‘A beautiful girl giving me the once-over?’ he mocked. ‘Who in their right mind would object to that? Though to be scrupulously fair, Abby, I really ought to return the compliment. Oughtn’t I?’
For a moment she was confused, and then, with a rapidly thudding heart, she saw exactly what he meant.
He let his gaze linger from breast to hip, on the long line of her legs which were outlined by the thin material of her black skirt. His eyes roved over her with such a careless, almost insolent appraisal that Abigail found herself blushing furiously, and fastened her hands tightly onto the lapels of her jacket as though she were holding onto a life-jacket.
Because he had never looked at her like that before. As man to woman. For many years she had secretly wanted him to, but now that it was happening she found it curiously unsettling. And insulting.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Nick!’ she snapped angrily. ‘I know that ogling women probably comes as easily to you as breathing—but it isn’t really an appropriate time to ogle me, is it? Or have you always found widows easy prey in the past?’
That hit home. But as soon as the words were out of her mouth Abigail regretted them, her heart sinking with some nameless fear as his mouth became an ugly line and the light of retaliation flared in his eyes. ‘If we’re talking appropriate behaviour,’ he mocked, ‘then I’ve yet to see your tears, Abigail, dear. I’ve rarely met a widow who was so composed. Or who showed quite so much of her beautiful, black-stockinged thighs.’
‘It was the only black suit I had!’ she said defensively.
‘Which just happens to mould every sexy curve of that beautiful body?’ he mocked, with cold laughter in his eyes.
‘Any more of this and I’m getting out and walking,’ she threatened, wondering if he had any inkling of just how her body was betraying her by responding to that erotic criticism.
‘Not in those shoes, you aren’t, sweetheart!’ And the laughter was switched off as he glanced down at the delicate, black patent leather concoctions which were strapped around her narrow ankles. ‘Unless you’re planning to spend the rest of the day in the local casualty department, that is.’ He gave her another appraisal, but this time there was none of the lazy approval which had made her heart race like a train. This time his eyes were impartial. And disapproving.
‘What the hell have you been doing to yourself?’ he demanded. ‘Why are you so thin?’
Abigail glared. ‘Most women in the western hemisphere are striving for cheekbones, Nick!’ she retorted. ‘Don’t you know that you can never be too rich or too thin?’
‘Slenderness should not equal unhealthiness,’ he replied.
‘I am not unhealthy!’
‘No?’ He turned her face towards him and cupped it in his strong, brown hand and Abigail felt, suddenly and frighteningly, terribly, terribly vulnerable. ‘Then why are your cheeks so pale? Your face so pinched? I don’t know about interesting hollows, Abigail—they’re more like bloody great ravines in your case!’ He let his hand drop.
‘Orlando was an actor!’ she said, as if that really mattered. ‘And he liked me to look good!’
‘A thin, pale, pretty little accessory—the compliant little doll,’ he mused reflectively. ‘So, no change there, then.’
‘It wasn’t like that!’
‘No? Then why don’t you tell me what it was like? Tell me about your relationship with Orlando.’
‘No!’ she declared heatedly, aware that he had unwittingly touched on the rawest nerve of all. ‘Why on earth would I want to tell you anything?’
‘Because confession is good for the soul, didn’t you know that, Abby?’ he purred, and now his green eyes were as watchful as a cat’s. ‘Wasn’t marriage everything you dreamed it would be? Did the delectable Orlando fall in your expectations of him?’
And this, too, hit home—far more accurately and woundingly than he could ever have imagined. Abigail’s mouth trembled violently, pain and anger overwhelming her as she met the mocking question in his eyes.
‘You have no right to talk to me that way, Nick! To ask me questions like that! Especially not today,’ she finished on a shudder.
His face was quite expressionless. ‘Oh, but that is where you are wrong, Abby. I have every right,’ he answered, with a smooth assurance which made her want to lash out at him.
She drew a deep breath. ‘And why’s that?’
‘Because your stepfather trusted me. He appointed me executor of his will—’
‘Nick,’ interrupted Abigail. ‘Philip died well over a year ago. You fulfilled all your obligations as executor then. I inherited Philip’s estate—end of story. We are no longer bound by even the most tenuous of ties. We need never see each other again.’
‘No, I don’t suppose we do.’ He gave her a long, considering look. ‘But here I am.’
‘Here you are,’ she said dully, a sharp pang of apprehension overwhelming her as she tried to imagine never seeing him again.
There was silence in the car as it purred through the narrow, frosty lanes, and Abigail tried to tell herself that the unsettling feelings his appearance had provoked were simply a reaction to her husband’s death. And a reminder of her youth, of simpler times, when the outside world had not seemed such a big and hostile place. Because I was cosseted and protected from it, Abigail recognised as she stared at the ploughed fields, where frost like icing sugar glittered thickly.
‘What made you decide to sell all the shares that Philip left you?’ asked Nick suddenly.
The question was so unexpected that Abigail started as though he had tipped icy water over her head. ‘How did you know that?’
He gave her an impatient look. ‘Oh, come on, Abby—I know you wouldn’t exactly qualify as businesswoman of the year, but you can’t be that naive! If shares are floated on the stock market, then it isn’t exactly a state secret, is it?’
‘N-no,’ answered Abigail uncertainly. She would just as easily have ridden a rocket to the moon as been able to talk with any degree of knowledge on the subject of stocks and shares; she had left all that kind of thing to Orlando. Because that, more than anything, had kept him off her back. In more ways than one. A dull flush crept into her cheeks.
‘It just surprised me, that’s all,’ said Nick, giving her a shrewd look. ‘Just as it surprised me that you sold the New York apartment earlier in the year,’
Abigail tasted the bitter flavour of memory in her mouth, the utter chaos of the last year coming back to torment her. ‘Yes, the New York apartment,’ she echoed, in a hollow kind of whisper. ‘Sold.’
‘There’s no need to sound so horrified.’ Nick threw her a strange glance. ‘You knew all about the sale, of course?’
‘How could I not know?’ she queried. ‘It was my flat, wasn’t it? And my inheritance.’
His dark, enigmatic face looked almost pitying. ‘Poor little rich girl,’ he murmured, and turned his dark profile to the car window to survey briefly the English winter landscape. The fat flakes of snow had multiplied and now there were whole armies of them, swirling down to settle on the iron-hard ground.
‘In theory it was your inheritance,’ he continued relentlessly. ‘But when you married dear Orlando, of course, what was yours became his, and what was his became yours. That’s what I love about marriage,’ he added sarcastically. ‘The total trust involved.’
‘You cynical—’
‘Not to mention the fundamental inequality of the equation,’