“She means my trust fund. She means all the money I ever earned working at Royale Industries. All the money she never allowed me a cent of.”
Luke’s frown deepened. “How did you live, buy food, clothes…?”
Penny shrugged. “Selina paid for everything. It was just another way for her to control me.”
Like I am, Luke added mentally, his conscience niggling at him again. He pushed the errant thought from his mind, put his hands on her shoulders, and turned her to face him, his gut clenching with self-reproach as he stared at her tearstained face. He had done this to her. He had subjected her to her aunt’s own personal brand of torture twice in one day.
Damn her. He needed to focus. He stroked his finger under her eyes to wipe away her straggling tears and gently stroked her cheek.
“Selina tossing her hat in the ring has changed the game. You need my help now just as much as I need yours, and I think I know how we can help each other.”
“How?” Penny’s eyes narrowed at Luke’s velvety tone of voice. He smiled devilishly and held her face in both hands as he stared into her eyes with those molten golden orbs.
“Do as Selina says, Penny. Be my mistress.”
Her tears turned to ice and she shoved Luke and his tender gestures away from her.
“Would you please pick a personality and stick with it? I swear, Luke, I never know if I coming or going with you!”
“What did I do?” he asked, his face bathed in genuine confusion.
“One moment you’re nice to me, the next you’re not, one night you’re blackmailing me, the next you’re kissing me. You’re sarcastic and mean to me when you want me to do your dirty work and you’re tender and caring when you want me to do Selina’s dirty work. And if you think sleeping with you is going to happen any time soon then I have−”
Penny’s tirade was stolen by Luke’s smiling mouth as his lips slashed down over hers and absorbed her passion. Without thinking she returned his kiss with all the force of her argument. Tongues lashed in a war of wills as Luke lifted Penny off the floor and wedged her between himself and the glass wall behind her. His hands groped and caressed her ass and thighs, wrapped her legs around him, and pulled her hips into him.
Her mind was in a spin. She was lost in Luke’s kiss. Why did his lips have to be so soft? Why did his body have to be so hard, feel so good, so right thrust between her legs with his thick erection grinding down her resistance?
But it wasn’t right, none of this was. Penny shook her head and broke the intoxicating kiss.
“No, I won’t do this,” she whispered urgently. “I can’t do this.”
Luke either didn’t hear her or didn’t care to. He held her firmly, not letting go. “Be my mistress, Penny,” he murmured as he buried his face against her neck and licked her hammering pulse. “Let me make love to you.”
Penny clung to Luke’s shoulders and closed her eyes. Making love sounded so nice the way he said it—made her want to give in to him, made her want to know how it would feel to have this magnificent man pleasure her and love her.
But then dismay settled low in her belly as she realised Luke would never love her; he would never even like her. Why should she give herself to a man who would never give himself to her? By making Penny do his dirty work, he was already exercising too much control over her. She wouldn’t let him take what little independence she had left.
“No.”
Luke pulled back and took a moment to steady himself. He looked at Penny and saw the conflict in her eyes. She wanted him. He knew it. Hell, he’d known it from the moment he saw her blush the other morning in her café, and he knew it now as he studied her face. But the look of distress settling across her features made him concede to her wishes. Again he hid his frustration at her resistance.
“Why are you afraid of me?” he asked softly as he put her down.
“I’m not afraid of you!”
“You’re afraid of something,” he pressed.
“If I’m afraid of anything, Mr Hardcastle, it is of becoming someone’s dirty little secret, or worse, a not-so-secret scandal. If I allow myself to be your mistress I run the risk of being first one, then the other.”
Luke frowned as he studied Penny’s face. Where did she get these notions? Was this Selina’s influence? After listening to the recording he could well believe it was. Luke found it very plausible that Selina would fill Penny’s head with fears and doubts about the world, about men. It would make her so much easier to control, and it would seem Selina was all about the control.
“I’ve never kept secrets, Penny, dirty, little or otherwise, and I have no intention of starting now. And as for scandals, what is so scandalous about a man and a woman dating?”
“In this city, when the man is a Hardcastle and the woman is a Royale, scandal is bound to follow. There is too much bad blood between our families for it not to.”
“The only bad blood is between me and Selina.”
“And me. You still blame me too, Luke. How are you supposed to convince people that you’re in love with me when you don’t even like me? Even then you’d need a miracle to−”
“To what, Penny?” Luke watched her as she shifted her feet anxiously.
“I’m not exactly your type, Luke,” said Penny as she looked away. She was embarrassed.
“What do you mean?”
“You only date models,” she said, exasperated. “And Selina’s right. I hardly scrub up to the task.”
Luke laughed out loud, until he saw the sheen of tears in her devastated eyes. He took her face in both hands and kissed her again, just long enough to throw her off kilter.
“Honey, you are the sexiest woman I have ever known, and the fact that you don’t know that makes you even more so. Why do you think I want you in my bed?”
Penny looked at Luke as though he’d lost the plot. “Because you’re horny and I’m convenient,” she said, her temper obviously winning out over her hurt.
Luke chuckled. “There is nothing convenient about you, Penny. Trust me.”
Moving his office from one side of Hardcastle Tower to the other several years ago, so he could avoid the temptation of watching her come and go from Royale Industries, had been far from convenient.
Missing lunch today because he would rather lie and say he wasn’t hungry than stand up in front of his board members with a raging hard-on induced by the smell of Penny’s perfume on his jacket, was extremely inconvenient. But he could see she wasn’t convinced.
“For the record, I do like you. A lot more than I ever thought I could, and definitely more than I should,” he said, his voice growing husky and low. He swept Penny up in his arms. “Stay with me tonight.”
“Put me down.”
“Not until you agree to stay with me.”
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “Fine. Stay and talk with me then.”
“I can’t. I’m opening the shop tomorrow.”
“Get someone else to do it.”
“No. Put me down.”
“No. Kiss me.”
“You said talk,” she gasped, and turned her head away just as Luke’s lips crashed against her cheek.
“Does that mean you’re staying?” He chuckled softly against her ear.
“You’re incorrigible,” Penny said, a laugh bubbling in her voice.
Luke pulled back and smiled. “And you’re beautiful.”
Penny’s face darkened again. “Stop saying that.”
Luke frowned and put her back on her feet. He leaned back against the glass wall, folded his arms across his chest, and watched as she moved back to the couch, sat down and smoothed her skirt out over her lap and tugged at her blouse and fiddled with her hair.
“No one’s ever told you that before, have they?”
“Lots of times, but they didn’t mean it either.”
Luke’s frown deepened. Conversations with Penny made his head hurt. Her words constantly contradicted w
hat he read in her body language, she rarely smiled and more often than not Luke found himself wanting to forget about getting his revenge—against this Royale, anyway.
But damn if those very complaints didn’t make her more intriguing.
He slumped down beside her, stretched his arm along the back of the couch and toyed with her silky hair, letting the chestnut strands sift through his fingers. He repressed a sigh when she rejected his advances yet again and shied away, but he refused to move his arm. He had some pride.
“What do you mean?” he said. “Who didn’t mean it?”
“The men who thought to climb the corporate ladder by wooing me. They all said I was beautiful, they all said I was special, but they all lied. As soon as they discovered the way to the top at Royale Industries was to sleep with Selina instead of her niece, they didn’t think twice about giving me the flick.”
“Did Selina know?” Luke asked through gritted teeth, images of Penny being used and discarded by Selina’s sycophants making him sick to his stomach.
“If she did, she didn’t care.”
Luke glared at nothing in particular. In his mind Selina was racking up a laundry list of crimes that had nothing to do with Cassidy Holdings and everything to do with hurting Penny. He wasn’t sure why he felt so protective of her but he knew he wanted to hurt Selina for hurting her, and he was no longer thinking of ways to hurt her himself. In fact, his thoughts were leading him down a very different path.
He turned to her and suddenly grinned. “Well, Penny Royale, I suggest we make a new deal. You were right about me. I am a good man, and I really don’t know how to blackmail people−”
Luke was cut off by the phone ringing. The answering machine picked up and his sister’s bubbly voice burst into the room.
“Luke, pick up the phone. I know you’re home, you slacker, now pick up. Okay fine, ignore your one and only sister. Please, continue having sex with whatever swizzle-stick bobble-head Euro-trash you’re−” Luke scrambled over the back of the couch and snatched up the phone from the kitchen bench.
“Now is not a good time, Cas.”
“I didn’t offend your date, did I?” she asked with glee.
“No, because I’m not on a date.”
“Yeah right, Mr. Model-of-the-month. Who is it this time?”
“It’s Penny Royale.”
“Oh, so, the plan is in full swing, then? I wasn’t sure you’d actually go through with it.”
“Can we talk about this tomorrow, please?”
“So you haven’t forgotten then?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten. I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty. Now go to bed, Cas.”
“Yes, mum. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Cassie.” Luke hung up the phone, grabbed two more beers from the fridge and moved back to the couch. “Now, where were we?”
“You suck at blackmail,” Penny reminded him.
Luke laughed. “Yes, I do. And as I said before, by making demands of her own Selina has changed things, for the better I might add.”
“How is me being blackmailed by two people instead of one person better?”
“Because I’m not blackmailing you anymore. I don’t need to, not if you agree to my new deal.”
“And if I don’t agree to the new deal?”
“Then I guess we’ll be sticking with the blackmail option.”
“You know, for a moment there, I actually wanted to kiss you.”
Luke smiled seductively. He let his eyes dip to her mouth and watched her pink tongue moisten her lips.
“But now I just want to slap you again.”
Luke shrugged a broad shoulder. “Kissing, slapping. Where you’re concerned, Penny, both are a turn on. Now do you want to hear the deal or not?”
Penny rolled her eyes in frustration at his cheeky grin but nodded her head.
“If we play the game right, we can both get what we want. If Selina wants inside intel about my finances, then we’ll give it to her.”
“Not to pick holes in the plan, Luke, but wouldn’t that be counterproductive?”
“Not if the information she receives is false.”
Penny took a sip of beer as Luke’s words sank in. They were going to trick Selina. “So I pretend to mend bridges by giving Selina dodgy information about you, and she gives me my money.”
“While you’re mending those proverbial bridges you can get me the evidence I need against Selina.”
“It still sounds like I’m the one doing all the work, taking all the risks. If Selina thinks I’m screwing her over, even for a moment, she’ll ruin me. I can’t afford to start all over again. Again.”
“You won’t have to. Selina can’t take your shop because I own it. If she tries to intimidate your suppliers, I’ll be there to reassure them, and if she tries to take your house, she’ll find that you own it, lock, stock, and barrel. In short, I’ll protect you, Penny.” He paused and stroked her cheek, the warmth of his hand soothing against her skin. “I won’t let Selina hurt you again.”
The urge to throw herself at Luke was overwhelming. After everything he’d put her through this week, such generosity was completely unexpected, especially since Penny knew he wouldn’t have forgotten about her part in the Cassidy Holdings deal. But even as her body cried out for her to lean into him, to taste his mouth once more, to slide her hands under his T-shirt and knead his hot, hard flesh, her stubborn pride reminded her of the promise she’d made and she shrank from his intimate touch.
Dignity, first and foremost.
Well, at least on the outside.
“But why would you do that for me?”
“Because even if you don’t want to be my mistress, I would hope we can be friends. Do we have a deal?” Luke asked. He held out his hand to shake Penny’s. She hesitated to take it.
“But what about our affair? If I start giving Selina detailed information she’ll expect us to be fooling around, and if she doesn’t see any evidence of that, she’ll get suspicious.”
Luke thought for a moment and scratched his chin. “You’re sure you won’t sleep with me?” he asked with his best come-hither smile, golden eyes smouldering with the promise of wicked delights.
Penny’s pulse beat so fast she thought she’d have a heart attack. She quickly looked away and shook her head before she threw her dignity out the window, caved in and leapt on him.
“I’m sure,” she said, hoping she sounded sure.
Luke sighed dramatically, then drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. His brow creased as he thought for a moment, and he picked up the voice recorder. Penny filled with dread. She didn’t want to hear Selina’s voice again today. Her nerves were raw enough.
Luke skimmed through the conversation until he found what he was after.
“I find it extremely hard to believe that a man as importantly wealthy as Hardcastle would stoop so low as to discuss lease terms with the likes of you. He has lawyers to−”
He stopped the recorder and grinned.
“Would Selina believe I was mentoring you?”
Penny chewed her lip as she considered the idea. “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe. I mean, it’s more plausible than her thinking I was selling you her ‘trade secrets,’ isn’t it?”
Luke chuckled. “But do you think she’ll believe it?” he asked again.
“I’ll make her believe it,” Penny said.
“So, do we have a deal, Miss Royale?”
Penny shook Luke’s hand. “We have a deal, Mr. Hardcastle.”
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Luke drove Penny to Royale Teas. The previous night had been a revealing experience. They’d stayed up until three in the morning, just talking. Luke had never done that with a woman before. He was actually quite surprised to find it wasn’t nearly as pointless as it sounded.
Usually Luke’s brief relationships consisted of little more than hot sex in classic romantic locations like Milan, Paris, and Hong Kong, with gorgeous
young models with strange names. Vanity, Mercedes, Alura. Talking was not required.
But Luke found he wanted to talk to Penny. He wanted to know everything about her, and he’d never wanted that with a woman before either. He rationalised his behaviour by telling himself that if he could just find that one little flaw that would drive him crazy, he could cease and desist his rekindled infatuation before it took over his life again.
He’d found nothing.
It was as Luke feared. Penny Royale was a caring, compassionate, gentle woman. When her anger wasn’t being provoked, she was witty and kind, passionate about her work and her friends, and as the night progressed she’d learned to relax in his presence and even began teasing Luke, and took his teasing with grace.
He smiled as they drove along Brisbane’s streets at the thought that they would be spending a lot more time together.
Luke stopped the car in front of Penny’s shop. He turned to look at her and smiled. She’d paired her stripy skirt with one of Cassie’s T-shirts and had her hair pulled back in a simple yet stylish ponytail. Even after only four and a half hours sleep, she still looked lovely to his eyes.
“Would you like to come up for a cup of coffee?” Penny asked.
Luke grinned wickedly as he fixed her in his sensual golden gaze. “You do know what that question is the universal code for, don’t you, Penny?”
“Don’t start that again.” She blushed at his teasing. “I’m offering coffee only, and maybe cake.”
“Mmm, coffee and dessert. Tempting,” Luke purred as he let his eyes leisurely and deliberately scan Penny’s body, making her blush an even darker pink. “But I’ll have to take a rain check. I have to pick up Cassie in half an hour. But I will call you tonight and you can tell me if Selina bought our cover story. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Penny, then paused before asking tentatively, “When will I see you again?”
Luke wanted to say, “Stuff the phone call. I’ll just come and see you tonight instead,” but he knew they would both benefit from some personal space.
“I thought you might like some time to yourself. I know I’ve run you ragged this week. Why don’t we say Monday?”
Revenge and Redemption Page 8
