For all her amazing looks, which were capable of piercing the black mood possessing him at having been landed with Hans’s wretched adultery-minded wife, the stunning, flashing-eyed beauty was not someone, he knew perfectly well, he should allow himself to pursue…
She isn’t from my world—let her go.
But a single word echoed in his head, all the same. Domage…
A pity…
* * *
Tara wheeled away, gaining the far side of the room as fast as she could. Her heart-rate was up and she knew why. Oh, she knew why!
She shut her eyes, wanting to blank the room. To blank the oh-so-conflicting reactions battling inside her head right now. She could feel them still, behind her closed eyes, slashing away at each other, fighting for supremacy.
Two overpowering emotions.
Impossible to tell which was uppermost!
The first—that instinctive, breath-catching one—had come the moment she’d seen that man looking at her…seen him for the first time. She certainly hadn’t seen him at the fashion show, but then she never looked at the audience when she was on the catwalk. If she had—oh, she’d have remembered him all right…
No man had ever impacted on her as powerfully—as instantly. Talk about tall, dark and devastating! Sable-hair, cut short, a hard, tough-looking face with a blade of a nose, a strong jaw, a mouth set in a tight line. And eyes that could strip paint.
Or that could rest on her with a look in them that told her that he liked what he was seeing…
She felt a kind of electricity flicker through her and her expression darkened abruptly. The complete opposite emotion was scything through her head, cutting off the electricity.
Liked it so much he just saw fit to click his fingers and summon me over so he could inspect me!
She fought for reason. OK, so he hadn’t actually clicked his fingers—but that imperious beckoning of his had been just as bad! Just as bad as the way he’d so blatantly looked her over…
And it wasn’t the damn gown he was interested in.
That opposite emotion, with a jacking up of its voltage, shot through her again. As if she was once again feeling the impact of that dark, assessing inspection…
She threw the switch once more. No—stop this, right now! she told herself. So what if he’d put her back up? Why should she care? That over-made-up blonde he’d been with had treated her just as offhandedly, waving her away. So why get uptight about the man doing so?
And so what, she added for good measure, that she’d had that ridiculously OTT reaction to the man’s physical impact on her? He and Blondie came from a world she wasn’t part of and only ever saw from the outside—like at this private fashion show. Speaking of which…
She gave herself a mental shake, opened her eyes and continued with her blank-faced perambulations, showing off a gown she could never in all her life afford herself. She was here to work, to earn money, and she’d better get on with it.
Oh, and if she could to stay on this far side of the room… Well away from the source of those emotions in her head.
* * *
‘Marc, cherie, now, this one is ideal! Don’t you think?’
Celine’s voice was a purr, but it grated on Marc like nails on a blackboard. However, at last, it seemed, Hans’s wife had found a gown she liked and was stroking the gold satin material lovingly, not even looking at the model wearing it. This model was smiling hopefully at Marc, but he ignored her. He was not the slightest bit interested.
Not like that other one.
He cut his inappropriate thoughts off. Focussed on the problem at hand. How to divest himself of Hans’s wife at last.
‘Perfect!’ he agreed, with relief in his voice. Could they finally get out of here?
His relief proved short-lived. Celine’s scarlet-tipped fingers curled possessively around his arm.
‘I’ve seen all I want here. I’ll arrange a fitting for that gold dress while Hans and I are in London. But right now…’ she smiled winningly at Marc ‘…do be an angel and take me to dinner! We could go to a club afterwards!’
Marc cut short her attempts to commandeer him for the rest of the evening. Never one to suffer irritation gladly, he knew his temper had been on a shortening fuse all evening. It was galling to see his father’s old friend in the clutches of this appalling woman. How on earth could Hans not have seen through her?
But then dark memory came, though he wished it would not. Hadn’t he been similarly blinded once himself?
Oh, he could tell himself he’d been young, and naïve, and far too trusting, but he’d been made a fool of all the same! Marianne had strung him along, playing on his youthful adoration of her, carefully cultivating his devotion to her—a devotion that had exploded in an instant.
Walking into that restaurant in Lyons, Marianne thinking I was still in Paris, seeing her there—
With another man. Older than Marc’s barely two and twenty. Older and far wealthier.
Marc’s father had still been alive then, and Marc only the prospective heir to the Derenz fortune. The man Marianne had been all over, cooing at, had been in his forties, and richer even than Marc’s father. Marc had stared, the blood draining from his face, and had felt something dying inside him.
Then Marianne had seen him, and instead of trying to make any apology to him she had simply lifted her glass of champagne, tilted it mockingly at Marc, so the light would catch the huge diamond on her finger.
Shortly afterwards she had become the third wife of the man she’d been dining with. And Marc had learnt a lesson he had never, never forgotten.
Now, his tone terse, he spoke bluntly. ‘Celine, I already have a dinner engagement tonight.’
Hans’s wife was undeterred. ‘Oh, if it’s business I’ll be good as gold,’ she assured him airily, not relinquishing her hold on his arm. ‘I sit through enough of Hans’s deadly dull dinner meetings to know how!’ she added waspishly. ‘And we could still go clubbing afterwards…’
Marc shook his head. Time to stop Celine in her tracks. ‘No, it’s not business,’ he told her, making the implication clear.
Celine’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not seeing anyone at the moment. I know that,’ she began, ‘because I’d have heard about it otherwise.’
‘And I’m sure you will,’ Marc replied, jaw set.
He did not want a debate over this. He just wanted to get Celine off his hands before his temper reached snapping point.
‘Well, who is it?’ Celine demanded.
Marc
