was a statement, not a question.
Still he turned back. “You’d prefer me to stay?” There was hard mockery in his brilliant eyes when the temptation to stay was overwhelming.
“You are leaving,” she repeated. ‘This is not your finest hour, David Wainwright.”
“I agree. I’m afraid I overestimated my powers of self-control. So how do I go about making reparation? I’m too much of a gentleman to ask you to account for your behaviour. There’s a lot of passion dammed up behind the Ice Princess façade, isn’t there, Sonya? Floods of it!”
She felt as if she were thrashing about in a cage. “I’ve had enough! I know what you’re up to. You are not exonerated. You are wanting me to fall in love with you. That is your strategy. I should have been prepared. After all, men have been preying on the weakness of women since the dawn of time. Your precious Marcus would be safe from my greedy clutches. How could dear sweet Marcus compare to you? I can’t deny your sexual power. But I can refuse to succumb to it. I’ve had no ordinary life. I’ve had years and years of—” She had to break off, sick with herself, sick with him. She took a strangled intake of breath. “Don’t ever touch me again!”
“But we can’t forget the here and now.” Some demon was in him. The way she spoke to him. The combative glitter in her emerald eyes. Who did she think she was? She affected him so powerfully in all the right ways. And all the wrong ways. Anger engulfed him. He pulled her back into his arms, outrage overcoming his natural protective feelings towards women. His sexual power? he thought grimly. What about hers?
His kiss was like a brand. Sonya tried to grit her teeth, but his tongue forced entry into her mouth. An avalanche of dark pleasure had her near collapsing against him.
Equally furiously he drew back. “I’d say you returned my kisses, you little fraud.”
Without a second’s hesitation she lifted her arm, hellbent on leaving the imprint of her fingers on his handsome, hateful face.
He caught her wrist mid-flight. “Don’t mess with me, Sonya,” he rasped.
“And blessings on you too!” she cried. “Maybe I will marry your Marcus. Outrage your entire family, Lady Palmerston who has been so kind to me, your friends, your whole circle, that witch of a Paula Rowlands. Go grab her if you want to grab a woman. She’s desperate for you to do it. But you can’t have me.”
He shot out a hand to grasp the door knob. “You sure about that?” he asked with a lick of contempt. “Are you sure you can cross me?”
She laughed, throwing up her chin. “Trust me, David Wainwright. I’ve had plenty of experience of villains.”
It was an admission that sobered him entirely. “I suggest if one shows up, Sonya, you give me a ring.” He couldn’t have been more serious.
“What use are you to me?” The stormy expression in her green eyes became uncertain.
He opened the door. “If you’re in trouble—any kind of trouble—you had better contact me,” he said. “Whatever else I am, Sonya, I’m no villain.”
CHAPTER FIVE
SONYA had never thought to see Paula Rowlands come into her shop, given Paula’s vehement promise that would never happen, but lo and behold there she was!
Another catastrophic day?
And the timing was terrible! She was having lunch with Camilla in just over a half-hour. Paula wasn’t alone. An older woman was with her, both of them stern faced, dressed to the nines. This was the mother from hell obviously. Family resemblance was apparent; the expressions were identical. They might have been called as witnesses in an unsavoury court case involving her.
Sonya acknowledged them with a calm nod, although her stomach muscles were tensing. She finished off wrapping a large bunch of stunning yellow heliconias. She had added some ginger foliage that had very interesting yellow strips for effect. She passed them across to her valued customer with a smile. “There you are, Mrs Thomas. You might use a few dark philodendron leaves if you have them at home,” she suggested. “See how it goes.”
Maureen Thomas nodded, very happy with the unusual selection. “These are splendid, thank you so much.”
“My pleasure.”
Mrs Thomas glanced in pleasant fashion at the two very uppity looking women as she walked to the door. She might have been invisible. It amused her.
Marilyn Rowlands swooped to the counter, a mother protecting her young. “Look here, young lady,” she said without preamble, “it’s wrong what you’re doing. You’re only creating serious problems for yourself.”
“Do I know you?” Sonya’s brows arched.
Breathe deeply. Keep calm.
Marilyn’s face clouded. “You know me. I’m Paula’s mother.” She might have been as easily recognisable as the Queen of England.
“Paula can’t speak for herself, then?” Sonya asked politely.
“No cheek, young lady,” Marilyn Rowlands said, thinking this girl was a whole lot more than she had been led to expect. She was amazingly beautiful, with an ultra-refined look. “I take insolence from no one,” she warned, placing a heavily be-ringed hand on the counter.
A blue cloisonne bowl full of exquisite gardenias jumped. Sonya settled it.
What was it the Buddhists intoned to calm them?
Om … om … om.
“Do I have a need for concern here, Mrs Rowlands?” she asked. “There is a security guard who patrols these shops.”
Marilyn’s coiffed head shot back in outrage. “Are you threatening me?”
“I have a perfect right to refuse service to difficult people who come into my shop, Mrs Rowlands.”
Paula belatedly entered the fray. “No one speaks to my mother like that. My father could have you out of here in no time.”
“I doubt that,” Sonya said. “You leave my husband out of this,” Marilyn Rowlands ordered, not averse to a slanging match.
Sonya was. “Mrs Rowlands, I’m asking you quietly to leave.”
Marilyn Rowlands stood her ground. “First I need you to promise me you’ll stop your little games.”
“What games exactly?’
“You know very well. You’re an opportunist.”
“So what’s in it for me?” Sonya asked.
Paula threw up her hands in triumph. “I knew it! Didn’t I tell you, Mummy?” she cried as though her low opinion of Sonya had been vindicated.
Marilyn opened her Chanel handbag, and then pulled out a cheque book. “Don’t attempt to double cross me, young lady. How much?”
