Hawk's Prey

Stephen Hollister still looked uncomfortable for having interrupted them at such an intimate moment. ‘I can come back later.’

Hawk gave Whitney a hard look before nodding to the other man. ‘Maybe that would be best,’ he acknowledged. ‘I was just about to escort Whitney down to her suite anyway.’

The innuendo in his tone was unmistakable, and with a rueful shrug of understanding the older man left them alone once more.

Whitney spun away from Hawk’s side as soon as the door closed. ‘And what if dear Geraldine got to hear about that?’ she challenged, hurt by the way he had used her. Her worst humiliation was that he had to know she had responded to him.

His body tensed, his eyes as hard as the metal they resembled. ‘My staff is paid very well not to gossip about me,’ he bit out. ‘Besides, none of them ever cared for Geraldine.’

She was so angry she just wanted to unnerve him the way he had disturbed her. ‘And what about Mr Peterson?’ she taunted. ‘Was he paid to forget, too?’

‘Yes,’ he answered with simple arrogance.

‘You didn’t have to kiss me just now to shut me up,’ she told him agitatedly, still able to feel the imprint of his lips on hers. ‘A simple “someone’s coming” would have sufficed! I know I lost my temper with you earlier but I’m not in the habit of causing a scene.’

‘I know that,’ he sighed wearily. ‘I just—I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.’ He shrugged awkwardly.

Embarrassed! She was a quivering mass of nerves, was still having trouble breathing, could barely resist the impulse to place her fingertips where his lips had touched hers; embarrassment was the last emotion she felt!

‘You were my guardian for six years, shouldn’t you be the one to feel embarrassed at being caught making love to me?’ she scorned, to hide her complete devastation.

He drew in a ragged breath. ‘Embarrassment doesn’t come into it. You’re right, I should never have kissed you. I’ll have a word with Stephen and tell him to forget what he saw.’

‘Don’t forget to explain to him that the kiss you gave me couldn’t possibly have meant anything when you still love your ex-wife!’ Whitney’s eyes were heavy with unshed tears.

‘Whitney—–’

‘Don’t bother to see me to my suite,’ she told him heatedly. ‘I’m sure it’s the same one that I usually occupy!’ She closed the door forcefully behind her, resisting the impulse to lean weakly back against it, her back straight and unyielding as she took the stairway down to the deck that housed the suites.

She didn’t relax that control until she had the door to the peach and pale cream suite firmly locked behind her; Hawk hated having people walking out on him in the middle of a conversation; she had learnt that at a very young age, having to spend every afternoon for a week of her holiday studying French the first time she had done it.

She had been fifteen when she had been put into Hawk’s guardianship, when she had met him for the first time at all. She knew he and her father were friends, her father often speaking of him, and she had seen articles about the Hawkworth heir in the same magazines that wrote about her father.

At that time the two men had dominated the motor-cycle circuits, one of them always taking first place, the friendly rivalry inducing a lasting friendship. Whitney had known what her father did for a living, had been proud of his achievements from the safety of the boarding school he had sent her to when she was eight, her mother having died while she was still a baby. The day James Hawkworth arrived at the school in her father’s place she had known Dan Morgan’s sparkling career had come to an end on the race circuit he had loved so much.

The teachers at the school had managed to keep the knowledge of the fatal bike accident from her until Hawk arrived to gently break the news of her father’s death, and because she had known of her father’s close friendship with the younger man she had moved instinctively into his arms to cry over her loss. He had held her until the tears stopped, not speaking, just holding her, and then he had quietly explained to her that her father had left her care to him.

And so as well as her father’s death she also had to contend with the fact that she had been left in the hands of a complete stranger. At first nothing had changed, Hawk leaving her at the school to finish her last year, the only difference there was being that instead of going home to her fun-loving father during the holidays she now went to the large imposing Hawkworth House in the exclusive part of London where Hawk and his wife lived.

Never having really known her mother, except from the photographs her father kept, Whitney had envisaged becoming friends with Geraldine Hawkworth. But the first time she met the other woman she had told her what a nuisance she was, and how her guardianship had disrupted her life. Whitney had always known that Hawk came from a very wealthy family, that he had become something of the black sheep when he had chosen to take up racing motor cycles instead of going into the family-run businesses that had made them all so wealthy. Being given the guardianship of a fifteen-year-old girl had necessitated Hawk donning the respectability of the family business rather than the excitement of travelling around the world racing, Geraldine had tartly informed her. And the other woman obviously resented the loss of that exciting life.

Not that Hawk had ever seemed to blame her in any way, not even when the change in career had such an adverse affect on his marriage. But for years the confinement of business had sat awkwardly on his shoulders, and Geraldine had never made any secret of her dissatisfaction with the new, staid, if equally rich, life she now led. The arguments between the couple had often been horrific those first two years after Whitney left school, Geraldine having a wicked temper.

When Whitney reached eighteen she had suggested to Hawk that now that his guardianship was over she should move out and give the married couple some privacy. It was then that she had discovered that, although she had now reached the age of consent, Hawk was to remain her guardian until she was twenty-one. Her father, perhaps because of his long absences, had always been protective of her, but nevertheless the thought of spending another three years with the bitter Geraldine and the determined Hawk had filled her with dismay.

But the situation between the married couple had suddenly changed. Geraldine began to go out alone, sometimes all night, and it was obvious when she returned the next morning in the same evening gown she had gone out in that she hadn’t just arranged to stay overnight with friends.

Hawk became more withdrawn than ever, concentrating all his energies on his business empire, at last seeming to fit smoothly into this new career he had adopted for her sake, often working late into the evenings. Although the latter, Whitney had been sure, was so that he didn’t have to be at home to witness Geraldine going out to meet what had to be her latest lover. Somehow the role of cuckolded husband didn’t sit well on the shoulders of the man Whitney had come to know—and love. But, as Hawk raised no objection to the situation between himself and Geraldine, Whitney had had to accept that he loved the other woman, no matter what she did, or who she did it with.

Geraldine had finally tired of the life she was living just before Whitney’s twenty-first birthday, asking Hawk for a divorce, which he agreed to give her without argument; how could he hold on to the woman when she obviously wanted to leave!

With Geraldine out of the house while they waited for their divorce, Whitney had tried to get closer to Hawk, to show him that she loved him even if Geraldine had been too stupid to. He had rejected her love by arranging for her to move into her own house, and handing over the diamond-studded watch on the eve of her birthday, the last time they had met before today.

She had been working for the Hawkworth-owned newspaper since she was twenty, and as she knew she was good at the job she had seen no reason to change that; she occasionally saw Hawk striding about the building. He looked older after his divorce from Geraldine became final and she remarried, more cynical than ever, and despite the fact that he had always appeared to be a highly sensual man there had been no women reputed to be in his life, not even casually. Even though she no longer wanted him Geraldine still owned him body and soul. It didn’t matter to Hawk that she had made a fool of him with other men during their marriage, that she ridiculed his love during that stormy time, or that she had become involved with and finally married one of the most powerfully corrupt men in England.

Knowing Geraldine as Whitney did, only too well, and the other woman’s craving for excitement in any shape or form—the more dangerous, the better she liked it—she had a feeling that Geraldine was involved in Tom Beresford’s corruption right up to her beautiful neck.

She also had a feeling that, despite what the other woman had done to him, Hawk was going to protect Geraldine and the happiness she had found with the other man with the last breath in his body if necessary.

God, how she hoped she was wrong!

CHAPTER THREE

THE problem of what she was supposed to wear while on board the Freedom was resolved later that day when two suitcases containing all of her clothes were brought to her cabin by one of the crew. She hadn’t given Hawk the key to her house!

She found him in the library, seated at the mahogany desk there, papers spread out before him. She firmly stood her ground as he looked up at her with a look designed to chill. ‘Has breaking and entering become part of your accomplishments now?’ she demanded accusingly.

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