A Delicious Deception

He knew his father could take care of himself. He was a man of the world, for heaven’s sake! But Mitch was also vulnerable to a pretty face, and therefore to unscrupulous gold-diggers—and this Rayne Carpenter was one hell of a cagey lady.

Even so, he wasn’t blind to the long, elegant line of her pale, translucent throat, or the way it contracted nervously beneath his blatant regard. Any more than he could fail to notice that her breasts—the cleft of which was just tantalisingly visible above the neckline of her chic but simple black dress—were high and generously proportioned. Quite a handful, in fact.

Hell! He was surprised by how acutely his body responded to the femininity she seemed to flaunt without any conscious effort, especially when his keen mind was telling him that Miss Rayne Carpenter was definitely one to watch. But there was something about her …

Some memory tugged at his subconscious like the fragment of a dream, too elusive to grasp, but still powerful enough to deepen the crease between his thick, winged brows, compelling him to enquire, ‘Have we met before?’

Beads of perspiration broke out over Rayne’s body, as tangible as that strong hand that was clasping hers, prickling above her top lip and along the deep V between her breasts.

She gave a nervous little laugh and said, ‘I hardly think so.’

She wasn’t sure whether he had let her go or whether she had been the one to break the contact, but as her hand slipped out of his she realised that she was desperate to take a breath.

Deep inside her something stirred. Resentment? Dislike?

What else could have produced this overwhelming reaction to him that had her blood surging, not just from his question, but from the unwelcome and disturbing touch of his hand? After all, anything she might have felt for him he had killed off a long time ago, she assured herself caustically. But it had been more than a touch, she reasoned, despising him—as well as herself—for the way he was making her feel.

With one simple handshake she felt as though she’d been assessed, undressed and bedded by him, because behind that probing scrutiny that had trapped the breath in her lungs there had been a fundamental appreciation of a man for a woman. Yet there was still no sign of recognition …

Her breath, marked with trembling relief, shivered shallowly through her when he accepted her denial of having met him before. But then everyone she met nowadays who hadn’t seen her since she was a teenager remarked on how much she had changed. Seven years ago she had had no real curves and her hair had been short and spiky, as well as a different colour. And back then, of course, she would simply have been known as Lorri …

‘Those thieves must have reckoned on your being a definite pushover, don’t you think?’ he remarked smoothly. ‘For the three of them to have targeted you so precisely?’

She took a step back, finding his dominating presence much too stifling, his question baffling her even as it warned her to be on her guard. ‘I’m sorry …?’

‘I mean that they must have noticed you taking more than a passing interest in my father to be so certain you’d rise to their bait when they took that wheel and rush off and help him as you did.’

Could he hear her heart hammering away inside her?

‘I don’t like seeing anyone taken advantage of,’ she said pointedly, and then, with barely concealed venom, ‘for any reason.’ Now, with her head cocked to one side, she demanded, ‘What exactly are you insinuating, Mr—’

‘King.’

Perhaps ‘Your Majesty’ would please you more!

She had to bite her lower lip to stop from crying it aloud. He was rich and powerful now. As well as ruthless, she decided bitterly.

Even then, all those years ago, when she’d crashed in on the ugly scene between him and her father, she had seen a side to him she hadn’t realised he’d possessed. A steel edge to his personality, coupled with a determined lack of scruples for a young man who, while still only twenty-three, had been forced, through his father’s accident, to learn the ropes quickly so that he could pick up the reins of a company about to explode on the world.

‘I couldn’t help but take an interest in him—or in what he was doing, certainly!’ she breathed now, hating him for the part he had played in destroying her father, while warning herself that nothing would escape this man’s notice or bypass the keen circuits of his cold, intellectual mind. ‘I was struck by the way he’d overcome his obvious difficulties to be able to drive himself around like that. I wasn’t aware that admiring someone’s capabilities actually constituted a crime.’

‘It doesn’t.’ His smile seemed to light his face like the evening sun lit the rooftops of Monte Carlo, leaving her struck by its transformation from a dark enigma to one of pure blinding charm.

Rayne’s throat worked nervously. Was he backing off?

‘As you’ve probably been told, my father’s chauffeur left … rather suddenly. Hence the reason he was without a driver, although, I should say, thanks to you, that that breach has been miraculously filled.’

She nodded, ignoring the sarcasm lacing his words.

Her heavy hair moved softly around her shoulders, King noticed, the warmth of the evening light turning it to flame.

His thick black eyelashes came down as he followed the rivers of fire to where they ended just above her contrastingly pale breasts. ‘I gather you didn’t lose everything at the hands of those criminals.’ A toss of his chin indicated the clothes she was wearing, but the way those appraising blue eyes slid down her quivering body invested even that innocuous statement with disturbing sensuality.

‘My clothes were in my car.’

‘And they didn’t take your keys?’

‘No. They were in my jeans pocket.’ With her cellphone, she thought—mercifully!—although she didn’t tell King that. She had taken it out of her bag to text her mother just minutes before Mitchell Clayborne had emerged from the hotel restaurant next to the café the other day, and she had been immensely relieved that she had. It meant that she had been able to cancel her credit and debit cards and report the crime to the police in the privacy of the hired car, while leaving her cellphone number with them in case of any developments—so nobody would be ringing and asking for Lorrayne Hardwicke on her host’s landline.

Tilting her head, she viewed the formidably attractive heir of Clayborne International with her throat dry from a raw sexual awareness and enquired, ‘Do you interrogate all your father’s house guests like this?’

His mouth tugged on one side as he moved over to the granite-topped table on the terrace and poured himself some coffee from the silver pot a manservant had brought out a little while ago. A masculine hand—long-fingered and tanned—queried whether he should pour some for her.

Rayne shook her head, dragging her gaze from the stark contrast of an immaculate white cuff and dark wrist to note that he added no cream or sugar to his cup.

‘But you’re not just a house guest, are you?’ he remarked wryly. ‘You’ve insisted on working while you’re here until you get your affairs straightened out, which makes you an employee of sorts—albeit a rather unconventional one—and my father doesn’t engage anyone these days without consulting me.’

And that just showed who was ruling the Clayborne empire now, she thought, resenting the authority he exuded as well as that brooding magnetism and forcefulness of character that lent his features a strength and quality that went way beyond mere handsomeness. ‘You must excuse me if you think I’m being overly cautious.’ She watched him drink through the steam rising from his cup and then set the fine china down on the table with cool economical movements. ‘But, as I’m sure you’re aware, my father is a very wealthy man.’

So are you, she supplied silently, remembering how amazed she had been to read that article that reported him as being higher up Britain’s Rich List last year even than Mitchell Clayborne. That it was at her father’s expense that the Claybornes were in that enviable position was something she refused to dwell on. She was aware, though, of the numerous enterprises King was involved in outside their technological empire, and reluctantly accepted that a man of his drive and determination would succeed at anything he turned his hand to. She looked at him askance and with a confrontational note in her voice queried, ‘Meaning?’

He made a careless gesture with his hands. ‘A beautiful young woman. An obviously rich but vulnerable older man whose ego needs a bit of boosting. An unlikely prank-turned-robbery in the midst of a crowded café. You must admit it couldn’t be a more finely tuned scheme to play on the older man’s sympathies and to get you into this house if you’d engineered it yourself.’

The colour already touching her cheeks intensified on a surge of guilt because, of course, she had been waiting at that table specifically for his father’s appearance, but not for the reasons his sceptical guard dog of a son was suggesting!

Still trying to deny the heat coursing through her veins from his remark about her being beautiful, she retorted, ‘That’s preposterous!’

‘Is it?’ He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, bringing her attention unwillingly to the hard lean line of his pelvis until, shocked at where she was looking, she dropped her gaze down over his intimidating stance and long, long legs. ‘It isn’t unheard of.’

‘Except for one thing, King.’ They both glanced in the direction of the shaky, gravelly voice, accompanied now by the unmistakable squeak of the wheelchair approaching. ‘She didn’t want to come.’

It was true. She hadn’t at first. When those thieves had left her with nothing but a car with a virtually empty fuel tank, no money or credit and no place to stay, she had been uncomfortable enough with Mitchell Clayborne’s gratitude for returning his property without his offer of assistance when he realised the loss and inconvenience that helping him had caused her. After all, she’d been lying in wait for him solely for one reason: to confront him with who she was and to threaten him if necessary with exposure in the papers if he didn’t come clean and admit the wrong that both he and King had done to her father. To try and prick his conscience—if he had one!—where Grant Hardwicke had failed, because Mitch Clayborne and his son had taken something more precious from her family than a simple wheel! But he’d seemed so shaken up by those morons running off with it that it hadn’t been the time or the place. Besides, she’d only been waiting at that café because she knew she would never have got past this villa’s impregnable security if she had tried to see him here, so, after her initial hesitation, she’d decided to grab the opportunity she was being offered with both hands.

After all, the Claybornes owed her family big time, she’d decided, and all she had to do was bide her time until she had got her credit cards sorted out, enjoy a bit of luxury for a night or two and then, when her host was feeling better, she’d come clean and tell him who she really was. But it hadn’t worked out like that.

‘Hear that, King?’ Mitchell Clayborne brought his chair out into the scented dusky air, warm still even though the light was fading. His iron-grey hair, combed straight back, was still thick like his son’s, but his face was more harshly etched as his lined blue eyes clashed with the brooding intensity of the younger man’s. ‘I said she didn’t want to come.’

Despite the gathering shadows around the pale stonework of the house, Rayne saw a fragment of a smile pull at King’s sensual mouth.

‘Your discretion becomes you,’ he remarked quietly. His eyes said something quite different, though, she was sure, as they swept over her tight, tense features—as did the scarcely concealed scepticism with which he spoke.

Did he know? she wondered with her heart banging against her ribs. Had he guessed who she was and was just playing with her? Or did his only beef about her stem from the fact that she hadn’t come through his stringent security system? Been passed to him first for his cold and calculating assessment?

‘Leave her alone, King.’ Mitchell was pushing himself over to the table as King reached for the cut glass decanter beside the coffee pot and poured some of its golden contents into a matching tumbler. ‘Can’t I enjoy a bit of female company without you vetting her like she was some filly with a dubious pedigree?’ Mitch took the glass from the man who was more than thirty-five years his junior, and yet whose influence and power in the corporate world was more respected and deferred to even than the older man’s these days.

King’s shoulder lifted and a sudden last shaft of sunlight, piercing through the trees that decked the hillsides, splintered colour from the crystal decanter in his hand. ‘Of course.’ Replacing its stopper, he put the decanter back on the table with a dull thud. ‘But be it on your own head, Mitch. I’m not going to be riding this one.’

Rayne’s back stiffened from the double entendre as she watched him walk away, looking every bit as proud as the man in the wheelchair, but exuding an air of such uncompromising autonomy that lesser men, including his own father, could only hope to aspire to.