Reputation in Tatters

by Maggie Cox

  Seeming to reflect upon the question, Freya leaned towards Nash with her arms folded in front of her on the table.

  ‘A passionate story cannot help but inspire…do you not agree?’ she asked him, in the most perfect Russian accent.

  A hot charge of intense euphoria catapulted through his insides like a circus act shot from a cannon.

  ‘So…you won’t mind, then, that I went ahead and arranged an audition for you?’ He grinned.

  ‘When? How?’ The shock on her beautiful face was a picture.

  ‘You’re telling me that you’re interested?’

  ‘Don’t tease me…please!’ She grabbed his hand and her warm palm curled around it.

  Sweet heaven! Nash wanted to tease her some more—but not here. The teasing he had in mind should most definitely take place in bed, where he would be able to hear her sweet moans of pleasure as he did the things to her that his mind and body were so avidly clamouring to do.

  ‘Have you really arranged for me to audition for the part of Nikita?’

  Her grip on his hand didn’t lessen, Nash noticed with almost dizzying satisfaction. Her perfume filled the air and deluged his senses.

  ‘I have. But we’ll arrange the timing of it when we get back to the UK and you’re feeling ready. I’ve got Geoff Epstein’s promise on that.’

  ‘Oh, I could kiss you!’ She lifted his hand to her sweetly warm lips and did just that.

  The pupils of his blue eyes turned to jet. Before she could say another word he detached his hand from hers and walked round to the other side of the table where she sat. Gazing deeply into her captivated glance, he reached out and impelled her to her feet.

  ‘Before you ask, sweetheart…I’m not asking for payment for fixing you up with an audition. But I want you to kiss me. I want you to kiss me because I think I’m in serious trouble if you don’t!’

  And she found her lips as well as her will vanquished beneath the possession of his burning kiss. Her mind couldn’t have swum more dizzyingly if she’d been on a carousel. The way his body pressed tight up against hers, as though they were one flesh, left Freya in no doubt about his desire for her. Iron-hard, his strength and need exploded onto her senses like a crescendo of fireworks—and if that wasn’t enough his intoxicating masculine heat seemed to elicit the kind of weakness in her limbs that only a serious fever would otherwise accomplish. Every part of him seemed made to entice and seduce her, and resistance never even entered her head.

  So when Nash lifted his head, and his mesmerising blue eyes branded her soul with his name in tongues of flame, Freya knew the outcome of this inflammatory exchange between them was nothing less than inevitable. Keeping her hand resting possessively at his back, she felt her excitement make her tremble—hard.

  ‘What about our meal?’ she asked, her voice hoarse.

  ‘Are you serious?’ His wicked toe-curling grin was pure sex, and she shook even harder. ‘I want you in bed, Ms Carpenter…and I want you there right now.’ Possessively catching her hand, he drew her through the open doorway.

  In Nash’s bed, Freya discovered a sensual haven and the kind of bone-melting seductive delight that even her most secret fantasies had lacked the power to conjure up.

  Beneath them, the sheets were pale cold linen—but they could have been satin, velvet, the most sumptuously exotic materials from a Bedouin market for all her entranced senses knew. Nash’s warm, commanding mouth became both an instrument of delight and torment to her, because every time he withdrew it from her lips Freya felt as though he’d withdrawn some vital component that her very nature needed to exist. She found herself begging him for more of the same, and her huskily voiced pleas stunned her with the welter of desire and need she heard in their register.

  His palms came into full, devastating contact with her bared breasts, and his fingers teased and seduced their sensitive tips as a musical maestro coaxed the most exquisite heavenly sounds from his orchestra. Her hushed urgent moans as she yielded to his riveting attentions fell upon the air like pearls of morning dew clinging lovingly to lush blades of grass. His skin was so smooth and warm, and the soft hairs on his well-defined muscular chest rubbed delightfully against her as he claimed the right to cover Freya’s body with his own.

  Her moans became even more rasping and urgent as Nash lowered his head and started to rain explosive little kisses down the whole length of her, right to the tips of her pearl-coloured toenails. Such devastating lovemaking was a revelation to her, and she wished that it never had to end. Arching her body with a surprised cry as his mouth found the most sensitive core of her womanhood, Freya sensed the room spin crazily once more. Pure sensation drowned her in its spell, as though the air was filled with showers of tiny diamonds that kept exploding onto her body like shooting stars. Her fingers curled tightly into the stiff linen sheet beneath her as his silken tongue made her climax, and the scalding surge of wild emotion that inevitably accompanied it brought her to tears. It was as though some dammed-up body of water had burst its banks inside her and was now moving unstoppably through every sense, cell and limb she possessed—as though its force would not be denied any longer.

  Returning to examine her face, Nash brushed back her hair and glanced with concern into the dark eyes that glittered moistly back at him.

  ‘I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ he said softly, his palm touching the side of her velvet cheek.

  ‘You didn’t do anything wrong… In fact…you did everything right. I just can’t help it. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me every day.’ Freya bit her lip to try and stem the threatened onrush of fresh tears, trying to form a smile at the same time. ‘I guess I’m just used to a man taking his own pleasure and that’s it.’

  Hearing her softly spoken confession, Nash found her unexpected revelation profoundly touching. It saddened him to think that she’d never really enjoyed the act of making love up until now because her ex-partner had never given her that ultimate pleasure. But then he supposed that tallied with what he already knew about the man. He shouldn’t be surprised. Nash had never witnessed a woman cry when he’d brought her to climax. He was beginning to see that there were many undiscovered shades to this lovely woman that he had frankly been quite unaware of. It made him want to become acquainted with even more of the myriad facets of her personality.

  ‘Well, right now your pleasure is right at the top of my list, angel,’ he asserted tenderly, then kissed her with all the voracious need that had seized his body, the desire he had been able to exert such control over up until then almost threatening to overwhelm him.

  ‘Nash…’ She rubbed the pad of her thumb across his mouth, and smiled as he gazed down at her.

  He thought that he had never seen such a mixture of innocence and lust on a woman’s face before, or even guessed at the torrent of feeling that sight might elicit. Capturing her wrist with his hand to still it, he suckled the thumb she had been teasing him with, then applied his teeth to the tender part. Feeling her hips rise towards his in surprise and hunger beneath him, Nash moved away for a few moments to see to protection, then slowly—and with devastating care—inserted his aching shaft deep inside the warm cavern of her exquisite womanhood.

  She was tight and hot, and her sweetly enraptured moan shattered him as it fell on the hushed air. There was not another house for miles, and right at that moment it was as though the entire world belonged just to them. A gravel-voiced groan was emitted harshly from his throat. With increasing urgent need Nash clasped her hips even harder with his strong muscular thighs and drove into her, bending his head to kiss her breasts, her neck, her quivering mouth and her eyelids. Sliding his fingers through her glorious hair. He knew his delight in her body was beyond measure as he sensed her climax again beneath him. He had waited for that satisfying response from her, but now Nash finally gave his own mounting desire wings and let it fly.

  As he let himself lie against her in the aftermath, the combined heat they’d engendered making them cling ho
tly together, he listened to her heart beating wildly against his ear and knew his own easily matched it, beat for beat. His lips curved into an unashamed smile of acknowledgement.

  ‘I didn’t realise you had even more talents than I first suspected, Ms Carpenter,’ he teased gently, leaning up on his elbows and laughing into her eyes.

  At that very moment Freya knew she had walked to the edge of a pretty high cliff and was poised to take that final leap. There seemed to be no going back after what had just happened, and she knew it. Watching that devastating sea of blue sparkle back at her, she thought she had never seen another man more beautiful. He was incredible. Right now her will-power was teetering crazily—balanced on a knife-edge as she warred with the desire to let herself fall for him, utterly and completely.

  ‘My dad used to say I had lots of talents,’ she heard herself reply, wondering how that poignant thought had somehow permeated her mind when it was still reeling from the devastating impact of Nash’s lovemaking. Probably the emotion of the moment had jettisoned it up from deep in her unconscious. ‘He used to say that I could be anything I wanted to be and that everything was possible if I only believed it.’ She sensed Nash’s gaze narrow with interest. ‘You would have found much in common with him, I’m sure.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘He got cancer and died when I was six.’ She shrugged, trying to will away the desolation that almost closed her throat at the memory—feeling the old gnawing ache of missing the man who had meant the world to her rise strongly inside her. ‘People say that I was far too young to remember him that well—to miss him as much as I do—but they’re wrong. I remember every detail about him—the way he looked, the way he spoke, the way he smelt—as though someone injected the memory into my very cells so that I would never forget him. He made me feel like I was the most precious thing in the world. When I was with him I felt so…so loved…you know?’

  Nash didn’t know, but he would have liked to experience the same from his own father if he had lived. People said that girls often subconsciously looked to find men modelled on their fathers in character and even sometimes appearance. Had Freya been searching for someone to love her with the depth of feeling her father had loved her with all along? If so, she must have been totally blinded by the true facts of James Frazier’s nature to be so misled.

  ‘Those big brown eyes would melt any father’s heart,’ he teased lightly. ‘I’m sure that you were very easy to love as a little girl.’

  ‘But not as a woman? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I’m not saying that at all!’ A bolt of shock slashed through Nash’s insides. Did she really believe that she was unlovable? Even the mere notion astonished him. ‘Where did you get such an idea?’

  Her gaze sliding momentarily away from his, Freya wriggled out from beneath her lover and moved herself up into a sitting position. Getting hold of the sheet, she pulled it up to her chest as Nash leaned back against the pillows beside her. ‘Men only generally admire me because I’m a fairly well-known actress. They don’t ever seem to see the woman behind the roles I play. Then…when they get to meet me…I think that somehow they’re disappointed that the “real” me doesn’t somehow fit with the fantasy they’ve bought into. I think that’s why James was so angry with me. I refused to play along with the role of this amazing movie star he thought he’d married. The parties, the whole celebrity circuit—they were all things that he craved and I didn’t. He often accused me of being the dullest creature on earth!’

  ‘The man’s judgement must have been seriously defective!’

  ‘Everyone has their little fantasy…don’t they?’ She bestowed a look on him of such unremitting anguish that Nash sensed his heart constrict. ‘And when it’s proved not to be true they feel let down.’

  Her ex was even dumber than he’d first suspected, he thought vehemently. If the fool couldn’t see the glittering diamond that was the real Freya Carpenter then he must indeed be blind! The true woman was so much more than any character she might portray on screen or on stage, and far more compelling and enchanting. Any man in his right mind would be honoured to know her…let alone have her regard!

  The depth of his own feelings startled him. ‘Remind me why you married him,’ he heard himself comment wryly.

  ‘Why?’ Her dark gaze riveted Nash. ‘Because I have a spectacular talent for not knowing who I can trust, that’s why! Either that or I trust too easily. Also…I was frightened of being alone. I never spent one lonely day in my life until my dad died. He used to say that he’d never leave me—and if you tell that to a child they believe you! I felt like he’d somehow betrayed me—not just deserted me when he died. Maybe subconsciously I expect every man to eventually betray me? Anyway… You asked why I married James. Well…when a good-looking, attentive man who professes to think the world of me then tells me that he loves me…I…idiot that I am…believe him!’

  There was shattering hurt in her voice now, and before Nash could react Freya had slid across the bed, grabbed her jeans and started to pull them on with her back to him.

  ‘I guess I’m just one of those gullible women who always end up with the wrong man—the type that the press is so good at mocking!’ Turning her head, her dark hair spilling across her naked breasts, hiding them from Nash’s view, she nonetheless easily commanded his gaze—stunned by her actions though it might be. ‘You can’t be a one-night remedy for all my unhappiness, Nash. I know that. And let’s be real here too. I know that you don’t really want any more of me beyond a little sexual recreation. So…nice as just now was…it probably wouldn’t do either of us any good to repeat it.’

  Picking up her shirt from the chair where she’d thrown it, she quickly shoved her slender arms through the sleeves and did up the buttons. Then she collected the discarded scraps of silk underwear that lay there too and balled them into her palm. ‘I’m going downstairs to get something to eat.’

  ‘Hold on a second! Sexual recreation, Freya?’ Nash regarded her with furious disbelief. ‘Is that all you think this was?’

  ‘Well…tell me what it was, then, if it wasn’t that?’

  Freya stopped at the door, with her hand on the edge of the frame, and her expression was one of weary resignation, clearly anticipating the worst. Feeling both regret and great frustration, Nash was suddenly hesitant to try and explain feelings that right then were out of his remit.

  He knew the exact moment when her interest in hearing what he had to say withdrew, even before he’d said another word.

  ‘I thought so,’ she said quietly, and pulled the door closed behind her as she went out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KNOWING that Freya had just come through a pretty horrendous time in both her private and professional life, and would naturally be wary of other relationships as a result, did not help lessen the sense of failure Nash had experienced when she’d walked out of his bedroom, he reflected.

  Nursing a freshly brewed cup of coffee the next morning, he stared out at the azure horizon through the open kitchen doorway, deep in thought. Okay, he hadn’t deepened their intimacy by readily talking about himself and admitting some of his own issues…but was that really such a crime? He hadn’t deliberately withheld information…at least not consciously. But he’d be the first to admit that dealing with emotions was not something he particularly excelled at—especially in relationships.

  Now he considered that he had been playing a role too. One that he’d hidden behind—and not just professionally. The disguise had also encroached upon his private life, and that was why he rarely talked about himself with intimate partners. All they ever knew was that he was a successful businessman with a textbook-perfect past that didn’t really exist, and Nash silently admitted that he had disguised his true background through feelings of shame and regret. He’d even sometimes fooled himself into believing the fiction rather than revisiting the truth.

  The fact didn’t make him proud. Freya was
braver than him by far. Openly discussing her issues with trust, she had frankly told him that she feared any man she got into a relationship with would probably eventually desert her…just as she felt her father had done. At last Nash was beginning to get a true picture of her make-up, and he had to admit that it rendered her even more appealing to him than she had been already. She was a sensitive, caring woman—nothing like the brittle, self-absorbed persona in the picture the press and her ex-husband had painted for the public.

  Remembering the highly provocative sight of her as she’d presented her back to him to dress, and the way her long hair had spilled like a black velvet waterfall across her breasts, Nash had to contain a groan as a strong resurgence of last night’s heady desire throbbed through him. To lessen its hold, he got up and walked out towards the swimming pool. Settling himself in a cane chair, he silently and perhaps bitterly acknowledged that the sense of failure hadn’t dissipated in any way. After all, it didn’t make him feel too good to have a woman gaze at him as if he’d just confirmed her worst fears about him…especially when they had just made love.

  Shortly after Freya had left Nash alone, he’d joined her in the kitchen to finish the meal they hadn’t even started, and—just as he’d envisaged—conversation between them had been stilted, punctuated by long, tension-filled silences. Not long after that he hadn’t been surprised when Freya had declared she was going to have an early night. But today, in spite of this new unforeseen tension in their relationship, Nash had to focus on the reason why they were here together. He was supposed to be helping her build her confidence, as well as protecting her from negative publicity and working on strategies to help her make progress professionally—not having his own ego deflated by imagined disappointment.

  ‘I’ve finished reading the book. You wanted me to tell you what I loved about it and why I think I’d be the right person to play the lead?’

  She’d stolen up on him on silent feet, and Nash glanced up at her in a simple white sundress, her lovely shoulders bare and her soulful dark eyes piercing him with their melancholy and beauty. Once again he was struck by how this woman commanded attention as avidly as a spectacular sunrise.