them both—from the start.
Like a coward, though, as soon as the other man had left, she started towards the stairs, wanting to get away from King until he had calmed down.
‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ Strong fingers suddenly clamped onto her wrist, preventing her precipitous flight up the stairs. ‘So you’re Lorri Hardwicke. Well, well.’
‘Let me go!’ She could feel his white hot anger pulsing against her as those determined fingers tightened relentlessly around her soft flesh. ‘I was going to tell you! Both of you!’ she gasped as he pulled her towards him.
‘You were? Well, that’s very magnanimous of you!’ he scorned. ‘And when exactly were you going to do that? When you’d got your “scoop”, or whatever it is you’re after? What exactly is it you’re after, Rayne?’ His face was livid, his voice so dangerously soft that with one fearful yet furious yank she managed to pull free.
‘What was rightfully my father’s!’ she shot up at him, massaging her wrist, numb from the pressure he’d applied.
‘And what is that?’ he breathed equally softly, every long lean inch of him powerfully intimidating, like a dangerous adversary she’d been unfortunate to cross. Well, he wasn’t going to intimidate her!
‘You know very well!’ There were family loyalties at stake here. ‘You stole that software from him! You and Mitch! You knew MiracleMed was his and you stole it!’
‘And you, my dear young woman, have been very much misinformed if you think you can make a serious allegation like that.’
‘I haven’t been misinformed! I know the hours he put in—at home, as well as in the office. And don’t speak to me like that. I don’t need to be patronized by you!’
‘Just the pleasure I can give that beautiful body when it suits you.’
‘No!’ Shame washed over her like scalding water.
‘Don’t deny it, Rayne. You’re as enslaved by your desire for me as I am for you. Or was that all part of the act?’ he tossed at her roughly.
‘No!’ What could she say? How on earth had they got on to this? ‘That … that just happened,’ she stammered, stepping back as he moved nearer, knowing that even now, if he touched her, she would have no defence or resistance against his particular brand of humiliation. And it would be humiliation. He’d make certain of that.
‘I’ll bet it did! And I’ll bet you’ve been laughing all the way to the bank in thinking I was so taken in.’
‘You were never taken in.’
‘Maybe not. But Mitch was. So what is it you want?’ he demanded. ‘Money?’
‘That’s the only thing that matters to people like you, isn’t it?’ She was near to tears, but tears of anger and frustration which had been bottled up for so long. ‘Well, it might surprise you to know that some of us put honour and respect before making ourselves rich at other people’s expense.’
‘Really?’ A masculine eyebrow arched in obvious derision. ‘There didn’t seem to be much honour and respect in the way you engineered your scheming little way into this house. Those thieves didn’t take your passport, did they, Rayne?’
His question, so direct and demanding, seemed to suck the air right out of her body. King Clayborne might be a lot of things, but a fool wasn’t one of them.
‘No,’ she answered, inhaling again. ‘It was in the glove compartment of the car with my driving licence.’
‘And your credit cards? Where have they been while Mitch and I have been financing your every requirement? Your meals. Trips into town. The flowers for your poor ailing mother?’
The disparaging way he referred to Cynthia Hardwicke sent anger coursing through Rayne in red-hot shafts.
‘My mother has been sick! Very sick!’ she retorted fiercely. ‘And don’t you ever dare to refer to her illness like that again! And my credit cards were stolen! They took my bag. My traveller’s cheques. All my money. Everything! It was only when Mitch jumped to the conclusion that I’d lost my passport as well and invited me back here that … well … that I let him think so. I felt he owed it to me. Or to Dad at least.’ And it was her father who had said that windows of opportunity didn’t just open on their own—that you had to create them. ‘I needed to talk to him but I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and it just seemed like the perfect chance I’d been waiting for.’
‘I’ll bet it did! So what have you been hoping to gain out of all this if, as you say, you’re far too honourable to contemplate blackmailing him with the threat of selling some cracked-up story to the papers? Are you in league with this Faraday character? Is that it? Was that why he turned up here so coincidentally today?’
‘That was only coincidence,’ she retorted with bright wings of colour staining her cheeks. ‘And I wasn’t going to blackmail Mitch. I was hoping—if I could talk to him—let him know who I was and what my father went through—that it might prick his conscience in some way. That I might be able to appeal to his better nature.’ Hotly then, she couldn’t help adding, ‘I didn’t imagine for one moment I could ever appeal to yours!’
‘So why didn’t you tell him who you were? Right away? The day you got here?’ he interrogated, ignoring her last derogatory remark about himself. ‘Or was the prospect of sharing a house with such a newsworthy name too much for your journalistic instinct to pass up?’
‘I didn’t because he seemed so shaken up after those lads had taken his wheel,’ she answered, ignoring him in turn, even though she was railing inside at his high-and-mighty attitude, ‘I didn’t want to do or say anything that might have upset him even more. And the day after that he still wasn’t well.’ And then you arrived, she remembered with her mouth firming in rebellion, although she didn’t tell him that. Didn’t let on that she feared and regarded him with far more respect than she feared and regarded his father, not least because of the frightening strength of her attraction to him. ‘And then when Hélène said he had a heart problem and high blood pressure …’ Her shoulder lifted in a kind of hopeless gesture. ‘I didn’t want to be responsible for making him ill.’
A thick eyebrow was lifting again in patent scepticism. ‘Do I detect a conscience, Rayne? Surely not! And you’ll have to excuse me,’ he tagged on, with no hint of apology in his voice. ‘It’s Lorri, isn’t it? But then it’s difficult keeping up with the change of identity.’
‘It isn’t a change of identity. Rayne Carpenter’s the name I write under,’ she said, admitting it now.
‘Why? So that your victims won’t know who you are when they read the sensationalist dirt you’ve managed to dredge up about them?’
‘I don’t write that sort of news story.’ Chance would have been a fine thing! She had never got beyond covering house-fires started from flaming chip pans and local demonstrations about library closures, whatever Nelson Faraday had led him to believe. ‘I only write the truth.’
‘Or your warped version of it.’
‘Is it warped to expect some credit for my father’s work? I’m not after any personal or financial gain, whatever you may think.’
‘No.
