reputation in a pointless attempt to rescue your own. Were you a man I would not have stood here and let you talk about my sister like that. Don’t take advantage of the fact that you’re a woman.’
‘You’re the one who’s been taking advantage!’ Hope protested, a floodtide of anger and agony breaking loose inside her because he had immediately dismissed her account of what had happened at the party. ‘You’ve called me a liar and a slut…you’re refusing even to listen to my side of the story.’
‘What’s to listen to? What’s to understand?’ Andreas demanded, striding back down the corridor and cornering her against the wall outside the bedroom. ‘You spread your legs for a pretty blond toy boy!’
‘Of course I didn’t!’ Colour had run like a banner into her cheeks. ‘Don’t be crude—’
‘That’s nothing to what I would like to know.’ Andreas slammed his hands to the hall on either side of her head, effectively holding her entrapped. Smouldering golden eyes as dangerous as dynamite challenged her. ‘Did you do it in our bed?’
‘It didn’t happen!’ she cried. ‘I wouldn’t even look at someone else, never mind—’
‘You forget…I saw you looking at Campbell last night,’ Andreas reminded her darkly.
Hope was trembling with the strength of her emotions. Her spine pushing into the wall, she was forced to tip her face up. ‘But I wasn’t looking in the way you mean—’
‘What does he have that I don’t?’ Andreas demanded with savage force. ‘Is he better in bed?’
‘Andreas…’ Hope gasped, fierce embarrassment and dismay at the tenor of that blunt question making her full lower lip part from the cupid’s bow curve of her upper.
‘Is he more inventive? More exciting? Kinky? What did he do that I didn’t do? Didn’t I satisfy you? Tell me…I have the right to know!’ he launched at her, stunning eyes smouldering ferocious gold with dark sexual jealousy and dropping to the luscious pink swell of her mouth.
‘There’s nothing for you to know!’ she cried in despair.
The tension in the atmosphere was electric. At first Hope did not understand its source. There was a warm, heavy feeling low in her tummy, a buzzing vibration of awareness holding her on a dizzy edge. Holding her indeed on the edge of an anticipation that left her mind frighteningly blank.
‘And right now…it’s me you want,’ Andreas purred with silken satisfaction, lifting lean brown hands to skim a blunt masculine thumb over the distended buds of her nipples, which were clearly delineated by the thin wrap.
Hope gasped in helpless response and arched her back. Her entire body felt hot and super sensitive. Recognising her own sexual excitement shook her inside out. ‘Yes, but—’
‘In fact you’re begging for it,’ Andreas husked, dropping his hands to her hips and mating his passionate mouth to hers with a bold hunger that in its very intensity was overwhelmingly erotic.
Fire snaked sinuous seductive forays through her heated flesh. She melted like honey in sunshine, yielding to the plundering thrust of his tongue and the heady intoxication of her own response. In one powerful movement he lifted her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom. As he brought her down on the bed his mouth was still melded to hers with devouring passion.
Just as swiftly he relinquished his hold on her. Still lost in the fever of her own desire, Hope clung to his shoulders to draw him back to her.
With cool disdain, Andreas detached her arms from him and straightened to his full commanding height. Proud, dark head high, he stared down at her with icy derision. ‘It’s over. The instant you let Campbell touch you, it was over. I expect my mistress to preserve her affections exclusively for me.’
Her face drained of colour, Hope thrust herself up into sitting position. ‘I’m not and I never was your mistress!’
From the doorway, Andreas vented a sardonic laugh that scored her tender skin like a whiplash. ‘Of course you were. What else could you have been to me?’
Hurt far beyond his imagining, Hope blanked him out and stared into space. She could no longer bear to see him. She listened to his steps recede down the corridor, the distant slam of the front door echoing through the apartment. It was over and he was gone and without apparent regret. He could never have cared a button for her, she thought in an agony of mortified pain.
FRANTIC to conceal the fact that she had been crying, Hope utilised some eye shadow to draw attention away from her reddened lids. ‘Smile…’ she instructed her flushed and unhappy reflection and she practised curving her mouth up instead of down at the corners.
It was seven weeks since she had moved into Vanessa’s spare room. Her friend had been marvellous in every way but Hope knew that misery made other people uncomfortable. Vanessa had told her that the end of a relationship was the perfect excuse for a week of tears and laments, but that after that point it was time to move on. Ever since that week had ended Hope had been pretending that she was well over Andreas and miles down the road to recovery.
Unhappily, however, she was finding that maintaining that pretence was the most enormous strain. She assumed that stress had caused the further bouts of nausea she had suffered. Mercifully that sickness had petered out the previous month and, apart from a rather embarrassing craving for olives at certain times, she was fine. If she had a problem, it was with her state of mind. For so long Andreas had been the centre of her universe. Now every day stretched in front of her like a wasteland. Determined to keep up her spirits, she had concentrated on developing a new and much improved business plan. She had visited various financial institutions and was doing her utmost to win a business loan. So far, admittedly, she had not been lucky, but she kept on telling herself that success lay just round the next corner. In the meantime, to meet her bills, she was working in a shop and selling bags at occasional craft fairs.
‘Are you sure you don’t want any lunch?’ Vanessa called from the kitchen.
Hope emerged from her room. ‘No, I grabbed something earlier,’ she fibbed because her friend had begun to nag her about how little she was eating.
Vanessa, who ate like a horse and never put on an ounce, strolled into the ultra-modern lounge. In one hand she held a sandwich the size of a doorstep. ‘So, how did you get on with that bank this morning?’
Hope almost winced. ‘The guy said he’d be in touch but I don’t think I’ll be holding my breath.’
‘Let Ben back your business,’ Vanessa urged impatiently. ‘Your funky handbags are a much better risk than the racehorses he keeps on buying!’
Hope smiled to show that she was appropriately grateful for Ben’s offer of financial assistance. However, her smile was a little tense round the edges, for if being dumped by Andreas had taught her anything it was that caution and common sense should be heeded. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’
‘Why not? Five different banks have turned down your loan application,’ the redhead reminded her baldly. ‘Ben’s got money to burn and he’s eager to help. In your position I wouldn’t
