The Price of a Wife

'You don't lie very welt—unlike most of your sex, I might add,' he said thoughtfully after a few tense moments had passed. 'You'd really find my company so hard to take?'

'I— It's not that. I'm just—'

'Tired?' He cut into her red-faced mutterings with cool composure as the lift doors glided silently open, and she knew her legs were trembling slightly as she stepped into the carpeted box. 'Josie, you are twenty-eight years of age and as free as a bird—no demanding husband in the background, no little infants hanging on your coat-tails and interrupting your sleep, not even a live-in lover, from what I can determine. You are young, beautiful and healthy, right?'

The glittering gaze was as sharp as finely honed steel as it swept over her and the lift doors slid shut. 'Now, in view of all this are you seriously trying to tell me that you are so exhausted you can't make dinner tonight?'

'How do you know all that?' She forgot the matter of dinner as she glared at him across the small space, anger competing with the warning her brain was giving her to go steady, to keep cool. 'All that about my personal life.'

'Is it inaccurate?' He was leaning against the lift wall as he spoke, muscled arms crossed over a broad chest that wouldn't have disgraced a prize wrestler.

&nb

sp; 'That's not the point,' she replied hotly, her face burning as she frowned up at him, her tiny, delicate frame taut and her honey-gold eyes flashing green sparks. 'My private life is nothing to do with you or the job.'

'Don't be so ridiculous,' he said coolly.

'Ridiculous?'

'Yes, ridiculous.' Now the hard face had set into pure granite, and there was a chill emanating from the silver-grey gaze trained on her face that could have frozen molten lava. 'Hawkton Enterprises is a large and varied organisation, as I'm sure you are aware, but as I think I explained to you Hawkton Marine is particularly important to me.'

Because of his father? Yes, she remembered as the lift deposited them at their floor, the doors gliding open to reveal a hushed, scented corridor with ankle-deep carpeting and hothouse blooms perfuming the still air.

'The person I chose for the Night Hawk project needed to be mentally and emotionally on the ball—a quality that can't always be determined at first glance,' he added cynically. 'I had no intention of employing someone with a messy or complicated private life, and if that offends you— tough.'

'So you spied on me?' she asked in disbelief, her voice high.

'Spied on you?' he asked, in a voice that resembled splintered ice. 'I control Hawkton Enterprises, for crying out loud, not the Secret Service. You've been reading too many novels, young lady. I merely made enquiries as to whether you were free to put in the number of hours this job would entail or whether there were personal ties in your life that would make it difficult. If you had had a husband and children you would have seen little of them over the next five months, and although that may be fine during the initial euphoria it very quickly palls, believe me.'

'And you'd have made the same enquiries about a man?' she asked tightly as they came to a halt outside her door.

'Most certainly.' He looked at her steadily. 'I don't go in for sexual discrimination in any shape or form. I've been accused of many things in my life, but chauvinism is not one of them. Could you say the same?'

'What?' His question had taken her completely by surprise and it showed.

'You don't date—or very rarely. You have a circle of a few close friends, none of whom are male. And you have a way of looking at me with those huge golden eyes as if I was something that had just slithered out from under a stone,' he drawled sardonically. 'It doesn't take a genius to work out that for whatever reason the male animal is a species you find less than trustworthy.'

'Oh, really?' She couldn't remember when she had been so mad. 'I'm surprised you didn't apply the age-old male explanation for all that.' She had meant her tone to be scathing, but it wasn't quite so forceful as she would have liked. His intuition had frightened her, badly. She had been right to feel he was dangerous. 'That I must prefer women? Isn't that what you men usually assume when your egos are dented?'

Part of her couldn't believe that she was having this conversation with the head of Hawkton Enterprises, that she could well be throwing away both this particular project and the job she had worked so hard for at Top Promotions. If he fired her now—and he could, easily—Mike and Andy would be livid with her.

'I have no idea what men do when their egos are dented, Josie; such an… unpleasant calamity has not befallen me to date.' He smiled easily, his equanimity quite unaffected by her all too obvious rage. 'But it sounds painful,' he added drily. 'Now, can we stop this childishness and agree on dinner at eight?'

She immediately thought about arguing some more, but somehow the instruction didn't get through to that part of her brain which governed her responses, because she found herself nodding dazedly as he took the key she had been holding and inserted it in her door, pushing her gently into the room beyond and shutting the door after her.

She stood for some minutes in the quietness of her room before her hand reached for the light switch. Immediately the room was bathed in a soft golden glow from the carefully positioned lighting, and the thick cream carpet and curtains and pale lemon furnishings appeared both tasteful and restful to her tired eyes.

He was generous; she had to give him that. This must be one of the best rooms in the hotel, after all. She shook her head gently as she ran her hand across her face in a quick, confused gesture that spoke of her inner turmoil. He had probably wanted her easily available if he needed to consult her about anything, and his suite was just down the hall… This was all to suit him, that was all it was—

'Stop it.' She swallowed painfully after speaking out loud into the silence. It didn't matter whether he was generous or not. The only thing of any importance was the Night Hawk project. Once that was completed she would have had a terrific boost to her career prospects, an undreamed-of advance up the ladder of success.

And this feeling she had had of late—that it was all futile, empty, that she wanted more, someone to call her own, something to love—well, that was just a classic case of the grass being greener—human nature in all its perversity. Because she had no choice; she had no choice at all, did she? Her options had all disappeared thirteen years ago on a beautiful summer's evening in June amid a mass of tangled metal and burnt rubber.

'You look quite beautiful.' It wasn't so much what he said as the husky deepness in that rich voice that made her heart beat a trifle more quickly as she opened the door to Luke just before eight.

She was dressed simply but expensively in a sleeveless cocktail dress of russet silk, the wafer-thin straps over her shoulders and softly fitted bodice showing the creamy perfection of her skin to its best advantage and the three-inch heels on shoes of exactly the same shade giving her petiteness a small boost. She'd left her hair loose, and it fell in tiny shimmering curls about her face and shoulders, accentuating the fine, heart-shaped face and huge golden eyes.

'Thank you.' She managed a light smile, but the way the black dinner jacket sat on those massive shoulders had given her a nasty moment. He oozed sex appeal—positively oozed it, she thought helplessly as her mind went blank on the conversation front. And she didn't like the warm ache that his male sensuality called forth from the core of her; it was crazy, stupid. She wasn't attracted to the he-man type, not remotely. Not remotely, she told her quivering nerves.