‘And a fat lot of good it did!’ he murmured wryly. ‘And now, of course, I’d fly round the world a hundred times just to catch a glimpse of your beautiful face, Triss Alexander. Oh, hell!’ He briefly buried his face in his hands then looked up at her mock-despairingly. ‘Did I really say that?’
‘Yes, you really did!’ she gurgled contentedly. ‘And I rather like it when you’re being sloppy.’
‘Then you’ll marry me?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow?’
He gave her a mock frown. ‘Don’t know if I can wait that long,’ he murmured, then eyed the two plates of Caesar salad which the waiter had just placed on the table in front of them. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Can you?’
‘Are we talking about marriage now?’ she queried primly. ‘Or bed?’
His eyes glinted. ‘Bed.’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Triss sighed, and stood up as Cormack took a wad of notes from his wallet and flung them down on the table without even bothering to count them.
They could barely wait until they were outside before they were in each other’s arms and kissing each other like there was no tomorrow.
Inside the restaurant, the two Italian waiters looked on at the embracing couple indulgently, while several of the women sighed jealously and were almost—but not quite—tempted to give in to the dessert trolley.
In fact, as one heavily jewelled and bone-thin woman remarked to her equally bone-thin friend, she didn’t know why some people bothered going out to eat, when food was obviously the last thing on their minds.
And Triss and Cormack—if they could have heard—would have agreed with her wholeheartedly!
DOMINIC DASHWOOD drove through the ornate golden and navy gates of St Fiacre’s Hill estate with just a little more speed than was necessary. Though not with as much speed as he would have liked, he decided, with a grim smile which nonetheless transformed his devastating features into the kind of face that most women only ever fantasised about.
Tensing one long, muscular thigh, he depressed the accelerator pedal, and his dark green Aston Martin shot forward like a bullet.
What he would have liked was to be on some wide, empty highway, where he could put his foot down and succumb to the heady lure of mechanical power. Machines and speed were two of Dominic’s great passions. In the past women had accused him of being cold and unfeeling.
‘You love that damned car more than you love me!’ some sultry beauty had once poutingly accused him.
And Dominic had been unable to deny the truth which lay behind her accusation. He had taken her to bed one last time—because she had begged him to and, in truth, because he had wanted to—and had then walked away, wondering what it was that made him immune to the pain of emotion.
You know damn well what it is! mocked an inner voice, and Dominic’s long fingers tightened convulsively around the soft leather of the steering wheel, as if they were biting deliciously into a woman’s tender flesh. But not just any woman. He felt the potent flicker of desire as he slowed to take the bend near the clubhouse.
His sensual mouth twisted as a woman in tennis whites emerged from the St Fiacre’s club-house. She stopped dead and stared at the car as it roared by, her eyes narrowing with speculation as they took in the hard, handsome profile of the driver.
But Dominic deliberately avoided eye contact with her. The woman’s body language made it patently clear that she was available, and Dominic avoided such openly available women like the plague.
His unconscious sexual appeal had become the bane of his life. In his youth he had used it, squandered it even. For many years now he had desired the challenge of a woman who would not melt with early submission into his arms.
Unfortunately, the woman he was scheduled to meet in just under an hour was not going to provide the challenge he needed, though once again he felt the reluctant heat coursing around his veins which just the thought of her could provoke.
For Romy Salisbury was everything he despised in a woman.
She was a siren who used her sexuality indiscriminately. Who had ruined at least one man’s life and had haunted his own for longer than he cared to admit.
A muscle worked in his lightly tanned cheek as he drove past another sports car, unwilling excitement shivering its way up his spine as he anticipated what he intended to happen.
Dominic smiled—but it was a cold, cruel smile as his mind lingered on the pleasure of the retribution he was going to exact in the next few days.
He had waited five years for his moment and now it had come at last.
It was high time that he settled the score with the delicious Miss Romy Salisbury.
Romy missed the turning for St Fiacre’s Hill and said something rather rude underneath her breath. The entrance was so well camouflaged she was surprised that even the residents could find it!
But then, didn’t they always say that you got what you paid for? And what St Fiacre’s residents were paying for—apart from ultra-luxurious houses in the jewel-like setting of nine hundred prime Surrey acres—was privacy, pure and sweet.
Privacy from nosy tourists with their instant cameras always to hand, who were curious to know how the super-rich really lived. And privacy from good, old-fashioned fortune-hunters—people with an eye to the main chance who thought they could get rich quick by marrying into money!
Romy glanced in the rear-view mirror, realising that she would have to go right round the roundabout and come back in again.
Minutes later, she was heading back towards the St Fiacre’s turn-off in her zippy little black car, bought largely with the bonus given to her by her last grateful client.
Not for the first time, Romy thanked her lucky stars that in business at least she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. No job was too big, too small or too difficult for Romy to tackle, and Top Class, her very own company, was going from strength to strength.
She drew up in front of the distinctive navy blue and gold wrought-iron gates which separated St Fiacre’s from the rest of the world, and decided to risk a quick, critical glance at herself in the driver’s mirror.
Not too bad, she thought dispassionately as she squinted her eyes against the glare of the sun reflected there. She flicked a trace of dust from one smooth, pale cheek and risked a closer look.
Her face carried the barest trace of make-up and her thick, straight hair was expertly styled in the urchin cut which was currently so fashionable and which made the most of the unusual pale honey colour.
She wore a silk and linen trouser suit in a neutral dark cream colour which flattered the pale magnolia of her skin and the deep velvety brown of her eyes. Beneath the suit Romy wore a simple white silk T-shirt, and she looked as she had intended to look—professional and efficient and ready for anything.
Or anyone, she reminded herself, with a wry little twist of her wide mouth as she punched in the security number she had been given.
The