She couldn’t hide the bitterness. ‘Of course I remember, Monsieur de Valois. It’s not every day the press chases a seventeen-year-old out of London, calling for her blood—a press that was spurred on by your comments. All you lacked was a pulpit…’ Her chest rose and fell and she couldn’t disguise her agitation. She could feel her skin heating up under his look.
‘Do you forget that you were a seventeen-year-old drug addict?’ he said with harsh inflection. ‘Photographed unconscious on the street?’
A pain so sharp that it caused her to stop breathing for a second made Sorcha want to curl inwards. Guilt, shame, and an old, old fear all vied for supremacy. With what felt like a superhuman effort she found some hard brittle shell left. She tossed her hair with studied indifference, and was too wound up to notice the tiny flash in the cool grey gaze.
Her voice was scathing. ‘If you’ve got nothing more to do than come over here like some kind of outdated moral judge and check for track marks on my arms, then please excuse me—’ She turned to go, and was taking a step away when her wrist was caught in a strong grip. His touch seared through her whole body like a brand. He slowly and very calmly turned her palm upwards, and made a thorough study up and down the underside of her milky white arm.
‘No,’ he said musingly. ‘No track marks. But then I’m sure you’re an intelligent woman. You’d have them well hidden.’
Sorcha finally yanked her arm free and hugged it close to her chest, as though he had burnt her. Her voice was shaking with emotion, and to her utter horror she could feel the sting of tears at the back of her eyelids. ‘Mr de Valois, if you would please excuse me? I am here in a work capacity tonight for your aunt. I don’t want to cause a scene, but trust me when I say that if you try to stop me leaving again I will scream this room down.’
‘There’s no need for such dramatics Miss Murphy—or should I say Quinn? And if you did anything of the sort I’d put you over my shoulder and carry you out like a child having a tantrum.’
Sorcha gulped, her bravado in short supply all of a sudden. She didn’t doubt his words for a second, and the thought of him throwing her over his impossibly broad shoulder…She could feel the heat flare up from her stomach.
She furiously willed a body which seemed to have been invaded by an alien force to obey her silent command to stop reacting to his presence, and gritted out, ‘It’s Murphy to you. If all you want is to see the tabloid fodder you chewed up and spat out, then have a good look.’
‘Oh, I am,’ he drawled, and Sorcha mentally castigated herself for her careless words.
She didn’t want this man’s attention on her…any part of her.
‘You’ve certainly grown up…and filled out.’
She sucked in a breath, unaware that her innocent movement caused his eyes to be drawn back to those parts of her body where they had rested briefly in an eloquent accompaniment to his words.
‘I was just a teenager—’
‘No teenager I knew stayed out till six a.m. every morning, drinking champagne all night, taking cocktails of various drugs to stay awake—’
He glanced pointedly at the glass in her hand. Her knuckles were white on the stem because she gripped it so tightly. Following his glance, and feeling suddenly reckless and rebellious, she tipped the glass to him in a salute. ‘Well, I must say it’s nice to meet the man who once called me the poison seeping into the industry…Here’s to you, Mr de Valois. I wish you luck on your crusade to rid the world of imperfect people!’
And with that Sorcha downed the half empty glass in one go. Very carefully she put it down on a nearby table. And while she still could, feeling sick from the immediate rush of a drink she didn’t usually favour, she spun on impossibly high heels and strode away from him, the silk of her long dress billowing out behind her.
More than a few men turned to look as she passed, and Romain couldn’t fail to notice, the very strange and proprietorial surge of…something very disturbing. He felt a little shell shocked. He could still see the white expanse of her delicate throat, bared as she had downed the sparkling drink. Her eyes had flashed before putting the glass down.
No woman had ever walked away from him like that, or showed such blatant disrespect. Yet, much to his utter confusion, he found himself thinking that his decision to veto her for the campaign suddenly seemed a little too hasty. Watching her walk away had filled him with the almost overwhelming urge to grab her back, strike more sparks, keep her talking.
He hadn’t expected this. He’d expected her to be hard, with that smooth shell most models had, yet her vulnerability had hit him straight between the eyes. And he’d been surprised that she’d remembered his comments from eight years previously. His jaw hardened. Despite his aunt’s words, and Sorcha Murphy’s apparent vulnerability, he’d be more than surprised to find that she had given up her old habits.
To be brutally honest, he’d expected that once she’d known who he was she’d morph into exactly the type of woman he’d become immune to. Sycophantic, posturing…But she hadn’t. She’d been filled with fire and passion underneath that pale, pale skin. An intoxicating package.
For some men, he told himself angrily, and finally turned away from the image of her slender back walking away from him.
‘Well, he can take his job and—’
‘Sorcha!’ Maud’s husky smoke-ravaged voice rang out like the crack of a whip.
It stopped Sorcha in her tracks—literally. She was pacing back and forth in Maud’s palatial office that looked out over busy New York streets. Ever since Maud had called her in to tell her that Romain de Valois wanted her for his campaign, she’d been feeling jittery and panicky.
She sat down. ‘Sorry, Maud, I know he’s your nephew—’
‘Technically, he’s my ex-nephew.’ The older woman waved a hand. ‘That doesn’t matter anyway. Nepotism didn’t get him where he is now; that was through sheer hard graft and ingenuity.’ Her face softened with unmistakable affection. ‘Can you believe even I have to answer to him?’ She ignored Sorcha’s dark scowl, austerity marking her features again. ‘The fact is, this is probably one of the most prestigious jobs you could ever be offered—two weeks jet-setting around the world. Do you know how many models were considered? It’s so important to him that he’s overseeing the whole shoot personally. He’s even willing to kick off in Ireland to accommodate your holiday plans—a condition I insisted on.’
The thought of even a day with that man glowering down his nose at her, checking up on her every two minutes, caused very contradictory feelings in Sorcha’s head…and body. Since that night almost a week ago she hadn’t been able to get his dark face and tall, impressive body out of her mind. And she hated it. He was her nemesis—the embodiment of every misunderstanding she had suffered all those years ago.
‘Maud…can’t you see how difficult this would be? He’s not just anyone. He’s—’
‘I’m well aware of the things he said in London that time. But you have to admit, innocent or not, if you hadn’t been caught like that then he wouldn’t have had any reason to say anything. His hand was forced by his board. He didn’t have the complete control he enjoys now. They couldn’t be seen to be taking an easy line on models doing drugs…not when that girl had died so soon before…’
Sorcha felt cold all of a sudden. She was barely able to take in Maud’s words, her mind seizing on the girl that she’d mentioned. She had been a young model on the brink of stardom who’d overdosed and died only weeks before Sorcha’s own chain of events had unfolded. It always made her feel sick, and impotent with anger and guilt. It was one of the reasons she’d finally followed her heart in the past year and tried to do something about those past events—something concrete…
Maud stood up and came round to perch one hip on her desk. She looked at Sorcha from over her spectacles.