Dishonourable Proposal

Jake glanced down at her hand against his; with his other hand he clasped her wrist between thumb and forefinger and lifted it away. His lips curved in a grimace of disdain and he dropped her hand as though it were a dead rat. 'I told you to get out; don't make me throw you out.'

The air crackled with barely contained animosity. She must have been mad to ever have imagined she loved him. Katy sizzled. She tilted her head to stare into black eyes as hard and expressionless as jet. He didn't need a mistress or a wife—a blown-up doll would have had enough emotion for him. Throw her out! she seethed. He wouldn't get the chance...

'Oh, I'm going, never fear, but first I am going to have the satisfaction of telling you exactly what I think of

you. If I am a whore I am exactly what you made me,' she snarled. 'You barged back into my life and thought you could buy me for three thousand pounds. Jake Granton, the staid banker no publicity must touch. You even used an agent, though God knows what for— the stage was very public. As for your bland assumption I would leap into bed with you, you conceited pig-----'

'That's enough,' he cut in icily.

'No way—I'm only just starting.' Her small chin jutted belligerently. 'You blackmailer, I wonder what your City friends would think if they knew,' she sneered. 'You set me up simply because of dented male pride. Some tasteless revenge. You bought me, and I was stupid and cared enough about other people to let you. Something, Mr High and Mighty Granton, you deliberately used against me.'

Katy watched as his face darkened with suppressed anger. That got to him, she thought savagely, but she wasn't finished yet. 'Don't you think I guessed your little game the past few weeks? You made me into your mistress, and I, fool that I was, actually thought you might care for me.' In full flood, she didn't register the narrowing of Jake's eyes, or the flash of some unknown emotion flicker across his handsome face. 'Until you started dragging me around every nightclub and high-profile place in town. The use of my body wasn't enough for you. You had to publicly humiliate me.'

'No.'

She ignored his swift denial. 'You're a liar and a cheat without an honest bone in your body. You even lied to your own grandmother.' Katy shook her head. 'And you have the colossal nerve to quote asinine cliches at me.' She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans to try and stop them trembling, her fingers curled on something hard, and without a second thought she withdrew the ring and pendant from her pocket and flung them in Jake's face. 'Here—take back your props; I don't want them. Give them to the next woman you buy.'

Jake flinched as the jewellery scraped his face and fell to the floor. Slowly he bent down and retrieved the ring and pendant. He straightened and stared at the jewels in his hand for a long moment, then, catching Katy by the arm as she would have stormed off, he swung her around to face him. 'You kept this,' he rasped, the words apparently dragged out of him, the pendant dangling from his hand.

He could barely suffer to speak to her, he held her in such contempt, Katy thought raggedly, and suddenly she had to fight to retain her anger.

'Stupidly I thought it was a legitimate birthday present. Now I realise you gave it to me for services rendered that weekend.' The thought of the first time they had made love all those years ago brought a sudden rush of moisture to her eyes. She blinked; what a naive idiot she had been, and it was all this man's fault.

'That is not true, Katy,' Jake said adamantly. 'It was a birthday present. I have never bought a woman in my life and I-----'

Katy's harsh laugh echoed in the sudden silence of the room. 'No, Jake?' she queried cynically.

His dark brows drew together in a deep frown, his lips a tight line rimmed in white. He was fighting to retain his own temper. But Katy didn't care. He couldn't intimidate her; not any more.

"The truth hard to stomach, darling?' she jeered.

'I've listened to you rant and rave, but nothing alters the facts. You can blame me for some things. But Claude and all the others... I don't think so,' he said sardonically, his hand dropping from her shoulder as he turned and sank down on to the sofa. 'Get a cab and go, Katy.' He waved a dismissive hand in her direction, picked up a newspaper and began to read.

His casual dismissal was the last straw for Katy. Her slender control snapped completely, and with a fury she did not know she possessed she swiped the paper from his hands. 'All what others?' she cried. 'You sanctimonious bastard. There were no others. You saw to that. You spoilt me for any other man. I gave you everything, believed your protestations of love, only to find out the truth about you just in time.'

Katy was not aware of Jake sitting up straighter on the sofa, the fierce tension tautening his large frame. Her eyes were fixed on his face but she did not really see him; she was reliving his first bitter betrayal.

'What truth, Katy?' The urgency in his tone escaped her; all she heard was the trace of cynicism.

She laughed, a harsh jangling sound, on the edge of hysteria. 'Monica! What about Monica, Jake?' she raged. 'My once stepmother, the lady you told me to try and get along with. Remember that, Jake? The lady you were bedding on a regular basis beneath her husband's, my father's, very nose.'

Katy, her emotions running riot, shot him a fulminating look of sheer hatred. 'I didn't go to France because I wanted to broaden my horizons; I went because I couldn't stomach the way you had used me, or intended to go on using me, even to offering marriage to hide your miserable affair.'

Suddenly Katy felt sick: she had told him more than she had ever wanted him to know. She swung around on one heel, stalked across the room and picked up a suitcase. Her rage was extinguished like a spent firework on the fourth of July.

Why bother? she asked herself. The man was without conscience or morals and his integrity was on a par with Attila the Hun. She was only hurting herself dredging up the past. She had to get away before she was physically sick.

She reached the door and her hand grasped the lock to open it. Jake had said not a word. But then why would he? she thought bitterly; he could not deny her charges. He was a low-down skunk of a man, and she had wasted quite enough of her life loving him. She breathed deeply and turned the key. From now on she was going to be her own woman. She had a good career in front of her, a child of her own to look forward to. Who needed a man? she asked herself.

She pushed open the door, but something held her back; she turned, unable to resist one last look at the man she had loved so deeply and for so long.

Jake was sitting where she had left him, his dark head thrown back, his face grey beneath his tan, his eyes tightly closed, his sensuous lips pressed together as though he were in pain. He looked as though someone had punched him in the stomach.

Katy hesitated; she had never seen him like this. Was he ill? 'Jake.' She whispered his name, although her common sense told her to leave.

His eyes opened, his dark gaze trapped hers, and she was incapable of breaking the contact. He looked as she expected a wounded stag must feel as the hunter's unseen bullet pierced its heart. Uncertainty, sorrow and pain mingled in the brown depths of Jake's thickly lashed eyes. He looked vulnerable as she had never imagined he could.

She took a step towards him, but abruptly drew back as he leapt to his feet, his face contorting into a mask of demonic rage. Vulnerable, Jake? She must be going weak in the head... Katy turned to leave.