Chris still looked rebellious. ‘I told you, I don’t want——I can pay my own way, thank you!’ He snatched the bill from in front of Reece as he would have been the one to pick it up.
Reece raised dark brows. ‘Can you?’ he queried softly. Pointedly. He hated doing it, but it was time Chris realised, once and for all time, that he held the purse-strings——God, he groaned inwardly with self-disgust, what the hell was he doing? Did he really want Diana Lamb so much himself that he was willing to threaten his own son to get her? The answer—painful as it was to admit it—was yes!
Thankfully Chris was too agitated himself by this time to take exception to the veiled threat, his movements aggressive as he dealt with the bill.
Reece almost felt sorry for him. If it had been any other woman but Diana——!
But it wasn’t, and Reece wanted her for himself, could feel his tension rise as Diana sat forward to touch Chris’s arm as she spoke to him so softly that Reece couldn’t hear what was being said—even though he did try!
So instead he could only look at her, at the way her curtain of hair had fallen forward, so thick and luxuriant that Reece just wanted to entangle his hands in it—at the same time his body became entangled with hers! He felt like a callow youth as he felt his body harden with desire, knowing that he couldn’t get up and leave the table just yet without totally betraying himself.
His attention tensed as Diana finally stopped talking to Chris in that undertone and looked across at Reece with those unfathomable green eyes. So cool, so calm, and yet she commanded interest—his, at least!—without even trying!
‘As Chris and I came together by taxi,’ she spoke softly, ‘we appreciate your offer to drive us both home.’ There was challenge in her voice now.
Because they all knew it wasn’t what he had offered at all. But he could see it was a way of saving face for all of them. And that Diana had achieved it with the minimum of fuss…
It would also mean, once he had Diana safely inside his car, that his plans for being the one to take her home weren’t completely lost. Although he didn’t for a moment fool himself into thinking she had engineered it that way! Why was it that this particular young lady, the one he was finding he wanted badly enough to even cut out his own son, didn’t seem in the least impressed by him, and made no effort to hide the fact? Oh, he had never fooled himself into believing it was the way he looked that brought most women he desired into his life, usually for as long as he wanted them there. He had learnt long ago that money and power were compelling aphrodisiacs for a lot of women. And he had plenty of both.
He wasn’t always successful in winning the women he wanted, even with those powerful weapons at his disposal, but any rebuff usually meant there was already someone in those women’s lives whom they loved and wanted to be with, and Reece could only respect them for feeling that way.
Diana Lamb didn’t even pretend that her own lack of interest in him was because of any of those reasons—she had just scorned him from the beginning!
He didn’t believe either that it was because this particular woman had enough money of her own not to be attracted to Reece’s millions; there was a saying that ‘you could never have too much money’, and Reece happened to believe that was true, believed that money begat more money. Unless you were a fool, and lost it all on a game of chance. But that would involve taking a risk, and Reece only ever gambled on certainties.
However, he was far from certain about Diana Lamb…
* * *
Reece was so obvious in his intention of dropping Chris off at his apartment first and then driving her home that Diana was surprised at his lack of finesse in trying to achieve it. Or maybe he was just so determined to have his own way that he didn’t care how he did it. Whatever, he had seated her beside him in the front of the black BMW, and a disgruntled Chris sat in the back glowering at them both, already excluded by the mere fact of the seating arrangement.
Diana could see that this was turning into a battle of wills between herself and Reece, and if he thought he was going to win as easily as this he was going to be sadly disappointed. And soon!
There was a look of triumph on the strong angles of his face once he had parked his car outside Chris’s apartment building, although it was masked slightly as he turned to look at his son. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, Chris,’ he said lightly. ‘I’ll just drive Diana home now.’
He really did think it was as easy as that, Diana realised with an incredulous shake of her head. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she drawled dismissively, releasing the catch to her seatbelt as she spoke, ‘but, as I’m sure you can appreciate…’ she gave him a bright, dazzling—and totally meaningless!—smile, as she knew he had sensed the brush-off he was about to receive ‘… Chris and I really do have a lot to talk about still.’ She opened her car door and got out, pointedly waiting on the pavement for Chris to join her.
A heavy scowl had settled on Reece’s arrogant features. ‘I thought I was taking you home,’ he bit out tautly.
‘You have,’ she nodded. ‘It was—interesting, meeting you again,’ she added dismissively, green eyes meeting the fierceness of his silver gaze in mocking challenge.
‘Oh, I have no doubt,’ he ground out forcefully, putting the car into gear with barely controlled movements once Chris had got out of the car on to the pavement beside her, ‘no doubt at all that we shall meet again!’
She arched dark brows. ‘Really?’ she returned softly. ‘I can’t imagine in what circumstances.’
His mouth thinned. ‘And it will be sooner than you think!’ he assured her harshly, turning coldly to look at his son. ‘Tomorrow,’ he told Chris again in a warning tone before pressing the button to close the window and driving off at great speed.
If Diana was relieved to have a respite from the open as well as subtle undercurrent of Reece Falcon’s challenging presence, it was mild in comparison to how Chris obviously felt!
‘God!’ He physically wilted after the onslaught. ‘That was so much worse than I ever imagined it was going to be!’
Her mouth twisted wryly at his naïveté. ‘What did you think your father was going to do, Chris—pat you affectionately on the head and tell you it’s perfectly acceptable to ask one woman to marry you while still engaged to another one?’ Diana shook her head derisively. ‘He’s naturally furious with you,’ she ruefully pointed out the obvious.
And in the circumstances—Reece Falcon’s own relationship with Madeleine’s mother—that wasn’t in the least surprising! Chris’s behaviour with her could obviously seriously damage that relationship too. Not that Diana cared about that, but it was clear Reece Falcon did!
‘And you?’ Chris looked at her almost pleadingly. ‘Are you furious with me too?’
She didn’t care about him enough in that way to be furious with him, but if she had actually intended marrying him then she would have been feeling quite differently from the way she did at this moment about his behaviour. ‘I think——’ she chose her words carefully ‘—that you’ve been very silly. I don’t know how you even thought you could get away with your father and me meeting in that way and he—at least—not mentioning that you already have a fiancée.’ She shook her head disbelievingly.
‘I honestly didn’t think he would do that to me,’ Chris groaned painfully. ‘I thought that by bringing the two of you together tonight in the way that I did I could force his hand in accepting our relationship.’
Diana could see that he really had believed that by presenting his father with a fait accompli he would be able to simply change fiancées with the minimum of fuss. How incredibly naïve this boy was! Reece Falcon was the manipulator, not the one to be forced into doing something he didn’t want to do. Ever.
‘It didn’t work out that way, did it?’ she mocked lightly.
‘No.’ He sighed heavily. ‘And did you mean what you said to him earlier—that our going out together had been just that to you; that you have no intention of marrying me?�
�� He looked at her with pained blue eyes.
She gave a rueful shake of her head at his hurt-little-boy look. ‘Chris, you had no right even mentioning marriage to me,’ she reminded him exasperatedly.
‘You mean because of Maddy——’
‘Of course I mean because of Maddy!’ she confirmed impatiently. ‘Look, we had some good times together, I’ve enjoyed your company, but now I think it’s time you accepted that you already have a fiancée, and that I——’
‘Yes?’ Chris cut in sharply, frowning. ‘Did you meet someone else while you were in Paris; is that it?’ he accused.
She didn’t believe this! ‘Chris——’
‘Because you haven’t been the same since you got back from there; you seem more distant, less—affectionate.’
Considering the most they had ever shared had been a few kisses—carefully controlled ones on her part at that—this last accusation was verging on the ridiculous! Chris was trying to make them sound like lovers, with the love having cooled on her part.
‘There’s no one else, Chris,’ she told him softly, knowing there possibly never would be anyone for her. Her obsession over Reece Falcon was such a dominating part of her life now, and it wouldn’t be fair to offer any man less from a relationship than he deserved. Reece Falcon had done that to her… ‘But at the same time I never had any intention of marrying you, Chris,’ she added coldly. ‘I wouldn’t have gone out with you at all if I had realised you had a fiancée.’
She wasn’t absolutely sure this latter claim was true, because she knew she had needed Chris to make the initial contact with Reece Falcon. But Chris had known full well of his fiancée, and he didn’t particularly deserve her consideration now. He had proved himself to be his father’s son—utterly selfish when it came to something he wanted. It was Madeleine she felt sorry for now, and she wondered if the other girl really did deserve Chris in her life.
‘Why, you——!’ Chris recoiled as if she had struck him. ‘You knew how I felt about you, led me to believe——’
‘Nothing,’ Diana put in flatly, looking at him with hard green eyes. ‘Absolutely nothing. I haven’t deceived you in any way, Chris.’ She shook her head. ‘I never told you I loved you, never gave you any false hopes. It was your king-sized Falcon ego that did that!’ she couldn’t stop herself from adding hardly.
‘Falcon ego…?’ Chris echoed slowly, more than a little dazed by this unexpected attack from her when she so rarely deviated from that serenely calm exterior she usually presented to the world.
In fact Diana was disappointed in herself for the lapse; she couldn’t start to become over-emotional now, when she still had a very long way to go.
She gave the ghost of a smile. ‘After meeting your father, it’s obvious where you get your determination from.’ But in the father it was arrogance, pure and simple! ‘We’ve had fun, Chris,’ she shrugged, her smile warming slightly. ‘Let’s part as friends, hmm?’ she encouraged.
His uncertainty dissolved to be replaced almost by panic as he realised, once and for all, that Diana was actually saying goodbye to him, and his hands reached out instinctively to clasp both of hers, his expression beseeching. ‘But it’s you I care about——’
‘Sure?’ Diana teased; if he wasn’t still in love with Madeleine then why hadn’t he made more of an effort to break the engagement? It could just be—in fact it probably was—that with the other girl’s prolonged absence in Switzerland Chris had just forgotten how much he did care for Madeleine: absence didn’t always make the heart grow fonder!
He looked shamefaced now. ‘I’m so confused—it isn’t funny, damn it!’ he scowled as Diana began to chuckle wryly.
She shook her head, sobering slightly, although a smile still curved the natural pout of her lips. ‘I’m not laughing at you, Chris, only at the ridiculousness of the situation. Usually it’s the woman who’s “so confused”!’
For a moment he remained unyielding, and then he gave a rueful smile of acknowledgement. ‘I suppose it is pretty silly,’ he finally conceded. ‘But—well, the truth is, I don’t want to lose you, Divine.’
‘There’s another way of looking at it, Chris,’ she shrugged. ‘You never really had me.’
Blue eyes widened at the starkness of the statement, and then he frowned. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘No, I never really did, did I?’ he realised regretfully.
Diana moved to kiss him lightly on the cheek; after all, her war was with his father, not with him. ‘Take your father’s advice and go and see Madeleine, if not tonight, some time soon,’ she told him softly. ‘Even if it’s only to say goodbye.’
‘Hmm,’ he sighed heavily. ‘I owe her that, don’t I?’
‘At least,’ Diana nodded.
‘And if I do say goodbye can I come and see you? No,’ he dully answered his own question at her ruefully mocking expression.
‘It’s over between us, Chris,’ Diana confirmed almost gently.
He scowled. ‘And once again my father has his own way! You can’t imagine just how galling that is.’ He shook his head frustratedly.
Oh, yes, she could, only too well! ‘I won’t tell him if you don’t.’ She couldn’t quite manage to keep all of the pent-up bitterness out of her voice, but luckily Chris was just so relieved to hear her say that that he was too self-absorbed to notice her vehemence.
‘Let him stew for a while,’ he agreed with satisfaction, obviously brightening at the prospect of bettering his father for a while, at the same time acknowledging his relationship with Diana was over mainly because of his own stupidity in deceiving her in the way he had and believing he could get away with it.
Diana’s own smile lacked humour. It suited her own purposes not to let Reece Falcon know—yet—that his son no longer played a part in her life. ‘I hope things work out for the best with Madeleine, whichever way that might be,’ she said with quiet sincerity, aware once more that she had genuinely come to like Chris.
He looked at her with regret. ‘You won’t change your mind…?’ he said hopefully as he sensed she was weakening. ‘No,’ he accepted again dully as she made no reply to what they both knew was a silly question. ‘God, what a prize fool I’ve been!’ he groaned self-disgustedly.
Diana chuckled softly with understanding for his inner frustration with himself. ‘It’s a fallacy of every human being, Chris,’ she comforted.
He scowled again. ‘Not my father.’
She sobered instantly. Oh, yes, Reece Falcon had been a fool at least once in his life that she knew of—twelve years ago when he had pushed her father to the extreme of taking his own life. And, like all fools, Reece would have to pay the price in the end.
And what a price he would pay.
* * *
Her hair rippled with vitality as she walked; it looked like silver in the moonlight rather than the gold it really was.
Reece sat in the shadowed interior of his car, parked across the street from Diana’s flat.
He had been sitting here for two hours now. Waiting. Waiting for her to come home. Waiting to see if she would come home at all or if she would spend the night with Chris. With his son.
And as he had waited, the minutes slowly ticking by, he had raged—and suffered!—at the thought of Diana in Chris’s arms, in his bed, that silken body entwined with his son’s. He had ached until it had become an actual physical pain in the very pit of his stomach.
And yet now here she was, almost ethereal in the moonlight, tall and slender, silver and black, her feet still giving the appearance of being bare in those ridiculous see-through shoes.
But it was almost two hours since he had left her with Chris outside his son’s flat. What had happened between the young couple in that intervening time? Had they made love, as he had imagined they had, only for Diana to leave afterwards? Reece knew that if he made love to Diana he wouldn’t let her leave afterwards, that he would want her there with him all night, to love again in the morning. But Chris wasn’t him, and—oh, God!—
he was starting to hate his own son for the relationship he might have with this elusive—only to him?—woman!
Diana, head high, her step light, was totally aware of the car parked opposite as she took out her key to let herself into the building; of the car owner sitting silently behind the wheel in the shadows. Of Reece’s burning, ever-growing anger. At her. At Chris. At himself.
It had begun.
CHAPTER FIVE
NEW YORK, a city that never seemed to sleep, seemed to Reece, after only one day among its bustling activity, to be boring and colourless.
He had flown to the States the day after that dinner with Chris and Diana, ostensibly because he genuinely had business to deal with there, but really because he wanted to talk to Cathy about the wedding; he owed her that much consideration, at least.
Over lunch his ex-wife, Chris’s mother, had been warm and friendly, as beautiful as ever, their conversation containing none of the antagonism that had coloured so much of the last years of their marriage. In fact, it had all been so pleasant, it might almost have been cosy!
Cathy watched him with smiling puzzlement as they lingered over coffee at the end of the meal. ‘What is it, Reece?’ she prompted softly.
He looked up from his coffee-cup, frowning. ‘Sorry?’
Her mouth quirked. ‘You take your coffee black, with no sugar, and yet for some reason you’ve been stirring the bottom out of your cup for the last five minutes!’ she said pointedly.
He looked down at the submerged spoon, dropping it down into the saucer as he realised she was right. He hadn’t even realised he was doing it!
Cathy tilted her head questioningly; at thirty-eight she was still youthfully lovely to look at, the happiness she had found from her second marriage and family obvious from the glow to her dark blue eyes and the soft curve to her lips. ‘And you haven’t glanced at your watch once in the last hour,’ she added with amusement.
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