‘If you’re trying to frighten me into giving the Hall to you, I can tell you now, you won’t succeed,’ she told him scathingly.
He smiled then, very coldly, with eyes like ice. ‘I wasn’t, but don’t think I’ve given up, it will be mine.’
‘Over my dead body.’
He laughed then, and drawled tauntingly, ‘All things are possible.’
She was still blindingly angry when she got home. She had managed to leave the apartment via the back e
ntrance, without anyone seeing her, and when she got home had been so appalled by her own appearance that she was thankful no one had. Her hair hung down her back in untidy strands, her eyes glittered febrilely, hot colour staining her cheekbones. And, dear God, her mouth! She touched its swollen outline, wincing at its soreness. Her bottom lip was split and still bleeding slightly.
When he had been grinding his mouth down against hers she had almost bitten him; the temptation had been overwhelming but she had been aware that to give in to it was to allow him even more opportunity to hurt her. Even now she felt acutely sick at the thought of the loathsome intimacies he might have forced on her had he been able to get beyond the gritted barrier of her teeth. Vile, arrogant animal! She shuddered, stripping off her clothes and going into her bathroom. She even felt as though she smelled of him. She was too wrought up for sleep and decided instead to do some work. Pulling a comfortable old bathrobe over her nude body she went through into her small study.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE had been working for over an hour when she heard her doorbell ring. Thinking that Lucy must, after all, have decided to return home she padded into the hall, releasing the safety catch and opening the door.
It wasn’t Lucy who stood outside, but James Allingham. It was too late to bar the door to him, but to her surprise he made no attempt to push his way inside, merely stretching out one long arm to display her jacket, held lightly in his hand.
‘You forgot this.’ He said it softly, the smile in his eyes totally derisory as he added tauntingly, ‘I wonder why?’
Every instinct she had screamed at her to snatch the cloth from his fingers and slam the door in his face, but the lesson he had already forced upon her lingered, and she was reluctant to do anything that would bring her into contact with him, no matter how briefly. It infuriated her that he should have had such a powerful effect upon her instincts. She had never gone in fear of any man, and it goaded her to the point where her temper was ready to explode that this man should engender it in her.
‘Margery noticed it when we were leaving, so I volunteered to deliver it for you, since I had to drive past.’
‘Thank you, but you really needn’t have bothered.’
Margery thrived on gossip and wasn’t above doing a little extra embroidery of her own, and there was no limit to the fairy tale she would be able to concoct out of his simple offer. She was always questioning Jenna about the lack of men in her life. Her eyes narrowed as something rather odd struck her. ‘How did you know my address?’ she demanded flatly.
The dark eyebrows rose in mockery. ‘Isn’t there a saying—know one’s enemy? Through circumstances beyond my control, I might have been obliged to drop out of the auction and allow you to gain possession of the old Hall, but the game isn’t over yet.’
‘Why are you so anxious to possess it?’
Jenna bit her lip in vexation the moment the question was asked, angry with herself for being betrayed into showing any interest in anything about him.
‘It is my ancestral home.’
Jenna could not deny that, but she sensed that something stronger than a mere yearning to possess the house that belonged to his ancestors drove him. Compulsive determination to reach a specific goal was no stranger to her—perhaps that was why she recognised it so clearly in someone else.
‘Why were you so determined to possess it?’
‘I fell in love with it.’ She offered him a tight smile to accompany the words, which were, after all, true, if only part of the whole truth.
‘You know, I find that an extremely intriguing admission. You don’t strike me as a woman who knows the meaning of the word,’ he told her brutally.
For one crazy moment she wanted to strike him, to hit out at him violently in her own pain, but she withstood the fierce drive to retaliate, remembering how he had reacted to her before.
‘I mustn’t keep you waiting.’ She stretched out her fingers, trembling slightly as they curled round the fabric of her jacket and he allowed it to slip from his own, without making any attempt to restrain her.
His glance slid lazily over her body as she stepped back from it, making an openly sexual inventory of her that made her tense with raw rage.
‘Your friend will be wondering what’s happened to you,’ she added with pointed curtness.
‘I doubt it.’ His teeth gleamed white in a brief smile. ‘I dropped her off on the way here.’
Jenna felt her stomach lurch, without quite knowing why it should. She took another step backwards, starting to close the door, tensing when long male fingers curled round the wood just above her own.
‘Before you do, I have a small favour to ask you.’