from her, because she couldn’t deny it now.
Sexually, she was as attracted to him as she had ever been. More so, if that was possible. But it was just her flesh that was weak. It meant nothing beyond that, and she had to keep reminding herself of that. Seth Mason was a dangerous man and she’d be a fool if she were to allow herself to fall into his honey-tongued trap. Because that was all it was, she decided—the flowers. The apparent concern. Just ways of wearing her resistance down until he could claim the ultimate prize for himself: her surrender to his powerful sexuality. And what then? she wondered, shuddering.
She longed to put a safe distance between them, and common sense alone prevented her from making any sudden moves. That would have had the same effect as a mouse trying to escape the clutches of a prowling jungle cat, she realised hopelessly, knowing by instinct alone that if she attempted it then that arm would tighten mercilessly around her—and where would she be then?
Instead, her fine features ravaged by her darkest emotions and the things that she must never, ever tell him, and with her eyes fixed on a pastoral watercolour on the far wall that she had bought for next to nothing at a car-boot sale, she asked, ‘Just how much persuasion did it take on your part to get Corinne to hand over her share of the company?’
‘What is it you want me to say, Grace?’ He inhaled deeply, sitting back, mercifully withdrawing his arm as he did so. ‘That I’m sleeping with her?’
Unable to help herself, she sent a swift glance towards his hard-hewn face, breathing normally again now that he had released her, or as normally as it was possible to breathe in his devastating sphere. ‘Are you?’
His lashes came down, veiling the perfect clarity of his eyes. ‘You think I’d kiss and tell on any woman I bed?’
She laughed, a humourless sound strung with tension, as images of him naked on that beach, and as he would be in bed now—his long limbs entwined with others that were paler, more submissive in their passion—rose to threaten her far-too-vulnerable defences. ‘Are you trying to tell me you have scruples?’
Seth’s mouth compressed. ‘No more than you.’
She turned away from him, her chin lifting in spite of the reminder. A cold feeling seemed to settle right in the place where his arm had lain.
‘Does it matter to you, Grace?’
‘What?’
‘Whether I’m sleeping with her or not?’
‘Hardly,’ she sneered.
He laughed softly, the warmth of his breath stirring the fine hairs at her temple, making her stiffen. ‘Such protestation!’ he mocked. ‘I just wonder why the lady deems it necessary to deliver it with such force.’
‘I would have thought that was obvious.’ She leaped up now, dreading that she might have given him cause to suspect how her body reacted to him against her will, against her rational thinking. ‘You’re despicable!’ she breathed.
His mouth moved carelessly. ‘Shouldn’t you be saying that to those closer to home?’
He meant Corinne—and Paul.
Turning wounded eyes in his direction, she noticed the grace with which he moved, brought his tall, lithe frame to his feet.
‘She sold you down the river, Grace.’ His words were hard, blunt, unsparing. ‘So did your precious Harringdale.’
‘He isn’t mine,’ she flared, hurting, wondering how he—how both of them—could have pulled the plug on her and left her and the company to the mercy of a man like Seth Mason. ‘It’s over between us—as you so subtly pointed out at that launch party. It was over months ago.’
‘Ah, yes. What really happened there? Did you just get tired of him?’ he asked, sounding bored suddenly, while ignoring her barbed accusation. ‘Or were you as butterfly-minded and fickle as Harringdale said you were? What was it?’ His thick brows pleated as he pretended to search for the words which were obviously at the forefront of that shrewd, keen mind. ‘“Grace Tyler’s only interested in having fun and when that wears off, which is surprisingly quickly, so does her sense of loyalty”.’ His mouth compressed. After all, hadn’t he been on the receiving end of what could only be described as her capricious behaviour? Perhaps he did have reason to think badly of her, she accepted painfully. But that was all in the past.
‘I don’t think my relationship with Paul is any of your business,’ she murmured, catching her breath after the hurtful remarks her ex-fiancé had made to the press when she had broken off their engagement only a few weeks before their wedding. Wearily, she added, ‘Perhaps you’re just too influenced by what you read.’
‘Perhaps,’ he concurred, without sounding wholly convinced. ‘Perhaps Harringdale was just being spiteful, in view of the way you jilted him. Or perhaps he was right. Perhaps loyalty and respect are two things you still need to learn.’
His words had an ominous ring to them. ‘Believe that if you want to,’ she objected, so tense that she flinched as the clock on the mantelpiece suddenly struck the half hour. ‘Just like every sensation-seeking journalist I’ve come across, you’ve got your own prejudiced opinions and nothing I say will change them.’
‘Try me.’
‘Why?’
He didn’t answer, but his eyes were so commanding in their intensity that she found the words slipping away from her before she could stop them.
‘If you must know, it was something I drifted into with Paul as much as anything else. I thought we had a lot in common, so it seemed like a good idea for the two of us to get engaged and to merge our business interests. It was what both our families wanted, my grandfather in particular.’ She couldn’t forget the hints Lance Culverwell had dropped, the silent but eternal pressure he’d applied to see her settle down with the heir to the Harringdale fortune.
‘And, with dear Granddad out of the way, you didn’t have to.’
‘No, strange though this may seem to you, I consider principles to be more important than doing something just because it’s expected of me.’
‘Really?’ Dark, winged brows lifted mockingly. ‘And when did you first cultivate that admirable virtue?’
‘You can scoff all you like. It’s true.’
‘And your stepmother?’
‘Step-grandmother,’ she corrected with emphasis.
The look he sliced her left no doubt that he had picked up on that unintentional censure in her voice, and his mouth pulled at one corner, as though he were weighing up the age difference between the ex-model Corinne Phelps and Lance Culverwell, questioning the whole viability of the match.
‘It’s peculiar how sex drives a man—or a woman, for that matter—isn’t it, Grace?’
She regarded him warily. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning he wasn’t prepared for someone from my background to soil the pedigree of his precious family, but he had no such qualms when it came to himself and a woman who didn’t mind being photographed in some of the more, shall we say, graphic newspapers.’
