KENZIE dressed and tidied her appearance as best she could before returning to the house, breathing an inward sigh of relief when she discovered Dominick wasn’t in the kitchen as she had expected he would be.
Although she wasn’t quite so lucky as she walked through the main house with the intention of going up to her bedroom to get her bag before leaving.
‘Drink?’ Dominick growled as she passed the doorway to the sitting room, holding up the glass of brandy he was obviously enjoying.
Kenzie entered the room slowly. It was a beautiful gold and cream room, and the early evening sunshine shining in through the huge bay windows should have looked warm and welcoming, but failed to succeed when it was being dominated by the presence of the tall, darkly brooding man standing beside the unlit fireplace.
Kenzie eyed him in challenge. ‘Am I going to need one?’
His mouth twisted humourlessly. ‘Probably,’ he drawled calmly, moving to the drinks cabinet to pour a second brandy before putting it down on the coffee-table that stood in front of the sofa.
Either Dominick no longer wanted to touch her again, even accidentally, or this was a move on his part to force her to sit down on the gold-coloured sofa, the fact of her having to look up at him instantly putting her on the defensive.
She would take a guess on it being the latter!
Kenzie moved to pick up the glass before strolling over to stand in front of one of the windows, her back to the garden, and the sun streaming in behind her putting her face into shadow.
She hadn’t rushed to return to the house, and had taken some time to try to think how she was going to get away. She had tried to decide how she would deal with Dominick if she didn’t manage to leave without seeing him again, knowing that her uninhibited response to him in the pool-house had put her at a definite disadvantage.
It was a disadvantage she intended taking back if she could.
‘I believe I did try to warn you that statistically those sort of—experiments, never work out,’ she reminded him before taking a sip of her brandy, her gaze remaining unwaveringly on his.
Dominick studied her through narrowed lids, filled with the need to hurt and kiss her at the same time!
To hurt her because he couldn’t stand the thought of her making love to a man like Jerome Carlton in the way she just had with him. To kiss her because that once hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough!
Instead he looked at her coldly. ‘Obviously not,’ he agreed icily, enjoying the angry flush that suddenly coloured her cheeks.
She hadn’t liked him saying that. Good. Because he wasn’t enjoying himself, either.
And he had expected to. During the months since Kenzie had walked out on him, the thought of what was going to happen next had been the driving force behind all of his actions. He had believed that revenge would be sweet, and this added bonus of making love with Kenzie more than he could possibly have hoped for. But the only result of that was that he knew he still wanted her, damn it!
‘Better?’ he scorned as Kenzie took another sip of her brandy.
Kenzie didn’t respond as he had thought she would, her green eyes glittering with anger rather than tears as she met his gaze full on. ‘The brandy is excellent,’ she bit out coolly.
He had to admire her, Dominick acknowledged grudgingly; after the passion they had shared down in the pool-house, and his harshness afterwards, he knew Kenzie must be feeling more than a little unsure of herself, but not by so much as a blink of the eye did she reveal that emotion.
Instead she looked tall and self-possessed, and the bitter rage that welled up inside him made him want to wipe that air of confidence off her beautiful face!
‘So aren’t you curious to know why your boyfriend had to delay his visit to England for a couple of days?’ he asked tauntingly.
Kenzie tensed, but only inwardly; after the humiliation Dominick had tried to inflict earlier she had no intention of letting him see how upset she really was.
She had reacted instinctively to Dominick’s lovemaking; she couldn’t have denied her response to him even if she had wanted to. How Dominick must be loving that. In fact, his scathing comments afterwards had already shown her that he did. They both knew now exactly how ‘unwilling’ she hadn’t been!
For a while, a very brief while, Dominick had once again been the man she loved, the experienced but considerate lover who had initiated her into all the pleasures of lovemaking. Even though Dominick refused to believe it, he was the only man she had ever made love with.
But the Dominick he had been after their lovemaking, the Dominick he was now, wasn’t the man she had fallen in love with.
Had she really thought that their making love would make any difference to Dominick? To the way he felt about her now?
She hadn’t been thinking at all, that was the problem. From the first moment Dominick had touched her, she had only been able to feel!
She drew in a controlling breath. ‘If by the phrase “boyfriend” you are referring to Jerome—’
‘How many other boyfriends do you have, Kenzie?’ Dominick mocked, his brown eyes as hard as pebbles, and his mouth a thin, derisive line.
Her cheeks became flushed in spite of herself. For one thing, at forty-two, Jerome was hardly a boy, and for another, he had never been a boyfriend or anything else in the least intimate to her!
‘My marriage to you hasn’t exactly made me eager to return to the dating circuit!’ she told him accusingly. She was sure the same couldn’t be said for Dominick; as she knew only too well, he might not believe in love, but he was an extremely sensual man, and had been involved with lots of women before the two of them had met.
His mouth tightened. ‘I very much doubt that’s the reason for the oversight, Kenzie. I feel sure that Jerome Carlton is no more eager to share you than I was!’
Kenzie breathed her impatience. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that I am not, nor have I ever been, involved in an affair with Jerome Carlton?’ Her eyes glittered with anger.
Dominick gave an uninterested shrug. ‘You’re the one that feels that need, Kenzie, not me.’
‘And anyway, what do you know about Jerome’s delay in coming to England?’ she prompted impatiently, sure from his attitude that Dominick did know something.
The scowl disappeared from Dominick’s brow as he gave a relaxed smile. ‘Quite a lot, as it happens,’ he answered easily.
Kenzie swallowed hard. ‘And are you going to tell me?’
‘I was going to leave it to Carlton to do that—but why not?’ Dominick shrugged. ‘About two years ago Carlton Cosmetics hit a few financial difficulties, at which point Carlton decided to float forty-nine per cent of the company shares on the open market, retaining thirty-one per cent for himself, and ten per cent to his two siblings, a younger brother and sister.’
Kenzie had met both Adrian and Caroline Carlton. Adrian
