The Master's Mistress

So much for Rogan’s thinking that kissing Elizabeth might divert her attention away from the fact that he had been using her laptop earlier!

‘You really don’t want to know.’

Her stance became one of stubborn determination. ‘Oh, I really think I do.’

Rogan smiled nastily. ‘I have a doctorate in Computer Analysis, remember.’

Auburn brows rose challengingly. ‘And that allows you to violate another person’s personal laptop any time you feel like it?’

It actually allowed Rogan to access almost any computer system anywhere in the world any time he felt like it!

He grimaced. ‘More or less.’

Elizabeth folded her arms in front of her chest. ‘How much more or less?’

Elizabeth Brown was dogged as well as intelligent, Rogan acknowledged ruefully. ‘Give me a computer, almost any computer, and I guarantee that in a matter of minutes I will have access to all its stored information.’ He gave an unapologetic smile.

‘Isn’t that illegal?’

Rogan’s smile widened into a hard grin. ‘Some might call it that, yes.’

Her mouth thinned. ‘What do you call it?’

‘Useful.’

Elizabeth gave a disgusted shake of her head at the complete lack of apology in his tone. ‘And you don’t see anything wrong in that?’

Rogan made an impatient movement. ‘Why should I, if it gets the job done?’

She became very still. ‘What sort of job could you possibly do that requires that you intrude on information stored on other people’s computers?’

He snorted. ‘If I told you that I might have to kill you afterwards!’

‘Stop teasing me, Rogan.’

‘Who says I’m teasing?’ He quirked dark brows.

‘I do.’ Elizabeth glared at him.

‘I’m not in the habit of explaining myself or my actions to anyone, Elizabeth. And, where I come from, sharing a few kisses with someone doesn’t give them the right to question, or to poke and prod into other parts of that person’s life.’

She drew her breath in sharply. ‘I wasn’t—’

‘Oh, yes, you most certainly were,’ he rasped. ‘And, enjoyable as those kisses were—and probably would be again, given the opportunity—’

‘Which there won’t be!’

‘I think you should know that I don’t do permanent relationships!’ Rogan concluded harshly, as if she hadn’t interrupted.

Elizabeth had never felt so uncomfortable and humiliated in the whole of her life!

Rogan couldn’t have told her any more clearly not to read anything into the kisses they had just shared. As if! Elizabeth was as anxious to forget them as he obviously was.

She gave him a scathing glance. ‘Well, that’s just fine—because neither do I!’

He looked at her speculatively. ‘Does that mean you do casual instead?’

‘It means that where you’re concerned I don’t do any sort of relationship whatsoever! We’re only here together at all because of circumstances.’ And Elizabeth wished now that she hadn’t been goaded into staying on. ‘I suggest that for the rest of your time here we stay well out of each other’s way!’

Rogan gave a terse inclination of his head. ‘I’m glad we got that straightened out.’

‘So am I!’ Elizabeth had never felt quite so much like hitting someone as she did Rogan at that moment.

He gave a slow, taunting smile. ‘Does that mean you won’t be joining me for dinner?’

Dinner? Elizabeth was so angry—with herself as much as Rogan—that she wasn’t sure she would be able to eat anything for the rest of the day!

Her chin rose. ‘I’ll be quite happy to have a tray in my room.’

‘That seems a little unfriendly, don’t you think?’

A frown appeared between her eyes. ‘I thought we had just agreed that neither of us does friendly?’

‘Oh, I do friendly. Just not for ever.’ Rogan regarded her mockingly. ‘Did you eat dinner on a tray in your room when my father was here?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Then you don’t need to do it now, either,’ he pointed out.

Need? What Elizabeth needed was some time—and space—away from Rogan Sullivan, in which to regain some of her shattered composure. ‘I would like to get on with some work now, if you don’t mind.’ She deliberately turned her back on him.

‘No problem,’ Rogan came back nonchalantly. ‘I’ll see you at dinner.’

Elizabeth continued to stand unmoving in the middle of the library long after she knew Rogan had gone.

Rogan had kissed her, and she had kissed him back. Damn it, she hadn’t just kissed him, she had been hungry for him! Hadn’t been able to get enough of him! To get close enough to him! Still ached with wanting him…

He was everything she had ever fantasised about. Everything she had never thought to encounter in her quite frankly boring academic life, she told herself wryly.

Maybe.

But for her to have totally lost all inhibition with a man she knew nothing about was seriously worrying.

She knew Rogan had kissed her as if he’d wanted to devour her. As if he’d wanted to taste and touch every part of her. As if he’d wanted to bury himself deep inside her and—

She knew nothing positive about the man!

Rogan had arrived in the middle of the night. The only way of contacting him was through a PO Box in New York. He had used her laptop, somehow bypassing the security code, without even bothering to check who it belonged to. He had totally dismissed the need to contact his girlfriend.

Worst of all, he was mysterious about his past, and obviously had no intention of sharing any important details about himself with her.

Elizabeth hadn’t just been stupid when she had responded so wantonly to Rogan, she had behaved totally recklessly. And reckless was something that she never was where a man was concerned. Let alone a man who had so reminded her of her father, with his claim of wanting no permanent ties in his life…

Leonard Brown. Handsome. Charming. Secretive. And totally immoral…

Leonard had been working for industrialist James Britten as one of the man’s senior managers when he had first seen Stella Britten. A tiny red-haired beauty of only twenty-one. Adored by her father, and surrounded by dozens of young men who wished to capture her heart, Stella had barely noticed thirty-year-old Leonard on the occasions when she visited her father at his office.

Then Stella’s father had died unexpectedly, and suddenly Leonard was there, offering comfort, a shoulder to cry on, someone to lean on. Offering to help her deal with everything that needed to be dealt with now that her father was dead. James Britten had left no son to inherit. Only Stella, his beautiful, oh-so-grateful and very quickly so-much-in-love-with-Leonard and pregnant daughter.

The two had been married within six months of James Britten’s dying, and, although the company had had to remain in Stella’s possession, Leonard had taken over as chairman within three months of their marriage. Something that had suited Leonard perfectly, as he had been able to leave the work to others whilst he wined and dined and travelled abroad ‘on business’.

Over the years Leonard had found a woman, or women, in every foreign city he visited—despite the fact that he’d had a wife and daughter waiting for him at home in London.

A wife who had loved him so much she had been willing to overlook Leonard’s affairs as long as he always came home to her. But as the years had slowly passed she had become more and more disenchanted and bitter over the man who simply couldn’t, or wouldn’t, remain faithful to her. To the extent that Stella had eventually begun drinking whenever Leonard was away from home, in an effort to block out all thought of him with those other women.

Stella had been drinking heavily the night she had driven into a brick wall and been killed instantly…

Eighteen-year-old Elizabeth had stood beside her mother’s newly covered grave only days later, and had watched as her father wept for his dead and disillusioned wife. She had sworn to herself there and then that she would never, ever love someone in the same helpless way that her mother had loved her father.

In the same way Maggie Sullivan had loved her husband?

It was ironic—unbelievable, really—that two people who were as unalike as Elizabeth and Rogan undoubtedly were had both been shaped into the adults they now were by the unhappiness of their parents’ marriages.

Elizabeth: solitary, serious and academic, determined never to fall in love.

Rogan: just as solitary, but wild and untamed—untameable!—and just as determined never to fall in love…

‘Glass of red wine?’ Rogan indicated the glass he held. ‘Elizabeth?’ he prompted with a frown as she made no effort to move away from the doorway of the drawing room.

But for the moment Elizabeth couldn’t move. In fact, she had been rooted to the spot from the moment she had first entered the room and seen Rogan.

A Rogan who looked so handsome this evening he literally took her breath away!

Over the last twenty-four hours she had become accustomed to seeing him in the black clothing and boots he habitually wore, and which somehow seemed to suit the aura of danger that always surrounded him.

Tonight he wore a silk shirt the colour of freshly brewed espresso coffee that hinted at the muscled chest beneath rather than emphasised it, and a pair of expertly tailored trousers in the same dark coffee colour. With his long hair brushed back from that intelligent brow, and those dark, enigmatic eyes, Rogan appeared every bit as threatening, if not more so, as he had in the black clothing he preferred.