it, lashing around inside him, not allowed an outlet.
But he knew exactly what outlet it wanted.
And it was one it wasn’t going to get.
He wanted that damn girl, and he wasn’t going to have her.
Anna Delane.
Sable-haired and breathtakingly desirable…
All through a night in which sleep had been persistently and exasperatingly scarce, all through a day which had tested his patience to the limit with its demanding and tedious social requirements, her image had kept intruding. He had banished it a hundred times, and it still came back.
And more than an image.
His memory was tactile.
Erotically, sensually tactile.
The feel of her silken mouth beneath his, the swelling roundness of her breast in his hand, the straining peak rigid beneath his stroking thumb, his body hardening against hers…
With savage control he hammered down the pointless, treacherous thoughts that heated through him.
OK, so he was frustrated. That was all. He’d gone a month without sex, and for him that was a long time. Last night had been punishing because he’d been on the brink of sexual release and then he’d been balked of it. No wonder his body was protesting!
But it was more than his body, he knew. If, say, he’d been interrupted by some kind of business emergency he’d have been a lot less angry than he was now. It wasn’t just the absence of sex that was winding him up tighter than a watch spring.
It was her—that black-haired, green-eyed witch, who’d given him every damn come-on in the book and then called time on him in an outburst of self-righteous outrage as if he were one down from some kind of lascivious groper!
Thee mou, but she had wanted it as much as he had. She’d been melting for him, soft and honeyed, aroused and responsive.
And then to turn on him like that. Make those accusations, those spitting, contemptible accusations of harassment, harassment—
He felt his anger bite viciously.
A liar—that was what she was. Saying no when her body said yes. Had been saying yes all evening to him. All the way until he’d been about to lower her down on her bed…
With monumental effort he slammed shut the lid on his snarling thoughts. He would simply put Anna Delane out of his head, and that was that. There were plenty of other women around—willing women—who didn’t play infantile and hypocritical games about sex.
Plenty who would be happy to be taken up as his mistress!
The trouble was, he couldn’t think of any right now who held the slightest interest for him.
Damn Anna Delane. Turning him on—and then turfing him out! Well, she’d made her decision and so had he. He would not waste any more of his valuable time thinking about her.
With a rasp of irritation he realised his mobile had started to vibrate again. Hell, was he to have no peace at all? Impatiently he jabbed his ski-sticks into the snow and yanked out his phone.
‘Yes?’ he demanded icily, wanting only to dispose of the call and detach his skis.
But when he heard Justin’s strained, panic-stricken voice, his body stilled completely.
Anna kept walking along the corridor. Her hands felt clammy, her heartbeat erratic, every muscle tense.
What am I going to do?
She still hadn’t the faintest idea how she was to return the bracelet. She had to do something with it—anything—anything other than keep it on her person or in any way let its loss be linked back to Jenny.
She must have been mad to take it—
No! No time to think about that now! She’d cope with Jenny’s breakdown later—her only priority now was to get rid of the bracelet.
She could just dump it somewhere. Somewhere it would be easily found by one of the household staff or something.
For a moment she thought of trying to tell someone that it had been taken completely by mistake, that its catch had got caught up in some material or something. But even as she ran it through her brain she knew it wouldn’t wash. They hadn’t been wearing their own clothes when the jewellery had been collected back in. They’d still been in their fashion shoot dresses. If any jewels had got caught they’d have been caught in them, not in the girls’ mufti clothes.
How had she managed to take it?
Out of the blue, Anna suddenly knew. There’d been a shot with the four of them gathered around the table, their four pairs of hands buried wrist-deep in the golden bowl of priceless Levantsky jewels, spotlights blazing down at them to bring out every last glittering facet. Then Jenny had given a low moan. Anna had looked round at her immediately and realised that she was feeling nauseous.
She’d acted instinctively. Pulling back with deliberate clumsiness, she’d dragged on the edge of the bowl and it had tipped over, spilling jewels all over the table.
And some had slithered on to the floor.
She and Jenny—and half a dozen others—had scrambled around on the floor, mostly feeling with their fingers in the sharply delineated shadow under the table on the cold stone flags. While she was down there she’d managed to whisper to Jenny, ‘Are you going to be sick? I’ll call time and say I need the loo—come with me—’
All the other model had done was to shake her head vigorously and go on searching for bits of jewellery, almost head to head with three security personnel, a dresser, Kate, and one of the photographer’s assistants.
Jenny had been the last to stand up, Anna recalled. She’d deposited an emerald ring, a ruby brooch and a sapphire bracelet back into the bowl, while Anna herself had contributed one ruby earring and a diamond choker. As Jenny had got to her feet, Anna, still watching her worriedly, had seen her wince.
I thought it was because she still felt nauseous, but it wasn’t.
She slipped the ruby bracelet inside her shoe while she was getting to her feet…
That was how she’d done it. Kept it hidden inside her shoe for the rest of the shoot, and then somehow, in the crush of the changing room, she must have transferred it into her sleeve.
Dismay hollowed out again in her. How could Jenny have been so insane?
No—no time to think about what had driven her friend to such folly. All that was important now was getting rid of the bracelet in such a way that its temporary disappearance could not be linked to Jenny.
She gained the head of the staircase leading down to the guest level upper floor. From there, the huge main staircase flowed down to the hall. At the top, she paused a moment. Instinctively, she realised, she’d been heading back to the scene of the crime—the main hall,
