you after you lost your oldies? Who took you in?’

T
HE TROUBLE
with the women he met now, Tom brooded, attempting to disentangle himself from yet another bout of gushing hypocrisy, was their brazen sexiness. Sure, he enjoyed hot chicks as much as the next guy, but the women he really admired were cool, contained women, like Sandra. Women that a man needed to look into deeply to find their hidden qualities. Sandra had been perfect.

Well, apart from that one instance …

His gut tightened, though not with the same savagery he used to feel. He accepted now that it had all been his own fault. He’d been too caught up in the demands of the business. He’d been so focused on learning to keep his end of the corporation afloat that he’d neglected her. It was natural she’d drifted away.

So, apart from that one glitch … Though he still wondered sometimes if it had only been the one. There had been a distant look in her eyes more than once that had unsettled him.

Anyway, apart from that, Sandra had been close to perfect. She’d never driven him crazy, or made him furious, or made him want to strangle her.

Except after she was dead, and he’d found out the gut-wrenching truth of where she’d been driving down that midnight road. Then for a few brief minutes he’d wanted to kill her all over again with his bare hands, and—unbelievably—once or twice, himself.

But he was a civilised man, and he’d used his reason to detoxify those out-of-character responses, almost at once. And he’d mellowed. He had no lingering issues, with fidelity or otherwise. He was as faithful to her as he’d ever been. She was still the benchmark against whom he measured all women.

With Sandra, he’d never had to battle to concentrate on his work. So on a day like this, with the most difficult hand of cards a man had ever had to play, it was outrageous to have the distraction of a woman’s slender, maddening form, just a few metres away, blazing in his consciousness like a beacon.

For God’s sake, he had business to attend to. There was no putting off the afternoon’s meetings with his lawyer and his stockbroker. Decisions had to be made,
today.
What was he to do about her while they were discussing which properties to throw on the market to raise some quick cash?

He disciplined himself not to glance at her. To cut her completely from his mind. The couple of times he’d been unable to resist had been a mistake. Though standing there in the corner all alone made her appear abandoned, even in some way vulnerable, he wasn’t deceived.

That taunting little smile curving up her lips said it all. He was prepared to wager his last remaining assets that she was dreaming up vengeance. She probably couldn’t wait to get back to her keyboard. Only the necessity of ascertaining whether rumours of his father’s madness had begun to circulate the city boardrooms kept him from swooping down on her and whisking her out of harm’s way at once.

He should never have brought her. But what else was he to have done to keep her away from the
Clarion,
apart from getting Timmins to lock her in his hotel room, bound and gagged? At once his imagination recoiled from the idea of Timmins manhandling her. No, he would have to have done the job himself. Tied her up. Handcuffed her, even. His imagination made a wild gratuitous leap to her spreadeagled on a bed, handcuffed to the bedposts …

The harping voices of some of his more powerful business associates filtered through, and he refocused. The essential thing was to glean what, if anything, they knew behind their bland smiles. All the time, though, a blonde time bomb, desirous of blowing him sky high, was ticking in his consciousness. The grim realisation dawned on him that he couldn’t, under any circumstances, allow her to go back to the
Clarion.

In the meantime, he’d have to find some way to placate her. For God’s sake, she was a woman. Surely all he needed was to get her on her own. Take her to a place where he could soothe her ruffled feathers.

An intoxicating vision rose to fill his entire being, of him stroking her hair and her white throat as if she were a soft, pliant swan.

His mouth went dry. Tasting—he half closed his eyes—tasting the skin of her throat.

Unbuttoning her dress.

She’d be wearing underwear, of course—a lacy, flimsy bra, from which round pert breasts would burst like tender ripe fruit. She would quiver to his touch and …

A persistent plucking at his sleeve dragged him back to reality. With a start of irritation, he glanced down and saw it was the Prime Minister, eager to ingratiate himself. Sighing, he edged around slightly to position himself so he could keep an unobtrusive eye on Cate Summerfield over the shorter man’s head.

He flicked a sideways glance across at her and felt a lurch of alarm.

She wasn’t there!

He spun about to scan for her among the crowd, until the ominous silvery sound of her laugh drew his gaze past some shade umbrellas. Then something like a cannon ball blasted a hole through his insides.

Malcolm Devlin had her in his clutches. A small crowd was gathered around them, and she was chatting with people,
flashing that smile,
laughing
in the presence of the most cunning bastard in the country.

Tom sucked some air back into his lungs. ‘Not now,’ he growled, shoving aside some irritating little pest who was blocking his path.

On an edge of anxiety, Cate half listened to the gossip swirling about her. At another time she’d have been tempted to whip out her notebook and dash down some of the choicer morsels. It was lucky she had an excellent memory for detail.

She’d intended to keep her promise not to talk to anyone, but how could she? By the time she’d realised who Malcolm was it was too late, and, before she knew it, to her dismay he’d attracted a crowd.

Fortunately, once she’d explained how she’d met Tom at a public hospital benefit, they had all started to look bored. She’d only had to start filling them in about the waiting list for heart surgery for most of them to find their own circle so riveting they forgot all about her.

Except Malcolm.

She glanced about for Tom, wondering with a nervous pang what he’d say if he caught her with Olivia’s husband. She waited until the group around her were absorbed by the juicy topic of someone’s fifty million dollar mansion, then made an effort to melt to the furthest corner of the deck.

To her intense annoyance, Malcolm Devlin followed her.

‘Tell me again, Cate, what did you say your last name was?’

To a seasoned campaigner like herself, the innocence in his faded blue eyes was disturbing. His persistence was getting on her nerves.

She hesitated. ‘Summerfield.’

His brow creased in thought. ‘Summerfield,’ he echoed slowly. ‘Now where have I heard that name? Have you been in the social pages lately?’

The man had missed his calling. He’d have made a fine reporter. Cate rose up on her toes to look for Tom, but the view
was obscured by some shade umbrellas. She moistened her lips. ‘As a matter of fact …’

A tall black shadow loomed between her and the sun and her heart skidded to a giddy halt. Tom Russell, lean, dark and oozing menace, stood gazing down at her, and her pulse plunged into a mad, excited rhythm at the savage fire smouldering in his grey eyes.

His hands made a convulsive twitch towards her. ‘Darling.’ Though his tone was silken, the endearment speared a delicious thrill of fear down her spine.

With seeming difficulty, he dragged his eyes from her to her companion. ‘Malcolm.’ He thrust out a hand and the resulting handshake was like a sword clash. ‘Good of you to come.’

Malcolm Devlin rescued his hand from the crush, flexing it by his side a couple of times to kick-start his circulation as he showered Tom with condolences. ‘I’ve so enjoyed meeting your friend,’ he continued when the spate had run out. ‘Tell me, Cate, you aren’t related to that Summerfield who writes for the
Clarion,
by any chance?’

Cate’s nerves made an alarmed leap. She could feel Tom’s burning gaze on her face, and noticed all at once that several people had drawn closer to listen, some of them Tom’s relatives. Enough to constitute a lynch mob.

She felt an unaccustomed surge of panic. Malcolm Devlin had her on the rack.

She could lie, pretend she was another Cate Summerfield. It wasn’t impossible that there would be others.

Then an image of Gran’s wise, kind face rose in her mind’s eye and she felt ashamed of her spineless impulse. How could she deny her profession, betray the ideals instilled in her since childhood? Tom’s friends all valued their easy lives in their democracy, didn’t they? How long did they think it would survive without the writers and thinkers who produced papers like the
Clarion?

Despite her brave words to herself her coward’s heart was
pounding like a jackhammer. Tom Russell would kill her. But she forced herself to meet Malcolm Devlin’s malicious gaze, and screwed herself up for the truth.

‘Yes, that’s me,’ she said, the barest tremor in her soft voice. ‘I write for the
Clarion.’

Though a proud smile was fixed to her face, the terrified hair stood up on the back of her neck. No one in the group stirred, struck dumb by the shock, perhaps. In a second they would recover, then lunge to seize her and string her up to the nearest yard-arm.

She was just considering doing a bolt when, with a deep internal gasp, she felt Tom’s strong arm slide around her waist and draw her close. ‘We’re in the same business, aren’t we, sweetheart?’ He smiled down at her, though the smile didn’t reach his glittering eyes. ‘Just different ends of it.’