into sight, tall and lithe and confident as a young goddess, her wide shoulders and long legs emphasising the graceful curves of breasts and hips. The glowing light of the setting sun played like a nimbus around hair the colour of dark honey, tied back to reveal the striking contours of her face.
A severe goddess, he decided—more Minerva than Venus. But then, he’d always preferred the challenge of intelligence to overt, eager sexuality.
Something stirred into life inside him, a lazily predatory instinct that startled him.
He ignored it. Desire could be inconvenient, and over the years he’d learned to manage it.
He’d known from their first meeting four years ago that Melissa Considine wasn’t a suitable candidate for an affair. Apart from the fact that Gabe was a good friend, she simply wasn’t his type; refreshingly down-to-earth, she exuded a simple, straightforward innocence that suggested a charming lack of experience.
However, because he never took anyone on trust, he had run a search on her during the day. Interestingly, it had turned up precious little; perhaps that innocence was real.
Or perhaps, he thought cynically, noting the subtle, sexy sway of her hips as she turned to look at the mountains, she’d just been remarkably discreet.
He could have contacted his head of Security, who’d probably have been able to dig deeper, but for some reason he hadn’t.
Still, he’d found out a few things. He ticked them off as he watched her come towards him along the lakeshore. Her father had died when she was nine, her aristocratic French mother five years later. She’d gone to a top-grade boarding-school in England, a finishing school in Switzerland. With an excellent degree in marketing under her belt she was now taking her master’s at a prestigious university in America. So she had a good brain—probably a first-rate one.
She stooped to pick up some small thing. Hawke’s eyes narrowed and the tug of hunger sharpened into a goad when she straightened and an errant little breeze moulded the thin material of her jacket around her magnificent breasts.
Heat kindled in his loins. Damn, he wanted her…
Tough, he told himself ruthlessly. She was only twenty-three, ten years younger than he was, and she’d been sheltered all her life. He shouldn’t have asked her to dinner. Hell, his one experience of an ingénue—an actress-debutante who’d developed a crush on him with no encouragement whatsoever and made a damned nuisance of herself when he’d let her down as gently as he could—had taught him not to take anyone at face value.
Young she might have been, but Lucy St James had thought nothing of weeping all over the tabloids about an affair that had never happened. He liked his lovers experienced and too sophisticated to demand any more than a passionate affair; that way, when they parted no one got hurt.
Just lately, however, he’d been thinking it might be time to consider marriage.
But not, he told himself caustically, watching Melissa stare out across the lake as though searching for a lover in the gathering dusk, with someone he’d asked to dinner purely as a courtesy to her brothers.
And that was a lie.
The invitation had been a direct result of the dance they’d shared almost a year ago. Until then she’d been Gabe’s younger sister, notable only for her height, her coltish grace and her reserve.
Don’t forget her eyes, his photographic memory prompted—heavy-lidded and topaz-gold, set under fly-away brows. And the mouth that made him wonder if she ever let her full lips relax into lush sensuousness.
Skin like magnolia petals, and a voice all crisp coolness on the surface but with an intriguing hint of huskiness…
Hawke said something succinct and irritable beneath his breath. All right, so for some reason she’d stuck like a burr in his memory, and that dance in Provence was still as fresh and new as it had been the following day.
Probably because he’d never danced with anyone who’d stayed so silent, practised no tricks, merely followed his lead as though caught in some bewitched time out of time!
He hadn’t wanted to talk either, in case words shattered the tenuous enchantment that surrounded them that night. Content to waltz with her in his arms, he’d watched her grave, absorbed face, the soft mouth tender as though she’d strayed into a dream…
It had been an oddly moving experience, so moving that he hadn’t gone near her for the rest of the night. Although, he remembered, he’d known when she and her brothers left the ballroom.
He walked out onto the stone terrace, disconcerted at his satisfaction when she turned as though his presence had impinged on some sixth sense. After a moment’s hesitation she came towards him.
Hawke drew in a sharp breath. His previous thought that she looked like some goddess of old came back to him; instead of the unsophisticated student he knew her to be, she projected a potent physical radiance.
Her smile, tentative and fleeting, banished it instantly, thank God.
Quelling the slow growl of sexual hunger in his gut, he said more sternly than he’d intended, ‘Good evening, Melissa. I’m glad you could come.’
‘Thank you,’ she said a little breathlessly.
Once they were inside he held out his hand. ‘Can I take your jacket?’
‘I…Yes, thank you.’
After the crisp coolness of the air outside the room was warm, but she felt oddly reluctant to surrender her outer layer. The silk of her top felt suddenly thin and too revealing, the fake jewels obvious and cheap.
Nevertheless, she’d look a total idiot if she wore the jacket all evening. And Hawke clearly wasn’t in the least interested in what lay beneath it; a swift glance revealed no emotion at all in the forceful features.
His closeness, emphasised by the light touch of his hands on her shoulders as he took the garment, produced gentle tremors of tantalising energy through her. The world froze, suspending them in a fragile bubble of silence and stillness so that her senses lingered obsessively on each tiny, heart-jerking stimulus.
A faint, almost subliminal scent, masculine and wholly disturbing, set her pulse rate soaring. Did his hands linger on her shoulders as though staking a claim she didn’t dare recognise?
No, she told herself sternly, while her body swayed slightly and she had to control an urge to hyperventilate. Of course not; he was merely being polite.
And she was behaving as foolishly as a fifteen-year-old in the throes of her first crush!
He dropped her jacket onto the back of a chair. Masking her dilating pupils with her lashes, Melissa took a swift step away and tried to reassemble the shreds of her self-confidence by examining the table with a professional interest.
The staff had done him proud, setting the white damask with flowers from the warmer North Island—rich apricot and cream roses with a softly intimate perfume. Wine glasses sparkled in the light of candles, and the silver gleamed richly, burnished by the gentle flames.
‘I hope you’re enjoying yourself here,’ she said laboriously.
OK, so pedestrian was
