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Mariann squirmed, not wanting to risk having a handson experience with Mr Bedroom Eyes himself and wondering what it would take to free herself.
‘You tryin’ to stop the blood flowing to me fingers?’ she asked in pointed objection.
‘Is that what I’m doing? Dear me! No wonder I’m known for breaking butterflies’ wings on wheels,’ he said in a low, unnervingly cruel undertone. He smiled unpleasantly, as though contemplating a few butterflies he’d destroyed, and Mariann’s pulses lurched erratically. ‘In certain circumstances, I use more force than necessary.’
‘What circumstances?’ she asked hoarsely.
His sharply sculptured lips curled into a calculating smile that coincided with the pressure of his hips against hers. ‘When I’m aroused in one way or another.’
Aroused. Mariann swallowed hard. Was that anger or passion in his tone? She found it confusingly hard to tell. ‘You come to the boil a bit quick!’ she observed, her jaunty tone belying her fear.
‘Depends how high the heat is turned up,’ he said meaningfully. Mariann took the hint. She’d overdone it. This guy needed no encouragement for his sexual urge to take over. ‘Now let’s find out all about you, shall we?’
‘I’m better at talkin’ when I can breathe,’ she husked. His thumbs were now massaging in an irritatingly rhythmic way over her flesh. Her tingling flesh. How could it tingle? she thought in mortification.
‘And I’m better at getting information out of people when I have some kind of a hold over them,’ he replied coolly.
She gasped at his blatant threat and decided it was time this trickster experienced a dirty trick or two in return. So she inhaled deeply. Vigadó’s avid eyes fell to her T-shirt, which he watched with close interest as it rose beneath the strain of her lifting breasts.
And then, ‘Read all about it!’ she yelled, approximately two inches from his mesmerised face.
‘What the devil—?’ he roared, flinching violently.
She was free!’ ‘Just checking my lungs work all right,’ she said with bright innocence, taking a precautionary step or two nearer to the sanctuary of her outdoor clothes. A bit of bleached-blonde Marilyn slid seductively over one eye and she decided to leave it there. Her giggle surfaced at his pained expression. ‘I haven’t gone mad.’ She grinned. ‘That was-—’
‘I know,’ he grated irritably. ‘I’ve heard newspaper venders shouting that phrase in London. You bring the city sounds vividly back to me,’ he added in icy sarcasm. ‘You’ll be doing the Lambeth Walk and impressions of Big Ben chiming next.’
She flung him an amused look and then her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a laugh. ‘Oh, my!’ she gasped. ‘The paint’s gone all over your nice pin-stripe!’
His gaze followed hers. ‘Dammit!’ he cried irritably, slipping his arms out of the expensive coat—mercifully untouched—and passing it imperiously to her. ‘Look what you’ve done!’
Annoyed by his arrogant manner, she flung the coat in the general direction of his luggage and decided to have a dig at him. ‘I didn’t ask you to clutch me to you like a drownin’ man grabbin’ a lifebelt!’ she argued indignantly.
‘I was steadying you, after your launch into space,’ he said in chilling tones. ‘And I don’t quite see myself as a drowning man.’
‘Like a leech, then,’ she said in a kindly way, because he was, having sucked the life blood from her boss’s business.
His lips compressed. ‘I think I’m beginning to understand what you’re trying to convey,’ he said caustically. And suddenly she saw that he looked tired, as though his journey had been a long one. Tired was good news, she thought, giving a sigh of relief. He’d be less of a menace. ‘Have you got any turps?’ he snapped.
‘Sure,’ she chirruped. She strode over to She tool box and solemnly handed him the bottle and some rags.
‘You?’ Curt and barely civil, he held out the bottle.
Thanking him politely, she took the worst of the stains off her shorts and then turned her attention to the spots on her legs, aware that his eyes kept flicking over to watch her movements. No harm in that. Plenty of men had ogled her legs before—but this time she felt more uncomfortable than usual so she gave one hasty, make-do rub and waited anxiously for the chance to leave.
Her heart was racing at an all-time high. That would be due to the danger, of course. But being found out was far less worrying than the air of sexual violence he was projecting. And also worrying was her extraordinary pagan response to it. What had happened to her immunity, her sense of the ridiculous when men became doe-eyed and panting?
Unfortunately for her, this guy was light-years away from being doe-eyed or panting. She, however, had felt alarmingly close to sinking, with a mindless sigh, into his arms! Extraordinary—and humiliating that she was reacting to his leader-of-the-pack attitude by virtually rolling over in submission!
She darted a quick, resentful glance at him and he looked away. His strong but deft fingers worked at the cloth, stretching it taut across his well-developed thighs. In fact, he was very muscular all over. And she wished he were a seven-stone weakling. She’d feel safer. At the moment, she felt as safe as a rabbit in a trap. She shivered—and knew with a sinking heart that she had to abandon her attempt and try again the next evening. All she needed was a good exit line.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_53c7e6bb-ddf8-512f-84c8-5aa20ffb104f)
IN FRUSTRATION, Mariann began to pack up her things. While Vigadó worked doggedly at the stains on his trousers, her mind drifted to another man who’d always dominated his environment: István, her sister’s guy.
Fondly she contemplated the love-affair between istvá and Tanya—its ups and downs and eventual state of bliss. Whenever they’d looked into each other’s eyes, her heart had contracted with a wistful envy. A mutual adoration like that was very moving. But bitter experien perience reminded her that men like him were rare, very rare and the odds against falling in love with a man who met her special needs were virtually nil.
Marian smiled gently. Nevertheless, their happiness had given her hope. Things could turn out well after difficulties. The thought inspired her to persevere with her daring plan.
Maybe Lionel’s wife would return to him when she found out what a monster Vigadó really was. And Mary O’Brien—surely she wouldn’t approve of the working methods of a brute whose sole motive was profit and dam the consequences? All they needed was Mary’s secret address and they were home and dry.
‘Is the paint coming off?’ she enquired sweetly, her eyes lingering on the fine tailoring of his double-vented jacket and ferociously knife-edged trousers. Some of Lionel’s authors had probably funded that suit!
‘No. I hope the cleaners will have better luck. I hate waste,’ he frowned, dropping the cloth rag in. defeat. Foiled for once, and obviously hating the experience, he impatiently thrust back a hank of silky black hair that spoilt his impeccable appearance by daring to dip its wave on to his broad forehead.
‘Disasters will happen. I’m sure it’ll clean out,’ she said soothingly, screwing the top back on the turps. ‘Well, since you’ve arrived, I’ll get out of your way now.’
‘No, you won’t! You’ll tell me what you’re planning first,’ he said aggressively.
Mariann bit back her annoyance. ‘You’ll be dead surprised!’ she promised wryly.
‘You may be right, you may be wrong,’ he said in an ice-splintered voice, and pushed his hands deep into the pockets of the sharply tailored jacket. ‘Why don’t you show me what you have in mind?’
Later! she thought, hugging her secret to herself. ‘All right. Come and see.’ Serenely content to be deceiving the dreaded monster, she knelt on the dustsheet beside the stack of paint tins.
‘Here?’ he asked lazily. ‘How original.’
‘You’ve got a dirty mind,’ she reproved and grabbed a screwdriver, ignoring Vigadó’s mock-exclamation of lecherous surprise and levering open a tin. She’d cheerfully directed the decorators to some interesting shades, just for fun, pretending that ‘Viggy’ would ‘adore’ her choice. And she’d enjoyed picking out the colours, majestically arranging for the bill to be sent to the Dieter Ringel office. ‘Cantaloupe,’ she pronounced proudly, showing him and revving up her cheery Cockney impersonation to full throttle. ‘Bright, innit? Once it’s slapped on the walls, you’ll be real chipper! What do you think?’
‘Can’t say it’s been one of my life’s ambitions to work inside a melon,’ he grunted, crouching beside her on the dustsheet. His hand stretched out to her discarded boiler suit beside him and fingered the emblem on the pocket reflectively. ‘Kastély Huszár,’ he mused, flicking a quick glance at Mariann’s widening eyes. ‘The hotel…How did you get hold of this?’ he demanded sharply.
‘Monogrammed, is it? That’s posh for you!’ she exclaimed.
And inwardly she groaned. Oh, help! He might know the countess! She made a mental note to ring István’s mother and beg her not to reveal the family connection between them. Vigadó had to continue to believe that she was a simple, uncomplicated girl with nothing but empty space between her ears. If he got wind of the fact that she worked for a publisher—
‘Are you having trouble formulating an answer?’ he asked with sinister softness.
She blanched at the barbaric growl and sharpened her defences. Travel-weary he might be, but he was still more alert than most guys on their fifth cup of coffee.
‘I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she said, much on her dignity. ‘The hotel supplied me with it,’ she told him truthfully, rather pleased with her evasion. ‘It’s had a revamp,’ she explained. ‘Decorators everywhere.’
His head angled on one side. ‘Everyone knows that. István Huszár and that English manager of his have made the hotel world-famous. You’ve worked there?’ he probed, his glacial eyes boring into her soul.
Her heart began to thump. Lying didn’t come easy to her, not after being brought up as a vicar’s daughter! ‘Did a few jobs,’ she answered with a vigorous nod.
She smiled ruefully, thinking of when she’d helped her younger sister Sue to soothe a few hundred guests when their brother’s wedding at the castle was dramatically cancelled. Or when she’d packed up the wedding presents. What a terrible day that had been! She could have wept—would have done—if Tanya hadn’t been relying on her support. But the apparent disaster had brought Tanya and István together after years apart. Crises were often turning points.
Vigadó had stood up smoothly and was running incredulous eyes over her rather skimpily clad body. ‘You’re telling me you really are a decorator?’ he asked in mild disbelief.
Mariann nodded blithely. After doing out their Devon home and her London friends’ flats, she reckoned she could call herself that. ‘That’s right,’ she said, thinking she was almost home and dry. A little more proof and he’d be convinced. Perhaps some colourful Cockney would help! ‘Okey dokey, swivel your peepers this way—’
‘Do you think,’ he interrupted with a heavy sigh, ‘that you could speak normal, undecorated English? I don’t think my jet-lagged brain can cope with riddles.’
‘I meant’ she said, cheerfully in command of the situation, ‘for you to see what else we were doing.’ Hoping to convince him by sheer self-assurance, she opened tins enthusiastically. ‘Sultana skirting boards, flapjack ceiling and cane-sugar door panels with a cream surround. What do you think? Come on, be honest.’ Mariann leapt up eagerly and her big smile broadened with delight at his shattered expression.
‘Sounds like a greengrocer’s shop in the West Indies,’ he said caustically.
‘Too right!’ she sympathised. ‘But there’s colour charts for you,’ she added, disclaiming all responsibility for the manufacturer’s wild fantasies.
‘This building is part of Budapest’s historic Castle district,’ he said wearily. ‘You’re working in what was once an eighteenth-century salon—’
‘But the colours would look stunning!’ she cooed.
‘If this is a joke…’ he began in stiff anger.
And she couldn’t resist teasing him. ‘Too unconventional? I thought it might be.’ She sighed. ‘Colours are supposed to reveal your inner character.’ She eyed his suit with a professional air and let her gaze linger for a fraction too long on the lines of the beautiful body beneath. Wasted on a man like that…
‘Enlighten me as to my character,’ he said in clipped tones.
With pleasure! she thought. ‘A guy who believes in straight-down-the-line commitment with no sideturnings, who’s organised, ruthless to a fault, with no grey areas and no maybe,’ she replied, sounding annoyingly husky. Conventional or not, he looked devastating. But then his earthy, raw sensuality would fight its way through anything he chose to wear. Stopping herself from wool-gathering, she waved an expressive hand towards her kaleidoscopic pile of clothes. ‘What do mine say?’
He scanned the heap of reds, oranges and shocking pinks. ‘They don’t “say”, they shout,’ he grated in disapproval. ‘They scream in raucous tones that you’re as fast and as brash and as exciting as a fairground ride. A chameleon landing on those clothes would have a nervous breakdown.’
‘You’re funny!’ she said in surprise. She was grinning good-naturedly at his assessment, not in the least bit bothered by it because she was proud of brightening a grey world, one hand jammed into her tiny waist above the womanly swell of her hip, her long legs and bare feet planted assertively apart.
‘Hilarious. Stick your tongue out,’ he commanded abruptly.
She almost obeyed. ‘What?’ She gaped in astonishment.
Suddenly he was as close as a tango dancer, looming over her, his snazzy-suited body authoritative and slightly menacing. A faint quiver of nerves rippled from her head to her toes. When his hand enclosed her bare arm like an iron manacle again, she wondered seriously whether she could actually get away with deceiving him. Those eyes of his could penetrate flaws inside iron girders.
‘Stick your tongue out,’ he repeated softly, and Mariann found herself swaying towards him, helplessly mesmerised by his smoulderingly sexy eyes.
She fought the urge to lift her mouth to Vigadó’s inviting lips. He was even more wickedly sexy in the flesh than on paper, and of course that was how she had expected him to stay—a paper threat. It hadn’t been her intention to be around when he arrived. If he’d stuck to his schedule, she thought resentfully, like any normal businessman, whose life was run by his Filofax, she would have extracted all the information she needed and been on her way before he ever knew he’d been invaded by decorators!
Or tempted her with his undeniably enticing mouth.
He lifted an insistent eyebrow. ‘Your tongue,’ he murmured.
Her head cleared a little. What could he do to it? she reasoned. Cut it off? Intrigued, she obliged, her eyes challenging his while she stuck out her tongue with an energetic thrust that turned the gesture into an out-andout insult.
‘Awrr righ’?’ she enquired insolently.
A square of beautifully soft linen appeared in his hand and was gently moistened on her outstretched tongue while she covertly watched him—his long black lashes curling like a child’s on his cheeks, his come-and-kissme mouth flowering before her eyes in a shockingly sensual enjoyment. Her heart began to thud faster and hastily she retracted her tongue, aghast that she was responding with such primitive eagerness to his compelling, raw sexuality.
She liked men. She liked kissing. Perhaps a cuddle. No more. More led to expectations, to commitment, to ‘going steady’. And then obsessions, which she feared. Her sister Tanya’s happiness, her mother’s, father’s, brother’s—all had been nearly destroyed by obsession. And even the powerful István had been scarred by its denial. It was frightening, to be possessed by emotions.
To kiss this man would be an experience. But Vigadó gave out the impression that he’d never settle for less than complete surrender in return for his time and effort. Pity. She’d have liked to know what it felt like to have that amazingly carnal mouth on hers. It looked so wickedly, excitingly mobile…
She stiffened. He’d taken her face in one hand and slowly, solemnly rubbed at the paint splashes on her forehead, beneath the dip of her Marilyn waves. She jerked back and he continued on less dangerous areas of her brow. Snow from the sub-zero blizzard outside had dampened his hair and the freezing wind had given his face a healthy glow. He was so near, she mused, that she could feel the icy chill rising from his skin.
He smiled. It looked rather calculating to her and she sought to break the tension between them with a merry quip, but he got there first. ‘Now we’ve cleared up the flapjack, we can proceed,’ he murmured huskily. ‘I wonder which of us is the hungriest? Who will devour whom?’
Mariann blinked. Did he mean the paint, or her? Dark eyes burned into hers. And then she felt the tip of his tongue touching her jawline and all hell broke loose inside her. Something odd had happened to her stomach. She shook her head slowly till she had some control over her voice—confused as to why her throat had closed up in collusion with her body.
‘You can’t eat me. You’d get poisoned,’ she managed to croak out.
‘Oh?’ he murmured, his eyes mocking. ‘Venom in your blood?’
‘Lead in the paint,’ she countered shakily.
He chuckled in a sinister way. ‘Thanks for the warning,’ he said silkily. ‘I will look out for all the dangers when I’m tempted by beautiful and mysterious decorators putting in a bit of overtime.’
Mariann lowered her eyes modestly, her heart fluttering like crazy. There’d been a wealth of hidden meaning in his words. Tread carefully, she told herself. This man would be suspicious of his own mother.
‘Flatterer!’ she accused, feeling the desperation clouding her brain.
‘Don’t flirt,’ he warned in a low tone. If I want a woman, I take her—without any need for coy messages of encouragement.’
She tried to force her throat to open again, deciding to make a stand. Because she mustn’t fail! So a big smile and, ‘Who’s flirting?’ she defied.
‘You were,’ he said curtly.
‘Why would I do that?’ she shrugged.
‘Why indeed,’ he stated starkly.
Mariann licked her lips nervously. Fencing with this Don Juan was a tactical mistake. She must make her exit soon, find a way to close that incriminatingly open filing cabinet and carry on the decorating farce for another day.
‘If you don’t like the colours,’ she babbled, ‘we could do mango and cocoa-brown with fudge…’ The look in his eyes—beech-nut brown, or Havana? she wondered a little breathily—told her that it was time to stop. As usual she’d gone just a little too far. Her sense of fun had run away with her.
“Don’t push it,’ he said tightly. ‘You’re on dangerous ground.’
The beech-nut browns took another swift tour of her body. This time he made her feel so alarmingly naked that she wished she’d worn overalls. By now, the T-shirt was clinging rather indecently to her hot, damp breasts. The shorts weren’t much better. When she’d cut the hems for ease of movement, she’d been sublimely indifferent to states of the office staff—after all, she was playing a part and András and János knew better than to even glance below her neck, because she was ‘Viggy’s’. But this was Viggy himself. And he not only stared, he had a way of igniting her flesh and making it seem…more fleshy, more sexy than ever before. And that scared her.
‘Sorry. Tell me what colours you want and I’ll do them,’ she said contritely, every inch of her aware of him—and hating the magnetic pull he was exerting over her. ‘It’s a shame,’ she said, struggling for normality. ‘I reckoned my scheme would look terrific——’
‘You reckoned?’ he interrupted sharply. ‘My office manager should have made that kind of decision, not you. Sándor Millassin.’
‘Antal,’ she corrected, watching him closely.
‘Of course,’ he replied, as bland as milk. ‘I forgot.’
She knew that was an out-and-out lie. Vigadó Gabór had the reputation of having a memory like an elephant. He was checking up on her! Must do better she told herself angrily.
‘Look, Antal was in a flap,’ she said, giving him an edited version of the truth. In fact, it was because the manager had been in so much of a flap, with his office in such chaos and the dreaded Vigadó due that month, that her bluff had worked. Antal had swallowed everything she’d told him about ‘Viggy’s’ generosity towards her. ‘Apparently you’d suddenly decided to switch your headquarters to Budapest and he wanted everything to look smart for you. He was far too busy making offers for the building next door and ordering equipment to bother with minor details like colour charts.’
Vigadó wandered to the window and stared out at the broken ice patterning the Danube below. The converted mansion stood high on a dramatic rocky outcrop above the city. Now the blizzard had stopped it was possible to see the whole panorama of the snow-blanketed city across the white-flecked river.
