Revenge is Sweet: Getting Even

‘What else could you possibly want to know?’ he drawled.

‘You haven’t even told me what you do for a living!’ she realised aloud. ‘Or how you know the mysterious Dominic Dashwood.’

‘I deal in money,’ he told her curtly, his grey eyes as cold as an arctic sea. ‘Dominic I met during my time at Oxford.’

She remembered the small but significant pause after he had introduced himself at the tennis club. ‘And should I have heard of you?’

‘Not necessarily.’ He shrugged. ‘Only if you happen to read the financial pages—and then I’ve been in New York for the past ten years so it’s unlikely you’d have heard of me anyway. I’ve only just come back.’

‘And what brought you back?’

Another pause. ‘Family business,’ he said finally, his face hardening forbiddingly.

Lola took no notice. ‘So what does someone who deals in money actually do?’ she persisted.

His face grew even colder. ‘I buy and sell,’ he told her tersely. ‘That’s all.’

Lola registered the superb quality of the suit he wore. Clearly buying and selling, as he put it, was very lucrative indeed! ‘You make it sound so simple,’ she said slowly.

There wasn’t a flicker of emotion on his face as he watched her unconscious assessment of him. ‘I prefer not to make it sound anything at all,’ he told her flatly. ‘But you asked the question, as women inevitably do—’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Lola glared at him. ‘You asked me exactly what you wanted; what did I do that was so different?’

‘You homed straight in on the money side of it, didn’t you, sweetheart? Sometimes I really think it would save time if I produced a bank statement for women to peruse at their leisure!’

‘Oh, sor-ry!’ said Lola furiously. ‘I didn’t realise you were so touchy about money!’

‘When you’ve met as many women with dollar signs flashing in their eyes as I have,’ he mused with distaste, ‘then being touchy about it is inevitable.’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug of his shoulders, before he said, ‘Were your parents very rich, Lola?’

The deep, velvet undertone of his voice sent new shivers skating down Lola’s spine, but she could not quite decide whether it was excitement or fear which had caused them. ‘Why do you ask that?’ she queried.

His eyes glittered. ‘Isn’t it rather obvious? Your house on St Fiacre’s for one thing. How did you happen to come by a house like that on your salary?’

‘How do you think I came by it?’ she retaliated as she encountered the oh, so familiar judgemental expression on his face.

‘A man, I suppose?’

Lola met his gaze and read the condemnation there and didn’t care. How dared he judge her without even knowing her? ‘That’s right,’ she said steadily.

‘A rich man?’

She saw the censorious look which soured his expression and decided that she would like to sour it even more! ‘You’ve got it in one!’ She smiled and noticed his knuckles whiten as the bread stick he had picked up was reduced to dust by the inadvertent clenching of that strong fist.

‘A ve-ry rich man,’ she purred deliberately, and saw a muscle begin to work violently in his cheek. ‘Much richer than you, probably. Why, I expect he could buy you out a hundred times over, Geraint!’

He let the bread dust trickle out of his hand into the large, cut-glass ashtray, so that it looked like sand running through an egg-timer. His eyes were full of mocking amusement as they caught her in their cool gaze. ‘I doubt it,’ he contradicted her with soft confidence.

And Lola doubted it too; that was the trouble. She found herself wondering why she hadn’t stormed out of the restaurant, but one look at the lean, autocratic face in front of her reminded her that it was not easy to walk out on someone this gorgeous. She drank more wine in an effort to calm herself.

‘So what was it between you and your generous benefactor?’ he asked eventually. ‘The love-affair to rival all love-affairs?’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ she answered flatly, then sighed, wondering just how much to tell him. The trouble was that there was nothing much to tell—but nobody ever believed her! Lola had grown used to people who didn’t really know her drawing their own tacky conclusions! But for some reason that cold look of disapproval on the face of Geraint Howell-Williams was more than she could bear.

She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands to look at him earnestly. ‘I don’t really like talking about it,’ she admitted.

‘Oh?’

Lola glared at him. ‘Because nobody believes me, and because people tend to pre-judge me—they all seem to think that I’m some kind of amateur hooker who played for very high stakes—and won! A horrible, critical look comes over their faces—a bit like the expression you’re wearing now!’

‘Am I? Sorry.’ He lifted his shoulders in a gesture of appeal which had something of the little boy about it, and it stabbed at Lola’s soft heart.

‘Of course the other reason I don’t talk about it,’ she explained, her blue eyes glinting with mischief, ‘is because now that I own a prime piece of real estate I’m very wary of would-be fortune hunters.’

‘And do you put me in that category?’ he asked her softly.

She looked at him with a wry expression. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she snorted. ‘Fortune hunters don’t usually come kitted out in handmade Italian suits!’

‘Thank you,’ he said gravely, though Lola thought she detected a reciprocal glitter of humour lurking in the depths of his stormy eyes. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?’

Lola went pink. ‘If you want.’

‘So why don’t you tell me all about the house?’ he suggested. ‘And let me judge for myself.’

What harm would the truth bring? Lola thought. Anything would be better than him believing that she had been Peter Featherstone’s lover. She began to pleat her napkin with fidgety fingers. ‘About three years ago, I first met Peter Featherstone on a flight to. Brussels—’

‘Did he have a woman with him?’ he demanded quickly.

Lola frowned at the interruption. ‘No.’

He nodded. ‘And so you got chatting—naturally?’

Lola gave him a long-suffering look. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, with sardonic emphasis. ‘We aren’t discouraged from chatting to passengers, you know. Do you have a problem with that, Geraint?’

His face was expressionless. ‘I guess not.’

‘Peter used to travel all over Europe quite regularly, and often I was among the cabin crew. And then one day, while we were chatting, quite by coincidence I discovered that he was on the board of a charity I’m involved with—’

‘Charity?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘You’re involved with a charity?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ exploded Lola. ‘Now who’s talking stereotypes? What’s the matter, Geraint—don’t I fit into your idea of the kind of person who does things for charity?’ She looked at him, and her mouth twitched. ‘No, on second thoughts don’t answer that!’

‘Which charity?’ He frowned.

‘Dream-makers,’ Lola told him, still gratified by the rather dazed expression which had not left his face since the mention of the word ‘charity’! ‘It’s for very sick children. We find out where they’d most like to go, or who they would most like to meet, and we try and arrange it for them. Peter owned a number of toy shops and factories in the south of England and he was a very generous benefactor.’

‘So what happened?’ he asked carefully. ‘Between you and Peter.’

‘Well, nothing—that’s the odd thing.’

‘No romance?’ he barked.

‘He was years older than me, for heaven’s sake! Over sixty—’

‘But an attractive man, all the same?’

Lola afforded him an icy look. ‘I honestly never thought of him in those terms. I only had dinner with him once or twice, after which for some inexplicable reason, he must have changed his will—leaving me the house. And then he died. Perhaps he knew just how sick he had become. Anyway, he suffered a fatal heart attack about a year ago.’ ‘That’s terrible,’ he said automatically.

It was strange, and Lola couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but she definitely got the feeling that her first impression of him this evening had been the right one, and that Geraint was only going through the motions of responding to what she was saying. It was as though his answers were conditioned, rather than genuine. Almost as if he was asking questions to which he already knew the answers . . . But how could he? They had only met for the first time last night.

‘Yes, it was terrible,’ she agreed slowly, but more out of respect than out of sorrow—she had not known Peter Featherstone either long enough or well enough to feel any deep grief at his passing.

There was silence for a moment while he studied her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, but there was a strained, indefinable note to his voice. ‘That he died, I mean.’

‘You don’t sound particularly sorry.’

‘Don’t I? Maybe that’s because I’m jealous.’

Jealous?

Lola despised herself for the longing that his flippant little remark produced. Even after all the nasty slurs he had directed at her, too! Would nothing keep her from coming back for more? She put on her most bemused voice. ‘But you barely know me, Geraint. So why on earth would you be jealous?’

He lowered his voice to a sultry whisper. ‘Because I’d like to know what spells you could possibly weave and cast on a sixty-year-old man to make him leave you a house worth a million pounds. You must be pure dynamite in bed, Lola.’

For a moment, she thought that she had not heard him correctly, and then the full horror of his words hit her like a kick in the teeth. Lola slammed her glass down on the table and stared at him.

‘What right,’ she whispered incredulously, ‘what right do you think you have to say a thing like that to me? And after all I’ve said! And after convincing myself that you were the kind of person who could be trusted to hear the whole story! Well, more fool me!’ She leaned across the table, and her eyes spat sapphire fire at him. ‘Do you think that buying a woman dinner gives you carte blanche to make boorish remarks?’ She pushed her chair back and got to her feet. ‘Well? Do you?’ she repeated shrilly.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he asked her calmly.

Lola nearly exploded with rage. ‘I don’t think I’m going anywhere! I am going! Back to my hotel! Where else? Because if you imagine that I would spend another minute in your company after what you’ve just said to me, then you haven’t an ounce of perception in your body!’

‘And if I happen to apologise for my boorish remarks—as you so sweetly put it?’

‘Oh!’ Lola exclaimed exasperatedly, not caring that the diners around them were steadily growing silent as they observed a very un-English display of public passion. ‘Isn’t that just like a man?’

‘It is?’

‘Yes, it damn well is! You think you can come out with all kinds of inconsiderate, brutish comments, and then all you need to do is to bat your eyelashes and mumble “I’m sorry” and suddenly that makes everything better! Well, take it from me, Geraint Howell-Williams—it doesn’t!’

‘Obviously not.’ He gave her a small, tight smile. ‘I can see that I am going to get lots of insight into what motivates male behaviour, if I stick around!’

‘Oh!’

‘And now you have two choices,’ he said challengingly, without giving her a chance to say anything else. ‘You can either sit down and we can start all over again—especially since I have apologised . . .’ He looked up to meet her stony eyes.

‘Or?’

‘You can make a scene in the middle of the restaurant.’ He spoke with the lazy assurance of someone who was certain that, once challenged, Lola would back down.

‘And you think I wouldn’t?’ she queried, hardly noticing the waiter who had removed their salads to deposit two delicious plates of pasta in front of them.

‘I think you’re far too sensible.’

Lola stared at him as if he were completely mad. She leaned across the table again, her hair spilling in mahogany disarray over her pale, silk-covered shoulders. ‘There’s no need to make it sound as if this whole disastrous evening is my fault!’ she declared hotly. ‘You were the one who interrogated and then insulted me and you are the one who is going to have to learn a lesson, Mr Howell-Williams!’

‘From whom?’

‘You’re looking at her!’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, really!’

He looked amused. ‘And what might that lesson be?’

It was the final straw for Lola. Oh, not the mocking tone of his question nor even the teasing smile which curved the corners of that delectably sensual mouth. It was her response to him that did it. He had been just about as rude as any man could be, and yet still she wanted him to kiss her!

‘It’s a lesson in taking responsibility for your actions,’ Lola told him coolly, and tipped her glass of mineral water into his lap.

He recoiled only momentarily, his reactions razor-sharp as he picked up her thick linen napkin and used it to blot up the liquid.

He gave her a long, thoughtful look as he dabbed at the mark on the unmistakable part of his anatomy and Lola glowered as he said, loudly enough for anyone who happened to speak English to hear, ‘I suppose that you want to do this for me, don’t you, darling? After all, it is your weak spot!’

Someone two tables back must have heard and understood because they gave a raucous laugh and a cheer and Lola blushed with embarrassment.

Geraint smiled at her reaction, and gave a gentle shake of his head as he said, ‘Darling, please don’t sublimate your sexual desires any longer. I give in.’ And he held his palms up in a gesture of surrender as he rose to his feet to tower rather intimidatingly over Lola. ‘I’ll miss the rest of my dinner and let you take me home to bed since that’s what you so obviously want.’

Lola’s fingers twitched. ‘Why, you no-good, conniving—’

‘Oh, dear,’ he interrupted with a dramatic sigh, playing to the crowd like mad. ‘You just can’t wait, can you, sweetheart?’ And in full view of the restaurant he pulled her unprotestingly into his arms.

The crowd went wild as Geraint began to kiss her, but Lola was deaf to the sounds of clapping and cheering and blind to the sight of diners peering unashamedly over at them, their forgotten meals growing cold.

And what had started out, presumably, as Geraint’s attempt to silence her and subdue her and to re-assert his mastery after having the contents of her glass tipped into his lap turned into something quite different.

She tried to hold back at first, keeping her lips pressed tightly together, but just the warmth of his breath was enough to coax them apart. He slowly let his tongue curl into the warm, moist cavern of her mouth and the intimacy of this small gesture made her grow positively weak with need.

She gave a tiny moan of submission, her hands winding themselves luxuriously around his neck as she allowed him to press her even closer, so that she could feel the thundering of his heart against the softness of her breasts.

She could feel the tips of her nipples tingling with the need to have him touch them, could feel the honeyed ache begin to tug deep at the heart of her, and she must have moved her hips restlessly against him in some silent, unconscious plea for she felt him stiffen with tension.

‘Oh, Lola,’ he breathed indistinctly against her mouth. ‘I want you. Dear God, how I want you.’

The bald words ripped into the falsely romantic little saga which Lola had been busy constructing for herself, and she forced herself to tear her lips away from his, pulling herself out of his arms and staring at him in accusation.

‘And you think that’s all it takes?’

He frowned. ‘What?’

‘You know what!’

‘I do?’

‘Yes, you do! Or rather you think you do!’ Lola glared at him. ‘You want to go to bed with me—but you start leaping on me before we’ve even eaten our main course or our pudding! Why, of all the cheap behaviour!’ she stormed, as angry with herself as she was with him. Talk about behaving like a complete walkover!

‘I think we should go and find somewhere quieter to discuss this,’ he murmured, with a swift sideways glance at the rapt diners who were still watching them. ‘Don’t you?’

‘I’ll bet you do! And let me guess where you’re about to suggest! Your bedroom? Or mine?’

He gave her a look of outraged mockery. ‘Do keep your voice down, Lola—I have my reputation to think of!’

The remark was enough to bring her crashing back to her senses. As if the whole room had suddenly shifted into sharp focus, Lola became aware of the silence in the restaurant, of the knowing smirks as people watched them.

She noted the direction of Geraint’s dark gaze as his eyes drifted to then lingered insolently on the swell of her breasts against the thin, butter-coloured silk, and she wondered whether the other diners could see the blatant thrust of her nipples as desire hardened them into painfully sensitive nubs.

She lifted her palms to her flaming cheeks for one agonised and distracted moment, then something of her normal spirit returned and she rounded on him briefly, her eyes spitting angry, cold, sapphire sparks at him.

‘Next time you ask a woman out to dinner,’ she drawled sarcastically, before lifting her hand to summon the maître d’ who had been hovering rather anxiously in the background, but who sprang forward at her command, ‘might I suggest that you consult an etiquette book first? I’m afraid that your manners are really much too brutish for modern tastes, Geraint!’

He looked mildly amused rather than seriously perturbed. ‘You think so?’ he queried softly, and the velvet whisper of his voice made Lola start having second thoughts about walking out on him.

She had to get out of here! And fast!

‘Please find me a taxi immediately!’ she said to the maitre d’ in flawless Italian as she marched with determination towards the door, her chin held high.

‘Sí, signorina,’ breathed the maitre d’, but it was Geraint’s murmured comment behind her which lingered temptingly in her ears.

‘You can run all you like, Lola, because we both know it won’t make any difference in the end. . .’

Lola didn’t answer, just ran out of the restaurant and leapt into the waiting taxi, asking the driver to go quickly to the hotel, which he did as best he could, considering that it was a Saturday evening in one of the busiest cities in the world.

She was still fuming when she reached her room, shaking from all the emotion of rowing with Geraint and then being kissed by him!

And all in public!

Lola groaned as she stripped off her silk suit and carefully hung it up, then cleaned off her make-up and dived into the shower, remembering how she had soaked him. And just where she had soaked him! What must he think of her now?

No worse than she thought of herself, quite honestly, she decided. Her body was racked by an unconscious little shudder as she lathered soap over one of her acutely aching breasts and remembered how understanding he had seemed, as though he was really interested in hearing what she had to say.

Well, more fool her! That so-called understanding had been shallow and superficial—there was only one thing that Geraint was interested in where she was concerned, and she was just going to have to make sure he didn’t get it!

But what if he came to find her? What if she let him into her room and he started exercising that irresistible sorcery of his and she ended up falling into his arms and letting him make love to her—just as Marnie had predicted earlier?

Lola drew herself up short. Was she really so weak and pathetic and untrusting of her own actions that she was afraid to risk being alone with Geraint Howell-Williams in case he kissed all her doubts away? What was she—a woman or a wimp?

Let him come, she thought with determination as she boiled the hotel kettle then added water to an ancient-looking teabag. Let him try his damndest and beat the door down.

And then let him see how strong she could be!

Feeling much more resolute, Lola felt her appetite return and she hunted around in the mini-bar. She had done nothing but pick at her green salad in the restaurant.

But a quick search revealed that Marnie had eaten just about everything there was to eat and Lola couldn’t face waiting for Room Service to arrive. So she was forced to go to bed with her stomach rumbling, having consumed nothing more than a cup of black tea of uncertain age.

Foolishly, and hating herself for doing it, Lola lay awake for ages, listening to the sounds of other hotel guests returning from their evenings out, but Geraint did not come.

Even when her eyelids began to drift down, she was aware that her senses remained half-alert to the possibility of his appearance.

But still he did not come.

Poised on the dreamy edge of sleep, Lola was immensely irritated to realise that her last waking thought was to be one of profound disappointment!

CHAPTER FOUR

BY FOUR O’CLOCK the following afternoon, as Lola drove her zippy little yellow car through the impressive navy and golden gates of St Fiacre’s, Geraint Howell-Williams had been consigned to his proper place in her memory.

Nowhere!

OK, she wasn’t denying that there was definitely some sort of powerful sexual chemistry between the two of them—because only a fool would deny that!—but clearly there was no future for them.

They didn’t seem to actually like one another very much—and just because their bodies went into overdrive whenever they were near each other that certainly was not a secure basis on which to begin a relationship!

The yellow car turned into the driveway of Marchwood House with an exuberant little spray of gravel as Lola put her foot defiantly down on the accelerator. She had been looking forward to these days off and she was not going to let her chance meeting with an insufferable Welshman spoil her hard-earned rest!

As the car stopped Lola experienced the by now familiar little sensation of awe as she stared up at the elegant, three-storeyed white house, with its impressive porticos and the two boxed bay trees which stood on either side of the shiny black front door. She still couldn’t quite believe that she owned this magnificent pile!

After managing to unlock the front door—which was a feat comparable to breaking into Fort Knox—Lola dumped her suitcases in the utility room and went off to see if there was any post, shrugging off her jacket as she went and impatiently unbuttoning her blue uniform shirt.

The house was much too hot, she decided, and turned the thermostat right down. She had been advised to leave the central heating on whenever she was away on a trip, especially in winter when there was a very real risk of the pipes freezing over. And although it was March the weather had been unsettled enough for her to continue doing just that.

However, the atmosphere was sultry enough for the house to be mistaken for a greenhouse at the moment! Lola wiped her damp brow with the back of her hand and bent down to pick up the post.

As well as the usual sundry bills and an invitation to the Dream-makers ball in May there was a letter from her mother, declining Lola’s invitation to come and spend Easter at Marchwood and telling her she had decided to spend the holiday weekend quietly on her own.

Lola sighed, disappointed but not surprised. As Marnie had pointed out, her mother’s visits had been infrequent enough when she had lived in her scruffy little flat, yet in all the six months that she had been living at Marchwood her mother had not visited once.

When she had first discovered that Peter had left her the house, Lola had worried that June Hennessy might be suspicious of her daughter’s relationship with Peter Featherstone. So Lola had told her mother outright that there had been nothing of a sexual nature between her and her benefactor, and Mrs Hennessy had, to her credit, sighed with slightly over-the-top relief and believed her.