Mistress of Convenience

Suppressing thoughts he did not want to have to deal with, Luke walked into his suite and headed for the shower.

Stripping off, he stepped into it, the hot needle-jets of water glistening on his body as he moved beneath the shower’s spray. The light fell on old scars on his chest, and the newer one low down on his body.

Having finished showering, he stepped out onto the marble floor, padding naked into his bedroom to extract a pair of clean white boxer shorts from a drawer. The phrase ‘going commando-style’ might have a certain sexual edge to it when used to describe the choice not to wear any underwear, but from his own point of view weeks, sometimes months of living in the field, in one set of sweat and dirt-soaked combats had given him a very different take on the matter! To anyone who had experienced desert combat conditions the luxury of quantities of clean water was something to be truly appreciated.

CHAPTER TWO

Six months later

SUZY paused and studied the sleek yachts clustered in the harbour of the small Italian coastal resort. Two women walked past her, expensively groomed and wearing equally expensive designer clothes. Suzy had dressed as appropriately as she could for this luxurious resort, in white linen trousers and a brief sleeveless matching top, with sandals on her feet and the de rigueur sunglasses concealing her eyes, but no way was she in their league—and no way was she made for such an exclusive resort.

She had tried to tell Kate as much when her friend had announced that since she and her husband could not take up the week’s holiday they had been offered via their business they wanted to give the treat to Suzy instead.

‘Oh, no, Kate, I couldn’t possibly accept your generosity,’ Suzy had protested.

‘It isn’t generosity,’ Kate had retorted. ‘You need this break, Suzy. You’ve been through a lot these last few years—nursing your mother and then losing her, working every spare hour you had to finish your degree, and then that awful job you had!’

Suzy had sighed. ‘I shouldn’t have handed in my notice, really. My tutor had been so kind, getting the intro for me, I feel so guilty.’

‘You feel guilty?’ Kate had exploded. ‘Why on earth should you? You said yourself that you hated the way the magazine worked, its lack of morality with regard to how it got its stories and everything. And when I think of the way that slimy boss of yours tried to behave towards you! If anyone should be feeling guilty it’s them, not you, Suzy! I’m surprised they’re allowed to get away with treating you as they did. You know my opinion—you should have reported them for sexual harassment!’

Just listening to Kate’s words had been enough to make Suzy shudder a little.

‘It wasn’t as easy as that, Kate,’ Suzy had reminded her. ‘For one thing I was the only female working there. No one would have backed me up.’

Hearing the strain in her friend’s voice, Kate had shot her a quick look of concern before continuing, ‘Suzy, I know how strong you are, and how independent, but please just for once put yourself first. You need this break. You need time to relax and reflect, to pick up the threads of your life and weave them into a new pattern. You need this breathing space! I want to do this for you and I shall be very hurt if you refuse.’

Put like that, how could she refuse? Suzy had acknowledged ruefully. And besides, there had been enough truth in what Kate had said to make her see that her friend was right.

She still shook with anxiety and nervous tension when she thought about the scene in the Down and Dirty office the day she had handed in her notice. The crude insults her boss had hurled at her still made her face burn with embarrassment and loathing.

‘You aren’t leaving—I’m sacking you,’ he had told her furiously. ‘No jumped-up little nothing is going to mess me about!’

He had then claimed publicly that he was sacking her because she had offered him sex in exchange for promotion—but privately told her he would rescind his claim if she agreed to go to bed with him.

Her flesh still crawled at the thought.

Roy Jarvis might be the magazine’s editor-in-chief, but so far as Suzy was concerned he was the most morally corrupt man she had ever met. And her opinion was not just based on his attitude towards her, but on the way he ran the magazine and obtained its articles. Roy Jarvis’s reporters were told to let nothing stop them in their pursuit of obtaining a story. She had been like a fish out of water in such an environment.

And Kate had been right, Suzy acknowledged unhappily now. She did need some time out to reassess her life. And her emotions.

Suzy closed her eyes and tried to swallow past the hard ball of pain and misery lodged in her throat. Panic prickled over her skin as she fought against allowing herself to think about the cause of her pain.

Instead she switched her mind to more easily dealt with issues. The difficulties of the past few years, then the misery of realising she was in a job she hated, and working with people whose morals she could never accept, never mind adopt, had all affected her. But she still needed to earn a living—somehow! And giving in to Kate and accepting this holiday was not, in her opinion, going to aid that.

No, but it might stop her from dreaming about a man she should have forgotten.

And this pretty Italian fishing village, perched precariously on the steep sides of a small bay, was surely a perfect spot in which to chill out and ground herself, to assess her own ambitions and think again about her original desire to become an archivist, perhaps. Her tutor had scorned her ambition, but Suzy had a deep longing for the cloistered quiet of such career.

Skirting the pretty harbour, with its chic and very expensive restaurants, Suzy headed for the steep path that led to the top of the cliff.

Half an hour later she had reached it, and she paused to study the magnificent view and to take a couple of photographs to show Kate.

Another hill rose up a short way along the path, and Suzy headed for it, wondering what lay beyond.

Its incline was steep, and she was a little out of breath when she finally made it to the top. She gasped, her eyes widening in delight as she looked down into the lush valley below her at the stunningly beautiful Palladan villa at its centre. She just had to get a photo of it to show Kate and her husband.

Rummaging in her bag, she found the small digital camera Kate had insisted on lending her.

‘If you get any really good pictures we can put them on our Web site,’ she had announced when Suzy had tried to protest.

The camera was obviously expensive, and Suzy had said as much, but Kate had dismissed her concern, shrugging it aside as she reassured her, ‘It’s insured—and if you do lose it—which I know you won’t—then we shall replace it.’

Dutifully Suzy had photographed everything she thought might be of interest to her friend, and she knew that Kate would love this wonderful villa in its beautiful setting. From her vantage point Suzy could see the layout of its formal gardens within the high walls surrounding them, and the lake that lay beyond with its picturesque grotto.

Carefully she focused on the villa, pausing for a moment, as sunlight glinted on the metal casing, to stare in bemused awe at the sight of four imposingly large men in military uniform heading for an even equally imposing large black Mercedes, almost hidden from view beyond the entrance to the villa. What an impressive sight! She had to get a photograph of it—and of them! Who on earth were they?

On his way across the courtyard—having escorted the private security officers who had arrived to check out the villa without giving any warning, and against Luke’s strict instructions, to their huge Mercedes with its blacked-out windows—Luke froze as he caught the unmistakable glint of sunlight on metal. Automatically he reached for his binoculars, training the powerful lens on the steep hillside above the villa.

He had done everything he could to avoid having to take on this commission, but pressure had been put on him, via his old commanding officer and certain other people, and reluctantly he had given in—although not without first enquiring grimly why on earth MI5 operatives could not be used.

‘Because it is so sensitive, old boy,’ had been the wry answer he had received. ‘And because we don’t have anyone in the field of your calibre.’

Reluctantly Luke had bowed to the pressure he’d been under.

Making sure that the Foreign Secretary was able to conduct a very politically sensitive meeting with the President of a certain turbulent African state, without either arousing the curiosity of the press or certain factions within the African state required optimum vigilance. And why on earth anyone had ever thought it a good idea to conduct such an exercise so close to a popular Italian resort—visited by the rich and famous and followed there by the paparazzi—Luke had no way of knowing.

Of course he had tried to initiate a change of venue, but he had been overruled.

A smooth-talking suit from MI5 had announced that no one would suspect that the Foreign Secretary would be seeing anyone political whilst enjoying a holiday with his children.

Children? Luke had baulked furiously at that point. No matter how many reassurances or platitudes the MI5 suit might choose to utter, this was potentially a dangerous mission.

The African President was insisting on bringing his own private guards with him, and he was a man who was obsessed with a fear of betrayal—both at home and abroad. If things should go pear-shaped Luke did not want to have to worry about two young children as well as their father. He had said as much to Sir Peter Verey when they had been introduced, suggesting that his children might be better left with their mother.

‘My dear chap,’ had been Sir Peter’s drawled response. ‘I wish I could oblige, but you see my ex-wife is insistent that they come with me. Thinks I’m not doing my fatherly duty and that sort of thing.’

Luke knew all about Sir Peter Verey’s ex-wife. She had left him for a billionaire industrialist who had little liking of his predecessor’s offspring, with the result that she had placed both children at boarding school.

Luke frowned as he swept the hillside for whoever had been responsible for that telltale glint.

The resort less than a couple of miles away seethed with celebrities and minor continental royals, all of whom seemed to be followed by their own pack of predators, feeding off them as if they were carrion.

It didn’t take Luke’s trained eye long to find its quarry—in fact, he reflected in disgust, it did not need a trained eye to spot her at all. She was standing there openly photographing the villa. She? Luke frowned as he studied the familiar features. Suzy Roberts! It was as little effort for him to conjure up her name as it had been for him to recognise her face. Suzy Roberts, reporter for Down and Dirty magazine. Automatically he swept the area around her to see if she was on her own, before focusing on her once again.

She looked thinner, paler—and what the hell was she doing standing in the strong sunlight without the protection of a hat when any fool could see that she had the kind of delicate skin that would burn?

How on earth had she got wind of what was going on? The editor of the magazine she worked for got his stories by trawling in the gutter for them.

Luke’s mouth compressed. The gutter, maybe, but then Roy Jarvis did specialise in ‘revealing’ the failings and vices of those in power, as well as breaking some extraordinarily sensitive news stories. Someone was supplying him with his information, and Luke knew that if he had been in charge of finding out who it was the leak would have been stopped a long time ago.

Luke refused to believe that anyone could have got through his own rigorous security, but he was not the only person who knew what was happening. Somehow Roy Jarvis had been given a tip-off about the upcoming meeting, and he had obviously sent Suzy Roberts to find out what she could and confirm the story so that he could publish it. After all, a reporter like Suzy had the extra assistance of her sexuality to help her get her story—and she would have no qualms about using it!

Lucas had seen it happen over and over again in the theatre of war, and of course he had already discovered for himself that there were no lengths Suzy Roberts was not prepared to go!

Silently Luke slipped out of the villa grounds, moving quickly and stealthily towards his quarry.

Oblivious to the danger, Suzy pushed her hair back off her face. The villa really was a gem. She paused to admire it again before lifting the camera to take another shot.

Luke, who had circled up behind her, waited until she had raised the camera before making his move.

As Suzy focused the camera he reached for it…

Someone was trying to steal the camera!

Instinctively Suzy turned round, and then froze in shocked disbelief whilst Luke took it from her.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded as soon as she could speak.

Lucas Soames—here! She could feel the colour leaving her face and then surging back into it. Her heart was thudding in panic, and she felt as though she was trembling from head to foot. Emotions she had assured herself she had totally destroyed were taking a frightening hold on her, threatening to swamp her.

Frantically she tried to ignore them, to focus instead on what she should be feeling. These emotions had no right to exist. Lucas Soames meant nothing to her, and one of the reasons she was here on holiday was to make sure she was fully recovered from whatever it was she had experienced six months ago.

Willing her physical reaction to him to subside, Suzy demanded sharply, ‘Give me back my camera!’

Her eyes widened as she watched Lucas delete the pictures she had just taken.

‘No!’ she protested, trying to snatch back the camera, to stop him ruining her photographs.

Luke reacted immediately, fending her off with one deceptively easy movement that kept her at arm’s length from him, his fingers locked around her wrist as he finished what he was doing.

Despairingly Suzy closed her eyes, trying to blot out the physical reality of him in an effort to protect herself. But almost immediately she realised her mistake. Deprived of sight, she felt all her sensory receptors focusing instead on the feel of Lucas Soames’s hand around her wrist—the texture of his flesh, the powerful strength of his grip, the coolness of his skin against the heat of her own. Weakening thrills of sensation were running up her arm, and she could feel the frantic jump of her pulse.

Panic and desperation speared through her. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, the sound of her voice raw and frantic in her ears as she recognised her fear and the reason for it.

What was it about this man that made her feel like this?

Luke studied her silently, assessing her behaviour and her reactions. She looked convincingly both distraught and distressed, and he mentally applauded her acting talent whilst cynically wondering how many victims she had honed it on.

Ignoring her anxious question, he asked one of his own. ‘Why were you photographing the villa?’

His response caught Suzy off guard.

There was something about the coldly intense way he was watching her that unnerved her, and Suzy felt a shudder of apprehension run through her body. Stubbornly she fought against giving in to it—and to him!

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she shot back. Antagonism towards him was a far safer emotion than that dangerous and overwhelming surge of longing she had experienced the last time she had seen him. Don’t think about it, she warned herself frantically. Don’t remember. Don’t feel…

Seeing him then had been like having the clouds part to reveal a miraculous space of blue sky and a dizzying vision of heaven. But things were different now, she reassured herself fiercely. She was different now!

Taking a deep breath, Suzy gave a deliberately nonchalant shrug before saying, ‘That’s what people on holiday do—take photographs.’

Her body language was flawless, Luke acknowledged grudgingly. Not by so much as the flicker of one of those ridiculously long eyelashes of hers was she revealing the fact that she was lying. He could feel his temper starting to rise. Immediately he checked it, alarmed that somehow she had managed to pierce the shield of his professionalism.

‘On holiday?’ He gave Suzy a comprehensive and cynical look. ‘Oh, come on—you can come up with something better than that, surely?’

Just looking at her now—anger sparking her eyes to brilliant gold, flushing her cheeks with heat—anyone other than him would have believed immediately that she was a woman righteously defending herself from an unwarranted attack. But he knew she had to be lying, given who she was, and sure enough, as he continued to watch her, she was unable to continue to return his gaze.

What was Lucas Soames trying to say? Suzy wondered frantically. Had he guessed how he had affected her? Did he think she was nursing some kind of desire for him and that she had followed him here?

Her face began to burn again. If he did then she was going to make sure…

‘Nice camera.’ Luke interrupted her thoughts, adding assessingly, ‘Expensive too.’ Still nervously on edge, Suzy told him stiffly, ‘It isn’t mine…it belongs to a friend.’

Luke could see the discomfort and the guilt in her eyes—but, to his own irritated disbelief, the knowledge that he was right to be suspicious of her made him feel more angry than satisfied. Determined to stamp on such feelings and destroy them, he responded coldly, ‘A friend? So, Roy Jarvis is a friend now, is he, as well as your employer?’

Her employer!

Suzy shook her head.

‘I don’t work for the magazine any more,’ she told him quickly. ‘I…I left.’ Even saying the words was enough to bring back the unpleasant memories, and she had to swallow against the bile of her distress.

‘Oh, come on. You don’t really expect me to fall for that, do you?’ Luke demanded unpleasantly.

‘It’s true,’ Suzy insisted fiercely. ‘I no longer work for the magazine. You can check if you don’t believe me!’

Her eyes were more green than gold now, Luke recognised. Reflecting her passionate nature? He frowned, irritated with himself for allowing his attention to be distracted from the professional to the personal.

‘Oh, I have no doubt that officially you might have left, but it isn’t unheard of for your boss, your friend, to use underhand methods to get what he wants. He has sent you here to work undercover—which is, as we both know, why you are up here photographing the villa and spying!’

Now cynicism had joined the cold disdain icing his voice, and Suzy decided that she had had enough. Not allowing him to finish, she interrupted him hotly.

‘That’s ridiculous! Why on earth would he send me to do that? It’s the resort that is full of the glitterati, not this villa, and as for my agreeing to spy on anyone—I have my own moral code!’ She gave him a bitingly scornful look, but her glare might have been directed at an invisible shield for all the effect it had on its intended victim.

‘Very affecting.’ Luke stopped her. ‘But you are wasting your breath and my time with this unconvincing show of innocence. I know exactly what you are, remember? I’ve witnessed your professional reporting methods—and your moral code—at first hand,’ he reminded her grimly.

A telltale crimson tide of guilt and misery flooded Suzy’s face. Illogically she felt not just humiliated by his words but emotionally hurt as well.

How could he say something like that to her? Hadn’t he been able to tell that she had kissed him because of her own overwhelming need to do so and not for any other reason?

Unable to stop herself, Suzy discovered that she was reliving the feelings she had had then. Anguish filled her. Did he really think she was the kind of woman who would do such a thing for any other reason than because she simply had not been able to stop herself?

The very thought of what he had implied disgusted and nauseated her, and she burst out defensively, ‘That wasn’t—I didn’t—I did it because—’

Abruptly Luke stopped her again. ‘You did it because you thought it would be an excellent way of providing a firescreen for your companion—yes, I know that!’ he told her grimly. ‘Unfortunately for you it wasn’t very effective.’ He paused, and then added curtly, ‘And neither was the kiss!’

What the hell was he thinking of? Luke asked himself savagely as his comment fell into the silence between them and he was forced to remember the kiss they had shared. A woman as experienced as this one must have felt his body’s arousal, and gloated over his response to her. Any minute now she would be reminding him of it and challenging him to deny it. And there was no way Luke wanted to be dragged into that dangerous and unreliable ground.

Yes, he had responded to her. He could not deny that! Yes, he had for a split second in time experienced the most extraordinary physical longing for her, and the most extraordinary emotions. But that had been a momentary weakness, quickly controlled, and of no lasting or real importance whatsoever!

‘What did Jarvis tell you to do—apart from take photographs?’ he demanded sharply, steering his questions back in the right direction.

Still grappling with her own feelings, Suzy told him angrily, ‘He didn’t tell me to do anything!’

Her anger must somehow have heightened her senses, she decided, because suddenly she was aware of the musky male scent of Lucas Soames’s body. She could see the sunlight glinting on the fine dark hair of his muscular forearms. Her heart somersaulted and then attempted a cartwheel, crashing into her chest wall as it did so. She willed herself to drag her gaze away from his body, but somehow it was impossible to do so. The white tee shirt he was wearing, although not tight-fitting, still revealed an impressive breadth of shoulder and chest. Something dangerous was happening to her, and she seemed powerless to stop it.

Suzy began to panic.

The back of her head was burning from the heat of the sun. It was making her feel slightly sick and dizzy—or was it the intensity of the navy blue gaze, the shock of her own emotions that was responsible for her malaise?

She couldn’t give in to such feelings, Suzy warned herself frantically. She must not give in to them! She must think of something else! She must get away from here—get away from here and from Lucas Soames, and the sooner the better. If she didn’t leave, if she was forced to stay, she was terrified that she might be trapped into saying something that would betray how she felt about him. How she had felt about him, she corrected herself. Taking a deep breath, she searched for the right words.

‘I’m sorry if you feel you can’t believe me,’ she began politely. ‘But I assure you that I am telling you the truth. I do not work for the magazine any more and no one from it is responsible for my being here! Like I just told you, I am here on holiday!’

She was picking her words too carefully for them to be genuine, Luke decided.

‘On holiday? Alone?’ he challenged her softly. One dark eyebrow rose tellingly, and Suzy was hotly conscious of his merciless and unkind gaze sweeping her face and then her body.

‘I needed time on my own…to…to think…’

She had to get away from him!

‘Time on your own? A woman like you?’

The razor-edge contempt in his voice made her face burn, but before she could say anything he continued silkily, ‘So, if you aren’t, as you claim, working for Roy Jarvis any more, then who are you working for?’

His question caught Suzy off guard, and she had to wrench her thoughts away from the pain his insult had caused her in order to answer it.

‘I’m not working for anyone at the moment. I haven’t got another job yet…at least…’ She paused, her eyes darkening as his question reactivated her own anxiety about her future. After the contempt he had already shown her there was no way she was going to tell him that in order to make ends meet she had taken a job in a local supermarket.