A quick brush of her aching teeth and an ingestion of freshly brewed coffee made Nora feel a trifle less like dying. Anxious to change out of the tacky clothes, she paused to look at herself in her bedroom mirror and grimaced. Her eyes looked glassy and sunken and the stubborn remnants of her mascara deepened the bruised shadows that surrounded them. She had washed her hair at the motel, using the meagre courtesy sachet of shampoo, but the establishment hadn’t run to hair-dryers and now her curls were an uncontrollable tumble around her pale face, her bleached complexion accentuating the ginger freckles and the faint whisker burns glowing on her cheek as well as on the skin above the drooping neckline of the baggy hip-length T-shirt.
She looked like a woman who had been used and abused, she thought bitterly—which was pretty much the truth.
Only…she had done her share of using, too, Nora reminded herself in a smothering of guilt. She had shamelessly courted danger and almost been consumed by it.
She kicked off her shoes and hooked her fingers into the waistband of the bright green leggings. Perhaps once she was back in her own clothes she would feel more like herself.
She tensed at the sound of the doorbell, and then relaxed as she told herself that it couldn’t be Kelly—and Ryan also had his own key, although he had never given Nora similar free access to his apartment.
Nora’s mood swung from brooding self-doubt to angry anticipation as she walked to the door. If it was that flower delivery man back again he was going to get himself a fresh ear-blistering.
She whipped open the door, eyes sparkling with challenge.
‘Hello, Nora.’
For an instant she gaped, paralysed with shock and embarrassment. ‘Blake! W-what are you doing here?’
He bared his teeth in a lethally unpleasant smile. ‘Guess.’
She didn’t like the sound of the sibilant threat and instinctively tried to whip the door closed, but that first instant of unwariness had given him all the edge he needed.
A muscular hand slapped against the wood and slowly applied the pressure to widen the gap to a full body-width.
‘I—I’m just about to go to work,’ she lied, struggling to resist the inexorable pressure.
His eyelids flickered downwards. ‘Dressed like that? I doubt if it’ll meet the Maitlands dress code.’
‘How do you know where I work?’ she croaked, the muscles of her arm straining against the losing battle with the door.
‘I asked around.’
She wasn’t fooled by the laconic drawl. Repressed fury oozed from his every pore.
‘Where have you been all night?’ he demanded, as if he had every right to know.
She tried to gather her defences. ‘Look, I’m sorry I left the way I did, but I really don’t have time to discuss it right now—’
‘Make time,’ he said, leaning more heavily on the door. ‘I have something that belongs to you.’
Yes—her innocence. Before she had gone off with Blake MacLeod she had quaintly imagined that she could handle the kind of risk he represented. But she had never dreamed that danger would turn up on her own doorstep!
‘I thought you might want it back…’
He was dangling something from his other hand, distracting her from his savage expression. Her wildly expensive new shoe. Shades of a fairy-tale romance…he had tracked her down to return her lost shoe!
A rush of relief weakened her grip on the door and, before she could register the unlikelihood of him performing such an extreme act of altruism he rammed through it, kicking it shut behind him with his polished heel. His head swivelled as he made a scowling survey of the room, seemingly unimpressed with the serenely comfortable decor which reflected Nora’s unfussy taste. This was certainly no gallant Prince Charming come looking for his Cinderella. In a dark blue pinstriped suit and navy shirt and tie he looked ominously like a storm cloud looking for somewhere to pitch his lightning and thunder.
He turned to face her and Nora fell back under the frontal assault of his molten silver gaze.
‘H-How did you find me?’ She knew it hadn’t just been a matter of looking her up in the phone book. After a number of nuisance phone calls the previous year she had obtained an unlisted number.
He pitched the shoe on to her couch. ‘Your credit card receipt confirmed your name; the rest was relatively easy, given my resources.’
Her stomach lurched. He had gone back to the hotel boutique? She didn’t know whether to be flattered or horrified.
‘You thought I might have been lying about who I was?’ she croaked.
‘Well, I didn’t think you’d really be fool enough to try and screw me under your real name.’
She stiffened, fighting a hot wave of shame. ‘There’s no need to be crude!’
His mouth compressed to a cruel line. ‘Oh, there’s every need. After all, what you did to me was the essence of crudity.’
She put her hands to her blazing cheeks. ‘So I changed my mind—that’s supposed to be a woman’s prerogative,’ she said, her words muffled with mortification.
‘The hell you did,’ he grated, stalking closer, deliberately menacing her with his size. ‘You got me precisely where you wanted me, and I played right into your hands by acting the gentleman. I won’t make that mistake again.’
She swallowed hard, dismayed by her body’s response to his nearness. Surely he didn’t mean to pick up where they’d left off last night? She ran her damp hands down the uneven seams of the cheap T-shirt.
‘I—I don’t understand,’ she said, bewildered by his strange intensity. Why was he making it sound as if she was the dangerous one?
‘Tell me, Nora, is there some personal history between us that I don’t know about? Did I reject you at some point? Have I dated someone you know or slept with your sister—?’
She backed further into the room, wide-eyed with confusion at his sudden change of tack. ‘I don’t have a sister.’ Only a brother who was living in Florida, well out of range of any screams for help.
‘There must be something—some reason that you’re willing to go to such lengths to discredit me,’ he said. ‘Is this some kind of vendetta? What’s so important that you were willing to prostitute yourself for the sake of getting even with me?’
The heat drained from her cheeks. ‘Vendetta?’ she repeated shakily, putting a hand to her throbbing head.
She knew she had acted like a reckless idiot, but a prostitute? The accusation was too absurd to be insulting. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Come on, Nora, a woman doesn’t call a man a snake and threaten to ruin him without some very personal feelings being involved—’
‘I never called you a snake!’ she protested.
His face tightened in contempt. ‘If you’re going to lie, Nora, at least try and make it believeable—’
‘I am not lying!’ she shouted at him, almost blowing off the top of her head in the process, her slight body vibrating with outrage.
A sneer curled the corner of his mouth. ‘Doug reported your conversation verbatim. You want me to call him up as a witness? Or was that comment about a bribe a hint that you’d prefer to be paid? Unfortunately for you, my stinking personal morality draws the line at giving in to blackmail. I’ll see you in hell before I give you a cent!’