I’m asking, anyway.’
How his two brothers would laugh if they could see him now—the arrogantly self-contained Nik willing this tiny woman to have dinner with him tonight. Zak and Rik would find it highly amusing that he had to ask twice at all, let alone exert all of his pressure of will in order to get the positive answer he wanted.
And he did want it. That cautious self-preservation told him to stay as far away from this woman as it was possible for him to be, but all of his natural instincts told him he wanted to be with her again. That he wanted so much more than that.
And he wasn’t averse to using every means at his disposal to achieve his objective!
‘Surely your father won’t mind your going out and leaving him for one evening?’ he prompted softly, closely watching her response to this mention of her father, knowing by the way her expression suddenly became blankly unreadable that he had touched a raw nerve. ‘Just how ill is your father, Jinx?’ he pressed at her continuing silence.
She seemed to flinch at his persistence, her smile having faded long ago, once again withdrawing behind that coolly dismissive mask. ‘I have no intention of discussing my father with you, Nik,’ she snapped. ‘Either now or at any other time,’ she added firmly.
In other words, she wasn’t going to have dinner with him this evening. Damn. Good move, Nik! He cursed his own stupidity in having moved too far, too fast. So much for his finding the right buttons to press…
‘I heard that he had some sort of nervous breakdown a year or so ago?’ he murmured, still sure that Jackson Nixon was the key to this woman’s acquiescence.
Then why did he feel such a heel as her face paled even more, her eyes huge blue pools of pain and confusion as she looked at him incredulously?
‘And where, exactly, did you hear that?’ she demanded, her whole body defensively taut as she sat up straighter in the chair, those tiny breasts unknowingly thrust provocatively forward.
A fact that Nik tried his best to ignore—and failed miserably, able to see the outline of her nipples against the silky fabric of her blouse; indeed, almost able to discern their rosy hue. ‘One of his colleagues at the university mentioned—’
‘You had no right to go anywhere near my father’s colleagues!’ She gasped. ‘This is exactly what I didn’t want! Exactly what I knew would happen once people started snooping about in an effort to meet the author of No Ordinary Boy!’ Two bright spots of colour had appeared in the paleness of her cheeks as she breathed deeply in her agitation. ‘Stay away from my father, Nik! Stay away from anyone who knows him! Most of all—’ she stood up again forcefully ‘—stay away from me!’
He couldn’t do that. Didn’t want to do that. More than ever he wanted this woman to have dinner with him this evening. Forget dinner—he just wanted her with him this evening.
‘Jinx, please sit down—’
‘No way,’ she told him angrily, once again flicking back the fiery length of her hair. ‘I can’t believe you did such a thing! Can’t believe anyone could sink so low as to—’
‘You weren’t exactly cooperating,’ Nik pointed out as he stood up to face her.
Jinx looked at him incredulously. ‘And that was enough for you to pry into my private life, my father’s private life, like some cheap—’
‘Excuse me, Mr Prince—it is Nik Prince, isn’t it?’
Nik had turned sharply at the first sound of the female voice, his angry gaze narrowing warily as he took in the woman’s appearance—short dark hair, deep brown eyes, a pleasantly smiling mouth—as she looked at him enquiringly.
‘The film director?’ the woman pressed brightly.
Nik felt the faint stirrings of unease; in his experience there was only one profession he knew of who pushed their way into other people’s lives in this intrusive way. And as he saw the woman nod to a man who had just entered the lounge, the familiar camera slung about his neck, Nik knew that his guess had been the correct one.
Hell, Jinx was skittish enough already, without finding herself face to face with a reporter and her photographer!
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WHAT do you think you’re doing?’ Jinx squeaked indignantly as she suddenly found her arm grasped in Nik Prince’s vice-like fingers as he began marching her across the room. ‘Nik—’
‘Move!’ he instructed harshly as she attempted to push his hand away from her arm.
‘But I don’t—’ Jinx broke off in alarm as a light was suddenly flashed in her face, momentarily blinding her.
Nik just kept on walking, pulling the semi-blinded Jinx along with him.
What on earth was going on? she wondered dazedly. Who was that woman? The same woman who had been staring at Nik so avidly across the lounge earlier…! Why had Nik wanted to get away from her so quickly? Most puzzling of all, what had been the source of that light that had blinded her?
‘She was a reporter, Jinx,’ Nik told her as he pulled her into the lift and pressed the button to ascend.
But not before another light had flashed brightly, almost in their faces this time, Jinx able to see clearly that the flash had come from a camera being thrust between the rapidly closing lift doors.
‘And he—’ Nik reached out to grab the camera just as the doors closed, the other man’s cry of protest instantly cut off mid-flow ‘—is her associate!’ He released Jinx to open the back of the camera and take out the film and thrust it into his trouser pocket. ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ he muttered grimly as he closed the camera.
A reporter…
Not just a reporter. Paparazzi!
The scourge of the true reporter, whose aim was to report the real news, these other, less professional members of the press weren’t really looking for truth, but went in search of sensationalism.
Jinx felt slightly sick at the realization that she had been in the presence of just such a reporter the last half an hour or so, that she had been completely wrong in her assumption earlier that the other woman had been looking at Nik because she’d recognized him and found him attractive; this woman was out for a story, and didn’t particularly care how she got it.
Her teeth began to chatter uncontrollably in reaction to what had just happened.
If Nik hadn’t realized—If he hadn’t spotted the photographer—If he hadn’t grabbed the camera in that way—!
‘It’s okay, Jinx.’ Nik spoke soothingly as he moved to stand in front of her, touching her gently as he moved the fringe of hair back from over her horrified eyes. ‘It’s okay,’ he repeated encouragingly.
Of course it wasn’t okay. Nik was a personality, a highly photographic one, and if he hadn’t retrieved that film then Jinx knew she would have appeared beside him in a photograph in one of tomorrow’s newspapers—prob-ably with a speculative comment about who this latest mystery woman was in his life. After that, it would only be a matter of time…!
