Now that was an interesting speculation. Still, Jade appreciated her father wouldn’t go round proudly showing her photograph to every Tom, Dick and Harry. He was probably terrified one of them might recognise her as the little bit of fluff they’d had one night. After all, if she’d slept with as many men as her father and Nathan presumed, Byron was bound to come across one sooner or later!
Jade brushed aside the jab of dismay this thinking brought and wondered for the first time what business the gorgeous Mr Armstrong was in. He had to be calling on business. Why else would he be dressed in a dark grey suit on a hot Saturday afternoon? Besides, her father was not one for male friends of the personal kind. He was close to Nathan, and had a type of friendship with Zachary Marsden. But that too was partly business. Zachary had been the Whitmores’ legal advisor for as long as she could remember.
Jade shut the front door and turned to their guest. He was no longer looking at her but was glancing around the house. Assessingly, she thought.
‘This way...’ She waved him along the downstairs hall that went under the staircase. Byron’s study being the second last door on the right. ‘Mr. Armstrong...’ She began as they walked side by side.
‘Kyle,’ he returned coolly. ‘Call me Kyle.’
‘How nice. Kyle, then.’ She smiled over at him. ‘And I’m Jade.’
‘Jade,’ he repeated, but said nothing more. He didn’t smile back, either.
Jade felt a momentary irritation. She didn’t like men she couldn’t read, or who didn’t react the way she expected them to. It came to her abruptly that she didn’t like men who were challenges after all. She much preferred men who fell victim to her charms immediately, and who pursued her doggedly. She enjoyed leading them a merry dance, making them almost beg for her favours, favours she did not bestow left, right and centre, au contraire to popular opinion.
She slid a sidewards glance over at the man beside her. In profile, he was not as pretty. His nose was sharp. His chin jutted stubbornly. He was not a man to beg for anything, of that she was certain. He was also staring steadfastly forward as they walked along the hallway together.
But if Jade’s mind found Mr Armstrong’s rude indifference highly offputting, her body did not. Just looking at him was making her stomach curl with a quite alien sensation. Dear God, but she would give anything to have him want her as she was suddenly wanting him.
Jade only managed to stop herself gasping in shock. For she had never really wanted a man like that in her entire life!
Oh, yes, she’d once been mad about the opposite sex, thriving on the dizzying excitement of being desired and needed and loved. But she’d been very young then, a teenager desperately looking for love and attention and approval, finding substitutes for all three in the kisses and arms of her boyfriends.
But she’d only had two actual lovers during her teenage years, not a zillion, her last serious relationship breaking up well before Nathan came back to Belleview to live after his separation from Lenore. That was when Jade’s hero worship for her adopted brother had flared to a full-blown infatuation, and, while her feelings for Nathan had seemed part sexual at the time, she could see now that they hadn’t touched the surface of real desire. Real desire was what she was feeling at this moment.
Yes, she’d tried to seduce Nathan, but not looking for sexual satisfaction—frankly, she’d never found intercourse at all memorable—but as a way to recapture his love and attention, the love and attention he’d once bestowed on her as a child and which had made her young life bearable. Admittedly, after that first bold kiss of hers, he’d quickly turned the tables on her, taking the initiative and managing to arouse her quite stunningly before he’d abruptly terminated the encounter. Her body had undoubtedly been left aching with physical frustration, which might explain why she’d raced precipitately into the arms of a new admirer a couple of days later.
The next morning, however, she’d felt ashamed of herself for the first time in her life. She’d only met the man the previous night at a party, where admittedly she’d had too much to drink. Not that that was any excuse. At least, she hadn’t gone out with him again.
There had been several admirers since. But none had persuaded her into his bed.
Jade conceded, however, that Kyle Armstrong would not have much trouble doing just that.
Suddenly, she hoped he was married. That would put an end to this amazingly intense desire he’d somehow managed to spark in her. Her whole body felt tense and tingling by the time she stopped outside the study door and knocked.
‘Yes,’ boomed her father.
Opening the door, she popped her head inside. ‘Mr Armstrong is here.’
‘Well, bring him in, girl. Don’t stand there looking ridiculous.’
Gritting her teeth, Jade threw open the door and waved their visitor inside.
He went, not giving her a second look. She was disgusted to find her heart was still racing and that her eyes were clinging to the back of that dark grey suit, to the way it fitted his nicely shaped shoulders like a glove. Jade had been on the end of undressing eyes from men before, but she’d never been guilty of doing such a thing herself. She was very definitely undressing Kyle Armstrong in her mind at that moment, however, and the results were unnerving. How was he managing to exude such a potent sexuality without even trying?
‘Don’t get up, Mr Whitmore,’ Kyle said when Byron started struggling to his feet behind the huge desk. Striding over, he outstretched his long arm to shake Byron’s hand. ‘I’m so glad to meet you at last, sir. Talking on the telephone is not the same, is it?’
Jade saw her father look his guest up and down. Clearly, he liked what he saw almost as much as she did.
‘It certainly isn’t, my boy,’ he said.
Jade dropped his age down to twenty-six or -seven. Her father would not call a man close to thirty...my boy.
‘You were just leaving, Jade?’ Byron snapped, making her seethe inside. How dared he dismiss her so rudely?
She delivered a saccharine smile his way. ‘Melanie asked me to ask if Kyle was staying for dinner. Also, if he preferred tea or coffee.’
‘You know Kyle here?’ Byron ground out.
‘Not till a minute ago,’ she replied sweetly. And make of that what you will, you horny old hypocrite.
‘Ah...’
His obvious relief infuriated the life out of her. ‘Well?’ she said sharply.
‘What about it, Kyle? Can you stay for dinner? I’d like you to. I doubt if we’ll have finished our discussions till then.’
‘I’d love to stay,’ he replied politely, still not looking at Jade. Suddenly, she felt like slapping his coolly supercilious face. Though poisoning would be better. She might slip some hemlock in his wine tonight.
But then she thought of a better vengeance for this snooty pair. Her father wanted her to wear a bra. Well, she would! At dinner tonight. A quite spectacular bejewelled corselette number that she’d bought for a fancydress costume a few years back and which would undoubtedly be at least one size too small. By God, if those unflappable dark eyes didn’t fall out of their sockets when she walked into the dining-room wearing that, then she wasn’t the girl voted most likely not to be a virgin in her last year at St Brigit’s girls school.
‘Tea or coffee?’ she asked with the simpering sweetness of a Southern belle, fluttering her eyelashes when Kyle turned to glance her way at last.
‘Coffee. Black, no sugar.’
Not a twitch. Not a flicker, either of irritation or amusement or anything. The man was a robot, she decided. A cold lifeless sexless robot. How could she have possibly thought he was sexy a moment