dark silhouettes against the vivid red ball of the setting sun.
She couldn’t go back to the oppression—to being dictated to. Nor could she stand everyone believing the worst about her when her only crime was being taken in by a man she had thought was—to all intents and purposes—free to love her. The fact that he’d ranked highly in a couple of world-class races and had a prominent politician father only served to make the supposed affair front-page news when his still very resident wife had taken that overdose and lost her unborn baby because of it. Perhaps, Shannon thought now, it would have been better if she had divulged her side of the story, but she had remained silent when those reporters had hounded her, preferring to be thought an adulteress rather than a fool. Afterwards Ranulph Bouvier had tried to tighten his control of her, tried to deprive her of her independence and her freedom, until his authority had stifled her. Eventually, only weeks after Kane had left the firm, she had fled London for good.
‘Did my father ask you to find me?’ Suspicion narrowed her eyes as she turned back to Kane. ‘Try to bring me home?’ And when he didn’t answer, his mouth still set in that inexorable cast, ‘So that’s it!’ she breathed, letting her arms fall in clarification, her pose no longer defensive, but all-attacking now. ‘He’s got you back working for him again, hasn’t he?’ she accused, certain of it, her lips tightening mutinously when she noticed that almost indiscernible shrug of his shoulder. ‘This is my father’s boat, isn’t it? It isn’t yours at all. And I thought you’d done better for yourself!’ She couldn’t contain the derisory little laugh that trembled through those last words, her laughter masking the pain she had nursed for what seemed like centuries from his cruel opinion of her; the frustration of never being able to tell him that he was wrong; that nothing was as it seemed. ‘So the Bouvier name isn’t that muddied for you after all!’ she continued to taunt him. ‘Or was the deal being offered so much more attractive to you this time?’
Almost inaudibly, she heard him catch his breath. ‘You think that’s all it boils down to, don’t you?’ he said scathingly. ‘Money?’ With that he was striding away from her, back to the helm.
‘Doesn’t it?’ Shannon, following, threw at his broad back. In her experience, it had ranked very highly on most people’s list of priorities, in the men she had met, in the obvious hangers-on, in the long line of superficial, so-called ‘friends’. ‘What’s he offered you? A nice fat bonus if you bring me back?’ She watched him take up his position behind the wheel again and increase the vessel’s speed with a swift, controlling ease. ‘Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it,’ she suggested desperately through the sudden, ominous throbbing of the powerful engine.
‘Out of your allowance?’ From that half-cocked eyebrow, as the boat surged forward, he looked remarkably sceptical.
Perhaps he thought she couldn’t afford him, she considered, wondering how much he knew.
‘I have assets!’ she assured him, clutching the cool steel of a handrail, having to raise her voice above the upsurge of the water, the rush of the stiff and freshening wind. There was the jewellery she hadn’t wanted. The paintings she had left back in England. Not Monets or Constables, it was true, but certainly worth a lot of money by anyone’s standards. And there was her Porsche…
‘So I see.’
‘Not that!’ she berated, when she saw the way his eyes were roving over the slender lines of her body with mocking sensuality, causing her breathing to quicken, her cheeks to flame from the realisation that he had deliberately misinterpreted what she had meant.
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ he called back over the increasing turbulence of the water, ‘for both our sakes. Much as I find you tempting, it’s not my policy to get involved with news-courting little socialites, so your honour’s quite safe, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ And then, before she could retaliate, stung as she was by his remarks, he was adding, ‘And what makes you think your father’s offered me anything?’
‘Because I know my father.’ Deftly she watched him flick a switch, saw a jumble of data appear on one of the screens. ‘And I know now that, like most people, you can be bought if the price is right.’
‘Well, Shannon,’ he said without looking at her, ‘I’m afraid taking you back there is going to cost me far more than you can afford.’ Then with a pointed glance at her small breasts and the logo stamped blatantly across them, ‘so I’m afraid,’ he intoned firmly, ‘the bulls are going to have to manage without your gallant support for a while.’
‘You…’ The little invective she uttered was barely audible above the boat’s powerful slicing through the waves. ‘And I used to think you were a cut above the rest.’
For a moment as his eyes met hers she saw in his a silent query; a studied contemplation as though she had surprised him with that reckless little confession. Swiftly, though, he was turning away, giving all his attention to the task of steering and navigation. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he said.
Lips tightening, Shannon swung away from him, down the steps and through the doors into the saloon, where she flopped wearily onto one of the pale leather settees. He’d said he was sorry to disappoint her. Well, she was sorry too, she thought.
She had always admired and envied him: his candidness; his refusal to be anything but his own man. Now she was profoundly disappointed to discover that, when it came down to it, he was just the same as everybody else.
And why? she asked herself bitterly. Surely these feelings he still aroused were only the leftovers of a fierce and painful adolescent crush? And even if she was still affected by that hard, masculine, bred-in-the-bone confidence and by his intensely powerful sexuality, it was only that, just sexual, after all.
Which was just as well, she decided with a sudden clenching of her teeth, because he had certainly made it clear—and with no beating about the bush—that he wasn’t interested in her! As far as he was concerned, she was just a spoilt rich bitch whom he was being paid to return to where he thought she belonged, without knowing anything about her, what made her tick, her values, her hopes, her dreams.
Well, carry on, Kane Falconer! she thought, flicking angrily through a glossy magazine she had plucked from the floor-mounted coffee table before tossing it back down again. You don’t know anything about me—nor are you going to! she determined wretchedly, retreating behind the wall of self-protection she had built around herself. If you want to think the worst about me, then carry on!
Having glanced back over his shoulder when Shannon had stormed off, Kane hadn’t failed to notice that deflated look about her.
She had said she’d thought him a cut above the rest, which surprised him immensely, but he was also surprised to discover how much it pleased him too. He had always thought her opinion of him low to say the least, and now, because of the way she had sounded when she had—unintentionally, he felt—dispelled him of that notion, suddenly he felt like a first-rate heel. He’d condemned her, not because everybody else did. It had never been in his nature to listen to mere gossip—follow the common trend—but because, like everyone else with a gram of common sense, he could see the road she was going down, and he couldn’t deny that that crazy lifestyle of hers invited criticism. But even the most condemned of men—or women, he amended wryly—deserved a hearing, and he hadn’t even allowed her that. Perhaps he should have left her back there, instead of trying to get her to see things his way when she was so hell-bent on refusing to. But if he had, and then something happened to her…
He shook off the thought, wishing he didn’t feel so inextricably involved.
She
