Threat From The Past

‘Of course not.’ Vanessa’s voice was tight and Selina guessed how painful the subject must be for her. ‘It’s not something we bring into everyday conversation. I take it you’re staying there to show him the door if he actually has the gall to turn up?’

‘Exactly.’ Selina’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the receiver, and her aunt said heavily,

‘Don’t blame yourself. You weren’t to know. I honestly thought we’d seen the back of the greedy wretch all those years ago. And be careful,’ she warned. ‘He could turn nasty. Have Meg around to back you up if he does put in an appearance.’

Which was something Selina had no intention of doing. The fewer people dragged into the affair, the better, and she was quite capable of handling the creep on her own. And Vanessa’s reaction had borne out everything Dominic had told her. Every word he had said before he’d left had been burned into her brain.

‘Mother’s told me a lot about him, but I only saw him once. I must have been about seven at the time. He came to the house—we were living in Watford in those days—and even then, as a kid, I knew he was a threat. Big, black-haired, wild-looking. The aggression was the first thing I picked up. He demanded to see Father. Said he wanted to tell him he had a place at university. And I remember Mother saying that Father was out, telling him that now his slut of a mother was dead there would be no more money. He was eighteen, she said, old enough and big enough to earn his own living like everyone else, and if he couldn’t afford to take his place at university then that was tough, but hardly his father’s concern. She told him to go. And he did.

‘It was years later when Mother told me the full story—how Tudor and his promiscuous mother had tried to drain us dry, how Father had paid a thousand times over for a youthful indiscretion. How he’d been led astray by an older, much more experienced woman. And Father, being the man he is, took her word when she said the child she was carrying was his. Though not even he could bring himself to marry a slut like that, but he supported them both very generously to the end of her life, which must have been just before he came to the house that time, griping because the hand-outs had stopped.’

So Selina was ready for him. The way he had used her, an unknowing pawn, to get to Martin, made her angry enough to kill. The blame for her uncle’s attack was his, and his alone. And for that he would have to pay.

He was probably short of money and had decided to try to force Martin to make a handsome payment in return for his silence about their true relationship. Well, he’d be in for one hell of a shock! Mention of bringing in the police would be the least of her threats!

Every nerve working on overdrive, she picked up the sound of the front doorbell and, just for a moment, the supple length of her body as she paced the fine Persian carpet went quite rigid. He was here.

She’d warned Meg to expect a visitor, asking her to bring him directly to the sitting-room. And now Selina braced herself, forcing herself to walk calmly over to one of the tapestry-covered, high-backed armchairs which flanked the huge stone hearth.

Seating herself, she turned her face to the crackling fire and then deliberately took a magazine from the low table at her side, opening it on her lap as she heard Meg’s unhurried footsteps cross the huge hall.

When Dominic had recalled that importuning visit they hadn’t been living here. When the creep saw the quality of this house and its environs he would probably double his demands! Her ears aching with the strain of listening for his approach, she disgusted herself by remembering how she’d warmed to his voice, how her body had quickened at its sensual quality—how she’d lain in bed fantasising about the man, wondering if his looks could possibly measure up to the way he sounded.

Hastily, she thrust the unwelcome memory aside and composed her striking features into a mask of icy hauteur. Whatever he looked like, Adam Tudor would get what was coming to him!

And then he was actually in the room with her and, totally oblivious of Meg’s formal, ‘Adam Tudor to see you, Miss Selina,’ her breath shook in her lungs.

He was everything his voice had promised, and more. No sign of the down-at-heel, surly weakling she had begun to half expect. No sign at all.

He was six feet plus of male perfection, packaged in a custom made dark lovat suit that could only have come from Savile Row, the white shirt obviously Italian craftsmanship at its best, as were the dark leather shoes.

She made herself stand, forcing the tremor out of her long, long legs, made herself meet the darkly fringed, incredibly green eyes, noting the slashing lines, the harshly crafted structure of his devastingly handsome face, the wide mouth that she instinctively knew could be as cruel as it was sensually fascinating.

Swallowing thickly, she ignored his outstretched hand, the greeting murmured in that unbelievably seductive voice, and tilted her chin a fraction higher.

Dominic had been wrong when he’d described this man as a creep. He couldn’t creep if his life depended on it. That much about him was authoritatively stamped in every line of his face, on every inch of his wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped body. He was a man firmly at the centre of his own universe, who expected to get what he wanted and went ahead and took it.

The fight to get him to back out of Martin’s life, once and for all, might be harder than she had anticipated. But it was a fight she was determined to win.

Fixing him with the blazing scorn of her glittering golden eyes, Selina tossed back the riot of tawny, gold-streaked hair that she had spent all her life unsuccessfully trying to tame, and told him, ‘I don’t know what you came for. But, whatever it was, you are going to leave without it. Right now. And for your sake, Mr Tudor, I hope you understand.’

CHAPTER TWO

SILENCE. A silence so thick, so intense, that for a moment Selina thought the world had stopped.

Then the shaded green glitter of Adam Tudor’s eyes stroked her from head to toe, swept slowly up again, lingering on every taut detail of her body, making her cringe inside at this blatant sexual appraisal. But she endured it. Stoically endured this insult, refusing to betray by the merest flicker of anger or disgust that she was aware of what he was doing and so tacitly admit to a compliance of sorts.

The gleam of his gaze rested on the wide, soft curves of her mouth now and she fought to control the betraying shudder of her heated body. Horrifyingly, she felt the muscles at the pit of her stomach tighten as if struggling to contain the flare of flame-hot excitement within, felt her warm breasts peak against the soft covering of cashmere, felt as if his long-fingered hands had followed the path of his caressing eyes...

‘Incredible.’ The single word hung sultrily on the still, apple-wood-scented air, and she moistened her lips, saw the way his own softened into shocking sensuality as his eyes followed the involuntary gesture, and fought to find the strength to defeat the bastard.

He moved further into the graceful room, his very presence an invasion, but she held her ground. He had to be shown that she wouldn’t back away and his single utterance had to refer to her earlier statement, and she reinforced tightly, ‘Incredible that you’ve been shown the door? You’d better believe it. You’re not welcome. There’s nothing for you here.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that.’ The deep, sexy voice, enriched by just a hint of amusement, enfolded her, compounding the unwelcome frisson of awareness that invaded her body as his eyes lingered once again on her mouth.

He was thirty-seven years old and, for the past twenty of them had obviously been fully aware of his effect on women, she reminded herself caustically. And, just as obviously, would have no hesitation about playing on the susceptibilities of the female sex when it suited him.

Well, she wasn’t an empty-headed bimbo and was taking his loaded comments at face value. And when he told her, ‘But I came to see Martin, initially, that is,’ she was able to inform him coolly,

‘He’s not here. I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time.’

‘I wouldn’t class meeting such a delectable virago as a waste of time.’ He had the audacity to grin at her, moving closer so that she could actually feel his body heat, could judge the space that separated them down to the last quivering centimetre, and she had to grit her teeth and force herself to stand her ground as he cupped her chin in one warm, dry hand, green eyes gleaming down into seething gold as he asked softly, ‘Now I wonder why the lady’s so uptight?’

He was using his blatant sex appeal to walk right over her and it was just too much! She despised him, doubly so, for that. And she jerked her head away, out of his hateful dominion, setting her glorious hair flying around her head and her eyes impaled him with the bitter strength of her enraged emotions as she spat out, ‘I would have thought that you, of all people, would know the answer to that!’ But she had promised herself she wouldn’t lose her temper and she tacked on, allowing an edge of ice to rim her voice, ‘As I’ve told you, my uncle’s not here. Please leave.’

‘I can wait.’ The infuriating, slight shrug of those wide shoulders beneath that expensive suiting flicked her on the raw, doubly so as he strode calmly over to one of the armchairs and sat down, his long legs stretched out in front of the blaze from the fire. The time had come for a little plain talking. She wouldn’t mince her words, but she wouldn’t lose her temper, either.

Following him, she planted herself firmly in front of him and said, on a controlled intake of air, ‘Martin won’t be back tonight. Probably not for days.’ And that much was the truth. But no way was she going to tell him why. If he knew where he was he’d be out of here like a shot, making his demands over a hospital bed!

‘Where is he?’ For the first time she began to see the man he really was. The teasing eyes were now as cold and still as glacial lakes, the formidable features unreadable, a mantle of power cloaking the superb male body with tensile strength. Whatever he wanted, whatever he had come for, it wouldn’t be peanuts.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she lied, her mouth lifting in a small, utterly insincere and worthless smile as she sank with unconscious elegance into the chair opposite the one he had taken.

‘I don’t believe you.’ His voice was a quiet, cool statement of fact and her eyes glinted at him across the dividing space. She didn’t care what he believed and felt a reckless excitement welling deep inside her because playing games with this devil could be dangerous.

‘Suit yourself. But you’re going to have a long, long wait.’

‘Again, you’re lying,’ he stated with smooth contempt, his words accompanied by the slightest lift of power-packed shoulders. ‘Did you pass my message on? Stress the importance of my seeing him tonight?’

‘Yes.’ The word was a bitter condemnation of the effect of having done just that, but he continued smoothly, as if not noticing her abrupt change of tone,

‘Then I simply refuse to believe that he could calmly absent himself without seeing me.’

‘No? How nice to have such self-assurance,’ Selina taunted with cool malice, seething inside at the man’s monumental arrogance.

Dominic had said that this creature was Martin’s enemy, Vanessa had reinforced that information. And she herself was beginning to understand exactly why they should have received the news of his imminent arrival in the way they had, as if an unexploded bomb had been secreted on their premises. Adam Tudor wasn’t the down-at-heel, whining opportunist Dominic had led her to expect. She could have dealt with that. The reality was something else.

A layer of ice inched down her spine as she forced herself to meet his level, thoughtful stare head-on, her golden eyes, long-lidded and slumbrous, giving no hint of her razor-sharp mind as she asked, almost idly, ‘How much were you expecting Martin to shell out?’ From the suavely elegant look of him, the clothes he wore, he was used to nothing but the very best. Whatever he had in mind it wouldn’t be small change.

‘I see Dominic and Vanessa have been getting at you.’ His beautiful mouth curved humourlessly but there were disconcerting lights in those slightly hooded green eyes that made Selina’s breath catch in her throat. She turned her head quickly, looking into the fire, her pure, disdainful profile brushed by the warm glow, revealing the entrancing imperfection of a too short, curling upper lip, the full pout of the generous, made-to-be-kissed mouth. And he continued in that rough velvet voice, as if the question he posed was purely academic, ‘I take it your cousin and aunt have also been unexpectedly called away from home?’

How unexpectedly he would never know, not if she could help it. And she despised herself for the way his voice, his looks, his sheer male animal magnetism could make something move deep inside her. This man was her uncle’s enemy, for heaven’s sake! Merely learning of his intention to visit had been enough to give the elderly man a heart attack! So why did her wretched body react as if this was the one man she had spent her life waiting for when her brain informed her that he was poison?

Her throat was too tight with a disgusting amalgam of sexual awareness and self-hatred to facilitate a verbal response to his question, so she merely nodded, unable to prevent the sideways slant of anguished eyes as they sought his own.

‘Then I’m left with no option but to deal with you. Not that that will be any hardship, believe me.’ The smoky sexuality of his voice made her heart punch beneath her breastbone, and her hand flew up, as if to steady that wayward organ, and she saw his sultry eyes follow the betraying gesture and went hot all over, her flesh burning.

Belatedly, she hauled herself together and clipped out, ‘Fine.’ He was all too aware of his masculine potency, of its devastating effect, well used to using it very deliberately when it suited him. And if he thought she’d be a push-over simply because of her gender then that gave her the advantage, didn’t it? He would expect her to bend beneath the onslaught of his undoubted attractions, to move to his side of the fence, dragged there by the strength of the magnetic forcefield that surrounded him. He wasn’t to know that she would fight for Martin’s well-being with every last weapon at her command.