A Treacherous Seduction

Whoever she was, the woman was obviously very wealthy. If this man was acting as an interpreter for her he must be trustworthy, Beth acknowledged, because one look at the older woman’s face made it abundantly clear that she was not the sort of person to be duped by anyone—no matter how handsome their face or how sexy their body.

‘You don’t have to make up your mind right now,’ the man was telling Beth calmly. ‘Here is my name and a number where you can reach me.’ Reaching into his jacket, he removed a pen and a piece of paper on which he quickly wrote something before handing it to Beth. ‘I shall be here in the hotel tomorrow morning. You can let me know your decision then.’

She wasn’t going to accept his offer, of course, Beth assured herself once he and his companion had gone. Even if he had been an accredited interpreter provided by a reputable agency she would still have had her doubts.

Because he’s too sexy…too…too disturbingly male, and you’re too vulnerable, an inner voice taunted her. I thought you were supposed to be immune to men like him now. You said that Julian Cox had cured you of ever falling in love again.

No. That will never happen, she answered her sharp-tongued inner critic swiftly. There’s no way I could ever be in danger of falling for a man like him, a man who’s far too good-looking for his own good. Heavens, he must have women swarming all over him. Why on earth should he be interested in someone like me?

Perhaps for the same reason that Julian Cox was interested in you, her inner critic taunted. To him you probably seem to be an easy meal ticket. A woman on her own, vulnerable. Remember what you were told before you left home.

Beth was determined not to accept Alex’s offer, but in the morning, when she presented herself at the hotel’s reception desk again, insisting that she desperately needed an accredited interpreter, the man behind the counter shook his head regretfully, repeating what Beth had been told the previous day.

‘I am sorry, but we simply cannot. There are conventions,’ he told Beth.

It crossed Beth’s mind that she might have to abandon her plans to make this a business trip and simply do some sightseeing instead. But that would mean going home, having to admit to another failure…She had come to Prague to look for crystal, and she was not going to go home until she had found some.

Even if that meant accepting the services of a man like Alex Andrews?

Even if it meant accepting that—yes! Beth told herself sternly.

She had eaten her breakfast alone in her room; the hotel was busy, and, despite all the stern admonishments she had made to herself, she still didn’t feel confident enough to eat in the dining room—alone. Now she ordered herself a coffee and removed the guidebook she had bought on her arrival in Prague from her handbag. For all she knew Alex Andrews might not even turn up. Well, if he didn’t there were plenty of other foreign students looking for work, she reminded herself stoically.

She went and sat down in a corner of the hotel lobby, not exactly hiding herself away out of sight, but certainly not making herself very obvious either, she recognised with a small stab of irritated despair. Why was she so lacking in confidence, so insecure, so…so vulnerable? It was not as though she had any reason to be. She was part of a very loving and closely knit family; she had parents who had always supported and protected her. Perhaps that was what it was. Perhaps they had protected her a little too much, she decided ruefully. Certainly Kelly, her friend, seemed to think so.

‘The waiter couldn’t remember what you’d ordered, so I’ve brought you a cappuccino…’

Beth nearly jumped out of her skin as she heard Alex’s husky, sensual voice.

How had he found her here in this quiet corner? And, more importantly, how had he known she’d ordered coffee in the first place? And then, as he placed the tray he was carrying down on the table in front of her, Beth guessed what he had done. There were two cups of coffee on it and a croissant. No doubt all of them charged to her room!

‘I actually ordered my coffee black,’ she told him curtly, and not quite truthfully.

‘Oh.’ He gave her an oblique, smiling look. ‘That’s odd; I could have sworn you were a cappuccino girl. In fact I can almost see you with just a hint of a creamy chocolatey moustache.’

Beth stared at him in angry disbelief. He was taking far too many liberties, behaving far too personally. She gave him a ferociously frosty look and informed him arctically, ‘As a woman, I hardly find that a flattering allusion. Men have moustaches.’

‘Not the kind I mean,’ he returned promptly as he sat down beside her, a wicked smile dancing in his eyes as he leaned forward. His lips were so close to her ear that she could actually feel the warmth of his breath as he whispered provocatively, ‘The kind I meant is kissed off, not shaved…’

Beth’s eyes widened in outraged fury.

He was actually pretending to flirt with her, pretending to find her attractive.

She started to get up, too furious to even bother telling him that she was not going to need his services, when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the beautiful crystal lustres the salesgirl was placing on the display shelves of the hotel’s gift shop. Beth caught her breath. They were just so beautiful. The lustres moved gently, catching the light, their delicacy and beauty so immediately covetable that Beth ached to buy them.

A friend of her mother’s had some antique Venetian ones which she had inherited from her grandmother, and Beth had always loved them.

‘What is it?’ she heard Alex asking her curiously at her side.

‘The lustres…the wall-lights,’ Beth explained. ‘They’re so beautiful.’

‘Very beautiful and I’m afraid very expensive,’ Alex told her. ‘Were you thinking of buying them as a gift, or for yourself?’

‘For my shop,’ Beth told him absently, her attention concentrated on the lustres.

‘You own a shop? Where? What kind?’ His voice was less soft now, sharp with interest and something which Beth told herself was almost avaricious—too avaricious to be mere polite curiosity.

‘Yes. I do…in a small town you won’t have heard of. It’s called Rye-on-Averton. I…we sell good-quality china and pottery ornaments and glassware. That’s why I’ve come to Prague. I’m looking for new suppliers here, but the quality has to be right, and the price…’

‘Well, you won’t beat those pieces for quality,’ Alex told her positively.

Beth looked at him, but before she could say anything he was telling her, ‘Your coffee’s going cold. You had better drink it and I had better introduce myself to you properly. As you know, I’m Alex Andrews.’

He held out his hand. A little reluctantly Beth took it. She had no idea why she felt so reluctant to touch him, or to have any kind of physical contact with him. Any other woman would have been more than eager to do so, she was quite sure. So what did that make her? A frightened little rabbit…too scared to touch such a good-looking and sexy man because she was afraid of the effect he might have on her? Of course not.

Quickly she shook his hand, and just as quickly released it, uncomfortably aware of the way her pulse-rate had quickened and her face become flushed.

‘Beth Russell,’ she responded.

‘Yes, I know,’ Alex told her, confessing, ‘I asked them on Reception. What’s it short for?’

‘Bethany,’ Beth told him.

‘Bethany…I like that; it suits you. My grandmother was a Beth as well. Her actual name was Alžb

ta, which she anglicised when she and my grandfather fled to Britain. She died before I was born—of a broken heart, my grandfather used to say, mourning the country and the family she had to leave behind.

‘When my parents finally visited Prague, after the Revolution, my mother said that she found it incredibly moving to hear her family talking about her. She said it made her mother come alive for her. She died when my mother was eight…’

Beth made an involuntary sound of distress.

‘Yes,’ Alex agreed, confirming that he had heard and understood it. ‘I feel the same way too. My mother missed out on so much—the loving presence of her mother and the comfort of being part of the large, extended family which she would have known had she grown up here in Prague. But then, of course, as my grandfather used to say, the opposite and darker side of that was the fact that because of his political beliefs he would have been persecuted and maybe even killed.

‘The rest of the family certainly didn’t escape unscathed. My grandfather was a younger son. His eldest brother would, in the normal course of events, have inherited both lands and a title from his father, but the Regime took all that away from the family.

‘Now, of course, it has been restored. There are some families living in the Czech Republic today who have regained so many draughty castles that they’re at a loss to know what to do with them all.

‘Fortunately, in the case of my family, there is only the one. I shall take you to see it. It is very beautiful, but not so beautiful as you.’

Beth stared at him, completely lost for words. British he might claim to be, British his passport might declare him to be, but there was quite obviously a very strong Czech streak in him. Beth had done her homework before coming to Prague; she knew how the Czech people prided themselves on being artistic and sensitive, great poets and writers, idealists and romantics. Alex was certainly romantic. At least in the sense that he obviously enjoyed embroidering reality and the truth. There was no way she came anywhere near deserving to be described as beautiful, and it infuriated her that he should think her stupid enough to believe that she might be. Why was he doing it?

She was about to ask him when the lustres caught her eye again. Alex was right; they would be expensive on sale in a hotel like this one, but there must be other factories that made the same kind of thing—factories that did not charge expensive hotel prices to tourists. Without an interpreter, though, she would have no chance of finding them.

Beth turned to Alex Andrews.

‘I know exactly what the going rate for interpreters is,’ she warned him fiercely, ‘and you will have to be able to drive. And I intend to check that the hotel management is prepared to vouch for you…’

The smile he was giving her was doing crazy things to her heart, making it flip over and then flop heavily against her chest wall like a stranded salmon.

‘What are you doing?’ she protested, panicking as Alex reached for her hand.

‘Sealing our bargain with a kiss,’ he told her softly as he lifted her nerveless fingers to his lips. And then, before they got there, he stopped and told her thoughtfully, ‘Although perhaps on second thought…’

Beth went limp with relief. But it was a relief that came a little bit too soon, for, as she started to pull away, Alex leaned closer to her and swiftly captured her mouth with his own, kissing it firmly.

Beth was too shocked to move.

‘You…you kissed me,’ she gasped in a squeaky voice. ‘But…’

‘I’ve been wanting to do that from the first moment I saw you,’ Alex told her huskily.

Beth stared at him.

Common sense, not to mention a sense of self-preservation, screamed to her that there was no way she could employ him as her interpreter, not after what he had just done, but his mesmeric grey eyes were hypnotising her, making it impossible for her to say what she knew ought to be said.

‘We’ll need a hire car,’ he was telling her, just as though what he had done was the most natural thing in the world. ‘I’ll organise one.’

CHAPTER THREE

BETH gave a small sigh as she replaced the lustres on the glass shelves of the hotel’s gift shop.

The previous day, after Alex Andrews had dropped her off following their visit to the first of the factories on her list, she had come into the shop and asked the price of the lustres they had on display.

As she had expected, they were expensive—very expensive.

‘This piece is from one of our foremost crystal factories,’ the salesgirl had explained to Beth. ‘The lady whose family owns and runs the factory would never normally allow their things to be displayed in such a way, but she is a friend of the owner of the hotel. Normally they work only to order. Those wishing to buy their glassware have to visit the factory and speak with the people there themselves. The factory has been with the family for many, many generations, although it was taken away from them for a time during the Regime…’

‘The lustre is very beautiful,’ Beth had sighed.

Yes, it was very beautiful, she thought now as she left the gift shop.

The factories she had already visited today produced nothing even approaching the quality of the piece in the gift shop. The people she had met there had been friendly and helpful, eager to do business with her, but Beth had known the moment she saw their glassware range that it was not right for her shop—they specialised in highly individual pieces, highly covetable pieces. But it had not been her disappointment over the quality of what she had seen that had caused her to storm back to the car several paces ahead of Alex Andrews, her lips pressed together in a tight, angry line.

Still, at least this evening she would be seeing the stall holder in Wenceslas Square, who had promised her that she would bring her samples of the kind of glass she wanted to buy.

Yesterday, after Alex Andrews had left her to go and organise a hire car, Beth had spent an anxious hour restlessly walking by the river, trying to convince herself that she had not been as reckless as she feared in accepting his offer of help. For some reason, although technically she was the more senior ‘partner’ in their ‘relationship’, and she therefore held the power, the control, she couldn’t quite escape the feeling that Alex had manoeuvred her into employing him, and that he was deliberately trying to manipulate her.

She’d known that she was going to have to be on her guard with him, and that she couldn’t trust him. He was a man, after all, just like Julian. Another charmer…another chancer…

By the time he had returned she had told herself that she was fully armoured against him.

She’d deliberately had her lunch early, so that he wouldn’t suggest they could eat together, thus ensuring that she wouldn’t be tricked into paying for his meal. But even then he had nearly caught her out.

Eating so early had meant that she hadn’t been particularly hungry, and so she had left the hotel dining room having barely touched her meal. Just as she had done so, Alex had walked into the hotel foyer. The warmth of the smile he had given her could quite easily have turned another woman’s head, and Beth had certainly been conscious of the envious looks she’d attracted from the three female tourists who’d been watching them.

‘We still haven’t discussed exactly what you want to do,’ Alex told her as he reached her. ‘I thought we would have lunch together so that we can do so. There’s a very good traditional restaurant not far from here that I know you’d enjoy…’

What she would not give for just one tenth of his impressive self-confidence, Beth thought enviously as she started to tell him curtly, ‘No, I’ve already…’

‘And these are the factories you want to visit,’ Alex was saying as he picked up her list.

‘Yes,’ she agreed tersely.

‘Mmm…Well, they certainly produce reasonable-quality crystal, but if what you’re looking for is more along the lines of the pieces you were looking at in the gift shop then I would recommend…’

Alarm bells began to ring in Beth’s brain. She had been warned at home to be wary of the touts paid by some of the more dubious manufacturers whose aim was to sell inferior-quality goods to the unwary at inflated prices.

‘None of the reputable manufacturers would want to tarnish their reputations by becoming involved in that sort of thing,’ she’d been told by a friend. ‘The Czechs are a very artistic and a very proud people, but unfortunately, like any other nation, they have their less honest citizens. But that shouldn’t affect you.’

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