Taken By The Maverick Millionaire

He’d apologised later. Grovelled, in fact. Promised the earth if she’d take him back. Even Gran had urged her to relent. But she never would. A strong, instinctive part of her had known that if a man truly loved a woman, he cared for the people she loved.

She clenched her cognac glass. She’d learned from the love experience. A man expected a woman to devote herself exclusively to him. Give up her own interests. Spend all her weekends at the football, or her evenings watching sport on television, or playing pool with his beer-swilling friends. Until Gran had had her heart bypass and was safe and well, there could be no new love for Cate Summerfield, even if she did ever want to chance that stony road again.

‘Well?’

Tom Russell’s voice roused her, his black brows bristling with impatience.

‘No, no,’ she assured him. ‘Not—currently.’

What was she hiding? Tom wondered, scanning her face with a cynical gaze. ‘You don’t sound very sure.’

‘Of course I’m sure,’ she snapped.

‘Ah. Then you’ll do it.’ He raised his glass to his lips and his lashes flickered down.

Cate eyed the determined line of his handsome jaw, and wondered how many people in his life had ever given him opposition.

She wrinkled her brow. ‘I suppose I could do it, so long as it doesn’t get out. I’m not sure how my grandmother or the people at work would take it.’

There was a second of stunned silence, then he gave a sharp little laugh. ‘Are you saying you’d be ashamed to—be with me?’

‘Not ashamed, exactly.’ His face was picture of bemusement, and she felt some remorse. Naturally he saw himself as a highly desirable property. With people like Olivia West throwing themselves at him from all directions, it was only to be expected. ‘It’s not you, so much as—’ She made a vague gesture and mumbled, ‘You know. What you represent.’

Struggling to find his way through shifting mists of unreality, Tom scoured her face for signs of teasing. But her big sea-green eyes held only earnestness, and, goddammit, he realised with a deep inner shock, something that looked like pity. When had he, Tom Russell, ever inspired pity?

He stared at her for long seconds with narrowed eyes. ‘Then we’d better make sure your family and friends never find out. I would hate to embarrass you.’

Cate bit her lip, aware of having been less than tactful. ‘It’s not just a case of embarrassment. It’s whether my friends would believe I could be seduced—even temporarily by your—’ she waved her glass ‘—your wealth, and all that. And that brings me to—something else I need to get straight.’ She took another swallow to bolster her courage, and her voice deepened. ‘I hope you mean this purely as a business arrangement, and you’re not hoping to whizz me off afterwards to some sleazy downtown hotel room.’

A muscle twitched in his lean, smooth-shaven cheek, and his eyes glittered with a dangerous intensity. After a second he said, ‘I’m asking you because, rightly or wrongly, you were on the spot, and I may as well make the most of a bloody annoying situation. As for whether I could seduce you with my wealth…or that I might be planning some afternoon…’ He shook his head while he wrestled with the disgraceful concept. Then he tossed off the rest of his cognac and gazed at her with derisive amusement. ‘I need someone to act the part. And that’s all you’ll be required to do, sweetheart. Act.’

‘Well, if you’re sure. So long as it’s only acting. And as long as you honour your part of the deal and don’t leak the story without me.’

He hissed in an incredulous breath. ‘For some reason,’ he exclaimed when he could find the words, ‘the people I do business with believe they can trust my word.’

She arched her brows. ‘Maybe they’re birds of a similar feather.’

Tom experienced a further shock. What did she think he was—some shoddy used-car salesman? What had he ever done to this woman to earn such distrust? A blistering retort rose to his tongue, but he managed to control it, realising it was far more likely to be the things his father was reputed to have done.

‘Look,’ he said, with an attempt at smoothness, ‘we’ll just have to trust each other, won’t we? I’ll be trusting you to act convincingly enough to persuade Devlin—’

‘Is that Olivia’s husband?’

‘That’s correct—Malcolm Devlin—that we’re together. Do you think you can do it?’

Cate sank back into the plush luxury. Could she? It would be a huge risk, a leap into the unknown, but it would give her a fabulous inside view of a society party. She might even get a feature article out of it, once the embargo was lifted. Although…

She let her gaze flicker over his lean, tall sexiness. She would need to take care. He was so damnably attractive, he might talk her into anything.

She gave a shrug. ‘I suppose I could give it a go. ‘

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