Since that first experience she had viewed compliments on her looks as preliminaries to demands she had no intention of satisyfing, but listening to Flint Jansen’s gravelly voice as he passionlessly catalogued her physical assets brought heat bursting through her in a drenching flood of sensation.
Appalled, mortified, she said huskily, ‘Mr—Flint, I know you’re Paul’s oldest friend, and I know you and he are very fond of each other, but you shouldn’t be talking to me like this. I’m going to make Paul very happy. Please take me home.’
‘I hope you mean that,’ he said, every menacing syllable clear and silky above the pounding of her heart, ‘because if you don’t, beautiful Aura, if you find a richer man than Paul one day and decide to shuck him off like an old coat, I’ll come looking for you. And when I find you, I’ll make you sorrier than you’ve ever thought you could be.’
WITHOUT waiting for a reply he switched on the engine and backed the car around, then set off down the hill while Aura fought the hardest battle of her life. Never before, not even in childhood when she had been notorious for tantrums, had she been so furiously incandescent with rage, a rage all the more difficult to deal with because it was stretched like a fragile cloak over debilitating fear.
What an arrogant, brutal, cocksure, conceited bastard! Oh, she would like to ruin Flint Jansen’s life, she’d love to have him come begging to her so she could spurn him with a haughty smile. She’d turn sharply on her heel and walk away, she’d make him grovel—
Shaking with frustration and fury, horrified by her thoughts, she dragged air into painful lungs, then set her mind to looking coolly and rationally at the situation.
Eventually, after a huge expenditure of willpower, she succeeded.
In one way Flint’s attitude was rather touching. So often the only feelings men allowed themselves to express were connected with anger. Flint’s suspicions at least showed he had Paul’s interests at heart.
And, viewed objectively, someone who had been engaged twice before had to be a risk in the matrimonial stakes. If you didn’t know the circumstances, such a history did seem to show a certain lack of staying power.
Unfortunately, her eminently rational thoughts did nothing to ease the fury that simmered beneath her imposed and artificial restraint. Flint didn’t know the circumstances; he had just jumped to conclusions, so how dared he accuse her of being a tramp, of not loving Paul, of marrying him for his money?
Nothing would give her greater pleasure than to rub every word in his face, force him to acknowledge that he was wrong…
After another calming breath she tried to convince herself that all she had to do was make Paul happy. If she did that, Flint would be compelled to admit how very wrong he was. Staring blindly through the windscreen, she conjured up a vivid and highly satisfactory scenario of her and Paul’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, when Flint, proud head lowered, would have to grovel. She could see his face so clearly, see the gracious smile with which she received his abject apology…
Much later, she realised that Paul had not appeared at all in this immensely gratifying dream. The scene that sprang fullblown from the depths of her brain had only two players—her and Flint Jansen.
Neither spoke until they reached the unit. Aura made to open the door, but Flint said crisply as he turned the engine off, ‘I’ll see you inside.’
‘You don’t need to,’ she said, curt words spilling into the cold silence like little pebbles thrown into sand.
Taking no notice, he got out and came around the front of the car. For those moments, as the street-lights edged his silhouette in gold, he looked like some dark huntsman straight out of myth, lean and lithe and supernaturally big, an ominous, threatening, purposeful presence in the quiet, seedy suburban street.
Holding herself rigidly aloof, Aura slid her long legs out of the car and stood up, then preceded him down the path. A light inside revealed that her mother hadn’t gone to bed.
The last thing Aura wanted just then was for them to meet. Her emotions were too raw and antagonistic to be properly controlled, so at the door she turned and said with what she hoped was aplomb, ‘Thank you for the ride home. Goodnight.’
Unfortunately, before he had a chance to answer, the door opened.
‘Paul,’ Natalie cooed in the voice she reserved for him alone, ‘dear boy, do come in! I want to talk to you about the new flat—I was thinking that what it really needs is a new—’
‘Paul didn’t bring me home,’ Aura interrupted swiftly.
Her mother peered past her, her eyes widening. ‘Neither he did,’ she said.
Aura watched her regroup as she surveyed Flint. Over her mother’s face flashed the famous smile that had reduced so many men to abject submission.
‘Darling,’ she purred languidly, ‘don’t just stand there letting me make a fool of myself, introduce us.’
With angry resignation Aura complied, heard her mother invite Flint inside, and his immediate acceptance. It was useless glaring at Natalie, who was invulnerable to suggestion, but Aura sent a contemptuous glance at the man smiling with cynically amused admiration down at her mother.
As though it impacted physically on him he lifted his head, returning Aura’s fulminating glower with a long, considering look from narrowed eyes that challenged her to object.
To her fury and despair, Aura couldn’t meet his gaze. Turning away, she dumped her bag on the table with a short, abrupt movement.
‘How kind of you to bring Aura home, Flint. You must have a nightcap before you go,’ Natalie said sweetly, making expert play with her lashes as she ushered him into the cluttered little sitting-room. ‘Whisky, surely? You look like a whisky man. I think we’ve got some somewhere.’
His expression reminded Aura of the smile on the face of the tiger. ‘Not for me, thank you.’
Aura bit her lip. She should have been pleased at this unusual interest. Following Lionel’s death and the subsequent revelations of his shady, secret life, her mother had sunk into a dangerous apathy that developed into a fullblown nervous breakdown when she’d realised that the only assets she had left were a small annuity Lionel hadn’t been able to get his hands on. It provided barely enough money to keep her.
For the first time in her life, Aura had found herself needed by her mother. At first she hadn’t understood how ill Natalie was, but when she’d come home from a much-wanted job interview to find her unconscious from an overdose of sleeping pills and tranquillisers, she had realised that for the time being she was going to have to give up her ambitions to make a career in marketing.
Even then, she had hoped that she would have time to finish designing a market research programme she had begun at university. Unfortunately, Natalie had needed her constant attention, and as the tap of the computer’s keys seemed to drive her to a frenzy, Aura had given up on it for the time being.
It had been a miserable six months. The only thing that had sustained Aura was meeting Paul. It had helped Natalie, too. She was slowly returning to her normal spirits.
Witness, Aura thought grimly, her swift reaction to Flint Jansen.
It was difficult to see what was going on behind the clear, hard glitter of Flint’s eyes, but Aura was prepared to bet that it was appreciation. The clear skin and sultry green eyes Natalie had bequeathed to her daughter were almost unmarred by the years. Tiny lines of petulance and self-indulgence were beginning to etch into the ivory skin, drag the full, lush mouth down at the corners. Even so, Natalie was exquisitely beautiful.
‘No?’ she said now, with a knowing, flirtatious