A Treacherous Seduction

His secretary’s office, which she had glimpsed through an open door as he had escorted her from the reception foyer and into his own office, had been crammed with the most up-to-the-minute modern technology, and it was just not feasible that such an organisation would not, during office hours, have its telephone system fully manned and its faxes working.

But every time Beth had punched the numbers into her own telephone she had been met with a blank silence, an emptiness humming along the wire. Even if the factory had been closed for the Czech Republic version of a Bank Holiday, the telephone would still have rung.

The most horrible suspicion, the most awful possibility, was beginning to edge its way into Beth’s thoughts.

‘Don’t be taken in by what you’ve been shown,’ Alex Andrews had warned her. ‘Some gypsies are thought to be used as pawns in organised crime. Their aim is to sell non-existent goods to gullible foreign tourists in order to bring into the organisation foreign currency.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to frighten me,’ Beth had told him furiously. ‘To frighten me and to make sure that I give my order to your cousins,’ she had added sharply. ‘That’s what all this is really about, isn’t it? Telling me you’ve fallen in love with me…claiming to care about me…I would be gullible if I had fallen for your lies, Alex…’

Beth didn’t want to remember Alex’s reaction to her accusations. She didn’t want to remember anything about Alex Andrews at all. She wasn’t going to allow herself to remember anything about him.

No? Then how come she had dreamed about him virtually every night since her return from the Czech Republic? a small inner voice taunted her.

She had dreamed about him simply out of the relief of knowing she had stood by her own promises to herself and not fallen for his lies, his claims to love her, Beth told her unwanted internal critic crossly.

She looked at her watch. It was almost four o’clock. No point in trying the Czech suppliers again today. Instead she would repack her incorrect order.

Dee, their landlady for the shop and the comfortable accommodation that went with it, who had now become a good friend, had invited her over for supper this evening.

Dispiritedly she started to repack the stemware, shuddering a little as she did so. The crystal was more suitable for jam jars than stemware, Beth decided with a grimace of distaste.

‘Haven’t I heard,’ Dee had queried gently a few weeks ago, ‘that some of the processes through which their china and glassware are made are a little crude when compared to ours…?’

‘At the lower end of the market perhaps they are,’ Beth had defended. ‘But this factory I found originally actually made things for the Royal House of Russia. The sales director showed me the most exquisite pieces of a dinner service they’d had made for one of the Romanian Princes. It reminded me very much of a Sèvres service, and the translucency of the china was quite breathtaking. The Czech people are very proud of their tradition of making high-quality crystal,’ Beth had added.

She had Alex Andrews to thank for that little piece of information. It had been something he had thrown furiously at her when she had accused him of trying to persuade her to buy his cousins’ goods, and the cause of yet another quarrel between them.

Beth had never met anyone who infuriated her as much as he had done. He had brought out in her a streak of anger and passion she had never previously known she possessed.

Anger and passion. Two very dangerous emotions.

Quickly Beth got back to repacking the open crates. Remember, she told herself sternly, you aren’t going to think about him. Or about what…what happened…

To her chagrin, Beth could feel her face starting to heat and then burn.

‘God, but you’re wonderful. So sweet and gentle on the outside and so hot and wild in private, so very hot and wild…’

Furious with herself, Beth jumped up.

‘You weren’t going to think about him,’ she told herself fiercely. ‘You aren’t going to think about him.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘MORE coffee, Beth…?’

‘Mmm…’

‘You seem rather preoccupied. Is anything wrong?’ Dee asked Beth in concern as she put down the coffee pot she had been holding.

They had finished eating and were now sitting in Dee’s sitting room, where several furnishing and decorating catalogues were spread open around them. Dee was planning to redecorate the room, and had been asking Beth for her opinion of the choices she had made.

‘No. No…I like the cream brocade very much,’ Beth told Dee quickly. ‘And if you opt for the cream carpet as well, that will allow you to bring in some richer, stronger colours in the form of cushions and throws…’

‘Yes, that was what I was thinking. I’ve seen a wonderful fabric that I’ve really fallen for, and I’ve managed to track down the manufacturer, but it’s a very small company. They’ve told me that they can only accept my order if I pay for it up front, and of course I’m reluctant to do that, just in case they can’t or don’t deliver.

‘I’ve asked my bank to run a financial check on them and let me have the results. It will be a pity if the report isn’t favourable. The fabric is wonderful, and I’ve really set my heart on it. But of course one has to be cautious in these matters, as no doubt you know.

‘You must have really been keeping your fingers crossed in Prague whilst you waited for your bank to verify that the Czech company was financially sound enough for you to do business with.’

‘Er…yes. Yes, I was…’

Beth took a quick gulp of her coffee.

What would Dee say if Beth were to admit to her that she had done no such thing, that she had quite simply been so excited at the thought of selling the wonderful stemware she had seen that every principle of financial caution she had ever learnt had flown right out of her head?

‘Kelly rang me today. She was telling me that she and Brough are hoping to make an extended trip to Singapore and Australia…’

‘Mmm…they are,’ Beth agreed.

She ought to have asked her bank to make proper enquiries over the Czech factory. She knew that, of course. Not just to ensure that they were financially sound, but also to find out how good they were at meeting their order dates. She could even remember her bank manager advising that she do so when she had telephoned him to ask him for extra credit facilities. And no doubt if he hadn’t been on the point of departing for his annual leave on the very afternoon she had rung he would have made sure that she had done so.

But he had and she hadn’t and the small, nagging little seed of doubt planted earlier by her inability to make telephone or fax contact with the factory was now throwing out shoots and roots of increasingly strong suspicion and dread with frightening speed.

‘How will you manage whilst Kelly’s away? You’ll have to get someone in part-time to help you…’

‘Yes. Yes, I shall,’ Beth agreed distractedly, wondering half hysterically what on earth Dee would say if she admitted to her that, if her worst fears were confirmed and her incorrect order had not been a mistake but a deliberate and cynical ploy to take advantage of her there was no way she would need any extra sales staff because, quite simply, there would be virtually nothing in the shop to sell.

Another fear sprang into Beth’s thoughts. If she had nothing to sell then how was she going to pay her rent on the shop and the living accommodation above it?

She had absolutely nothing to fall back on, not now that she had over-extended herself so dangerously to purchase the Czech glass.

Her parents would always help her out, she knew that, and so, too, she suspected, would Anna, her godmother. But how could she go to any of them and admit how foolish she had been?

No, she had got herself into this mess, and somehow she would get herself out of it.

And her first step in doing that was to locate her supplier and insist that the factory take back her incorrect order and supply her with the goods she had actually ordered.

‘Beth, are you sure you’re all right…?’

Guiltily she realised that Dee had been speaking to her and that she hadn’t registered a single word that the older woman had been saying.

‘Er…yes…I’m fine…’

‘Well, if it would be any help I could always come and relieve you at the shop for the odd half-day.’

‘You!’ Beth stared at Dee in astonishment, surprised to see that Dee was actually flushing.

‘You needn’t sound quite so surprised,’ Dee told Beth slightly defensively. ‘I did actually work in a shop while I was at university.’

Had she hurt Dee’s feelings? Beth tried not to show her surprise. Dee always seemed so armoured and self-contained, but there was quite definitely a decidedly hurt look in her eyes.

‘If I sounded surprised it was just because I know how busy you already are,’ Beth assured her truthfully.

Dee’s late father had had an extensive business empire which Dee had taken over following his death, managing not only the large amounts of money her father had built up through shrewd investment but also administering the various charity accounts he had set up to help those in need in the town.

Dee’s father had been the old-fashioned kind of philanthropist, very much in the Victorian vein, wanting to benefit his neighbours and fellow townspeople.

He had been a traditionalist in many other ways as well, from what Beth had heard about him—a regular churchgoer throughout his life and a loving father who had brought Dee up on his own after his wife’s premature death.

Dee was passionately devoted to preserving her father’s memory, and whenever anyone praised her for the good work she did via the charities she helped to fund she was always quick to point out that she was simply acting as her father’s representative.

When Beth and Kelly had first moved to the town they had wondered curiously why Dee had never married. She had to be about thirty, and surprisingly for such a businesslike and shrewd woman she had a very strong maternal streak. She was also very attractive.

‘Perhaps she just hasn’t found the right man,’ Beth had suggested to Kelly. That had been in the days when she herself had believed that she had very much found the right man, in the shape of Julian Cox, and had therefore been disposed to feel extremely sorry for anyone who was not so similarly blessed.

‘Mmm…or maybe no man can compare in her eyes to her father,’ Kelly had guessed, more shrewdly.

Whatever the truth, one thing was certain: Dee was simply not the kind of person whose private life one could pry into uninvited. And yet tonight she seemed unfamiliarly vulnerable; she even looked softer, and somehow younger as well, Beth noticed. Perhaps because she had left her hair down out of its normal stylish coil.

Certainly it would be impossible to overlook her, even in a crowd. She had the kind of looks, the kind of manner that immediately commanded other people’s attention—unlike her, Beth decided with wry self-disdain.

Her soft mousy-blonde hair would never attract a second look, not even when the sun had left it, as it had done last summer, with these lighter delicate streaks in it.

As a teenager she had passionately longed to grow taller. At five feet four she was undeniably short…‘Petite’, Julian had once infamously called her. Petite and as prettily delicate as a fragile porcelain doll. And she had thought he was complimenting her. Yuck. She was short. But she was very slender, and she did have a softness about her, an air which had once unforgettably and almost unforgivably led Kelly to say that she could almost have modelled for the book Little Women’s Beth.

On impulse, before going to Prague, she had had her long hair shaped and cut. The chopped, blunt-edged bob suited her, even if sometimes she did find it irritating, and had to tuck the stray ends behind her ears to stop them from falling over her face when she was working.

‘You are beautiful,’ Alex Andrews had told her extravagantly when he had held her in his arms. ‘The most beautiful woman in the whole world.’

She had known that he was lying, of course, and why, and she hadn’t been deceived—no, not for one minute—despite the sharp, twisting knife-like pain she had felt as she had listened to him in the full knowledge of his duplicity.

Why would he possibly think she was beautiful? After all, he was a man who any woman could see was quite extraordinarily handsome in a way that was far more classical Greek god than modern-day film star. Tall, with a body that possessed a steely whipcord-fit muscular strength, he’d seemed to radiate a fierce and very high-charged air of sensual magnetism that had almost been like some kind of personal force field. Impossible to ignore it—or him. Beth had felt at times as though he was draining the willpower out of her, as though he was somehow subtly overpowering her with the intensity of his sexual aura.

He also had the most remarkably hypnotic silver-grey eyes. She could see them now, feel their heat burning her. She could…

‘Beth…?’

‘I’m sorry Dee,’ she apologised guiltily.

‘It’s all right,’ Dee assured her, with her unexpectedly wide and warm smile. ‘Kelly told me that you’d collected your stemware from the airport and that you were unpacking it. I must say that I’m looking forward to seeing it. I’ve got some spare time tomorrow. Perhaps if I called round…?’

Beth could feel herself starting to panic.

‘Er…I don’t want anyone to see it until the town’s Christmas lights go on officially,’ she told Dee quickly. ‘I haven’t got it on the shelves yet, and—’

‘You want to surprise everyone by making a wonderful display with it,’ Dee guessed, her smile broadening.

‘Well, whatever you decide to do with it, to display it, I know it’s going to look wonderful. You really do have a very creative and artistic eye,’ she complimented Beth truthfully, adding ruefully, ‘And I most certainly do not. Which is why I needed your advice on the refurbishment of my sitting room.’

‘Your eye is actually very good,’ Beth assured her. ‘It’s just when it comes to those extra details that you need a bit of help. That crimson damask trimmed with the dull gold fringing would make a wonderful throw…’

‘It’ll be very rich,’ Dee commented doubtfully.

‘Yes, it will,’ Beth agreed. ‘Perfect for winter, and then for spring and summer you could switch to something softer. Your sitting room French windows open out onto the garden, and a throw which picks up the colours in that bed you’ve got within view of the window would be a perfect way to bring the garden and the sitting room into harmony with one another.’

Beth glanced at her watch and stood up. It was time for her to leave.

‘Don’t forget,’ Dee urged her, ‘if you do need some help in the shop, let me know. I realise that Anna sometimes stands in, when either you or Kelly aren’t available, but…’

She stopped as Beth was already shaking her head.

‘There’s no way that Ward will allow Anna to spend several hours on her feet right now. Anna says that you’d think no woman had ever had a baby before. Apparently it doesn’t matter how often she tells him that being pregnant is a perfectly natural state, that she’s happy and there’s absolutely nothing for him to worry about; he still treats her as though she’s too fragile to draw breath.’

Dee laughed ruefully.

‘He’s certainly very protective of her. He was most disapproving the other day when he found out she and I’d been to the garden centre and that I’d let her carry a box of plants. But then I suspect he still hasn’t completely forgiven me for sending him away when he came to look for Anna before they were married.’

‘You were only trying to protect her,’ Beth protested. She liked Ward, and was pleased that her godmother had found happiness with him after being widowed for so long, but she could well understand how two such strong characters as Dee and Ward would clash occasionally.

Only a very, very fine line separated a strong, determined man from being a bossy, domineering one, as she had good cause to know. Ward, fortunately, knew which side of the line to be on; Alex Andrews did not.

Alex Andrews.

He would certainly have enjoyed her present predicament, and he would have enjoyed even more saying ‘I told you so’ to her.

Alex Andrews!

Beth parked her small car outside the shop and let herself into the separate rear door which led upstairs to the living accommodation she had originally shared with Kelly.

Alex Andrews!

She was still thinking about him as she made herself a cup of tea and headed for her bedroom.

Alex Andrews—or, more correctly, Alex Charles Andrews.

‘I was named for this bridge,’ he had told her quietly the day they had stood together on Prague’s fabled Charles Bridge. ‘A reminder, my grandfather always used to say, of the fact that I was half Czech.’

‘Is that why you’re here?’ Beth had asked him, curious despite her determination to remain aloof from him—aloof from him and suspicious of him.

‘Yes,’ he acknowledged simply. ‘My parents came here in the early days after the Velvet Revolution in 1993.’ His eyes had grown sombre. ‘Unfortunately my grandfather died too soon to see the city he had always loved freed.

‘He left Prague in 1946 with my grandmother and my mother, who was a child of two at the time. She can barely remember anything at all about living here, but my grandfather…’ He stopped and shook his head, and Beth felt her own throat close up as she saw the glitter of tears in his eyes.

‘He longed to come back here so much. It was his home, after all, and no matter how well he had settled in England, how glad he was to be able to bring up his daughter, my mother, in freedom, Prague always remained the home of his heart.

‘I remember once when I was at Cambridge he came to see me and I took him punting on the Cam. “It’s beautiful,” he told me. “But it isn’t anywhere near as beautiful as the river which flows through Prague. Not until you have stood on the Charles Bridge and seen it for yourself will you understand what I mean…”’

‘And did you?’ Beth asked him softly. ‘Did you understand what he meant?’

‘Yes,’ Alex told her quietly. ‘Until I came here I had thought of myself as wholly British. I knew of my Czech heritage of course, but only in the form of the stories my grandfather had told me.

‘They had no substance, no reality for me other than as stories. The tales he told me of the castle his family had once owned and the land that went with it, the beautiful treasures and the fine furniture…’ Alex gave a small shrug. ‘I felt no sense of personal loss. How could I? And neither did I feel any personal sense of missing a part of myself. But once I came here—then…then…yes…I knew that there was a piece of me missing. Then I knew that subconsciously I had been searching for that missing piece of myself.’

‘Will you stay here?’ Beth asked him, drawn into the emotional intensity of what he was telling her in spite of herself.

‘No,’ Alex told her. ‘I can’t—not now.’

It was then that the heavens well and truly opened, causing him to grab her by the arm and run with her to the shelter of a small, dangerously private alcove tucked into a span of the bridge. And then that he had declared his love for her.

Immediately Beth panicked—it was too much, too soon, too impossible to believe. He must have some ulterior motive for saying such a thing to her. How could he be in love with her? Why should he be?

‘No! No, that’s not possible. I don’t want to hear this, Alex,’ she told him shortly, pulling away from him and out of the shelter of the alcove, leaving him to follow her.

Beth had first come across Alex at her hotel. The staff there, when she had asked for the services of an interpreter, had prevaricated and then informed Beth that, due to the fact that the city was currently hosting several large business conventions, all the reputable agencies were fully booked for days ahead. Beth’s heart had sunk. There was no way she could do what she had come to the Czech Republic to do without the services of an interpreter, and she had said as much to the young man behind the hotel’s reception desk.

‘I am so very sorry,’ the man apologised, spreading his hands helplessly. ‘But there are no interpreters.’

No interpreters. Beth was perilously close to tears; her emotions, still raw in the aftermath of discovering how badly Julian Cox had deceived her, were inclined to fluctuate from the easy weepiness of someone still in shock to a numb blankness which, if anything, was even more frightening. Today was a weepy day, and as Beth fought to blink away her unwanted emotions through the watery haze of her tears she saw the man who had been standing several feet away from her at the counter turn towards her.

‘I couldn’t help overhearing what you were just saying,’ he told Beth as she turned to walk away from the desk. ‘And, although I know it’s rather unorthodox, I was wondering if I could possibly be of any help to you…’

His English was so fluent that Beth knew immediately that it had to be his first language.

‘You’re English, aren’t you?’ she challenged him dubiously.

‘By birth,’ he agreed immediately, giving her a smile which could have disarmed a nuclear warhead.

Beth, though, as she firmly reminded herself, was made of sterner stuff. There was no way she was going to let any man, never mind one who possessed enough charisma to make him worthy of having a ‘danger’ sign posted across his forehead, wheedle his way into her life.

‘I speak English myself,’ Beth told him pleasantly and, of course, unnecessarily.

‘Indeed, and with just a hint of a very pretty Cornish accent, if I may say so,’ he astounded Beth by commenting with a grin. ‘However,’ he added, before she could fire back, ‘it seems that you do not speak Czech, whereas I do…’

‘Really?’ Beth gave him a coolly dismissive smile and began to walk away from him. She had been warned about the dangers of employing one of the self-proclaimed guides and interpreters who offered their services on Prague’s streets, approaching tourists and offering to help them.

‘Mmm…I learned it from my grandfather. He came originally from Prague.’

Beth tensed as he fell into step beside her.

‘Ah, I see what it is. You don’t trust me. Very wise,’ he approved, with astounding aplomb. ‘A beautiful young woman like you, on her own in a strange city, should always be suspicious of men who approach her.’

Beth glowered at him. Just how gullible did he think she was?

‘I am not…’ Beautiful, she had been about to say, but, recognising her danger, she quickly changed it. ‘I am not interested.’

‘No? But you told the receptionist that you were desperately in need of an interpreter,’ he reminded her softly. ‘The hotel manager will, I am sure, vouch for me…’

Beth paused.

He was right about one thing: she was desperately in need of an interpreter. She had come to Prague partially to recover from the damage inflicted on her emotions by Julian Cox and, more importantly in her eyes at least, in order to buy some good-quality Czech stemware for her shop.

Via Dee she had obtained from their local Board of Trade some addresses and contacts, but she had been told that the best way to find what she was looking for was to make her own enquiries once she was in Prague, and there was no way she was going to be able to do that without some help. It wasn’t just an interpreter she needed, she acknowledged; she needed a guide as well. Someone who could drive her to the various factories she needed to visit as well as translating for her once she was there.

‘Why should you offer to help me?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Perhaps I simply don’t have any choice,’ he responded with an enigmatic smile.

The smile Beth dismissed. As for his comment—perhaps he hoped to make her feel sorry for him by insinuating that he was short of money.