‘He didn’t ask you?’
No, he hadn’t asked her. The truth slammed home like a blunt fist and defensiveness seemed her only rational form of protection. ‘Miranda—what the hell is this all about? Some kind of Spanish Inquisition?’
‘All I’m saying is that if he used you as some kind of substitute for the woman who broke his heart—’
Catherine opened her mouth to say that it wasn’t like that. But what had it been like, then? He hadn’t struck her as the kind of man who would normally make mad, passionate love to a complete stranger. A notoriously private man…
So what could have been his motivation?
She, at least, could blame her reeling emotions on having been dropped by Peter. But—dear God—had Finn Delaney spent the whole time imagining that she was someone else?
Her ego, already severely punctured, underwent a complete deflation.
When he’d told her she was beautiful, and how it was a crime against society for a body like hers to be seen wearing any clothes at all, had he been thinking about Deirdra? When he’d driven deep inside her, had he been pretending that it was another woman’s soft flesh he was penetrating?
Inwardly she crumpled as she realised just what she had done. But most of all what he had done. He had used his Irish charm in the most manipulative and calculating way imaginable. He had guided her into his bed with all the ease of a consummate seducer, had made love to her and then let her walk out of his flat without a care in the world.
He hadn’t even asked for her phone number, she remembered bitterly.
She came out of her painful little reverie to find Miranda’s eyes fixed on her thoughtfully—with something approaching kindness in them. And Catherine was badly in need of a little kindness right then.
‘Why don’t you tell me all about it?’ Miranda suggested softly.
Maybe if she’d eaten breakfast, or maybe if her body hadn’t still been aching with the sweet memories of his lovemaking which now seemed to mock and wound her, then Catherine might have given a more thoughtful and considered response.
But memories of betrayal—her mother’s and now her own—fused into a blurred, salty haze before her eyes, and she nodded, biting her lips to prevent her voice from disintegrating into helpless sobs.
‘Oh, Miranda!’ she gulped. ‘I’ve been so stupid.’
‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’
She needed to tell someone about it. To unload her guilt. To make some kind of sense of it all. She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Try me.’
Distractedly, Catherine began voicing her thoughts out loud. ‘Maybe it was a reaction to Peter—I don’t know—I just know that I behaved in a way which was completely alien to me!’
‘You slept with him?’
Catherine nodded. She supposed that was one way of putting it. ‘Yes, I slept with him! I fell into his arms like the ripest plum on the tree. I spent the night with him. Me! Me! I still can’t believe it!’ Her voice rose in disbelief. ‘I went out with Peter for three years and never even looked at another man.’ But then, no man like Finn Delaney had come along for her to look at, had he? ‘And before that there was only one significant other. I was too busy building up my career to be interested in men. And I’ve certainly never—never—been quite so free and easy. Not even with Peter.’
Especially not with Peter. Quite the opposite, in fact. Peter had been surprised that she had held out so long before letting them get intimate. He’d said it was a refreshing change to find a woman who played hard to get. But it hadn’t been a game—it had been a necessity. Born out of a need for self-respect which her mother had drummed into her and a desire to have him respect her.
Which made her wonder what Finn Delaney must be thinking about her now.
‘Maybe he has something special—this Finn Delaney.’
‘Oh, he has something special all right!’ burst out Catherine. ‘Bucketfuls of charm and sex-appeal—and the ability to pitch it at just the right level to make himself irresistible to women!’
Miranda, not normally given to looking fazed, raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s some testimony, Catherine,’ she murmured. ‘I take it that he was a good lover?’
‘The best,’ said Catherine, before she had time to think about it. And with those two words she seemed to have managed to invalidate everything she had had with Peter, too. ‘He was unbelievable.’
There was a long silence.
‘You’ll get over it,’ said Miranda at last.
Catherine raised a defiant face, but her green eyes were full of a tell-tale glittering. ‘I’ll have to,’ she said staunchly. ‘I don’t have any choice, do I?’
His face almost obscured by the creamy bloom of flowers and dark green foliage, Finn narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the names next to the doorbells.
Walker. Flat 3. He shifted the flowers onto one shoulder, as if he was winding a baby, and jammed his thumb on the bell.
Inside the flat, the bell pealed, and Catherine frowned, then stifled a small groan. Bad that someone should call unannounced after this week when she had lost almost everything. What had remained of her self-respect. Her pride. And now her job.
Miranda hadn’t even had the grace to look ashamed when Catherine had marched straight into her office and slammed the latest copy of Pizazz! on her desk.
‘What the hell is this supposed to mean, Miranda?’ she demanded.
Miranda’s face was a picture of unconvincing innocence. ‘You don’t like the piece? I thought we did Dublin justice.’
‘I’m not talking about the piece on Dublin and you know it, Miranda!’
‘Yes.’ Miranda’s face turned into one of editorial defiance. ‘The story was too good not to tell.’
‘But there was no story, Miranda!’ protested Catherine. ‘You know there wasn’t.’ Except that there was. Of course there was. And it was the oldest trick in the journalist’s book. Being creative with the facts.
The only facts that Miranda had gleaned from Catherine were that she had spent a wild night with Finn Delaney and that he had not asked to see her again. Miranda had discovered for herself that Catherine looked uncannily like an ex-lover of his, and from this had mushroomed a stomach-churningly awful piece all about Finn Delaney underneath Catherine’s article on Dublin.
It described him as an ‘unbelievable’ lover, and hinted that his sexual appetite was as gargantuan as his appetite for success. It described the view from his bedroom in loving detail—and she didn’t even remember telling Miranda about that! It did not actually come out and name Catherine as having been the recipient of his sexual favours, but it didn’t need to. Catherine knew. And a few others had guessed.
But the person she had been astonished not to hear from was Finn Delaney—and she thanked God for the silence from that quarter, and the fact that Pizazz! didn’t have a big circulation across the water.
‘You deceived me, Miranda,’ she told her editor quietly. ‘You’ve threatened my journalistic integrity! I should bloody well go to the Press Complaints Commission—and so will Finn Delaney if he ever reads it and if he has an ounce of sense!’
‘But it was in the public interest!’ crowed Miranda triumphantly. ‘A man who could be running a country—it’s our duty to inform our readers what he’s really like!’
‘You don’t have a clue what he’s really like!’ stormed Catherine. Though neither, in truth, did she. ‘You’ve just succeeded in making him sound like some kind of vacuous stud with his brain stuffed down the front of his trousers!’
And with that Catherine had flung down her letter of resignation and stomped out of the office into an unknown future, her stomach sinking as she told herself that she could always go freelance.
The doorbell rang again.
Now, who the hell was bothering her at this hour in the morning? At nine o’clock on a Saturday morning most people were in bed, surely?
‘Hello?’ she said into the inter
com, in a go-away kind of voice.
Downstairs, the petals of the scented flowers brushing against his cheek, Finn felt the slow build-up of tension. He had tried to pick a time when she would be in and it seemed that he had struck lucky.
His eyes glittered. He wanted to surprise her.
‘Catherine?’
A maelstrom of emotions swirled around like a whirlpool in her befuddled brain as that single word instantly gave her the identity of her caller. But of course it would. She would recognise that rich Irish brogue from a hundred miles away, even if her guilty conscience hadn’t been fighting a war with a suddenly stirring body.
Finn?
Finn?
Here?
He must have seen the article!
A fit of nerves assailed her. Catherine pressed her forehead against the door and closed her eyes. Oh, why the hell had she answered the wretched door in the first place? He knew now that she was here, and short of ignoring it and hoping he might go away…
She opened her eyes. Tried to imagine him shrugging those broad, powerful shoulders and just quietly leaving and failed miserably. She was trapped.
Presumably Finn Delaney had come here to wipe the floor with her. To tell her exactly what he thought of women who blabbed their tacky stories to middle-of-the-road magazines.
‘Catherine?’
She tried to work out if he sounded furiously angry or just quietly seething, but the rich, lilting voice sounded nothing more than deeply irresistible.
‘C-come up, Finn,’ she suggested falteringly.
The words stayed in his mind as he rode up in the lift, and an odd sort of smile twisted his lips. Of course everything she said would drip with sexual innuendo—because it sure as hell was pretty much all they had really shared.
Sex.
But still he felt the unwilling burn of excitement just thinking about it.
Catherine had enough time to zip round her mouth with her electric toothbrush and then drag a comb through her long, mussed-up hair. The over-sized tee shirt which fell to an unflattering length at mid-knee she would just have to live with.
She cast a despairing glance in the mirror. At least she couldn’t be accused of being a femme fatale.
Then her face paled as she heard the lift door open, and all flippancy fled as she remembered just why he was here. Femme fatale, indeed. As if he would look at her with anything but contempt after what had happened!
She opened the door before he had time to knock, and the first thing he thought was how pale her face looked without make-up. The second was that the baggy tee shirt did absolutely nothing to conceal the tight little buds of her nipples which thrust against the soft material. He felt himself harden.
‘How lovely to see you!’ she said brightly—which was true. Because he looked heart-stoppingly gorgeous in a pair of faded jeans and a sweater in a washed-out blue colour which made his eyes seem even more intense than usual. Her heart started crashing in her chest and she tensed in expectation, wondering how he was going to express himself.
Withering contempt? she wondered. Or blistering invective? But as she waited for the storm to rage over her, her pulse began to race in response to the confusing messages she was getting. He was carrying flowers. Strange, beautiful flowers, the like of which she had never seen before. With long white-green petals and dark leaves.
Flowers?
Finn gave a rueful shrug of his shoulders. ‘Sorry. It’s a pretty unsociable hour to call, I know,’ he murmured. ‘And it looks like I just got you out of bed.’
She found herself blushing and hated herself for it. Why draw attention to a remembered intimacy which now seemed as false as a mirage? ‘No, no—I’ve been awake for hours.’ Which also was true; she certainly hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch since she had returned from her fateful trip to Dublin.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in, Catherine?’ His tone was as soft as the paw of a tiger moving stealthily through the jungle.
‘You want to come in?’ she questioned stupidly. Well, of course he did—no doubt a man of his status would object to a slanging match where the occupants of the nearby apartments were in danger of hearing!
He gave a half-smile. ‘Is this how you usually react when lovers appear on your doorstep offering you flowers?’
He handed her the flowers but she barely registered their beauty—because all her attention had focused on that one hopeful word he had uttered.
Lovers.
That didn’t sound past tense, did it? Which meant not one, but two things. That he couldn’t possibly have read the article, and that possibly—just possibly—he wanted to carry on where they had left off in Ireland. But did she?
Of course she did! Just the sight of him was making her mind take flight into a flower-filled fantasy world where it was just her and Finn. Finn and her. Uttering a silent prayer of thanks, she swallowed down her excitement as she stared at the exotic blooms.
‘They’re for me?’ she asked, even more stupidly.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did you think I’d be so insensitive as to turn up here carrying flowers for someone else?’
‘I suppose not.’ She smiled, hardly daring to acknowledge the growing pleasure which was slowly warming her blood, so that she felt as if she was standing in front of a roaring fire. ‘Come in,’ she said, and drew the door open. She thrust her nose into the forgotten blooms as the most delicious and beguiling scent filled her nostrils. ‘These are absolutely gorgeous,’ she breathed. ‘Just gorgeous. And so unusual.’ She turned wide green eyes to his. ‘What are they?’
His voice was careless. ‘Mock orange blossom.’
‘You mean as opposed to real orange blossom?’ she joked.
‘Something like that.’
She’d never seen mock orange blossom on the stalls of her local flower market, but perhaps Finn Delaney had stopped to buy them in one of the more exclusive department stores. She smiled again, not bothering to hide her delight. ‘I’ll go and put them in water—please, make yourself at home.’ Did that sound too keen? she wondered as she went off to the kitchen to find a vase.
Oh, who cared? Wasn’t a man who turned up on your doorstep first thing on a Saturday morning bearing flowers being more than a little keen himself?
Maybe he felt the same as she did, deep down. That the time they had shared in Greece, and then in Dublin, hinted at a promise too good to just let go.
Humming happily beneath her breath, she filled a vase with water.
Finn prowled around the sitting room like a caged tiger, noting the decor with the eye of a man used to registering detail and analysing it.
The curtains were still drawn—soft gold things, through which the morning sun filtered, gilding the subdued light and giving the room a slightly surreal feel.
Lots of books, he noted. Run-of-the-mill furniture. Two fairly ordinary sofas transformed from the mundane by the addition of two exotic throws. A couple of framed prints and a collection of small china cats. Not enough to tell him anything much about the real Catherine Walker. His mouth flattened as she walked back into the room and deposited the flowers in the centre of a small pine coffee table. Their scent filled the room.
Now what? wondered Catherine. Were they going to carry on as if nothing had happened between them? ‘Coffee?’ she asked.
He shook his head and moved towards her, driven on by some primeval urge deep within him. His eyes were shuttered as he pulled her into his arms, feeling her soft flesh pliant against the hard lines of his body, which sprang into instant life in response. ‘I haven’t come here for coffee.’
She opened her mouth to protest that he might at least adhere to a few conventional social niceties before he moved in for the kill, but by then he had lowered his mouth onto hers, and she was so hungry for his kiss that she let him. How long had it been? Four weeks that felt like a lifetime…
‘God, Finn—’
‘What?’ He cupped her breast with arrogant posse
ssion, liking the way that the nipple instantly reacted, pressing like a little rock against his hand.
To be in his arms once more was even better than she remembered, and the honeyed pleasure which was invading her senses was driving every thought out of her head other than the overriding one—which was how much she wanted this. Him.
‘Mmm? You were saying?’
‘W-was I? I can’t remember.’ Catherine’s hands roved beneath the washed-out blue sweater, greedily alighting on the silken skin there. ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you.’
‘And you, too. And this is certainly the kind of welcome I was hoping for.’ His voice sounded thickened, slurred. He drew his mouth away from hers and his eyes were glittering with blue fire. ‘My only objection is that I’m not seeing quite enough of you, Catherine. Don’t you think it’s time to remedy that situation?’
And with a single fluid movement he peeled the tee shirt off her body, over her head, and threw it to the ground, so that she was standing naked before him.
‘Finn!’ She felt the air cool her already heated body, but any consternation fled just as soon as he touched his lips to her nipple, and she began to shake as she clutched his dark head further against her breast. ‘Oh, God!’
That shuddered cry of pure, undiluted desire fuelled his already overwhelming hunger, and he yanked his sweater over his head, kicked off his deck shoes, pulled roughly at the belt of his jeans and unzipped them. ‘Take them off,’ he commanded unsteadily.
On fire with her need for him, Catherine sank to her knees and slid the denim down over the hard, muscular shaft of his thighs, burying her head in the very cradle of his masculinity, her tongue flicking out to touch him where he was burningly hard. He groaned.
‘Are you always like this?’ he demanded, once the jeans were discarded, and he drew her down with an urgent need onto the carpet, their naked bodies colliding and merging with a mutual greed.
‘Like what?’ Hungrily she nipped at a hard brown nipple and he shuddered.
‘So responsive.’ So bloody easy to turn on, and so fiendishly good at turning him on until he thought he might explode with need.
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