‘I would have thought that was obvious.’ She leaped up now, dreading that she might have given him cause to suspect how her body reacted to him against her will, against her rational thinking. ‘You’re despicable!’ she breathed.
His mouth moved carelessly. ‘Shouldn’t you be saying that to those closer to home?’
He meant Corinne—and Paul.
Turning wounded eyes in his direction, she noticed the grace with which he moved, brought his tall, lithe frame to his feet.
‘She sold you down the river, Grace.’ His words were hard, blunt, unsparing. ‘So did your precious Harringdale.’
‘He isn’t mine,’ she flared, hurting, wondering how he—how both of them—could have pulled the plug on her and left her and the company to the mercy of a man like Seth Mason. ‘It’s over between us—as you so subtly pointed out at that launch party. It was over months ago.’
‘Ah, yes. What really happened there? Did you just get tired of him?’ he asked, sounding bored suddenly, while ignoring her barbed accusation. ‘Or were you as butterfly-minded and fickle as Harringdale said you were? What was it?’ His thick brows pleated as he pretended to search for the words which were obviously at the forefront of that shrewd, keen mind. ‘“Grace Tyler’s only interested in having fun and when that wears off, which is surprisingly quickly, so does her sense of loyalty”.’ His mouth compressed. After all, hadn’t he been on the receiving end of what could only be described as her capricious behaviour? Perhaps he did have reason to think badly of her, she accepted painfully. But that was all in the past.
‘I don’t think my relationship with Paul is any of your business,’ she murmured, catching her breath after the hurtful remarks her ex-fiancé had made to the press when she had broken off their engagement only a few weeks before their wedding. Wearily, she added, ‘Perhaps you’re just too influenced by what you read.’
‘Perhaps,’ he concurred, without sounding wholly convinced. ‘Perhaps Harringdale was just being spiteful, in view of the way you jilted him. Or perhaps he was right. Perhaps loyalty and respect are two things you still need to learn.’
His words had an ominous ring to them. ‘Believe that if you want to,’ she objected, so tense that she flinched as the clock on the mantelpiece suddenly struck the half hour. ‘Just like every sensation-seeking journalist I’ve come across, you’ve got your own prejudiced opinions and nothing I say will change them.’
‘Try me.’
‘Why?’
He didn’t answer, but his eyes were so commanding in their intensity that she found the words slipping away from her before she could stop them.
‘If you must know, it was something I drifted into with Paul as much as anything else. I thought we had a lot in common, so it seemed like a good idea for the two of us to get engaged and to merge our business interests. It was what both our families wanted, my grandfather in particular.’ She couldn’t forget the hints Lance Culverwell had dropped, the silent but eternal pressure he’d applied to see her settle down with the heir to the Harringdale fortune.
‘And, with dear Granddad out of the way, you didn’t have to.’
‘No, strange though this may seem to you, I consider principles to be more important than doing something just because it’s expected of me.’
‘Really?’ Dark, winged brows lifted mockingly. ‘And when did you first cultivate that admirable virtue?’
‘You can scoff all you like. It’s true.’
‘And your stepmother?’
‘Step-grandmother,’ she corrected with emphasis.
The look he sliced her left no doubt that he had picked up on that unintentional censure in her voice, and his mouth pulled at one corner, as though he were weighing up the age difference between the ex-model Corinne Phelps and Lance Culverwell, questioning the whole viability of the match.
‘It’s peculiar how sex drives a man—or a woman, for that matter—isn’t it, Grace?’
She regarded him warily. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning he wasn’t prepared for someone from my background to soil the pedigree of his precious family, but he had no such qualms when it came to himself and a woman who didn’t mind being photographed in some of the more, shall we say, graphic newspapers.’
‘What my grandfather found out after they were married had no bearing on his judgement. And we aren’t all like you, Seth Mason. My grandfather didn’t marry Corinne for…’ She couldn’t even bring herself to say it, hating having to listen to someone else voicing the doubts about Lance Culverwell’s good judgement that she had harboured in silence, alone. ‘He married her because he was lonely.’
Those steely eyes seemed to strip her to the soul. ‘If you believe that, then you still haven’t grown up, Grace, despite all your claims to the contrary. He might have advocated high standards and good breeding—which he obviously found in the woman he spent most of his life with—but at the end of his life he was no more immune than any other man to the wiles of a pretty gold-digger who has about as much refinement as a bag of raw cane-sugar.’
‘Coming from someone as basic as you, that’s rich!’ she shot back, hating him for saying these things to her. ‘All I can say to that is that it takes one to know one.’
From the anger that flared in his eyes, she realised she had hit a raw nerve.
Scared by the fury she had provoked, she started to move away, but he was too quick for her, and she gave a helpless little cry as he caught her, dragging her into his arms.
Her robe had slipped off one shoulder and, tugging it off the other so that her arms were trapped inside it, he pulled her towards him before his mouth came down hard on hers.
She struggled in his grasp, protesting little sounds coming from her captured lips, but her wriggling only made him more determined, his mouth growing more insistent in its demands.
Her fruitless movements caused her robe to separate. She could feel the rasp of his suit against her stomach, her thighs, her naked breasts.
She groaned again, only this time it was the muted sound of desire. She hated him and yet she wanted him! How sick was that?
The revelation shocked her even as she realised that he had recognised it too.
In response his arms came around her, pulling her into the hard warmth of his body, his mouth leaving hers only to force her head back for his teeth to graze with humiliating purpose over the far too sensitive column of her throat.
Sensations ripped through her such as she had never known for eight long years. Why him? she asked herself savagely, clenching her teeth against all that he was doing to her. Was he destined to be the only man that she could ever respond to?
Hating herself for her weakness, fingers curling tensely against the shoulders of his jacket, she battled with the traitorous responses of her own body so that she was standing breathless and trembling with her eyes closed when he finally lifted his head.
His face was flushed, his mouth taut from the desire he was holding in check, but his eyes were unmistakably smug.
Even so, he seemed to have a struggle drawing breath before he said in a voice that was softly mocking, ‘Where are those principles now, Grace?’
‘You bastard.’ Her lashes parted to reveal the self-loathing in her eyes. ‘Was that why you came here tonight?’ she demanded shakily, pulling out of his grasp. ‘To try to humiliate me?’ Her hands were trembling so much she could scarcely do up her robe.
‘If