Sleeping Partners

His eyes narrowed briefly but in the next moment she broke the hold and turned to John, and she made sure she didn’t glance Clay’s way again as she finished her coffee.

How was it, she asked herself silently, that all her previous good intentions of being distantly charming and amusing could be shattered with one glance from the man? In all the last twelve years she hadn’t met anyone who could set her teeth on edge like Clay Lincoln. Everything, but everything about him grated on her. She couldn’t imagine why he and Guy were friends.

She wasn’t going to wait for someone else to make the first move to leave. As soon as it was decently possible she would make her goodbyes and be out of here; she didn’t need this. She really, really didn’t need this. She would rather die than let Clay see it but she was acutely aware of every little movement he made and it was mortifying. Suddenly she just didn’t know herself any more and she was aghast at the way she felt.

Music was drifting in from the lounge, courtesy of Frank Sinatra who was doing it ‘his way’, and as Cassie began ushering them all out of their seats Robyn seized the opportunity to take her sister’s arm and say quietly, ‘I really need to be making tracks, Cass, I’m sorry. It’s been a lovely evening but—’

‘You can’t go yet.’ Cassie was horrified. ‘It’s only half past ten for goodness’ sake! Here, grab one of the bottles of brandy and port and bring them through, would you?’ And with that she sailed off across the hall, where she could be heard urging everyone to replenish their glasses.

Robyn stared after her, biting her lower lip and wondering how she could love someone and want to strangle them at the same time. It was a feeling she’d had before but never so strongly.

She had just turned to reach for the bottles when she saw Clay, still seated, surveying her with contemplative eyes. ‘Somewhere else to go?’ he asked mildly.

At some point in the evening he had discarded his suit jacket over the back of his chair and had undone the first couple of buttons of his shirt, pulling his tie loose, and although she was absolutely furious with herself the sheer physical magnetism of him registered in her solar plexus like a fist. She could feel the blood pulsing through her veins, a frantic flood that made her feel breathless and giddy, and she had to swallow hard before she could say, ‘Not—not exactly. Only home. But I’ve a heap of work waiting for me.’

‘At half past ten at night?’ he queried softly.

She flushed hotly, her voice something of a snap as she said, ‘I meant tomorrow, of course. It will mean an early start and so I didn’t want to be too late tonight.’ He needn’t try and be clever!

‘Do you always work such long hours?’ He stood up as he spoke, his silver eyes running over her face and the cloud of silky red-gold curls falling to below her slender shoulders. ‘I thought everyone was due one day of rest a week.’

She shrugged carefully. At five feet nine she had never considered herself petite but Clay must be at least another six inches taller and it was disconcerting to find she was having to look up at him. ‘It varies,’ she said stiffly.

‘Are you always so communicative?’ he drawled silkily.

They were the only two people left in the dining room now and Robyn had the ridiculous urge to turn and bolt into the lounge, but the knowledge that he would love that, just love it, restrained her. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said tightly, reaching for the bottle of brandy and another of port as she added, ‘Cass wants these, I’d better take them through.’

‘Running away…again?’ The pause was just long enough to bring the colour which had begun to recede from her cheeks surging back with renewed vigour.

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said with icy dignity, her voice at direct variance with her fiery skin. Horrible, horrible man!

‘If you had known I would be here tonight you wouldn’t have come.’ It was a statement, not a question.

You’ve never said a truer word, she thought. ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she returned scathingly. ‘How could your whereabouts be of any possible interest to me one way or the other?’

He hadn’t liked that. Robyn was immensely gratified to see his mouth tighten, but the black scowl was a little unnerving and grasping the bottles she made for the door. Enough was enough.

‘You’re an angel.’ As she entered the lounge where the others were draped about talking and laughing, a couple of the women dancing languidly to the music, Cassie took the bottles from her, glancing interestedly over her shoulder. ‘Where’s Clay?’

‘How would I know?’ Robyn said offhandedly. ‘Bathroom perhaps?’ Her tone made it quite clear she couldn’t care less.

‘Robyn, make an effort please,’ Cassie hissed quietly. ‘That’s not too much to ask, is it? He’s—’

What he was Robyn never found out as the next moment Clay walked in the room and Cassie fluttered over to him, insisting on replenishing his glass and then—to Robyn’s horror—drawing him over to Robyn as she said loudly, ‘You know you two have so much in common when you think about it, both with your own businesses and so on. You’re both workaholics, you know,’ and she giggled in a most un-Cassie-like way.

‘Clay and I have nothing in common, Cass.’ It was out before she could stop it, his narrowed eyes and cold face hitting a multitude of nerves, and she hastily qualified the retort with, ‘Clay is a millionaire with a network of businesses that stretch from here to Timbuktu, and I’m a one-man-band in Kensington. You really can’t compare the two.’

‘Timbuktu is a town in central Mali on the River Niger, and to my knowledge I have no business connections there,’ Clay said pleasantly, his voice conversational and his eyes deadly, ‘and I am sure your company is every bit as important to you as mine are to me. I think that is what your sister was getting at.’

She knew what Cassie was getting at but she couldn’t very well say so, Robyn thought helplessly, knowing she had been put in her place by an expert. She glared at him, hating him for making her feel such an ungracious, churlish boor, and then as Cassie shifted uncomfortably at the side of them Robyn tried to straighten her face into a more acceptable expression.

‘Robyn works too hard, Clay.’ Cassie was clearly in ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ mode. ‘I know she’s trying to build the business up but nothing is worth killing yourself for. Of course it doesn’t help that her bank manager is less than far-sighted,’ she finished with all the delicacy of a charging bull-elephant.

Dinner party or no dinner party, this was finale time. ‘Excuse me.’ Robyn’s voice was throbbing with outrage as she nodded at Clay, taking Cassie’s arm in a vise-like grip as she did so and hauling her sister out of the room before anyone could say another word.

She didn’t let go until the pair of them were safely in the kitchen with the door shut behind them, and then she pushed her sister onto one of the breakfast stools with the command of, ‘Sit,’ her face flushed and her brown eyes sparking.

‘Robyn, please, just let me explain—’

‘Not another word, Cass.’ She was angry, so angry her voice choked before she took a deep breath and continued. ‘You’ve gone too far and you know it, don’t you? If I had wanted my private business broadcast to all and sundry I would have said so. Everything I tell you is in confidence, and you knew—you knew—Clay was the last person I’d want to confide in. I couldn’t have made it plainer the other day,’ she finished vehemently.

‘I’m sorry.’ Cassie didn’t look at her and her voice was meek.

‘Sorry isn’t enough, Cass. You tricked me into coming tonight too. You didn’t even give me the chance of refusing when you knew Guy’s brother wasn’t going to make it. Well, I’m going now and I tell you it’ll be a long time before I forgive you for this. I mean it!’ Robyn’s voice was high with outrage.

Cassie had always been unsquashable and pregnancy had only served to make her more serene. She raised her eyes now, her voice placid and her face composed as she said, ‘He would be perfect for what you need, Robyn. His own businesses are so vast he wouldn’t meddle or get involved with yours, but with just a fraction of what he’s worth backing you you’d never look back. And he’s a friend of the family. It’s ideal.’

‘He’s a friend of yours and Guys, Cass, let’s get that straight. I don’t know him; I don’t want to know him and if I ever see him again in all my life it’ll be too soon!’

They both heard the knock on the kitchen door and spun round to face it, and it dawned on Robyn—Cassie too, by the look on her face—that the person outside must have heard every word of that last statement because Robyn’s voice had not been moderate.

Robyn knew who it would be before the door opened and Clay’s dark cool voice spoke. It went with the whole miserable evening somehow. She prepared herself for the explosion.

‘Do I take it this is a bad moment?’ He was speaking directly to Cassie; Robyn might not have existed. ‘Guy asked me to tell you that May and her husband are leaving; babysitter deadlines.’

‘Oh, yes, yes, of course. I must… Yes.’ If Clay hadn’t had a grain of intelligence Cassie’s flustered voice and scarlet face would have alerted him to the fact that he just might have heard something personally detrimental.

But Clay was intelligent, formidably so, Robyn thought miserably as she watched her sister skuttle out of the room as though the devil himself was at her heels. But the devil wasn’t following Cass, he was here with her, she acknowledged silently, as icy eyes drilled into her. ‘So…’ It was grim. ‘I see the spoilt brat is still a spoilt brat?’

‘What?’ She couldn’t believe her ears. ‘What did you say?’

‘I should imagine you will rise to the top of the tree with very little effort,’ the devastatingly cold voice continued gratingly. ‘Ignoring anything you don’t want to acknowledge, bulldozing your way through without a thought of anyone else or any higher concepts—the business world will just love you, Robyn. Do you use that delectable body as well as your brain to get what you want? You started early, I should know that, so—’

Nothing in the world could have stopped her lashing out at him and it caught him completely off guard. His head snapped back with the force of her hand across his face and for a moment there was complete stillness in the kitchen, the sound of voices and music from outside unbearably normal in what was suddenly a terribly abnormal world.

Robyn was shaking now, her dark brown eyes enormous in her chalk-white face. She could see her hand print forming on one tanned cheek, the red lines a reproach in themselves, and she stared at him, shocked beyond measure at what she had done. She had never, in all her life, struck anyone, and for it to be Clay Lincoln! And at Guy’s birthday party!

And then she backed away as Clay came forwards without saying a word, his face frightening. ‘Don’t…don’t you dare hit me. I’ll call for someone—’

‘Hit you?’ It stopped him in his tracks. He swore, softly but vehemently and with enough force to scare her further. ‘Is that the sort of man you think I am? The sort who strikes women?’

‘I don’t know what sort of man you are.’

‘Really?’ It was deadly. ‘And yet you’ve been insufferable all evening. Care to tell me why?’ he asked cuttingly.

She had backed as far as she could go, the edge of the sink pressing into her lower back, but she still drew herself up as she said, ‘Me, insufferable? Me?’

‘Oh, don’t tell me!’ He folded muscled arms over his broad chest. ‘I’m the one who’s been aching to pick a fight. Right?’