A Sudden Engagement and The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife(12)

She did so hesitantly, watching the room come to life as Drew switched on two table lamps. The room was larger than she expected, with windows at either end, furnished traditionally with what she suspected were several very good antiques. Two large settees covered in a bold-patterned fabric dominated the room, and although it lacked the Georgian elegance of the Baileys’ home, Kirsty had an immediate sense of homecoming and relaxation. Children could play happily in this room, adults could unwind in it once they had gone to bed, sharing one of those settees, perhaps, while they talked; the table lamps casting an intimate glow over them, their children sleeping upstairs. Two boys, perhaps, with dark ruffled hair and serious grey eyes.

‘Something wrong?’ Drew asked softly.

He was watching her closely, and her face flamed. She had always been a bit of a daydreamer, but never before had her daydreams taken on such an intimacy. How strange that when she had imagined a couple in this room, they had been Drew and herself; their children sleeping upstairs.… What on earth was happening to her? she asked herself crossly. The last thing she wanted was to get involved with Drew Chalmers. She disliked the man intensely. She only had to get within ten feet of him and her whole body started to react in the most unpredictable way.

‘Would you like a drink? Oh, don’t worry,’ Drew was quick to assure her. ‘I’m not proposing to get you drunk. You’d been drinking that night in Winton, hadn’t you?’ he asked quietly.

The suddenness of the question caught Kirsty off guard. Drinking! He made it sound so horrible and deliberate somehow, and she felt impelled to defend herself.

‘One cocktail and half a bottle of wine,’ she admitted, with more pain in her voice than she realised. ‘I don’t normally drink much at all, but I was on my own, and feeling miserable.…’ She broke off, her face flaming, wondering what on earth had made her tell him that, but her chagrin was forgotten when he came towards her, a furious dark anger in his eyes as they moved relentlessly over her body, probing its soft contours with a knowledge that seared.

‘Dear God!’ It was almost a prayer, but there was no repentance in the angry line of his mouth, or the eyes that stripped her savagely of all her defences. ‘What are your family thinking of? Have they never warned you of the folly of drinking too much when you can’t take it? God, I thought that was the first rule parents impressed on their teenage daughters! How the hell have you managed to live so long and stay so naïve?’ He shook his head, exasperation darkening his eyes as he saw her paling with the shock of his words.

‘You must have been to teenage parties, surely; seen what happens when a girl has too much to drink?’

‘Of course I have,’ Kirsty agreed painfully. She had always avoided drinking at parties, mindful of her mother’s warning that it was easy to lose control of one’s ability to reason after a few drinks, and besides, having seen what happened to the girls who didn’t heed their parents’ advice she had made a vow that when she did make love with someone, it would be because she wanted to, and had made the decision stone cold sober.

‘And yet still you went to my suite after God knows how potent a cocktail and several glasses of wine? What was it,’ he jeered, ‘Dutch courage? Well, we both know the result, don’t we?’

‘I never thought.…’

‘That I’d be so turned on by the sight of you that I’d want you?’ Drew finished brutally for her.

‘You were angry with me,’ Kirsty reminded him. ‘You wanted to punish me.’

‘And ended up punishing myself,’ Drew agreed sardonically. ‘But it doesn’t end there, does it? Didn’t you stop even once to consider some of the consequences of what you were doing?’ His jacket was discarded with swift irritation, the light from the lamp behind him outlining the shape of his torso in the thin white shirt. Kirsty’s mouth went dry, and a curious tension enveloped her. She closed her eyes, trying to blot out the sight of that powerful male body, the dark shadowing of body hair erotically obvious beneath the silk shirt. When had she become aware of such things? she wondered, licking dry lips; when had she first discovered that a man’s body could be a beautiful thing, exciting to look at and touch? She knew the answer, but she didn’t want to admit it.

‘I just wanted to show you that I could act convincingly,’ she got out huskily. ‘I never thought I would see you again.’

‘No,’ Drew agreed harshly, ‘you behaved like a spoiled child, and thought you could simply walk away from what you’d done and put it all behind you. Well I’m afraid life in the adult world doesn’t work out quite like that, as you’ve discovered tonight.’

‘I didn’t ask you to get me a job,’ Kirsty protested, stung by the validity of his criticism. ‘I didn’t ask you to say you were engaged to me.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Drew agreed heavily, ‘and I’ve already explained my reasons for both those actions. God, you’re such a child, you aren’t fit to be allowed out on your own!’ he announced with a savagery that sent her stomach muscles into a protesting spasm. ‘That night at the hotel I could have raped you, and there wasn’t a thing you could have done about it. Didn’t you stop once to think about that? Is your innocence of so little value to you, that you’d carelessly throw it away, simply out of childish spite? Or are you so anxious to join the grown-up world that you’re getting desperate for someone to open the door for you?’ he taunted softly.

‘That’s a vile thing to suggest!’

‘Isn’t it just?’ he agreed suavely. ‘But one that could explain one hell of a lot.’ There was an air of tension about him that puzzled Kirsty—a sort of suppressed violence that electrified the air between them and made her pulses race in reaction.

‘I know you didn’t announce our engagement just to save my good name!’ Kirsty hurled at him childishly, driven by some deep-seated instinct to destroy the sensations threatening to engulf her. ‘You can’t deny that there was another reason?’

He seemed to stiffen, thick black lashes masking his expression from her.

‘No,’ he agreed expressionlessly. ‘However, I didn’t realise I’d been quite so obvious.’ There was a curious pause, as though he was searching for the right words, a hesitation about him that made him seem oddly vulnerable, and for some reason the mere fact that he should be vulnerable—and show it—over Beverley Travers increased her bitterness and resentment tenfold.

‘You needn’t think I’m going to help you,’ she told him aggressively, ‘far from it. I think what you’re trying to do is despicable!’

‘Do you now?’

It was several seconds before Kirsty realised that the strangely flat words masked an anger far greater than any Drew had ever exhibited before, and when she did, fear trembled through her, making her rush on into incautious speech.

‘Yes, I do—and to try and use a trumped-up engagement as a lever is even worse!’

‘You’d have preferred me to make a laughing stock of myself and a tramp out of you by letting Beverley’s comment stand—is that it? You’re very naïve, Kirsty, if you honestly believe that doing so wouldn’t have had repercussions—for both of us. How long do you suppose it would be before your reputation as an actress is tainted by rumours and whispers that you don’t confine your ambition to appearances on stage! And me—how much longer do you suppose I would be taken seriously as a critic if it became common knowledge that I shared my bed with every little aspiring actress who climbed into it?’ There was no mercy in his eyes for her pale face and stunned expression. ‘Think about it,’ he told her hardily, ‘and you’ll soon realise I’m not motivated by any quixotic impulse—our careers could be on the line here—both of them, and it’s a risk I’m not prepared to take even if you are. You do realise that if you hadn’t pulled that idiotic stunt in the first place none of this would have happened, and if it weren’t for the fact that.… Oh, what the hell!’ he exploded suddenly, pushing irritated fingers into his hair. ‘We could argue about this all night and get nowhere. Our engagement stands, Kirsty. Any attempts by you to break it off, or to reveal the truth, and I’ll make you wish you’d never been born—and if you’re thinking I couldn’t, think again. I grew up in a pretty hard school, and I could make you very sorry you crossed me.’

An inner voice warned her that it would be folly to press him any harder, but warring with it was a furious determination not to give in to what was tantamount to bullying.

‘How?’ she was tempted to demand, but the word trembled unspoken on her lips. However, Drew was obviously well aware of the train of her thoughts, because anger glittered and smouldered in his eyes as they searched her flushed and mutely defiant features.

‘Oh, there are any number of ways,’ he drawled coolly, ‘in answer to that question so obviously burning on your tongue. At the moment the most pleasurable, as far as I’m concerned, would be to take you to my bed here and now, and teach you a lesson I’d make sure you were a long time forgetting!’