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‘I was—visiting the Ladies,’ she said with an attempt at airiness, though she could feel a slight flush colour her cheeks. Privately, it was mortifying. Of all the people in the world to have to explain to…
His eyes made a slow, thorough, entirely masculine survey of her down to her ankles, then back, lingering an insolent moment on her mouth. ‘Do you seriously expect me to believe that?’
She stared at him in incredulity. ‘Well…’ A saving surge of anger brought the words flying to her tongue. ‘Why shouldn’t you believe it? People are innocent until proven guilty in this country, you know.’ She drew herself up to her full five-six. ‘And now I have to go. There are things I need to do.’ She made a brusque attempt to sweep past him, but his lean bronzed hand shot out and closed once more around her arm.
‘Not so fast.’ He moved very close to her, and again she felt that swamping effect on her senses. ‘Don’t try to play the innocent, Goldilocks. You’ve been lurking in there like a common thief, spying on a private conversation. Either explain yourself properly, or you will find yourself in court pretty bloody quick.’
There was something so insulting about being called a name in that deep, cultured voice. Allowances needed to be made, she supposed, for a man coping with the loss of his father, but did he have to be so offensive? Certainly, neither her shoes nor her suit were brand new, but they were far from common.
‘I wasn’t listening to your conversation.’ In a determined effort she twisted from his grasp and retreated a strategic step. ‘I had important things on my mind.’
He snarled a contemptuous expletive not at all appropriate for a church, and added, ‘Don’t make the mistake of assuming you’re dealing with a fool, darling.’
The air fairly crackled with masculine aggression. Who knew what he might do? For all she knew, he might have minders who rubbed people out, like the mob.
To get herself off the hook, she warmed to her innocence theme, ignoring his sceptical gaze raking her from head to toe as if she were some despicable form of alien low-life. Amazing how, in the living, breathing flesh, that stern, tightly compressed mouth could still be so sensuous and expressive.
‘I hardly heard a thing,’ she continued, earnest in her effort to allay his fears. ‘You can’t hear much at all in that room when the door’s closed.’
‘Rubbish. I heard your voice very, very distinctly.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Look, I was here first, remember? I didn’t know you were coming in for your romantic rendezvous, did I? I’m not a mind-reader. I came in to find the Ladies, and you chose to use this room, too. Maybe I should have let you know I was there, but I thought you and your—girlfriend would be less embarrassed if I just said nothing and tiptoed away.’
He took a moment to digest this, and his gaze became less hostile, though more guarded, as if he’d seen the force of her argument but didn’t want to show it. It occurred to her that underneath his big, powerful, macho-male-in-command act, he actually seemed quite worried. She wondered if the merger had a lot more riding on it than he’d been willing to show Olivia West.
His eyes flickered over her. ‘What’s your name?’
Her heart sank. Lying was tempting, especially considering her summation of Marcus Russell as a vampire whose fangs had been battened to the national throat, but she thought of the guard in the porch and discarded it. ‘It’s Cate,’ she muttered. She forced herself to meet his eyes. ‘Summerfield.’
‘Summerfield.’ His brow creased, as if with the effort of recollection, and he slipped the phone back into his pocket.
That little action reminded her of something that had been nagging at her. He hadn’t made the call to Security. No minders had been summoned. Why?
The answer came to her in a dazzling flash. Because it would be a risk. Of course!
He was afraid that if he did, she would blab his secret to the world.
For a fabulous, golden moment she tasted the heady nectar of power. How the tables were turned. Goldilocks held Tom Russell in the palm of her little hand. Just wait—wait until he found out where she worked.
He’d relaxed a little, and now he started strolling about, pausing at times to fire questions and grill her with his hard gaze, although she couldn’t help noticing now how often his eyes lighted on her legs, or drifted to her hair.
Her own blood sparked up in response. She reminded herself that he was a rich, spoiled parasite devising criminal new ways to soak up the country’s wealth, but even at his iciest, his tall, dark sexiness impacted on her with undeniable power.
‘So who are you?’ he shot at her in his deep voice. ‘Are you an actress? A friend of one of my stepsisters? What do you do? More to the point, why are you here?’
She fluttered her lashes. ‘Oh, that.’ She allowed the moment to lengthen, the better to savour it.
Though a cowardly part of her cringed in terror at the risk she was about to take, another part fairly tingled with anticipation. She could feel his wolfish grey eyes follow her every move, and somehow the knowledge incited in her a dangerous desire to tease him.
With pleasurable deliberation, she pulled the ribbon from her hair, shook out the pale mass until it frothed in a blonde cascade down her back, then smoothed it all down with her hands.
Against every fibre of his will, Tom’s concentration wavered as the line of her profile and tender white neck impinged on his vision. His brain, locked down and blinkered against temptresses since the solemn vows of his wedding, flooded with images of shapely mermaids and bare ripe breasts. The thought came to him that she should be sunning herself on some rock. Naked, and smelling of the sea.
Conscious of his riveted attention, Cate swathed her hair back into her nape, casting him a glance as she retied the ribbon. ‘You invited me.’ She made a graceful, self-correcting gesture. ‘That is to say—my employer was invited to send a representative.’
‘Your employer…’ His thick black brows edged together and he flicked a frowning look over her. Then she saw the grim comprehension dawn in his eyes. He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘Bloody hell. I should have realised. You’ve got paparazzi written all over you.’ Underneath the derision, she detected something very close to dismay in his voice.
In one heart-stopping stride he was across the room to where she stood. ‘Here, give me that.’ He snatched the bag from her shoulder, and her alarmed internal organs all dropped back into their niches. ‘Which rag do you write for?’ he growled, making a ruthless search of the compartments. He found her phone and coolly slid it into his jacket pocket, then his lip curled in triumph as he pounced on her cassette recorder.
‘No, I don’t work for you,’ she rejoined, watching with some pleasure as his lean, smooth fingers rewound the tape and played it back without finding a whisper of illegal conversation. ‘I’m not guilty of churning out any of that cheap Russell trash, thank you. I write for a quality paper. The Clarion.’
He gave a snort of cynical laughter. ‘Quality? The Clarion?’ He put the recorder back in her purse and took out her pass. ‘What’s your excuse for not wearing this? I’d sack you for that alone if you worked for me.’
‘It spoiled the line of my jacket.’
‘What?’ His lip curled with such incredulous contempt that she was spurred to anger herself. A man like him would never know the challenges a woman faced fitting in with the society crowd.
He thrust the bag back at her. ‘Let me impress on you, Miss Summerfield,’ he said, enunciating each syllable with punishing precision, ‘anything you did happen to hear is completely off the record. Don’t even think of trying to use it.’ He towered over her in such an intimidating stance that it took all her nerve to hold his gaze. ‘Though you did say, didn’t you,’ he added, his eyes narrowing, ‘you didn’t hear anything?’ He scoured her face. ‘How true is that?’
Maybe it was the excess of testosterone in the air, but somehow her feminine spirit seemed creatively inspired.
‘Nearly true,’ she assured him, hoisting her bag to her shoulder. She gazed at him with smiling innocence. ‘Unless you count that bit about the merger. But don’t you worry. I don’t know much at all about share prices and the Stock Exchange.’
It was like kerosene to the bonfire. He hissed in a long searing breath, and stood stock still. Then he began to advance on her, his grey eyes glinting through the screen of his black lashes. ‘What else?’ he murmured, his deep, rich voice smooth with menace. ‘What else did you hear?’
Her heart revved up to an insane degree, but there was a crazy exhilaration in taunting him that drove her on. She gave a breezy little shrug and neatly eluded his grasp, sashaying over to the table to take a look at his notes.
‘Nothing else,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘Oh, except the part about Ms West’s divorce. Something about deceiving the courts so she can rip off her husband in the division of property, et cetera. It was all really too complicated for me to take in.’ She shuffled through the pages and slanted him a mocking glance. ‘And then there was that bit about how you have to hire a woman.’ She gave an amused laugh.
He stared at her for seconds, his eyes narrowed in calculation, then strolled across and tweaked the pages from her grasp. In a visible change of tack, he perched casually on the edge of the table, quite close to where she stood.
Too close for comfort.
‘Now, how does a female body,’ he drawled, cool amusement in his deep, dark voice as he made a slow, appreciative appraisal of her from head to toe, ‘so clearly designed for an angel, come to house such a teasing little devil?’
In spite of herself her blood heat rose. She told herself she was impervious to flattery. Her body wasn’t like an angel’s, unless it was a fallen angel that had consumed one chocolate too many. She made an effort to keep her voice under control. ‘I’m—just doing my job.’
‘Now, now, Cate.’ His mouth edged up in a smile. It gleamed in his grey gaze and lit his harsh, sardonic face with such warmth, it was impossible to believe she’d not seen at once how handsome he was. ‘You know you can’t write a word of it. Think of your code of ethics. Wasn’t it the Clarion who invented it?’
He was all suave reason and charm. She knew he was turning on the seduction, but it worked. All the air was sucked from her lungs and her heart started an erratic thumping.
‘The code, yes,’ she agreed, breathless. ‘We do, we do—adhere to it. Religiously. Although if something’s in the national interest—I’m sure Harry would think that a merger between Russell’s and the West Corporation—’
‘Won’t happen if you publish it.’ He still smiled, but the warmth vanished. ‘Olivia will pull out. Then I’ll sue you for a billion and take your Clarion to the cleaners.’
The cold menace in the words helped her to pull herself together. She fished in her bag for a notebook. ‘That sounds like a threat, Mr Russell.’ She challenged him with her eyes. ‘Hang on, I’ll just write it down.’
Danger flashed in his grey irises like a lightning strike. ‘Take care, sweetheart. This is not the day to be playing games with someone who can ruin you.’ He gestured at her accusingly. ‘Consider your position. Here you are, caught red-handed, listening in on a conversation in which some highly sensitive information is being discussed. You’ve deliberately concealed your press pass—’
She gave a deep sigh. ‘I explained that.’ Resigning herself, she capitulated, feeling in her bag for the pass, then lifting up the edge of her jacket while she clamped it on. ‘See? Ruins it.’
His eyes were fastened to her waist. He must have only seen the merest fragment of bare skin over her ribs before she dropped the hem back, but his pupils dilated and she saw his heavy black lashes give an almost imperceptible flicker. He raised his darkened gaze to hers.
Somehow she couldn’t look away. The air tautened and she felt her mouth dry. She pulled the pass off and patted down the hem several unneccessary times, conscious of her heart’s sudden mad racketing.
A priest’s dark figure loomed in the doorway, and they both started. A gang of small, fresh-faced boys crowding in behind him told her that the choir had arrived. She became fully conscious then of something she’d had at the edge of her awareness for some time, but had been too intensely absorbed in Tom Russell to notice.
The organ was playing, and there was a growing swell of voices.
The church was filling up.
‘I’d—I’d better go,’ she said, making an abrupt move towards the door, looking for a way through the milling boys. ‘I don’t want to miss my spot in the church.’
‘No, you don’t.’ Tom Russell sprang to his feet and caught her elbow. ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight.’
Visions of Mike, outside, fuming, assailed her. ‘But—I have to do my job—’
His hand closed around her wrist in a deceptively light grip. ‘Until I decide what to do with you, sweetheart,’ he said softly,
‘you’re with me.’
CHAPTER THREE
IT FELT surreal, walking into the main chapel with Tom Russell. All over the church heads swivelled their way, and there was an added buzz to the murmurs of the congregation. Everywhere she looked, she met the interested stares of celebrities and socialites, business high-fliers and politicians, plenty of whom had tasted dust, courtesy of the Sydney Clarion.
She had the unnerving sensation that she was in the maw of the enemy. A small crowd surged to greet Tom, but she couldn’t help noticing that, despite their sombre murmurs of sympathy, their curious glances kept shifting sideways to scrutinise her.
Perhaps their interest mightn’t have been as avid if he hadn’t been keeping such a firm hold on her arm. A stylish older woman, who looked vaguely familiar, rushed up to engulf him in an emotional embrace and he was forced to relax his grip. Cate saw her opportunity, and tried to slip away, only to feel a ruthless hand grasp hers and draw her back. Despite her sudden shock, or because of it, his hard palm in sudden connection with hers sent her blood coursing in giddy confusion.
The woman appeared to be one of Marcus Russell’s exwives. ‘Who’s your friend, Thomas?’ she demanded, leaning forward to peer closely at Cate once her effusions had run out. ‘Introduce me.’
Tom Russell’s caustic gaze clashed with Cate’s. ‘No one you want to know.’
The woman looked taken aback, then, when his attention was diverted by the next well-wisher, whispered to Cate, ‘Don’t take any notice of him, dear. This is a difficult day for him.’
Of course. It must be, Cate thought with some remorse. How could she have taken such pleasure in taunting him?
The service was surprisingly simple and austere. Though the chapel was packed to the rafters with celebrities, there was none of the razzmatazz Sydney had come to associate with Marcus Russell. Someone had chosen the most exquisite, spiritually moving music in the repertoire. If music could waft Marcus’s poor old soul to heaven, Cate reflected, then J. S. Bach and Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ should do it.
She gave up trying to escape to Mike, and allowed herself to be jammed into the front pew beside Tom Russell and a gaggle of expensively dressed stepsisters and their mothers, who all stared at her with surprise and curiosity. Some of the glances at her suit made her wonder if she’d left the price tag showing. She crossed her ankles under the seat, hoping to spare her shoes from their merciless scrutiny. She prayed when the others prayed, and sang the Twenty-third Psalm along with everyone else.
A stream of dignitaries, including the Prime Minister, stood up to honour the memory of Marcus Russell, but after a tedious while she tuned down to listen with half an ear, and started to plan her story for tomorrow’s issue. Her absent, wandering gaze drifted down to the burnished leather shoe resting next to hers, and she surfaced from her reverie with a small start of surprise. Why hadn’t she noticed before?
Between Tom Russell’s trouser hem and his expensive loafer was an expanse of bare, tanned skin.
He’d forgotten his socks.
A strange sensation flooded her, of sympathy and amusement mingled with some poignant, melty feeling. How unexpectedly human it made him. She was overwhelmed with a need to turn and look at him, to touch one of the beautiful lean hands resting on his Armani-clad knee. Possible words of comfort welled up on her tongue, but she forced herself to keep gazing straight ahead, and had to be satisfied with drinking in the magnetism of his masculine aura, and luxuriating in the warm contact of his arm and shoulder.
When he rose to take the lectern, the coughs and shuffles of the congregation ceased, and the church fell silent. The air pulsed with anticipation. She held her breath for him, wondering how nervous he was.
If he was it didn’t show. Like a man born to rule, he rose to the occasion and spoke with dignity and authority, taking only an occasional glance at his notes. His voice resonated through the church like the darker tones of a cello.
It gave her a perfect opportunity to study the classic bone structure of his lean, harsh face. He was so tall and masterful, so sincere and grief-stricken and restrained, she felt moved. How he must have loved that dreadful old man.
It came as a shock. Affection for his only child was the one thing she’d never heard Marcus Russell accused of. She knew a stab of discomfort to wonder how much the unshrinking honesty of her obituary had added to Tom’s pain.
‘My father may not have been universally admired,’ he said, controlling the emotion in his voice, ‘but he was a generous benefactor to many charities. Those who knew him well knew that he was not “a mere leech, fat on the profits of greed”.’
The familiar words, read with grim distaste, jolted through Cate. Murmurs of sympathetic outrage rippled around the congregation.
She sank down in her seat. What if they knew the perpetrator of those words was here in their very midst?
From his commanding position at the lectern, Tom spoke to the sea of familiar faces before him without seeing a single one. Conscious this had to be the performance of his life, he measured his comments with care, searingly conscious of their irony. If people only guessed how generous his father had been to charity.
The question that had tortured fourteen sleepless nights tormented him afresh. Why had Marcus done it? How could a man of his experience have believed a desperate financial shortfall would change his son’s life for the better? Did he really believe a disaster could erase a man’s grief?
Something of the depths of his dismay must have leaked into his voice, because the hushed atmosphere suddenly seemed charged with dynamite.
‘In fact,’ he read on, frowning in the effort to concentrate on the task at hand, ‘far from “squandering his squalid profits on sordid pleasure”, throughout his life my father was a notable phil—’
A sudden connection pinged in his brain and with a little choke he broke off. The notes blurred, while in his mind’s eye, in perfect clarity, a name focused.
Cate Summerfield.
The people, the church, the rigorously composed thread of his address receded. He raised his eyes from the page.
Cate Summerfield, obituary writer, stared back at him from her pew, frozen in guilty acknowledgement. Her mermaid’s eyes were wide in alarm, her lips tight-pressed.
In the throbbing silence, the emotional tension ratcheted up to screeching pitch and sobs broke out, but Tom was hardly aware of them. For speechless seconds he grappled with the sheer enormity of it. The nerve of this dizzy little blonde to have shown her face, even to have set foot in the church. But to have eavesdropped on a negotiation that gave her the actual power to ruin him…
For a heart-struck instant he stared into an abyss. If the corporation went under thousands would lose their livelihoods. The Russell name would echo down the years as a byword of shame.
Conscious of a faint, unwonted moisture on his upper lip,
he had to grip the lectern tight to restrain himself from loosening his collar. But he wasn’t his father’s son for nothing. With an almost superhuman effort, he summoned his formidable powers of recovery and cut the unnecessary emotion to make a lightning situation assessment.
Damage control needed to be neat and complete. He must find something to offer her. Some way to zip her saucy mouth with its infuriating smile. He thought of a bribe and discarded it. How the Clarion would gloat. Although if there was something she wanted, something out of her reach…
What could he offer her? The answer boomeranged back at once. What else would she want, but what they all did? She was a reporter, after all.
Beyond that, he seethed, she was a woman. And in that crystalline instant he knew exactly how he could do it.
Cowering in her pew, Cate recognised sudden purpose in Tom Russell’s glinting gaze. She gathered herself to make a dash for the exit, but too late, for with an eloquent gesture that provoked a wave of sobs around the cathedral, he handed over the lectern to the officiating archbishop, and in a couple of strides was back beside her.
‘Stay put,’ he hissed in her ear, smiling, though his white, even teeth were gritted. ‘I’m not finished with you yet.’ He slipped his arm around her and held her close against his hard body, as though she were some stricken family member in need of support. Her senses plunged into uproar, but she shrank from making a scene, and submitted to the disturbing effects of feeling his long muscled thigh pressed against hers.
In a short, nerve-racking while the service came to an end, and she knew her time had come. As soon as the mourners rose to make their way out, her captor seized the opportunity, amid the confusion, to hustle her away from the goggling stares of his family members, down the aisle past the crowded vestry, and out through the door to the visitor’s car park.
