The Morning After

‘No,’ he conceded. ‘But then—I never meant to.’ A brief smile touched his mouth before he turned his attention to pouring himself a cup of dark, rich coffee. The aroma drifted across the room to torment Annie’s parched mouth, forcing her to swallow drily, but other than that she ignored the temptation to change her mind. ‘Won’t you at least sit down?’ he offered politely.

Again she shook her head—for the same reason. ‘I just want you to tell me what is going on,’ she insisted.

He studied her for a moment, those strange green eyes glinting thoughtfully at her from between glossy black lashes, as if he was considering forcing her to sit and drink.

Whatever, the look had the effect of pushing up her chin, her blue eyes challenging him just to try it and see what he got!

Though what he would get if he did decide to force her physically, she wasn’t sure. She was tall, but this man seemed to fill the whole room with his threatening presence. And she couldn’t help quailing deep down inside because she knew that if he did call her bluff she would have no choice but to do exactly what he wanted her to do.

And it is that, Annie, she told herself grimly, which keeps you standing as far away from him as you can get! He reminds you of Luis Alvarez—the same height, the same colouring, the same arrogance that made men like them believe that they could say, be and do anything they liked!

And if he was Adamas then he also possessed the same money and power in society to have anything nasty about himself that he would not wish the world to hear covered up.

Like the abduction of unwilling females.

She shuddered, unable to control herself. She should have known from the moment she laid eyes on him last night—had known! Her well-tuned instincts had sent out warning signals straight away! But she had let his easy manner lull her into a false sense of security. And, dammit, she’d liked him! Actually allowed herself to like him for the way he had behaved!

She had never been able to say that for Luis, she remembered bitterly. Luis Alvarez had turned her stomach from the moment she’d found herself alone with him. But then, Luis Alvarez had been at least ten years older than this man, his good looks spoiled by ten years’ more cynicism and dissolution.

This man did not turn her stomach in that same way, she realised worriedly. And maybe that was one of the reasons why he frightened her perhaps more than Alvarez had ever done. He frightened her because she was reluctantly attracted to him. His calculating study of her frightened her. His softly spoken words that held so many hidden messages frightened her. But, above all, the actual air she was breathing was frightening her—simply because it was filled with the appealing scent of him.

Did he know it? she wondered anxiously. Could he tell what kind of effect he was having on her? His eyes were burning over her—burning in a way that told her that, whatever else was going on here, he too liked what he saw.

The air thickened, became impossible to breathe as the silence between them grew hot and heavy. Then, without warning, he looked down and away.

It was like having something vital taken from her, and Annie had to measure carefully the air she dragged into her suddenly gasping lungs in case she should hyperventilate.

‘OK,’ he conceded coolly. ‘We talk.’

He brought those green eyes to hers again, and there was something overwhelmingly proud in the way his chin lifted along with the eyes.

‘My name,’ he announced, ‘is César DeSanquez. Adamas is merely a name under which I trade…’

DeSanquez, DeSanquez, Annie was thinking frowningly. The name rang a rather cold bell inside her head. It was a name that evoked an image of great wealth and power—an image wrapped in oil and gold and diamonds and—

‘I am American-Venezuelan by birth, but my roots are firmly planted in my Venezuelan links.’

And it hit. It hit with a sickening sense of understanding that made her sway where she stood.

‘Ah,’ he murmured. ‘I see you are beginning to catch on. Yes, Miss Lacey,’ he softly confirmed, ‘Cristina Alvarez is my sister. And you made the quick connection, I must assume, because your—affair with my brother-in-law took place in the DeSanquez apartment. The media made quite a meal out of these—juicy facts, did they not? In fact, their attention to detail was quite remarkably concise—the way they told of Annie Lacey lying with her lover in one bed while her lover’s wife lay asleep in another bedroom of her brother’s apartment. My apartment, Miss Lacey,’ he enunciated thinly. ‘My bed!’

Annie sank tremulously into a nearby chair, his anger, his contempt and his disgust breaking over her in cold, sickening waves while she fought with her own sense of anger and disgust—disgust for a single night in her life that would always, it seemed, come back to haunt her for as long as she lived.

She had gone to that apartment by invitation, to a party being held by a man called DeSanquez—a wealthy young Venezuelan who had expressed a desire to meet the sweet Angel Lacey, as everyone had called her then. She never had actually met the Venezuelan, she remembered now in surprise, because she hadn’t given him a thought after meeting Alvarez instead.

Alvarez. She shuddered.

‘Quite,’ he observed. ‘I acknowledge your horror. It was a revolting time for all of us. Not least my sister,’ he pointed out. ‘Having to walk into my bedroom and find you in my bed, not with me—it would not have mattered if it had been me,’ he drawled. ‘But to find you with her own husband was a terrible shock. It effectively ruined her marriage and ultimately almost ruined her life.

‘For this alone,’ he explained with a hateful coolness, ‘I feel perfectly justified in demanding retribution from you—and indeed would have done so at the time this all happened if my sister had not begged me to let it be. So, for Cristina’s sake, and for Cristina’s alone,’ he made absolutely clear, ‘I went against my personal desire to strangle the unscrupulous life out of you right there and then. But—that is not the end of it.’

Turning, he moved to place his coffee-cup on the top of the white marble fireplace then rested his arm alongside it. Every move he made, every unconscious gesture was so incredibly graceful that even in the middle of all of this Annie found herself drawn by him.

‘I mentioned my dual nationality for a good reason,’ he continued, his tone—as it had been throughout—utterly devoid of emotion. ‘For although my father was Venezuelan my mother was, in actual fact, American. Now,’ he asserted, as though relaying a mildly interesting piece of history, ‘her name before she married my father was Frazer—Ah, I see you are quick. Yes.’ He smiled thinly as Annie licked her suddenly dry lips. ‘Susie is my cousin. Quite a coincidence, is it not, that you should happen to be the woman trying to ruin her life just as carelessly as you ruined my sister Cristina’s?’

Annie closed her eyes, shutting out the crucifying blandness of his expression as he watched her. She had been wrong before when she’d believed him to be of the same ilk as Luis. He was in actual fact very different, if only because Luis had cared only for his own rotten neck while this man seemed to hold himself personally responsible for the necks of others.

Which in turn made him very dangerous because, in deciding to make himself an avenger, it was obvious that he was quite prepared to endanger his own neck to get retribution for those he loved. Blindly loved, she added heavily to herself. And she suddenly felt very, very sorry for him.