‘Madame, I said I’d come!’
It was Martha’s first glimpse of the first-floor reception-room of Madame’s house, and she couldn’t fail to be impressed by the looped, draped, tasselled yellow velvet curtains about the tall windows that overlooked the square; by the palest eau-de-Nil wall-to-wall carpet that was dotted with exquisite Chinese and Persian rugs; the beautiful, spindly, inlaid pieces of furniture; the flowers and lamps; the vivid pink silk-covered chairs.
But of course it was still an ordeal—to be introduced and overlooked by an ever-growing number of people, to try to make conversation with complete strangers without sounding gauche and, particularly, colonial. I really should have got over these kind of nerves, she told herself once, sipping a very dry sherry. How many times have I paraded before hundreds of strangers? But that’s different; I can detach myself then—not something I can do now at the same time as I’m hearing my accent stand out so obviously—not that I care what they think about my accent, so why do I feel like this? Martha asked herself impatiently. Perhaps, she went on to think with a slight shrug, looking round the room suddenly, I can concentrate on the possibility that one day I could own a room like this...
‘Miss Martha?’
Martha turned as Madame’s voice penetrated her reflections.
‘I ’ave a very special guest to introduce you to—my nephew. Simon, this is my new protégé, Martha Winters—is she not stunning?’
Martha froze, her lips parting and her eyes widening as she looked up at the tall man beside Madame who was wearing a beautifully tailored grey suit that sat superbly across his broad shoulders. She took in his quiet air of assurance and authority, his brown hair, his long-fingered hands which had once made her shiver with delight to think of them upon her body—and looked at last into Simon Macquarie’s grey-green eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WELL, well,’ he drawled in that quizzical, amused voice that haunted her dreams, ‘we meet again. I wonder if that’s pure fate or—something else?’
Two things happened at the same time: Madame burst forth into surprised French and Martha tossed her head and clenched her sherry glass so that her knuckles showed white. Which caused Simon Macquarie to narrow his eyes and cut across Madame’s outpourings as he said drily, ‘Now, Martha, we’ve been through this once before. I was remarkably understanding about the champagne but there is a limit—I would drink that sherry if I were you.’
Martha did just that and the next best thing she could think of. She tossed off the last of her sherry, placed the glass down gently on a table, and stalked out with all of the considerable hauteur, disdain and controlled rage she was capable of—leaving the party to fall into a sudden, electrified silence behind her.
Once in the sanctuary of her basement with the door firmly locked, she tore off her earrings and bracelet and flung them down on the kitchen table. She was just in the process of undoing the buttons of her waistcoat when, to her incredulity, she heard a key in the area door and it swung open into her kitchen-cum-sitting-room to admit Simon.
Buttoning herself up with furious, trembling fingers, but aware that he must have seen at least the flesh-coloured silk and lace of her low-cut French bra, she spat, ‘How dare you! How did you get a key? This is intolerable!’
‘It’s Yvette’s master key,’ he said placidly, laying the offending article on the table next to her earrings and bracelet. ‘She—er—agreed with me that there was obviously some unfinished business between us.’
‘Oh, no, there’s not!’ Martha flashed, then took a breath as she tried to think, tried to gather herself into some sort of icy composure. ‘At least to my mind,’ she said in a suddenly cool, reflective voice, ‘there’s only this, Simon Macquarie. You posed the theory that I’d somehow tracked you down and ingratiated myself with your aunt in a bid to...’ She paused, which was fatal as it turned out.
‘To re-establish yourself in my life?’ he suggested gently, but with such mockery that she winced. ‘It did cross my mind, yes.’
‘Then you must be mad!’ she accused. ‘I had no idea she was your aunt, and believe me, if I had, the last thing I’d be doing is working for her.’
‘Well,’ he murmured with a faint smile, ‘you’ll have to forgive me for being a little wary of your motives, Martha. But I must say——’ that clever, amused gaze roamed up and down her figure ‘—I have to give you full marks for ambition, my little Aussie tart. This is a rather astonishing climb up the ladder from serving drinks and propositioning guests. Like to tell me how you achieved it?’ And with a wryly raised eyebrow he sat down at her kitchen table and picked up the gold bracelet she’d cast down in such a rage, to run it thoughtfully through his long fingers.
Martha had never actually seen red before but what saved her was the sudden, startlingly clear mental picture of what had happened to her the last time she’d slapped this man’s face. So she closed her eyes on the red film, very briefly and discreetly filled her lungs with air as she’d been trained to, then sat down opposite him with a shrug and said, ‘How do you think? It’s amazing what you can achieve—on your back.’
For a long moment their gazes locked, hers not even defiant, she hoped, yet she was momentarily puzzled by the tinge of scepticism she thought she saw in his; then it was gone and she wondered if she’d imagined it.
But he said abruptly, ‘So that part of it was always true?’ And there was no mistaking the cold disgust in his eyes now.
‘Of course. Did you ever doubt it?’ Martha asked sweetly, despite the strange mixture of hurt and the feeling that she was tumbling down a mine-shaft—by her own hand but unable to stop herself. ‘Perhaps I was a bit...rough in those days. Is that what made you have doubts? Well, I’m much, much more experienced now, Mr Macquarie. Would you like a demonstration?’
He relaxed all of a sudden. ‘No, thank you, Miss Winters. I think I could live without it. No,’ he mused. ‘What activated certain doubts was the sometimes undoubted genuineness of your—rages. But I guess we’re all wrong from time to time. Does my aunt know how you operate?’ he asked drily.
I’ve gone too far—I’ve done it again! Martha found herself thinking dully as she coloured a little. Why does this man do this to me? Then she stood up abruptly, swung her hair defiantly and said equally drily, ‘No. In fact I’ve turned over a new leaf. Now I’ve got this far it would be silly to...well, I guess you know what I mean.’
‘Acquire a sleazy reputation?’ he suggested softly.
‘Yes,’ she said shortly, but couldn’t prevent herself from shooting him one brief, blazing glance.
His lips twisted. ‘Well, I hope you succeed. And I hope you don’t find it too difficult to live without,’ he added, standing up himself.
Martha knew exactly what he meant as his gaze drifted up and down her again as if he could see beneath the blue crêpe and the coffee silk and she was reminded with deadly accuracy how it felt to have his hands on her body, but he didn’t leave a thing to chance. He moved towards her and stopped only inches away so that she was assailed by everything about him that she’d always found so tormentingly attractive: his height and the width of his shoulders; the slight tang of a lemony aftershave and the sheer male smell; the hard planes and angles of his fit, lean body that she’d secretly so admired. And she recalled the rapture of being kissed and held by him and how her heart had beaten and her skin shivered of its own accord, how her nerves had leapt...
She swallowed as she tried to gaze up unaffectedly into his eyes and remembered that he’d always been more than a match for her, and not only physically. She remembered, too, how he’d looked into her eyes, often after a passionate embrace, with that assessing, clever amusement lurking in the greeny depths of his and that wry, ironic twist to his lips and just sometimes with a more deadly kind of mockery.
She