Mistress of Deception

The blackest feeling of guilt swamped him. She's still little more than a girl, he agonised. God, what have I done to her? What do I keep doing to her?

But then he glimpsed the beginning of a very adult, almost devilish glitter in those eyes, and every vestige of guilt vanished. He would have her in his bed tonight if it was the last thing he did!

'About what?' he returned silkily, secure in the knowledge that she would

not have seen anything of his inner torture on his face. His earlier slip-up when she'd taunted him about Stevenson had put him on his guard. She had not coaxed any visible reaction from him over dinner, and she would not do so now. 'Sorry, but I wasn't listening.'

'It's not like you to daydream,' she said with a small, teasing smile.

His shrug was offhand. 'My concentration suffers when I'm tired.'

'Alan's been working too hard lately,' Deirdre put in. 'Sometimes he works all night.'

'Really?' Ebony arched her eyebrows. 'Well, he always was a one for all- nighters, Mrs Carstairs. Remember when I first came to live here with you? A couple of nights a week at least he didn't make it home.'

Alan tensed, knowing exactly what Ebony was referring to—not work, but his three-year affair with Adrianna. He had used to stay over at her apartment quite regularly, a fact which clearly had not escaped Ebony, despite her being in school most of the time. But all that had ended when Adrianna had fallen in love with another man and married him.

'He'll never change, Mrs Carstairs,' Ebony went on, a touch sharply. 'Old habits die hard.' Now she lanced him with a vicious look that only he could see. 'Unless someone takes a firm hand and makes them die. Perhaps it's time you found a woman to marry, Alan. You're not getting any younger.'

His smile was velvet around steel. 'I assure you, my dear Ebony, if and when I find a woman I want to marry, I will.'

'Huh!' his mother scoffed at him. 'You haven't even looked at another woman since Adrianna married that McLean fellow. If you think she'll ever get a divorce, then think again! The woman's besotted with the man.'

'I realise that,' Alan said tautly. 'Believe me when I say I am not waiting in the wings, hoping Adrianna will one day divorce her husband. Especially not with a baby and another on the way. What on earth do you think I am? A home-wrecker?'

'No, of course I don't,' his mother said impatiently. 'But I wish you'd give consideration to being a home-maker Ebony's right. You're thirty-four years old. Time you were married and having babies of your own. I'd like to have grandchildren before I get too old to enjoy them.'

'I'm sure Vicki will give you some. Eventually.'

'Vicki! She hasn't a maternal bone in her body. As for that layabout she's living with... I doubt he's got it in him to father a child! But we're getting off the point here. The subject under discussion is your fathering a child. Or don't you want children?'

Did he or didn't he? He'd never thought he did. He'd always been too busy, too wrapped up in saving the family business, then in expanding it, making it into a success. One of the reasons he'd proposed marriage to Adrianna was because, at the time, she hadn't wanted children.

It was ironic that the moment she'd really fallen in love she hadn't been able to wait to have a baby. Her son, Christopher, had been born nine months to the day after she'd married Bryce McLean.

Now there was a lucky bastard, winning the heart of a woman like Adrianna. If only she'd fallen in love with him instead.

His mind turned inwards to the way Ebony treated him. No man would ever win that witch's heart, he thought savagely.

Alan looked up to find both women were watching him, expectant expressions on their faces.

'Will I be hung, drawn and quartered if I say I have no great yearning for children?'

Deirdre Carstairs sighed. 'I should have known. Well, it's up to you, Ebony. Your children will feel like grandchildren to me. I hope you haven't any objection to eventually having babies.'

'I'd love to have a dozen babies,' she said with such apparent sincerity that Alan was stunned. 'I hated being an only child. When I have a family, it will be a very large one,'

'And spoil that perfect figure of yours?' he asked, unable to eliminate the derision in his voice.

She turned cold black eyes upon him. 'Having a baby is worth a little figure-spoiling.'