Ransacked Heart

‘Other than this job,’ she added challengingly, some perverse part of her almost wishing he would attempt to deprive her of it so that she would have something real, present and immediate to fight him for.

‘Which you have. This time I’m not letting you off so lightly—which is what I was actually doing when I had you dismissed from that other one,’ he stated outrageously.

‘Hardly!’

‘I could have destroyed you six years ago,’ he continued.

‘And didn’t you just do your best?’ Bitterness rose. ‘My job—’

‘I’m not talking about your dismissal or even the fact that it parted you from Jones, and I think you know it.’ The claim was confident. ‘I’m talking about the way things were between us. As I say, I could have destroyed you, or so I thought at the time, but you’ve turned out to be a lot tougher than I had imagined…not vulnerable or confused at all. This time I don’t have to restrain myself; I don’t have to be merciful. I know what you are and that you can cope.’

‘With what? Being destroyed by you?’ she quipped wildly.

‘Weren’t you listening? I’ve realised that you neither required nor merited consideration. Nor do you now, and this time you won’t get it.’ Luke paused deliber-ately, his eyes holding hers. ‘You’re not stupid and you’re not innocent, Maria. You knew what it was all about six years ago—what was happening.’

It was as if she was bound by silken cords, soft yet irresistibly strong. Maria couldn’t move her head or even lower her eyes, and time had slipped. She was nineteen and choked by the immensity of her reaction to this man, unable to breathe or stir, and panicked by the conviction that Luke was seeing into her secret self, invading, bent on vandalising and stealing. Every time he looked her way, that frightening compulsion went sweeping through her, the urge to let him look, let him absorb her until nothing was left and she no longer existed as a separate, individual entity. She was a confident, outgoing girl who usually interacted quite happily with people of either sex and any age, but she was reduced to silence in Luke Scott’s presence, so deeply did he disturb her.

A trick of time. She was twenty-five, her hormones under control, her identity secure and her spirit her own, safe from thieves. She showed Luke her smile.

‘Weren’t you listening to me earlier? Yes, I know what was happening. You were a romantic figure, come to restore our fortunes. The awe I felt was probably the first phase of hero-worship—the sort of thing some people call a crush. Oh, it was uncomfortable.’ She gestured mockingly. ‘And confusing, since I never reached the stage of identifying my affliction. Maybe I do owe you something after all. If you hadn’t made me hate you, it might have gone on for months.’

‘Ah, hatred.’ Luke was smoothly reflective. ‘Much more comfortable.’

‘And it lasts.’ Maria looked straight at him with hard eyes. ‘I still hate you, Mr Scott.’

‘Then call me Luke, as there’s a certain intimacy to hatred. It’s a very personal thing,’ he taunted. ‘And there you were, insisting that there’s nothing personal between us.’

‘You must have hated me too!’ she flared, caught, and angry enough to show her resentment, past and present. ‘All right, your claim that I was superfluous is probably valid, so why wasn’t I made redundant in the usual way? Let go, as the euphemism has it? There’d have been no comebacks for the station. I didn’t belong to a union, I didn’t know anything about my rights then, and I know now that I didn’t have any in that particular case…But you actively made my dismissal a punishment.’

‘You must have thought you merited punishment, for the idea to have occurred to you at all.’

‘The way I was dismissed ensured that it occurred to me,’ Maria asserted tightly. ‘Except that I had no idea what I was being punished for.’

‘Because you felt no guilt about what you were doing?’ Luke probed inimically.

‘My supposed affair with Florian?’ Maria just man-aged to keep her voice low. ‘Even if you hadn’t been way out there, you had no right to make something from my personal life the grounds for dismissal.’

‘The method of your dismissal,’ he corrected her. ‘You were due to lose that job anyway.’

‘You admit it, then? That it was personal?’

‘We’ve just been agreeing that what’s between us is personal, haven’t we?’

‘Only in the most negative sense, and only then, not now.’ Maria was defiant.

Luke laughed with genuine amusement, but something hard and unyielding still lay behind the surface gleam in his eyes.

‘More than ever now. As I say, you owe me something, and if you’re determined to go on pretending you don’t know that, I’ll be delighted to tell you what it is some time soon, but not right now. We’re attracting too much attention. In fact——’his upper lip curled

fastidiously as he paused thoughtfully ‘—in fact, if we didn’t have our professional connection to serve as camouflage, I don’t think I’d care to be seen with you. It’s just a pity we don’t live in the era when a man could set his mistress up somewhere and know she’d be there waiting for him whenever he felt the urge to see her, but was never, ever seen with her in public.’

Immobile, barely breathing, Maria didn’t speak for several seconds. Then she said tightly, ‘I’m not your mistress.’

‘No, but you’re going to be.’

This time her silence was longer. She had known, hadn’t she? Oh, yes, she had recognised the sexual awareness that was the dark other side of Luke’s hostility—and had tried to ignore it, but it was impossible to go on pretending it didn’t exist now that the preliminary skirmishing was over and he was referring to it openly.

Apprehension was a physical pang, the ensuing denial a wash of red-hot feeling. Never!

The thought was frantic as she dragged a desperate breath into her lungs. She hated Luke Scott, so——

Just say no.

Maria suppressed rising panic that was fatally laced with hysteria. Where had that stupid slogan come from, the facile answer of those who thought there were easy solutions to all the world’s problems? Nothing was that simple.

The way he was looking at her——

‘When I’m so cheap and nasty?’ she jeered, a soft acknowledgement of the contempt with which he was regarding her.

‘Cheap,’ he granted her ruthlessly, and smiled as she glanced in the direction of Florian, who was now dancing energetically with the exotically lovely Nicky Kai. ‘No, Jones won’t be rescuing you, even supposing Nicky is into sharing. He can name his price and I’ll pay it because he’s a brilliant jock, but that’s it and he knows it.’

In a happier moment, Maria might have laughed at the idea of Florian troubling to rescue anyone from anything.

‘I don’t need rescuing.’ She lifted her chin. ‘No one has mistresses any more.’

‘I know, but what other word is there? We’d both balk at “lover”. People just get married or live together,’ Luke went on relentlessly. ‘But those don’t apply to us as they imply a sharing that’s total, and there’s only one area of my life that I can bring myself to share with you.’

The insult enraged her.

‘Unfortunately there isn’t a single square inch of my life I want to share with you,’ she told him levelly, the mad, febrile fluttering of her heart a private weakness.

‘This time I’m not considering you,’ Luke returned callously, and produced a brilliant smile. ‘Come, let me introduce you to people. Who haven’t you met yet?’

As they moved around the room, Luke introducing her to the people with whom she would be working, Maria struggled to put his threats out of her mind and minimise her own reaction to him, both six years ago and now. Whatever she had felt at nineteen, hatred was all that was left now, and hatred ought to impart strength. Luke Scott meant nothing to her; he couldn’t do anything to her if she refused to let him.

But she remained disturbed, acutely aware of him at her side and only grateful that he despised her too much to allow himself to be seen touching her in public.

Even the convention of a hand at her elbow would have been intolerable. That was how much she hated him.

She glanced at him, almost hopefully, but the impact of his virility and arrogance remained undiminished, and her fingers curled into her palms, painted nails slicing the soft skin. He was quite simply devastating, a combination of grace and power, allied to the pride implicit in strong, superb facial bones over which dark coppery skin was stretched tautly. He was clean-shaven, although a faint darkness marked his jaw at this hour; inevitable with his colouring, she knew, her eyes moving upwards to his jet-black hair and then—a betrayal of herself—down to where the open neck of his shirt provided tantalising glimpses of subtly gleaming flesh shadowed by softly curling dark hair, all so emphatically masculine.

It was a dangerous moment, fascination obliterating resentment, but when Luke suddenly turned his eyes her way again, the contempt Maria saw in them restored hatred.

CHAPTER TWO

‘CAN we give you a lift?’

Maria flung Luke Scott a hostile look as he and Cavell Fielding appeared just as she was taking her leave of Giles and Ursula Estwick, with Florian and Nicky on either side of her.

‘I’m going home with Florian and Nicky, thanks.’

It was deliberately dismissive, but a scorching anger rose in response to the searingly contemptuous look he gave her.

‘We’ve managed to wangle her an apartment just a floor below Nicky and me,’ Florian volunteered cheerfully. ‘Well, it was Nicky’s influence really, I have to admit. It takes Taipei’s most famous daughter to buck our letting agent’s system of waiting lists like that.’

‘It sounds like a convenient arrangement,’ Luke commented urbanely, and Maria saw his lip curl sar-donically, as if everything he believed of her had just been confirmed.

What did he think they were going to do? Toss a coin to determine on which floor Florian spent the night?

‘Cosy,’ she offered flippantly with a defiantly challenging smile.

‘Obviously,’ he drawled.

Maria met Cavell’s watchful sapphire eyes and a furious resentment gripped her, felt on Cavell’s behalf almost as much as her own, because Luke couldn’t have spoken to her as he had earlier, openly stating that he intended to make her his mistress, if he had had any real regard for Cavell, or women in general, for that matter.

‘See you tomorrow, then, Cavell,’ she confirmed an arrangement they had made during the course of the evening, ignoring Luke now but still acutely conscious of his attention as she thanked the Estwicks again and departed with Florian and Nicky.

‘Luke Scott doesn’t like you any better yet, Flo,’ Nicky commented amusedly when they were in a taxi.

‘I’m a woman’s man,’ Florian returned complacently as their driver eased his slow way out of one of the traffic jams that were a major problem in Taipei. ‘Other men can resent that.’

Maria shook her head, her smile a little cynical.

‘You don’t think his dislike might be a little more personal than that?’ she wondered casually.

‘As gorgeous as she is, I don’t go for women like Cavell Fielding.’ Typically, Florian laughed, natural vanity making him misunderstand her. ‘Although I suppose he might suspect her of fancying me! I have to say this, though—whatever it is, he’s never let it become a big issue. He ignores me when he can and I co-operate by keeping out of his way, because I like the job. He’s never allowed his dislike, personal or otherwise, to influence his professional judgement in any way. He knows I’m the best jock he’s got here. But generally it’s been unnecessary for us to have much contact. As I told you earlier, he spends most of his time in Hong Kong, where his major interests are.’

It was just a pity that Luke hadn’t decided to ignore her as well, Maria reflected wryly. The policy he applied to Florian would have suited her perfectly.

As it was, the most she could hope for was his speedy return to Hong Kong, but for now she supposed she would just have to endure a certain amount of contact, as he had warned her earlier at the party just before leaving her with Cavell Fielding and Penny Seu Chen.

‘I plan to be around over the next few weeks while we get this new image launched, and we expect you to be very visible. Obviously we haven’t gone for whole-sale personnel changes, so you’re the hook on which we’re hanging the idea, a new programme manager whose own image is the station’s—young, smart, sophisticated and committed to the music. Taiwan is one of the most Westernised countries in this region, and our last few surveys have shown that we’re attracting an extensive local listenership now, covering an age-group ranging from mid-teens to late thirties, so we want to ditch a lingering perception that we exist solely for the benefit of non-nationals. Giles Estwick will have discussed it with you, and you’ll have ideas of your own. Cavell will want to hear what they are, as well as some appropriate biographical details for Press releases, as she’s handling the publicity angle for us. She’s the best there is, so consult her if there’s anything you’re unsure of on that side.’

‘But only on that side?’ Maria had prompted derisively.

Luke’s smile was equally mocking. ‘Obviously we understand each other perfectly already.’

‘I understand you,’ she corrected him sharply. ‘I should. Rats aren’t exactly rare.’

‘Highly intelligent, though,’ Luke retorted dismissively, apparently uperturbed, but hostility still glinted in his eyes.

‘Every rule has its exception,’ she snapped.

She could work with Cavell, Maria had decided by the next afternoon. Along with a Chinese freelance photographer, Cavell had called for her that morning and whisked her round some of Taipei’s famous land-marks, the all-marble Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, a colourful Buddhist temple, and the Grand Hotel with its magnificent Chinese architecture, pausing only long enough at each for the young man to take the photos that would help introduce Maria to the Taipei public, before escorting her back to the apartment and approving the outfit she planned to wear to the dinner the radio station was hosting for the rest of the local media that night.

‘You’d better have the afternoon to yourself as I imagine the heat and humidity must be hitting you,’ she decided, preparing to depart. ‘We’ll see you tonight.’

‘Will everyone be attending?’ asked Maria.

‘Except for whoever’s on duty. It’s expected,’ Cavell added drily.

‘Mr Scott?’

‘Of course. He’s taking a personal interest in this.’

Personal. The word disturbed Maria for a while afterwards, although Cavell probably hadn’t given it any real thought, since she appeared so untroubled, her manner calmly confident and still strictly professional.

Maria was checking her public face, glittering tawny colour smudged lightly over her eyelids, darkening at the outer corners, lips defined with vivid colour, when the doorbell rang that evening, and she went to open it, expecting Nicky Kai, who had telephoned during the afternoon to suggest that the three of them share a taxi again tonight.

Surprise made her catch a breath, but it was the swiftly ensuing resentment that held it locked in her lungs for seconds after she should have expelled it as she stared questioningly at Luke Scott, casually elegant in a beautifully made lightweight jacket worn over a pale shirt and obviously expensive trousers with a discreetly fashionable belt.

‘Are you ready?’ he enquired, eschewing any conventional greeting.

‘What do you want?’ Maria demanded rudely, not yet fully recovered from the oddly physical shock of seeing him so unexpectedly.

Luke didn’t answer her immediately, but the grey eyes were eloquent as they dropped to the tiny cham-pagne-coloured skirt the slenderness of her legs made permissible, then travelled upwards again in slow appraisal of her strapless matching bustier, encrusted with transparent beads and revealing both her smooth olive-toned midriff and the upper swell of her high, proud breasts beneath the single fine circle of gold she wore about her neck.

‘Do you really want to go into that now?’ he challenged her softly, his ironic gaze returning briefly to her party face and the shiny, streaky curls that tumbled over her brow and about her neck, just skimming her bare shoulders. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t think we have time.’

‘I meant, why are you here?’ Maria elaborated bitingly, suppressing reactions more heated than simple anger.

‘To make sure you get to this dinner tonight.’ It was tersely volunteered.

‘Cavell never said anything about this,’ she protested tightly.

‘Cavell doesn’t know.’

She had already guessed that, and her smile was blistering as she registered his arrogance all over again. He not only believed that she would be a willing accessory to his two-timing Cavell, but that Cavell either wouldn’t realise what was happening or wouldn’t mind if she did.

‘Then forget it. I’ve already made arrangements to go with Nicky and Florian.’

‘Cancel them. God, do you think Nicky really wants you hanging around?’ Luke added disgustedly, his expression growing relentless.

‘Does Cavell?’

‘Cavell doesn’t come into this. Get used to the idea, Maria. I’m going to be partnering you at most of the functions you’ll be required to attend in your professional capacity over the next few weeks.’

‘That wasn’t in my contract, and there was no mention of it in the programme Giles and Cavell have outlined for me either.’ Maria produced a whisper of a laugh. ‘In fact, I could swear your image-maker wants me to come across as a free spirit, someone who doesn’t need the convention of a male escort—and I don’t. It won’t be a pretence.’

‘Nevertheless, you’ll have one,’ Luke told her inexorably.

‘You?’ Maria derided.

‘Who else? Unless you’ve moved unbelievably fast, Nicky Kai still has a claim on Jones, and while some of the other jocks may have shown signs of making themselves available as reserve players last night—yes, I noticed the attention you attracted—they’ll just have to wait their turn.’ The look Luke gave her was cautionary as she stirred rebelliously, brilliant lips parting. ‘And perhaps I should remind you that the contract you’ve just cited binds you as securely as it does us, unless you’re willing to face interminable legal hassles in an effort to extricate yourself.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ The passionate question was involuntary and, regaining a measure of both control and fighting spirit, she went on quickly in a lightly mocking tone, ‘And what’s Cavell Fielding’s reaction going to be when she does know about these…plans you have for escorting me? And not so much about the fact of them, as the reasons behind the fact?’

‘You seemed to understand it clearly enough last night, so why not now? I won’t have Cavell dragged into our personal affairs.’

It was offered as a warning, but the threat was unmistakable.

‘Our personal affairs!’ Maria sent him a smouldering glance as her mind screamed its resistance to the idea of there ever being anything personal between them, and every muscle in her body clenched in physical imitation of that wild denial.

Luke shrugged indifferently, his face hard but still astonishingly handsome.

‘How else should I phrase it? I can be a lot more crude if you want me to.’

‘I’m sure you can!’ Maria snapped, and flung out a hand, unconscious of the helpless appeal allied to imperative demand in the gesture as control slipped once more. ‘Tell me why you’re doing this, damn you!’

‘Why?’ he repeated, his eyes resting on the suddenly tempestuous shape of her mouth. ‘Because arriving with you makes it easier for me to leave with you—to take you home, Maria.’

And all that the phrase implied. He didn’t need to be more explicit. She flung up her head, bright satin-smooth curls shaking.

‘I’d rather die!’

It rang with pride and passion, the intensity of the emotion heightening the slightly exotic aspect of her peculiar beauty which was in reality merely the end sum of a wonderfully mixed ancestry of ordinary Celts, Latins and Anglo-Saxons.

Luke laughed, his amusement genuine for a moment.

‘How extremely dramatic!’

‘But true,’ she insisted, her eyes still stormy.

‘And passionate.’ Grey eyes were turned silvery by a gleam of speculation. ‘Do you make love as passionately as you hate?’

‘Love?’ Maria scorned, and saw his lips twist in acknowledgement.

‘You’re right—a badly chosen phrase,’ he conceded derisively as he looked at his watch again. ‘The limi-tations of our language…Ring Jones and tell him I’m taking you to this dinner.’

‘Because arriving with me will make it easier for you to leave with me?’ Maria threw his explanation back at him. ‘Easier being the limited English way of saying—less likely to excite comment and speculation?’

‘If you like,’ he allowed tautly.

‘And it will look more as if you’re carrying out a professional duty.’ Surging resentment drove her on. ‘So if you don’t want anyone thinking you might be with me for personal reasons, why bother?’

‘You know why,’ Luke asserted, suddenly harsh.

But she didn’t really. Oh, yes, she recognised the sexual awareness that was an integral part of his attitude towards her, and it made her uneasy, but he couldn’t really mean to do anything about it when he despised her so intensely. His talk was just that, talk aimed at intimidating her, but she would never give him the satisfaction of allowing him to succeed. Six years ago, her own bewildering awareness of him, the way it had made her feel threatened, must have been obvious to him when his simple presence, a glance in her direction, the sound of his voice, had been enough to unnerve her; but these days she answered back—and for some reason he was hell-bent on punishing her for what he believed her to be, humiliating her with constant reminders of his contempt.

But he would never actually touch her, Maria decided, directing a quick look at the resolute line of chin and jaw and the arrogant curve of his nose. Strength of character and a confident decisiveness were implicit in the hardness of that darkly handsome face, and while the curve of his lower lip was disturbingly sensual, there was a fastidiousness there too which ought to be reassuring. He wouldn’t be able to bring himself to touch her, because if he did, the contempt he felt for her would be extended to himself, and she thought Luke Scott was too intelligent a man to submit to anything so destructive. Like most successful, powerful men, he would cherish his self-respect.

She had no need to feel so uneasy in his presence. All she had to do was steel herself to get through the forthcoming weeks until he returned to Hong Kong and she was left to immerse herself in this new job in peace, free of the distraction he constituted.

Half convinced, she shrugged philosophically and turned to leave the apartment’s square entrance hall in which they were standing, aware of Luke following her into the luxuriously appointed lounge, a long elegant room which ended in sliding glass doors opening on to a balcony with a view she had spent part of the afternoon enjoying, pretty green parkland dotted with ornamental ponds linked by a winding, deeply cut stream that was spanned by the occasional arched stone bridge.

A hand on the telephone receiver, she paused in the act of reading Florian and Nicky’s number which was jotted down on the pad beside it, and threw Luke a challenging glance.

‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll give you away to someone?’ she taunted. ‘Florian and Nicky, for instance? Suppose I tell them that you want to escort me tonight for personal reasons?’

Luke shrugged, unperturbed. ‘Perhaps there isn’t that much need for discretion. You’re a beautiful woman, after all, intelligent and successful in your career—and unknown here. Other than myself, probably only Florian Jones knows what you really are and he at any rate obviously doesn’t find the reality at all unpalatable.’