‘MAROONED.’ Annie frowned at him, trying to decide whether he was just attempting a very poor joke. But his face held no hint of humour, only a smile that sent the blood running cold through her veins.
Marooned, she repeated silently and slowly to herself. Abandoned. Isolated without resources. He had used the word quite deliberately.
It hit her then that this was no simple commission in which the great Adamas employed the notorious Annie Lacey to promote his priceless gems. She had been brought here under false pretences—brought here and isolated from the rest of the world by this man for some specific purpose of his own.
A sick sense of déjà vu washed over her, filling her eyes with unmistakable horror as Luis Alvarez’s hot face loomed up in her mind, and for a moment—a small moment—she lost control, face paling, breasts heaving, eyes haunted as they glanced around for somewhere to run.
‘Perfect,’ he drawled, making her blink at the soft-voiced sensuality that he managed to thread into the one simple word. ‘That look of maidenly panic must have taken hours of practice in front of your mirror to cultivate. Allow that gorgeous mouth to quiver just a little,’ he suggested, ‘and you will be well on the way to convincing me that the well-seasoned vamp is actually a terrified virgin.’
Margarita used that moment to knock on the door. He moved smoothly, loose-limbed and lazily controlled, to open the door and stand aside while his shyly smiling servant wheeled in a trolley laid out with coffee things and some daintily prepared sandwiches.
Annie watched, unable to so much as move a muscle as the other woman murmured in Spanish to her employer and he answered in deep casual replies. The trolley was wheeled over to stand beside a low table between two big, soft-cushioned sofas of a pale coral-pink. Then Margarita was leaving again, murmuring what must have been her thanks to her employer for holding the door for her.
‘Who are you really?’ Annie demanded once they were alone. ‘And will you kindly explain what this—stupid charade is all about?’
‘I am who I said I am,’ he replied with infuriating blandness. ‘I am Adamas. I told you no lies, Miss Lacey.’ Moving gracefully, he went over to the trolley then turned a questioning look at her. ‘Tea—coffee?’ he asked. ‘Margarita has prepared both.’
Impatiently Annie shook her head. She wanted nothing in this house until she got some answers. Nothing. ‘Is that supposed to make sense to me?’ she snapped out impatiently.
‘No,’ he conceded. ‘But then—I never meant to.’ A brief smile touched his mouth before he turned his attention to pouring himself a cup of dark, rich coffee. The aroma drifted across the room to torment Annie’s parched mouth, forcing her to swallow drily, but other than that she ignored the temptation to change her mind. ‘Won’t you at least sit down?’ he offered politely.
Again she shook her head—for the same reason. ‘I just want you to tell me what is going on,’ she insisted.
He studied her for a moment, those strange green eyes glinting thoughtfully at her from between glossy black lashes, as if he was considering forcing her to sit and drink.
Whatever, the look had the effect of pushing up her chin, her blue eyes challenging him just to try it and see what he got!
Though what he would get if he did decide to force her physically, she wasn’t sure. She was tall, but this man seemed to fill the whole room with his threatening presence. And she couldn’t help quailing deep down inside because she knew that if he did call her bluff she would have no choice but to do exactly what he wanted her to do.
And it is that, Annie, she told herself grimly, which keeps you standing as far away from him as you can get! He reminds you of Luis Alvarez—the same height, the same colouring, the same arrogance that made men like them believe that they could say, be and do anything they liked! And if he was Adamas then he also possessed the same money and power in society to have anything nasty about himself that he would not wish the world to hear covered up.
Like the abduction of unwilling females.
She shuddered, unable to control herself. She should have known from the moment she laid eyes on him last night—had known! Her well-tuned instincts had sent out warning signals straight away! But she had let his easy manner lull her into a false sense of security. And, dammit, she’d liked him! Actually allowed herself to like him for the way he had behaved!
She had never been able to say that for Luis, she remembered bitterly. Luis Alvarez had turned her stomach from the moment she’d found herself alone with him. But then, Luis Alvarez had been at least ten years older than this man, his good looks spoiled by ten years’ more cynicism and dissolution.
This man did not turn her stomach in that same way, she realised worriedly. And maybe that was one of the reasons why he frightened her perhaps more than Alvarez had ever done. He frightened her because she was reluctantly attracted to him. His calculating study of her frightened her. His softly spoken words that held so many hidden messages frightened her. But, above all, the actual air she was breathing was frightening her—simply because it was filled with the appealing scent of him.
Did he know it? she wondered anxiously. Could he tell what kind of effect he was having on her? His eyes were burning over her—burning in a way that told her that, whatever else was going on here, he too liked what he saw.
The air thickened, became impossible to breathe as the silence between them grew hot and heavy. Then, without warning, he looked down and away.
It was like having something vital taken from her, and Annie had to measure carefully the air she dragged into her suddenly gasping lungs in case she should hyperventilate.
‘OK,’ he conceded coolly. ‘We talk.’
He brought those green eyes to hers again, and there was something overwhelmingly proud in the way his chin lifted along with the eyes.
‘My name,’ he announced, ‘is César DeSanquez. Adamas is merely a name under which I trade…’
DeSanquez, DeSanquez, Annie was thinking frowningly. The name rang a rather cold bell inside her head. It was a name that evoked an image of great wealth and power—an image wrapped in oil and gold and diamonds and—
‘I am American-Venezuelan by birth, but my roots are firmly planted in my Venezuelan links.’
And it hit. It hit with a sickening sense of understanding that made her sway where she stood.
‘Ah,’ he murmured. ‘I see you are beginning to catch on. Yes, Miss Lacey,’ he softly confirmed, ‘Cristina Alvarez is my sister. And you made the quick connection, I must assume, because your—affair with my brother-in-law took place in the DeSanquez apartment. The media made quite a meal out of these—juicy facts, did they not? In fact, their attention to detail was quite remarkably concise—the way they told of Annie Lacey lying with her lover in one bed while her lover’s wife lay asleep in another bedroom of her brother’s apartment. My apartment, Miss Lacey,’ he enunciated thinly. ‘My bed!’
Annie sank tremulously into a nearby chair, his anger, his contempt and his disgust breaking over her in cold, sickening waves while she fought with her own sense of anger and disgust—disgust for a single night in her life that would always, it seemed, come back to haunt her for as long as she lived.
She had gone to that apartment by invitation, to a party being held by a man called DeSanquez—a wealthy young Venezuelan who had expressed a desire to meet the sweet Angel Lacey, as everyone had called her then. She never had actually met the Venezuelan, she remembered now in surprise, because she hadn’t given him a thought after meeting Alvarez instead.
Alvarez. She shuddered.
‘Quite,’ he observed. ‘I acknowledge your horror. It was a revolting time for all of us. Not least my sister,’ he pointed out. ‘Having to walk into my bedroom and find you in my bed, not with me—it would not have mattered if it had been me,’ he drawled. ‘But to find you with her own husband was a terrible shock. It effectively ruined her marriage and ultimately almost ruined her life.
‘For this alone,’ he explained with a hateful coolness, ‘I feel perfectly justified in demanding retribution from you—and indeed would have done so at the time this all happened if my sister had not begged me to let it be. So, for Cristina’s sake, and for Cristina’s alone,’ he made absolutely clear, ‘I went against my personal desire to strangle the unscrupulous life out of you right there and then. But—that is not the end of it.’
Turning, he moved to place his coffee-cup on the top of the white marble fireplace then rested his arm alongside it. Every move he made, every unconscious gesture was so incredibly graceful that even in the middle of all of this Annie found herself drawn by him.
‘I mentioned my dual nationality for a good reason,’ he continued, his tone—as it had been throughout—utterly devoid of emotion. ‘For although my father was Venezuelan my mother was, in actual fact, American. Now,’ he asserted, as though relaying a mildly interesting piece of history, ‘her name before she married my father was Frazer—Ah, I see you are quick. Yes.’ He smiled thinly as Annie licked her suddenly dry lips. ‘Susie is my cousin. Quite a coincidence, is it not, that you should happen to be the woman trying to ruin her life just as carelessly as you ruined my sister Cristina’s?’
Annie closed her eyes, shutting out the crucifying blandness of his expression as he watched her. She had been wrong before when she’d believed him to be of the same ilk as Luis. He was in actual fact very different, if only because Luis had cared only for his own rotten neck while this man seemed to hold himself personally responsible for the necks of others.
Which in turn made him very dangerous because, in deciding to make himself an avenger, it was obvious that he was quite prepared to endanger his own neck to get retribution for those he loved. Blindly loved, she added heavily to herself. And she suddenly felt very, very sorry for him.
To each his Achilles heel, she mused starkly, opening her eyes to show him a perfectly cool expression. Luis Alvarez’s Achilles heel had been his inflated ego, and the arrogant belief that power and money could buy for his bed any woman he’d desired. Cristina’s had been her blindness to what her husband actually was. And Susie’s was her need to have everything her selfish heart desired.
This man’s was his fierce love for his family.
She then found herself wondering what her own Achilles heel was. She didn’t know, but she had a horrible feeling that in this man’s hands she was going to find out.
‘You have nothing to say?’ Her calmness was irritating him; she could see the annoyance begin to glint in his strange green eyes.
Green. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘Not a single thing.’ And another realisation hit her squarely in the face. Susie had green eyes—the same green eyes. Which seemed to tie the whole situation off neatly for her. She didn’t have a cat-in-hell’s chance of making this man with those eyes see anything from her point of view, so she wasn’t even going to try. ‘Perhaps you would, therefore, like to continue?’ she invited, knowing with certainty that he had not offered her all of this information just for the fun of it.
His sudden burst of angry movement at her seeming indifference took her by surprise, because he had been so purposefully controlled up until then. His hand flicked down from the mantel, his body straightening tautly. ‘Has nothing I have said managed to reach you?’ he demanded harshly.
‘It would seem not,’ she said. ‘All I’ve heard until now is a potted description of your family tree. Very interesting, I’m sure,’ she drawled, ‘but nothing for me to get fired up about.’
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like the fact that she could maintain a cool façade and even go as far as mocking him.
It served him right, she thought, for his arrogant supposition that he had a right to speak to her like this! If he had taken the trouble to find out about her—really find out instead of restricting his knowledge to pure tabloid gossip and the malicious judgement of his thankless family—then he would have discovered that few people managed to rile Annie Lacey with mere words. Out of sheer necessity she had grown a thick skin around herself to protect her from the cruel thrust of words, and it would take a better man than he to pierce that protective skin.
‘When they say you possess none of the finer senses they are right, aren’t they?’ he muttered. ‘Do you feel no hint of compassion for others at all?’
‘It would seem not,’ she said again, fielding his contempt with blue eyes that gave away nothing of what she was thinking or feeling inside. Then sheer devilment made her cock a golden eyebrow at him. ‘Is there any in you?’ she challenged right back.
‘For you, you mean?’ He shook his sleek dark head. ‘No, Miss Lacey, I am sorry to inform you that I harbour not an ounce of compassion for you.’
‘Then you have no right to expect more from me than you are willing to give yourself,’ she said, and got up, her slender body no less sensuous in movement because it was stiff with control. He couldn’t know, of course, that she had been through this kind of character-slaying before, and at far more lethal hands than his, or he would not be trying this tactic out on her.
‘Where do you think you are going?’ he demanded as she walked towards the door.
‘Why, to the one place you obviously expect me to go,’ she replied. ‘To the devil. But by my route, Mr DeSanquez, I will do it by my own route.’
He moved like lightning, had to to reach the door even before she had a chance to turn the handle. His hand, big and slightly callused, closed around her own. Even with the light clasp he exerted, the hand managed to intimidate her.
‘And how do you mean to get there?’ he enquired silkily. ‘Fly on your broomstick as witches do? Or are you more the snake, Miss Lacey, prepared to slither your way across the ocean to your devil’s lair?’
‘Funny,’ she jeered, having to force herself to retaliate through the stifling breathlessness that she was suddenly experiencing at his closeness. ‘But I thought this was the devil’s lair?’
‘I am merely his servant, Angelica,’ he stated grimly. ‘Merely his servant.’
There was nothing ‘mere’ about this man. He was larger than life itself—in size, in presence, in the sheer, physical threat of the man.
‘I want to leave here,’ she informed him coldly.
‘But I’ve not finished with you yet.’ The taunting words were murmured against her cheek, dampening her skin with his warm spicy breath.
‘But I have finished with you!’ she snapped, turning to anger to cover up the hectic effect his closeness was having on her. ‘I demand that you fly me back to Union Island!’ She tried to prise his fingers from her other hand. ‘Now—before this silly game gets out of hand!’
He responded by snaking a hard arm around her waist and lifting her off the ground. Ignoring the way she twisted and struggled and kicked out with feet made in-effectual by the way he was carrying her, he walked over to the sofa and dropped her unceremoniously into the soft coral-coloured cushions, then came to lean threateningly over her.
‘Now listen to me,’ he commanded. ‘And listen well, for this is no game. I mean business, Miss Lacey—serious business. You are here on my island for one purpose only, and that is to put you right out of circulation. From now on I am going to ensure personally that you form no danger to anyone in my family again!’
He was talking about Susie now, of course, Annie realised. ‘And how do you intend to do that?’ she asked, blue eyes flashing a scornful challenge at green, absolutely refusing to let him see how very frightened she was. ‘By ruining my good reputation when everyone knows I don’t have one? Or do you have murder in mind, Mr DeSanquez?’ she taunted dangerously.
His anger flared at her refusal to take him seriously, his bared teeth flashing bright white in a cruel dark face as he reached for her again. ‘Murder is too easy an escape for you, you little she-devil,’ he muttered. ‘Perhaps this will teach you to have a healthy fear of me!’
She didn’t expect it, which was why he caught her so totally off guard when his hard fingers curled tightly on her shoulders and he brought her wrenchingly upwards to meet the punishing force of his mouth.
It lasted only seconds, but it was long enough for her to feel again the hectic sensation of her whole body burning up, as though something totally alien had invaded her.
She didn’t move, did not so much as breathe or blink an eyelash in response, yet, as she had been the evening before, she was suddenly and excruciatingly aware of him—aware of his strength, of the power behind the muscles that strained angrily against her, of the subtle, pleasing scent of him, the smooth texture of his tight, tanned skin.
Her mouth was burning, her soft lips throbbing where he pressed them bruisingly back against her tightly clenched teeth. And her breasts—the damning traitors that they were—were responding to the heated pressure of his hard chest, the sensitive tips hardening into tight, tingling sensors of pleasure as they pushed eagerly towards him.
He muttered something in his throat and whipped a hand around the back of her neck so that he could arch her backwards, the other hand coming up between them to let a throbbing nipple push against his palm.
Annie gasped at the shocking insolence of the action, trying to pull away from him. But her gasp gave him entry into her mouth, and the next thing she knew she was being flung into a heady vortex of hot, moist intimacy.
Never—never since Alvarez—had she let a man kiss her like this. The very idea of it had always appalled her. But with this man it was the most achingly sensual experience of her life!
And that appalled her. It appalled her to know that she could be so receptive to a man who held her in such open contempt! And when he eventually lifted his head it was an act of sheer self-preservation that made her stare up at him with apparent indifference to the attack when in actual fact she was slowly and systematically collapsing inside.
‘Well, well, well,’ she heard herself murmur with an inner horror at her own gall. ‘So you too are prepared to use sex to get what you want. And there I was, thinking you way above that kind of thing. How very disappointing.’
He stiffened violently at the taunt, then smiled ruefully when her meaning sank in. ‘Ah,’ he drawled. ‘You are implying that we are similar creatures. But that is not the case,’ he denied. ‘You see, I do not sleep around—especially with promiscuous bitches who run a high risk of contamination.’
That cut—cut hard and deep. Not that she let him see it, her bruised and trembling mouth taking on a deriding twist as she taunted softly right back, ‘Then I think you should tell your body that, because it seems to me that it’s quite fancying a bit of contamination right now.’ And she let her eyes drop to where the evidence of his own response to the kiss thrust powerfully against Annie’s groin.
He dumped her so suddenly that she flailed back into the soft cushions behind her, but she barely noticed because her gaze was fixed incredulously on his hard, angry face.
He’d flushed—he’d actually flushed! She had absolutely thrown him by daring to point out his own sexual response, and elation at managing to get to him made her eyes flash with triumph.
Spinning away from her, he went to pour himself a drink—not coffee this time, but something stronger from a crystal decanter standing on a beautiful mahogany sideboard by the fireplace.
Annie got to her feet, studying him with more curiosity than fear now as that small revelation helped her to diminish the godlike proportions she had been allowing herself to see in him.
How old was he? she found herself wondering curiously. Thirty-one—thirty-two? Not much older, she was certain, though her original impression last night—had it only been last night?—had been of a much older, more mature man.
‘Don’t you think it’s time you told me exactly what it is you do want from me?’ she suggested when the silence began to drag between them.
He turned with glass in hand. ‘What I want from you is quite simple,’ he said, having got his temper back under control, she noted. ‘I want you taken right out of Hanson’s life, and I intend personally to make sure it happens.’
Todd? She stared at him, amazed that she could have forgotten all about Todd! Even when he’d brought Susie into this Annie had only connected the other girl with their modelling war. Susie’s connection with Todd had not even entered her head!
Stupid! she berated herself. How damned stupid can you get? Of course this was all about Todd and Susie, and not just Susie and the Cliché contract!
It was like being on a see-saw, she likened heavily. One minute feeling the uplift of her own confidence returning before she crashed down again so abruptly that she was starting to feel dizzy.
‘How long have you known Hanson?’ he asked her suddenly.
Almost all my life, Annie thought, with a smile that seemed to soften the whole structure of her face. Then she shrugged, slender shoulders shifting inside the white cotton top. ‘None of your business,’ she said.
He grimaced, as if acknowledging her right to be uncooperative. Yet he tried again—on a slightly different tack. ‘But you have been lovers on an off for—what—four years, is it now?’
‘No comment.’
He took a sip at his drink, green eyes thoughtful as they ran slowly over her. Annie fixed him with a bland stare; she was determined to give him no help whatsoever.
‘You are very beautiful,’ he remarked, making her eyelashes flicker in memory of the way he had said that to her the night before. ‘Incredibly so for someone who has led such a chequered life. It is no wonder my brother-in-law lost his head over you.’
‘Something you are determined not to do,’ she reminded him, smiling although the fact that just thinking of Luis Alvarez was enough to turn her stomach.
‘And Hanson,’ he continued, as if she had not spoken. ‘He cannot seem to help himself where you are concerned.’
‘Is this conversation supposed to be leading somewhere?’ she asked. ‘Only, if it is, would you kindly get to the point so I can get out of here? I am tired and would like to get off this island so I can book into a hotel somewhere and get some sleep tonight.’
‘Oh, you will get your sleep, Miss Lacey,’ he assured her smoothly. ‘Plenty of it—in the bed already waiting for you upstairs. You see…’ He paused—entirely for effect, Annie suspected. ‘As from tonight you became my mistress, and therefore will sleep wherever I sleep.’
‘What—?’ Annie began to laugh. She couldn’t help it; the whole thing was getting so ridiculous that she was truly beginning to believe that she must be stuck in some real-as-life nightmare—one of those where nothing made any sense!
‘Oh, not in the physical sense of the word,’ he inserted coolly into her laughter, ‘since we have already established that I have no wish to go where too many men have been before me.’
‘Have we?’ Her blue eyes mocked him. He lifted his chin and ignored the silent taunt.
‘It is, therefore, simple logic to assume that I mean to create the illusion of intimacy—solely for the minds of others.’
‘And I’m supposed to meekly go along with all of this, am I?’ she murmured with rueful scorn.
Funnily enough, instead of getting angry with her again, he grimaced. ‘No,’ he conceded. ‘Not meekly, I do acknowledge. But I fail to see what you can do about it since this is my island, and the only form of transport off it is in my helicopter. And,’ he continued while Annie grimly took all of that in, ‘considering I hold the very success of Hanson’s launch into Europe in the palm of my hand, I think I can—persuade you to do exactly what I want you to do. If only for Hanson’s sake,’ he added carefully.
Annie’s spine straightened slowly, her attention well and truly fixed now. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ she demanded.
‘Exactly what it said.’ He rid himself of his glass then shoved his hands into the pockets of his lightweight trousers. The action drew her eyes unwillingly downwards to that place where the evidence of his arousal had been so obviously on show.
Not so now. The man was back in control of his body, his stance supremely relaxed. ‘As I suppose you must already know, Hanson has overstretched his resources going into Europe,’ he went on smoothly. ‘He is in dire need of a world exclusive to get his new magazine off the ground. Convincing me to let him publish my new collection is undoubtedly that world exclusive. Using your body to display that collection means he cannot fail. And indeed,’ he went on while Annie stood taking it all in, ‘I have no wish for him to fail. It would not suit my cousin, you see, for the man she loves to be a failure,’ he pointed out. ‘But,’ he then warned chillingly, ‘I am prepared to have him fail if you are not prepared to do exactly what I say.’
The bottom line, Annie recognised as he fell into a meaningful silence. They had just reached the bottom line—as far as any protest from her went anyway. Because from the moment he said he was able to hurt Todd she had been beaten. She would do anything for Todd. Lay down her life for Todd.
Prostitute herself for Todd.
‘Tell me exactly what you want me to do,’ she said huskily, and at last gave him his victory over her spirit by letting her shoulders wilt in defeat.
Oddly, rather than pleasing him it seemed to have the opposite effect, tightening his mouth and putting an impatient glint into his strange green eyes.
‘Look,’ he exhaled irritably, ‘why don’t you avail yourself of some of that coffee? You are obviously jet lagged and no doubt dehydrated. Please…’ He waved a hand towards the trolley, but when she still just stood there, looking like a slowly wilting flower, another sigh rasped from him and he came to grasp her arm, guiding her to one of the chairs and pushing her roughly into it.
Annie glanced at the hand on her arm, long-fingered and beautifully sculptured, then at his face, darkly intense and intimidatingly grim, and shivered, realising just how accurate her first impression of this man had been. Danger, her instincts had warned her. Danger—hard with resolve.
Dangerous on several levels, she acknowledged as her senses quivered beneath his touch. Then, as she let her tense body relax into the chair, she was filled with a sudden aching kind of sadness. For the first time in her adult life she had come upon a man whom she did not feel an instant physical revulsion for, and he wanted only to do her harm.
Lifting her hand, she began rubbing at her brow with weary fingers. Her head was beginning to ache, the long hours of travelling only to be faced with all of…this beginning to take their toll.
A minute later a cup of strong coffee was placed into her hand, then he stood over her, with those piercing eyes probing her pale face while she sipped at the strong, sweet drink.
‘Please explain the rest,’ she requested, once the drink had managed to warm a small part of her numbed body.
He looked ready to refuse, an oddly ferocious look tightening his lean face. Then, on a short sigh, he turned away. ‘Hanson will get his exclusive for his magazine,’ he assured her. ‘Only—’ he turned back to face her ‘—it won’t be you wearing the Adamas collection, it will be Susie—after Hanson has begged me to allow her to take your place, of course, when you don’t turn up in time for his deadline because you have disappeared with your lover.’
‘You, I suppose.’ Her smile was twisted with contempt.
‘Of course.’ He gave an arrogant half-nod of his dark head. ‘It has to be convincing, after all. The man may have overstretched his resources in this economic climate, but he is no fool. He knows you well enough to suspect anything less than your assurance that the love of a very rich man has brought this decision on you.’
He paused, waiting for her to put up a protest or at least show some horrified response to his demands. But when she revealed nothing—nothing whatsoever—his frown came back, the first hint of puzzlement showing on his rock-solid, certain face.
‘You understand what I am demanding of you?’ he questioned. ‘I am demanding that you cut yourself completely free of Hanson—both professionally and personally. No contact,’ he made clear. ‘Nothing. He loves my cousin, but he suffers an incurable lust for you. You cannot be allowed to go on ruining lives simply because that body of yours drives men insane!’
And whose fault is that? she wondered cynically. Mine for projecting exactly what they want to see? Or theirs for being such pathetic slaves to their wretched libidos?
She glanced at him from beneath her lashes, wondering curiously if this man had ever been a slave to his libido. And decided not. He was Adamas—the rock, the invincible one! And just too damned proud to let himself become a slave to anything—except his family, maybe.
And there, she realised suddenly, was his weakness! Hers was Todd and always would be Todd. His was his pride and abiding love for his family.
‘You know…’ she murmured thoughtfully, a small seed of an idea beginning to develop in her mind. If it worked—if she could swing it—there was a small chance that she could get herself out of this relatively unscathed. ‘You’ve forgotten one rather obvious thing in all your careful planning,’ she said. ‘If, by your reckoning, I’ve had Todd at my beck and call for the last four years, despite the countless other men he knows have been falling in and out of my bed—then he isn’t going to give up on me just because you’ve come along.’
That deep sense of personal pride took the shape of haughty arrogance on his face. ‘He will if I insist upon it,’ he said.
‘Enough to make him turn to Susie for comfort?’ she charged. ‘Enough to make him thrust me from his mind? I’m sorry—’ ruefully she shook her head ‘—but it won’t happen. Todd loves me, you see,’ she stated with a soft and sincere certainty. ‘Loves me from the heart not the body. Or why else do you think he keeps coming back to me no matter what goes on in my life?
‘Ask Susie if you don’t believe me,’ she prompted when deriding scepticism that anyone could love a promiscuous bitch like her turned his attractive mouth ugly. ‘Ask her why all her other attempts to make Todd dismiss me from his life have failed. And ask yourself why a beautiful, desirable woman like Susie cannot win her man on her terms without having to bring you in to do it for her.
‘Ask her—’ she gently thrust her strongest point home ‘—if she’s ever asked Todd why he refuses to give me up, and if she’s honest, Mr DeSanquez, she’ll tell you that she has asked him, and Todd had told her, quite clearly, that he loves me and will always love me until the day he dies—no matter what I do.’
Silence. She had him wondering, and Annie had to stifle the urge to smile in triumph. The way his sleek black brows were pulling downwards over the bridge of his long, thin nose told her that she had forced him to consider what she’d said.
‘You could keep me here for six months—a year! but when I eventually went back Todd would be waiting for me with open arms. Is Susie prepared to live with that?’ she challenged. ‘Knowing that, no matter how deeply she manages to inveigle Todd into her clutches, I will always be there like the shadowed wings of a hawk in their lives, waiting to swoop down and steal him right away from her?’
This felt good—really good! Annie thought with relish as he spun restlessly away. He poured another drink, swallowed it down in one go then turned, forcing her to smooth the pleased glow out of her eyes as he glanced sharply back at her.
‘You really are the shrewd, calculating bitch my family label you, are you not?’ he said grimly.
‘I am what I am.’ She shrugged, throwing his own words of earlier right back at him.
‘And what made you what you are, I wonder?’ he mused angrily.
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ she said. ‘There’s a final ingredient in all of this which should clear that up.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘You see, I love Todd in exactly the same way that he loves me. Only, we are not allowed to show it because of Todd’s mother. You do know who Todd’s mother is, don’t you?’ she questioned tauntingly.
‘She is Lady Sarah Hanson,’ she provided the answer whether he knew it or not. ‘A woman with pure blue aristocratic blood running through her veins. She would die rather than see her son align himself with a woman with my reputation.’ Her soft mouth twisted on that little truism.
‘Lady Sarah also suffers from a chronic heart condition,’ she went on. Most of this was the absolute truth—most of it. ‘Todd is strong—tough—but draws the line at killing his own mother.’ She gave a helpless shrug. ‘Your Susie doesn’t stand a chance against a love like ours, Mr DeSanquez,’ she concluded, ‘and you would be doing her a bigger service by telling her that, rather than trying to blackmail me.’
At that she got up, mentally crossing her fingers that she’d managed to swing it. He was certainly not as confident as he had been, nor—oddly—as contemptuous of her as he studied her thoughtfully.
‘No.’ He shook his dark head and her heart sank. ‘You are wrong. I have seen the way he looks at my cousin, and no matter what you believe about his feelings for you Hanson gazes at her like a man angrily frustrated in love. Whatever hold you may have on him, and I do not deny it is there,’ he conceded, ‘I think it is time—perhaps more than time—that both you and Hanson learned to forget each other.
‘I saw the way you were with him the other night, watched the seductive way you utterly bewitched him, seducing him with your promising smiles and the sensual brush of your exquisite body.’ Contemptuously his gaze raked over her. ‘Susie has a chance with him with you out of the way,’ he concluded. ‘She stands none while you are around.’
‘So what is your plan?’ she scoffed at him deridingly, her mind tumbling over itself in an effort to find the hidden key that would stop all of this. ‘To keep me here tonight and tomorrow night and the next and the next in the hopes that it will blacken me in his eyes? Didn’t you hear a word I said?’ she sighed. ‘Todd doesn’t care what I do or who I do it with! He will forgive me for you and he will forgive me for breaking my contract with Cliché!’
‘Then you have a rather big problem on your hands, Miss Lacey,’ he countered grimly. ‘Because if you do not find a way of convincing him that you care nothing for him any more then I withdraw my support for his magazine. So now what do you suggest that we do?’
Catch twenty-two. Annie felt her heart sink in her breast.