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‘I would have thought Andy and Mark had more than adequately fulfilled your grandmothering needs, Mum,’ he pointed out drily. ‘They have five very nice children between them—three boys and two girls—plus two perfect daughters-in-law for wives. You really don’t need me to add to the St Clair brood, or the St Clair wives. Two out of three ain’t bad, you know. Don’t become one of those meddling matchmaking mums, or I might be forced to stay in LA in future.’
Her hurt look made him feel instantly guilty, and he sighed his regret. ‘Just kidding, Mum. You know you’re my best girl. I could never stay away from you for too long.’
‘Flatterer,’ she said, but he could see that she was pleased.
His mother mollified, Luke sat back silently and tried to distract his wretched mind by focusing on the familiar but still beautiful surroundings. He stared out at the blue waters of Botany Bay on their right, then up at the clear blue sky. Nowhere in the world had he ever found skies such as in Australia. Their clearness and brightness was unique, but it made for harsh light—not the easiest background for good photography.
It took special skills and equipment to photograph Australian scenery really well—unless one captured the shots at dawn or dusk—skills which he had never honed, but which could present an interesting challenge, Luke decided unexpectedly.
His passion had always been photographing people, right from his boyhood days. He’d perfected portraiture, especially in black and white, and had made a small fortune out of it.
There’d been a time when he’d got a kick out of surprising people with his flattering photographs of them. Models and actresses with a portfolio by Luke St Clair had a definite edge in the cut-throat world of auditions in the US. He was sought-after and paid handsomely for his work. He could command huge fees.
But, quite frankly, it had all become somewhat of a bore.
Besides, he no longer needed to do things for money. An inspired investment in a small independent movie which had taken the world by storm a couple of years back had ensured he never had to work again if he didn’t want to. So perhaps it was time to spread his photographic wings, so to speak. To find a new direction to satisfy his creative eye.
Maybe his mother was right, he began to muse. Maybe it was time to come home—if not to marry then to find a new life-path. He could not go on as he had this past year. It was slowly destroying him.
‘I’ll let you out here,’ his mother suggested, pulling over to the kerb. ‘The dentist is just in that small arcade over there. There’s a narrow staircase which leads up to a corridor, and his surgery is the second door on the left upstairs. I’ll meet you in that coffee-shop on the corner. Whichever one of us gets there first can wait for the other.’
Butterflies gathered in the pit of his stomach as he mounted the stairs and pushed open the glass door. A very attractive brunette looked up from behind the reception desk, saw the cut of the man standing there and smiled a smile as old as time itself.
‘Yes, can I help you?’ she asked hopefully.
Luke did his best to ignore the silent invitation in her pretty blue eyes, despite his own gaze automatically shifting to her left hand. He was almost relieved to see a diamond engagement ring twinkling there, for in all truth he’d become horribly addicted to picking up pretty women during the last year or so, taking them out, then home to bed, then never contacting them again.
He wasn’t proud of his behaviour, but he understood it. He was punishing them for her.
He excused himself by saying that he only picked up the really eager ones—the ones who made it perfectly obvious what they wanted from him. Like she had. He always hoped to gain some darkly twisted satisfaction from being the one who did the seducing and the dumping. Instead he always felt like a rat in the morning, hating himself more and more with each episode.
The women involved didn’t know it, but they were better off without him. He’d become a right bastard—sexually speaking—since that night, his only concession to his conscience being that he steered clear of married and engaged women. He took some small comfort from that, soothing his escalating qualms with the thought that he hadn’t descended to being a complete scoundrel yet.
‘My name’s St Clair,’ he announced, deliberately leaving off the Luke. ‘I have an appointment for ten-thirty.’
‘Oh, yes, Mr St Clair. I’m afraid Dr Evans is running a little late. Maybe fifteen minutes or so. Would you like some tea or coffee while you wait?’
Tea or coffee on his churning stomach? A whisky, perhaps, but he didn’t think she’d offer him that. ‘No thanks,’ came his brusque reply. ‘I’ll just wait.’
‘There are plenty of magazines,’ she told him as he walked over to settle himself into one of the black leather two-seaters which lined the starkly white walls.
Luke did his best to relax, resting his right ankle on his left knee and spreading his arms along the back of the seat. But he soon found his fingers tapping impatiently on the leather. In the end he picked up one of the dog-eared women’s weeklies lying on the table next to him, smiling wryly when he saw that it was dated four years previously.
He began idly flicking through it, just to pass the time, and might have missed her picture altogether if his attention hadn’t been attracted by the headline above it: MODEL GIVES UP BLOSSOMING CAREER TO MARRY NOTED SCIENTIST.
It had been years since Luke had made his living doing fashion magazine layouts, but during that time many of his friends had been models—and some had been more than friends—so curiosity had him open the double page in his lap and look to see if this particular model was anyone he knew.
His eyes skimmed the kissing couple to see if he recognised them, but it was impossible with their faces obscured—though he noted that the bridegroom had greying hair. So he scanned the words beneath, looking for names.
No bells rang in his brain when he read that a twenty-two-year-old model named Rachel Manning had married noted geneticist Patrick Cleary at St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, that Saturday afternoon four years previously. It was only when his gaze dropped further, to another smaller photograph of the bride alone, that he recognised her.
Had he gone as white as a sheet?
Luke fancied that he had.
His knuckles certainly went white as his fingers tightened around the pages, his eyes wide upon the photograph of the smiling bride—the gloriously golden-haired and exquisitely beautiful bride.
How innocent she looked in her white bridal gown, he thought savagely. The picture of perfect purity. The very essence of untouched womanhood.
A rage began to grow inside him as his shock gave way to anger. She’d been married! The bitch had been married!
My God, it explained so much. So damned much!
There had been so many elements of that night which had stayed to haunt him. So many unanswered questions.
Now he had the answers.
Or did he?
Just because she’d been married four years ago it didn’t mean that she’d still been married eighteen months ago. There was such a thing as divorce, wasn’t there? Maybe she wasn’t an adulterous little tramp. Maybe there were other reasons why she’d acted the way she had that night—why she’d chosen to disappear while he was asleep, without leaving a trace of her true identity.
And maybe pigs might fly, came the blackly cynical thought.
‘Dr Evans is ready for you now, Mr St Clair.’
Luke schooled his face into what he hoped was a normal expression, snapped the magazine shut and placed it back on the pile in the corner.
Forget her, common sense whispered. She’s bad news.
He stood up and walked over to where the dental nurse was waiting for him in the now open doorway. Her petite prettiness didn’t even register. He no longer felt nervous either. She dominated his mind again, turning his thoughts from the present.
Luke distractedly settled in the dental chair and closed his eyes, his mind whirling with memories. But how could he forget her now? Now that she had a name.
Rachel.
He hadn’t known her name when she’d picked him up at the exhibition that night eighteen months ago. Hadn’t known it the next morning, when he’d woken to find her gone.
Rachel...
It didn’t suit her, he decided viciously.
Oh, it suited the bride in the photograph, but not the sultry feline creature who had undulated into his sight that night. Rachel sounded like a lady—but it had been no lady who’d boldly approached him within seconds of spotting him leaning against a pillar, who’d stolen his drink from his hands and taken a deep swallow, who’d smiled seductively at him over the rim before uttering the most astonishingly forthright proposal he’d ever heard from a woman.
And he’d heard a good few in his time.
The dentist was talking to him as he worked, but Luke didn’t hear a word. He was back at that exhibition, hearing her say those astonishing words again, reliving every moment of that unforgettable but ultimately soul-destroying night.
CHAPTER TWO
‘I HAVE a hotel room nearby,’ she said in a huskily sexy voice, her incredible green eyes locked to his all the while. ‘If you’re as bored as you look, perhaps you’d like to join me there.’
Luke straightened, glad that his drink now rested between those long, elegant fingers with the equally long bronze-tipped nails. Otherwise he would surely have spilt his drink down his front. Though perhaps that might not have been such a bad idea. Things were happening down there which could do with a spot of cooling down.
He stared deep into those exotic green pools, because it was safer than looking at the rest of her. Not that he hadn’t already had a damned good look as she’d slowly sashayed towards him across the gallery floor.
She had a stunning face—exotic perfection framed by a wild tawny blonde mane—but an even more than stunning body. Tall and slender, with high, firm breasts, a riveting cleavage and long, long legs which ran right up to her tiny waist. Or so it seemed.
Dressed a touch obviously for his usual taste in women, her leopardskin-print mini left nothing to the imagination. Hell, if she was wearing anything underneath he couldn’t spot it. The silky material clung like a second skin, the halter-necked style leaving her shoulders and arms bare, the short, short skirt showing an expanse of firm tanned thigh which would do a stripper proud.
This last thought made him wonder what she did do for a living. Though perhaps it was better if he didn’t know.
Normally he was attracted to cool, classy types, sophisticated career women who exuded an understated and challenging sexuality which left it up to him to do the chasing. They sent out silent and very subtle messages for him to follow. They didn’t openly invite, like this bold creature.
‘Are you in the habit of propositioning perfect strangers?’ he drawled, trying not to sound as shocked as he was feeling. Or as aroused.
He told himself that it was because he hadn’t been with a woman since he’d broken up with Tracy a couple of months before. But underneath he knew this wasn’t so. He’d wanted this she-cat the moment he’d set eyes on her.
A slight frown drew her perfectly arched eyebrows close together. ‘You’re American,’ she said.
He could have enlightened her, but something... some indefinable tension which this mistaken conclusion was evoking in her, made him keep his Australian heritage to himself. He’d been told that he’d picked up an American accent, but he hadn’t believed it till that moment.
‘You don’t like Americans?’ he asked, taking the drink back from her suddenly still hands and draining it dry. He had a feeling he might need to be a little drunk to get through this evening.
‘That depends,’ she said, a touch warily. ‘Are you holidaying here? Or staying indefinitely?’
‘Holidaying,’ he said, quite truthfully. But I might stay indefinitely, came the dark thought. If it means I can spend every night with you.
Already he could feel the blood rushing hotly to his loins. Already...
His flesh might have become a painful and obvious embarrassment if he hadn’t been wearing a longer-line sports jacket loosely over casually fitted dark trousers which also had plenty of room. Luke could put up with the discomfort, if it was his alone to contemplate and suffer in private.
He had no intention of letting this feline huntress see that he was ready prey for her animal-like sexuality. As much as he was turned on by her amazingly forward approach and absolutely knockout body, his male ego insisted that he play hard to get for a decent amount of time.
At least a minute, came the drily self-mocking thought.
‘Does that disqualify me?’ he said lazily.
‘On the contrary,’ she murmured, her husky voice rippling down his spine like a mink-gloved hand. ‘I love tourists. Especially tall, dark, handsome ones with sexy black eyes. You are alone, aren’t you? No little wife or girlfriend back at the hotel, or in the States?’
‘I’m so alone,’ he told her, trying to sound cool but feeling anything but, ‘that it’s positively indecent.’
‘Nothing about you is indecent, handsome,’ she murmured. ‘You’re positively gorgeous and positively perfect. Come with me...’
She pried the empty glass out of his suddenly frozen hand and bent to place it on the floor, giving him an uninterrupted view of her quite perfect breasts. Rising again, she smiled a siren’s smile, slid her right hand into his still frozen left and began leading him away, across the upper gallery floor then down the wide white staircase.
The shredded remnants of Luke’s common sense finally burst through his paralysed brain and he ground to a halt, momentarily resisting the hyp- . notic pull of the softly feminine fingers entwined through his.
‘You’re not a hooker, are you?’ came his harsh-sounding question as they faced each other on the stairs.
He could not have mistaken the momentary shock which flared within those gorgeous green eyes, or his own inner shudder of relief. For what would he have done if she’d said that she was?
Still have gone with her, came the appalling admission.
‘My mistake,’ he muttered. ‘Lead on, lover.’ Obviously she was just a good-time girl, out on the tiles for the night. She wanted a one-night standwithout—complications, without strings.
As much as that was not usually his style, Luke could see that it was going to be for tonight. It was no use pretending that he wasn’t bowled over. More than bowled over. She seemed to have bewitched him with the primitive and alluring sexuality which emanated from every pore of her body. It wafted from her in waves, weaving a spell around his senses, teasing his flesh and his imagination, making him wonder what it would be like to spend the night with her.
She kept glancing over her shoulder at him as she drew him down the rest of the stairs and through the crowded foyer, her eyes sometimes smiling invitingly, sometimes seemingly checking that he was still there—as though she too could not believe he’d come with her so readily.
It was those glimpses of unexpected vulnerability which began intriguing Luke. The suspicion that this was not her usual style either began to form in his mind. She looked at him that way one time too many after they’d finally made it outside into the street, and he suddenly whipped her over into a darkened doorway, pulling her against him in a jolting embrace.
Her shocked gasp and almost frightened eyes confirmed his opinion that she was not used to playing such dangerous games. Either that, or she had never run into real trouble before.
‘You little fool,’ he snarled, infuriated by this last thought. ‘Don’t you know the risks you run in going off with a stranger?’
Her chin whipped up, green eyes glinting an answering fury at him. ‘I take it you’ve changed your mind—is that it?’ she snapped. ‘If so, then say so, damn you.’ She began to struggle to free herself from his arms. ‘I have no time for cowards tonight.’
‘Cowards! Why, you little...’ Red spots of fury went off in his brain like flashlights, and before he knew it he’d grasped a large clump of her hair and yanked it back so that her chin tipped up all the more.
Before she could do more than cry out through startled lips, his mouth clamped down over those lips and he was kissing her as he’d never kissed a woman before. With anger, not passion, with a desire to punish and hurt, not seduce.
But seduction was the final result.
His, not hers. For as his tongue drove repeatedly into the depths of her mouth she moaned a moan which moved him as no woman’s moan had ever done before, making him want to protect her, not punish her. Hold, not hurt.
He found it impossible to keep kissing her with such ferocity. His tongue gentled to a series of sinuous slides against hers, his free hand finding the small of her back and pressing inwards. He thrilled to the feel of her sinking weakly against him, then to the sound of another longer, more sensual moan—this one signalling total surrender to his male domination over her body. It brought a dizzying sense of sexual power, and he simply could not wait to have her naked and trembling beneath him.
‘This hotel room,’ he muttered thickly against her mouth. ‘Is it far?’
She shook her head in the negative, the movement brushing her lush lips to and fro across his.
He shuddered as a rush of blood almost had him doing what he hadn’t done since he was fifteen. Gulping, he drew back from the raw heat of her body to stare down into wildly dilated green eyes. She looked... stunned, he realised. Stunned, and totally at his mercy. It was an exhilarating and intoxicating thought—a male fantasy come true. Impossible to resist.
‘Then take me there,’ he muttered. ‘And take me there quickly...’
The drill contacting his tooth brought Luke back to the present—physically at least—but his mind continued to chum over his still vivid memories.
Had she deceived him with that air of vulnerability, with her seemingly mindless surrender? Had she been so diabolically clever, so skilled in seducing strangers that she had made it seem as if he had been master of what had happened that evening? Whereas in reality she had been the one pulling the strings and making all the moves?
He desperately wanted to believe that she hadn’t been married at the time—although it seemed likely that she had. Given that assumption, he clung to the idea that it had been her first foray into adultery.
Even so, he could not deny that she had come to that exhibition right and ready for a night of casual sex, dressed for the occasion and armed to the eyeteeth with the equipment necessary to reduce fools like him to instant mush.
Looking back, he could see that she’d also gone to great pains to protect her true identity—to cut down the risk of ever being caught out in her outrageous behaviour. She’d wanted a mad fling of some kind, but she hadn’t wanted any evidence of that mad fling left behind. The only part of the puzzle which remained was why she’d taken that appalling risk during the middle of the night.
It couldn’t have been deliberate, he decided, unless it had been part of some crazy fantasy she’d wanted to fulfil. He preferred to think that she’d simply been carried away—as he had been carried away.
It was one of the reasons why she haunted him. Because he’d never been carried away like that before. Or since...
