Ransacked Heart

‘You do this very well,’ Luke commented smoothly later.

‘I’d rather be doing it on my own,’ Maria responded waspishly, taking advantage of the fact that no one was near enough to overhear them for the moment.

‘Sorry,’ he drawled with blatant insincerity.

‘Why don’t you go and talk to Cavell?’ The suggestion was tartly offered.

‘She’s working,’ Luke returned dismissively, and it was true, she realised, following his glance and seeing Cavell in conversation with a television reporter.

‘So am I,’ she reminded him pointedly.

‘We all are.’ There was something savage in his smile.

The look Maria gave him was inimical. That was what he hoped people would think, she knew, and so far only she was aware that he was here, relentlessly at her side, for personal reasons.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_49d19236-4e65-5313-aeea-4f5f9a4665f7)

‘WHOSE idea was it that you should live here?’ Luke asked as he and Maria stepped out of another lift, this one mercifully crowded, on their return to her apartment.

‘Oh, obviously it has to be something Florian and I arranged between us, doesn’t it?’ Maria retorted sar-castically. ‘Naturally, being the sort of people we are, we felt no compunction about making use of Nicky, letting her sweet-talk the letting agent…Why haven’t you warned her about me, by the way?’

Her mind was preoccupied with a moment just several seconds in the future. Luke had brought her home as he had intended. It had been impossible to thwart him under the glare of media attention back at the restaurant, and she was still trying to decide how to deal with the situation if he wanted to come in with her when they reached her apartment—and she knew he would want to. That was what this was all about.

‘Oh, I’m not worrying about Nicky,’ Luke dismissed the challenge amusedly. ‘She’s tough, she knows how to look after herself and her interests. In fact, the two of you have a lot in common. You’ve both followed international careers, acquiring a cosmopolitan patina, you’ve both been involved with the same man…Have you compared notes yet? And I suspect that you’re as resilient in your own way as she is, so things could get interesting when she does realise that you’re out to steal her man.’

‘I am not out to steal her man!’ Maria snapped automatically.

Her steps had slowed, as if in sympathy with her mind’s reluctance to confront the looming moment.

Dear God, was this anticipation or apprehension, and why should she feel either? She had turned other men—men she didn’t hate—away at her door before now without going through all this prior angst, meeting the moment with the tact or firmness it required when it came, but not before.

‘You’re planning to share him?’ Luke probed derisively. ‘The way you did with his wife? Were you equally friendly with her?’

‘Rachel was one of my best friends from school.’ It was almost a relief to be being attacked on this particular issue, because there were other far more personal ones to be dreaded. ‘I actually introduced her to Florian.’

He threw her a sardonic glance. To your eternal regret?’

‘Yes!’ Maria said vehemently, her thoughts flying briefly to Rachel, for whom marriage was a trap in a way it could never be for Florian.

‘Why, when her existence never stopped you?’ he mocked.

‘My affair with Florian, since that’s what you choose to believe, has nothing to do with you—past or present—but why isn’t it stopping you?’ she demanded.

‘Ah, one rule for yourself, another for everyone else?’ Luke was still taunting, but naked hostility blazed in his eyes momentarily.

But they had come to the door of her apartment and the moment was here and now, impossible to delay.

She shot him an eloquent little smile and said decisively, ‘Goodnight.’

Humour gleamed in the dark grey eyes as he understood her. ‘Not yet, Maria.’

‘Right now, Luke,’ she retorted smartly, determined not to reveal her apprehension.

‘Why?’

‘Entertaining the proprietor wasn’t part of the job description,’ she offered, her tone creamy as she nerved herself to continue the debate if necessary.

‘Even if it’s the job I want to discuss with you?’

‘It’s not, though, is it?’ Of that, at least, she was confident.

Luke laughed. ‘No, as always, this is personal.’

‘Then goodnight again,’ she responded evenly as she inserted her key in the lock.

‘Why?’ he enquired idly once more.

Maria drew a breath and smiled resolutely. ‘Because even if my personal feelings were a whole lot warmer than hatred, I hardly know you.’

‘There’s nothing cold about your particular brand of hatred,’ he contradicted her. ‘It’s a passion.’

‘Then it’s the only sort of passion you’ll ever get from me!’

It was too confrontational, she realised as soon as she had said it, seeing something spark in his eyes, the instinctive, age-old masculine response to the sort of rejection men would always interpret as a challenge.

Then he disconcerted her by laughing again, but the sound was laced with a derision she found intolerable.

‘Does the occasion really merit the heavy dramatics? What do you imagine I’m planning to do? Seduce you tonight? As you say, we hardly know each other.’ He paused, allowing her to assimilate it before adding, ‘Having waited six years, I can probably wait a little longer. It’s almost a habit.’

The outrageous claim squashed incipient embarrassment, and in her distraction Maria allowed him to push her gently aside and take command of her key, turning it swiftly. They were inside her apartment, Luke already closing the door again, before she found her voice.

‘Six years? I don’t believe you! You haven’t been waiting six years, Luke.’ The disbelieving protest was almost indignant. ‘You couldn’t have!’

‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ All humour had vanished as he turned to face her, dropping her key on to the stand beside the door, his features stamped with hostility. ‘And yet it’s true. That’s what you owe me, Maria. Six years—six years in which I’ve never quite succeeded in getting you out of my mind.’

‘It’s not true!’

Panicked, she didn’t want it to be true, because if it was, it increased the threat he constituted a thousandfold.

‘Why are you so incredulous? You must be used to the way men react to you. There can’t be a man alive who sees you and doesn’t want to take you to bed, who doesn’t wonder what you’re like, although some might be able to resist the temptation to try and find out once they realise what you are. I thought I could.’ Luke’s lips twisted. ‘Is that why you’re so sceptical, Maria? Because I didn’t act, didn’t come looking for you again? I’d have despised myself. I despised myself anyway, haunted by things as superficial as a way of moving, a combination of colour and shape, an asymmetrical smile, the chance attributes of someone who holds herself so cheap she’ll squander herself on a man as truly valueless as Florian Jones, and ignore both his marriage and his other affairs. No, I wasn’t going to come after someone like you.’

‘Then what are you doing here now?’ Maria flared, the insults having begun to register humiliatingly, boring hotly into her.

Luke wore an expression of distaste, like a mask, so hard was its set.

‘Bending with the wind that brought you to me,’ he quipped, the humour harsh and followed by a shrug. ‘When Estwick passed on the fact that Jones had mentioned you as a possible candidate for this job and your previous experience confirmed that you were amply qualified to do it, I thought—what the hell! Chance, fate or whatever you want to call it was offering me the opportunity to finally get you out of my system. It would be worth it, if it put an end to such irritations as the inconvenient way I’d suddenly find myself visualising you when I was with other women…So here we are, and that’s