The Innocent's One-Night Confession

by Sara Craven

  Because he had to have been there, Gerard’s boss and billionaire cousin, waiting to be introduced to the newcomer.

  Watching her, smiling, the silver eyes travelling over her in lazy, undisguised appraisal.

  Just, Alanna thought, as he first looked at me. And did he tell her to call him Zan too, switching them both effortlessly to intimacy?

  Was that how it had begun for them—but ended for Gerard?

  Maybe the original intention had been simply another brief fling. A discreet interlude of pleasure, without commitment, and no harm done.

  After all, they were the rich and the beautiful, she thought wretchedly, taking whatever they wanted from life because they could, then moving on regardless of what trail of devastation they might leave behind them.

  It all made sense—and yet...

  Had they really hurt Gerard because it was love at first sight and they couldn’t help themselves, or was it a rather darker story?

  Gerard wasn’t a poor man by any means, but in comparison to Zandor, it was no contest.

  Something that might well have occurred to Lili, she thought slowly, perhaps suggesting that her amazing looks might have a market value. And on which Zandor might be prepared to pay—with marriage.

  Yet if this was so, how could Gerard bear to go on working with Zandor—running Bazaar Vert for him?

  That was another piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit.

  When I found out how Zandor had betrayed me over the Jeffrey Winton deal, I walked away, she thought.

  Why hadn’t Gerard done the same? Surely the job didn’t mean that much to him?

  So, there had to be more to it. But how was that possible?

  What on earth could be so important to Gerard that he’d allow it to outweigh such a betrayal?

  And then she remembered the abbey. Of course, she thought. What else?

  She remembered how they’d talked about it on the journey down. The enthusiasm bordering on reverence in his voice. That faint indrawn breath of pleasure she’d heard from him when at last it came into view.

  Recalled too things that Joanne had let slip about its finances, and how she herself had clutched at the wrong end of the stick, wanting to believe that Zandor was just a ne’er-do-well battening off his aged grandmother, when in reality it was exactly the opposite. That it was his cash being poured into that historic money pit.

  Which put Zandor in a position where he could force Gerard to choose between his heritage and the girl he loved.

  ‘My God,’ she said aloud, her voice shaking. ‘If so, it’s positively medieval. It beggars belief.’

  There was also another consideration. Whatever she might think of Niamh Harrington, and many of those thoughts were unutterable, she was still Gerard’s Grandam, a woman in her eighties, and the abbey was her home where her children and her eldest grandson had been born, so her wishes and well-being must have been a prime factor in his decision.

  Gerard must have been torn apart, she told herself sombrely. And I accused him of self-pity.

  At the same time, she needed to remind herself that she had no proof that any of these conclusions were true, even though nothing would ever convince her that Gerard had not been in love with Lili, or that her loss still haunted him.

  And what kind of a marriage would she have with Zandor? One of these arrangements where she spent his money and looked glorious on his arm, while turning a blind eye to the way he amused himself when he was away from her?

  The thought turned her stomach.

  But at least I’ll never again be the object of his attentions, she told herself.

  The sound of the door buzzer startled her. She was tempted not to answer in case it was Gerard returning in hope of consolation.

  On the other hand, it could well be Susie back early from Lewes without her key, so, sighing, she went to the door, unfastening the latch and pulling it open, only to stand in stunned silence as she saw who was waiting in the passage outside.

  ‘So you haven’t gone to bed yet,’ said Zandor. ‘You must have been expecting me.’

  And before she could slam the door, he walked past her into the living room.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WHEN ALANNA COULD SPEAK, ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ she demanded huskily.

  Hands clenched at her sides, she glared at him, masking with aggression her sudden trembling weakness at the sight of him. ‘How dare you force your way in here?’

  ‘It didn’t need much force,’ he returned coolly. ‘Nor am I playing.’

  ‘How did you find me? Get this address?’ She bit her lip. ‘Oh, your cousin Joanne, I suppose.’

  ‘Then you’d be wrong. Your personal details are still on record at Hawkseye. The company owes you some money. Once it’s paid, they’ll be removed.’

  He glanced around him, appraisingly. ‘Nice place. Do you live here alone?’

  ‘No,’ she said stonily. ‘If it’s any of your business. I have a flatmate. She—she’ll be back soon.’

  ‘If you say so. Actually, I thought Gerard might be here.’ He paused then added deliberately, ‘Looking for consolation.’

  The sheer cruelty of that made her gasp. ‘Do you blame him?’

  He shrugged. ‘If you make a wrong choice, you pay for it. Something you would do well to remember, my sweet one.’

  She said huskily, ‘And don’t call me that. You—you have no right.’

  ‘No?’ His mouth twisted. ‘Yet you’ve been mine, and I found you infinitely sweet. And quite unforgettable, believe me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe you if you told me today was Saturday.’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘Which it still is—if only just. But I should have known Gerard had left if only because you’re still wearing that awful apology for a dress.’

  She flushed hotly. ‘I don’t dress to please you,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Not at the moment, anyway. Or undress either—but I can hope. Don’t worry. I shall not insist.’

  She stared at him in disbelief. She said thickly, ‘My God, you have absolutely no shame, do you?’

  ‘Yes, of course, when it’s called for.’ His own tone was dismissive, his gaze direct. ‘In this case—no.’ He paused. ‘Won’t you ask me to sit down?’

  ‘No.’ Alanna marched to the door and held it wide.

  ‘On the contrary, I’m telling you to get out.’

  ‘In my own good time. Meanwhile, why don’t we have some coffee.’ He walked to the kitchen door and paused, eyebrows raised. ‘Except there seems to have been a fight with it. Interesting.’

  He picked up the wine bottle, and reached into the glass-fronted cupboard for a glass. ‘I’ll share this with you instead.’

  She began to feel foolish, standing there stubbornly holding the door open when he clearly had no intention of leaving, so she closed it reluctantly, and came back to sit down again.

  She said, ‘Where is—?’ then found herself stumbling over both your fiancée and your future wife and chose a compromise. ‘Where is Lili?’

  ‘Back at the hotel and, I hope, asleep.’ Zandor seated himself beside her, but at the opposite end of the sofa. He sounded, she thought, unforgivably casual.

  ‘Why didn’t she come with you?’

  ‘As I said, Gerard might have been here, and I thought it was too soon for that.’ He paused. ‘I presume he has told you everything?’

  She took a sip of wine. ‘Enough.’

  Well, it wasn’t a total lie.

  For some reason he’d changed out of the dark suit he’d been wearing at the Healeys’ into light chinos and a blue shirt, against which his skin looked like bronze.

  Wrenched with longing, she moved further into her corner of the sofa, wondering in self-disgust how she could still entertain such feelings for him, knowing what she did.

  Especially when he’d just admitted he’d actually left his lover to come here tonight.

  But why?

  She took a deep breath. ‘Lil
i—she’s very beautiful.’

  However much it hurt, she needed to acknowledge that, although it excused nothing and never could.

  ‘I think so.’ His sudden smile was warm—even tender, and Alanna winced inwardly. ‘In character as well as appearance.’

  ‘Have you told her about—me?’ she asked, in spite of herself.

  His glance was ironic. ‘Enough,’ he said, echoing her own earlier response.

  She drank some more wine. ‘She must be very forgiving.’

  ‘I think,’ Zandor said slowly, ‘that remains to be seen.’

  There was an odd silence which she felt it wiser to break.

  ‘I shall see Gerard tomorrow. We’re having lunch with my parents. He—he hasn’t met them yet.’

  ‘I see,’ he said softly. ‘A momentous occasion.’

  She flushed again. ‘I only mention it because you came here to look for him and you might want me to give him some message.’

  ‘No message.’ His mouth curled. ‘At least not one you’d wish to carry. And I didn’t come here to find Gerard but because, yet again, I have something to discuss with you.

  ‘And don’t look so alarmed,’ he added coldly. ‘This time it’s perhaps more business than personal.’ He paused. ‘At dinner tonight, you seemed to imply that your reason for leaving Hawkseye Publishing involved me. That I’d somehow forced the decision upon you.

  ‘If so, I regret it, and I’m here to ask you to reconsider. To withdraw your resignation and continue your work as a fiction editor, with a rise in salary.’

  She stared down into her glass. ‘Even when you must know that’s impossible.’

  ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here. I wish you to return to the company. What prevents you from doing so? Pride?’

  ‘No.’ She turned. Faced him defiantly. ‘Obviously, a very real fear of sexual harassment.’

  Zandor’s head went back as if she’d struck him. He said quietly, ‘Dear God, is that really what you think? That because I own the company, I’d expect to own you too? Bring my private feelings and desires into the workplace?’

  ‘Your desire for revenge because I rejected you, perhaps?’ Her voice shook. ‘Then, yes. Why else would you allow me to be—handed over to the unspeakable Jeffery Winton. You were there, Zan, at the bookshop and saw what happened. You—rescued me from him, for God’s sake.

  ‘Then, as soon as you took over, you authorised Louis Foster to give me back to him, at his request, to be his own personal editor, presumably because I’d upset you and knowing full well what it would mean.’

  She drew a choking breath. ‘And you think anything on earth would persuade me to go back—to that? Let that lecherous little creep anywhere near me again?’

  She stopped abruptly, aware there was a danger she might start to cry again, and why that could not be permitted to happen.

  Zandor’s mouth had straightened into a hard line, and there was a dull flush of anger along his cheekbones.

  He said, ‘You truly believed that this—order came from me? How is that possible?’

  ‘Louis said “from the top”. That’s what you’d just become.’ She paused. ‘And in the staff meeting, you’d hardly looked at me, so I thought I understood why.’

  ‘What did you expect?’ His tone was almost savage. ‘That I’d walk the length of the room and kiss the life out of you in front of them all? The temptation was there, believe me.’

  ‘Please don’t say things like that. You—have no right.’

  ‘Then let’s push all of it into some dark place, and turn the key for ever. Is that really what you want? No, don’t answer that. Not now when we’re both angry.’

  He ran a hand through his dark hair, pushing it back from his forehead. ‘However, I swear to you this is the first I’ve heard about this particular proposition concerning Jeffery Winton. You’re saying he actually asked for you? By name?’

  ‘I was told so by Louis. Also that my agreement was pretty much my Last Chance Saloon in the publishing world. So—I walked.’

  There was another silence, then Zandor said slowly, ‘Up to now, the general consensus, presumably excluding Louis Foster, has been that Mr Winton’s day is done. That his Maisie McIntyre sales are in serious decline, the new project he’s set on will almost certainly crash and burn, and, as he’s now out of contract, he should be recommended to look for another publisher.’

  He added flatly, ‘An option that I shall back all the way, as the fiction department will be informed when it opens for business on Monday.’

  He reached across and took the glass from her hand, putting it down with his own on the little table beside him.

  His fingers closed round hers, his thumb stroking her palm very gently. ‘So, might that persuade you to change your mind and return to Hawkseye Publishing?’

  His touch ran through her like a flame, offering, she realised, shivering at some sensual brink, far more than a job. And in that first searing moment, she knew how easy it would be to yield. To turn to him, offering her mouth, her body for their mutual pleasure.

  Because it would be mutual. She had no doubt about that. It was there in the way he was watching her, the brilliance in his eyes as they met hers. As they moved down to the vulnerable curve of her mouth, the urgent swell of her breasts against their lacy confines, the line of her thighs under the cling of her dress.

  As if he knew that she was melting, scalding with sheer need, just through the movement of his thumb against her hand.

  And if it was just a matter of a physical fusion between two consenting adults, temptation might have proved too much.

  But for her, it would be once again, as it had always been, an affair of the heart. Acceptance that she wanted all of him, for ever, as she’d done from the first.

  And for him, it would be a callous betrayal of the girl who might not be sleeping at the hotel, but fighting her fears of this very situation as she counted the minutes to his return.

  And knew she could allow it to happen.

  Must stop it now—once and for all—before—dear God—before he took her in his arms. Before his lips touched hers...

  She withdrew her hand from his clasp. She said quietly, even steadily, ‘No, thank you.’

  She heard his sharp indrawn breath, but when he spoke, his voice was equally composed. ‘To what? Hawkseye—or me?’

  ‘To both. The first, because I’d like the challenge of a change.’ She lifted her chin. ‘The second—because I don’t share your casual attitude to infidelity.’

  He was silent, then: ‘I hope this challenging career doesn’t involve marriage to my cousin.’

  ‘Because, as you keep warning me, that’s doomed?’ She made herself shrug. ‘Well, maybe. Maybe not. After all, if you had me first, Gerard had Lili, so perhaps that makes us quits.’

  He got to his feet so quickly that the table with the glasses went flying. He looked down at her, hands clenched at his sides, silver eyes blazing.

  ‘Now that,’ he said in a voice she did not recognise, ‘may be unforgivable.’ And went.

  * * *

  Alanna got little sleep that night, and Gerard’s wan look when he came to collect her suggested he’d suffered in the same way.

  Maybe it was for the best, she thought, remembering to transfer the opal ring to her right hand. If they’d shown up at her parents’ house looking like the flowers that bloomed in the spring, the fast-approaching irretrievable rift might have lost credibility.

  ‘But you seemed so right together,’ was not what she wanted to hear, in spite of its rarity value.

  Her mother and father were warm and welcoming as always, but Alanna was aware from the start that a distinct effort was being made on both sides, and admitted silently that, if this had been a real engagement, she’d have been worried.

  As it was, Mrs Beckett snatched a quick, private word with her daughter, while Gerard and her husband were outside having a technical discussion on the Mercedes.

  ‘He�
�s very nice, darling. In fact, quite charming. But you will make absolutely sure, won’t you? Because I did think...’ She halted, flushing a little. ‘Although that doesn’t matter now, of course. And your happiness is all that matters in the end.’

  Leaving Alanna to wonder about what her mother hadn’t said on the largely silent drive back to London.

  Susie still wasn’t back, but Alanna found a message from Joanne on the answering machine. ‘Hi, stranger. How about lunch this week and catch up on all the news? I can do Gibby’s Place at twelve-thirty on Friday. Call me if you can’t.’

  No prizes for guessing which particular item of news was at the top of the agenda, thought Alanna. She was tempted to plead a prior engagement, but decided ruefully she’d probably filled her quota of lies for the immediate future.

  And maybe there’d be some temporary relief in talking about Zandor’s marriage plans—like biting down on an aching tooth.

  Maybe...

  * * *

  By the time Friday arrived, she was regretting her decision.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about Zandor, kept seeing the image of him, the strained lines of his dark face, the hard glitter of his eyes, the contemptuous curl of his mouth. Kept telling herself he’d had no right to look at her like that.

  But, equally, she should not have said what she did. Should not have lowered herself to such a cheap, unpleasant jibe. Which she now bitterly regretted.

  But when you were torn apart by jealousy and longing, it wasn’t easy to behave well, or even rationally.

  Unforgivable.

  The word had become her constant torment, stinging at her brain.

  Yet why did it matter so much now—when he was lost to her anyway?

  I don’t know, she whispered silently. Only that—it does—it just does.

  And if Joanne insists on going over every detail of his relationship with Lili from first meeting to the present day, I’m not sure I can bear it.

  She’d been so sure a year ago that she could make herself forget him and the night they’d spent together. That she could keep slamming mental doors on her memories. Tell herself that ‘out of sight was out of mind’ and that time and distance would let her heal.