Passionate Retribution

'It's a coup, as they say; and he's a she… Bernice.'

'Oh.'

'What exactly is that supposed to indicate?' The blue gaze was alarmingly speculative.

The amount of petulance and innuendo she had unwittingly slipped into the monosyllable was depressing. Jealousy, she admitted, wondering what aberrant behaviour she would exhibit next. 'How did you persuade her to allow you to interview her?' she asked hurriedly. 'I suppose she must be quite old by now,' she added. The thought was somehow cheering.

His expression grew sardonic and his lips twisted into a crooked smile. 'Age, infant, is relative; and Bernice is one of the warmest, most open people I've come across. Serene is too placid a word to describe her, but she is comfortable with her own femininity without feeling the need to exploit it,' he reflected. 'As for persuading her, she saw a spread I did in Time last year and approached me.'

Emily's expression had grown sour as he'd described this talented paragon. 'I'm amazed you dragged yourself away.'

A strange expression flitted into Luke's eyes. 'I'm still not sure I should have,' he said grimly.

In the time it took her to register the sudden husky intonation and the restless flicker of unrefined hunger flare and subside in his expression, she realised he wasn't as relaxed as she had imagined. Intellectually he'd been able to support a pretence of normality, but the brief window had made her aware of the sinews pulled tightly in his neck, the air of restraint about him as if he was angrily confining some strong emotion which she was too afraid to analyse.

In a tangle of limbs she jumped off the bed. In the circumstances, conducting a conversation in this setting had not been one of her best moves. 'I need…' she began, her heart pounding furiously. As she met the angry smoulder of his eyes, her voice faded momentarily.

'Go on, Emily, this should prove interesting,' he encouraged. 'What do you need?'

His scornful drawl broke her free of the catatonic state. 'A cup of tea,' she told him stoically.

He pinned her with his slitted raw gaze. 'An original euphemism, Emily.' One brow rose, coolly sardonic, and she flushed madly. His sensuous mouth remained immobile as he watched the warm carnation flood her face. 'If you are prepared to marry me to save your father from the pain of knowing I knew his little girl in the biblical sense.'

'You didn't.'

'He wouldn't know that,' he pointed out heartlessly. 'If you are prepared to make the supreme sacrifice.'

'My father has a bad heart.' It was true, even if it wasn't as critical as she had been led to believe.

'The fact Charlie has a heart at all is news to me.'

'You're the heartless one,' she accused, her voice filled with loathing. 'Marriage isn't meant to be a means of retribution.'

'It's so sacred that you were going to marry Gavin with no deeper motivation than choosing a new duvet cover, he co-ordinated so well,' he said, the caressing sneer in his voice breaking new ground in insults. 'As I was saying,' he continued softly, 'I find your attitude difficult to fathom. You're prepared to be the dutiful daughter, but when it comes to accepting the benefits of our relationship you lie through your teeth. The fact is you can't think about anything much except touching me, being touched… You respond physically to me so dramatically—'

'Stop it!' she interrupted, holding up her hands in a defensive gesture as if to fend off his low, intimate pun- that made her breasts ache and the muscles in her belly coil. 'As far as I'm concerned, you're the lowest form of humanity, a blackmailer…you make my skin crawl with revulsion. Anything else is conjured up by your imagination.' She met the incandescent flare of blue as their eyes collided, and the ambivalent expression of disgust and craving in his face so precisely mirrored what she was experiencing that she gave a small cry of instinctive fear and took to her heels, regardless of the fact that she was wearing only a short nightdress.

He caught up with her on the foreshore where her impetuous withdrawal had led her. 'Leave me alone!' she yelled as he approached.

Luke stopped several feet away, and his eyes swept disparagingly over her, making her aware of the ridiculous picture she must present—barefooted and clutching the light, knee-length nightdress that the wind had plastered to her body like a second skin. He, she saw, had paused to pull on a pair of trainers and jeans; his torso was still bare and his presence evoked the now almost familiar suffocating sensations.

His voice was hard with derisive contempt. 'That might prove difficult, if I wake up to find you dining on me with those, big, beautiful eyes.'

'A girl can look without necessarily being inspired to do anything else.' There was little point in denying the incident so fresh in her mind. She felt mortification stiffen her spine and make her face grow blank.

'That's true, no doubt…in some instances.'