The Final Seduction

‘Can I come in?’

‘Of course you can come in.’ She stepped aside, not daring to speak.

It wasn’t until they were facing each other warily across her sitting room that she summoned up the courage to ask. ‘Any news?’

‘I’ve found him,’ he said flatly.

‘Oh, thank God! Is he okay?’

Drew shook his head in disbelief. ‘The man walks away with a great stack of your cash, without any intention of using it for the specified purpose of the loan—and you ask me is he okay?’

‘Someone could have robbed him and beaten him up!’

‘Shelley!’ he howled, and then, unexpectedly, he smiled. And kept smiling. ‘Yes, he’s okay! Fortunately, I caught up with him before he managed to work his way through more than a couple of hundred pounds of the money. He told me that he was planning to come back anyway—but he was drunk when he said that, so I don’t know if it was true.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘At his mother’s house,’ said Drew grimly. ‘Sobering up. Actually, can you pour me a drink?’ he asked suddenly, and flopped down into an armchair. ‘I think I need one.’

She didn’t comment on the irony of his request, just poured him a gin and tonic which was all she had. He took a large swallow and winced, before putting the glass down and delving deep into the pocket of his jeans. Always a distracting movement, thought Shelley as she watched him, like a cat watching a mouse.

He withdrew a wad of banknotes and threw them down on the table. ‘These are yours. The exact amount—’

‘Minus two hundred,’ she agreed.

‘No,’ he contradicted. ‘Minus nothing. It’s all there. I made up the amount myself—’

‘Drew, I can’t—’

‘Shelley, you can, and believe me you’re going to. Jamie is family—kind of—so he’s partly my responsibility. And that’s an end to it.’

‘I don’t deserve it,’ she said, in a small voice.

‘No, you probably don’t,’ he agreed, but at his mouth was another glimmer of a smile and she knew that she had to tell him the truth.

‘You were right all along,’ she sniffed.

‘No crying, Shelley. I refuse to be manipulated by your tears,’ he warned her softly, then frowned suspiciously. ‘You mean about Jamie squandering money?’

She shook her head. ‘No—about the reason I lent him the money in the first place! It’s true—I did it as a spectacular act of revenge—to use your very own words!’

‘I see.’ He leaned his head back and his eyes were half-closed. ‘And what was your reason for this spectacular act of revenge?’ he asked calmly, as if it were the sort of question he asked every day.

‘Because I saw you kissing that…that—’ She swallowed down her first choice of word. Bitchiness was never an attractive quality. ‘Woman at your party.’

The eyes opened an interested fraction. ‘And why on earth would that bother you, Shelley?’

She turned on him. ‘Why do you think? Do you want me to spell it out for you?’

‘Not really. I want you to say it out loud for me instead.’

Her eyes were very bright and very clear. ‘That I love you? That I’ve always loved you? Surely you must know that by now?’

He didn’t answer at first, just eased himself out of the chair as though he found sitting down inhibiting, but the blue eyes were as cold as a winter sea. ‘Then you fall in love very easily, don’t you, Shelley? Last month Marco, this month me.’

She shook her head, knowing that she needed to tread very carefully here. ‘But I never loved Marco.’

‘No?’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘You just lived with him for three years? That’s some kind of devotion!’

‘Yes, it is, I agree—but it’s not love.’ Her eyes blazed out the truth at him. ‘And it never was—it was never anybody but you.’

There was silence and Shelley stared down at her hands, unable to look him in the face.

‘Then why didn’t you come back sooner if that was the case? Why stay with a man you claim not to have loved?’

She knew that she had to have the courage to face him, but she almost flinched from the accusation in the burning blue gaze. ‘Like when?’

‘When your mother died.’ His eyes asked a question. ‘I thought you would have needed me then.’

‘Needed you?’ She shook her head in despair. ‘Oh, Drew—of course I needed you! If you’d shown the slightest indication that you wanted or needed me—then I would have come back like a shot! But you wouldn’t even speak to me—bar the absolute minimum that you needed to—so how could I tell you anything? I was waiting for you to say something, anything that would have given me the smallest hint that you still wanted me. But you didn’t. Sometimes I used to dream that you would come to Italy to find me, but you never did.’