Passionate Scandal

CHAPTER FOUR

‘WE HAVE to talk. Have dinner with me.’

‘W-what did you say?’ The sound of his voice, washing deep and seductively over her via the telephone earpiece, was enough on its own to make her deaf to the words he actually said.

‘Have dinner with me,’ he repeated huskily. And her throat closed up on a wave of nostalgia those few gruff words resurrected from years ago when he had asked her the selfsame question in the exact same intimate tone. Was it done deliberately? She couldn’t tell. ‘We must talk.’

‘How dare you ring me here!’ she whispered, glancing furtively around the empty hallway, She was alone, thank God! But it was only by fluke that she had happened to answer the phone because she was expecting a call from Perry.

‘Why, will your father beat you if he finds out you’ve been talking to me?’ he drawled.

‘Probably,’ she grimaced, remembering the stand-up row she’d had with her father over the Stanton affair. It hadn’t got her anywhere, and she was beginning to realise just how impossible the situation had become.

‘He wouldn’t harm a hair on your lovely head, and you know it,’ came the sardonic reply. ‘Now, about dinner.’

‘I can’t,’ she answered bluntly, searching her mind for an adequate excuse why not, then realising that she didn’t need one when the truth was clear enough. ‘I don’t want to, actually.’

‘Actually,’ he mocked, ‘I don’t think either of us has much choice. Not if you don’t want to see Vicky hurt more than she has been already over this damned wedding of Nina’s.’

‘All right, I accept that something has to be done and perhaps you and I are the only ones to do it,’ she agreed. ‘But I am not prepared to share another slanging match with you, Dominic,’ she warned him coolly.

‘No?’ he murmured provocatively. ‘What a shame. We used to have such fun throwing insults at each other…’

‘Well, not any more,’ she said coldly, hurt that he could be so cruel as to taunt her about their row four years ago.

‘So, when can we meet?’ he enquired more briskly, obviously deciding he had provoked her enough for one day.

Not at all if I had any choice, Madeline thought heavily. ‘Not before next week,’ she told him out loud. ‘Today is Friday, and my weekend is fully booked.’

‘The Lassiter thing?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The Lassiter thing.’

‘We could meet there,’ he suggested. ‘You know, sneak off somewhere to some secret location and have a little pow-wow all on our own…?’

Madeline closed her eyes, her pulses automatically beginning to race as a trace of the old Madeline fondness for intrigue pierced its way through her armour. Was that why he’d made that outrageous suggestion, she wondered agitatedly, because he knew it would appeal to her old wayward nature?

But not her new careful nature it didn’t. So, ‘Sorry,’ she drawled. ‘But my—partner wouldn’t like me sneaking off like that.’

‘Partner?’ Madeline had the satisfaction of hearing his voice sharpen. ‘What partner?’

‘The one I brought with me from Boston,’ she informed him coolly. ‘Perry Linburgh.’

‘Ah,’ he breathed, pretending no knowledge of Perry when she was sure as dammit that if Vicky knew about Perry, then Dominic surely did. ‘Byron Linburgh’s son and heir.’ He sounded suitably impressed. ‘My, but we do move in exalted circles, do we not?’

‘Thank you.’ She refused to take up the bait, and Dominic’s own short sigh of acknowledgement to that whispered down the line to shiver right through her.

‘Dinner next week, then,’ he said, dropping the sarcasm.

‘Not dinner, no,’ she refused. ‘I don’t think it—’

‘Lunch, then, in London,’ he cut in.

‘No.’ Madeline bit down on her bottom lip. ‘Dominic, I—’

‘A drink,’ he thrust curtly at her. ‘Meet me for a drink in Newbury one evening, and we’ll…’

‘Dominic,’ she broke in gently, softening her tone because in this particular case she had no wish to wound him. ‘You just have to understand that I can’t afford to be seen anywhere alone with you. The cost will run too high.’