Dishonourable Proposal
Page 4
Brazenly she faced him, though she was shaking inside with fear and repressed sexual desire. 'Well,' her hand trembled on his arousal, but she forced herself to continue, 'do you carry five hundred in loose change? I don't take credit cards.'
For one terrifying moment she thought he was going to hit her. He raised his hand, his black eyes spitting fire, then abruptly he shoved her away, and, turning on his heel, went back into the bedroom.
Katy slowly crossed to the long velvet sofa and sank into the soft cushions. She had caught a glimpse of something so terrible in his eyes as he had turned from her. She knew without a doubt he would never bother her again.
She watched as he returned, shrugging on his jacket. She lowered her head, unable to stand the disgust, the look of icy contempt in his dark eyes. She was unaware of his step towards her, or the flash of anguished regret that contorted his handsome face. She only heard the closing of the door as he walked out of the suite without saying a word.
Katy's head fell back against the soft cushions and a long-drawn-out sigh escaped her. Jake had gone, thank God! She had just put on the greatest act of her life, and he had fallen for it. She should have been pleased, but despairingly she recognised that one minute longer and she would have collapsed at Jake's feet, begging him to take her.
Moisture glazed her huge green eyes and slowly a tear trickled down her soft cheek. Self-pity was an unenviable emotion, but tonight she could not help herself. Why? Why? her heart cried. Of all the men she had ever met, Jake and only Jake was the one man to awaken the sensuous side of her nature to a fever-pitch of wanting. Tonight had taught her a hard lesson.
For years she had convinced herself she hated Jake, but sadly now she was forced to face the truth. It was not love; it couldn't be—she despised the man—but the chemistry, the want, the explosion of feelings his presence aroused in her was never going to go away.
It was something she was going to have to learn to accept and live with. Choking back a sob, she lifted her hands and rubbed the tears from her eyes. Rising from the sofa, she walked into the bedroom. Her heart squeezed in a spasm of pain as her glance rested on the rumpled bed, the image of herself and Jake barely fifteen minutes ago, locked in a passionate embrace, vivid in her mind.
She turned her back on the bed and the memories it invoked and, picking up the towel that had dropped from her hair earlier, she moved to the dressing-table and sat down on the low stool. Determinedly she began rubbing her hair dry. Massaging her scalp had a therapeutic effect on her overwrought nerves, and, finally dropping the towel, she picked up a comb and with grim determination began combing the damp tangle of her hair into some semblance of order.
Thinking clearly for the first time in hours, she began to question Jake's motive in bidding for a dinner date with her. True, if he had asked her for a date in the conventional way she would have refused. But any time in the past two years he could have seen her at any of the well-publicised shows and parties she attended.
He was a very powerful man with an entree in all levels of society. He knew her well enough to know she would never have caused a scene. So why go to the trouble of bidding for what he must have known was going to be a very public date with photographers in attendance? It didn't make sense...
Jake Granton was notorious for avoiding publicity; he was rarely mentioned except in business articles in the serious newspapers, and it was rare to see a photograph of the man or any mention of his private life in the popular media. God knew, she had looked!
In four years Katy had only seen one article about Jake in an Italian glossy. Her full lips quirked in the semblance of a smile. She had spent the whole evening in her hotel room in Rome, trying to decipher the same article with her limited knowledge of Italian. What a fool} she thought wryly.
Finally she admitted to herself she had never succeeded in tearing Jake out of her heart. It had been a self-delusion. She had run to France and stayed there. Developing a different career had helped her pretence.
Abruptly she stood up and crossed the room to the wide bed. No more, she vowed silently; as of now her game-playing was over. Next week she hoped to start working as a designer. Jake and all that had been between them was over, and she had to face the fact and get on with her life.
She shrugged off her robe, and, pulling back the covers, she crawled into bed. As for Jake, she had nothing to fear from him any more. The glimpse of pure unadulterated hate she had seen in his eyes, minutes before he had left, told her more clearly than words that the last part she had played had been her best and most convincing.
CHAPTER THREE
Katy buried her head in the pillow, but the slight, lingering fragrance of Jake's cologne clung to the crisp cotton covers, forcibly reminding her of their earlier lovemaking, and more—all the other moments she had shared with Jake...
She stirred restlessly on the bed, finally turning to lie flat on her back, her green eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Her mind spun on oiled wheels, preventing her from finding the oblivion of sleep. Small cameos of her past stirred flickering images in her brain.
Six years old and running around the huge grounds of the family home in Cornwall. A massive granite foursquare structure built on the hills above the little harbour of Fowey, a few miles from the china clay works that had been the foundation of the family business almost two hundred years ago. She had been a happy child, Irving in the huge house with her mother and grandfather. Her father had returned from the factory in London most weekends, and sometimes her mother would take her to London to stay in the elegant town house.
Looking back down the years, Katy could pin-point the exact moment things had begun to change. She had been ten at the time. Her father had returned home unexpectedly late one Thursday evening. She had awoken to the sounds of angry voices—her parents' and also her mother's friend Auntie Fiona's. The following morning the young Katy had run to her parents' bedroom, needing reassurance, only to find her mother on her own; her father had been occupying a separate bedroom.
From then on her father's visits were fewer, and Katy's trips to London stopped. When her dad did visit the talk was all about sending Katy to boarding-school. Her beloved grandfather died six months later, and at the funeral her parents had another row. The landlady of the local pub, the Bird in the Hand, cried at the graveside, and her mother had been disgusted. Katy could hear her father's voice even now.
'Mother has been dead for twenty-five years, for God's sake. He was a normal, healthy man, something you wouldn't understand, given your views on sex.'
Thinking about it now, she wondered for the first time if maybe her mother had been frigid. It was no excuse for the behaviour of her father but it might go some way to explain it.
By the end of the year Katy was a boarder at St Oswald's School for Young Ladies in the heart of Yorkshire. It was there that one of the older girls pointed out to her a photograph of her father and a young woman leaving a London club in one of the tabloid newspapers beloved of the school caretaker. Suddenly everything that had happened in her home over the past year made sense: her father was a philanderer and her innocent trust in home and family was badly damaged.
On the day of her mother's death in a car accident the police called at the factory, looking for her father. He was missing—abroad with one of his lady-friends. By sheer coincidence, Jake Granton had chosen that day to visit the factory. At the instigation of Mary, her father's secretary, Jake agreed to travel to Katy's boarding-school and break the news to the fourteen-year-old child.
He took her home to Cornwall and stayed rather than leave her with only the housekeeper for company. Jake supported and comforted her, until her father finally arrived on the morning of the funeral. It was Jake who explained her father's absence and told her she was too young to understand the emotions between adults and not to judge her father too harshly. At twenty-six, he appeared a confident young man, but near enough her generation to be comfortable with, so she tried to believe him.
/> Jake talked about his own mother's death a few months previously; he understood her feelings. He had only recently returned from Venice, where he had been acting as his father's envoy and settling his mother's affairs.
Katy sighed inwardly. It had been a peculiar trick of late that had brought herself and Jake together—the death of two women within months of each other.
In Venice Jake had discovered a great-uncle had left aim the shares in Meldenton, and on investigating had unearthed the story behind the holdings.
In the Second World War Grandfather Meldenton had been posted to Italy and there he had saved the life of an Italian man, Gianni Luzzini. After the war, when Grandfather Meldenton had needed capital to refurbish die London factory that had been badly bombed, Gianni, whose family had manufactured glass in Venice for centuries, had insisted on helping him. In return Gianni had rfoctantly accepted a thirty per cent holding in liddenton. Grandfather Meldenton's pride would not allow him to take the money as a gift.
Over the next twelve months Katy had been delighted d receive postcards from various parts of the world from Jake, but it had been the following summer before she had seen him again.
Her father had taken her to his new villa in Marbella and introduced her to Monica, his new bride, an attractive redheaded woman at least twenty years younger than himself. He'd also told Katy the house in Cornwall was to be sold—Monica did not like the country. Their home from then on was to be in London. Katy had been horrified, but Jake had turned up and with a few carefully chosen words had persuaded her to accept her father's marriage. From then on, Jake had always visited when Katy was at home.
Katy groaned and turned over, burying her head in the pillow. She wondered how she had ever been so damned gullible, such a fool, but at fourteen she'd had an outsize crush on Jake. He was the tall, dark, handsome man of her dreams, and she would have done anything for him... and eventually did!
It had been the Easter holiday in her last year at school. She had gone to the villa in Spain, loaded down with books to study for her A level exam. On arriving she had found Jake already in residence. He was convalescing after a skiing accident the month previously. She was horrified to see him hobbling around on crutches with his leg in plaster from thigh to ankle. Her father and Monica stayed for a few days, then left—nursing an invalid was not Monica's style.
For Katy the next two weeks were pure bliss; with only the elderly couple who looked after the villa to chaperon, Katy delighted in looking after Jake. They talked for hours, played Monopoly and chess, and Jake taught her to play backgammon.
It was the backgammon that was her downfall. The last evening of her holiday she was desperate for Jake to treat her as a woman.
Oh, he touched her—an arm round her shoulders, a quick hug, a kiss on the cheek—but she wanted more; just looking at him made her heart beat faster, her stomach turn over. She ached to be held in his arms and feel his beautiful mouth on hers.
Katy had read about love in books and longed to experience the reality of it with Jake, and that night for the first time she beat Jake at backgammon. She could remember it as though it were yesterday.
Jake lounged back on one side of the long hide sofa, his injured leg stretched out before him, his arm spread along the back of the settee. She had never seen him look more sexy. His dark eyes sparkled as he laughed at her across the width of the low coffee-table.
'Well, Katy, you finally did it. You beat the master, and by my reckoning I owe you five thousand pounds.' They used matchsticks as money, and, chuckling, he threw a handful of matches at her. 'I must be a great teacher,' he opined smugly.
Katy, elated at winning, but sad at the thought of leaving the next day, daringly responded, 'I admit you're a good teacher Jake, but, I wonder, is backgammon all you can teach me?' And, standing up, she moved around the table and sat down beside him on the sofa.
She looked at him without speaking, her green eyes brilliant in the perfect oval of her face. She was wearing a brief self-supporting smocked-top cotton sundress, and as she leaned towards him the front slid lower, revealing the soft full curves of her high breasts. She watched his brown eyes darken as his glance dropped to her breasts, she noted the dull flush spread along his high cheekbones, and all trace of amusement vanished from his expression.
He surveyed her smoulderingly. 'What else do you want me to teach you, Katy?'
Katy felt her heartbeat quicken until it almost deafened her. She moved closer and, leaning over his hard body, she reached her slender arms around his neck. 'A kiss instead of the five thousand you owe me,' she tried to joke.
He moved suddenly, his strong arms folding around her as his hard mouth imprisoned her trembling lips. His kiss was all she had imagined and more. His tongue thrust between her parted lips, the consuming heat he ignited in her sent shock-waves crashing through her body. When he finally broke the kiss she was trembling violently in his arms. Gently he held her head to his broad chest, his hand softly stroking her long blonde hair.
'I know, sweetheart, I know.' The huskily voiced endearment was exciting but oddly soothing. 'You want me to teach you to be a woman, and I will, I swear, but, Katy, I'm almost thirty and you are not yet eighteen; I have to be strong for both of us. For God's sake, you still have some months at school. You must concentrate on your exams, but when they are over I promise I will show you what it is to be a woman.' And, lifting her chin with one hand, Jake stared down into her eyes, his handsome face flushed.
'Damn it, Katy, I should have more self-control,' he groaned. 'You must know the effect your magnificent body has on me.' And, lying over him, her legs between his, she did.
'Yes, Jake,' she murmured throatily.
'At the right time and the right place you are going to be mine,' he declared emphatically.
Katy's body flushed with heat at the memory, and restlessly she turned over on the bed. Jake had kept his word, she thought bitterly.
She had finished her exams by the half-term holiday in June, and had gone to the London house for the holiday. Her father and stepmother had greeted her perfunctorily and given her a gold wrist-watch for her eighteenth birthday the following day, and within the hour had left for a weekend party. With only the housekeeper for company, Katy had felt rather deflated until Jake had called.
He'd given her an exquisite heart-shaped emerald pendant surrounded by tiny diamonds on a slender gold chain, and kissed her, declaring throatily, 'Thank God you are eighteen.'
They had spent a wonderful three days together; behaving like tourists, they had visited the Tower of London, taken a river boat from Richmond to Hampton Court, got thoroughly lost in the maze and spent hours just kissing and touching. Playing with fire!
What had happened next was inevitable. Every evening he had left her at the respectable hour of about ten until the Sunday, the last night of her holiday and the housekeeper's night off. She had cooked a light meal of ham omelette and salad for Jake and herself, and then they had settled down on the sofa in the sitting-room to watch television.
The tension, the electric awareness between them that had been brewing all weekend, exploded with the first touch of Jake's lips on hers. There was no doubt in Katy's mind that Jake loved her, and within seconds they had shed their clothes and, naked, in a fever of kisses and caresses, he made love to her with an urgent powerful tenderness, the first stab of pain vanishing in the wonder of his thrusting skilful possession.
Later when he had carried her up to her bed and joined her in it, he made love to her again and said he had something to ask her but only when she had left school. He loved her, but there was no way he would propose to a schoolgirl. She knew exactly what Jake meant, and his avowal of love and fidelity she swallowed whole, never doubting him...
Lying in each other's arms, they made tentative plans for the future. Katy had already been accepted by a private college in Paris, along with her friend Anna, but at Jake's instigation agreed to look into enrolling at a London art college.
The school prize-giving was the day before the end of term, and Anna's father Mr la Tour had arrived to see his daughter presented with the student of the year award. Afterwards he asked Katy if she wanted a lift back to London with them; there was no necessity for her to stay to the final day and have to catch the train back to the city.
Katy leapt at the chance, and the decision changed her life. They arrived in London very late—almost midnight. Mr la Tour insisted on carrying her suitcase to the door, and waited while she quietly opened it and let herself in.
Even now, four years later, the scene that met her eyes that night still had the power to hurt her. The hall was in darkness, but a thin sliver of light shone through the partially opened study door. She thought her father was still up and had taken a step forward when the unmistakable voice of Jake sounded in the silence.
'Really, Monica, my reasons for marrying Katy have nothing to do with you.'
Katy stopped; she was shocked that Jake had told her stepmother of his intentions before even asking her. But then she realised that Jake had probably asked her father's permission and obviously he must have told his wife. She grinned—Jake's words confirmed her treasured hope. She took another step.
'Shh, Monica, I heard something,' Jake said.
'Jake, darling, don't worry. David has been in bed for hours. I wear him out. But you and I never wore each other out, did we, sweetheart? Remember when we went skiing and never left the hotel for two days?'
Katy froze in horror at her stepmother's words, all her dreams turning to dust and ashes in her breast. With horrified fascination she stared through the partially opened door. She saw Jake's back and Monica's arms curved around his shoulders. She heard her stepmother's voice as if from a great distance.