into an intriguing, fascinating, infinitely desirable woman, one with the power to sabotage both his will and his conscience. But then, he thought with hard self-mockery, recalling the times he’d touched her, she’d always had that power.
It had to be something to do with tilted blue eyes that smouldered with a secretive, lying allure, and skin like ivory silk, and a passionate, sultry mouth—and that was just her face! Her body almost tempted him to forget that this delicate, sensuous package hid a woman who’d sold herself to his mentor for security.
His rich mentor, he amended cynically. Four years later she’d tearlessly watched Glen’s coffin lowered into the ground, her tight, composed face a telling contrast to the grief she’d shown at her mother’s funeral.
She got to her feet to face him, her body stiff with anger. ‘I need the money for her, Nick, not for myself.’
This from a woman who’d never shown any sign of liking children! Yet, in spite of everything, he wanted to believe her. Like all good actresses she projected complete and total sincerity.
Her attempt to use the little girl in the photograph made him sick and angry.
‘Sit down, Cat,’ he said evenly, ‘and tell me how you got involved with this child.’
After a second’s hesitation, she obeyed, disposing her elegant limbs neatly in the chair before lifting her arrogant little nose and square chin to say in the voice that made him think of long, impassioned nights and hot, maddening sex, ‘I made myself responsible for her.’
Hunger ripped through him, ferociously mindless. Furious at his body’s abject response to that degrading, treacherous need, he turned and walked behind the desk. Hiding, he thought sardonically. ‘Why?’
‘She was born on the first of November last year.’
Nick frowned. ‘So?’
‘So it was exactly a year to the day after my mother died.’ The colour faded abruptly from her skin, sharpening her features. Yet she said steadily, ‘I was in Romit. Her mother died having her. I—I made myself responsible for her.’
Clever, he thought objectively, to choose Romit as the scene of this drama. Unable to do anything to stop the carnage, unable to get help to the victims, people had watched in worldwide anguish as the images of a savage civil war had flicked with sickening vividness across their television screens. Even now, with the rebels beaten and a peace-keeping force in residence, the people of Romit were the poorest of the poor. Residual guilt should certainly prise his hands from the pursestrings. ‘I see. Which agency is organising this operation?’
‘None.’
His mouth thinned. ‘Only a total idiot would fall for a story like that,’ he said callously. ‘What do you really want the money for, Cat?’
The light died out of her eyes, leaving them a flat, opaque blue as hard as her voice. ‘I knew you’d accuse me of lying, so I’ve brought my passport and a letter from the nun who runs the clinic where Juana’s being cared for. Sister Bernadette’s explained where the money will go and why it’s necessary now.’
Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this.
He frowned as she opened her bag and held out a battered envelope and her blue New Zealand passport. Her long fingers flicked open the pages. ‘Here are the dates I went into Romit,’ she said coldly, ‘and came out.’
How would those fingers feel on his skin? Would they cling and stroke? A volatile, potent cocktail of guilt and desire charged his body.
Repressing it, he focused on the stamped pages. God, he thought, fighting back a chill of fear. ‘What the hell were you doing in Romit in the middle of a civil war?’
‘I was working in a hospital—well, it was more a clinic, really.’
The customs stamps danced before his eyes as he recalled the hideous stories that had come out of the uprising. ‘Why?’
She stared at him as though he’d gone mad. ‘I told you— I was working.’
‘You? In a Third World country, in a hospital?’ He laughed derisively. ‘Pull the other leg, Cat.’
With a sudden twist of her body that took him by surprise, she got to her feet.
Automatically he followed suit. Before he could speak she said in a tight voice, ‘Read the letter, Nick.’
‘I don’t doubt for a moment that it purports to be from a nun in a clinic somewhere on that godforsaken island,’ he said curtly. ‘Easy enough to fake, Cat. You must have forgotten who you’re dealing with. What were you doing on Romit?’
She shrugged. ‘After my mother and Glen died a friend suggested I go and stay with her on the island—her father was attached to one of the UN agencies.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘The clinic was next door to their compound and running on nothing. When the fighting started at the other end of the island refugees poured in and they were desperately overworked at the clinic, so Penny and I helped. Then her father was pulled out; he insisted she go with him, but I stayed.’
‘Why?’ he asked harshly.
She stood with her head averted, hands held clenched and motionless by a fierce will. Outside a cloud hovered across the sun. In spite of everything, Nick had to stop himself from taking three strides and pulling her into his arms.
‘I don’t know,’ she said at last in a muted voice. ‘They were—are—so valiant. They had nothing at all, but they laughed and they were kind to each other and to me. The children liked me. And I had no one else.’
Oh, she did it well. Cynically he thought that she was lucky; those fragile bones made every man long to protect her.
Furious at his weakness, he said, ‘Couldn’t you get out? The Cat Withers I knew would have run like hell in case something happened to her pretty little hide.’
‘Courtald,’ she flashed back at him. ‘I’m Catherine Courtald! And you don’t know anything about me—you never did. You looked at me and your prejudices sprang into life without reason or logic!’
‘I had reason,’ he said caustically. ‘Or are you going to tell me that you were passionately in love with Glen when you married him—that you didn’t even think that with his money you could take care of your sick mother and secure your own future?’
She flushed violently, and her gaze fell, her thick lashes hiding her eyes. ‘I told you then—I was in love with him,’ she said in a stifled voice.
‘How could you be, when you looked at me and you wanted me—almost as much as I wanted you?’
‘Have you never done anything stupid?’ she demanded, squaring her shoulders.
‘Yes. Six years ago I looked at my best friend’s fiancée and lusted after her,’ he said cruelly.
The colour fled from her skin. She made an abrupt gesture, then forced her hands back by her sides, her face into an exquisite mask.
Yet he still wanted to believe her. He strove to control the repressed lust and angry remorse—and a debilitating urge to shelter her.
