Savage Seduction

by Sharon Kendrick

  Furiously Jade bit her lip and turned away, de- termined that he wouldn’t be able to read such in- appropriate jealousy in her eyes.

  ‘Your expose rather put paid to maintaining any myth that we were prepared to wait until after the wedding,’ he drawled. ‘But in any case, I am not in the habit of living my life according to the dic- tates of my family. I answer to no one.’

  That, she could well believe. He wasn’t a man she could imagine many people standing up to.

  Until now, she thought defiantly. And I meant what I said. Yesterday, she had let her passion run away with her, and she’d almost done the same today; but not again. She had learnt her lesson painfully well. He was prepared to take her in as brutal a way as possible, without care and without feeling. She mustn’t let him.

  ‘And besides,’ he added. ‘After I have finished with my business in England, we will be returning to Piros. For our honeymoon,’ he concluded softly.

  Jade suppressed a shudder. ‘Is that really necessary?’

  ‘It is imperative. This wedding will be conducted with all due ceremony.’ A strong hand was placed on her forearm, like a gaoler’s grip. ‘Come. Let us go,’ he said. ‘The car is waiting.’

  Walking side by side, they made their way back out into the outer office, where Maggie was perched on the edge of the sports editor’s desk, with the face of a woman who had just gambled away a fortune. Everywhere, fingers stilled on word pro- cessors and silence fell like a guillotine.

  ‘One moment, Jade,’ said Constantine, and paused, running one hand through his luxuriant hair and looking round at the hushed expectant workers. ‘I know that there has been considerable speculation following my take-over. Therefore, I feel it only fair to inform you that there will be no redundancies at present,’ he said, and there was an audible murmur of relief. ‘And by the way, Maggie,’ he remarked, looking around. ‘We now operate a policy of no partially clothed women on any pages of this newspaper—is that understood?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ answered Maggie calmly, as though she had not just been asked to change the entire cthos of the Daily View! ‘We’ll think of something to replace them.’

  ‘Something suitable,’ murmured Constantine quietly. ‘And in keeping with the new goals which I outlined earlier.’ Piercing black eyes swivelled in Maggie’s direction. ‘Perhaps you would like to hold a meeting after we’ve gone—to outline the turn- around in our editorial policy. Any employee who feels that they would be unable to support such a turnaround will, of course, be free to leave.

  ‘Oh, and by the way,’ he remarked, almost casually. ‘Miss Meredith is no longer employed by this paper—’ He stilled the buzz of comment with the upraised palm of command. ‘Because she and I are getting married. Good day, ladies and gentle- men. Come, Jade.’

  As exits went, she would probably never better it, thought Jade, a flash of her customary humour returning as she observed the collective opening of mouths before following Constantine to the lift. How she wished she’d had a camera to capture the look on Maggie’s face!

  ‘What editorial turnaround?’ asked Jade curi- ously, as they rode down in the lift together.

  The back eyes glittered. ‘It is quite simple,’ he said. ‘The Daily View is about to change and in future no one will be able to describe it as a “scandal sheet”.’

  ‘I see,’ said Jade faintly. Well, it would certainly have to change a lot in order to qualify for that!

  Outside, a blindingly shiny black Daimler stood parked by the front of the Daily View building. There was a chauffeur in the front seat, whom Constantine introduced as Tony. Beside him was the Greek man who had opened the door to her at the Granchester, and Jade found herself blushing as she wondered whether Constantine had told him of the outcome of that little meeting.

  ‘This is Stavros,’ said Constantine. ‘My brother.’

  His brother? Wait for the animosity, thought Jade, and then was surprised at the politely formal greeting.

  ‘How do you do, Miss Meredith?’ Stavros ex- tended his hand. ‘I saw you in Piros, but you will not remember me.’

  Jade smiled; he had a kindly face. ‘On the con- trary,’ she said. ‘I remember seeing you in the taverna with your brother. Such a pity we did not meet.’

  Stavros shrugged. ‘Indeed. Constantine guarded you too well. But I am flattered that you noticed me,’ he finished wryly. ‘I thought that you and Tino had eyes only for each other.’

  Jade’s cheeks went pink. ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she said politely, if somewhat ironically.

  She and Constantine sat in the back of the car, and he gave instructions in Greek to the driver, but Jade clearly made out the word ‘Granchester’.

  ‘Constantine—’

  ‘What is it, agape mou?’ he answered softly, and laid his hand on her forearm, only the lightest of gestures, but which had her senses on full alert im- mediately. It was…an almost…well, if not exactly a loving gesture, then certainly an affectionate one, and much too close to the way he’d behaved on Piros for her to derive anything but regret from it.

  He’s putting on an act in front of his brother, thought Jade, wriggling away from him. He must be. ‘What about my things?’

  ‘Things?’

  ‘Yes, things. The kind of things which make such a difference to everyday living! You know—tooth- brush, clothes. Little things like that.’

  He laughed softly beneath his breath. ‘I like it when you answer back, you know, Jade. I find your spitfire retorts most entertaining—’

  ‘Well, they aren’t supposed to be!’

  ‘And as for your things—we can easily buy you another toothbrush.’

  ‘And my clothes?’

  ‘There is an answer to that which I do not think my brother and chauffeur should be privy to, but if you insist on wearing any then we can arrange to buy you anything you like.’

  ‘But I don’t want you to buy me clothes—I happen to have some perfectly decent ones in my own wardrobe.’

  His face darkened, with the look of a man obvi- ously not used to having his wishes thwarted. ‘I’m talking about garments by the best designers the world has to offer,’ he bit out impatiently. ‘You can spend what you wish.’

  ‘Keep them! I don’t want your money, or your designer clothes’ answered Jade emphatically. ‘I want my own!’ Through the glass partition, she was sure that she could see Stavros’s shoulders silently shaking.

  ‘As you wish,’ he said tightly, and bit out some new instructions, then bent his mouth to her ear. ‘So spirited,’ he murmured. ‘How I shall enjoy subduing that spirit.’

  ‘I shan’t let you!’

  ‘We shall see. But I fully intend to.’

  And there was no need to ask how he proposed doing that. Jade shivered, the sensual undertones of his murmured words creating vividly erotic pic- tures in her mind.

  Although the car was big, it was none the less claustrophobic and she was intensely aware of his presence beside her. Such a strong and dominating presence. More to keep her mind off his undeniable physical attraction, she asked him a question which had been bugging her since they’d left the building. ’What made you change the policy on the Daily View’s pin-ups? Don’t you approve of those kind of photographs?’

  An expression of distaste masked his face and he crossed one long leg over the other. He stared out of the window at the slow-moving traffic. ‘Of course I don’t approve!’

  Jade shrugged. ‘But lots of men do.’

  ‘Not this kind of man, Jade,’ he said softly.

  ‘And why do they offend you?’ she persisted. ‘Do all nudes offend your proprieties, or just some? Do Rubens or Renoir offend you? How about Botticelli’s Venus, for example?’

  He made an impatient sound. ‘Nudity in art is different—that embraces and celebrates the female form; these others merely titillate, and of that I do not approve.’

  ‘On purely moral grounds, then?’

  He shook his head. ‘I concern mys
elf with welfare, too. Those women who pose—they all have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters—maybe even young children of their own. How do you think that they must feel about it?’

  She should have guessed! ‘How very paternal- istic of you!’

  He shrugged. ‘And what about you, Jade?’ he queried coolly. ‘Do you approve of such pictures?’

  Jade sighed. ‘No, of course I don’t approve of them. I absolutely hate them! What woman wouldn’t?’

  He turned his head to face her, the black eyes piercing and direct. ‘And yet you chose to work there?’

  ‘Perhaps it was my only option. Lots of people do jobs they aren’t particularly proud of.’

  ‘Is that why you lied to me?’ he asked, the timbre of his voice dangerously soft. ‘Or do you just enjoy lying for the sake of it?’

  Jade met his disapproving stare face on. ‘You listen to me for a moment, Constantine! All your censure for my having lied about my job, and yet you were guilty of a similar lie. You allowed me to carry on thinking that you were no more than a humble restaurateur. Didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m guilty,’ he grated. ‘Of being foolish enough to fall for the innocent act you presented to me; foolish enough to believe that you had fallen for the man, and not all the trappings. For me, for the first time in my life, it was a delight to play at being two ordinary people, without all the press- ures of wealth. If only—’ his mouth twisted ‘—you hadn’t happened to be a mercenary little bitch who knew exactly who I was—who would go to bed with me in order to get the story she wanted.’

  Jade felt sick. ‘But I didn’t know who you were, I keep telling you! What do I have to do to make you believe me?’

  ‘Hell will be frozen over before ever I do!’ The black eyes narrowed to shards of jet. ‘If you hated, as you claim, your job so much—then why do it in the first place?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘Really?’ he queried with an almost polite dis- belief. ‘I’ll bet it is! You must tell it to me some time.’

  And she made up her mind to tell him right then because she simply couldn’t bear anyone thinking so poorly of her, and it suddenly became tremen- dously important that he should know that things weren’t quite as black and white as he seemed to see them, that she wasn’t the hard-hearted vil- lainess of the piece he thought she was. ‘I’ll tell it to you right now!’ she announced, then, exasper- ated by his disparaging stare, ‘But only if you stop glaring at me!’

  Their eyes fused in a long gaze, the corner of his mouth tilted upwards by a mere millimetre. ‘Very well.’ And he leaned forward to close the glass par- tition between them and the two men in the front.

  Jade laced her fingers together in her lap, re- membering when she’d thought that the compe- tition had been the answer to all her dreams. Some dreams! ‘When I was seventeen and still at school, the Daily View ran a competition to find the country’s most promising journalist. My teacher persuaded me to enter it, and, to my amazement— I won.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ he interjected mockingly.

  Jade glowered at the implied criticism. ‘Well, ac- tually—I was proud of winning, and of the article I wrote. When they offered me a job on the staff—’ She saw the expression on his face.‘Of course I accepted it! Who wouldn’t have done?’

  ‘I would have thought about it very carefully.’

  ‘Well, you’re a different kettle of fish, aren’t you?’ she retorted. ‘You were rich and I was poor! You probably could have got your father to buy you a damned newspaper—the way you’ve just bought the Daily View! But this was like the answer to all my dreams—I’d imagined starting work on the local paper, so to be offered a job on one of the nationals’

  ‘But there are other newspapers, surely, more serious newspapers which carry more weight and are more prestigious—why not choose to work on one of those?’

  Jade laughed sardonically. ‘Oh, come on! I was eighteen, green as grass, politically naive—serious papers don’t go for people like that, they want uni- versity graduates.’

  ‘And couldn’t you have gone to university?’

  ‘No,’ Jade answered flatly.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh? I find that hard to believe. You certainly aren’t stupid.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  ‘So why didn’t you go?’

  Jade could have shaken him by the shoulders for his total lack of comprehension as she remembered her father’s strained face, regretfully informing her that going through college simply wasn’t an option open to her. ‘For that very romantic reason of not having enough money—except that the reality of it isn’t romantic at all! Besides, I thought that working on the Daily View might get me a foot in the door.’

  ‘But it didn’t?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it didn’t. I didn’t— learn very much there.’ She met a pair of frankly interested black eyes. ‘Actually,’ she said, remem- bering some of the good things about the Daily View, ‘it wasn’t all bad there. They do do some very creditable investigative journalism. They raise a hell of a lot of money for charity, and they cer- tainly expose corruption in high places.’

  ‘But that wasn’t your particular line?’ he queried.

  ‘No,’ said Jade bitterly. ‘Because I’m a woman, and a “cub”—I get stuck in features; showbiz. At first it had novelty appeal, but now it’s worn off. As a matter of fact—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Come on—I’m intrigued.’

  She met his stare belligerently. ‘If you must know, I came to Piros with the idea of rethinking my future, and to see whether I had a book in me.’

  ‘And have you?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I don’t know yet. I didn’t write much for the first part of the holiday, and then I’

  ‘Met me?’ he finished slowly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And one other thing,’ she blurted out. ‘My editor happened to trick me into talking about you. I was upset and she gave me brandy and kindness and asked me all about you, and all the time she had a tape-recorder going! I certainly did not go to the Press willingly about you!’

  He muttered something violent beneath his breath, the black eyes boring into her, before looking down to study his hands, so that his ex- pression was shielded from her.

  There was a moment’s silence. He doesn’t care, she thought. Nothing you say will make any differ- ence. She bit her lip, staring sightlessly into the blur of traffic, before returning her attention defiantly to his dark gaze which was now fixed on her face once more. ‘Anyway, none of that matters. I don’t work there any more, do I?’ Or anywhere, for that matter—which didn’t bode well for her future once that Constantine had tired of her. She had tried to make her voice deliberately bright but she knew that it sounded put on, and he frowned at her, his lips parting very slightly, and Jade’s eyes were drawn to them, and he watched her, his own gaze flick- ering down to her lips. I want him, thought Jade unhappily. How can I stop myself from wanting him? How is it possible to want a man who can treat you so appallingly? Perhaps that’s why I’ve never fallen for anyone before—perhaps I’m a masochist!

  An uneasy silence descended and she had to con- centrate very hard not to stare at his long legs; sitting with her own knees held primly closed together, she tried to force herself not to think about him, about the way that he had brought her to that heart-stopping climax yesterday afternoon on the sofa. But it was no good, the memories of it were too intense.

  And he could feel it, too—she could sense that from the awkwardly tense way in which he held himself. A brittle stillness enveloped them both as the sexual tension grew. And Jade grew madder and madder with herself. How could she possibly still fancy him? The man was a brute!

  She could have wept with relief when the car drew up outside her flat. ‘Stop right here,’ she said coldly. ’This is where I live.’

  But, infuriatingly, he followed her inside, push
ing his way through the couple of reporters who re- mained, ignoring all their called pleas for a photo, and slamming the door shut behind them. Once inside, he prowled around, those intelligent dark eyes taking in the simple surroundings—the white walls, the brightly coloured rugs, and, on the wall in pride of place, the water-colour she’d bought on Piros before she’d met him, showing the shaded, narrow streets with the tantalising azure flash of sky which glimmered through one of the arches.

  He went to stand beneath it.

  ‘A good choice,’ he remarked sagely. ‘I know the artist well.’

  ‘I suppose you employ him?’ she asked brittly.

  ‘Her,’ he corrected brutally. ‘And no, I do not.’

  Pain, fierce, sharp, unwilling and debilitating— punched at the pit of her stomach. Was the artist who had produced this as exquisite as her painting, with eyes as black as his and hair like the night? Tears threatened to sting the back of her eyes.

  ‘I’ll get my things,’ she said, and scooted off to the bedroom before she made a fool of herself. Once there, she packed a suitcase full of clothes, hesi- tating as her gaze halted on the manila envelope on her dressing table. It contained the rough draft of her first chapter. She moved away, then hovered back again, torn with indecision.

  If she really was going to go through with marrying Constantine, then what was she pro- posing to do while he went out to work? Surely this was an ideal time to complete the book?

  She moved back and picked up the envelope, thrusting it to the bottom of her suitcase, when some sixth sense told her that the bedroom door had opened, and that Constantine had walked silently into the room. She didn’t turn round, stayed looking at the suitcase, afraid to look at him, vul- nerable in such an intimate setting as her bedroom. ’I’m almost ready.’

  ‘Are you?’ he said softly.

  He was behind her; she could hear the soft rise and fall of his breathing.

  ‘Please wait outside,’ she said shakily, but now she could feel his warm breath on her neck, feel the strong hands at her waist, firmly turning her to face him, and the black ice-fire in his eyes almost blinded her. How could she stay immune to the stark, dark passion so evident in that cruelly handsome face? A passion that he had awakened in her; a passion of such strength and intensity that it terrified her.