Painted the Other Woman

He smiled. A deep, amused smile. Still holding her helpless gaze.

Almost she went to him—almost she took that tiny fatal half-step towards him. She knew with absolute, searing certainty that he would draw her to him and lower his mouth to hers …

Almost—

But not quite.

Summoning all her failing strength, she stepped away. ‘Goodnight,’ she said.

Long lashes swept down over his eyes, veiling his regard. The glint was gone. Vanished. ‘Goodnight,’ he answered. His voice was nothing more than polite now—cool, even. Then, with a brief nod of his head, he was gone.

Outside in the corridor, with her apartment door firmly shut, he strode down towards his own flat. His face was closed. Troubled.

He wanted her. He knew that. Impossible to deny it. He desired the beautiful, demurely alluring woman who was Marisa Milburne. Desired her whether or not she was anything at all to do with his brother-in-law’s lamentable weakness of character.

Oh, he’d known from the first moment of seeing her photo that it would be no hardship to him to seduce her for his own purposes. But with every encounter with her, every date, he’d come to know more and more that he was wishing she had never got herself mixed up with Ian. And not just for his sister’s sake.

It was for his own.

I want her for myself—with no other complications, no strategy or plots or machinations or ulterior motives.

Heaviness filled him. It didn’t matter what he wanted for himself, he thought savagely. What he did he did for Eva. That was what he had to remember. That was all he had to remember.

And time was running out. He would have only a brief window while Ian and Eva were away together in the USA to achieve his aim of seducing Marisa Milburne and taking her away from his brother-in-law.

Which was why he was now, two days after the Sunday roast in her apartment, sitting here in a restaurant off Holland Park Avenue, waiting for her to open the white envelope he’d proffered.

Marisa was still gazing down at it. She’d accepted the dinner invitation only with reluctance. She had to stop this. She really did. She was getting in too deep.

She had managed the previous day, right after her dangerous dinner à deux with Athan Teodarkis in her apartment, finally to meet up with Ian for lunch. His face had told her what she’d dreaded hearing.

‘I have to go to San Francisco. I can’t get out of it. There’s no one else that can handle it, and I’ve had my marching orders from the top.’

Her face had fallen. ‘How long for, do you think?’

‘I’m not sure—at least a week, probably more,’ he’d said apologetically. ‘The thing is …’ He took a breath, looked even more apologetic. ‘Eva’s got the idea of turning it into a holiday—flying on from SF to Hawaii. So I could easily be away three weeks or more.’

Even as he’d said ‘Hawaii’ she’d felt a pang of envy dart through her.

Hawaii … tropical beaches … palm trees … silver sand …

But it would not be her there. She was stuck in London—where the weather had turned vicious. The bright but cold sunshine that had filled the Holland Park Orangery had given way to a miserable, dull and biting cold, with a low cloud base and an icy wind. Spring seemed a long way off. Even just getting out of the cab when she and Athan had arrived at the restaurant had set the wind whipping around her stockinged legs. Now she sat with her legs slanted against the radiator against which their table was situated.

‘Well?’ prompted Athan, indicating the envelope. There was an expression in his eyes she could not read.

It looked, she thought curiously, like anticipation.

She turned her attention back to the envelope he so wanted her to open. Carefully she slit it with a table knife and shook out the contents. As she did so, her eyes widened.

‘You said you wanted a tropical beach,’ she heard him murmur.

But she was gazing, rapt, at the leaflet that was lying there. A palm tree, an azure sea, a silvered beach, and in the background a low-rise, thatch-roofed resort, fronted by a vast swimming pool even more azure than the lapping sea.

Projecting from the leaflet were two airline tickets.

‘Come with me,’ said Athan.

His voice was soft. Intimate. Persuasive.