‘Tactic, Dominic?’ She emphasised the word archly and threw him a questioning look. ‘Talking tactics makes it sound as though we’re discussing warfare!’
‘Well, aren’t we?’ he challenged softly.
She stared into stormy eyes that you could lose yourself in quite easily. And thank goodness she was no longer in the market for letting herself do so! ‘I don’t—know,‘ she answered rather falteringly. ‘I didn’t come here looking for confrontation.’
‘Then what did you come here looking for?’ ‘I don’t have to answer that,’ said Romy mulishly. How could she, when she didn’t even know the answer herself?
Reluctant amusement lit the depths of his eyes. ‘What an obstinate woman you are, Romy Salisbury,’ he murmured, with a smile most movie stars would have envied. ‘More juice?’
‘No, thanks.’ She bent down and lifted up the brown leather briefcase which lay at her feet. ‘I think we’d better get down to discussing business—see if we can manage to work together.’
‘Of course,’ he murmured, his mouth curving into a faint smile as he saw the expression of doubt on her face.
He had forgotten just how feisty she could be—but that was hardly surprising. He had probably spent a couple of hours with her at the most, and yet he had been unable to shift the memory which had clung so stubbornly to his mind.
Romy took out a large, leather-bound notebook and fixed him with what she hoped was a cool, efficient look. ‘You really ought to outline what you want for your party. You’ve left this meeting very late, considering that we have just a fortnight to organise it! In fact, if you hadn’t made the booking so far in advance, there would have been no chance of getting me.’
‘I know.’
So it was no spur-of-the-moment thing. He had planned this. Planned her.
Why?
She cocked her head to one side, a heavy strand of blonde hair falling into her eye, and she impatiently brushed it aside as she said briskly, ‘I think you’d better provide me with some information.’
‘Tell me what you want, sweetheart,’ he mocked. ‘and I’ll give it to you.’
Somehow she managed not to react to the blatantly sexual taunt. ‘Like an exact number of guests, their food preferences, some idea of your timetable?’
He glanced down at his wristwatch. ‘I’m running awfully short of time, I’m afraid. I’m due at a meeting. Can we arrange another date to discuss the details?’
But Romy was miles away, allowing herself to look at the room properly for the first time, taking in the floaty muslin drapes and the pale furniture and the elegant black sculpture of a giraffe which dominated one corner of the room. It was a highly masculine room, on which he had stamped his own indomitable presence. But, all the same, it remained awfully stark, she decided.
Romy told herself that it was just professional perfiectionism which made her long to arrange a huge, fragrant bowl of sweet-peas on top of the grand piano and to stand three simple spears of delphinium in a stark blue vase on the mantelpiece. ‘Of course we can,’ she answered stiffly. ‘When?’
‘I can meet you in town, if it’s easier,’ he suggested, in a manner that might almost have been described as friendly if it had not been for the distinctly hostile glittering in his eyes. ‘Say, dinner next Tuesday? You live in Kensington, don’t you?’
Romy found that she wasn’t even remotely surprised at his offering up this piece of information. ‘So you know where I live, too,’ she observed wryly. Any minute now, and he would come out with her inside leg measurement! ‘You do realise you have me at a disadvantage, Dominic. You seem to know everything there is to know about me, while I know practically nothing about you.’
He held her eyes in a watchful gaze that was profoundly unsettling. ‘Let me know what you want to hear, Romy,’ he challenged, ‘and I’ll tell you.’
Romy shook her head and stood up, smoothing her jacket down over her hips. What was the point? The only questions she wanted to ask Dominic Dashwood were of the immature kind to which she suspected she already knew the answers.
Questions like, Did you lose all respect for me that day, Dominic? and, Do all women fall under your spell under similar circumstances, and behave so shockingly?
He got to his feet and walked with her to the door. ‘Let me see you out,’ he said, and at that moment Romy wished for the impossible. That she could rewrite history. That she had met Dominic before she had met Mark. Or that she had never met Dominic at all. Or something.
But hopeless desires weren’t going to get her any peace of mind. Only her own determination to exorcise his memory would do that. All she had to decide now was how to go about it!
In silence, they retraced their steps along the echoing marble corridor to the entrance hall.
Outside the sun blazed down on her racy little black car. All around them, the healthy green lawns of summer were as carefully kept as if some dedicated gardener had been up at the crack of dawn, snipping at the blades with a pair of nail scissors.
Up the side of the red-brick house grew delphiniums in every shade of blue—from deepest indigo to palest powder-blue. Riotous pink roses scrambled merrily over a trellis, scenting the air with their sweet perfume as they fought for space. It all looked terribly well-tended and safe and very, very British.
Automatically, Romy turned to look up at him to say goodbye, the rather false, social smile she had pinned to her lips dying when she saw the frozen expression which had sculpted his features into a cold, dark mask. Oh, why? she thought, with something approaching despair. Why does he still seem more real than anyone else I’ve ever met?
‘And do you like it?’ he demanded suddenly.
‘Do I like what?’ she echoed, lost in the mesmerising silver blaze of his eyes.
His mouth thinned, midway between a frown and a smile. ‘The house, Romy—the house.’
People were always asking her opinion about things like that—it came with the job. ‘Oh, I like it, all right,’ she answered slowly. ‘It’s just the last kind of place I imagined you living in.’
His profile was dark and shadowed against the bleached sapphire of the afternoon sky. ‘Oh? And why’s that?’
Romy tugged unnecessarily at the hem of her silk T-shirt, so that it showed a pale inch below her jacket. ‘It’s just that it’s all so...so...’ Her words tailed off. She was unsure of how to tell him without being offensive. Though, quite honestly, why she should worry about his finer feelings when he hadn’t given a thought to hers she didn’t know.
‘Mmm?’ he prompted silkily, as though her opinion really counted for something. ‘So what?’
The word she was searching for came to her in a burst of inspiration. ‘So controlled!’
His eyes narrowed, as though her choice of word interested him. ‘And I’m not, you mean?’
She stared at him, aware that it was what people always called a loaded question. ‘Not in my experience, no.’
And to Romy’s astonishment he actually flinched at her words, as though she had struck him. So he’s angry, she thought defensively. So what? She’d only been speaking the truth, after all.
‘Then I would hate to disappoint you by acting out of character,’ he drawled, and put his hands on either side of her waist
Romy willed herself not to react, and for a good few seconds she actually managed it. But then he dipped his head, so that his mouth was a mere breath away, his eyes dominating her line of vision with their silver fire. And Romy was lost.
‘You think I’m so out of control, do you, Romy?’ he mused quietly.