MARC WAS IN his office, staring moodily at his computer screen, paying the display no attention. He kept a fully kitted-out office in all his properties, so that he could keep constant tabs on his business affairs.
It had been his habit to do so ever since his vast inheritance had landed on his too-young shoulders. If he hadn’t kept a tight grip on everything, shown everyone he was capable of running the bank, he’d have been sidelined by his own board. Doing so had made him appear hard-nosed, even arrogant sometimes, he was aware, but imposing his will on men a generation older than him had been essential. Even now, over a decade on, the habit of command was ingrained in him, whoever he was dealing with.
Including women who were being paid handsomely to do a very simple job, and yet who seemed to find it impossible not to simply take on board his very clear instructions without constantly answering him back!
His mouth tightened. This nonsense with Hans’s wife was causing him quite enough grief as it was. To have Tara Mackenzie constantly interrupting him, gainsaying him, answering him back, was just intolerable!
He gave a sigh of exasperation. She had better adopt a more gracious and compliant attitude once the Neubergers arrived, or she would never convince the wretched Celine that they were an item.
Why can’t she just be like other women are with me? he demanded of himself in exasperation. All his life women had been eager to please him. So why was this one so damn un-eager? With her stunning looks, she could have made him far better disposed towards her.
Maybe I should win her over...
Whatever her self-righteous protestations, she had, he knew with his every well-honed male instinct, reacted just the way he’d intended when he’d kissed that tender spot inside her wrist that evening of the fashion show... It had had exactly the effect on her he’d wanted. Started to melt her...
So maybe I should do more of that, not less...
The thought played in his mind. It was tempting...oh, so tempting...to turn that obstreperous antagonism towards him to something much more...co-operative...
It would be a challenge, certainly—he had no doubt of that. But maybe he would welcome such a challenge. It would be an intriguing novelty, after all. So different from being besieged by over-eager females...
He thrust the thought from him, steeling his jaw. No, that would not be a good idea! Did he really have to run through all the reasons why Tara Mackenzie, whatever her allure, was out of bounds to him?
No, he did not. He pulled his keyboard decisively towards him. All he had to do was get through this coming week, using the woman he was paying an exorbitant amount of money, to keep the wretched Celine off his case.
Tara Mackenzie was here to do a job, and then leave. That was all.
All.
Decision reaffirmed, he went back to his work.
Tara cast a professionally critical eye over her reflection. And professional was the word she had to keep uppermost in her mind. This, she reminded herself sternly, was just as much a job as striding down a catwalk. And Marc Derenz was simply her employer. She frowned momentarily. Thankfully only for a week or so.
For a week I can put up with his overbearing manner!
And, of course, for the ten thousand pounds he was paying her.
She nodded at her reflection, that showed her in a knee-length royal blue cocktail dress, from a very exclusive luxury label, her make-up immaculate, hair in a French pleat, and one of the pieces of top-brand costume jewellery she’d found in the suitcases around her neck. Yes, she looked the part—the latest woman in Marc Derenz’s life. Couture-dressed and expensive.
So—time to go onstage. One of the maids had told her she was being waited for downstairs, so she made her way to the head of the Hollywood-style staircase. From the top she could see a white-jacketed staff member opening the huge front doors and stepping aside to let Marc Derenz’s guests enter, just as Marc himself issued forth from another ground-floor room.
And stopped dead.
Immediately Tara could see why. This was not the Neubergers arriving—this was Frau Neuberger toute seule.
Celine—sans mari—was dressed to kill in a tailored silk suit in crème-de-menthe, five-inch heels, and a handbag that Tara knew, from her modelling expertise, had a waiting list of over a year and wouldn’t give you change from twenty thousand pounds...
‘Marc, cherie!’ Celine cooed as she came up to her host, who was still standing frozen, and lavished air kisses upon him. ‘How wonderful to be here!’
‘Where is Hans?’ Tara heard him ask bluntly, at which Celine gave an airy wave.
‘Oh, I told him we had no need of him! We’ll do perfectly well on our own!’ She patted Marc’s cheek insouciantly with her bare hand, lingering over the contact with her varnished fingernails.
Tara wanted to laugh. Celine was in high fettle, despite the thunderous expression on her quarry’s face. Well, time to disabuse her of her hopes.
She started forward, heels tapping on the marble stairs. A wide, welcoming smile parted her lips. ‘Celine, how lovely to meet you again!’ she exclaimed. ‘We’re so glad you were able to come!’
She reached the hallway, marshalling herself alongside Marc Derenz. Her pulse was not entirely steady—and that was nothing to do with Celine Neuberger and everything to do with the way Marc Derenz had looked at her as she’d walked down towards them. The way his hard dark eyes had focussed totally on her, as if pinning her with his gaze. A gaze that this time was not like a laser, but more... Appreciative. Liking what it saw. More than liking...
She felt a flush of heat go through her limbs, and then, collecting herself, reminded herself that of course Marc Derenz had looked at her like that—he was in role-play just as much as she was! She bestowed an air kiss upon Celine, whose face had contorted in fury at Tara’s appearance.
‘I just adore house-hunting! We’ll have such fun together! I can’t wait!’ she gushed, ignoring the other woman’s obvious anger at her presence there. ‘Why not describe what you’re after by way of a villa over drinks?’ she invited Celine cordially, hoping that Marc Derenz would lead them to wherever it was that cocktails were going to be served. She hadn’t a clue—and if Celine realised that it might give the game away.
Thankfully, he did just that, ushering them both into a sumptuous Art Deco salon, where wide French windows opened onto a terrace bathed in late sunshine. Celine, all but snatching her glass, immediately started to talk animatedly in German to Marc, clearly intent on cutting out Tara as much as she could.
Marc’s expression was still radiating the same thunderous displeasure it had been since he had seen Celine arrive without her husband. For her part, Tara cast a jaundiced eye at the woman.
Honey, you’d be welcome to him! He’s arrogant and bad-tempered and totally charmless! Help yourself, do!
But of course that was out of the question. So, knowing she had to act—quite literally—she stepped forward, a determined smile on her face, placing a quite clearly possessive, hand on Marc Derenz’s arm.
‘I’m hopeless at German!’ she announced insouciantly. ‘And my French is only schoolgirl, alas. Are you telling Marc what you’re looking for in a house here?’
As she spoke she was aware that the arm beneath her fingertips had steeled, and his whole body had tensed at her moving so closely into his body space. She pressed her hand on his sleeve warningly. Celine was never going to be fooled if she stayed a mile distant from him.
And he needn’t think she wanted to be in his body space! His utterly unnecessary warning from the afternoon echoed in her head, informing her that she was to remember she was only here to act a part. Not to believe it was real.
I wouldn’t want it to be real anyway, sunshine, she said tartly but silently to him.
In her head—treacherously—a single word hovered. Liar.
You might not like him, the voice went on, but for some damn reason he has the ability to turn your knees to jelly, so you just be careful, my girl!
She pushed it out. It had no place in her thoughts. None at all. She was not looking for Marc Derenz to pay her what he so clearly imagined would be the immense compliment of desiring her for real. So there was no need at all for him to have warned her off.
And all this—all she was going to have to act out for the duration—was just that. An act. Nothing more.
An act it might be, but it was hard going for all that.
All through dinner she made a relentless effort to be Marc Derenz’s charming hostess—attentive to his guest, endlessly gushing and smiling about the delights of searching for zillion-dollar homes on the French Riviera to this woman who clearly wished her at the bottom of the ocean.
Tara was doggedly undeterred by Celine’s barely civil treatment. Far more exasperating to her was Marc Derenz’s stony attitude.
OK, so maybe he was still blazingly furious that Celine had turned up on her own, but that didn’t mean he could get away with monosyllabic responses and a total lack of interest in the conversation Tara was so determinedly keeping going.
As they finally returned to the salon for coffee and liqueurs, she hissed at him, ‘I can’t do this all on my own! For heaven’s sake, play your part as well!’
She slipped her hand into his arm and sat herself down with him on an elegant sofa, deliberately placing a hand on his muscled thigh. She felt him flinch, as if she’d burnt him, and a spurt of renewed irritation went through her. If she could do this, damn it, so could he!
She turned to him, liqueur glass in her hand. ‘Marc, darling, you’re being such a grouch! Do lighten up!’ she cooed cajolingly.
Her reward was a dark, forbidding flash of his eyes, and an obvious increase in the reading on his displeasure meter as his expression hardened. Her mood changed abruptly. Actually, she realised, there was something very satisfying in winding up Marc Derenz! He was so easy to annoy.
A little frisson went through her. She might be playing with fire, but it was enticing all the same...
She turned back to Celine, who was fussing over her coffee. ‘Marc’s just sulking because he doesn’t want to go house-hunting,’ she said lightly. ‘Men hate that sort of thing—let’s leave him behind and do it ourselves!’
But Celine was having none of this. ‘You know nothing about the area,’ she said dismissively. ‘I need Marc’s expertise. Of course ideally,’ she went on, ‘we’d love to buy here, on Cap Pierre—it’s so exclusive.’
‘So much so that there is nothing changing hands,’ was Marc’s dampening reply.
Dieu, the last thing he wanted was Celine Neuberger anywhere on the Cap. And the next last thing he wanted, he thought, his mood darkening even more, was Tara’s hand on his thigh.
It was taking all his resolve to ignore it. To ignore her, as he had been trying to do ever since his eyes had gone to her, descending the staircase with show-stopping impact, and he’d caught his breath at her beauty, completely unable to drag his eyes away from her.
All his adjurations to himself that Tara Mackenzie was out of bounds to him had vanished in an instant, and he’d spent the rest of the evening striving to remember them. But with every invasion by her of his personal space it had proved impossible to do so. As for her hissing at him like that just now—did she not realise how hard it was for him to have to remember this was only a part he was playing? And then, dear God, she had placed a hand on his thigh...
How the hell am I going to get through this week? Was I insane to bring her here?
But it didn’t matter whether he had been insane or not—he was stuck with this now. And, tormenting or not, she was right. He had to behave as if he were, indeed, in the throes of a torrid affair with her—or else what was the point of her being here at all?
So, now, trying to make the gesture casual, he placed his free hand over hers. Was it her turn to tense suddenly? Well, tough.
To take his mind off the feel of her slender fingers beneath the square palm of his hand, he said, making his voice a tad more amenable, ‘I’m sure you and Hans will find what you’re looking for, though, Celine. How about higher on the coastline, with a view?’
Pleased at being addressed directly, even if did cast a sour look at him all but holding hands with Tara, Celine smiled engagingly.
‘A view would be essential!’ she stipulated, and then she was away, waxing lyrical about various houses she had details for, animatedly wanting to discuss them.
Marc let her run on, saying what was necessary when he had to, aware that the focus of his consciousness was actually the fact that his fingers had—of their own accord, it seemed—wound their way into Tara’s... His thumb was idly stroking the back of her hand, which felt very pleasant to him, and her palm seemed be hot on his leg, which felt more than merely pleasant...
He could feel himself starting to wish Celine to perdition—and not for the reason that he had no interest whatsoever in a spot of adultery with his friend’s wife...
Because he wanted Tara to himself...
He could feel his pulse quicken, arousal beckon...
Maybe the cocktail he’d imbibed, the wine he’d drunk over dinner, the brandy now swirling slowly in his glass, had loosened his inhibitions, faded the reminder he’d been imposing on himself all evening that he had not brought Tara here for any purpose other than to shield him from Hans’s wife.
But what if I had?
The thought played in his mind, tantalising...tempting.
Then, with a douche of cold water, he hauled his thoughts away. He lifted his hand away too, restoring Tara’s hand to her own lap with a casual-seeming move. He got to his feet. He needed to get out of here.
‘Celine, forgive me. I have a call booked to a client in the Far East.’ He hadn’t, but he had to call time on this.
Celine looked put out, but he couldn’t care less. Tara was looking up at him questioningly. Then she took the cue he was signalling. He saw her give a little yawn.
‘We’d probably both better call it day,’ she announced to Celine. ‘I’m sure you’re tired after your journey.’
She was making it impossible for Celine to linger, and Marc ushered them both from the room, bidding his unwanted guest goodnight.
Then he turned to the woman who was not his guest, but his temporary employee, however hard she was making it to remember that.
‘I’ll be about half an hour, mon ange,’ he murmured, knowing he had to give just the right impression to Celine. Knowing, with a part of his mind to which he was not going to pay any attention, that, however much of a siren call it was, he did not want it to be a mere ‘impression’ at all...
He silenced his mind ruthlessly, by force of will, turning on his heel and heading for his office, where he was not about to make phone call to the Far East, but another, far more urgently needed communication.
The whole evening had been nothing but a gruelling ordeal—and not just for the reasons he’d thought it would be. Not just because of Celine.
Because of Tara.
And what she was tempting him to.
Which he must resist or risk breaking the most essential rule he lived by.
As Tara gained her bedroom relief filled her. Dear Lord, but that had backfired on her—big-time! Hissing like that at Marc to be more convincing in his role-play! Had she been nuts to demand that? To take the initiative he would not?
Memory was hot in her head, as if it were still happening—sitting up close and personal beside him, so that the heat from his body was palpable through the fine jersey of her dress. And then, after so stupidly getting a kick out of winding him up with her taunt about being a grouch, putting her hand on his thigh.
Hard muscle and sinew...and a strength beneath the material of his trousers that had made her want to snatch her hand away as if she’d touched white-hot metal. But she hadn’t been able to, because his own hand had closed over hers, imprisoning it between the hard heat of his thigh and the soft heat of his palm.
And then she’d felt her throat catch as that casual meshing of his fingers with hers, that slow, sensual stroking of his thumb, had lit up a thousand trembling nerve-ends in her...
No! Don’t think about it! Focus, instead, on getting to bed.
Tomorrow was going to be another long day. Just putting up with Celine was ordeal enough—let alone Marc as well.
Putting him out of her mind as best she could, she got on with getting into her night attire, carefully hanging up the beautiful dress she’d been wearing, then removing her make-up and brushing out her hair. The familiar rituals were soothing to her jagged nerves—as much as they could be soothed.
Aware that she was still on edge, and knowing why and deploring it, but unable to calm herself any more, she headed for the palatial en suite bathroom to brush her teeth. As she did so she glanced askance at the door inset beside it. It was no surprise that she’d been put into a bedroom with what must be a communicating door to wherever it was that Marc Derenz slept, because otherwise it would look too obvious that she wasn’t really there in the role she claimed. But all the same it was unnerving to think that only a flimsy door separated her from him.
Without thinking too much about what she was doing, let alone why, she went to test it. Locked—and from the other side. A caustic smile pulled at her mouth. Oh, it was definitely time to remind herself that whatever Marc Derenz did in public in order to put out the impression that they were having an affair, in private he was obviously keeping to the arrogant warning he’d given her—not to take his attentions for real...
Well, that was a two-way message, and it was time to remind him of it! She reached for the bolt on her own side, meaning to shoot it closed. And jumped back.
The door had been pulled open from the other side, and Marc Derenz was stepping through into her bedroom.
Her eyes flashed in alarm. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
She saw his brows snap together in his customary displeased fashion, as if she had no business challenging his walking in unannounced to her bedroom. Quite illogically, she welcomed it.
It’s better to dislike him than to—
Her disturbing thought was cut short.
‘I need to speak to you,’ he announced peremptorily.
He was still in his dinner trousers, but he’d taken off his jacket and his tie was loosened. It gave him a raffish look. As did the line of shadow clearly discernible along his jawline.
Tara felt her stomach hollow. It just did not matter how disagreeable he was. Marc Derenz really should not be so bone-meltingly attractive...
And he shouldn’t be in your bedroom either.
The realisation hit her and she took a step back, suddenly aware that she was in her pyjamas. Oh, they might be modesty itself, with their wide silk trousers and high-collared cheong-sang top, but they were still nightwear.
‘Well?’ she prompted, lifting her chin. She didn’t like the way his dark eyes had swept over her, then veiled instantly. Didn’t like the way she was burningly aware that they had... Didn’t like, most of all, the way her nerves had started to jangle all over again...
‘I’ve been emailing Bernhardt—Hans’s son.’ Marc’s voice was brusque, as if he wanted to get this over and done with. ‘I’ve told him in no uncertain terms that he must make sure Hans joins us. I won’t have Celine here on her own. Even with you here to—’
‘To protect you,’ completed Tara helpfully.
Another of his dark looks was his reply, before he continued as if she had not interrupted him. ‘Thankfully Bernhardt agrees with me. He’s going to tell his father he’ll stand in for him at a board meeting so Hans can arrive tomorrow evening. It’s all arranged.’
She could hear relief in his voice, and saw a snap of satisfaction in his eyes.
‘So we just have to get through tomorrow, do we? Trailing along while Celine looks at houses?’ Tara said.
She was trying to silence the jangling of her nerves at his unexpected presence—in her bedroom, with her only in her night attire. She fought to make her voice normal, as composed as she could make it.
‘Or are you going to find a way of getting out of it? I don’t mind coping with her on my own if you want to bottle it,’ she added helpfully.
His expression darkened again. ‘No, I’ll have to come along as well. If I don’t she’ll end up landing Hans with some overpriced monstrosity!’ He gave an exasperated sigh.
Tara couldn’t help but give a laugh, though it earned her yet another darkling look. ‘I’ll take a bet she’ll go for the most garish, opulent pile she can find,’ she said, preferring to have a dig at Celine than let herself be distracted by Marc Derenz’s overpowering, and utterly unfairly impactful presence in her bedroom. ‘Gold bathrooms and crystal chandeliers in the kitchen.’
‘Very likely,’ he replied grimly. ‘Oh, hell, why on earth did he marry the damn woman?’ he muttered to himself.
‘Well, she’s certainly a looker,’ Tara conceded, still trying to make normal conversation. ‘Over-done-up, to my mind, but presumably it appeals to your friend.’
He shook his head. ‘Not Hans,’ he said. ‘The last thing he wants is any kind of trophy wife.’
Tara couldn’t keep the caustic note from her voice. ‘Are you sure? Most men like to show off the fact that they can acquire a woman that other men will envy them for.’
Marc’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is that your experience?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s pretty common in the world I come from—models are, after all, the ultimate trophy females to make a man look successful.’
Was there bitterness in her voice? She hoped not, but being with Jules had made her wary. What would a man like Marc know, or care, about men like Jules, who needed to feel big by draping a model on their arm? He certainly wouldn’t need to.
A man as rich and as drop-dead gorgeous as he is doesn’t need to prove a thing to anyone!
The thought was in her head before she realised it was there.
Then it was wiped right from her mind. Marc Derenz had taken a step towards her.
‘Can you blame them?’
There was something different in his voice, in his stance, in the way he was looking at her.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, every nerve in her body was jangling again—louder than ever. What the hell was she doing, talking to him like this? Standing here in her bedroom, wearing only her silk pyjamas, while Marc Derenz stood there far too close to her, looking so unutterably damn sexy with his loosened tie, his jacketless shirt, the hint of a shadowed jawline...
She caught the scent of his aftershave—something expensive, custom-designed, a signature creation made for him alone...
And his eyes—those deep, dark eyes—like slate, but suddenly not hard like slate, but as if a vein of gold had suddenly been exposed in their unyielding surface...
She couldn’t drag her own eyes from them...
Couldn’t drag breath into her lungs...
Could not focus on a single other thing in the universe than those dark, gold-lit eyes resting on her...
The room seemed to be shrinking—or was it the space between them?
He started towards her again, lifted a hand. She caught the glint of gold at his cuffs, echoing that same glint in those dark eyes of his that were now holding hers...holding her immobile, breathless, so she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move...
She could only hear the blood surging in her veins, feel electricity crackle over her skin, as if all he had to do was touch her—make contact...
‘Can you blame them?’ he said again.
And now there was a husk in his voice, a timbre to it that did things to her insides even as his outstretched hand reached towards her, a single finger drawing down her cheek, lingering at her mouth.
His eyes were playing over her face and she felt a kind of drowning weakness slacken her limbs. Making it quite impossible for her to move a muscle, to do anything other than simply stand there...stand there and feel the slow drift of his fingertip move across the soft swell of her lips. Only his touch on her mouth existed...only the soft, sensuous caress...
‘Pourquoi es-tu si, si belle?’ His murmur was a low husk as he lifted his other hand to slide it slowly, sensuously, around the nape of her neck, through the tumbled masses of her loosened hair. ‘Why is it that I cannot resist your beauty?’
She felt her eyelids flutter, felt her pulse beating in her throat, felt her lips parting even as his fingers splayed across her cheek, cupped her jaw to tilt her face to his lowering mouth which she could not, for all the world, resist...
Her eyelids dropped across her eyes, veiling him from sight. She was reduced only to the kiss he was easing across the mouth she lifted to his... Reduced only to the feathered silk of his touch, the hand at her nape cradling her skull, the fingers woven into her hair.
It was like that lingering wrist-kiss all over again, but a thousand times more so. A million sensations swirled within her at the sheer velvet sensuality of his kiss...his mouth moving on hers, tasting her, exploring her. She was helpless—helpless to resist. The heady scent of his aftershave, his body, was in her senses, in the closeness of him as he shaped her mouth to his.
She felt herself leaning into him, letting her own hands glide around the strong column of his back, feeling the play of muscle and sinew, with only the sheer cotton of his shirt to separate her palms from the warmth of his flesh.
She could not stop—would not. Blood was surging in her...her pulse was soaring. She was drowning in his kiss, unable to stop herself, unable to draw away, to find the sanity she needed to find...
And then, abruptly, he was pulling away from her. Stepping away so sharply that her hands fell from him, limp at her sides, just as her whole body felt limp.
Dazedly, Tara gazed blankly at him. She had no strength—none. All her limbs were slack and stricken. Inside her chest her heart was pounding, beating her down.
She heard him speak, but now there was no husk in his voice, no low, sensual timbre. Only a starkness that cut like a knife.
‘That should not have happened.’
She felt it like a slap—but it was a sudden awakening from her deathly faint and her eyes flared back into vision, her mind into full consciousness of what she had permitted...given herself up to...
She saw him standing there, stepped back from him. There was a darkness in his face, in his eyes, and his features were pulled taut—as forbidding and shuttered as she had ever seen them.
Then, with the same sharp movement with which he’d pulled away from her, he was turning away, body rigid, his expression still tight as steel wire, walking with heavy, rapid strides to the door. Walking through. Snapping it shut behind him. Without another word.
Leaving her alone, heart pounding, lungs airless, his words echoing in her head—resonating as if it had been she who’d uttered them.
Dismay hollowed her.
Marc plunged down the staircase. Dieu, had he been insane to let that happen? Hadn’t he warned himself repeatedly that he must keep his response to her hammered down, where it could not escape?
Anger with himself consumed him. Anger he welcomed—for it blotted out more than any other emotion could, blotted out the memory of that irresistible kiss.
Well, you should have resisted it! You should—and must—resist her! She is not here for such a purpose! It would be madness to indulge yourself. Indulge her...
Every reason for his warnings to himself about the dangerous folly of letting the desire that had seized him from the first moment her show-stopping beauty had hit upon his senses marched through his head at his command.
He kept them marching. He must allow nothing else to occupy his mind. Nothing except work. That would keep him on the straight and narrow.
Gaining the hallway, he yanked open the door to his office. The Far Eastern markets would soon be starting up. They would absorb him until he was sufficiently tired to risk heading for bed. Tout seul.
His mouth tightened. Most definitely alone.
And it must stay that way. Anything else was a folly he would not commit.
Would not.