‘Really? I’ve always found a simple “No thanks” perfectly adequate.’ He flashed white teeth in a faintly cruel smile, and Brooke found herself wondering cattily who had done his dental work. If it wasn’t for that slight chip in one of them she might almost have believed they had been falsely enamelled.
‘Then I’m saying “No thanks” to you right now,’ she told him recklessly, suddenly searingly angry without really knowing why she should be. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to see an irate wife bearing down on them. Why was it that women always acquitted their erring husbands of the blame? She had received more frosty looks from her own sex than she could count, and if they had but known it her interest in their dull husbands had been less than nil.
‘Are you now?’ The deep voice was unexpectedly soft, shooting warning flares along Brooke’s nerve endings. ‘I wasn’t aware that you’d been asked.’
There were several responses she could have made. She could have pointed out that the way he was looking at her was invitation enough, but she was too stunned to speak, and he used his initiative relentlessly watching her colour change and deepen as she fought against her growing anger.
‘When you’re angry your eyes change from green to gold,’ he remarked softly. ‘Did you know that? What are you doing here? You look as out of place as a goldfish in a village pond.’
‘If that was meant to be a compliment you can keep it,’ she told him crisply, spoiling it by adding, ‘anyway in Japan goldfish do inhabit the village pond.’
‘And women know their rightful place,’ he tormented her, ‘so what conclusions are we to draw from that?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ Her expression was disdainfully uninterested. She glanced at her watch, a twenty-first present from her uncle and bought in the days before she discovered the state of his financial affairs. It was a gold Piaget and she treasured it more because he had given it to her than because of its value.
The grey eyes watching her had suddenly darkened, flashing storm signals that startled her. ‘A present from a grateful admirer?’
His voice was taunting, his expression one she was familiar with on male faces. So he thought the watch had been given to her by a lover; well let him.
Pinning a false smile to her lips she responded coolly, ‘Of course…. And now if you’ll excuse me….’
‘You’re leaving? Why?’
His arrogance infuriated her afresh. What business of his was it if she chose to leave?
‘Because I’m bored,’ she told him sweetly.
‘The company not good enough for you? Perhaps there isn’t anyone here wealthy enough to supply you with another of these?’ His fingers circled her wrist just below her watch, stroking the fragile bones, sensitising her flesh in a way that Brooke couldn’t believe possible. She was torn between wanting to tug her wrist away, and giving way to the melting sensation of pleasure spreading up her arm, making her finger-tips tingle. The intensity of her response startled her to the point of not being able to correlate her thoughts, and the rough drawl of his voice broke the physical spell momentarily binding her to him as he continued mockingly, ‘But I’m sure they’d be willing to give you other if less valuable baubles in return for some of your time….’
‘Only my time?’ Inwardly Brooke was seething, but she hid it well, as she had grown used to doing.
‘Or perhaps you’re playing for higher stakes,’ the soft drawl continued. ‘One large item is so much more worthwhile than several cheaper ones, and easier to earn,’ he added cynically.
It wasn’t the first time Brooke had come up against such an attitude, and she doubted that it would be the last. By some trick of fate the delineation of her facial features was such that she possessed a slumberous, almost sensual quality that men automatically assumed meant that she was sexually available. That, in a way, she could understand and excuse, but what she couldn’t forgive was their immediate reaction that being available meant she could be bought—and by the highest bidder. This man it seemed was no different from the rest, and despite the fact that he lacked the smooth polish of many of the other men in the room with him, he did possess all the discreet trappings of wealth. Brooke’s mouth tightened. He was an arrogant, over-confident male who seemed to think he could just reach out and take whatever he wanted from life. Perhaps it was time someone taught him a lesson.
‘Meaning?’ Brooke queried, mentally holding her breath.
‘Meaning,’ came the audacious response, ‘that I’m in a position to provide the one large item.’ A lazy smile accompanied the lightly spoken words, his expression saying that this conversation was really unnecessary, as the result was already a foregone conclusion. For one moment Brooke was tempted to blast him with the full force of her wrath, but caution, and a searing need to humiliate him as he had just humiliated her, intervened. How dare he imagine that she was his simply for the buying; that she would ever dream of agreeing to the sort of sordid bargain he had just suggested? Her quick brain agilely sifting through their conversation, Brooke thought she had found a way to make sure he would never again look at a woman with the same contemptuous confidence with which he had just smiled at her.
‘Which do you prefer,’ she was asked as she remained silent, ‘cash or kind?’ When she turned shocked gold eyes towards cold grey ones, Adam shrugged and said easily, ‘I do prefer to get these annoying details sorted out beforehand, don’t you? It makes life easier all round.’
‘You prefer paying for your sex?’ Brooke asked him, hardly able to believe she was having this conversation.
The broad dinner-suited shoulders shrugged. ‘I believe in an honest exchange of commodities—yes, and women always intend men to pay in one way or the other don’t they?’ He added less pleasantly, ‘It’s just that the majority of them prefer their payment in emotional coin—far more damaging to the pocket in the long run.’
‘Meaning?’ Again Brooke put the brief question.
‘Meaning that I’m not in the market for emotional involvement,’ Adam told her coolly. ‘I always like to make that clear right from the start.’
‘Very wise of you, I’m sure.’ Brooke hid her surprise under a veil of indifference. From his attitude she wasn’t the first woman he had approached in this way, by a long chalk. How had the others reacted? Or was this the first time he had mistaken his quarry? Brooke wasn’t blind to the fault of her sex; there were women, and she knew plenty of them, who would be quite happy to accept his offer—providing it was more prettily packaged to be sure, and yet one look at him had been sufficient for her to know that he possessed a sexual magnetism that few women would be able to resist, and that they would want him for himself alone.
‘So, do we have a bargain?’
Caution warned her to refuse—to stop the game while she still could, but a deep inner burning anger overruled caution and she heard herself saying calmly, ‘Yes, I believe we do.’
‘So … tonight, then?’
He didn’t waste much time, Brooke reflected, concealing her consternation. ‘Very well, tonight. I live in the Lodge at the end of the drive.’
‘I’ll be there at ten.’
No pretence of wining and dining her first, Brooke noted, one half of her applauding his cynical down-to-earth attitude while the other half was horrified, cringing away from the implications of his comment. Obviously he was a man well used to getting what he wanted, but tonight she was going