Mistress And Mother

‘Did Donald take it badly?’

Registering the fact that he had noticed the missing engagement ring, Molly flung her head back, anger stirring. ‘That’s none of your business!’

‘Together we made it my business,’ Sholto countered softly. ‘I don’t make a habit of seducing women who have made promises to other men.’

Colour drenched her cheekbones. ‘Donald and I had a sensible talk and simply decided that we wouldn’t be suited,’ she said with taut discomfiture.

An air of grim amusement softened the bold lines of his strong, dark face. ‘I gather you didn’t tell him how very lacking in sense you had been with me.’

Molly quivered, outraged that he could make that point to her face. ‘I—’

‘I’m not gloating, cara. But I do value candour,’ Sholto told her drily. ‘And once you did too. Yet you slapped me in the face and told me that you didn’t want me when I know very well that you do.’

Completely disconcerted by that outspoken assurance, Molly was transfixed to the spot. Her rebellious memory chose that same moment to flash the image of that beautiful bronzed body of his against white linen sheets and the wild, exquisite torment of a lovemaking that had driven her out of her mind with excitement. Stunned by the intensity of that sexual imagery, she gazed blindly into shimmering golden eyes as compelling as the heart of a fire on an icy day, her legs trembling, her breasts rising and falling with the jerky rapidity of her breathing.

And then she remembered the aftermath, the game that he had taken to its merciless, cruelly humiliating conclusion, and the heat inside her was chilled by sudden instinctive fear. She turned her head away, breaking free of her overwhelming need to look at him with a sick sense of self-loathing.

‘I have nothing more to say on that subject,’ she informed him woodenly.

‘Dio…there’s not a lot you can say when you’re lying through your teeth.’

Involuntarily Molly flinched and hated him. Dislike and despise, she had told Donald. And that had not been a lie. She had the susceptibility of a drug addict where Sholto was concerned but he had made her face the full destructive extent of her own weakness and she wore that experience now like a protective suit of armour. However, if there was the remotest chance that Sholto was here to discuss her brother’s situation, she could scarcely afford to speak her mind. She spun back to him, heart-shaped face pale and tense, green eyes anxiously assessing.

‘You mentioned lunch. Yet at this very moment your representatives are in the act of repossessing my brother’s home and business.’ Molly spelt out the unnecessary reminder uncomfortably. ‘If you’re here because you’re willing to discuss Nigel’s problems….’

A sardonic ebony brow had climbed, his spectacular bone structure clenching hard. ‘I’m not…and I don’t respond well to blackmail.’

‘Blackmail?’ Molly vented a shaken little laugh at the charge even as stark resentment and disappointment flooded her. ‘And what could I possibly blackmail you with? Let me tell you something, Sholto…if it wasn’t for the fact that Nigel is in a deep, dark hole I wouldn’t even be speaking to you…indeed, I would already have shown you the door!’

Dense black lashes had swept low on his stunning dark eyes. ‘Is that a fact?’

‘Yes, that is a fact,’ Molly confirmed in a shaking undertone as her temper rose in response to his unflinching cool. ‘You have the legal right to do what you’re doing to Nigel but don’t expect me to like or respect you for it! Right now, on my own account, I would cross the street to avoid you! Dear heaven, don’t you have any sense of decency? Your presence here now is an insult and an abuse of your power!’

‘I don’t believe I’ve ever been guilty of an abuse of power…or are you now saying that you slept with me in the hope that I might change my mind about your brother?’ Sholto was oddly pale beneath his dark skin, slashing cheekbones rigid, eyes now a flash of burning, searing gold between his lashes.

The atmosphere simmered like a boiling cauldron. Molly stilled in shock that he could even think her capable of using her body like a bargaining counter. Very pale, she lifted her head high and cleared her throat hoarsely. ‘No, Sholto. That was a moment of madness… let that be my excuse,’ she breathed, not quite evenly. ‘No pressure and no price would ever be sufficient to persuade me to share a bed with you! I wouldn’t behave like a tramp even for my brother’s benefit!’

“‘A moment of madness,”’ Sholto repeated very softly, rolling the syllables darkly together as the glitter of his icy gaze raked her hotly flushed and angry face. ‘You are quite, quite sure that it was nothing else?’

Molly slung him a look of defensive scorn. ‘It was an accident, a mistake. What else did you think it might have been?’

Sholto surveyed her with chilling intensity. ‘You may yet find out, cara.’

Molly snatched in a steadying breath, her legs quivering like cotton-wool sticks beneath her. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about but before you leave you are going to listen to what I have to say about Nigel. You gave a huge sum of money to a boy of twenty-three who left school at sixteen without a single exam pass to his name. He had no business experience, no training, no guidance and no supervision—’

‘Per I’amor di Dio-’

‘Nigel can’t even balance a bank statement, Sholto,’ she breathed in fiercely determined continuance, shot through with guilt for making that point and jerking her head hastily away before he could see the glimmer of tears in her eyes. ‘But he knows just about everything there is to know about the horticultural end of the business and he is quite incapable of deliberately committing fraud. I blame you for the mess that he’s in now! It was sheer insanity to give Nigel that money and then leave him alone to sink or swim!’

‘Miss Bannister?’ Molly whirled round in dismay to see Mr Woods standing on the threshold of his office. ‘What is going on here?’ he demanded with frowning incredulity.

His jawline hard as iron, Sholto released his breath in a slow, measured hiss. After shooting Molly a disturbingly intent look, he switched his attention smoothly to her boss. ‘My apologies if we disturbed you,’ he drawled, and then he swung fluidly on his heel and strode out the door without another word.

Molly dropped back down into her seat as if someone had suddenly kicked her feet out from under her. She was trembling, both shocked and proud that she had finally got to state her own opinion. Her employer hovered for a split second, glimpsed the tears sparkling on her cheeks and then headed for his raincoat like a homing pigeon. As his feet clattered in haste down the stairs, a ragged laugh fell from her lips. There she had been, tautly awaiting an outraged lecture, but poor Mr Woods couldn’t escape fast enough from the threat of a crying secretary.

In the tiny cloakroom she splashed her face with cold water and with the greatest difficulty pulled herself together again. How could Sholto have come here in the midst of the nightmare her family were being forced to live and without a flicker of embarrassment invite her out to lunch? Didn’t he have any sensibility at all? Had that same desire for revenge brought him here? Had he wanted the satisfaction of confirming that her engagement had been broken? No doubt he would laugh if he ever found out that Donald didn’t even know that for the space of a day she had actually worn his ring and planned to marry him.

But what on earth had Sholto meant when he had asked her if it had only been a moment of madness on her part when they had made love? How had he expected her to respond?