His One-Night Mistress(10)

She said mendaciously, "I don't think we've ever met before, Mr. Talbot.  But you remind me very strongly of someone I'd much prefer to  forget … please forgive my lack of good manners." There. She'd given an  excuse for her rudeness without publicly embarrassing him by telling the  truth. Turning to Conway, she added, "I'd love to meet you tomorrow for  breakfast, if you have the time."

Conway bowed gallantly. "I always have time for you, Lia. Eight-thirty here in the foyer?"

"Wonderful," she said and smiled at the Sonyards. "Please excuse me."  Then she made the mistake of glancing at Seth. He was staring at her,  his brows knit, a look of such genuine puzzlement on his face that she  could have slapped him. The man should have been an actor, not the head  of a giant corporation.

Calling on all her self-control, she said lightly, "I'm going to be late for my reservation, I must go. Enjoy your evening."

"Until we meet again," Seth said in a clipped voice.

That'll be never if I have my way, thought Lia, turning on her heel and  leaving the foyer as though she had nothing more important than dinner  on her mind.

She didn't have a reservation in the Reef Room; she only hoped they'd  have room for her. Not that she was the slightest bit hungry.

Another wave of anger surged through her. Her heels tapping sharply on  the stone path, she walked between banks of plumbago, frangipani and  hibiscus. Until Seth Talbot had crossed her path, she'd been looking  forward to her solitary meal in the Tradewind Room. How dare he act as  though he'd never laid eyes on her before? How dare he? And then to have  the gall to ask how he'd offended her. The bastard. The cold-hearted,  irresponsible bastard.

Her steps faltered. It was her own child who was the bastard. Her beloved Marise.

Whose eyes were the green of a summer meadow. Just like Seth's.

Once Lia had realized, eight years ago, that Seth had no intention of  answering her letters, she'd made it a policy never to speak about her  personal life to the media; so Marise's existence, although generally  known, only rarely emerged in print. She'd been fortunate in that she'd  put on very little weight during her pregnancy, and had had a dressmaker  who'd expertly masked the gentle bulge of Lia's belly with Empire  waistlines and concealing panels of stiff fabric. She'd had to miss two  concerts. That was all.

As her due date had approached, Lia had cashed in half the bonds her  parents had left her and, using them as security, had bought a small,  but very lovely old farm in the country eighty miles from Manhattan. The  bank had come up with the mortgage and a local carpenter had done the  renovations. Her daughter had been born in the little hospital five  miles down the road.

She'd hired a nanny. She'd bought a car. She'd made a life for herself  and her child. The farm had become home, giving mother and daughter a  very necessary stability.

Despite his betrayal, she hadn't allowed Seth to derail her life. But  neither had she been able to forget him. For one thing, every time she  looked into her daughter's eyes, Lia saw him. For another, she'd never  replaced him. Not once, in eight years, had she felt pulled toward a man  the way she had been toward Seth. So her bed had remained empty, and  her heart untouched.

Passion, once experienced in all its overwhelming power, couldn't easily  be duplicated. That had been one of the lessons Seth had taught her.  That, along with the disillusion and wariness of the deeply wounded.

What was she going to do? She could leave the island tomorrow morning on  the resort's helicopter, pleading a family emergency. Nancy, Lia's  nanny, wouldn't be happy with her; it was vivacious, dependable Nancy  who insisted Lia have a few days a year all to herself.

If she left, she wouldn't have to face Seth again. Breakfast with Conway, and then she'd be gone.

Seth was going to seek her out. He'd said as much, and he wasn't a man  for idle words. How long would they be together before he spoke about  the past? More important, how long could she keep her fury to herself?

Her fiery temper had gotten her into trouble more than once in the past.  She couldn't risk it here, not with Seth. There was too much at stake.  Because she wasn't going to let him near her daughter, not for anything.  He'd done nothing to earn such a gift, and everything to desecrate it.                       
       
           



       

But if she ran for the farm with her tail between her legs, she'd be the  loser. She needed this holiday desperately, for she was returning to a  killer schedule of concerts and recording sessions. Why should she leave  here just because Seth Talbot had turned up out of the blue?

He didn't want anything to do with her. If he had, he could have contacted her at any time in the last eight years.

Standing in the warmth of a Caribbean sunset, Lia snapped off a single  bloom of hibiscus and defiantly tucked it behind her ear. She was going  to march into the Reef Room as though she owned the place, and eat her  way down the menu. Then she'd go to her cottage and read one of the  books that had been sitting on her bedside table for the last six  months.

Seth Talbot wasn't going to ruin her holiday.

But neither was he ever going to meet Marise.





CHAPTER SIX





A BIRD was screeching in the bushes next to the cottage. Seth turned  over in bed and stared blearily at the clock radio. In bright red  numerals it said 0545: numerals that were just as red as Lia d'Angeli's  dress. Ouch, he thought, and buried his head under the pillows. The  first bird had been joined by a second; it sounded like full-blown  domestic warfare was being waged two feet from his open window.

He'd stake his brand new red Porsche that Lia had been planning on  eating in the Tradewind Room until she'd seen him. Then she'd changed  her mind prestissimo. He tried to block out the image of her crouched by  the door, making a little boy laugh. Or the way her long black hair  waved to her shoulders, gleaming like satin. Her skin was like satin,  too, he thought, and felt his groin harden in instinctive response.

Trouble. That's what she spelled with her lustrous dark eyes and sensuous, red-painted mouth. Big trouble.

He didn't need that kind of trouble in his life. Why couldn't she have  gone somewhere else for her holidays? Somewhere a long way from here.

Knowing sleep was out of the question, Seth turned on the bedside light  and reached for the novel he'd started a couple of days ago. But he  couldn't concentrate on the plot, and kept having to flick back through  the pages to see who was who.

Impatiently he put the book down. It hadn't been the birds that had  woken him; it had been a nightmare, one that seemed totally out of place  in this luxurious setting.

The images were still fluttering at the edge of his vision: miserable  shanties, burned villages, refugees displaced with only what they could  carry on their backs. He'd seen it all only a few days ago in a  rebel-torn area near Africa's equator. It was the children who had  gotten to him. Orphaned children, weeping. Starving children beyond  tears. A newly dead little boy, his mother wailing her sorrow … what were  his troubles compared to that?

As always, he'd done his best to see that the money his foundation was  channeling into the area went straight to those who needed it; in the  course of which he'd run foul of a gun-happy rebel and a bullet had  plowed across his ribcage. He was just lucky the guy's aim had been off.

No matter what he did, one thing was obvious. Single-handed or with the  help of his admirable staff, he couldn't stop the war or stamp out the  root causes of the poverty … those went far beyond the reach of one man,  no matter how rich or how well-meaning.

Oddly enough, among Seth's primary emotions as he'd flown home had been a  searing realization of the aridity of his own life. Sure, he had  friends, good ones, scattered all over the globe. But otherwise, he was  detached. Uninvolved. He could tell himself he was the inevitable  product of the disastrous marriage between his mother and father. Blame  his need to be a loner on them. But wasn't he, when all was said and  done, poorer than any of those close-knit families he'd seen struggling  to survive under a tropical sun? They at least had each other.

Who did he have?

No one. With a disgusted grunt, Seth heaved himself out of bed. Despite  his sore ribs, he was going swimming. Afterward, so he wouldn't bump  into Conway and Lia d'Angeli, he'd order room service: a calorie-laden  breakfast of all the things that were bad for him, like bacon and hash  browns. He needed this holiday and he was darn well going to enjoy it.

While the swim woke Seth up, breakfast made him drowsy, so he slept for  nearly an hour in his lounge chair on the shaded, breezy deck of his  cottage. Waking midmorning, he decided he had just enough time to join  the boat that should be heading out to the reef for some snorkeling.  Grabbing his gear, shoving his dark glasses on his nose, Seth set out  for the dock.