A Tycoon to Be Reckoned With (Harlequin Presents)

by Julia James

  Somehow she got through to the end of the number, pulling herself together to start the next one on time and not fluff it. It seemed easier now, and she realised that at some point that sense of being under scrutiny had faded and dissipated. As if a kind of pressure had been lifted off her. She reached the end of the last number, the end of her set, with a sense of relief. She made her way offstage, hearing canned music starting up and Max closing down the piano.

  One of the waiters intercepted her. ‘There’s a guy who wants to buy you a drink,’ he said.

  Sarah made a face. It wasn’t unusual that this happened, but she never accepted.

  The waiter held up a hundred-euro note. ‘Looks like he’s keen,’ he informed her with a lift of his brow.

  ‘Well, he’s the only one who is,’ she said. ‘Better take it back to him,’ she added. ‘I don’t want him thinking I pocketed it and then didn’t show.’

  Her refusal got Max’s approval. ‘No time for picking up men,’ he said, flippantly but pointedly.

  ‘As if I would...’ She rolled her eyes.

  For a moment, it crossed her mind that the invitation to buy her a drink might be connected to that shadowy figure at the back of the room and his disturbing perusal of her, but then she dismissed the thought. All she wanted to do now was get out of her costume and head for bed. Max started opera rehearsals promptly every morning, and she needed to sleep.

  She’d just reached her dressing room, kicking off her high heels and flexing her feet in relief, when there was a brief knock at the door. She only had time to say, ‘Who is it?’ before the door opened.

  She glanced up, assuming it would be Max, wanting to tell her something that couldn’t wait. But instead it was a man she’d never seen before in her life.

  And he stilled the breath in her lungs.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BASTIAAN’S EYES ZEROED in on the figure seated at the brightly lit vanity unit with its trademark light-bulb-surrounded mirror. Backlit as she was by the high-wattage bulbs, her face was in shadow.

  But the shadows did nothing to dim her impact. If anything it emphasised it, casting her features into relief. On stage, she’d been illuminated in a pool of light, her features softened by the distance at which he’d sat. He’d deliberately taken a table at the rear of the room, wanting at that point only to observe without being noticed in return.

  It hadn’t taken him more than two moments to realise that the female poised on the stage possessed a quality that signalled danger to his young, impressionable cousin.

  Allure—it was an old-fashioned word, but that was the one that had come to his mind as his eyes had rested on the slender figure sensuously draped in low-cut clinging satin, standing in a pool of soft, smoky light, her fingers lightly curved around her microphone, the lustrous fall of her long blonde hair curled over her bare shoulder like a vamp from the forties.

  Her mouth was painted a rich, luscious red, her eye make-up was pronounced, with long, artificial lashes framing luminous eyes. Seeing her now, close up, she was even more alluring.

  No wonder Philip is smitten!

  His eyes completed his swift scrutiny and he was interested to see a line of colour running along her cheekbones. Curious... he thought. Then the tightening of her mouth told him what had accounted for that reaction. It was not a blush—a woman like her probably hadn’t blushed since puberty—it was annoyance.

  Why? he found himself wondering. Women were not usually annoyed when he paid them attention. Quite the reverse. But this chanteuse was. It was doubly unusual because surely a woman in her profession was well used to male admirers courting her in her dressing room.

  An unwelcome thought crossed his mind—was it his cousin’s wont to hang out here? Did she invite him to her changing room?

  Just how far has she got with him?

  Well, however far it was, it was going to stop from now on. Whatever story she’d trotted out to Philip in order to get him to give her money, the gold mine was closing down...

  She was looking at him still, that scarlet mouth of hers pressed tightly, and something sparking now in her eyes.

  ‘Oui?’ she said pointedly.

  His eyelids dipped over his eyes briefly. ‘Did the waiter not pass on my invitation?’ he asked, speaking in French, which he spoke as well as English and a couple of other languages as well.

  Her arched eyebrows rose. ‘It was you?’ she said. Then, without bothering to wait for a reply, she simply went on, ‘I’m afraid I don’t accept invitations to share a drink with any of the club’s guests.’

  Her tone was dismissive, and Bastiaan felt a flicker of annoyance at it. Dismissive was not the kind of voice he was used to hearing in women he was speaking to. Or indeed from anyone he was speaking to. And in someone whose career relied on the attention and appreciation of others, it was out of place.

  Perhaps she thinks she does not need to court her audience any longer? Perhaps she thinks she already has a very comfortable exit from her profession lined up?

  The flicker of annoyance sparked to something sharper. But he did not let it show. Not now—not yet. At the moment, his aim was to disarm her. Defeating her would come afterwards.

  ‘Then allow me to invite you to dinner instead,’ he responded. Deliberately, he infused a subtly caressing note into his voice that he’d found successful at any other time he’d chosen to adopt it.

  That line of colour ran out over her cheekbones again. But this time there was no accompanying tightening of her red mouth. Instead she gave a brief smile. It was civil only—nothing more than that, Bastiaan could see.

  ‘Thank you, but no. And now...’ the smile came again, and he could see that her intention was to terminate the exchange ‘...if you will excuse me, I must get changed.’ She paused expectantly, waiting for him to withdraw.

  He ignored the prompt. Instead one eyebrow tilted interrogatively. ‘You have another dinner engagement?’ he asked.

  Something snapped in her eyes, changing their colour, he noticed. He’d assumed they were a shade of grey, but suddenly there was a flash of green in them.

  ‘No,’ she said precisely. ‘And if I did, m’sieu—’ the pointedness was back in her voice now ‘—I don’t believe it would be any of your concern.’ She smiled tightly, with less civility now.

  If it were with my cousin, mademoiselle, it would indeed be my concern... That flicker of more than annoyance came again, but again Bastiaan concealed it.

  ‘In which case, what can be your objection to dining with me?’ Again, there was the same note in his voice that worked so well with women in general. Invitations to dine with him had never, in his living memory, been met with rejection.

  She was staring at him with those eyes that had gone back to grey now, the flash of green quite absent. Eyes that were outlined in black kohl, their sockets dramatised outrageously with make-up, their lashes doubled in length by artificial means and copious mascara.

  Staring at him in a way he’d never been stared at before.

  As though she didn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Or hearing.

  For just a second their eyes met, and then, as if in recoil, her fake lashes dropped down over her eyes, veiling them.

  She took a breath. ‘M’sieu, I am desolated to inform you that I also do not accept invitations to dine with the club’s guests,’ she said. She didn’t make her tone dismissive now, but absolute.

  He ignored it. ‘I wasn’t thinking of dining here,’ he said. ‘I would prefer to take you to Le Tombleur,’ he murmured.

  Her eyes widened just a fraction. Le Tombleur was currently the most fashionable restaurant on the Côte D’Azur, and Bastiaan was sure that the chance to dine at such a fabulous locale would surely stop her prevaricating in this fashion. It would also, he knew, set her mind instantly at rest as to whether he was someone possessed of sufficient financial means to be of interest to her. She would not wish to waste her time on someone who was not in the same league as his young cousi
n. Had she but known, Bastiaan thought cynically, his own fortune was considerably greater than Philip’s.

  But of course Philip’s fortune was far more accessible to her. Or might be. If she were truly setting Philip in her sightline, she would be cautious about switching her attentions elsewhere—it would lose her Philip if he discovered it.

  A thought flickered across Bastiaan’s mind. She was alluring enough—even for himself... Should that be his method of detaching her? Then he dismissed it. Of course he would not be involving himself in any kind of liaison with a woman such as this one. However worthy the intention.

  Dommage... He heard the French word in his head. What a pity...

  ‘M’sieu...’ She was speaking again, with razored precision. ‘As I say, I must decline your very...generous...invitation’.

  Had there been a twist in her phrasing of the word ‘generous’? An ironic inflection indicating that she had formed an opinion of him that was not the one he’d intended her to form?

  He felt a new emotion flicker within him like a low-voltage electric current.

  Could there possibly be more to this woman sitting there, looking up at him through those absurdly fake eyelashes, with a strange expression in her grey-green eyes—more green now than grey, he realised. His awareness of that colour-change was of itself distracting, and it made his own eyes narrow assessingly.

  For just a fraction of a second their eyes seemed to meet, and Bastiaan felt the voltage of the electric current surging within him.

  ‘Are you ready to go yet?’

  A different voice interjected, coming from the door, which had been pushed wider by a man—a youngish one—clad in a dinner jacket, half leaning his slightly built body against the doorjamb. The man had clearly addressed Sabine, but now, registering that there was someone else in her dressing room, his eyes went to Bastiaan.

  He frowned, about to say something, but Sabine Sablon interjected. ‘The gentleman is just leaving,’ she announced.

  Her voice was cool, but Bastiaan was too experienced with women not to know that she was not, in fact, as composed as she wanted to appear. And he knew what was causing it...

  Satisfaction soared through him. Oh, this sultry, sophisticated chanteuse, with her vampish allure, her skin-tight dress and over-made-up face, might be appearing as cool as the proverbial cucumber—but that flash in her eyes had told him that however resistant she appeared to be to his overtures, an appearance was all it was...

  I can reach her. She is vulnerable to me.

  That was the truth she’d so unguardedly—so unwisely—just revealed to him.

  He changed his stance. Glanced at the man hovering in the doorway. A slight sense of familiarity assailed him, and a moment later he knew why. He was the accompanist for the chanteuse.

  For a fleeting moment he found himself speculating on whether the casual familiarity he could sense between the two of them betokened a more intimate relationship. Then he rejected it. Every male instinct told him that whatever lover the accompanist took would not be female.

  Bastiaan’s sense of satisfaction increased, and his annoyance with the intruder decreased proportionately. He turned his attention back to his quarry.

  ‘I shall take my leave, then, mademoiselle,’ he said, and he did not trouble to hide his ironic inflection or his amusement. Dark, dangerous amusement. As though her rejection of him was clearly nothing more than a feminine ploy—one he was seeing through...but currently choosing to indulge. He gave the slightest nod of his head, the slightest sardonic smile.

  ‘A bientôt.’

  Then, paying not the slightest attention to the accompanist, who had to straighten to let him pass, he walked out.

  As he left he heard the chanteuse exclaim, ‘Thank goodness you rescued me!’

  Bastiaan could hear the relief in her tone. His satisfaction went up yet another level. A tremor—a discernible tremor—had been audible in her voice. That was good.

  Yes, she is vulnerable to me.

  He walked on down the corridor, casually letting himself out through the rear entrance into the narrow roadway beyond, before walking around to the front of the club, where his car was parked on the forecourt. Lowering himself into its low-slung frame, he started the engine, its low, throaty growl echoing the silent growl inside his head.

  ‘Thank goodness you rescued me!’ she had said, this harpy who was trying to extract his cousin’s fortune from him.

  Bastiaan’s mouth thinned to a tight, narrow line, his eyes hardening as he headed out on to the road, setting his route back towards Monaco, where he was staying tonight in the duplex apartment he kept there.

  Well, in that she was mistaken—most decidedly.

  No one will rescue you from me.

  Of that he was certain.

  He drove on into the night.

  * * *

  ‘Give me two minutes and I’ll be ready to go,’ Sarah said.

  She strove for composure, but felt as if she’d just been released from a seizure of her senses that had crushed the breath from her lungs. How she’d managed to keep her cool she had no idea—she had only know that keeping her cool was absolutely essential.

  What the hell had just happened to her? Out of nowhere...the way it had?

  That had been the man whose assessing gaze she’d picked up during her final number. She’d been able to feel it from right across the club—and when he’d walked into her dressing room it had been like...

  Like nothing I’ve ever known. Nothing I’ve ever felt—

  Never before had a man had such a raw, physical impact on her. Hitting her senses like a sledgehammer. She tried to analyse it now—needing to do so. His height, towering over her in the tiny dressing room, had dominated the encounter. The broad shoulders had been sleekly clad in a bespoke dinner jacket, and there had been an impression of power that she had derived not just from the clearly muscular physique he possessed but by an aura about him that had told her this man was used to getting his own way.

  Especially with women.

  Because it hadn’t just been the clear impression that here was a wealthy man who could buy female favours—his mention of Le Tombleur had been adequate demonstration of that—it had been far, far more...

  She felt herself swallow. He doesn’t need money to impress women.

  No, she acknowledged shakily, all it took was those piercing dark eyes, winged with darker brows, the strong blade of his nose, the wide, sensual curve of his mouth and the tough line of his jaw.

  He was a man who knew perfectly well that his appeal to women was powerful—who knew perfectly well that women responded to him on that account.

  She felt her hackles rise automatically.

  He thought I’d jump at the chance!

  A rush of weakness swept through her. Thank God she’d had the presence of mind—pulled urgently out of her reeling senses—to react the way she’d managed to do.

  What was it about him that he should have had such an effect on me?

  Just what had it been about that particular combination of physique, looks and sheer, raw personal impact that had made her react as if she were a sliver of steel in the sudden presence of a magnetic field so strong it had made the breath still in her body?

  She had seen better-looking men in her time, but not a single one had ever had the raw, visceral, overpowering impact on her senses that this man had. Even in the space of a few charged minutes...

  She shook her head again, trying to clear the image from her mind. Whoever he was, he’d gone.

  As she got on with the task of turning herself back into Sarah, shedding the false eyelashes, heavy make-up and tight satin gown, she strove to dismiss him from her thoughts. Put him out of your head, she told herself brusquely. It was Sabine Sablon he wanted to invite to dinner, not Sarah Fareham.

  That was the truth of it, she knew. Sabine was the kind of woman a man like that would be interested in—sophisticated, seductive, a woman of the world, a femme fatale. An
d she wasn’t Sabine—she most definitely was not. So it was completely irrelevant that she’d reacted to the man the way she had.

  I haven’t got time to be bowled over by some arrogantly smouldering alpha male who thinks he’s picking up a sultry woman like Sabine. However much he knocked me sideways.

  She had one focus in her life right now—only one. And it was not a man with night-dark eyes and devastating looks who sucked the breath from her body.

  She headed out to where Max was waiting to walk her back to her pension, some blocks away in this harbourside ville of Pierre-les-Pins, before carrying on to the apartment he shared with Anton, the opera’s composer.

  As they set off he launched into speech without preamble. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘in your first duet with Alain—’

  And he was off, instructing her in some troublesome vocal technicalities he wanted to address at the next day’s rehearsal. Sarah was glad, for it helped to distance her mind from that brief but disturbing encounter in her dressing room with that devastating, dangerous man.

  Dangerous? The word echoed in her head, taking her aback. Had he been dangerous? Truly?

  She gave herself a mental shake. She was being absurd. How could a complete stranger be dangerous to her? Of course he couldn’t.

  It was absurd to think so.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘BASTIAAN! FANTASTIC! I’d no idea you were here in France!’ Philip’s voice was warm and enthusiastic as he answered his mobile.

  ‘Monaco, to be precise,’ Bastiaan answered, strolling with his phone to the huge plate-glass window of his high-rise apartment in Monte Carlo, which afforded a panoramic view over the harbour, chock-full of luxury yachts glittering in the morning sunshine.

  ‘But you’ll come over to the villa, won’t you?’ his cousin asked eagerly.

  ‘Seeking distraction from your essays...?’ Bastiaan trailed off deliberately, knowing the boy had distraction already—a dangerous one.