‘How long?’ he echoed. His voice was silky suddenly. ‘Why, Ms Delane—until I’ve had all I want of you. Or—’ there was a note in his voice that shivered down her spine ‘—until you please me sufficiently to earn your parole. There—is that exact enough for you? Or would you like me to spell out exactly—’ his repetition of the word mocked her ‘—how I envisage you earning your parole?’
He was baiting her, taunting her, wanting her to lash out, scream her defiance, her revulsion at him. She could see it, knew it all the way through her.
And she burned to do it! Burned to tell him to take his disgusting sick ‘choice’ and—
But she couldn’t. Couldn’t do anything except just stand there and let him say such things to her.
‘And…’ She swallowed, forcing herself to go on. ‘And if I…if I agree, then…then you won’t involve the police, or the press, or…anyone else? No one will know except…you?’
His mouth curved in a contemptuous curl.
‘No one will know that you are a thief—is that what you mean?’
‘Yes.’
She stared at him. It was essential, essential that he agreed that. Because somehow she had to keep this from Jenny. Her mind went racing ahead. If she could tell Jenny that she’d safely returned the bracelet, that no one had found out, that it had all gone quiet, she might just save her friend.
What else am I going to have to tell her?
Oh, God, what on earth was she going to say to Jenny? No, she would think about that later. Not now. Not when Leo Makarios was looking at her with a contemptuous expression on his face that would have made her flush with shame if he’d had the cause for it he thought he had.
But he didn’t have cause. She knew he didn’t!
So was that why she lifted her chin and stared back at him defiantly, refusing to let herself be cowed, humiliated, ashamed.
She felt her resolve stiffening as she held his coruscating gaze. What did she care what he thought of her? What did she care if he thought her a thief or not? Because she knew exactly what she thought about him—a man who’d walked into her bedroom last night in the sublime assumption that she was just going to sigh with gratitude and lie down for him…
No—don’t think about that!
Because if she thought then she might remember, and if she remembered then she might…
She might prefer Leo Makarios to phone the police after all…
But she couldn’t let him do that.
Oh, God, it was like being crushed between walls closing in on her, closing in—
With a mental strength she hadn’t known she possessed she pushed them apart. She could not collapse now—could not panic, or faint, or burst into tears. She had to keep going—keep going with what she had done. So she went on staring at him defiantly, chin high.
She could see it angered him. See it in the flash of blackness in his eyes, and she was darkly, viscously pleased. She knew it was irrational, and certainly stupid, to anger even more a man who had such cause to be furious with her.
And part of her brain told her it was unjust as well.
He thinks you’re a thief. He’s got a right to be mad with you!
But reason did not hold sway. Somehow keeping Leo Makarios angry with her made her feel safer—safer than Leo Makarios feeling anything else about her…
Or was it?
As Anna stood there, her back pressed against the door, with those heavy-lidded, hard-as-stone eyes boring into her like diamond-tipped drills, a sense of almost overpowering disbelief shuddered through her.
Oh, God, what have I done…?
The words ricocheted round and round inside her head. Like bullets. Each one a killing shot.
But it was too late to do anything now. Far too late. She’d taken on the burden of Jenny’s crime and now she had to see it through.
And the only way to do that, she knew, was not to think about it. Absolutely not think about what she had just agreed to.
A barrier sliced down in her brain. Don’t think about anything but now! That was all she must deal with.
‘Well,’ she heard her voice say, and marvelled that it sounded so cool, so unconcerned, ‘what happens now, then?’ She levered herself away from the door panel, deliberately thrusting her hands inside her pockets, staring, chin lifted, across at the man who had caught her red-handed with a priceless ruby bracelet in her illicit possession.
Again her attitude seemed to send a flash of black anger through his eyes.
‘What happens now, Ms Delane,’ he intoned heavily, with that killing look still levelled at her, ‘is that you get out of my sight. Before I change my mind and get you slung into jail, where a thief like you belongs! Now, get out.’
Leo’s eyes were dark, inward-looking, his face closed. He could feel the black deadly rage roiling through him like a heavy sea.
How dared she think she could steal from him? And then deny it, defy him as she had? Christos, he had heard the word shameless used before, but never had he realised just what it meant. His face darkened even more. Now he did.
She stood there in front of me, lying through her teeth. Pretending her innocence even as the bracelet was in her pocket.
And she might even have got away with it.
He saw again in his head the moment when she’d headed towards the front door of the Schloss, walking with her elegant, poised model’s saunter, distancing herself completely from the search going on behind her.
And all along…
But she’d given herself away. That tiny but instinctive gesture she’d made with one hand, brushing her pocket.
Checking if something was still there…
And he’d known—known with every gut instinct—that the thief was her. He’d already carpeted the cowering Justin, lambasted the head of security for the shambles that had happened that afternoon. It had been obvious that that was when the theft had taken place, and the only suspects had been those close enough to the spilt jewels to have purloined any.
It had been Anna Delane who’d spilt them in the first place. Anna Delane who’d been the first to scrabble down to the ground. Every finger had already been pointing at her.
But investigating would have been a delicate business. The missing bracelet could have been anywhere in the Schloss—secreted in any of a thousand unlikely places for collection later. Or even off the premises. It could have been miles away, in completely different hands. Searching any of the suspects’ rooms would have been fruitless.
And Anna Delane had had the audacity to think she could walk straight past him carrying it on her!
The black rage roiled through him again. That anyone should have stolen from him—and for it to be her—her of all people.
His eyes narrowed.
Had he been mad to let her walk out? Mad not simply to pick the phone up again and get the police here?
But the vixen had been right. She’d gone immediately for his one weak spot—his determination to avoid any bad publicity tainting the launch of the Levantsky jewels.
No. Leo let his rage sink down again, congealing into a cold, hard mass inside him. He’d done the right thing. No police—no publicity—no prison.
Anna