Carolyn dragged in a deep steadying breath. ‘He won’t mention you to her till after he’s presented her with the house, since he wants it to be a surprise. I should be able to get him alone before then and make up some plausible story about you without going into too much detail. You leave that up to me.’
‘Very well, though I don’t really agree with you. I think the open and honest approach would be best. Your mother must be well and truly over me by now. After all, she’s just married another man.’
But she doesn’t love him, Carolyn was reminded. If she sees you again, especially as you are today, so handsome, so successful, so damned sexy... all those old futile desires could be revived. It wouldn’t take much to tip the more fragile Isabel over the edge again.
‘Please allow me to be the best judge of that,’ Carolyn said stiffly.
‘Very well,’ he replied just as stiffly. ‘But that particular problem’s two months away. Right now I would like to address a more immediate problem. Julian’s house.’
‘Oh? Is there a problem with it?’
His eyes narrowed as they travelled over her tensely held body. ‘Not unless you give me one. Are you going to?’
He kept watching her almost warily and Carolyn wondered what he was getting at. ‘I have no idea,’ she hedged. ‘I haven’t seen it yet.’
‘I doubt that’ll make a damned bit of difference,’ he muttered, confusing her all the more. ‘Well? When do you want to see it? This afternoon some time?’
A quick glance at her watch showed eleven twenty-eight. ‘I have a half-hour appointment to see Miss Powers at eleven-thirty,’ she stated, hoping a businesslike manner would hide the emotional distress this encounter had evoked. ‘Perhaps the three of us could go and see the house together after that. Do you think that would be possible?’
Vaughan shook his head. ‘Unfortunately Maddie has another client at twelve whom she can’t put off and who’ll take at least an hour. I tell you what. After you’ve finished with her I’ll take you to lunch, then the three of us can meet up at the house around two.’
Carolyn only just managed to control the look of horror that threatened to spread across her face. She didn’t want to do anything as intimate as have lunch with him. Bad enough to have to put up with the occasional conducted tour around the house over the next couple of months.
‘Thank you for the offer,’ she said crisply, ‘but I’m afraid I’m not very hungry.’ She stood up. ‘Perhaps you could drop me off at the house and I can have a look around by myself while you go and have lunch.’
This suggestion brought a sharp glance. Vaughan stood up slowly, his eyes remaining hard as he came round the desk to join her. ‘I couldn’t do that. The place is a bit rough and you might hurt yourself. Look, there’s no point in your avoiding my company, Carolyn. It’s rather silly and schoolgirlish.’
Her blue eyes flashed with automatic pique. If there was anything she wasn’t, it was silly and schoolgirlish. My God, she’d had to assume the mantle of adulthood from a very early age, bypassing the life of a normal teenager, never having the sort of mindless fun adolescent girls indulged in. And all because of this man and his compulsion to bed every woman who came across his path. Her mother... Madeline Powers... Anthea Maxwell... And how many countless others?
Just as well that she had unwittingly taken Justin’s advice and made herself as unattractive as possible, otherwise he might even now be attempting to seduce her! Given this unwanted though undeniable sexual attraction she was feeling for him, who knew what disaster might have come of it?
‘I wasn’t avoiding your company,’ she lied frostily.
His sardonic smile showed he didn’t believe her for a moment. ‘In that case you can come with me and nurse a drink while I eat.’
Before she could stop him he took her elbow and began to usher her from the room. ‘You can tell me all about what you’re doing these days. Oddly enough, I’ve often thought of you over the years,’ came the wry remark. ‘Hard to dismiss the pretty blue-eyed little thing who used to glare at me with such obvious disapproval. Something which hasn’t changed much, has it?’ he added drily when she pulled away from him at the door. ‘You still think I’m some kind of ogre.’
‘Not at all,’ she returned with admirable coolness. ‘I don’t think of you as anything any more. You’re just my stepfather’s architect.’
‘Is that so?’ His gaze turned hard as it locked with hers. ‘And how should I think of you, Carolyn? As my client’s stepdaughter, here to help finish his house to everyone’s satisfaction? Or as a female harbouring an irrational grudge against me and who might be thinking of sabotaging my work out of revenge?’
She gasped with true shock.
‘I think any suspicion on my part is well warranted,’ he went on coldly. ‘After all, you did give a false name to my secretary, then you wangled your way into my office. If I hadn’t come in when I did, you would have been left alone with my plans to do God knows what to them. And just now, you seemed eager to be left alone at the house. I wonder what might have been missing or damaged when I returned?’
Her eyes widened even more. ‘I would never do such a low thing!’ she protested, trying not to colour guiltily over her earlier vengeful thoughts. ‘Never! I have a high regard for achievement and hard work, regardless of what my opinion is of the person behind them.’
‘And what is that, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Well, I...I...’
‘Go on, tell me exactly what you have against me, except a bit of ancient history that was hardly my fault, regardless of the consequences.’ He folded his arms and glared at her. ‘Well? Haven’t you anything to say? Don’t you think I deserve an explanation for this exaggerated hostility?’
Carolyn’s mind was going round and round. All she could think of was that fury became him, making him draw his body up tall and straight and proud, making his eyes darken and flash with a wicked appeal, his jaw jutting strongly forward, highlighting the splendid bones in his face.
Only later did she remember that she could have thrown his relationship with Anthea Maxwell in his face. Mrs Maxwell was, after all, a married woman, unlike Miss Powers who was clearly single. But at the time, she merely blushed furiously, giving him a dangerous glimpse of her vulnerability. ‘I...I don’t know,’ she said shakily, before pulling herself together and lifting an equally proud chin. ‘You seem to bring out the worst in me. You always have done. I just don’t like you, Vaughan. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.’
Her blunt remarks surprised him. They rather surprised her too. But after the surprise came selfsatisfaction.
At least I’m taking this ridiculous attraction by the scruff of the neck and killing its chances of going anywhere stone dead. Nothing puts a man off more than saying you don’t like him.
Not that I really needed to put him off, she thought with a certain irony. He hasn’t shown one ounce of interest in me in a sexual sense. Quite understandable, looking as I do today.
‘Well, I’m sorry about that too,’ he returned brusquely. ‘I always rather liked you. Even as a child you had character. You weren’t a ditherheaded little nincompoop like most of your girlfriends.’
‘Oh? You mean because I didn’t drool over the gorgeous Vaughan Slater?’ she said acidly before she could bite the words back.
His eyes narrowed slightly and Carolyn hoped she hadn’t just made a big mistake. Too much hostility was more revealing than none at all. With a supreme effort she dragged up a covering smile. ‘See?’ she laughed drily. ‘You’re still bringing out the worst in me. I’m not usually such a bitch.’
Those