Her eyes blazed.
Once he had possessed the power to disturb her, but no longer. Now there was only hatred left.
The extent of her fury disconcerted her fleetingly, fully alive and as fulminatingly intense as ever, despite all the years that had gone by since she had last felt like this.
‘That’s Luke Scott, Florian!’ she said sharply.
‘Sure, didn’t Giles ever mention him?’ Florian was surprised.
Maria’s tenderly passionate mouth tightened. Did Florian think she would be here if the name had occurred in the almost six months of correspondence between her and Giles? But perhaps he did. Florian was renowned for many things, but sensitivity wasn’t among them.
‘No, and neither did you,’ she said tautly, her party mood a distant memory. ‘Florian, don’t you remember? That—that man had me fired from that very first job, the one you organised for me back in South Africa when I left school!’
‘Hell, I haven’t thought about that station in years.’ Florian laughed and shrugged. ‘There are always so many firings in radio that it hardly seems a big deal any more.’
‘It was a big deal to me at the time,’ Maria snapped, her tolerance of his perpetual self-absorption vanished along with her brilliant mood.
‘Oh, come on!’ he began to protest easily.
‘Don’t you remember the way he did it?’ Maria’s eyes were pure topaz. ‘It was after that weekend gig in Zimbabwe—but I seem to remember that you took two weeks’ leave immediately after that, so perhaps you never knew. It wasn’t the usual rationalisation procedure, believe me! I arrived at work on the Monday and was handed a cheque and my personal belongings at the desk in the foyer and was then escorted out by Security. It took me a week to get myself together again, and by the time you got back from leave I’d left Johannesburg because there weren’t any jobs for me there. The subject never came up when our paths crossed in Sydney three years ago, did it? God, Florian! And my father——’
‘Well, as you say, a rationalisation process was under way. There were loads of retrenchments,’ Florian reminded her indifferently as she broke off, choking on complex, raging emotion. ‘If you remember, Luke Scott was with us for six months as a favour to the station’s director-general, who was a friend of his, because our listenership figures were dropping and we were losing advertising. He had carte blanche as long as he revived our fortunes—luckily he knew I was the station’s biggest asset. You were just a junior, a sort of Girl Friday with no qualifications, hoping to learn the ropes.’
‘I needed that job. It was paying for my Communi-cations course.’
‘Does it matter now? You made it in radio without it,’ Florian pointed out carelessly.
Maria shook her head angrily, aware of the futility of trying to explain the dilemma she had faced all those years ago to a man whose self-centredness precluded his ever having had to make a choice between his own interests and someone else’s.
Her eyes had remained on the tall, casually dressed man at the other side of the room, noting that little had changed in six years. He still held himself with the easy confidence she remembered, his dark head carried at an unconsciously arrogant angle, and he still had that polish to him, the patina of success.
He had been talking to a tall girl with white-blonde hair, but suddenly he turned his head slightly and looked straight at Maria, and every muscle in her body clenched in furious, shocked resistance. Reason said he couldn’t possibly have any recollection of a nine-teen-year-old nobody he had once caused to be dismissed from her first job, but the knowledge of her bones was stronger.
Luke Scott remembered her.
‘I thought he came to us from Hong Kong that time? But he’s English originally, isn’t he?’ she prompted Florian, as if she could alter the truth by uncovering an error.
‘Hong Kong is where he’s based. I told you, he has interests all over this part of the world. We don’t usually get this much hands-on attention from him, but I suspect that Cavell Fielding has something to do with his presence as he’s lending us her talents for the launch of our new look—or sound, I should say. The blonde. She’s his Hong Kong operation’s media liaison chief. Well, that’s her official, public position. Unoffi-cially and privately——’
‘Ah, Maria!’ Giles Estwick, the Englishman who handled the station’s financial affairs and commercial deals, had appeared at her side. ‘I was going to give the two of you a few more minutes out there, but if you’ve exhausted old times you can come and meet Luke Scott.’
‘I must find Nicky,’ said Florian, and drifted away.
A dangerous sparkle of anticipation in her eyes, Maria drew her shoulders back and walked across the room with her host at her side. There were women present who were more beautiful than she was, notably the blonde beside Luke Scott and Nicky Kai, the world-famous Taiwanese ex-model, but the languid sway of Maria’s hips above long slim legs drew attention, as did her unusual colouring, an exotic combination of olive-toned skin, streaky brown and blonde hair and eyes that could be anything from copper to amber, depending on her mood.
She was aware of Luke Scott watching her, but heedless of anyone else. Dark grey eyes, Celtic eyes, were ironic, as was his smile as Giles made the intro-ductions, including Cavell Fielding, and Maria returned it with her own piquantly imperfect smile.
‘But we’ve met before, haven’t we, Mr Scott?’
She was driven by a need to get in first, her mood openly aggressive.
‘Of course.’ He was urbane, and very slightly taunting. ‘Although I don’t recall that we ever actually spoke to each other.’
Maria laughed, a lovely liquid sound, but it required an effort of will to lift her hand and place it in his outstretched one, and resentment surged as his fingers closed round it briefly and were removed.
Shaking hands with the enemy. The distaste she experienced was so intense that she felt dizzy for several seconds.
‘I was too much in awe of you to utter in those days,’ she confessed, lightly dismissive and matching the subtle mockery of his tone.
It was a palatable version of the truth, and one she had spent years working at believing. Six years ago she had been tongue-tied in his presence, and terrified by the strength of her reaction to him, her fear manifesting itself physically, stopping the breath in her throat, tensing her muscles and making her nerves leap every time he moved or spoke to anyone, and the rare occasions on which his glance had strayed idly in her direction, it had actually hurt her. It had been as if he came from another, alien world, beyond her experience or comprehension, a glamorous, glittering man who made her think of diamonds, so hard and sharp were the edges of his personality.
‘This was in South Africa about—what?—six years ago,’ he told Giles and Cavell. ‘Your first job, wasn’t it, Maria?’
‘It didn’t last long,’ she said drily. ‘Yes, Florian Jones had organised it for me.’
‘And since then the two of you have got together in Australia once, and now again in Taiwan, of course.’
The contempt, or criticism, was probably hidden from the others, but Maria was acutely aware of it, and incensed.
‘I got him the Sydney job,’ she vouchsafed with delicate emphasis.
‘And since Sydney she’s been in Wellington, gaining experience as a programme manager.’ Giles was under-standably intent on selling her appointment to their real boss.
‘So Taipei isn’t even a promotion.’ Luke sketched a smile, his tone still laden with mockery.
‘Just a change,’ Maria asserted blithely, hating him—hating him.
‘And