only vulnerability.
Greg came over to them, his arm draped round the blonde typist Genista had seen watching Luke earlier. Greg’s eyes were faintly bloodshot and Genista guessed that he had had too much to drink.
‘Well, well,’ he drawled. ‘What’s all this? Has our ice maiden melted at last? You are a lucky man, Luke. Genista is one very choosy lady.’
‘You’ve had too much to drink, Greg,’ Luke told him evenly. ‘Why don’t you take him away and make him a cup of black coffee?’ he suggested to the blonde.
Quite a few people were watching them discreetly. Genista had been wondering how she would deliver the body blow which would deflate for all time Luke Ferguson’s inflated ego, and all at once she knew. He turned to her, his fingers trailing down her cheek in a caress which parodied tenderness, the desire burning in his eyes plain for all to see.
‘If you’re ready to leave?’
He really was an excellent actor, she marvelled. His voice had held just the merest suspicion of a faint tremor, as though he were having great difficulty in controlling his overwhelming desire to be alone with her; as though he actually felt more for her than merely a fleeting need to assuage a momentary desire and reaffirm his belief in his irresistibility to her sex.
‘Leave? With you?’ She arched her eyebrows and managed a cool trill of laughter. ‘My dear man, you’ve been entertaining company, but not that entertaining. I expect far more from a man than that before I allow him to take me anywhere.’ She turned her back on him, and smiled at Greg. ‘Be a darling, Greg, and get me another drink, will you?’ He was too drunk to argue. Well aware that everyone was watching them, Genista turned back to Luke, almost as though the gesture were an afterthought, her expression mockingly bland as she suggested, ‘If you’re lonely why don’t you ask Mary to go with you? You’d love Luke to take you home, wouldn’t you, Mary?’
The blonde girl glowered angrily at her, ignoring Luke, as she tossed her head disdainfully.
‘I’m not so short of a man that I need your cast-offs, thank you!’
Her departing flounce was rather spoiled by a slight wobble as she turned on excessively high heels, but otherwise her performance could not have been bettered had Genista written her script personally.
Luke was watching her with eyes that were suddenly smouldering like a volcano on the point of eruption, but Genista ignored the warning signs to say sweetly, ‘Still here? Can’t you take a hint?’
‘That’s what I thought I’d been doing ever since you walked in here,’ he snarled back at her, all the earlier traces of pseudo-tenderness gone. ‘You’ve been leading me on all evening, and now you turn me down flat. I want to know why, Genista.’
She hadn’t been expecting this. She had thought that her refusal to leave with him would have been enough to make him disappear without another word.
‘You do?’ Somehow she managed to appear calm. ‘Oh dear! I do so hate hurting people’s feelings. You’re a very attractive man, Luke,’ she added sweetly, ‘but you’re just not my type.’ She looked him up and down assessingly, a little surprised at her own ability to slip so easily into her new role. It was obviously true that there was a little of the actress in all women, although she seriously doubted her ability to give a repeat performance. Already her legs were beginning to feel distinctly shaky. There was something about the menacingly silent way in which Luke was regarding her that made her wonder if she might not have been wiser merely to have been satisfied with her initial success at putting him down, without trying to add any further gilding, but it was too late for second thoughts now. She had gone too far for those!
‘Oh?’ The solitary word was ominously quiet. ‘When did you discover that fact? When I didn’t accompany my offer to take you home with the promise of something more tangible if you spent the night with me?’
It was by a supreme effort of will that she prevented herself from hitting him. The cynical gleam in the charcoal grey eyes made the blood rush to her cheeks, but from somewhere she found the self-control to clench her hands into two small fists and say icily, ‘There isn’t enough money in the world to compensate me for having to endure a night in your bed. I can’t think of anything that would fill me with more revulsion.’
‘No?’ Luke’s voice had gone thick with rage. ‘Then you’re short of both imagination and memory. You were all but inviting me to make love to you there and then when we were dancing. If that was revulsion you felt you’ve got a damned funny way of showing it!’
When she didn’t say anything his eyes suddenly darkened suspiciously, his fingers biting into her wrist as he grasped it, hauling her against him. ‘You set me up, didn’t you?’ he demanded harshly. ‘You deliberately led me on, fully intending to humiliate me, didn’t you, you little bitch! God, you must be sick!’
Their onlookers had lost interest in them now and were drifting away. No doubt they thought Luke was still pleading with her to go with him, Genista thought wryly, nursing her aching wrist, when he turned without another word as he headed towards the door, leaving her standing alone.
‘Phew, you were taking a bit of a risk, weren’t you?’ Jilly Holmes, Greg’s secretary commented to Genista ten minutes later when Luke had gone.
Genista liked Jilly, they got on well together. She wrinkled her nose and shrugged. ‘Serves him right. He shouldn’t go round expecting females to fall at his feet with delight just because he deigns to smile at them.’
‘You weren’t exactly discouraging him, love,’ Jilly pointed out mildly. ‘In fact you were positively leading him on, and he didn’t strike me as the type of man to take very kindly to the way you humiliated him. It was a bit much, wasn’t it, Gen?’
‘What are you trying to do? Stir up my non-existent conscience? I’m telling you, Jilly, he got exactly what he was asking for, supercilious brute!’
‘Oh, come on. He was rather gorgeous. I wish he’d been looking at me the way he was looking at you. You had me convinced, you know. When the pair of you were dancing together, I thought the impossible had happened and you’d actually found a man you could like. You know, love, you were lucky he didn’t get nasty with you. You were really giving him the green light.’
‘Stop feeling sorry for him,’ shrugged Genista. ‘All I did was bruise his ego. You can’t be foolish enough to think he cared about me. We’d only just met! All he wanted to do was get me into bed.’
‘Don’t be so sure. Haven’t you ever heard of love at first sight?’
‘Often, but not from anyone who’s ever experienced it. Look, I think it’s time I went. I don’t know why I came really.’
‘Umm,’ mused Jilly. ‘Well, you can’t act the hermit all your life. I know you like to pretend that you’re quite happy in your solitude, but there must be times when you feel …’
‘A longing for a home and family?’ Genista interrupted briskly. ‘Never! Happy families are a myth, that’s all. Say goodbye to Greg for me, will you, Jilly. I’m going now.’
‘And you’re going to walk, I suppose, all on your own through the streets of London at this hour of the night. You must be mad!’
‘It’s only a short walk—quite safe. Don’t fuss. After all, I’m probably in far less
