could have been carved out of granite. A frown on his high forehead gave him a thoughtful look, but the set of his mouth was hard and uncompromising. He was reputedly only thirty-five, but he looked older. Not married, she’d also read, and decided that wasn’t surprising. He didn’t look like the type of man many women would take to, despite his wealth.
Bob’s phone started to ring. Muttering a swear word under his breath, he swept it up to his ear. Thirty seconds later he swore even harder.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised to her. ‘But McAllister has arrived early and the other parties aren’t here yet. Neither have I finished reading through this damned complicated contract. Look, could you do me a favour and go down and welcome him? Take him up to the boardroom on the next floor and get him a coffee, or a drink or whatever he might like. You’re good at that sort of thing.’
Sarah had no doubt she was. She’d been doing nothing much but getting coffee for Bob and his cohort since she started in this section. Might as well have been a waitress as well as a clerk. But her mother had taught her good manners, and excellent social skills. So she just smiled and said it would be her pleasure.
He beamed back at her. ‘You are such a good girl,’ he said.
Sarah might have taken offence if Bob had been any less than the sixty-three years he was. She was twenty-five years old. Twenty-six this year. Hardly a girl!
Rising, she smoothed down her skirt and pushed her hair back from her face before making her way from the office and along the hallway to Reception, glad in a way to have something to do. And to be honest, she was quite curious about the man she was about to meet, curious to see what he looked like without those sunglasses.
She spied him straight away, sitting all alone on one of the black leather two-seaters that dotted the large reception area. Dressed in a dark grey business suit, a white shirt and a rather dreary navy tie, he was leaning back with his arms outstretched along the back of the couch, his right foot hooked up over his left knee. His shoes, she noted, were clean but far from new. Fashion, she realised, was not one of this man’s long suits. Maybe mining magnates didn’t care about such things.
Disappointingly, his eyes were closed, but she could see the rest of him more clearly. His hair was dark brown and cut very short on top, and even shorter at the sides; a very macho look, which suited him. His nose was bigger than she’d originally thought, but his face could handle it. His mouth was wide and his top lip on the thin, slightly cruel side. His bottom lip was fuller, though not full enough to soften his hard face.
Even before he opened his eyes, Sarah knew Scott McAllister wasn’t a traditionally handsome man but there was something about him that she found perversely appealing. Odd, since she’d never been attracted to big macho-looking males, always finding them physically intimidating. She much preferred lean, elegantly handsome men who had more brains than brawn.
She stopped a metre short of his feet and cleared her throat. ‘Mr McAllister?’ she said, a sudden burst of nerves making her voice higher than she would have liked. Her drama teacher at school had once called her voice lilting. She found it a touch girlish, not a voice designed to make a great impact in court. But she was working on it.
His eyelids rose, and she finally saw them. His eyes...
An icy grey, with surprisingly long lashes. Not hard. But definitely on the cold side. Yet strangely hot at the same time. Hot and hungry. They took her in with one long sweeping glance, all of her, making her breath catch and her cheeks colour. Not a fierce blush but a blush all the same. How humiliating!
‘That’s me,’ he drawled as he unfolded himself and stood up, towering over her own five feet eight. And she had heels on as well! Not high heels admittedly, but still...
Her neck craned as she gazed up at him, her mouth having gone annoyingly dry. Suppressing a groan, she surreptitiously licked her perversely dry lips and adopted what she hoped was still a sophisticated persona.
‘The present owners of the mine aren’t here yet,’ she said with one of those coolly composed smiles she could summon on autocue. ‘So Mr Katon sent me down to look after you till they arrive.’
He didn’t return her smile. Just stared at her, his eyes like molten steel.
A returning heat started up deep inside her, melting her core and making her want to do and say the most outrageous things. The control she had to exert over herself was enormous.
‘If you’ll follow me, sir,’ she suggested, still coolly polite on the surface.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said, a small smile now lurking at the corners of that cruel yet sexy mouth. ‘I’d follow you into hell.’
Sarah’s mouth dropped open, the realisation hitting her with a certainty that was as strong as it was seductive that she felt exactly the same way about him.
Sydney, fifteen months later...
SCOTT STOOD AT the window behind his desk, staring blindly out at the view. Not that there was much of a view. The office block that housed the head office of McAllister Mines stood in the southern end of Sydney’s CBD, not down at the more picturesque harbour end of town. There was no soothing water to look at. No sparkling Opera House. No beautiful parks or gardens. Just traffic-clogged streets and rather boring buildings.
Not that anything would soothe Scott that Monday morning. Never in his life had he felt such emotional upheaval. He’d been distressed when his father had died. But death, Scott decided, was easier to cope with than betrayal. He still could hardly believe that Sarah would do this to him. They’d only been married a year, yesterday their first wedding anniversary. And whilst Scott harboured a degree of distrust in the female sex, Sarah had been different from the women responsible for his cynicism. Very different. That she would cheat on him seemed...incredible.
The text—with photos attached—had arrived on his business phone last Friday afternoon, shortly after he’d finished meeting with a Singapore billionaire who was staying on the Gold Coast, and whom Scott hoped would help solve his current cash-flow problems. Fortunately, he’d been alone at the time, as his first reaction had been utter shock. Followed by total disbelief. Gradually, however, he was forced to accept the evidence before his eyes. The incriminating photos, after all, had been crystal-clear, all of them stamped with the time and the date when they’d been taken. At lunchtime that very day.
And then there had been the accompanying message.
Thought you might like to know what your wife is getting up to when you go away.
It had been signed, ‘A friend’.
Hardly, Scott thought bitterly. More likely a business enemy of his, or a jealous female colleague of Sarah’s. His wife was the sort of girl who would inspire jealousy in other women. And in her husband. Not that that meant Sarah was innocent. His father used to say that if something looked like a duck, waddled like a duck and quacked like a duck, then the odds were pretty high that it was a duck. It didn’t take Scott long to accept that his wife was having an affair with the superbly dressed, very handsome bastard who featured in those damning photos.
Scott would never have thought himself capable of the kind of black jealousy—and almost uncontrollable fury—that had seen him abandon his PA, Cleo, on the Gold Coast to finish his business negotiations for him, making the excuse that
