Brand of Possession

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know you in this mood.’

‘You don’t know me at all if our last conversation is anything to go by.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Matthew agreed coldly. ‘First Jake Weston and now Paul Forbes! You’re letting your popularity go to your head.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Matthew. Having dinner with Paul Forbes doesn’t put me under any obligation to see him again if I still don’t like him.’ And it could tell Jake Weston what she thought of him once and for all.

‘If you say so,’ he said distantly.

She looked at him appealingly. ‘It’s only dinner, Matthew. If he turns out to be the louse we all think him then you can sit back and gloat over my second let-down of the day.’

He sighed, stiffening as Paul Forbes rejoined them. ‘Just watch his hands, Stacy,’ he muttered warningly. ‘I hear he has about four pairs of them when he really gets going.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ she promised, turning to smile at her escort as he came to stand at her side.

‘Ready?’ Paul Forbes gave her that heart-stopping smile that had been attracting the female fans to him for the last twenty years.

‘Yes. I’ll probably see you later, Matthew.’

The dining-room was very crowded when they entered, making it impossible for Stacy to see whether Jake Weston was here to be impressed or not.

‘Paul?’ Martin Payne’s voice halted their progress and they turned to look at him. He was seated alone at his table and Stacy knew what he was going to say even before he said it. ‘Why don’t you join us?’ he invited. ‘I have some things I want to discuss with you, Paul.’

Paul looked down at her. ‘Stacy?’

So much for his not wanting to be bothered with people! ‘I don’t mind,’ she shruggingly agreed.

He pulled her chai

r out for her before sitting down himself. It wasn’t until they were seated that Stacy realised Martin Payne had said ‘join us’. She paled slightly as she saw the fourth member of their party making his way towards their table. Jake Weston! So much for the possibility of him seeing her with Paul Forbes!

CHAPTER FIVE

HIS blue gaze raked over Stacy being with Paul Forbes before he seated himself beside her. Stacy determinedly looked the other way.

‘I thought it might be a good idea for Paul and Stacy to join us,’ Martin Payne explained to him.

‘By all means,’ Jake nodded coolly. ‘I’m sure you must have a lot to talk to Paul about.’

Stacy didn’t like the way he grouped the director and actor together. She certainly didn’t want to find herself talking to him all the way through the meal, as far as she knew they had nothing of interest to both of them to talk about.

She studiously ignored him all through the first course of the meal, but it seemed that the director really did have a lot to talk to Paul Forbes about, making the silence between herself and Jake all the more noticeable.

‘You didn’t waste much time.’ Jake watched her over the rim of his wine glass.

She shied away from the intensity of his gaze, running one painted fingernail along the pattern on the tablecloth. ‘Didn’t waste much time over what?’ she asked innocently.

‘Going out with Forbes,’ he said coldly, giving the man sitting on her other side a scathing look.

‘I told you I preferred his honest intent to your lies.’

‘Yes, but—Oh hell!’ his mouth was a taut angry line. ‘You didn’t have to go out with him, Stacy.’

She appeared composed on the outside although inside she was a seething mass of contradictory emotions, feeling attracted to him and yet fearing that attraction because he had a wife. ‘Like I said, I prefer to know a man’s intentions,’ she said coolly.

‘And we both know his! God, Stacy, I told you my intentions from the beginning too. At least with me you wouldn’t have just been one of many.’

‘No?’ She gave a harsh laugh.