A Virgin For The Taking

‘Well,’ she murmured, her back still to him, her voice low and strained as she rubbed her brow with one hand, ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to show you where your room is. I’ll leave you to settle in.’

He could just walk away, keep walking down the passageway to his old room. He could just ignore her and let her know her ploy had left him completely unmoved. He should just walk away.

But the urge to show her that he wouldn’t fall for her tricks was too great. She needed to know that he knew all about the games women liked to play when there was money at stake. She needed to know that he wouldn’t be falling for any of them.

He reached a hand to her shoulder, ignoring her startled flinch at his grip as he steered her around to face him.

He overcame her resistance, tipping up her stiffly held jaw with one hand until there was no way she could avoid his gaze any longer. Slowly, reluctantly, her eyes slid upwards, until their aqua depths collided with his. In the first instant he took in the moisture, the lashes damp and dark, and he had to acknowledge she was good, very good, if she could bring on the tears that readily.

But then he saw what was inside her eyes and it slashed him to the core.

Pain. Loss. Mind-numbing desolation.

All of those things he recognised. All of those things found an echo in a place deep down inside himself, something that shifted and ached afresh as her liquid eyes seemed to bare her soul to him. It was an awkward feeling, uncomfortable, unwelcome.

He watched as she jammed her lips together as a solitary tear squeezed from the corner of one eye. Momentarily disarmed, acting purely on instinct, he shifted his hand from her chin and gently wiped the tear from her cheek with the pad of one finger. Her eyelids dipped shut, her lips parted as she drew in a sudden breath, and he felt her tremble into his touch.

Gears crunched and ground together inside him. This wasn’t going the way he’d expected at all. Because she wasn’t the way he’d expected.

‘You really cared about him?’

The question betrayed his thoughts, clumsy and heavily weighted with disbelief. But there was no time to correct it—the thought that Laurence meant more to her than a mere provider of luxury and cash somehow grated hard on his senses.

She dragged in a breath and pulled away, shrugging off his hand as she backed into a cane lounge. ‘Is that so hard to believe? Laurence made it easy to want to care about him.’

Her rapid admission changed everything, transforming his confused thoughts into sizzling hot anger in an instant as the facts slotted back into their rightful place. Laurence had ‘made it easy’. No pretence, no circumspection. She’d admitted how it had been between them with barely a blink! And it was exactly what he’d expected. No wonder she felt so crushed. She’d lost her sugar daddy along with her cash flow.

‘Yeah. I’ll just bet he made it easy.’

She edged closer, her head tilted, as if she couldn’t have heard him right. ‘I’m not sure I understand you. What exactly do you mean?’

‘It’s hardly that difficult to work out. A rich old man with a taste for pretty women and who could afford to make having one around worth her while.’

If he hadn’t been jet-lagged, if he hadn’t been awake throughout too many flights over too many time zones, maybe he would have had a chance of fending off her next attack. As it was, he didn’t see it coming.

Her flattened palm cracked against his cheek and jaw like a bullet from a gun.

Instantly she recoiled in horror, her eyes wide open, the offending hand fisted over her mouth. She waited while he drew in a long breath and rubbed the place she’d made contact, the skin under his hand already a slash of colour. But he didn’t react, not physically, and she felt the shock ebb away, felt her panicked heart rate calm just enough to match the simmer of anger that still consumed her.

‘Well, you sure pack a punch,’ he drawled, working his jaw from side to side, his eyes narrow and hard like he was assessing her all over again.

‘Nothing more than you deserved.’ He’d asked for it all right. Why would he think that about Laurence? Why would he think that about her? ‘And don’t think I’m going to apologise. I don’t have to take that kind of garbage from you.’

‘Because you can’t handle the truth?’

‘You’re unbelievable! You really believe I’m here for Laurence’s money?’

‘Most people would be lured by it.’

‘Then I’m not “most people”. I don’t want his money. I never have.’

‘Then why else would you have been living with him, a man old enough to have been your father?’

She laughed then, mostly because she knew that if she didn’t laugh, she’d probably cry with the injustice of it all. He was so wrong. He didn’t know his father. He didn’t know her. He knew nothing.

‘I pity you,’ she said, much more calmly than she felt. ‘Obviously you’re completely unfamiliar with the words “friendship” or “companionship”.’

He snorted his disbelief and her anger escalated to dangerous levels again. But this time she was determined to keep control. She had to try to remember what Laurence had asked of her. She dragged in a deep breath, battling to stay rational and calm, in spite of his attack.

‘Just because you were incapable of showing your father any respect or affection…’ she shook her head ‘…don’t assume everybody else was.’

His eyes narrowed dangerously, the resentment contained within so hard and absolute, it glistened. ‘So you looked after him out of the goodness of your heart? You stayed merely to keep him company? Next you’ll be expecting me to believe you really loved him.’

‘Somebody had to! God only knows he got nothing but grief from you.’

She jerked herself away, wanting to get out of there, wanting to get as far away from him as she could, but a steel grip on her arm stopped her dead, preventing her escape. She turned, indignant, but the protest died on her lips the moment she saw his face, his features contorted with fury.

‘Don’t you try to take the high moral ground with me. You have no idea what I felt for my father or why. None at all.’

She fisted her hand and wrenched at her arm unsuccessfully. So instead she leaned closer, so close she could feel the anger coming out of him like heat from an open fire. But his anger was nothing compared to hers—she was angry enough for both of them.

‘You’re right,’ she agreed, feeling her lip curl in contempt. ‘I have no idea what you felt or why. But whose fault is that? Mine, for being here when your father needed support, or yours, for not caring enough to be here yourself?’

CHAPTER THREE

HOURS LATER, as the first unlayering of the night sky heralded the coming dawn, Zane had given up on sleep. He lay on his bed in the room that had been his for more than half his life, the accumulated photographs and trophies from his youth still exactly where he’d left them. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he’d never left. But he knew he wouldn’t be thinking about how things used to be. Because the last few hours had shown him that all he’d be thinking about was a woman with fire in her eyes and venom on her tongue, a woman built like a goddess and who fought like a she-cat.

Even last night, when she’d lashed out and slapped him, she hadn’t backed away. She’d come back for more and she’d given more. And even when she’d agreed with him, in their final exchange, she’d hit back with such a sting in her parting comments that when she’d yanked her arm against his grip once more he’d had no choice but to let her go.

She had some spirit. He wrestled once more with the sheets as he tried to get comfortable. What would she be like in bed? He’d lay odds that she’d show as much life out of her clothes, if not more, than she did in them.

He punched his pillow one final time before giving up, swinging his legs off the bed and making for the en suite, dragging his hands over his troubled head. What the hell was wrong with him? It didn’t matter what she was like in bed, he was hardly about to pick up where his father left off!

Besides, he had more pressing problems to turn his mind to now. There would be all kinds of things to deal with: a funeral to arrange, the future of the business. Naturally he’d be expected to fill Laurence’s shoes for the time being, but plans would have to be made for the longer term. He might as well make a start on it before Ruby could interfere. She might have held a high place in Laurence’s ‘affections’, but, now he was here, things were going to change.

Kyoto was waiting for him in the kitchen when he emerged, finally feeling more human after a long hot shower and fresh clothes.

‘Mister Zane!’ Kyoto shouted in welcome as he approached, his wrinkled face contorted between half-toothless smile, half anguish. ‘It’s so good you’re home. I make you breakfast, “special”.’

Sinewy arms suddenly wrapped tightly around him in a rapid embrace before releasing him just as quickly and returning to the task of scrambling eggs as if they’d never touched him. Zane smiled to himself. Kyoto’s broken English was just the same, but he could never remember a time when he’d ever been so physically demonstrative. It was strangely touching.

‘It’s good to see you again, too,’ he said sincerely.

‘Your father,’ Kyoto said, shaking his head as he heaped a plate full. ‘I am so sorry.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, right now feeling Kyoto’s loss more than his own, as hot coffee and a heavily laden breakfast plate with a stack of toast on the side was placed in front of him.

Kyoto disappeared, muttering sadly to himself as Zane made a start on breakfast in the large, airy room. It was hours since his last real meal and Kyoto’s cooking had never been a hardship to endure, least of all now. He’d almost made his way through the mountain when Kyoto returned and something else appeared on the table before him. He blinked in cold hard shock as he recognised the small padlocked wooden chest.

The old pearler skipper’s box had always sat in pride of place on his father’s desk and now it sat in front of him, bold and challenging. Mocking.

A relic of a former era, when natural pearls were real treasure and the rare bonus discovered while collecting the mother-of-pearl shell itself, any such pearls were deposited through a small hole in the lid and so kept secure during the lugger’s time at sea.

But it was hardly pearls he knew the box contained. More like dynamite.

‘Your father said you were to have,’ Kyoto said in response to Zane’s unspoken question.

Zane set his plate aside and drained the last of his strong coffee, never taking his eyes off the chest. The wood had aged to an even richer golden patina than he remembered, the metal handle and lock scratched and scarred by the passage of time, the tiny key clearly in place. Inviting. Taunting. Because it was hardly the chest his father wanted him to have. It was the contents. And Zane knew exactly what was inside.

Did his father honestly not realise Zane knew, or was he merely trying to press the point home—a bitter reminder of the circumstances of his leaving? No question, Zane decided. Of course he would have known. Clearly his father hadn’t asked to see Zane in order to settle their differences. He’d called for him to rub them in!

His mind rankled with the stench of the fetid memories. He’d been just a young boy home on school holidays when he’d sneaked into his father’s office under the cool verandah and had been exploring through the desk drawers until he’d come across a small battered key. Instantly he’d thought of the box on top of the desk, the box that had been locked as long as he could remember and which had always intrigued him. So he’d scrabbled up on to his father’s wide jarrah desk and tested the lock. It had clicked open on the second scratchy attempt. With a thrill of discovery he’d removed the lock and the metal plate from the catch. He remembered holding his breath as he’d lifted the lid to peer at whatever treasures lay inside.

And he remembered the crush of disappointment when he’d found it only contained a stash of old letters. Barely half-interested by then, he’d picked the first from the top of the pile. He’d opened the folded sheet, only to stare at a letter from his father to his so-called Aunt Bonnie, his mother’s best friend. There was a list of numbers and something about a house and a monthly payment that made no sense at all to his young mind. But there’d been no time to linger over it once his nanny had discovered him in the room he’d been forbidden to enter and warned him never to look in places he shouldn’t in case he learned something he never wanted or needed to know.

For a while he’d wondered what she’d meant but then he’d found a new game to play and gone back to school and he’d forgotten all about it. Until that day, nine stark years ago, when he’d been reminded of the letter and its contents and suddenly it had all made perfect sense!

He heaved a sigh as he considered the box, the stain of bitterness deep and permanent in his mind. What was his father really playing at, leaving him the box like this? Did he expect him to read the entire contents—no doubt their love letters—making sure Zane knew the whole sordid truth? Was this all Laurence thought Zane deserved after walking out nine years before? Was this to be his inheritance? Zane couldn’t help but raise a smile ironically as he contemplated the box. He wouldn’t put it past him. His father had never been known for his subtlety.

But he wasn’t playing into that game. He’d read enough all those years ago to last him. The box could stay closed.

Kyoto whisked away his plates and swept around the kitchen, cleaning everything he touched until it gleamed.

‘More coffee?’ he offered, interrupting Zane’s thoughts.

Zane responded with a shake of the head, giving the box a final push away as he stood. He didn’t need any reminders of the past. He had Ruby to do that.

‘Thank you, Kyoto, but no. I need to get started on a few things. Is there a car I can use while I’m here?’

‘Yes, yes.’ He nodded. ‘But you are home to stay now, for good?’

Zane dragged in a breath. His immediate plans for the company included making the long-term arrangements that would ensure his speedy return to London and his businesses there. Of course, there would be ramifications of his father’s sudden death to deal with—someone would have to take over the running of the pearl business; he’d source a manager somehow—but staying wasn’t an option right now. ‘We’ll see, Kyoto,’ he replied noncommittally. ‘First, I just need to make sure the company gets through this difficult stage, without my father’s hand to guide it.’

‘Not a problem,’ Kyoto offered, waving away his concerns with a flick of his tea towel. ‘Miss Ruby take care of all that, no worry.’

Zane stilled, a knife-sharp feeling of foreboding slicing through his thoughts. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Miss Ruby already at the office. She take care of everything.’

If indigestion came in a colour, it would be red. If it came in the shape of a woman, it would take the form of Ruby Clemenger.

She sat now in his father’s office, behind his father’s desk, like she owned it, making notes on a laptop computer as she studied an open file on the desk.

‘You haven’t wasted a minute, I see,’ he said, announcing his presence in the same sentence.

She looked up, momentarily startled, before the shutters clamped down on her eyes again, turning them frosty blue. Guarded.

‘I expected you’d sleep longer.’

He smiled. ‘So you thought you’d get a head start on running the company before I woke up?’

She frowned. ‘And why would you possibly think that?’

He gestured around the spacious office. ‘Because you’re here, barely twenty-four hours after my father’s death, in his office, occupying his desk.’

She put down her pen and leaned back in her chair—his father’s chair—her eyes narrowing to icy blue channels. ‘Is that what you’re worried about? That I might want to take your precious birthright away from you? That I might steal your inheritance and whisk Bastiani Pearls away from you while you’re not looking?’

‘You wouldn’t stand a chance!’ He squeezed the words through lips dragged tight, his jaw held rigid.

She smiled, a smile that exposed her even white teeth but extended no further. ‘Then maybe it’s just as well I’m not interested.’

‘So how do you explain being here now?’ he demanded, moving closer to the broad desk. ‘It’s Saturday. Not exactly office hours.’

I had to get out of the house, she thought. I had to get awayfrom you. But she wouldn’t say it. Didn’t want to admit the blatant honesty of her thoughts, even to herself. Instead she steeled herself against his approach and said, ‘I have work to do. Laurence and I were involved in a project together last week when he took ill. The file was still on his desk. And I really didn’t think he’d mind me borrowing his office for a while.’

‘What kind of work?’ he demanded, shrugging off her sarcasm like he expected it.

She surveyed him as he made his way around the desk to her side, taking in the cool-looking chinos and fine-knit shirt, resenting every lean stride he took closer to her. He was dressed for the heat, so why was it that her temperature was suddenly rising?

Damn the man! She’d told herself all night—she’d promised herself—that now they’d got their first meeting out of the way, now that they both knew where they stood with each other, that she’d be immune to his power and his sheer masculine force. And finally she’d convinced herself that that would be the case, that she could wear her anger like steel plating around her. But she’d been kidding herself. Otherwise, why else would she have fled the house at first light? And why else would she be feeling the encroaching heat of this man like the kiss of a blowtorch?

Her anger was still there, and the resentment—with just one comment, he’d managed to resurrect that in spades—but there was no avoiding the Bastiani aura.

Like father, like son.

Laurence’s power had made him a powerful colleague to work with, a fascinating and inspiring mentor. Zane, though, seemed to take the family trait to a new level, his proximity grating on her resistance, his raw masculine magnetism and fresh man-scent leaving her feeling strangely vulnerable.

‘What are these?’ he asked, looking down at the drawings on the desk, breaking her out of her reflections.

‘The new range,’ she said, feeling a note of pride creep into her voice as he sorted through the designs she’d been working on for over six months. ‘We’ve called them the Passion Collection. The launch is a little over three months away.’

‘Here?’

‘Like all our collections, we’ll launch in Broome first, at the Stairway to the Moon festival, then we’ll take the collection nationwide with an event at the Sydney Opera House one week later. We’ll follow that up with the dealer visits, where we take selected designs to New York and London. No doubt you’ll expect to come along, in Laurence’s place.’

She tried to infuse some kind of welcome note to her voice, but if he was impressed by the demanding launch schedule or wanted any part of it, he didn’t show it. ‘These designs are very ambitious,’ he said instead. ‘Extraordinarily so.’

‘Thank you.’

He looked around sharply. ‘These are yours?’

She nodded. Every last one of them. ‘That is why I was employed here,’ she told him, holding his gaze. ‘I design settings for the pearls the Bastiani Corporation produces.’

‘Then you must realise that wasn’t exactly a compliment. These designs will never work.’

She stilled, not believing what she was hearing. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘These designs—“The Passion Collection”: A Lovers’ Embrace. It’s a fine concept, but don’t you think it’s too ambitious to achieve with just pearls and gold and gemstones? You’ll never pull it off. We can’t have an entire collection based around such a crazy idea. It’s too much of a risk.’

‘It will work,’ she argued, trying to banish the doubt demons that assailed her creative mind at every opportunity without Zane’s input to spur them on. ‘Yes, it’s ambitious, and, yes, it’s a risk, but it’s already in production. And it’s almost complete.’

‘But not finished and not proven. So the Bastiani Corporation is pinning its future hopes on a collection that could be a major failure?’

‘Laurence was passionate about this collection. He was behind it one hundred percent.’

‘Laurence isn’t here now.’

‘But I am. And I’ve been designing pearl collections for Bastiani ever since I started working here—so far very successfully. There’s no reason to think this one won’t be as successful.’

He put down the drawing he’d been holding and swivelled, leaning back against the desk, his hands poised either side of his legs. ‘You’d hardly claim anything else.’

He was too close. Dealing with him while he’d had his back to her was one thing, having him staring her down while hovering alongside was something else. It made her wish she’d pulled on a whole lot more this morning than a floral wrap skirt and a cool, lemon-coloured singlet top. She pushed herself out of her chair, using the pretext of filling her water glass at the cooler, and only turned when she’d taken three steadying breaths.

‘Well, I don’t intend to let Laurence or the company down now,’ she said, in a bid to regain her composure. ‘And while we’re on the topic, did you ever bother to read those financial reports I know your father had sent to you regularly?’ she asked. ‘Did you ever take note of what they told you, and of how the profits of the Bastiani Corporation took off exponentially, when instead of selling cultured pearl stocks and basic design elements, we started selling themed collections twice a year?’

‘And you’re claiming the credit for that, I presume?’ He practically snorted the words out, without bothering to make any attempt to answer her question.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m not claiming the credit. Laurence took me on as a junior designer when I was barely out of design school. He said he wanted someone fresh, with no preconceived or outmoded ideas of how pearl jewellery should look. So together we worked on the idea of a themed collection, an entire range that would display the beauty and mystique of the most magnificent and highly prized pearls in the world. So, it was Laurence who had the vision, who had the dream of expanding his business in a way the company had never done before. But the designs were all mine.’

She stopped, feeling suddenly heady, as if oxygen was in short supply. All through her impassioned speech he’d sat, coolly surveying her from his position against the desk, his eyes hooded, almost slumberous.

If she didn’t like his attitude, she resented his silent scrutiny even more. In desperation, she took a sip from the glass, trying to fill the space in the conversation, suddenly glad she’d had the foresight to fill her glass now that her mouth and lips had turned desert dry. Condensation beaded as she tilted the glass, running down the side, making tiny rivulets around her fingers. She gasped as two icy drops splashed on to her singlet, leaching into the light fabric in ever-expanding circles.

His eyes followed the movement. He’d been fascinated watching her retreat, seeing her calm herself before facing him and stating her case. He’d been impressed by her no-nonsense sense of her own worth in the company—in spite of himself.

But right now he was more impressed with the way the droplets of water were soaking tantalisingly into the fabric of her top. He liked what it did to rattle her composure. He liked even better what it did to her breasts. In an instant they’d firmed and peaked and, like an invitation he couldn’t refuse, he was drawn closer.

‘You’re turning out to be a woman of considerable talents,’ he murmured, as he bridged the few steps between them. He came to a halt immediately before her. She was tall enough, but still she had to turn her head up to look him in the eye. That was good—that gave him an uninterrupted view of the sweep of her throat and the swell of tanned-to-honey-gold skin that disappeared tantalisingly under her singlet top.