made you apply for this post?’
His question caught her off-guard. For a moment she said nothing and then stammered. ‘I…I…I was ready for a change,’ she managed at last.
‘Is that so? You know you’re remarkably well qualified for a young lady who is content to be merely a PA. Have you never thought of taking on something more challenging? You have an excellent degree.’
‘I have my ambitions yes.’ Selina tried to mimic his cool self-possession.
‘And what are they, I wonder?’ He was coming towards her now, stalking her almost, she thought angrily. What was he hoping to achieve? ‘My uncle thinks very highly of you. In fact I’d say he’s taken to you in a remarkably short space of time. Most unusual. He’s normally a very cautious man where attractive young women are concerned.’
‘Why?’ Selina asked flippantly. ‘Does he have a jealous wife?’
Just for a second she was alarmed by the gleam in the midnight blue eyes, but then it was gone, his expression flat and unreadable.
‘Not very clever, Miss Thorn,’ he said at last. ‘If you’re only half as clever as I think you are you must have read all there is to read on my uncle; done all your background research before you applied for this job. You know very well why he would want to avoid any sort of entanglement outside his marriage don’t you?’
Selina felt as though the floor had suddenly dropped away beneath her, leaving her on thin ice.
‘I know that many years ago your uncle was involved with another woman,’ she agreed coolly, turning aside with what she hoped was a calm disdain as she added, ‘but then so have many other prominent men.’
‘Indeed they have, but very few have attracted the subsequent blaze of publicity and notoriety suffered by my uncle. I was eight years old at the time. My aunt almost suffered a nervous breakdown.’
‘I’m sure it must have been an extremely traumatic time for you all.’ Selina was distant, her voice clipped. Don’t tell me any more, it warned him, I don’t want to hear, but her warning signals were ignored.
‘My uncle has three daughters; the eldest one was expecting her first child at that time; she lost it; the second ran away from school because she could not endure the torment inflicted on her by her school-mates. You’re looking quite pale, Miss Thorn. Do you find what I’m relating to you upsetting?’
‘It was all a long time ago,’ she managed to say, hating him now with an intensity that made her long to physically assault him. How dared he tell her all this…. Didn’t he think that she had suffered…that she… She pulled herself together before she lost control completely.
‘I can assure you that I have no desire to break up your uncle’s marriage,’ she told him crisply. That much at least was true.
‘Maybe not,’ he agreed slowly, ‘but you have some ulterior means for being here. I can sense it. Body signals are a very strange thing, Miss Thorn,’ he added watching her. ‘They give away to others so much more than we want them to see. Why do you dislike me so much?’
‘How could I dislike you? I barely know you.’ Selina forced a cool smile, ‘I think you’re suffering from an ego problem, Mr Gresham. I am merely indifferent to you.’ She was lying and she suspected that he knew it but she wasn’t going to back down.
‘Is that a fact.’ He said it softly closing the distance between them before she could move. ‘Well, let’s just find out how much truth there is in that statement shall we?’
The hard warmth of his mouth as it covered hers shocked her into submission. She could feel the steady beat of his heart against her body, but her own refused to mirror its firm rhythm. It thudded threadily, her body tensing in mingled shock and rejection, her eyes blazing bitter defiance and fury as she fought against the domination of his hands and mouth. He was kissing her with ruthless precision and a great deal of sexual expertise; her body shamingly recognised that, even while her mind was disgusted by it. As soon as he released her Selina slapped him, panting hard as she delivered the hard blow.
It left the palm of her hand smarting and a white welt of flesh against his lean cheek which was now slowly filling with dark blood.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to repeat the experiment.’ For some reason his soft words brought darting flares of pain. He watched her, eyes slitted, ‘Do you know,’ he added, ‘I’ve always considered that that particular form of retaliation sprang more from sexual frustration than annoyance. Perhaps sometime it might be worth while putting my theory to the test.’
The way he said it made her blood run through her veins in angry fire. ‘Not with me you don’t,’ Selina told him rashly.
For a moment something came and then went in his eyes and when he spoke again, he appeared totally in control, unlike her, Selina reflected bitterly as he drawled. ‘Well now a man with an ego like mine just might consider that challenge to be an invitation, my dear. Is that what turns you on? To slap a man down and then needle him into physical savagery? If so, it’s a dangerous hobby.’
She wanted to spit and fly at him like an angry cat. No one had ever tossed such outrageous accusations at her before, and certainly not in a languid, almost soft voice that suggested that there was no possible way in which its owner’s assessment of her could be wrong.
If her father hadn’t walked back into his office just then Selina didn’t know how she would have reacted. As it was she muttered something about a phone call and excused herself. It was only later, safe in her own flat, that she was forced to admit to herself that resent it though she did, Piers Gresham had managed to provoke a physical response from her in a way that no man had done before. Even now she found it impossible to accept that there had been that moment of fierce need to respond to his kiss; that sensation of melting and then burning that urged her to yield. But she hadn’t done so. He had broken the kiss before she had betrayed herself that much.
From the first moment she saw him she had known that Piers Gresham was a man to be wary of. Now this impression had been reinforced a thousandfold. It would be a long time before she forgot how he had looked at her when he questioned her. So he didn’t trust her did he; well she didn’t trust him either.
Back in her flat that evening some impulse she couldn’t contain led her to study her features carefully in her bedroom mirror. What had Piers seen there that had led him to make his accusations? A formidable man the Judge had called him; for formidable she would have said diabolical Selina thought mentally. Even now hours after her encounter with him her pulses still fluttered at the thought of him, her mind and body unable to relax from the turmoil he had caused, and she for the space of one heartbeat had been in real danger of succumbing to him, of forgetting everything she had learned during her life and responding to his kiss… It would never happen again. Maybe the Judge had been right and she had been wrong to react as she had done in the restaurant, but even then her body had been sending her signals that had terrified her and she had reacted instinctively, too frightened by them to use reason and logic.
For some reason that evening she found it impossible to settle. Normally she enjoyed the quiet hours of solitude in her flat. After the hectic bustle of her foster parents home, where, despite their kindness, she had never felt she fitted in, she had come to relish the peace and quiet of her own home. The books she had collected at Oxford lined her bookshelves; the antique dresser she had found at a country market and lovingly restored holding her china and few little treasures.
