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That Devil Love
Lee Wilkinson
I mean to have and own you completely.Annis Warrener had only agreed to accompany her friend Stephen to an office party out of kindness and was expecting a rather dull evening. So she was taken aback to discover that Stephen's new boss was Zan Power, the man responsible for causing Annis and her family so much unhappiness.But Zan had no idea who Annis was and made no secret of his attraction to her. Worse, he was prepared to use every weapon– even blackmail– to get her into his life….
Zan’s voice was roughened by passion.
“I can’t wait to have you in my arms, in my bed, in my life….”
Meeting Zan again was a strange enough coincidence, but that he should feel so strongly about her was incredible, almost unbelievable. Yet Annis had to believe it.
By some cruel twist of fate this man was back in her life and apparently intending to stay. Somehow she had to find a way of getting rid of him now. Tonight. Before this madness had time to grow and flourish….
LEE WILKINSON lives with her husband in a three-hundred-year-old stone cottage in an English village, which most winters gets cut off by snow. They both enjoy traveling and recently, joining forces with their daughter and son-in-law, spent a year going round the world “on a shoestring” while their son looked after Kelly, their much loved German shepherd. Her hobbies are reading and gardening and holding impromptu barbecues for her long-suffering family and friends.
That Devil Love
Lee Wilkinson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
‘I HOPE you didn’t mind coming?’ Stephen, sounding like an anxious schoolboy, broke into her abstraction.
Annis forced a smile. ‘Of course I didn’t. I’m enjoying it.’
He relaxed visibly, and she thought how sweet he was. Genuinely concerned about her. Easy to fool. With his light brown unruly hair and round toffee-coloured eyes, his chubby cheeks and lack of any waistline, he always reminded her of a big, cuddly teddy bear.
‘Only you’ve seemed a bit quiet,’ he pursued.
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise.’
Mentally isolated from the talk and laughter of a party to celebrate what had been described as a ‘successful merger’, she’d been thinking about Richard. Worrying about him.
‘And you didn’t eat much at dinner.’
‘I wasn’t very hungry.’ That at least was the truth.
Giving up the attempt at conversation, Stephen asked a shade hesitantly, ‘Would you like to dance?’
‘Love to,’ she assured him, getting up from her seat at the table.
She was slim and graceful, with the kind of cool yet stunning beauty that made men stare and women sigh with envy. Wanting to play down that beauty, she wore a simple black sheath, her only jewellery small gold hoops in her ears, a narrow gold bracelet circling her right wrist and a gold watch on a plain black strap on her left.
Her smooth silvery-blonde head, with its elegant chignon, held high, she preceded him on to the hotel’s highly polished floor.
The band had started a quiet, smoochy selection, and as they joined the throng of dancers she found herself asking, ‘How do you think this takeover by AP Worldwide will affect people’s jobs?’
Damn! She hadn’t meant to bring the subject up, but Richard had seemed so jumpy, so worried about his future prospects.
He’d poured out all his anxieties to her, rather than Linda, who, with fourteen-month-old twin girls to care for, was heavily pregnant with their third child.
‘No one’s quite sure yet,’ Stephen admitted. ‘But Power’s a decent bloke by all accounts. Ruthless in many ways, but respected for being scrupulously fair, even generous to his employees, so long as they’re on top of their job…’
So long as they’re on top of their job… Her clear aquamarine eyes troubled, she repressed a shiver. Richard had confessed that, as far as work went, he was often out of his depth and relied heavily on Stephen to keep him afloat.
‘It’s not the kind of job I’m suited for,’ he’d told her, miserably. ‘But there’s nothing else going at the moment so I’ve just got to grit my teeth and hope for the best. I can’t afford to get the sack. The bank are threatening to turn nasty. We’ve a huge overdraft, and we’re badly in arrears with the mortgage.’
She knew they had been having difficulties, but was shaken by the extent of them.
Making an effort, Annis thrust the memory of Richard’s haggard face away and dragged her attention back to her companion who was continuing his panegyric.
‘…He’s only in his early thirties, and you don’t get right to the top at that age without being ruthless.’ Stephen, who was so downright nice it was a miracle he knew the meaning of the word ruthless, sounded admiring.
Annis sighed inwardly. There was a dull throbbing in her temples and she longed for the evening to end. As they slowly circled the edge of the crowded floor, she rested her head against Stephen’s well-padded shoulder and made an effort to relax in his safe, undemanding embrace.
A moment later he was pulling away. Straightening.
Her back to the speaker, Annis heard a crisp, authoritative voice say, ‘Good evening. It’s Leighton, isn’t it? Won’t you introduce me to your guest?’
Surprised, flattered, childishly delighted to be noticed and have his name remembered by the great man himself, Stephen beamed and said, ‘Annis, this is Mr Power, head of AP Worldwide…Miss Warrener.’
Annis, who had dutifully turned and extended a civil hand, stood without moving or speaking, shocked into immobility at the sight of the dark, dynamic man who wore his immaculate evening dress with such panache.
In a tough, unnerving way he was strikingly handsome. Unforgettable. There was no mistaking that well-shaped head of shorn black curls, no mistaking that lean, arrogant, strong-boned face. She knew it. Hated it!
‘Zan Power,’ he said, taking her hand in a light but far from casual clasp.
Zan. It was him! There couldn’t be another man who looked like the legendary Jason and was called something as outlandish as Zan.
‘Warrener—’ He was frowning slightly, winged black brows drawing together over heavy-lidded eyes, the irises a dark green rayed with gold, brilliant against the clear, healthy whites. ‘I know that name.’
‘Richard Warrener, Annis’s brother, works for you.’ Stephen supplied the information. ‘He’s part of my team in the computer think-tank.’
There was a momentary flicker of surprise in those extraordinary eyes, which throughout the exchange had never left the perfect oval of her face. Then he was saying in his attractive, cultivated voice, ‘Ah, yes. Isn’t he here tonight?’
Once again it was Stephen who replied, ‘His wife is having a baby quite soon. He didn’t want to leave her.’
‘That’s understandable.’ Still without removing his gaze from Annis’s face, Zan Power went on with a politeness that in no way disguised the purposefulness, ‘May I dance with your charming partner, Leighton?’
Displaying an unexpected firmness which earned her admiration, Stephen answered, ‘That’s really up to Annis, sir.’
‘Well, Miss Warrener?’ He held her gaze in a long, hard glance. There was no smile in his thickly lashed, feline eyes, no attempt to cajole, just a quiet waiting.
About to curtly refuse, she hesitated, remembering all she owed Stephen, then for his sake said a reluctant, tight-lipped, ‘Of course.’
Half suffocated by the loathing that filled her, and an equally powerful feeling she was at a loss to identify, she moved into Zan Power’s arms.
She was long-legged, tall for a woman at five feet, eight inches, yet still her eyes were only on a level with the cleft in his firm chin. Tense and awkward, she concentrated on keeping her body away from any contact with his.
He held her lightly, permitting the space between them, moving with a lithe grace that seemed strange in so big a man. The kind of grace one might expect to find in a gigolo, she thought with deliberate contempt.
Not a man willing to deal in polite platitudes, he asked, ‘When you’re not with Leighton do you always dance so stiffly, and in silence?’
‘It depends who my partner is; how much I’m enjoying the occasion.’ Her voice was cool, composed, belying the red-hot hatred that seethed inside.
They completed the circuit before he attacked from a different angle. ‘Do you enjoy parties as a rule?’
‘Yes,’ she lied.
‘But you’ve disliked every minute of this one.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I’ve been watching you.’
When, repressing a shiver, she made no reply, merely continued to move her feet and stare at his black bowtie, he asked with a kind of wry curiosity, ‘Why did you come tonight?’
‘Because Stephen wanted me to.’ She was aware, without even glancing at the man who held her so lightly yet so inescapably, that he was annoyed by her answer.
‘And do you always do what Leighton wants?’
Goading the man who reminded her of a sleek black panther, she said, ‘Whenever possible.’
‘What is he to you? Friend? Lover?’
‘So long as our relationship, whether it’s merely platonic or more than that, doesn’t disturb his work, I really don’t consider that it’s any of your business.’
Tawny green eyes caught and held aquamarine, his very look a threat. ‘I intend to make it my business.’
‘You surely can’t want to control the lives of all your employees?’ she protested incredulously.
‘I don’t.’
‘Then what makes Stephen special?’
‘You do.’
A sudden shiver of something closely akin to fear ran through her.
Softly, he went on, ‘I won’t tolerate anything other than friendship between you.’
‘Won’t tolerate…!’ Anger mingled with alarm.
‘So if by any chance it is more than that—’ his face was steely, his mouth a hard line ‘—for everyone’s sake I advise you to put an end to it at once.’
‘You must be out of your mind!’
Ignoring her choked words, he added, ‘However, I don’t think it is. You have the look about you of a Snow Queen, as if no man has been able to melt the ice and turn you into a real woman.’
‘I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that a man might have caused that ice to form, made me—as you so fancifully put it—like a Snow Queen?’
‘It hadn’t,’ he admitted seriously. ‘But then I don’t know you yet—in either the everyday or the old Biblical sense of the word.’
As her aquamarine eyes widened, he added with cool certainty, ‘Though I fully intend to.’
Heart thudding against her ribs, she somehow dragged her gaze away. As well as angry, she felt scared, threatened. Which was ridiculous.
‘I don’t go in for casual affairs,’ she said haughtily.
‘A casual affair was the last thing I had in mind. I mean to have and to own you completely.’
The calm statement stopped her breath, as though a noose made of fear and fury had tightened around her slender throat.
But however much she abhorred and resented his brand of cool sexual arrogance, it could well hold a fatal fascination for some women.
Was that how he’d managed to bewitch Maya?
‘No comment?’ he queried, with a lift of one black, mobile brow.
Trying to hide how rattled she was, she said dismissively, ‘I’ve already stated that I think you’re insane, Mr Power.’
‘Zan.’
‘An unusual name.’
‘My young sister couldn’t say Alexander and, probably because it was less of a mouthful, her version stuck.’
