her eyes at the memories…eyes which sliced through her when she opened her own again.
‘You can give up the act.’ He dropped her hand as though it was infectious and Maggie stepped back; she had to put space between them. She rubbed her wrist absently where he had gripped it, knowing that she’d have a bruise in the morning. She forced herself to look at him again.
‘The simple fact is that if you take the house it will kill my mother. It’s all she’s ever counted on, all that she has to remind her of my father. She didn’t get anything from Tom Holland except—’
Maggie belatedly remembered her mother’s desperate plea not to reveal the reality of her marriage.
‘Yes? Except what?’
This man would never understand. Too much had happened for her to count on any level of trust.
She steeled herself against his overpowering presence, the condemnation in his cold, implacable gaze. She ignored his prompt. ‘I know my word means nothing to you, but please just hear me out. She never had anything to do with any of his business concerns and certainly nothing to do with trying to take you down…’
Caleb’s eyes narrowed and Maggie seized on a chink in the armour. ‘You can ask anyone who knew him,’ she said in a rush, ‘Ask Mr Murphy; he knows. This isn’t for me; it’s for her. I’m asking you to put the house back into her name…for her sake.’
He just watched her with those hard eyes, his face shuttered. Then he said slowly, ‘And all the time your mother was supposedly blithely unaware, you were in league with your stepfather, doing your seductive routine, conning innocent men…and now what? You have a fit of conscience and want to make it up to her? I don’t buy it.’
Maggie couldn’t fight his opinion of her; it was so low that it may as well have been in the gutter.
She answered with a brittle smile. ‘Yes, you could say that’s what it is. I’m trying to mend my ways, starting with my mother.’ She felt silly tears smart at the back of her eyes. The truth of what she too had suffered at the hands of that man burned like a brand and that someone like Caleb, especially Caleb, would never believe her.
‘If I were to do as you ask, how can I be sure you’re being altruistic—and what will make it worth my while?’
‘I’ll do anything you want…anything! Wash floors…’ she said wildly, the brittleness gone, sensing a chance, however flimsy. ‘Anything. Just please give my mother back her house; she doesn’t deserve this punishment.’
Caleb lounged back nonchalantly against the desk, arms folded across his broad chest, the material of his shirt straining. Maggie couldn’t believe that in the midst of all this she could be so aware of him. His gaze was uncomfortably assessing.
He’d already decided he was going to take a mistress, but why go to the tiresome bother of having to go through the motions just to get someone into his bed? When what…who he really wanted was conveniently within his grasp. One thing he knew for certain as she stood in front of him, her whole petite frame quivering so lightly that it was barely perceptible—was that he wanted her. Badly. More than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life. And he always got what he wanted…
‘You’d sell your soul to the devil?’
‘Yes.’ She answered simply, without hesitation. ‘If I had to.’
‘You’d sell yourself to me?’ he asked softly.
It took slow seconds for his words to sink in; she wasn’t sure if she had heard him correctly. ‘I’m sorry—what…?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Sell myself like…like some kind of—’
‘Mistress. You…’He looked her up and down thoroughly, his eyes resting for long seconds on her breasts, which rose and fell, her distress evident. ‘Your body to me in exchange for the house.’
Maggie stepped back, blanching at his stark words, his intent, but Caleb stood and advanced a step for every one that she took back. As if she could have ever hoped that she could appeal to just his mercy. Men like him exacted payment for everything.
‘I couldn’t do that…How…how could you even suggest such a thing?’
‘Because, you see, I can. Believe me, I don’t want to want you…but I do. And you owe me…ever since you seduced me up in that hotel room six months ago and then turned on the ice maiden act. Tell me, did it turn you on? Was it part of the plan? Did you feel powerful, knowing that you could bring a man to the brink—’
‘Stop! It wasn’t…I didn’t…’ she denied automatically, wanting to halt his words, the tide of burning humiliation that threatened to overwhelm her, as she remembered just how awfully wanton she had been, the shock of her response to him. It had been that, along with the crushing burden of guilt, that had stunned her into frozen immobility at the time. Everything else had been forgotten. Even her mother. Even the threat. And it had scared the life out of her.
But it had been too late for her to laugh it off or feign nonchalance and then he had dropped the bombshell…revealing just how much he had known all along. Far more than her. Any nebulous desire she might have had to confide in him had died a death right there. He had set out to seduce her as cold-bloodedly as he’d believed she had done. She shivered. And yet there’d been nothing cold-blooded about their lovemaking.
‘You tricked me, Maggie. Can you deny that you met me that night with seduction and betrayal in mind?’ he asked, making her focus again on the present conversation. A stillness came into the air around them.
‘No…’ she replied faintly. Because that was exactly what she had done. Albeit against her will. But if he knew that…He could never know how much she had wanted it to be for real. Finding out the extent of his own deceit when hers had been unintended had exposed a wound that was still far too raw…He’d annihilate her and it would bring up all the emotions she’d buried in London, thinking she’d never see him again. She desperately tried another tack. ‘But you hate me…How can you want me?’
‘I think that you aren’t so naïve as to imagine that love or even friendship needs to be involved in the act of sex. I want you—you want the house. It’s a simple equation.’
His words flayed her somewhere inside and her hands were clenched tight into fists by her sides. ‘But how? I mean, for how long or when?’
‘Until I leave Dublin.’
She backed away again, the house, her mother, forgotten. All she could see was the menacing threat in front of her. The dispassionate way he was talking reached down to somewhere deep inside her and she knew that he had the power to rip away the very fabric of herself if she allowed him to do this. She summoned up some last reserve of strength. ‘But that’s two months…I can’t…I won’t sleep with you. I couldn’t…’ she sought feverishly for something to make him back off ‘…I don’t want you.’
‘Liar.’
Before she could emit a sound of protest, with lightning speed his arms reached out and he hauled her against his chest, his head descending so quickly that she didn’t have time to twist her own away. A hand snaked around to hold it in place, his mouth covering hers, crushing her lips to his. She could taste blood on the
