on his judgement. And we aren’t all like you, Seth Mason. My grandfather didn’t marry Corinne for…’ She couldn’t even bring herself to say it, hating having to listen to someone else voicing the doubts about Lance Culverwell’s good judgement that she had harboured in silence, alone. ‘He married her because he was lonely.’
Those steely eyes seemed to strip her to the soul. ‘If you believe that, then you still haven’t grown up, Grace, despite all your claims to the contrary. He might have advocated high standards and good breeding—which he obviously found in the woman he spent most of his life with—but at the end of his life he was no more immune than any other man to the wiles of a pretty gold-digger who has about as much refinement as a bag of raw cane-sugar.’
‘Coming from someone as basic as you, that’s rich!’ she shot back, hating him for saying these things to her. ‘All I can say to that is that it takes one to know one.’
From the anger that flared in his eyes, she realised she had hit a raw nerve.
Scared by the fury she had provoked, she started to move away, but he was too quick for her, and she gave a helpless little cry as he caught her, dragging her into his arms.
Her robe had slipped off one shoulder and, tugging it off the other so that her arms were trapped inside it, he pulled her towards him before his mouth came down hard on hers.
She struggled in his grasp, protesting little sounds coming from her captured lips, but her wriggling only made him more determined, his mouth growing more insistent in its demands.
Her fruitless movements caused her robe to separate. She could feel the rasp of his suit against her stomach, her thighs, her naked breasts.
She groaned again, only this time it was the muted sound of desire. She hated him and yet she wanted him! How sick was that?
The revelation shocked her even as she realised that he had recognised it too.
In response his arms came around her, pulling her into the hard warmth of his body, his mouth leaving hers only to force her head back for his teeth to graze with humiliating purpose over the far too sensitive column of her throat.
Sensations ripped through her such as she had never known for eight long years. Why him? she asked herself savagely, clenching her teeth against all that he was doing to her. Was he destined to be the only man that she could ever respond to?
Hating herself for her weakness, fingers curling tensely against the shoulders of his jacket, she battled with the traitorous responses of her own body so that she was standing breathless and trembling with her eyes closed when he finally lifted his head.
His face was flushed, his mouth taut from the desire he was holding in check, but his eyes were unmistakably smug.
Even so, he seemed to have a struggle drawing breath before he said in a voice that was softly mocking, ‘Where are those principles now, Grace?’
‘You bastard.’ Her lashes parted to reveal the self-loathing in her eyes. ‘Was that why you came here tonight?’ she demanded shakily, pulling out of his grasp. ‘To try to humiliate me?’ Her hands were trembling so much she could scarcely do up her robe.
‘If it’s of any consolation to you, Grace, humiliating you wasn’t my intention.’
‘No? Exactly what did you intend? To try and soft-soap me with your supposed concern for my welfare, and hope that that and a few well-chosen flowers would have me falling at your feet?’
‘Just let me remind you, Grace, that there were two of us involved in that kiss—and you responded to me. As for my takeover of Culverwells, one day you might just thank me for stepping in when I did.’
‘Never!’
‘Never say never,’ he ridiculed. ‘So, we can do this the easy way by being civil and trying to get on…’
‘Giving in to your assaults, you mean?’
‘Or we can go on just the way we’re going,’ he said, ignoring her remark, ‘And keep up this pointless war. It makes little difference to me.’
‘You started it,’ she said, and couldn’t help cringing at how childish that sounded even to her own ears.
‘Oh, no. You began it, my love.’ The endearment made its mark, but only because he spoke with such lethal softness. ‘Way, way before I’d done anything to earn your contempt.’
‘But now you have earned it, so will you just please leave?’
Stooping to pick up his car keys, he didn’t stay to argue, only turning as he reached her sitting-room door.
‘Get an early night. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,’ he informed her with all the blandness of an employer to a subordinate.
A couple of seconds later she heard him close the hall door after him. Biting back tears of frustration, Grace spotted the flowers still lying on the table and, picking them up, hurled them across the room in the direction that he had gone.
Chapter Five
SETH wasn’t in when Grace arrived at the office the following morning and she couldn’t have been more relieved.
After all her protestations yesterday about not winding up in bed with him, it had taken only one kiss from him to show her that, where he was concerned, she had no more control over her physical responses than she did over the weather.
As she slipped off her jacket, hung it over the coat stand and then tried to settle down to work she wondered—just as she had done until she’d fallen into a heavy slumber the previous night—she wondered why she had responded to him so disgracefully. Why, when his only interest in her was to seek revenge?
Was it because all her emotions had been so highly charged yesterday—because she had been shattered from a sleepless overnight flight, even before she had suffered the shock of Culverwells being taken over? Or was it simply because she had no resistance whatsoever where Seth Mason was concerned, and that nature—or whatever one could call it, she thought witheringly—would try its utmost to get them into bed whenever they were alone together?
She groaned to herself as she opened her post, staring down at a letter she had unfolded and reading it without digesting a word.
She was still the same woman who had got into that taxi yesterday morning, determined to fight Culverwells’ new CEO for all she was worth, wasn’t she? So, she might have played right into his hands and made a total fool of herself, but she still had her fighting spirit and her determination to do what was right for the company.
When the internal phone on her desk buzzed, though, and Seth’s deep voice came over the line insisting that she came up to his office, Grace’s heart started to pound.
Was he going to fire her, now that she had been weak and stupid enough to show him that she was still as affected by him as she had been as a senseless teenager? she worried. Or was he determined to hold out for the ultimate prize that would make his vengeance complete—her total capitulation in his bed?
He was rifling through the filing cabinet when she walked into his office and she gritted her teeth, steeling herself
