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‘He won’t,’ she said, flattered by the unexpected heat of his anger. Sometimes she had worried that Stephen was a little too cool and self-restrained, even though it was those qualities about him which she had initially found so appealing. ‘Because he changed his mind before I even got out of the building. He rescinded the firing and demanded I work my notice after all.’
‘He what?’ Stephen collapsed back in his seat, looking thunderstruck.
Kalera didn’t blame him. The swift volte-face had been totally out of character. One of the strengths of Duncan’s charismatic leadership was his ability to make instant decisions based on pure gut instinct, and so rarely did his instincts fail him that he had established a reputation for never failing to act on a snap decision.
‘The guards had taken me as far as the front door and were about to fling me out into the snow when Duncan came racing across the foyer and ripped me out of their hands. He told them he’d made a mistake and then he dragged me back up to his office and locked me in.’
‘He did what?’ Stephen’s smooth baritone rose sharply and Kalera regretted her flippancy when she noticed the covert glances they were receiving from the surrounding tables.
Stephen noticed too and abruptly lowered his voice. ‘My God, he actually locked you in the office with him?’
He looked appalled but there was a tiny thread of speculation in his voice that for no reason at all made Kalera’s whole body flush with heat. She felt the colour rise in her face and suddenly wished her hair weren’t so long and straight that it flowed like water down the middle of her back instead of drifting in handy thickets around her face. Her wispy blonde fringe provided little concealment for her pink cheeks.
‘Not him. Just me,’ she hastened to explain. ‘He pushed me in and locked the door, and then he took off somewhere—to cool down, so he said…’
‘He kept you prisoner!’ Stephen’s raw shock made it sound as if she had been chained to a dungeon wall and flogged. ‘For how long?’
Kalera adopted a soothingly vague expression as she accepted a dessert menu from the waiter whose desire to linger suggested an unprofessional interest in their intriguing conversation.
‘Not long—about an hour or so, I suppose,’ she said, deliberately playing down the drama. She knew exactly how long it had been. She had been left to stew for precisely one hour and fifty-one minutes before Duncan had returned to deliver his pithy lecture on the pitfalls awaiting gullible young widows who fell prey to smooth-talking villains.
She looked over the menu, forcing herself to choose something even though her sweet tooth had been soured by the subject of their conversation. Stephen’s frustration with the interruption was evident as he selected the cheeseboard and sent the flapping-eared waiter briskly on his way before leaning forward again.
‘And then what happened?’
Kalera was reluctant to go into too much detail. Duncan’s comments had not been flattering, either to herself or to Stephen. In fact they had been flagrantly insulting. She had known that the two men harboured an intense dislike of each other but until today she hadn’t recognised the true depth of their mutual hostility.
Her efforts to gloss over the worst bits in the retelling were in vain. For once Stephen seemed insensitive to her distress, insisting that she describe the abrasive encounter word for word, and wanting to know not only what Duncan had said, but how he had looked and sounded when he had realised she would not be cowed into calling off her engagement.
‘And that’s all he said about me?’ he probed, after she had informed him that he had been called a low-down, underhanded, cheating rat; a poor loser who had to compensate for his personal and business inadequacies by blaming others for his own mistakes; a vain, jealous, egocentric man who pursued his selfish goals without caring who he hurt in the process.
‘All! Isn’t that enough?’ asked Kalera, who had been humiliated by Duncan’s assumption that the only possible reason an attractive man could be interested in her was because of him. And he had the nerve to call Stephen egocentric! He had even had the gall to hint that Stephen had tried to cosy up to other female employees of Labyrinth in the past, but that Kalera was the only one naive and stupid enough to fall into his honey-trap.
‘It’s the oldest trick in the industrial espionage book!’ Duncan had declared in disgust. ‘Find a lonely, love-starved female in a sensitive job and seduce her into a secret affair so that her judgment is so clouded by infatuation she doesn’t even notice that her handsome new lover is pumping her for information…and refuses to believe it even when she’s confronted with cast-iron proof!’
Smarting from the image of herself as a pathetic emotional accident waiting to happen, Kalera had icily pointed out that he had produced no proof of anything other than his own paranoia and, given the fact that his own judgment was clouded by unreasonable prejudice against her fiancé, she would thank him to stop making slanderous remarks unless he was prepared to defend them in court!
‘So, he believes that I only asked you to marry me in order to worm his secrets out of you and to deprive him of your valuable services?’ Stephen’s aristocratic mouth curled into a contemptuous sneer. ‘Did his fertile imagination also suggest a motive for my madness?’
‘I thought you asked me here for dinner, not a postmortem,’ Kalera pleaded, his persistence beginning to grate on her nerves. ‘Do we have to talk about it any more? I’m just glad it’s over and done with, and you must admit it turned out better than we expected. Duncan even apologised for the way he overreacted—said it was just the shock—’
‘I’ll bet it was a shock!’ Stephen laughed grimly. ‘Royal doesn’t like it when the tables are turned. He likes to be the one to do the shafting. You should have told him where he could stuff his apology and walked out anyway.’
His unaccustomed crudity made her eyes widen. ‘Stephen!’
‘Well…I don’t trust him,’ he said, a moody look pushing out his lower lip. ‘I just can’t believe he wants you to stay on as his secretary when he knows you and I are engaged. I wouldn’t if our positions were reversed. I wonder what he has up his sleeve? He’s a devious swine—I doubt he’s doing you any favour by letting you work your notice. He probably intends to make your life hell for the next few weeks. Whatever he pays you it won’t be enough…’
It wasn’t a matter of money, but of principle and pride, thought Kalera. In the midst of a disarmingly eloquent apology Duncan had somehow extracted a promise from her that she would stay on until the end of the month to help train her successor. She couldn’t break her word when Duncan’s willingness to keep her on was an act of faith in her integrity; nor did she want to forfeit the respect and liking of her friends at Labyrinth by slinking away from her job as if she were guilty of some wrongdoing.
‘I’m sure I can handle it,’ she said, hoping that he was wrong. ‘I’m tougher than I look, you know.’ She straightened her narrow shoulders, laid partially bare by the classic cut of her simple, sleeveless silk sheath. Her slender, breakable body often led people to overlook her inner strength and mistake her serenity for lack of assertiveness.
‘I know.’ Stephen cupped his hand over hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘I just don’t like the idea of you being hurt because of me. I never wanted to put you through this…’
She felt a familiar tightening in her chest followed by a blossoming of sweet contentment, and turned her hand palm up in his grasp, twining her fingers with his. He lifted their clasped hands to his mouth and gallantly saluted her knuckles with a soft kiss.
She loved the way that he could make her feel cherished and special with simple statements of caring rather than extravagant compliments. She recognised the same emotional reserve in him that existed in herself. After Harry was killed so tragically and so young, she hadn’t wanted to fall in love again. She hadn’t thought that she would ever find another man so perfectly suited to her needs. But then fate had thrown Stephen across her path and his gentle persistence had won her wary heart.
His gaze shifted and suddenly he stiffened, the tender light in his melting brown eyes instantly extinguished. ‘Did you tell Royal that we were coming here this evening?’
Kalera raised her finely arched brows at his curtness. Surely Stephen wasn’t going to turn paranoid on her too! ‘No…at least—I might have mentioned that we were going out to dinner after we shopped for the ring, I suppose, but I don’t think I said where. Why?’
‘Because he’s here—in the restaurant—and he’s coming over,’ said Stephen through his teeth. ‘And you can bet it’s not to offer his best wishes.’
Kalera’s head snapped around, her fine hair spraying over her silk-clad shoulders as Duncan Royal came to a halt beside her chair. It was only long experience of his eccentric taste in clothes that prevented her mouth from falling open at the sight of his attire. He was dressed from head to toe in black, his sculpted silk velvet jacket cropped like a matador’s, the wide lapels and cuffs stiff with flamboyant gold embroidery. Everything about him, from his clothes to the expression on his darkly amused face, reeked of challenge.
‘Well, well, well…if it isn’t the happy couple,’ he drawled, looking down at them with a tigerish smile. ‘What an extraordinary coincidence.’
His gaze shifted to their entwined fingers and before Kalera could curb the impulse she had guiltily snatched her hand from Stephen’s loosened grasp. She immediately picked up her glass and pretended to be drinking from it, but the glint in Duncan’s eye told her that he wasn’t fooled.
‘Mind if I join you for a while?’
Kalera was rendered speechless by his audacity.
‘Yes!’
Ignoring Stephen’s violent rejection, Duncan hooked a soft black ankle-boot around the leg of a chair at the next table, abandoned by a foursome for the dance-floor, and dragged it over, not taking his eyes off Kalera’s flushed face. He smiled as he positioned the chair too close to hers and sat down, his thigh brushing hers under the round table. She crossed her legs to avoid a repetition and found that it was now her bare arm at risk of being caressed by the plush velvet of his sleeve. His black shirt was figured silk, with covered buttons, she noticed unwillingly. And, dear God…!
‘You’re wearing an earring!’ she gasped, sufficiently distracted to forget that she had been about to edge her chair away from his.
‘Yes, do you like it?’ He turned so that the elongated jet and chased gold teardrop swung against the tanned column of his neck, almost brushing the collar of his jacket. A stud or ring was a fairly commonplace declaration of modern macho cool, but the wickedly frivolous elegance of that dangling earring made an entirely different statement. It was the sort of exquisite piece of jewellery that a languid Elizabethan fop might have worn…or a modern rock-and-shock star!
‘I didn’t even know you had your ear pierced,’ murmured Kalera faintly.
‘I didn’t—until this afternoon,’ he said, turning the back of his head towards Stephen and lowering his voice to effectively cut him out of the conversation. ‘For some reason I had this sudden, compelling urge to go out and do something just for the sheer hell of it, something satisfyingly primitive, and preferably masochistic…What prompted me to feel like that, do you think, Kalera?’
‘I have no idea,’ she said, refusing to look into those mocking blue eyes, or acknowledge the gravelly insinuation that she was somehow responsible for his ritual act of self-mutilation. In her experience Duncan needed no outside prompting to encourage his hell-raising impulses. She glanced nervously across the table at Stephen’s stony face, and gave him a secret smile in the hope that it might take the sting out of being ignored.
‘I know I shouldn’t be wearing anything but a stud in it yet,’ Duncan went on in his confiding tone, ‘but you know me, Kalera, I like to experiment. If you stick to the rules all your life you end up never doing any real living.’
His taunt fell on arid ground. Kalera had grown up in a society where there were too few rules rather than too many, and she knew which system she preferred. Duncan, the maverick, was the product of a conventional upper-middle-class upbringing which provided him with the lifelong security of having something to rebel against.
He tapped the lobe of his ear, making the earring sway, the polished jet gleaming as it performed its hypnotic little dance in the candlelight.
‘So what do you think? Does it suit me?’
Surprisingly it did. The feminine delicacy of the piece presented an exotic contrast to the hard planes of his face and the square jaw shadowed by masculine stubble. But Kalera would die before she admitted it. He was here to cause trouble and she was not going to co-operate by being drawn into his game.
‘I think it looks freakish,’ said Stephen tightly, the words spilling out from behind his rigid control. ‘But then it’s typical of you, isn’t it, Duncan? Always some outlandish stunt to draw attention to yourself. You’d better be careful: one day people are going to figure out that you’re more show than substance.’
‘Ever the flatterer, Steve.’ Duncan was indifferent to the savage thrust, his interest still squarely centred on Kalera. ‘I suppose he’s told you how ravishing you look this evening,’ he said. His eyes ran over the soft sheen of white silk in a smouldering male appraisal that was completely different from the way he had looked at her that morning. This time his gaze was meant to disturb and arouse and Kalera was grateful for the slight stiffness of the heavy Thai silk which shielded her helpless feminine response to his honeyed blanishment.
It didn’t seem to matter that she knew he was mocking her. She could feel her breasts prickling against the cups of her soft lace bra and a dangerous electricity zigzagged through her veins and pooled at the base of her stomach. She unconsciously pressed her thighs together as she kept her expression serene. He didn’t have X-ray vision, for goodness’ sake; he couldn’t possibly know what she was feeling. But the knowing smile kindling in the navy eyes suggested that he could make a far too well educated guess!
‘And how very appropriate that you should be wearing the colour of purity and honour,’ he drawled, making her pulses spike with renewed apprehension. ‘Very bridal…especially with that radiant veil of hair.’ He lifted a pale gold lock which had slipped forward to coil on the tablecloth next to her tense elbow and began to curl the silky skein around his finger idly. ‘I had no idea it had grown so long. The last time you let your hair down so for me in such glorious abandon it was only halfway down your back, but now it’s past your waist…’
Kalera froze, her eyes darting furtively to Stephen, but he appeared so incensed by the sight of Duncan toying with her hair that he failed to notice any hint of collusion in his words.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.
Duncan surveyed the living band of gold that thickly spanned his finger. ‘Just admiring your future bride.’
Stephen looked every bit as jumpy as Kalera felt. ‘You can do that without pawing at her!’
Duncan’s eyes widened insincerely. ‘I’m sorry, is that what I was doing, Kalera?’
He slowly unwound the curl and replaced the long tress against the white satin of her bodice, smoothing it back into its former position, seemingly unaware of her sharply indrawn breath as his knuckles skimmed the outer curve of her breast.
‘I said, take your hands off her!’ hissed Stephen, his face stiff with suppressed anger.
Duncan smiled, all innocence. ‘No need to get uptight, Steve. Kalera’s not complaining. She’s been with me for three years, after all. She’s used to me touching her. She knows I’m a very tactile person…’
Stephen disliked the shortened version of his name and Kalera guessed that Duncan knew it and was aiming for maximum provocation with minimum effort. She watched Stephen seethe behind his sophisticated air of self-possession, the closest she had ever seen him to losing his cool.
Duncan had half risen in his seat as he spoke and Kalera let out an inward sigh of relief at the prospect of his departure, but instead of leaving he bent over to heft the bottle from the silver ice-bucket standing on the other side of the table. His mouth kicked up as he read the French label.
‘As usual, only the best will do, huh, Steve? Shall I get the waiter to bring another champagne glass so that I can toast your good luck? Better still, let me buy you another bottle to show there’s no hard feelings. Give those gossipy old trouts out there a disappointment!’
He sat down again and made a small flourish with his fingers which must have been a pre-arranged signal, for a wine steward immediately came trotting up with a chilled bottle of the same vintage and a third crystal flute.
If his final comment was meant to be a threat, then it worked beautifully to his advantage. Stephen’s quick glance around the room told Kalera that, much as he would have liked to reject the offer coldly, he was a hostage to his own good manners. He wasn’t going to allow the rest of her evening to be spoiled by allowing them to become embroiled in an unpleasant scene.
They watched as the last of the champagne from the old bottle was poured into Duncan’s glass and the new one deftly opened.
‘To Kalera…’ said the brazen interloper, singing his glass softly against hers and looking deep into the mysterious grey depths of her eyes. ‘May you get everything you desire in this world. And to Steve—’ He turned, and this time the clash of crystal sounded out like the ring of swords. ‘May you get everything you so richly deserve.’
Stephen suddenly seemed impervious to insult, his smile redolent with triumph as he inclined his head.
‘Thank you, Duncan. With Kalera as my wife I’m sure I will,’ he said smoothly. ‘I won’t apologise for stealing her away from you because I don’t think you appreciated what a quiet gem you had in your possession until she told you she was leaving Labyrinth…for me. You took it for granted that working for the great Duncan Royal must be the most important thing in her life. Well, now you know that it’s not—so don’t think you can buy her back with a bottle of champagne and a few glib compliments because you can’t. She isn’t for sale!’
Kalera’s hands fluttered in silent protest, aghast at Stephen’s unnecessary defence of her integrity. If he was trying to avoid a scene he was definitely going the wrong way about it. Didn’t he realise that telling Duncan he couldn’t do something was the equivalent of throwing down a gauntlet?
But, instead of responding to the irresistible challenge, Duncan’s eyes flickered down, concealing his expression under a thick screen of sable lashes.
‘Speaking of gems, I see you’re wearing your brand-new engagement ring, Kalera,’ was his meek reply. ‘May I see?’
She lifted her hand, surprised to find it was clenched into an involuntary fist, and he mimed a silent whistle at the sight of the large diamond solitaire.
‘That’s quite a rock. A lot bigger than the one Harry gave you, but since love’s not measured by the carat I guess that doesn’t mean much, does it?’
Stephen was incensed. ‘That’s an incredibly tasteless and vulgar remark!’
Duncan appeared so remorseful that Kalera knew it was a sham and was horrified by a brief and wholly inappropriate urge to giggle. ‘I’m sorry, I know comparisons are odious. It’s just that—well, until today Kalera was still wearing Harry’s ring and I have difficulty imagining her with another man.’ He shook his head reminiscently. ‘They were so well matched. I really liked Harry. You never met him, Steve, but he was an all-round nice guy. An incredibly tough act to follow.’ He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.
At last!
‘Forgive me, Kalera,’ he said, his politeness forcing her to look up into his unconvincingly humble face. ‘I’m compounding my sins, aren’t I? I didn’t mean to upset you by summoning up memories of your first husband, tonight of all nights…’
Liar! He meant to do whatever it took to wreck the romantic mood of their evening. But his plan had backfired as far as Kalera was concerned, because she knew that Harry would have wanted her to be happy.
So she smiled serenely and murmured that of course she wasn’t upset, only to have Duncan give her another lesson in the subtle art of brinkmanship.
‘As usual you shame me with your graciousness. But I won’t accept that I’m forgiven until you honour me with at least one dance before I go.’ He indicated the small, intimate dance-floor occupied by several couples barely moving to the smoochy blues of a small jazz band. ‘I doubt that I’ll be invited to your wedding so this might be my only chance to dance with the blushing bride. You don’t mind, do you, old boy?’
Stephen patently did mind, but Duncan was already stooping to cup Kalera’s elbow, applying a secret pressure of his fingertips that made her jump to her feet with apparent alacrity, the nerves in her paralysed arm going crazy and tiny pinpoints of white light dancing dizzily in front of her eyes.
Before she could recover from the momentary disorientation, Duncan’s cunning grip shifted and she found herself propelled into irresistible motion with every appearance of eagerness, leaving Stephen floundering in startled disapproval.
As they moved away from the table Duncan turned his head and asked conversationally, ‘Have you told him yet?’
Aware that they weren’t fully out of earshot, Kalera stiffened her spine and voluntarily quickened her pace, missing the smirk that Duncan threw over his shoulder.
‘Told him what?’
‘About us.’
She could feel Stephen’s suspicious gaze boring into her back.
‘There’s nothing to tell!’ she denied vehemently.
‘No?’
‘No!’
They reached the edge of the dance-floor and Duncan swung her lightly into his arms.
‘You must lead an astonishingly eventful life if you think that crawling naked into a man’s bed and begging him to make love to you is “nothing”. Somehow I don’t think that Stephen would take the same liberal view. Don’t you think he has a right to know that, far from being unappreciative, I’m fully aware of each and every intimate facet of his quiet little gem?’
CHAPTER THREE
THE strength in Kalera’s legs melted away and if Duncan hadn’t had his arm anchored around her waist she would have sunk ignominiously to the ground. Her long fingernails dug into the soft velvet of his jacket, scrabbling for purchase as she stumbled along, knocking her slender knees against his long legs.
Anyone watching would think that she had never learned to dance, she thought feverishly. But she and Stephen had often danced together and if he was still watching them he would be wondering what on earth was going on. When she went back to the table he would ask what they had been talking about and if she didn’t want to create a terrible turmoil in their relationship she would have to lie…
‘Oh, God!’ She moaned, her head wilting towards a gold-embroidered lapel, her temples tightening at the mere thought of the complications that could ensue. An exotic scent teased her nostrils and she dimly recognised the cologne that the staff had given their boss the previous Christmas, and which she had been despatched to select and buy. She had thought the sharp, spicy fragrance with its lingering, sensual undertones might have been designed with Duncan in mind, and now it seemed even more potent, uniquely personalised by the natural musk of his skin.
Duncan’s hard palm pressed against her back, bracing the centre of her limp body against his hips as he guided her around the floor in a semblance of grace. His thighs pushed insistently against hers, nudging them into sluggish action, his leading hand tucked close to his shoulder, keeping her torso nestled against his chest. At six feet four he towered over her, but he was nevertheless surprisingly light on his feet.
‘Keep moving. You’re doing fine,’ he murmured encouragingly, his breath stirring the hair above her ear. ‘I won’t let you go…’
