him with an amazingly practised skill, squeezing and releasing his flesh as no girl had ever done to him before.
Stunned and stupidly distressed, he’d immediately withdrawn, standing there in a speechless state as he tried to come to terms with his shock. Her only reaction was a dazed groan of disappointment at having her satisfaction snatched away from her at the last moment.
His own far more crippling disappointment suddenly found voice in his tongue, and he tore strips off her in words which he could not remember afterwards. He only knew he called her all sorts of names. He didn’t mean most of them, of course. It was his hurt talking. He’d been a fool to put her on such a pedestal.
But she had the last word anyway. She put the seal on what he meant to her and how she really felt about him...by not saying anything. By turning up her nose and simply going back to the ball and dancing with Chris as if nothing had happened. She looked right through him when he came back inside. When he kept staring at her, she laughed, then curled her arms much more tightly around Chris’ neck.
He’d been shocked. And shattered. He’d never known a girl could be like that. Ruthless. Unfeeling. Cruel. He had heard that laugh in his head for years, repeatedly imagining how that evening had ended for her, wrapped naked in Chris’s arms, giving him all she’d given Ben. But much, much more.
Ben shuddered at his masochistic thoughts, forcibly snapping his mind back to the present. He hadn’t thought about Amber Hollingsworth in such depth for a long time. God knew why she still haunted him. She wasn’t worth thinking about. Females like her were only good for one thing.
Ben strode back into his living room, and there, waiting for him, was his hometown paper, the one which kept him in touch—not only with Sunrise, but with Miss High-and-Mighty herself. It had told him about her marriage to an American playboy all those years ago. It had informed him of her divorce and return home three years back.
Ben had hoped her homecoming after her divorce was only a temporary thing, but when her father had had a stroke early last year Ben had been shocked to read in the paper that Amber had taken the helm of Hollingsworths—a most unlikely event, considering she had never been academically minded. At school she’d been more interested in her hair and her nails than in computers or business studies.
But clearly she’d found her feet being a minor tycoon, and she meant to stay. A week before Christmas he’d read in the Gazette about her grand plans for a shopping and cinema complex for the area.
Her ongoing presence in town was one of the reasons Ben had avoided going home last Christmas. His gran always dragged him along to church, and the thought of running into Amber there, as he seemed to every Christmas, had been enough to make him accept Brenda’s invitation to spend the Christmas break with her and her family.
A mistake, as it had turned out. Even putting up with another disturbing encounter with Amber would have been preferable to enduring four days with Brenda’s incredibly snooty family. They made the Hollingsworths look poor by comparison. And almost normal. Seeing the real Brenda in action—my God, she actually called her parents Mumsy and Daddykins!—had dampened his ardour for her in bed, and he hadn’t taken her out since.
Why was it, Ben wondered, that he knew nothing would ever dampen his ardour for Amber Hollingsworth? She could be as bitchy as she liked. As snobbish. As promiscuous. As ambitious. Anything, really. And he would still want her.
Ben glared down at the rolled up paper. He conceded that it was this ongoing obsession with Amber Hollingsworth which made him keep on subscribing to this pathetic rag. Why couldn’t he get over his masochistic fascination with the female? Why couldn’t he bear to sever the link once and for all by cancelling his subscription and never returning to Sunrise Point, not even at Christmas?
It seemed that such a final action was beyond him. For one thing he could not hurt his gran by never returning to the farm. She was a right pain in the neck, but she had been good to him when he’d desperately needed someone. If it hadn’t been for his gran’s support and encouragement, he probably would have ended up on the other side of the law.
Ben accepted that this coming Easter—which was less than a month away—he would drive back to Sunrise Point and sit in that damned church again, dreading yet aching to see his eternal torment one more time.
He drained the last of his drink, placed the empty glass on the coffee table, scooped up the paper from his armchair and plonked himself down. With angry sweeping movements, he spread the paper out on his lap.
The headline jumped out at him, and then the photo of his gran. His heart began to thump as he read the story, a mounting fury sending his blood charging hotly around his body. But along with the fury was frustration. Why hadn’t his Gran told him? Why hadn’t she rung?
He practically ground his teeth as he thought of Amber Hollingsworth, smugly thinking she could sweet-talk a seemingly defenceless old lady into parting with her home and land. For a pittance, no doubt.
Well, she didn’t know his gran, did she? Amber thought she could have anything she wanted, when she wanted it, simply because she’d been born rich and beautiful. Her motto in life was, ‘I want. And what I want, I get. And when I don’t want it any more, I get out’.
He felt sorry for that poor bastard who’d married her. No doubt she’d led him a merry dance. She’d led every male who cared about her merry dances. Chris Johnson had been given short shrift straight after that graduation ball. He’d been no longer wanted once the richest man in town gave his darling daughter a fancy trip around the world. Chris had bad-mouthed Amber around town for months afterwards, finally revealing the true nature of their relationship. His opinion of her was no higher than Ben’s own.
Ben clenched his teeth hard in his jaw. He’d denied her instant gratification once, and, by God, he’d make sure she didn’t have it this time, too.
No way was Ben going to allow his Gran to sell that land to the Hollingsworths. He’d buy the useless damned farm himself, if need be! The time for getting even with the Princess of Sunrise Point had finally arrived.
CHAPTER THREE
‘PERHAPS you don’t realise it, Amber, but, aside from that scandalous business in the paper yesterday, your father is very disappointed in you.’
Amber closed her eyes momentarily, grateful that her back was turned to her stepmother. Every time they were alone these days, Beverly trotted out some subtle criticism or other. Plus some not so subtle criticisms lately.
It hadn’t always been like that. When Edward Hollingsworth had first started dating Beverly, over ten years ago, she’d been all milk and honey around Amber. Amber had quite liked the woman, despite feeling naturally jealous that her father suddenly had no time for her at all. When they’d married, during Amber’s last year at school, she’d tried to be happy that her father had finally found someone to share his life with. His first wife, Amber’s mother, had tragically drowned only three years after their wedding, and less than two years after Amber’s birth.
Beverly had been an attractive widow in her forties back then, with a grown son of her own who didn’t live with her. She’d kept up a very convincing sweet stepmamma act even after the marriage, though Amber had always wondered whose idea it had been to send her overseas as soon as she’d left school. And she suspected Beverly had been thrilled when Amber had married an American.
It was easy to be nice from a distance. Over the telephone she’d been sweet as apple pie. But when Amber had come home to live, suddenly she could
