style="font-size:15px;"> In a tough, unnerving way he was strikingly handsome. Unforgettable. There was no mistaking that well-shaped head of shorn black curls, no mistaking that lean, arrogant, strong-boned face. She knew it. Hated it!
‘Zan Power,’ he said, taking her hand in a light but far from casual clasp.
Zan. It was him! There couldn’t be another man who looked like the legendary Jason and was called something as outlandish as Zan.
‘Warrener—’ He was frowning slightly, winged black brows drawing together over heavy-lidded eyes, the irises a dark green rayed with gold, brilliant against the clear, healthy whites. ‘I know that name.’
‘Richard Warrener, Annis’s brother, works for you.’ Stephen supplied the information. ‘He’s part of my team in the computer think-tank.’
There was a momentary flicker of surprise in those extraordinary eyes, which throughout the exchange had never left the perfect oval of her face. Then he was saying in his attractive, cultivated voice, ‘Ah, yes. Isn’t he here tonight?’
Once again it was Stephen who replied, ‘His wife is having a baby quite soon. He didn’t want to leave her.’
‘That’s understandable.’ Still without removing his gaze from Annis’s face, Zan Power went on with a politeness that in no way disguised the purposefulness, ‘May I dance with your charming partner, Leighton?’
Displaying an unexpected firmness which earned her admiration, Stephen answered, ‘That’s really up to Annis, sir.’
‘Well, Miss Warrener?’ He held her gaze in a long, hard glance. There was no smile in his thickly lashed, feline eyes, no attempt to cajole, just a quiet waiting.
About to curtly refuse, she hesitated, remembering all she owed Stephen, then for his sake said a reluctant, tight-lipped, ‘Of course.’
Half suffocated by the loathing that filled her, and an equally powerful feeling she was at a loss to identify, she moved into Zan Power’s arms.
She was long-legged, tall for a woman at five feet, eight inches, yet still her eyes were only on a level with the cleft in his firm chin. Tense and awkward, she concentrated on keeping her body away from any contact with his.
He held her lightly, permitting the space between them, moving with a lithe grace that seemed strange in so big a man. The kind of grace one might expect to find in a gigolo, she thought with deliberate contempt.
Not a man willing to deal in polite platitudes, he asked, ‘When you’re not with Leighton do you always dance so stiffly, and in silence?’
‘It depends who my partner is; how much I’m enjoying the occasion.’ Her voice was cool, composed, belying the red-hot hatred that seethed inside.
They completed the circuit before he attacked from a different angle. ‘Do you enjoy parties as a rule?’
‘Yes,’ she lied.
‘But you’ve disliked every minute of this one.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I’ve been watching you.’
When, repressing a shiver, she made no reply, merely continued to move her feet and stare at his black bowtie, he asked with a kind of wry curiosity, ‘Why did you come tonight?’
‘Because Stephen wanted me to.’ She was aware, without even glancing at the man who held her so lightly yet so inescapably, that he was annoyed by her answer.
‘And do you always do what Leighton wants?’
Goading the man who reminded her of a sleek black panther, she said, ‘Whenever possible.’
‘What is he to you? Friend? Lover?’
‘So long as our relationship, whether it’s merely platonic or more than that, doesn’t disturb his work, I really don’t consider that it’s any of your business.’
Tawny green eyes caught and held aquamarine, his very look a threat. ‘I intend to make it my business.’
‘You surely can’t want to control the lives of all your employees?’ she protested incredulously.
‘I don’t.’
‘Then what makes Stephen special?’
‘You do.’
A sudden shiver of something closely akin to fear ran through her.
Softly, he went on, ‘I won’t tolerate anything other than friendship between you.’
‘Won’t tolerate…!’ Anger mingled with alarm.
‘So if by any chance it is more than that—’ his face was steely, his mouth a hard line ‘—for everyone’s sake I advise you to put an end to it at once.’
‘You must be out of your mind!’
Ignoring her choked words, he added, ‘However, I don’t think it is. You have the look about you of a Snow Queen, as if no man has been able to melt the ice and turn you into a real woman.’
‘I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that a man might have caused that ice to form, made me—as you so fancifully put it—like a Snow Queen?’
‘It hadn’t,’ he admitted seriously. ‘But then I don’t know you yet—in either the everyday or the old Biblical sense of the word.’
As her aquamarine eyes widened, he added with cool certainty, ‘Though I fully intend to.’
Heart thudding against her ribs, she somehow dragged her gaze away. As well as angry, she felt scared, threatened. Which was ridiculous.
‘I don’t go in for casual affairs,’ she said haughtily.
‘A casual affair was the last thing I had in mind. I mean to have and to own you completely.’
The calm statement stopped her breath, as though a noose made of fear and fury had tightened around her slender throat.
But however much she abhorred and resented his brand of cool sexual arrogance, it could well hold a fatal fascination for some women.
Was that how he’d managed to bewitch Maya?
‘No comment?’ he queried, with a lift of one black, mobile brow.
Trying to hide how rattled she was, she said dismissively, ‘I’ve already stated that I think you’re insane, Mr Power.’
‘Zan.’
‘An unusual name.’
‘My young sister couldn’t say Alexander and, probably because it was less of a mouthful, her version stuck.’
‘I presumed you’d chosen it specially to go with the image.’ Before he could react to the taunt, she drew back and, lifting her
