by Susan Napier
Instead, she tapped the slim column of paper against her lips, then smiled sweetly as she trailed it down her throat and tucked it into the scooped neck of her dress, where it nestled securely in the lacy cleavage of her bra. Then she put her elbows on the table and leaned forward to enjoy the fruits of her pre-emptive strike, laughing huskily into the congealing triumph on Ryan Blair’s face.
‘Why, thank you, Ryan, the money will definitely come in handy...but I hope you don’t mind if I think over that exclusivity clause? I don’t like to close down my options before I thoroughly investigate the market.’
For a moment he didn’t move, then the full realisation that she was calling his cruel bluff detonated in his consciousness.
‘You don’t mean that,’ he said hoarsely, his eyes lowering to the spot where the cheque had disappeared.
‘Don’t I?’ She flipped her hair back over her shoulder with a carelessly provocative gesture, fired with a wild glee. He was about to find out that she could bluff as well as he—and better! ‘Why not? I’m desperate and, as you pointed out, desperate people take risks that they normally wouldn’t even consider taking...’
His black-browed scowl betrayed his thwarted frustration. Muscles flickered in his hard jaw and she could almost hear his teeth grinding. Oh, yes, revenge was indeed sweet! thought Jane dizzily. No wonder Ryan had pursued it with such relentless fervour...
‘What happened to the famed Sherwood pride?’ he sneered. ‘What would Daddy say if he knew his little girl was doing business on her back?’
Jane wondered why his insults persistently nagged on the paternal theme. Did he imagine he was trampling on sacred memories? She had no illusions about her father’s business morality—and, far from being his protected ‘little girl’, she had been toughened fast and early by his insensitivity and rigid expectations. He had seen nothing wrong with accepting dates on Jane’s behalf from men whom he shrewdly judged might be useful to him—which made Ryan’s choice of humiliation rather ironic.
Maybe his taunts were more revealing of the vulnerabilities in his own background!
‘I wonder what your father would say if he knew you’d turned into a pimp!’ she flashed back.
Dark colour flooded his hard face. ‘My father was killed twenty years ago,’ he grated.
Curious at the lingering intensity of grief in his voice, Jane felt a pang of shame. ‘I’m sorry...was it an accident?’
‘No.’ His denial held a wealth of repressed anger that sent a prickle down her spine.
‘He was murdered?’ She was jolted by the idea of anyone daring to deprive Ryan Blair of anything that was rightfully his. He would have been at a vulnerable age for a boy—just entering his teens. It was difficult to visualise him as a child but she imagined he had been aggressive even then, a dark, intense little boy with a fiercely possessive streak.
Jane’s hand crept unconsciously to her breast, flattening over the small, prickly piece of paper that now felt the size and weight of a boulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated nervously as the silence stretched. ‘It must have been a difficult time for you...’
Ryan’s raw laugh of contempt made her regret her momentary display of compassion. Like her father, he obviously viewed it as a weakness to be turned against her.
‘Still, maybe it explains what a bastard you turned out to be,’ she rallied spitefully. ‘Your mother obviously couldn’t teach you any manners. I bet you were a hellion as a teenager.’
He bared his teeth. ‘I still am, sweetheart. And let’s leave my mother out of this...she’s no part of our fight.’
Fortunately by this time Jane was feeling no pain whatsoever, and she was able to ignore the pressure on her injury and bat her long, mascaraed eyelashes at him, her eyes bright with reckless exhilaration.
‘Are we fighting?’ she said with honeyed innocence. ‘I thought this was the way you always conducted your business...you know—threats, insults, physical maulings...’
His temper was momentarily leavened by a flicker of admiration at her sheer audacity.
‘You want to be mauled, sweetheart, you’re going the right way about it.’ He lifted her hand in a parody of politeness and took a stinging nip out of her wrist, just below the ruffled edge of her glove.
‘You just can’t bear to lose, can you?’ she hissed as a fierce tingle shot up her arm and radiated down over her breasts, drenching her with a hateful awareness. ‘And stop calling me sweetheart.’
‘Just getting you in the mood.’ His hard glance shafted over her shoulder. ‘Dan’s on his way back to the table and he’s the one who’ll be doing the mauling. I hope you’re ready to earn your money because I understand he prefers his sex rough... He may like you to be a lady at the table but it’s a slut he wants in bed.’
His bluff had failed, so now he was trying to frighten her into giving his ten thousand dollars back.
‘Better him than you,’ she jeered, hell-bent on making him suffer before she let him off the hook.
‘Then, I guess we have a deal.’
He picked up the room key and pressed it into her captive palm, folding her fingers slowly down over the rectangular piece of plastic, one by one, his blue eyes smouldering with deadly challenge.
‘So be it.’
Jane’s breath stopped in her throat as she realised that he wasn’t going to back down. He was daring her to go through with their devil’s bargain! He really didn’t care about the money...he was rich enough not to miss the odd ten thousand, and had already proved that he would go to extraordinary lengths to gather her totally under his power.
Her head whirled in confusion, one certainty forming in the increasingly foggy muddle of thoughts: he was never going to give up and go away. Maybe the only way to win against him was to let him have the revenge he craved. Maybe then he would leave her alone.
But Sherwoods never gave up! Her father might not have had any principles but Jane had created a set of her own that she had sworn to live by: her word was her bond, never cheat on a deal, never betray a friend. And this man—this man was the reason she hadn’t been able to live up to those high ideals. He had haunted her past and now here he was once again trying to seduce her into forgetting her principles, turning herself into a cheat and a liar. A coward.
‘Well, are we going to party, honey?’ Dan asked, his hand appearing over her shoulder to plonk his empty brandy-glass down on the table. He tilted the back of her chair with a suddenness that made her gasp and clutch the seat, and grinned teasingly down into her upturned face.
Jane glanced back at Ryan, but he had swivelled away to put his signature on the bill which had been presented on a silver tray, the slashing downward strokes of his pen almost penetrating the paper. His angry profile was bleak and unrelenting.
‘Sure...’ Her voice seemed to come from a long, long way away as she let Dan help her to her feet. Her brain felt oddly separated from her body and her feet seemed to float above the floor as she accompanied him out of the restaurant into the thickly carpeted foyer of the hotel, conscious of Ryan prowling silently on their heels. She could feel his brooding stare pressing on her rigid back like the barrel of a gun—cold, hard and lethally unforgiving.
An icy calm settled over her. Time seemed to stretch, acquiring a dreamlike unreality as they walked past the reception desk to the bank of lifts where the two men shook hands and exchanged final pleasantries. Ryan sounded smooth and unruffled, but when Dan noticed that the receptionist was idle, and told Jane to summon the lift while he scooted over to check his messages, she discovered otherwise. She found herself abruptly backed into the nearest pillar, corralled by a solid body and big hands planted flat against the marble on either side of her shoulders.
‘He’s old enough to be your father—doesn’t that even bother you?’ Jane could feel Ryan’s burning gaze raking her pale, averted face. If she moved she would have to touch him so she froze, barely breathing, hoping that passive resistance would serve where open confrontation had so
miserably failed.
When she didn’t answer, his voice hardened sardonically. ‘The next customer mightn’t be so much to your taste. What happens then, Jane? You’re selling your right to say “no”. What happens if I offer your services to someone who makes your skin crawl? Will you close your eyes and think of the money while some sweating pig of a man grunts and heaves between your legs?’
Jane’s response to his lurid taunts was to retreat deep within herself, beyond the reach of his controlling fury.
His hands fell to his sides and he stepped back, as if suddenly contaminated by their closeness. ‘You know that if you do this there’ll be no going back,’ he warned harshly.
‘Thanks to you I have nothing to go back to,’ she pointed out, stepping around him to smile brittly at Dan, who returned just as the lift doors opened to disgorge a group of American tourists. She slid her arm through his and tugged him inside the vacant lift, not caring that her eagerness to get away from Ryan might be interpreted as something else.
Like a sleepwalker she accompanied Dan to room 703, handing him the key-card to unlock the door and watching him prowl around, twitching the curtains and switching on the radio, turning the lights on and off until he had created the effect he wanted. He left only a small, shaded lamp burning on the long, low, polished wood dresser, and Jane was glad of the near-darkness that shrouded the other side of the room where the big double bed loomed.
The room itself was luxurious, bland, anonymous... containing nothing to jar the senses or cling in the memory, and for that she was also grateful.
She put her black drawstring bag on the spindly table by the door, but even that movement took an effort. A stunned inertia weighted the limbs that had minutes ago been floating free of gravity, and rational thought eluded her.
She had made a deal...
The thought blazed through the fog in her brain as she let Dan take her into his arms. His hands felt dry and leathery on her skin as he tugged her face down to his. His cologne was sharp and unpleasantly astringent as it mixed with the strong aroma of alcohol on his breath She turned her head so that the lips that were about to fasten on her mouth crawled moistly down her cheek instead. She had to do this, she told herself desperately. It was a matter of honour. She had to do it to prove...to prove.
She couldn’t remember what she was supposed to be proving or to whom. The cloak of inertia began to slip. A vague sense of panic broke through the drug-induced lethargy and the blood thumped in her ears as she pushed frantically at Dan’s chest, conscious of the bull-like strength compressed into his stocky frame.
‘What? What’s the matter?’ Dan lifted his head, his brown eyes puzzled rather than annoyed, and Jane felt her brief burst of terror subside as he allowed her to ease away.
‘Uh, there’s someone at the door,’ she said shakily, having realised that the source of the thumping wasn’t inside her head.
Her knees almost crumbled in relief. Ryan! It had to be him! His conscience had got the better of him. In spite of his callous threats he hadn’t abandoned her to her just deserts. For that she was almost prepared to forgive him!
‘Oh, good, the champagne’s arrived!’ Dan crowed, opening the door and beckoning the hotel waiter inside. ‘I ordered it while I was down at the reception desk,’ he told Jane sheepishly. ‘Know how you girls like your bubbly...and flowers and chocolates—so I got some of them, too...’
Somewhere deep inside her she had been certain that Ryan would come. ‘I...I have to go...to the bathroom,’ she muttered from the depths of her shock, and dived through the door behind her, her hands scrabbling with the lock.
She braced herself over the marble basin, staring at her bloodless face in the mirror. Two hectic hot spots glowed on her cheekbones where Collette had applied blusher, and although her lipstick had completely worn off her lower lip was still red where she had been unconsciously worrying it with her teeth.
She looked down at her hands. Although there was no pain the left glove was beginning to strain at the seams. Soon her circulation might be affected. Better to take the gloves off now than have to have them cut off later...
She peeled back the tight satin casings, having to tug hard to free the puffy little finger of her left hand. She looked at the exposed damage with detachment, deciding that the mottled bruising wouldn’t be too obvious in the subdued lighting of the next room.
The next room, where champagne and Dan Miller waited...
In other circumstances she might actually have quite liked him, Jane thought woozily. Downstairs he had been boisterous and full of brash insensitivity, but in private the rough diamond had revealed himself as something of a closet romantic. No matter what Ryan had said, she didn’t believe that the older man would physically hurt her.
The knowledge gave her the courage to venture out, leaving the discarded gloves screwed up on the vanity unit.
She was grateful to discover that the curious waiter was gone, and accepted a brimming glass of champagne with fatalistic calm. No one was coming to rescue her. She would have to do it herself. Before, Dan had just been a cardboard cut-out figure in her consciousness, just a prop in her private battle with Ryan. Now he was all too real, a human being, someone who was gruffly generous and capable of being hurt...
It was all Ryan’s fault!
Jane drained her glass quickly and then sat down on the edge of the bed as she found her head spinning.
‘Dan...’ She had something important to tell him, she knew. Something very, very important...
‘Of course, my dear,’ he said with exaggerated courtesy, sloppily refilling her glass before she could tell him that that wasn’t what she wanted. She realised that he was none too steady on his feet, either. Although Ryan had ordered the wine that had been served with their dinner, he had drunk even more sparingly than Jane, and as a result it had been Dan who had ended up consuming most of the two bottles.
He staggered and she instinctively grabbed hold of the elbow of his jacket and pulled him safely down beside her, then bent to place her glass on the floor. The blood rushed to her head and the glass wobbled on the thick carpet, tipping over and sending ice-cold bubbles splashing over her feet. Jane squeaked, kicking off her dripping shoes, the flurry of her legs sending her toppling back on the bed, her dress riding up around her thighs.
Dan fell back beside her, the champagne bottle still clasped in his hand, and Jane let out another shriek as the golden liquid foamed out of the narrow neck onto his chest. He merely grinned at the sight of the fizzing cascade and she raised herself on her left elbow, righting the bottle and instinctively brushing at the huge wet patch that had appeared on his half-unbuttoned shirt.
‘Why don’t you just lick it off me, honey?’ he invited good-humouredly, his free hand sliding under her hip to roll her on top of him.
Engrossed in their damp tussle, neither of them heard anything, but suddenly the door to the room crashed open and, almost simultaneously, Jane felt herself plucked off the bed and set ungently on her feet.
‘Sorry, mate—change of plan.’
Ryan Blair reached down and hauled Dan up from the bed by his soggy shirt-front, plucking the champagne out of his hand as he marched him to the door.
When Dan spluttered a protest, Ryan bent to murmur something in his ear and the older man’s resistance collapsed like a pricked balloon. With a muttered goodbye in Jane’s vague direction he allowed himself to be bundled into the hall, hurrying off even before the door was kicked shut with a polished heel.
Jane stared at Ryan as he leaned back against the door, shooting the privacy bolt behind him with an ominous clunk. His pale jacket seemed to glow in the dimness, warning her of the volatile energy sheathed within its smooth contours.
‘Wh-what did you say to him?’ she demanded defensively. ‘And how did you get in?’
The door was still intact, so he couldn’t have broken it down, and she was horrified by the thought that someone from Housekeeping might have glimpsed her
rolling around on the bed with Dan.
He chose to answer her second question first. He tossed something with a clatter onto the table beside her evening bag. ‘I booked the room, remember?’
A key. He had kept a key!
He folded his arms across his chest. ‘And I told Dan that I’d regretfully just found out that you were suffering an occupational disease in its most infectious phase...’
Jane flushed with humiliation. ‘Why, you—’
He kicked away from the door. ‘Be careful. Be very, very careful what you say, Jane. I’m not in the pleasantest of moods.’
She circled warily away from him. ‘You never are!’
Suddenly the mental fogginess was gone, her lethargy replaced with a raging restlessness, her body taut with a fierce readiness. Everything around her came into sharp focus, colours were more vivid, sounds more penetrating. She could even hear his breathing, quick and shallow, and the whispering rasp of his clothing against his skin as he moved. If she listened carefully enough, she believed she could hear the blood pulse in his veins. Certainly she could see it throbbing heavily in his temple as he prowled closer. The shadow on his jaw seemed darker, emphasising the image of almost overpowering masculinity.
She put her hands behind her, where he wouldn’t be able to see them shake.
‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ Her effort to sound strong and assertive came out like a sullen complaint.
He slid his jacket down his arms and threw it carelessly onto the floor. ‘Ungrateful bitch!’
Her flush deepened in the knowledge that his taunt was partly justified. But did he expect a meek ‘thank you’ for rescuing her from a predicament that was mostly of his making? She glared at him defiantly, and was immediately punished for her sin.
‘It occurred to me that I might have been a trifle hasty in employing you without any references. So I decided to conduct a personal evaluation of your services before I allowed others to avail themselves of your expertise...’
He deftly unknotted his tie and stripped it from under his collar with a slow hiss of silk that was a provocation in itself.
