Mistress of Deception

'I don't know what to say!'

'I was hoping you'd just say yes. Mother said you would if you loved me as much as she thinks you do.'

Ebony gasped into an upright position, facing Alan with rounded eyes. 'She said that?'

His gaze raked hers. 'Is it true? Do you love me?'

'I ... I ...'

He sighed. 'I can empathise with that. It's hard to be sure of one's feelings after the way we've been carrying on.'

'Are... are you saying you might be in love with me too?' she asked shakily.

His smile was wry. 'Do you want me to be?'

'Yes,' came her simple but intense reply. 'I've always wanted you to love me.'

He stared over at her, his expression pained. 'You shouldn't say such things when I'm alone with you like this. I promised myself I would be gentler with you this time. Gentler and more considerate and, yes, even romantic, if that would please you. But you make me want to rip that scrap of lace from your body and ravage you right here and now.'

Abruptly, he stood up, his mouth twisting into a cynical and quite sardonic grimace. 'I'm not sure this will work, Ebony. The patterns we've set are very strong. But I'd like to take you somewhere tonight for a long and leisurely dinner, then afterwards I'm going to drive you home where I'm going to try damned hard to keep my hands off you. I want to see if we've got anything going for us other than sex. I want to see if a marriage between us could possibly work.'

'Marriage!' She jumped to her feet.

'You don't want to marry me?' he said, blue eyes narrowing.

'Well, I...I guess I never allowed myself to think you would ever marry me.

But yes, Alan, yes, I would marry you if you asked me.'

'So you did love me all along,' he muttered darkly, his frown an unhappy one.

'I told you I did, Alan. That night in the library...'

His eyes snapped wide. 'But you were little more than a child then, for God's sake. You couldn't have expected me to believe that was for real!'

'I don't think I've ever been a child where you were concerned. I've wanted you from the very first day I saw you.'

'That's ridiculous. You were only fifteen then!'

'Some fifteen-year-old girls are quite old in some regards, Alan.'

His stare showed shock.

A knock on the caravan door interrupted any further conversation. It was one of the crew giving her ten minutes to vacate the caravan. Alan said an abrupt goodbye, saying he had to get back to work and would pick her up at her apartment at eight.

'Wear something modest,' he threw over his shoulder at her as he strode off across the sand.

Ebony did not realise till much later that not once had Alan actually said he loved her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ALAN parked his white Holden SV5000 outside Ebony's block of flats shortly before eight, but he didn't get out. He sat there for a while, thinking.

Why couldn't he accept that Ebony really truly loved him? His mother insisted she did. Adrianna had suggested the same years ago. Now Ebony herself had said she'd always loved him.

Was that the part that bothered him? The 'always' part? Or Ebony's implication that by fifteen she had already been sexually experienced?

If this was so—and her youthful experiences had been pleasurable—then it was possible her concept of love was so entwined with sex and sexual pleasure

that she might not be able to separate the two. It troubled Alan, knowing what he knew about Ebony's father. Pierre had been notoriously unfaithful to his wife. Could his daughter be of the same ilk, a compulsive adventurer?

There were some women, Alan imagined, who, because of their make-up, made good mistresses, but awful wives. Their talent for intimacy lay in the bedroom and nowhere else. If they loved, it was not the sort of love that lasted, or could exist without constant physical release.

The image of Ebony spread out on that car this afternoon flashed into his mind, his body remembering the way she'd responded to the intimate gaze of that camera, and the exhorted demands of the man holding it. It made it worse that the photographer was actually one of the endless stream of men she'd reputedly slept with.

How could he not believe the gossip after seeing her in action for himself? The girl was a vamp of the first order, a natural-born siren, unable to stop herself from bewitching every man she came across. His mother was wrong about that. She was not an ill-judged innocent. No way.