ONCE down in the underground car park a firm hand in the small of her back steered Kalera towards the red McLaren F1 that was Duncan’s most spectacular extravagance.
‘But what about my car?’ she fretted belatedly, glancing over her shoulder at the sedate family saloon which Harry had always kept in immaculate condition.
‘It’ll be safe enough here overnight. If you think I’m going to let you drive in the state you’re in, you’ve got another think coming,’ Duncan said, handing her into the passenger seat of his car and brushing aside her fumbling fingers to buckle her into the safety harness and tuck her skirt under her slender thigh, the gentleness of his touch a direct contrast to the sternness of his words.
Kalera’s reserves of energy were too low to generate even a token objection to his high-handedness. She shut her mind to the difficulties of getting to work the next day and sank into the plush leather, closing her eyes and allowing the deep, throaty purr of the powerful engine to act like a sedative on her tired brain.
To her relief Duncan made no effort to engage her in conversation and, instead of surging onto the streets with his usual impatience, drove with an exaggerated care that she realised with detached amusement was a positive insult to the rampant machine under his control.
Insulated by her weary lassitude, Kalera wasn’t prepared for the icy attack of panic that hit her when she opened her eyes and saw the signpost for her street.
‘No! Wait—don’t turn here—’ She flung out a hand, clutching at the flowing sleeve of Duncan’s loose-fitting white shirt, urgently tugging his arm away from the wheel, causing the car to shy like a nervous thoroughbred.
Duncan cursed violently under his breath as he braked, skilfully controlling their sudden swerve. ‘Why? This is where you live…’
Only because Harry’s life insurance had paid off the hefty mortgage, otherwise Kalera wouldn’t have been able to continue to afford the payments on her single income. She could see the green roof of the house which they had saved so hard to buy…a family home in a suburban neighbourhood bustling with children, within walking distance of the local shops and primary school. A house purchased on hope and dreams…
Kalera’s breath caught in her throat, her restraining grip tightening, her skin creeping with an inexplicable dread. ‘I don’t want to go home yet!’ she declared flatly.
Duncan pulled into the kerb and looked down at her tense white face.
‘I wasn’t just going to dump you on the doorstep and run, Kalera,’ he said, disentangling his crumpled shirt from her stiff fingers. ‘You won’t have to be by yourself—I’ll come inside with you—’
‘No!’ She shuddered, unable to articulate her nameless fear. He thought the house was empty, but it wasn’t. Memories crouched in the very walls, waiting to leap out at her the moment she let her guard down. ‘No! I don’t want to go in there. Please—can’t we go somewhere else?’
‘Where would you like me to take you?’
‘I don’t know—it doesn’t matter…anywhere!’ she said, her voice rising shrilly. ‘I don’t care—please—can’t you just drive?’
That was how she had ended up at Duncan’s home and, ultimately, in his bed.
Some of the details were a blur. For instance she didn’t remember the drive to his house in Ponsonby, and only vaguely recalled the cup of sweet tea and sugary snack that he had forced her to eat in his aggressively modern kitchen when he had discovered that she had skipped lunch. She did remember the blooming headache that had made her grateful to accept his offer of a lie-down in a cool, mint-green room with a soft-sprung bed and dark teak shutters with which she could shut out the strident afternoon sun. Sleep was the perfect escape, both from her own pain and the subtle pressure of Duncan’s curiosity.
When she woke up it was pitch-dark, and she was sweating and trembling violently from a familiar nightmare, her throat dry and raw, her legs cramping as if she had been running too fast for too long. Except for her shoes she was still fully dressed and her twisted clothes stuck clammily to her skin as she fought free of the light blanket that had been placed over her as she slept.
She groped her way off the bed, her heart hammering as she tried to orientate herself in the smothering darkness. She knocked against something with sharp edges and cried out as she fell and suddenly Duncan was there, picking her up and setting her back on her unsteady feet.
‘Kalera? Are you all right? I heard you shouting something.’
‘I…woke up,’ she said stupidly, her heart easing its frantic beat as she recognised the harsh, rasping tone. She stepped away from his touch. ‘I—for a moment I didn’t know where I was. Wh-what time is it?’
‘Late.’ There was a whisper of sound and a wall-light clicked on, and she found herself blinking at a dishevelled-looking Duncan, his jaw roughened with dark whiskers, his hair lightly matted on one side of his head, a faint pink crease-mark impressed on his hard cheek. A short black towelling robe was insecurely belted at his waist, the sagging lapels revealing a silky swatch of dark hair curling across his deep chest.
‘Too late for you to bother going home.’ His voice was blurred around the edges with sleep but his eyes were sharp and alert as he watched her fold her arms around her waist in an unconscious gesture of self-protection, her gaze jerking away from his bared chest. ‘When you didn’t wake up for dinner I thought you’d probably sleep through until the morning.’
Her arms tightened about her waist as she looked enviously at the bed, wishing that oblivion were as easy as he made it sound. She rarely had an unbroken night’s sleep these days.
‘You may as well go back to bed for what’s left of the night,’ he added softly, persuasively. ‘My room is just across the hall if you need me—near enough to hear you call out. You know nothing can happen to you here.’
Her tautly strung nerves quivered. Didn’t he realise that it was when you felt most safe that you were most vulnerable? Innocent places and activities could harbour a danger all the more horrific for being so unexpected.
When Kalera didn’t answer immediately, his voice roughened. ‘Do you want me to get dressed and get the car out?’
He would do it, too, if she said yes. He made her feel both guilty and foolish with the gruff offer. She couldn’t be so churlish as to accept.
‘No.’ It came out as a husky whisper and she tried again. ‘No, you don’t have to do that…but I—’ Her hands plucked distastefully at her crumpled grey suit and high-necked maroon blouse, more suited to an air-conditioned office than a warm spring night. ‘I feel so hot and sticky—I’m not used to sleeping in my clothes…I suppose that’s what woke me up.’
He didn’t point out that people didn’t usually wake up screaming from the heat.
‘There’s a bathroom next door; a warm shower might make it easier for you to get back to sleep. I always have one before I go to bed.’ And before she could begin to feel uneasy at the thought of taking her clothes off in his domain Duncan yawned hugely, stretching his arms so that his robe sagged even more, sliding off one sleek, muscled shoulder. ‘I put a clean towel and some things in there for you earlier. Meantime you won’t mind if I turn in…I’m definitely not very scintillating company this early in the morning. G’night, Kalera.’
He turned and shuffled out of the room in a manner that suggested his brain had already checked the close-box on the window of his consciousness.
The ‘things’ he had left in the bathroom were neatly arranged on the top of a folded bath sheet, hand-towel and face-cloth—shampoo and a fragrant feminine soap pristine in its wrapper, a toothbrush still in its packet and a black silk pyjama top with a monogrammed ‘R’ on the pocket.
Kalera used the toothbrush and then, ignoring the shampoo, wrapped her hair in the hand-towel while she stood under the warm, pulsing water. The clear red soap slicked over her smooth skin, the bubbles bursting in a strawberry-scented flurry that made her sharply aware of how long it was since she had bought anything but utilitarian supermarket toiletries. Since Harry died she had avoided anything that served to emphasise her femininity. To want to feel attractive or sexy seemed a betrayal of their love.
She lifted her face to the spray, helpless to prevent the insidiously arousing memories that were suddenly swirling around her, like the rising steam in the small glass cubicle. Harry had loved to join her in the shower. Her dear staid, stodgy husband had been a secret sensualist and anything but stodgy in his lovemaking. It was through his unashamed delight in the physical side of their relationship that Kalera had learned to revel in her own deeply sensual nature.
From the time she was old enough to realise what her parents’ ‘open marriage’ really meant she had nurtured a strong distaste for casual promiscuity. Unlike the rest of her schoolfriends’ parents, Kris and Silver Donovan had expected their daughter openly to indulge her adolescent sexual curiosity and had been bewildered when she’d shown no interest in exercising her freedom. But Kalera had yearned for a conventional morality where sex was cherished as something special—personal and private between two people, not just another physical appetite to be satisfied with whomever happened to be convenient and willing. She’d been wary of the strong passions that seethed through her maturing body, repressing her sexual urges out of fear that she was destined to roam in her intemperate mother’s footsteps.
It was Harry who had freed her from her inhibitions. He had shown her that enjoying sex with the man she loved didn’t mean she had a predisposition for promiscuity, that it was possible to be wild and out of control in bed and still be utterly faithful out of it. After Harry she had never looked at another man, never been tempted, not even in her fantasies.
As her hands moved over her soapy skin Kalera ached for her husband’s slow touch, for the obliterating pleasure that could block out everything but the moment. She missed the physical side of their relationship with a fierceness that shocked and dismayed her—it seemed so selfish to be dwelling on what she had lost, when it was Harry who had lost everything…
Her eyes closed as her palms glided up over her slim hips and supple waist and cupped her firm, high breasts, shaping them with yearning fingers. She imagined that she had Harry back, that he was right there behind her, that they were his hands slipping and sliding erotically over the slick, wet hills and valleys of her flesh…
She groaned, the involuntary sound jolting her out of her forbidden fantasy into a horrified awareness of what she was doing. Her hands shook as she hurriedly turned off the shower and grabbed the fluffy bath sheet, quickly towelling the moisture off her tingling skin.
Her whole body felt tight and hot and achy, and a treacherous weakness trembled in her limbs. Avoiding her image in the steamy mirror, she unwrapped the towel from her head and shook out the loose pins from her sagging hairstyle, raking her fingers through the tangles. She shrugged into the pyjama jacket, shivering as the cool silk settled against her sensitised skin, and rolled up the too long sleeves, but when it came to the elegantly small buttons the fine tremor in her fingers made her so clumsy that she gave up, wrapping the slithery fabric across her front and folding her arms under her breasts to keep it in place. The jacket, designed to be roomy on a tall, muscular male, swamped her in loose folds to below her knees—like a black shroud, she thought with sudden revulsion.
From outside in the quiet street came several short, sharp reports as a cranky car sputtered past with a backfiring engine. The small explosions echoed like gunshots in Kalera’s overwrought mind and her mouth flooded with the metallic taste of terror as she was catapaulted back into her worst nightmare.
Half crouching in an instinctive effort to make herself as small and insignificant a target as possible, she darted blindly for sanctuary. The door to Duncan’s bedroom was ajar but the interior was dark and silent and she faltered, her ears straining for the reassuring sound of his presence, but she was unable to distinguish anything over the violent pounding of her pulse.
He had promised he would be there if she needed him. He had to be there! Her panic-stricken sense of disorientation was fading, but fear clogged like pack-ice in her veins as logic battled with her unreasoning dread of abandonment. If Duncan was only asleep, surely she should be able to hear the sound of his breathing? Oh, God! Even young, apparently healthy people sometimes died of heart attacks, or suddenly, in their sleep, for no reason…
She pushed the door wide, the muted light from the hall projecting her blurry shadow across the pale carpet as she crept into the room. She could see a motionless lump in the centre of the wide bed and a thready whimper escaped her lips, her heart stopped momentarily, only to resume its frantic beat as Duncan abruptly reared up on one elbow, his reactive speed indicating that he had been lying there awake in the dark.
‘Kalera? What’s wrong?’
Unutterable relief throttled her speech. Nothing was wrong. Not now. In the dim light she could see that Duncan was bare-chested, his broad shoulders gleaming like polished wood, the muscles of his supporting arm bulging in a manner that proclaimed him strong and vigorous and pumping with life. She had never looked at Duncan as a man before and now suddenly there he was—blatantly, inescapably, irrefutably male, a potent symbol of the passion that had been wiped out of her life by a bitter stroke of fate.
‘Can’t you go back to sleep?’ He pushed himself further upright and the sheet slid down his ridged abdomen to pool across his lap.
Kalera moistened her lips and shook her head, her hair streaming down her back, her anchoring clutch on the pyjama top falling away as she stepped towards the bed, driven by a compulsion she couldn’t deny. The unbuttoned jacket gaped, displaying a wide strip of pale flesh from the pulsing hollow in her throat to the soft shadow of fluff at the base of her belly.
Duncan’s shoulders went rigid with disbelief, his eyes glinting in the darkness as he wrenched them back up to her face.
‘My God, Kalera—what are you doing?’ His deep voice was hoarse with shock as she shrugged her shoulders and the black garment whispered to the floor in a slither of silk.
Silhouetted against the light from the hall, she looked as slim as a boy, but as she scrambled onto the high bed the tilt and flex of her body revealed the tantalising sway of sweetly rounded breasts tipped with dark, pointed nipples and the feminine curve of her bottom.
‘I’m cold,’ she said truthfully, burrowing under the covers until her body collided with his, the burning heat of her skin making nonsense of her words as she slid her arms around his rigid torso, tugging until he collapsed back onto the white pillows. ‘Hold me…please…I need someone to hold me, to make me warm again…’
She tangled her legs in his and nuzzled her face into his hairy chest, inhaling the aroma of clean, healthy male. She had wondered if he was wearing anything under the bedclothes and now her curiosity was searingly satisfied. His big, nude body was a patchwork of deliciously contrasting textures and tiny thrills of anticipated ecstasy shivered across her skin as she measured herself boldly against his rigid length. Her parted lips brushed one of his flat nipples and he groaned, his hands gripping her upper arms as he tried to hold her squirming body discreetly at bay.
‘For God’s sake, Kalera—’
She arched her back, rolling her pelvis against the broad saddle of his hips, and revelled in the hot thrust of desire he was unable to hide, a glorious reaffirmation of his life-giving potency. An answering response rippled through her empty womb, flooding her with bitter-sweet yearning.
‘Oh, yes…that feels so good, so hot…’ she murmured eagerly, pushing her smooth thigh between his legs, twisting her upper body so that her stiff nipples scraped against his chest and her hip angled across the thickening shaft of flesh stirring against his belly. He uttered another tormented groan.
‘No, we can’t do this—’
But even as he spoke his hands were shifting to cage her ribs, his thumbs angling into the crease under her soft breasts, pushing them up into pouting prominence, his thighs clenching around hers, a sheen of perspiration slicking across his skin.
‘Yes, we can,’ she said huskily, sinking her teeth into his heaving chest and sucking at the tiny wound, the epitome of the sultry temptress.
He growled deep in his throat and slammed her over onto her back. ‘Dammit, Kalera, can’t you see I’m trying to be noble here?’ he said thickly.
He had kicked the bedclothes astray in the flurry of motion and in the strip of light that fell across the bed Kalera could see something far more fascinating than his nobility. The lower half of his body was as hard-packed with muscle as his upper half and the heavy arousal springing from the thick cloud of jet-black hair in his groin was equally splendid. She wanted to absorb the very essence of that strength and splendour into her body, to make it part of herself. The very last thing she required from him tonight was gentlemanly consideration and restraint. He couldn’t reject her, he mustn’t…!
‘Please…’ She reached down between them to capture him in an intimate caress. ‘I need you to make love to me…’
His whole body jerked, the breath hissing between his clenched teeth as he felt her slim fingers wrap themselves around his swollen shaft. ‘It’s not me you really want,’ he gritted in a last-ditch effort to shock her back to sanity. ‘It’s Harry—’
‘But I can’t have Harry,’ she pointed out, her grey eyes stormy with thwarted passion as she met his tortured gaze. ‘So why shouldn’t I have this…?’
Her eyes fell as her thumb stroked across the moist tip of satin-sheathed steel that was the proof of his desire. She watched him pulse helplessly within her snug fist. ‘So full of life,’ she husked enviously, teasing him with another slow caress. ‘I want to taste it, touch it, feel it hot and strong inside me, filling me up until I can’t think, only feel…’
‘Dear God!’ Duncan shuddered, his noble intentions crumbling under the erotic assault. He plunged his hands into her shimmering hair as she would have bent her head to follow her words with her mouth, locking his fingers around the back of her skull and tilting the pale oval of her face up for his savage appraisal. He looked deep into her eyes, seeing past the hectic glaze of desire to the heart of her desperation. ‘All right, damn you! If sex is your drug of choice, then I’ll be your fix. But we do this my way, Kalera—’
‘Call me darling,’ she interrupted feverishly, too exulted by her victory to care about the terms of his surrender. ‘We don’t need names or labels. For tonight, let’s just be a man and a woman…’ Names would make everything too real, would disrupt her lovely fantasy…
An angry spark smouldered in Duncan’s shadow-masked eyes, warning Kalera that he guessed what she was trying to do, but instead of arguing the insult to his ego his mouth kicked into a dangerous curve, his aggressive self-confidence rising flamboyantly to the challenge.
‘Darling…’ he purred obediently, the predatory nature of his smile anything but submissive. He slowly began moving his hips, pushing himself against her soft palm, maintaining the delicious friction as he rolled onto his side and stroked his hands slowly down her throat and over her body from breasts to belly and back to her breasts again, fondling the taut peaks until she begged mindlessly for his mouth.
He complied instantly with her greedy demand, bending his head to rub his face against the soft pillows of milky flesh, the slight sandiness of his smooth-shaven jaw an erotic contrast to the silken glide of his cheek and the warm, wet whip of his tongue as he traced around each velvety areola, drawing them into the cavern of his mouth, nibbling and sucking at her dusky nipples until they were glistening peaks of swollen ripeness, as tight and hard as the exquisite knot of tension that budded in the secret folds between her restless legs.
‘Yes, oh, yes…’ Her voice throbbed with relief as he stroked her there too, insinuating his hand between her silky thighs and dipping his fingers into the damp, creamy heat, parting the moist petals and finding the most sensitive spot on her body with a tantalising skill that made her almost burst with unbearable delight.
‘Do you like that, darling?’ he murmured against her dewy breast, moving his invading fingers deeper into her receptive body. ‘Tell me…tell me everything you want and I’ll give it to you…’
But Kalera could no longer form her thoughts into a coherent pattern of words. Sweet, hot chills shivered over her skin as she threshed against the sheets, her fingernails digging into Duncan’s back, raking across the straining muscles as she plunged into a world of pure sensation unadulterated by fear or shame—a place where there was no evil, no pain, no smothering survivor’s guilt, only a soaring lust for life celebrated in the most elemental human way. The raw sexuality of the sleek and powerful lover she had summoned out of the depths of her loneliness triggered a primitive mating response that swept away her inhibitions, his ruthless dedication to servicing her every sensual whim encouraging her to become more and more reckless in her demands.
But Duncan was in no hurry. He lingered over the bone-melting caresses, feeding her wild craving by offering tiny tastes of the promised fulfilment and inviting her to match him stroke for stroke. Every time that Kalera’s eyes drifted closed in order to concentrate on her turbulent desire he would pause until she opened them again, forcing her to watch what they were doing to each other, to share with him each and every moment of voluptuous pleasure as it registered in her expressive grey eyes. His own eyes glittered with fierce triumph as he controlled her passionate frenzy, channelling and refining it into an exquisite mutual torture. Again and again he drove her close to the pinnacle of release with his hands and mouth, imprinting his identity on her mind and body, bombarding her with sensations so intense that she barely registered his subtle resistance to her efforts to take him into her body.
But eventually, as the tension inside her built relentlessly towards yet another unattainable peak, Kalera’s frustration exploded into open rebellion. It wasn’t enough. Underlying the pleasure there was still the painful sense of anxiety, of emptiness that only he could fill.
‘More…I want more,’ she panted, writhing beneath the heavy crush of his body, clamping her legs around his lean hips and arching her spine as her hand snaked down to try to force his bluntly engorged flesh into the slick folds of her womanhood, her guiding hand clumsy with impatience.
‘Wait—’
He was huge and hard, blatantly ready for her, and she couldn’t understand why he was holding back. ‘No…love me now…Please—I need you to come inside me now!’
His big body surged and trembled, a guttural sound tearing from his chest. Sensing that he was at the limit of his self-control, Kalera whispered more needy, greedy sex words as she waited, swooning for the first, deep, delicious, driving thrust that would simultaneously heal and splinter her asunder. But again he eluded her, this time with a finality that was flatteringly—and shatteringly—simple.
‘Oh!’ The silky wetness that flowed over her fingers stunned Kalera into stillness as convulsive shudders ripped through Duncan’s body, his groan of completion muffled in the curve of her throat.
‘Oh!’ Tears of anger and bitter disappointment stung her eyes as she felt a deep laxity ripple up his spine, mocking the excruciating tension in her strung-out body. His skin was damp with perspiration, and the musky scent of his sexual satisfaction was an added insult to her simmering frustration. ‘You…you—’ Her voice broke on a half-sob as she struggled to control her chagrin.
‘Kalera…’ His ragged plea for understanding held a hint of rueful amusement that turned her bewilderment to stinging resentment. She felt angry, deprived…
‘Get off me!’ she choked, trying to wedge her elbows against his heaving chest so that she could lever him away and free her hand, trapped between their sticky lower bellies.
Duncan rolled easily onto one hip, leaving a hairy leg slanting heavily across her sprawled knees, pinning them apart. He nuzzled into the soft side of her breast, inhaling deeply, flicking his tongue into the damp furrow where the swelling underslope met her delicate ribcage and, impossibly, she felt his sated manhood stir against her flank as he whispered, ‘I’m sorry. You drove me so wild I forgot my manners, didn’t I, darling? It should always be ladies first. Will you let me redeem myself?’
He took her slippery hand and pressed it down between her thighs and did something with it that had her hurtling off the edge of the planet, annihilating all her preconceived ideas about sexual fulfilment.
Oh, God, over a year later it still made her hot all over to remember what he had manipulated her into doing…and the way that he had watched—as if she had been doing it for his pleasure rather than hers alone…
‘Kalera?’
Her eyes flew open, her body stiffening as she realised that she was in the middle of a public dance-floor. She blinked, dazed, at the man who had spoken her name, evidently—from the annoyance in his golden-brown eyes—not for the first time.
‘Stephen?’
He was standing behind Duncan’s shoulder, looking at her with a suspicious frown that made her wonder whether the scalding heat of her internal blush had turned her face scarlet, betraying her secret shame for all to see.
How long had she been wrapped up in her guilty memories? Far too long, judging from the fact that her fiancé had been impelled to come and fetch her. She suddenly became aware that rather than swirling around the dance-floor in socially acceptable fashion she and Duncan had been barely swaying in place, their bodies separated by a mere sliver of distance, his chin resting on the top of her head. Appalled by her abstraction, Kalera stepped hurriedly back, a skein of blonde silk unravelling between them as a few stray strands of her hair caught against the black velvet of his jacket, but instead of letting his arm drop from her waist Duncan moved with her, forcing Stephen to trail in their wake.
‘Looks like the lady doesn’t want you to cut in, Steve,’ taunted Duncan, directing a malicious grin over his shoulder. ‘Ouch!’ He came to a stumbling halt as Kalera ground down on the toe of his boot with her delicate high heel.
‘Sorry, did I hurt you?’ she said, her narrow oval face smooth with innocence.
‘Bruised me to the bone,’ he said, with a little-boy-lost plaintiveness that didn’t fool her for a moment.
‘You’d better rush home and put some ice on it, then,’ she suggested sweetly. ‘Or you might end up with a limp.’
‘Believe me, after dancing with you limpness is the least of my problems,’ he retaliated sotto voce, his downy black lashes flickering as he glanced down his body.
‘Kalera!’ Stephen’s clipped annoyance reminded her that once again she had allowed Duncan to distract her from the proper focus of her attention. ‘I didn’t come out here to dance. The chef is waiting to flambé your Triberg apples…you did say you wanted to see them cooked at the table.’
‘Of course I do,’ she said, turning sharply to break out of Duncan’s grasp, carefully avoiding his eyes as she lifted her chin and said primly, ‘Thank you for the dance.’
The jet earring on which she had fixed her gaze seemed to wink mockingly at her schoolgirl politeness. ‘Oh, it was my pleasure, Kalera,’ he said, allowing his fingers to trail down the length of her arm as she pulled it away. ‘My very…great…pleasure.’ The slow separation and languid emphasis of his words made them replete with innuendo. ‘I know you enjoyed our dancing together as much as I did. You’re a wonderfully…gratifying…dance partner. I envy the man who gets to…dance with you…on a regular basis.’
Kalera’s ears burned. They both knew he wasn’t talking about the two-step! ‘Then you must envy Stephen,’ she said deliberately, tucking her arm through her fiancé’s elbow, aligning them together.
‘Must I?’ His brows sprang up and the charismatic grin flashed at full wattage. Too late she remembered that he knew she and Stephen weren’t yet lovers. For an awful moment she thought he was going to reveal his knowledge with another sly innuendo.
‘Yes!’
He dipped his head, acknowledging her desperation, his eyes brimming with mischief. ‘Far be it from me to contradict a lady.’
‘Since when have you cared about social niceties?’ sniped Stephen. ‘As I recall you’ve always preferred your women to be strictly of the tramp variety.’
Duncan’s jaw tightened but he replied evenly, ‘I suppose that depends on your interpretation of a woman—and a tramp. Personally, I thought the narrow-minded categorising of unattached females as either virgins or sluts had ended with the sexual revolution.’
‘How very politically correct—but a rather specious argument considering your predilection for women who are attached,’ said Stephen, covering Kalera’s hand on his forearm with such possessive firmness that her shiny new ring dug into her fingers. ‘For a fanatic about loyalty you have a fine disrespect for other people’s vows of fidelity. Wife or fiancée—it makes no difference to you, does it? You simply take it as a challenge if a woman belongs to someone else.’
‘And you think Kalera belongs to you?’ Duncan’s incredulity was a sneer in itself.
Stephen flashed his beautiful teeth in a tauntingly confident smile. ‘I know she does!’
Kalera had a strong desire to bang their arrogant male heads together.
‘Actually, I believe I belong to myself,’ she stated tartly. Even when she was married to Harry she had kept a fair measure of her independence. ‘A relationship is about partnership, not ownership!’
The two men looked at her with surprise, as if her opinion were an irrelevant intrusion, confirming her suspicion that their confrontation had little to do with her overstay on the dance-floor. It wasn’t really about her at all; she was merely an excuse for them to score off each other. She scowled.
‘I was referring to our emotional sense of belonging,’ Stephen hastily assured her, dipping his golden head to bathe her in apologetic attention.
Kalera was mollified, but the lick of scorn in Duncan’s navy eyes at her ready acceptance of Stephen’s reassurance made her inwardly bristle. How dared he try to imbue her with doubts about her fiancé’s sincerity?
She hugged Stephen’s arm and smiled up at him with a brilliance that relaxed some of his underlying tension.
‘I’m glad you came to find me—dancing has made me quite peckish again. I hope this dessert is as mouthwatering as you promised it would be…’ Repressed annoyance made her normally husky voice even throatier than usual, imparting a sexy resonance to the innocent statement. She began to turn and then paused, to deliver as a casual afterthought, ‘Oh—goodnight, Duncan.’
He ran a hand through his inky-black hair, drawing it back from his temples to expose the prominent widow’s peak that gave him a faintly devilish air as he challenged her unsubtle brush-off. ‘Does this mean you’re not going to offer me a bite of your apple?’ He planted his hands on his hips, the flare of his short jacket exposing his perfect proportioning to her unwilling admiration. ‘You know I wouldn’t refuse—I can resist everything except temptation.’
His grin pronounced him every inch the unrepentant sinner.
‘Precisely why I don’t intend to place any in your way,’ she replied acerbically. If he was referring to the fruit of knowledge, she thought that he had already dined spectacularly well enough off that particular tree!
When Duncan opened his mouth to respond, Stephen cut him off with a sternly punctuated dismissal.
‘Goodnight, Royal!’
His nemesis threw up his hands in a mocking gesture of surrender but Duncan still managed to have the last, provocative word. ‘Don’t stay out too late, Kalera—remember you and I have a date for breakfast…’
‘We have an early morning meeting with some clients at their hotel,’ Kalera explained hastily, matching her shorter stride to Stephen’s as he practically marched them off the floor. She didn’t dare glance back for fear that Duncan might take it as an invitation, half expecting him to tag along anyway, for the sheer pleasure of stirring up more trouble. But for once he seemed capable of discreetly fading into the background.
The ghost of his unsettling presence, however, continued to hover in her consciousness, a spectre at the feast. At least with the chafing-dish already set up at the table any awkward questions from Stephen were postponed and Kalera glued her eyes with apparent fascination on the chef’s hands as he swirled slices of peeled apple in a meld of butter, sugar, lemon juice and honey over the burner on his trolley. Unfortunately the price of her outer serenity was a churning stomach which cringed when the Kirsch was added and set alight.
The flames dancing across the sizzling fruit were unpleasantly evocative for one preoccupied with thoughts of temptation and sin. Surely sins of omission were at the lesser end of the scale? She was hardly likely to be condemned to an eternal roasting for not wanting to talk about a brief sexual encounter in her past. It wasn’t as if she had ever actively lied about it…
‘Thank you, this looks delicious.’ She pinned on an enthusiastic smile to mask her sudden lack of appetite as the apples were spooned, still flaming, onto her plate and topped with a swirl of Kirsch-flavoured cream, adding richness to the heady, alcoholic aroma of caramelised apple.
Guiltily aware of Stephen’s expectant gaze, Kalera forced herself to eat with every evidence of enjoyment and after the first few mouthfuls his attention thankfully shifted to his own portion, allowing her to ease back and toy with her dessert fork, dividing the apple into ever-smaller pieces which she nudged under the leafy garnish at the edge of her plate.
She was furious with Duncan, and with herself for letting him get under her skin. She wanted no part of whatever game he was playing. His interference in her private life was unconscionable, unwelcome and unacceptable—and she intended to tell him so!
Her brooding glance flitted across the room as she mentally composed the cool reprimand she would deliver the next morning and her eyes widened at a glitter of gold-on-black. Duncan! Not only was he still in the restaurant, he was dining heartily at a distant table for two in the company of a tall, elegant brunette with bobbed hair and hands that darted expressively as she talked. Her fire-engine-red dress and blazing jewellery proclaimed a striking sense of style and her strongly etched profile indicated an aggressive self-confidence.
Just the sort of woman who would appeal to Duncan’s flamboyant tastes, Kalera judged wryly—and not the type to take kindly to her handsome escort flitting off to dance with someone else, even if it was only his secretary. From the look of it Duncan was having to do some fast talking between bites. It would serve him right if his trouble-stirring had rebounded on himself. Kalera’s gentle mouth tilted into a small, vengeful smile. She hoped the brunette was giving him a really hard time.
‘Someone we know?’ Stephen quizzed the direction of her gaze.
‘I guess Duncan being here was a coincidence after all—he’s evidently out on a dinner date himself,’ she murmured, nodding towards the engrossed pair.
Stephen’s fork clattered against his plate and Kalera saw him pale, then flush with renewed outrage.
‘Bastard!’ he muttered. Stephen—whose fastidious nature frowned on public cursing, who had retained his self-control even when Duncan had goaded him to his face!
‘Do you know who she is?’ she asked curiously.
‘Yes, I know who she is,’ Stephen echoed with a contemptuous snap, picking up his fork again and viciously skewering a piece of apple. ‘Duncan was almost engaged to her once, but she decided to marry someone else. It didn’t stop the two of them having a flaming affair, though, and by the look of it they’re still going hot and strong…all lies to the contrary!’
His acrid bitterness gave Kalera a sinking feeling as she remembered the cryptic exchange of insults about ladies and tramps. She pursued the answer that she no longer wanted to hear. ‘But who is she?’
Stephen’s eyes were faintly sullen as they met her wary gaze. ‘I think you’ve guessed already, haven’t you? That, my dear, is Terri, my cheating ex-wife…and Duncan is the man that she was sleeping with for most of our marriage!’