reached for the cut glass decanter beside the coffee pot and poured some of its golden contents into a matching tumbler. ‘Can’t I enjoy a bit of female company without you vetting her like she was some filly with a dubious pedigree?’ Mitch took the glass from the man who was more than thirty-five years his junior, and yet whose influence and power in the corporate world was more respected and deferred to even than the older man’s these days.
King’s shoulder lifted and a sudden last shaft of sunlight, piercing through the trees that decked the hillsides, splintered colour from the crystal decanter in his hand. ‘Of course.’ Replacing its stopper, he put the decanter back on the table with a dull thud. ‘But be it on your own head, Mitch. I’m not going to be riding this one.’
Rayne’s back stiffened from the double entendre as she watched him walk away, looking every bit as proud as the man in the wheelchair, but exuding an air of such uncompromising autonomy that lesser men, including his own father, could only hope to aspire to.
‘He doesn’t like me,’ Rayne observed dryly, her confident manner concealing how uncomfortably sticky he’d made her feel beneath her light clothes. Had he picked up on the fact that she was hiding something from them? Or was her guilty secret letting her imagination run away with her?
‘You’ll have to excuse my son. He suspects every woman who happens to give me the time of day,’ Mitch told her. ‘Especially if she’s young and pretty. Usually he manages to frighten them off before the dust has time to settle under their feet.’
‘That’s pretty selfish of him.’ Rayne’s eyes lingered in the direction the other man had gone, her jaw tightening in rebellion.
‘He has no reason to be. With a physical and intellectual package like that, they all wind up wanting King anyway.’ He gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Well, who would want an old fossil like me?’ He started to cough, the contents of his glass threatening to slop over the side. As Rayne moved forward to take it from him, he waved her impatiently aside. ‘But what’s a man to do?’ The terrace lights had come on, taking over from the sun that had dipped behind the mountains and glinting on the crystal he lifted to his mouth, draining it in one swift gulp. ‘He calls it protecting my interests. Here—’ he thrust the empty glass in her direction ‘—pour me another one, will you?’
Rayne looked at him dubiously. He was already looking rather florid. She’d also learned from his late-middle-aged and amiable Swiss housekeeper while she’d been there that Mitchell Clayborne had high blood pressure as well as a heart condition, which was why Rayne had been hesitant to tell him who she was and why she was there. ‘Do you think you should?’
‘For heaven’s sake, girl! You have the audacity to question my actions while you’re a guest in my house?’
‘I didn’t mean to.’ Nor did she want to find herself worrying over someone who had treated her father so abominably. It felt like a betrayal, somehow. But her father’s ex-colleague and business partner seemed world-weary and surprisingly bitter, she had decided over the past few days, guessing that it was probably because of his disability, although having an heir as forceful and dynamic as King couldn’t help. But she was getting used to her host’s outbursts, startling though they were, and so she took the glass he was handing her and poured him another drink.
‘You’re behaving just like King,’ he persisted. ‘And while he’s excused through blood, I won’t take it from anyone who isn’t. D’you understand?’
‘Perfectly,’ she breathed with mock deference as she handed him his refill, and caught a surprising glint of warmth in his watery blue eyes. ‘If you don’t need anything else,’ she tagged on, uncomfortable even with fraternizing with him because of what he had done in the past, ‘I think I’ll get an early night.’
He smiled, gesturing her away with his glass, his angry mood dispelled. ‘Good idea. Oh, Rayne …’ Stopping before the open door that separated the luxurious living quarters from the terrace, she turned round with the scent of a potted gardenia trespassing on her senses. ‘About King … Did you do something to antagonise him before I came out?’
Her heart skipped a nervous little beat. ‘No. Why?’
‘I haven’t seen him quite so … intense before.’
She shrugged, trying to shake off the feeling of exposure she had sensed under those steely-blue eyes, trying not to remember how she had felt in the past. ‘Perhaps he had a hard day.’
‘Nonsense. He thrives on hard work and pressure where lesser mortals crack up and fall by the wayside.’
‘He sounds like a dynamo.’
‘He is.’
‘Even dynamos can break down.’
‘If you think that, then you don’t know King.’
Don’t I? she thought bitterly, but said, ‘Obviously not.’
‘But you will,’ he said, seemingly with some relish. ‘He’s going to be around for a while.’
‘That’s nice.’ She was finding it difficult keeping her voice light, making out that she didn’t care one way or the other, while her insides were screaming with guilt and resentment and a whole heap of worrying doubts over what she was getting herself into.
‘And Rayne …’ About to step inside, keen to escape to her room, Rayne glanced reluctantly over her shoulder as Mitch called to her again. ‘Be nice to him,’ he advised with just a hint of caution. ‘For both our sakes.’
I’ll fall at his feet, shall I? she suggested silently. Like I’m sure every nubile woman he meets probably does!
Her face ached from her forced smile as she got out, ‘Of course,’ aware that she was suddenly in danger of finding herself in way over her head, even as she told herself that she refused to be intimidated by King’s arrival. He might look like the stuff of every woman’s dreams, she accepted grudgingly, as the spacious interior of his father’s summer retreat, which had astounded her with its elegance and luxury ever since she’d been there, now felt as though it was swallowing her up. And if just a compliment from him or the most casual of physical contact—like shaking hands with him, for goodness’ sake!—made her pulse quicken a bit … well … it was only her hormones working, wasn’t it? She was only human, after all! But she’d come to Monaco to try to right the wrong that had been done to her father and she had no intention of letting a man like King—or her uncontrollable hormones—stand in her way!
CHAPTER TWO
THE shapes and tones and hues of Monte Carlo took her breath away, as they had been doing every time she’d looked down on them from her bedroom balcony over the past few days. But this morning, with the sun still low enough to have turned the sea to gold and wrapped the distant mountains in a haze of heat, this wakening resort seemed, like her, to be holding its breath, before offering up its vibrant heart to another day of wealth and glamour and total luxury.
Rayne grimaced at the comparison because she hadn’t come to Monaco to indulge herself. But while she was here, she thought, noticing how the trees on the steep ascent of the hillside above the house were touched with the same flame gold as the water in the harbour, then at least she could appreciate the scenery.
The only blot on her immediate horizon, she decided, was King.
She’d
