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‘I need to see you—to ask you—something,’ she amended carefully. Despite their situation, she ached to see him, but not the coldly distant man, the ice man, of their last meeting, the man she could tell, just from the tone of his voice, that he still was. ‘I need to—ask a favour, Dominick,’ she expanded slightly breathlessly, wincing at the admission.
‘From me?’ Dominick couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.
He clearly remembered Kenzie assuring him, on the day she walked out of his life, that their marriage was over, and she would never ask him for anything ever again!
Except for a divorce, of course.
His mouth tightened. ‘You have a damned nerve thinking that you can just waltz back into my life after four months and ask me for anything—’
‘Dominick, please—’
‘No—you please!’ he cut in forcefully. ‘You walked out on me, Kenzie. On our marriage. Straight into the arms of another man! And now you want me to do you a favour?’
‘I did not leave you for another man!’ she came back just as strongly, knowing he didn’t believe her, that he never had, but determined never to stop claiming her innocence.
‘I happen to know differently,’ Dominick rasped.
‘You don’t know the first thing about me, Dominick.’ She sighed. ‘You never did.’
The first shock of hearing from her had passed now, her conversation such that Dominick was pretty sure this call was just a coincidence. After all, Kenzie had no idea that the sword of Damocles—a blow entirely of Dominick’s devising!—was about to drop on her lover’s head.
‘I’m not—the favour I have to ask isn’t for me, Dominick,’ she came back sharply. ‘Well…not really,’ she amended impatiently. ‘Maybe,’ she muttered uncomfortably.
‘Perhaps you had better let me be the judge of that, Kenzie,’ he decided tersely. ‘Tell me what it is you—need, from me—’ he used the word deliberately ‘—and I’ll tell you if I’m willing to give it.’
‘Not over the telephone,’ she insisted determinedly. ‘I need to explain a few things to you first, to help you understand—Dominick, could you meet me for lunch?’
His brows rose at the suggestion. Talking to her on the telephone was one thing, but actually seeing her again, being close to her long-legged beauty, was something else. ‘Today?’
‘Well, of course—’ She broke off her impatient response. ‘Yes, today,’ she resumed more reasonably. ‘If that’s possible,’ she added abruptly.
Dominick looked at the open diary on his desk-top, unnecessarily so, already knowing that he was free for lunch today.
‘I’m afraid it isn’t,’ he told Kenzie smoothly, totally ignoring the blank space in his diary. ‘But I am having dinner at Rimini’s at eight o’clock this evening, if you would care to join me there?’
Kenzie winced her dismay at the thought of having dinner with Dominick, tonight or any other time. It meant none of the informality of a crowded lunchtime restaurant that she had been going to suggest, but instead dinner at one of the exclusive restaurants that they had quite often gone to together as husband and wife…
‘Couldn’t I just meet you for a drink in a bar or something before you go on to dinner?’ she suggested, frowning. ‘What I have to ask will only take a few minutes, and—’
‘Scared, Kenzie?’ Dominick interrupted tauntingly.
She bristled. ‘Of you? Hardly!’ she dismissed scathingly, knowing that wasn’t quite true. Although she wasn’t scared of Dominick himself, she knew that, with his wealth and power, the sort of retribution he was capable of could be immense! ‘I just don’t see the point of completely ruining both our evenings, that’s all.’
‘Just mine, hmm?’ he mused scornfully. ‘You’re the one that asked for this meeting, Kenzie, not me,’ he reminded her. ‘In the circumstances, I believe I’m allowed to set the terms for that meeting. In which case, it’s dinner this evening or nothing,’ he stated.
She’d had a feeling he was going to say that!
‘Then I suppose I will have to agree to that, won’t I?’ she snapped, the hours, instead of minutes, she would now have to spend in Dominick’s company looming before her like a deep, dark chasm.
‘Don’t sound too eager, Kenzie,’ he taunted. ‘I might get the wrong idea.’
‘I wouldn’t if I were you!’ she came back tartly. ‘Nothing has changed. I just need to talk to you, that’s all,’ she added huskily.
‘It must be something really big, Kenzie, if you’re willing to see me again,’ he mused, finding himself smiling at Kenzie’s obvious frustration with the situation.
It was the sort of relaxed smile he hadn’t given for months. Four months, in fact. Since Kenzie had left him…
His smile evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.
Kenzie had left him, had walked out on their marriage, because, she had claimed, he was incapable of feeling the love for her that she had for him, and after only nine months of being married she simply couldn’t live with him any more.
But her claims that it had been his lack of love for her that had ended their marriage had all been a lie, a fabrication, in an effort to hide the affair she was embroiled in with Jerome Carlton.
He sobered completely at the thought of the other man in Kenzie’s life, and in her bed. He knew that, despite all the things she had said about the fidelity of love and marriage, she had been involved with another man for weeks before their marriage had finally come to its bitter end!
But now, it seemed, she wanted something from him, a favour, she said.
The retribution he had planned was for Jerome Carlton alone, but he knew that the shock waves of the other man’s fall from power would ultimately shatter Kenzie’s world too.
But now Kenzie had brought herself willingly back into his life.
It was like the spider and the fly…
CHAPTER TWO
KENZIE had no idea what she was doing sitting in a restaurant waiting to have dinner with Dominick Masters, her almost ex-husband.
He was late.
Deliberately so, she was sure, in an effort to unnerve her.
As if she didn’t feel nervous enough about this meeting already!
A fact Dominick would be well aware of. Just as he had to be aware that any situation serious enough for her to have the need to call him in the first place had to be such that she couldn’t just walk out of here before he deigned to arrived.
Which was why, she was sure, he was purposely keeping her waiting.
Much to the interest of the other diners, not that they expressed it overtly. The face of Kenzie Miller was well known from her catwalk days, and more recently from the advertisements she appeared in on worldwide television as well as billboards and promotions in stores. Kenzie Miller, the face of Carlton Cosmetics.
Kenzie Miller, international model, sitting on her own for the last fifteen minutes at a table set for two, obviously having been stood up by her date for the evening!
No doubt this was Dominick’s idea of a joke, a minor vengeance for her having walked out on him, but, favour or no favour, if he didn’t turn up in the next three minutes she was walking out of here—
He had just walked into the restaurant!
Even if she hadn’t seen him enter Kenzie would have known of his arrival. She could feel the familiar ripple of awareness down her spine at his proximity, and the warmth of her breasts as they began to tingle, while an even hotter fire began in the pit of her stomach.
It hadn’t gone away then, her complete physical awareness of Dominick.
Not that she had ever thought that it would.
It was just distressing to once again be confronted with the proof. He looked amazing, Kenzie acknowledged, in his dark tailored suit and white silk shirt. She imagined the long muscular length of his powerful body underneath, and watched his dark hair as his head moved, hair that she remembered burying her fingers in as she drew his head down to hers and…
He wasn’t even looking her way, damn him. She watched him looking perfectly relaxed as he paused to talk to the maître d’.
Her stomach felt as if it were churned up into knots, and she was suddenly struck by the enormity of what she was doing. But what choice did she have?
Really?
None.
Dominick was walking over to their table now, acknowledging several acquaintainces along the way, seemingly completely unaware of her presence. Or that he was almost twenty minutes late!
‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,’ he said coolly as he took his seat opposite hers at the table, looking just as devastatingly handsome as he always had. As devastatingly handsome as she had imagined while talking to him on the telephone earlier today. ‘I was—unavoidably detained,’ he drawled.
Dominick had seen Kenzie as soon as he’d entered the restaurant, and had been shocked how just looking at her could still render him momentarily speechless. His mouth had gone dry, and he had deliberately paused to talk to the maître d’ in order to give himself time to get over his initial response.
Kenzie looked beautiful this evening. Stunningly so, with her long dark hair loose down her spine, the figure-hugging green strapless dress she wore revealing bare satin shoulders and the creamy swell of her breasts. The dress was an exact match in colour for the emerald of her eyes, eyes surrounded by the darkest, longest lashes Dominick had ever seen, and her full lips held the promise of a passion he had come to know intimately.
But Kenzie wasn’t just beautiful; she had something else, a grace, an inborn sensuality that was apparent even in stillness, like now.
The first time he had looked at her he had felt as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus. Today, under totally different circumstances, he felt the same painful blow as he studied her beneath hooded lids.
None of that emotion showed in the harsh arrogance of his face as he looked across at her. ‘You’re looking well, Kenzie,’ he told her distantly as he nodded his thanks to the wine waiter who was pouring two glasses of the wine Dominick always ordered when dining here. ‘Obviously taking a lover suits you,’ he added harshly.
‘Letting your overactive imagination run away with you again, Dominick?’ she bit out tartly, firmly pushing away her awareness of him as she tossed the long length of her hair back over her bare shoulders to meet his gaze firmly.
She had dressed carefully for their meeting this evening, choosing to wear her hair down the way she knew Dominick preferred it, and a clinging green dress that showed off the perfection of her figure.
She was going to need every weapon she could find to withstand the scorn Dominick now felt for her, and she had decided that she wouldn’t try to detract from the beauty of the face and figure with which she had made her fortune, but emphasize them instead. If only to show Dominick what he had given up when he had chosen to let her walk away rather than sitting down with her and sorting out their differences.
But the coldness of his dark gaze, as it moved slowly from the top of her head to the slenderness of her waist, didn’t show any regret for that loss!
Twenty-seven and a successful model for the last eight years, she never had been able to withstand the coldly analytical gaze that gave away none of Dominick’s thoughts or emotions.
If he had any emotions.
Besides physical desire, that was.
She had certainly never seen love shining in those dark depths, not for her or anyone else.
‘I prefer not to imagine anything where you and Jerome Carlton are concerned,’ he snapped now as he picked up his glass to take a sip of his white wine. ‘I was merely stating that the demise of our marriage doesn’t seem to have affected your beauty!’
‘Oh, let’s be precise,’ Kenzie muttered with inward resentment for his cool control. If Dominick had seen her a month ago as she had sat for hours by her father’s bedside at the hospital, just willing him to live, then he would have seen that she didn’t always look beautiful, that sometimes she just looked emotionally distraught.
‘Fine,’ she dismissed tersely. ‘If I could just explain to you why I need to talk to you—’
‘I would like to order my food first, if that’s okay?’ he cut in with smooth determination, his tone of voice telling her it wasn’t a question at all but a statement of intent.
He might have left her with no choice but to agree to meet him here at the restaurant, but she really didn’t think she could actually eat anything. Seeing him again, realizing she still loved him as much as she ever had, and knowing there was no return of love for her in his cold, unemotional gaze, was tearing her apart.
She swallowed hard. ‘Go ahead. I won’t, if you don’t mind.’ She closed the menu she had been given without even looking at it, her dark lashes sweeping low over the paleness of her cheeks.
Dominick studied her silently for several seconds, knowing Kenzie had never been one of those models that had to starve herself to stay thin, that her slenderness was as natural as her beauty.
He reached out to cup her chin in his hand and lift her face so that, unless she actually closed her lids completely, her gaze had to meet his.
She had become more adept at hiding her emotions in the last four months, he realized as she easily withstood his searching look.
Yet as he continued to study her he could see very slight changes in her. There was a strain in her green eyes, her face seemed pale beneath her make-up, and her slenderness, now that he had the time to look more closely, bordered on fragile.
‘What’s happened, Kenzie?’ he demanded as he released her chin to sit back in his seat. ‘Surely Jerome Carlton hasn’t failed to live up to your exacting expectations, too?’ he scorned.
She gave a weary sigh. ‘Why haven’t you ever believed me when I tell you I have never been involved with Jerome on a personal level?’ She shook her head.
Why? Because Dominick knew exactly how the other man had pursued her five months ago, desperate to get Kenzie as the ‘face’ for his company’s new line in beauty products.
And with the chasm that had recently developed in their marriage, Dominick knew it had been all too easy for Jerome Carlton to seduce Kenzie, and to persuade her into being a part of his life as well as contracted to his company.
He knew all these things because Jerome Carlton had personally taken delight in relating them to him!
‘Where does Jerome think you are this evening?’ he challenged. ‘Not out to dinner with me, I’m sure?’ he taunted.
She drew in a sharp breath before releasing it in a sigh. ‘I haven’t come here to discuss Jerome with you. I—actually I haven’t seen him for several weeks. My father has been ill, you see, and—’
‘Donald has?’ Dominick echoed sharply, waving away the waiter who came to take their food order, too interested in what Kenzie was saying to even think about food. Especially the part where she said she hadn’t seen Jerome for several weeks…
He also wanted to hear more about Donald. He had only found the time to meet the older man three times during his marriage to Kenzie, but he had liked him and had to admire the easy way he had survived being the only male member of a household dominated by his wife and four daughters.
Kenzie swallowed hard. ‘He wasn’t feeling well for some months, and then a month ago he had a heart attack—’
‘Why the hell didn’t you let me know?’ Dominick questioned immediately.
She blinked across at him in surprise. As she had learnt to her cost, Dominick didn’t ‘do’ family. Coming from a family that had been split apart when he was only eight, and then presented with a series of stepmothers and stepfathers, he could perhaps have welcomed the close-knit family Kenzie had brought into their marriage. But he hadn’t, he didn’t trust or want a family, and had kept his emotional as well as physical distance from all of them.
And only his emotional distance from Kenzie, she remembered achingly.
‘Why on earth would I do that?’ she prompted incredulously. ‘You never showed any interest in my family when we were married, so why would you want to be bothered now that we’re divorced?’
‘Separated,’ Dominick corrected harshly. ‘I haven’t signed the divorce papers yet,’ he reminded her.
No, he hadn’t, although Kenzie didn’t understand why not. She had thought he would be glad to get rid of her and the marriage he wished had never happened. But weeks after they had been sent, as far as she knew the papers remained unsigned as well as unreturned.
In the circumstances, perhaps that was as well…
It certainly made it a little easier to come here and talk to him this evening. A little…
‘A technicality,’ she accepted heavily. ‘I—’ She broke off as a waiter put a plate of hors d’oeuvres in the centre of the table before making a discreet exit.
