by Susan Napier
A flash of light from an oncoming car revealed a sardonic curl to his lip. ‘That pleases you, doesn’t it—the thought that I didn’t win?’
‘Of course not.’
‘One day I’m going to teach you to stop telling me lies,’ he clipped. ‘You like the idea of my pride being trampled in the dust. For your information I didn’t nominate myself, Dane did. And I didn’t lose.’
‘But you said—’
‘I didn’t say anything; your prancing stud made the assumptions. I told you he was a bit thick.’
‘You can’t blame him!’ She flew to Richard’s defence. ‘You didn’t appear to be in a very celebratory mood.’
‘I was until I found my butler hiding under his table,’ he said grimly, ‘and discovered why.’
Vanessa shivered at the reminder and hugged his jacket more tightly around her. He had a one-track mind. ‘If you won, why on earth did you leave early?’
‘What should I have done? Stayed to be smothered under the avalanche of sycophantic flattery that goes hand in hand with these things? Is that what you think is important to me? It isn’t the first award I’ve won and it won’t be the last. I know exactly how much and how little they really mean.’
Vanessa would have taken issue with that breathtaking piece of arrogance except that she knew that in his case it was justifiable. She had seen a photograph of his array of plaques and awards in one of the Architectural Digests and read his offhand comment that winning was ‘good for business’.
‘But your plans. You were going to stay overnight at the apartment—’
‘I changed my mind—I know you think I’m rigid and inflexible but I am capable of acting spontaneously on occasion,’ he said irritably. ‘Maybe I just wanted to celebrate my victory with someone who had no axe to grind, about whose opinion I might actually give a damn!’
There was a fraught silence while Vanessa dared to consider what that meant. He couldn’t be talking about her? While she sought for a delicate way of finding out he made another impatient sound.
‘I might have known you wouldn’t be impressed. I suppose you’d prefer to think of me as a valiant loser. As a disappointed man I’m less of a threat, an object of compassion rather than any positive emotion.’
‘Don’t be silly—’
‘Why not? I’ve already made a fool of myself over you once.’
‘This is ridiculous—’
‘I agree, totally absurd.’ He stopped the car with a skidding jerk and unclipped his seatbelt to turn towards her.
She stiffened, fighting off a dangerous pleasure, all her senses focused on the man now lifting his arm to rest along the back of her seat. He had come back because of her. Because of some boyish desire to impress her with his cleverness... Benedict Savage, who took his enormous successes with cynical casualness, had been proudly bearing his honours home on his shield. She moistened her lips and asked nervously, ‘Why have we stopped?’
He was silent for a long moment. Then the furious tension that gripped him seemed to relax. ‘So that I can seduce you on a dark and lonely street, Vanessa; why else?’
His words sent a wave of heat rolling over her. ‘I— Oh!’ She looked out of the window and was mortified to see that they were parked on the gravelled driveway at Whitefield, right before the front door. And she hadn’t even noticed! ‘Oh.’
‘Disappointed?’
She blushed, groping awkwardly for the door-handle and rattling it desperately when she discovered it wouldn’t open.
‘It’s still locked,’ Benedict pointed out.
‘I realise that,’ she said, her damp fingers slipping in panic on the lock as she tried to disengage it.
‘Vanessa—’
She heard the rustle of his movement and whirled round in her seat, only to discover that she was still trapped by her seatbelt and that he was leaning across her to deal deftly with the recalcitrant lock.
‘What?’ To make up for the sharpness of her response she subsided in her seat, reassured by his obvious willingness to let her go.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me what the award was for?’
‘Oh, yes—what was it for?’ she asked hurriedly, feeling ashamed of the self-absorption that had led her to misjudge his motives so blatantly badly.
‘Are you really interested?’
Typical of the male injured ego—he was going to make her work for his forgiveness. ‘Of course.’
‘I thought you didn’t like my work.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Dane. When he was here last year you told him that you thought the Serjeant Building was a boring monolith, exhibiting the kind of concrete-slab mentality that made modern cities universally the same.’
‘He just showed me a photo and asked my opinion,’ she said weakly, remembering the amusement the other man had displayed when she had unwisely abandoned her customary reserve around her employer’s guests and proffered an honest rather than diplomatic response. ‘I didn’t realise you had designed it.’
Benedict didn’t seem in the least offended. ‘One of my earliest commissions, when I was still working for my father’s firm. He had a stern rule that one supplied clients with what they wanted, not what the architect thought they should want. In that case the client was a hidebound reactionary who thought that Frank Lloyd Wright was a dangerous lunatic. That building fitted him like a second skin.’
‘I don’t mind some of your later designs,’ Vanessa said comfortingly.
‘Thank you for that damningly faint praise,’ he said wryly. ‘I realise commercial architecture is largely a soulless business...precisely because it’s such a big business, cost-driven to the point that anything new and untried or unusual is usually feared. Plans often have to be approved by a board, and committees are notoriously more conservative and difficult to please than individuals. Only those with real foresight, who want to make a permanent impact on the landscape rather than a smooth turn-around profit on construction, are interested in allowing an architect full artistic freedom. That’s why I left my father’s firm and branched out with Dane. I wanted to create a separate professional identity for myself...concentrate on smaller commissions calling for greater individualism. I still do the big—’ a taunting semi-bow to Vanessa ‘—”boring” bread-and-butter ones, but these days I supplement the stodge with a good leavening of the off-beat. The award was for a private residence at Piha. Would you like to see it?’
‘Go to Piha, you mean?’ Vanessa was startled.
His white teeth flashed in the darkness. ‘I was talking about something a little more convenient—the plans are up in my studio.’
‘Oh. Yes, that would be very interesting,’ she murmured, trying and failing to imagine what kind of houses Benedict Savage would design.
Palatial homes for millionaires and pillars of society, no doubt—they were probably the only ones who could afford his magnificent fees. But at least his dangerous mood seemed to have evaporated now that she had given his ego room to flex. ‘I’d like to see it, some time when it’s convenient...’
His eyes glittered as if he sensed he was being ‘handled’. ‘I’d better put the car in the garage. Would you like to open up the house? And here, you may as well take this.’
He scooped up something from the back seat and thrust a cool, metallic object into her hands. She found herself looking down at a slender, stylised sculpture. ‘Oh, is this your award? It’s very nice.’
She heard the smile in his voice. ‘Yes, very nice. Run on in, there’s quite a chill outside. Have you got your key?’
‘I’m not a child.’ She opened her door to get out and found herself pulled up with a jerk that made her gasp with pain.
‘Here, allow me.’ Kindly, Benedict freed her from her seatbelt and she scrambled out in a flurry of black crêpe de Chine, still clutching his jacket around her, conscious of his chuckle pursuing her up the steps.
She was acting like a nervous teenager for no reason at all, she simme
red as she flicked on the lights in the foyer and stairwell. He must have known that she thought he was going to pounce on her. But then, what was she supposed to think after the things he’d said to her at the restaurant? Beneath the challenging interplay of words there had run a definite current of sexual awareness, heightened by his obviously vivid recollection of their lovemaking.
Unconsciously she placed a hand over her flat stomach. He had actually sounded quite smug when he’d raised the question of pregnancy, as if the idea of her bearing his child wasn’t at all dismaying. In little more than a week he had invaded her body and wrapped himself around her consciousness to such an extent that the certainties that had been her strength and her protection over the last few years had begun to crumble. She was losing control and somehow she had to find a way to regain it.
She put the award carefully on the hall table beside the telephone after studying the engraved plague and was still hovering there uncertainly when Benedict slipped through the front door, which she had left ajar. He must have parked the car with remarkable speed, she thought as he closed the door behind him and locked it, then leant back against the stripped-wood panels just looking at her.
She moved restlessly under that steady gaze. ‘I was just wondering whether you wanted me to serve you coffee—’ She faltered as he pushed away from the door and began to walk slowly towards her. Automatically she backed away, until she reached a wall and could retreat no further.
It took all her will-power not to shrink back as he came to an unsmiling halt in front of her and reached out to unhitch his jacket from her shoulders with a single finger and draw it away. The slippery silk lining slid down over her bare arms like a caress. He tossed the jacket over the elaborately carved newel post at the bottom of the stairs and casually leaned against the wall, his hand planted beside her tense shoulder.
‘Now who’s trying to put whom in their place?’ he mocked softly. ‘After tonight you won’t ever dare call me sir again. Get used to it, Vanessa.’
‘Used to what?’ Her eyes were slightly higher than his but she felt small and surrounded.
‘The new relationship between us. If you’re going to run this inn for me, you’re going to have to do it with authority. You have to decide whether you want to be a butler for the rest of your life or whether you’re ready to move on and up.’
‘Me? Run the inn?’ Vanessa said faintly, pressing herself back against the supporting wall to try and escape the heat of his body.
He had loosened the black tie on the way in from the car and unbuttoned the top pearl stud of his shirt. The white pleated shirt was so thin, she could see the shadow of his torso outlined through the silk. His chin was dark with regrowth. He looked tired, disordered, and disturbingly sexy. It was incredible, but this man, with his only mildly good looks and his spectacles and his studied emotional colourlessness, harboured a smouldering sexuality that was as electrifying as it was astonishing. Vanessa was bewildered. Why had she never seen it before? And why, now that she could see it was so obvious, wasn’t he smothered in women wherever he went?
His eyebrows rose. ‘Isn’t that what you had in mind when you suggested a manager?’
She shook her head. ‘No, it never occurred to me!’
‘Not even in your secret dreams?’
Her eyes slid away from his. She had no intention of telling him what her secret dreams involved. ‘How could I?’ she asked huskily. ‘I don’t know anything about running a hotel—’
‘The job you’re doing now isn’t so far removed from it,’ he pointed out quietly. ‘You provide accommodation services for my guests, manage staff and purchase supplies. You do accounts and supervise building and maintenance. I think you’d be surprised how well-equipped you are for the job. A small hotel like this needs an intimate, highly individualistic management style, preferably by someone attuned to its unique atmosphere. Who better than you? You love it here, don’t you? Wouldn’t you like to know that you didn’t have to leave? That you could stay on and build it into something that we can both be proud of? If you feel inadequate in any way, there are always courses you can take to improve your management skills...’
It was such a powerfully seductive offer that Vanessa was afraid to question the motives behind it.
‘Why me?’
‘Because I’m already used to having you around.’
‘Oh.’
She was convenient. That hurt and she lowered her lashes against him. From the corner of her eye she watched his free hand move up to finger the velvety loop on the open edge of the neckline which lay against her collarbone, his knuckles almost brushing her chin, and he continued, softly chiding, ‘You should be flattered. I don’t let people into my life very easily. My mother elevated emotional manipulation to an art form, and to this day I still have a natural disinclination to trust my feelings for fear they’ll be used against me, particularly where women are concerned. I think we’re alike in that respect—slow to trust—which is why I’m willing to forgive you for playing games with my head. I realise you were only trying to protect yourself. But I’m offering you a unique opportunity here and the beauty of it is, you don’t even have to leave home to take advantage of it.’
His finger counted down to the next empty loop and the next, not touching anything but the fabric and yet managing to make her feel as if her skin was being brushed by a thin trickle of fire. At her sharply indrawn breath he looked up from his fascinating tracery and murmured persuasively, ‘I do trust you, you see. Will you trust me? If not as a man then at least as a businessman. I’ll be totally honest with you, Vanessa. I’d very much like to have you back in my bed, but neither offer is contingent upon your accepting the other. Whether we become lovers or not has no bearing on the fact that I think you’re the perfect person to run the inn. I won’t make it difficult for you if you choose to make profit with me rather than love, and I certainly won’t attempt any emotional manipulation. Ask Dane—I might not like losing, but I’m graceful in defeat.’
His finger flicked down the rest of the open loops to wedge into the fabric V where the bodice was fastened between her breasts and he paused before adding slyly, ‘Although you may have to bear with me a little; I’m so rarely defeated that I might be a little rusty about my graces...’
Her mouth came open but nothing issued forth from her parted lips. She was very conscious that the boning of her bodice had made wearing a bra unnecessary and wondered if he had guessed. Her breasts rose and fell, the inner slopes caressing his relaxed finger. He watched the expressions flitting across her face with a faint smile and delicately curved the other fingers of his hand under the smooth edge of the bodice, rubbing his thumb lightly over the top of the fabric. The backs of his fingers moved delicately against the silky swell of her breast in a secret caress that they were both intensely aware of. Only millimetres away from his touch, the soft, satiny peak tightened in an agony of anticipation. Blood rushed to her head, making her feel dizzy with unimagined pleasure.
‘This is a very elegant, sexy dress. It looks as if it’s melting over you,’ he purred, bending a knee so that it touched hers through the folds of her skirt.
‘I made it myself,’ she heard herself whisper inanely, thinking that it was what was under the dress that was melting.
‘Resourceful Vanessa.’ His praise curled around her ears and stroked across her senses. ‘Your hands are obviously as quick and clever as your tongue.’
She blushed right down into her cleavage and he laughed huskily, his whisky-warm breath teasing her mouth.
‘I was complimenting you on your wit, Nessa. What did you think I meant?’
‘Exactly what you wanted me to think,’ she said, simultaneously hot with excitement and shivery with fear.
Benedict probably thought she was able to hold her own with this kind of dangerous sexual banter but Vanessa knew she was already in over her head. The only other time she had tried it she had been badly hurt. What had started out as a seduction in
which she had willingly participated had become little better than rape when Julian St Clair had become brutally impatient with her inexperience. Her slowness to respond to his physical cues had made him lose his temper and abandon any further attempts to arouse her.
He had taken what he wanted and left her bleeding and in pain, telling her flatly that virgins were more trouble than they were worth. This despite the fact that her innocence was what had attracted him in the first place. He had deliberately set out to make her fall in love with him and then abandoned her as just another of life’s challenges that hadn’t lived up to his jaded expectations.
‘I don’t know what happened between us so you shouldn’t tease me about it,’ she said uneasily. ‘It’s not fair.’
His fingers stilled their delicate by-play. ‘Does that worry you?’
She swallowed, pulling her mind back to the present. Benedict wasn’t anything like Julian. For one thing he was older and more discriminating, a man who had achieved brilliant success on his own terms, not a spoiled, idle playboy trading on his family name. And he was as patient as he was tenacious, as demanding on himself as on others. He wouldn’t hurt her, not physically, anyway...
‘Of course it worries me...’
He sighed, and to her aching disappointment withdrew his hand from her dress. He removed his glasses and hung them carelessly from his hip pocket, then curved his fingers around her throat as he looked deep into her eyes. Once again, she succumbed to the spell of his mesmerising gaze.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured meaninglessly as he applied gentle pressure to the nape of her neck, drawing her down to his mouth.
She couldn’t have resisted even if she had wanted to; the mysterious shadows in those deep blue eyes were simply too alluring. They made her want to know who the man really was behind his self-controlled mask, to find out whether the strange, shivery sensations that radiated through her body at his lightest touch were real or merely the illusion of desire. She forgot that he was her employer, that there were very sound and sensible reasons why this should not be allowed to happen. She drifted into his embrace with a thrilling knowledge of her own daring. He hadn’t been disappointed in her as a lover... She had obviously pleased him and now it was time to discover if he pleased her!
