Prince Of Darkness

‘As I said before—you have an extremely fertile imagination,’ said Rosanne hoarsely. She had been here scant hours, she thought dazedly, and already she had been subjected to far more than she had ever dreamed she could take—and the vast majority of it from someone she had never even considered as a potential threat.

‘Ah, so you deny you feel the world owes you something, do you?’ he challenged softly.

‘Why on earth do you think I feel that?’ she protested, aghast.

‘Because it’s written all over you,’ he replied. ‘And I must say I find the idea of your becoming an embittered, shrivelled-up harridan most disturbing,’ he added, placing his hands on her shoulders and drawing her towards him with a casual ease that stunned her into immobility.

‘You do?’ she croaked dazedly.

‘Oh, I most certainly do, darling,’ he chuckled, his hands sliding lightly down her arms. ‘That’s why I feel almost duty-bound to light that fire just begging to be lit inside you—and to do so before it’s too late.’

‘You mean before I become that shrivelled-up harridan you’re so worried I’ll turn into?’ asked Rosanne, the scepticism she had intended not manifesting itself the least satisfactorily in her tone. He was being outrageous and they both knew it, but she desperately hoped that the disturbingly sensuous effect that his nearness and the teasing lightness of his touch were having on her was something of which she alone was aware.

‘I was right—you do have a brain,’ he murmured with an exaggerated sigh of contentment, then suddenly pulled her against the length of him.

‘Well, you can’t have much of a brain if you think I’m going to fall for a line as blatant as that,’ she said, but her intended laugh deteriorated into a choked gasp as she quickly turned her head to avoid the confidently smiling mouth descending towards hers.

‘You’d be surprised, the number of women who respond to that sort of drivel,’ he murmured unabashedly, his lips sending disconcertingly sharp shocks of pleasure through her as they played against her cheek. ‘And frankly, if I were a woman, I’d be inclined to use my fists on the likes of me,’ he added with a chuckle, while his arms slid slowly around her.

‘A thought something along those lines had just crossed my mind,’ said Rosanne, appalled to hear breathless excitement instead of dismissive lightness in her tone. She was almost immediately distracted from that problem by yet another—the fact not so much that his mouth seemed to be making rapid progress towards hers, but that her every instinct now was to turn her head that fraction that would unite their mouths.

‘You know, that’s the second time today that a woman has had me quaking in my breeches,’ he chuckled, his lips now nuzzling against hers with such electrifying effect that Rosanne was incapable of even considering whether or not she had accommodatingly moved her head. ‘Oh, hell, that reminds me,’ he sighed—a sigh that mingled their breaths in a way Rosanne was finding every bit as inflammatory as a full-blown kiss. ‘Hester will skin me alive if I don’t obey her orders.’

His abrupt release of her came so unexpectedly that for a moment he had to put out a hand to steady her.

There was a half-smile playing against his lips as he gazed down at her.

‘Well, at least we got that problem sorted out,’ he murmured. ‘So now I’d better lead you to the great man’s study.’

He turned and began strolling across the room.

‘And what exactly was that problem we’ve allegedly just sorted out?’ Rosanne called after him, a strange lightness—almost a feeling of frivolity—dancing through her.

He paused mid-stride, then spoke without turning. ‘As you didn’t use your fists on me this time—I’ll not insult your intelligence the next time.’

The teasing softness of his laughter sent a shiver through her, a shiver that was anticipatory, yet almost as pleasurable as those she had experienced so sharply in those brief moments in his arms.

She was smiling as she began walking after him. Damian Sheridan as an enemy was a frighteningly daunting prospect, whereas Damian Sheridan in romantic pursuit of her...

His steps slowed as he reached the door, then he turned. The eyes that swept her from head to toe as she walked towards him were predatory eyes, dark with the promise of desires in which romance would play no part.

And the shiver that rippled through her, as he turned once again, was one suddenly filled with foreboding.

CHAPTER THREE

ROSANNE watched Damian as he read her day’s notes, the unpalatable truth striking her that she actually looked forward to these daily meetings of theirs.

Perhaps its apparent preoccupation with Damian was her mind’s way of trying to bring a little respite to the constant pressure she was under, she reasoned half-heartedly, and once again found herself wondering how they might have got on had there not been that in-built wall of hostility between them. She knew the Irish were renowned for their way with words, yet Damian’s wit was razor-sharp and cutting and, despite so often finding herself on the receiving end of it, she still found it almost mesmerisingly attractive...just as she did the softly drawled inflexions of his speech. In fact, she found just about every aspect of Damian Sheridan disproportionately fascinating, she informed herself dejectedly, and gained little comfort from reminding herself how sorely in need of mental distraction she was—not only from unrelieved pressure, but from the fact that the actual work she was doing was boring beyond reason!

‘Riveting,’ drawled Damian, tossing the notes on to the desk and leaning back in the chair he had drawn up beside hers. ‘It’s a wonder you manage to keep awake, having to sift through all that dross. It’s hardly likely to leap into the bestsellers list once it’s published, now, is it?’

Rosanne flashed him an uncertain look, his words triggering off something that had been niggling at the back of her mind. Perhaps she should have rung Lawrence Hastings, her co-owner in Bryant Publishing and its managing director, she thought nervously, and asked for his opinion.

He being one of her grandfather’s oldest friends and, she had often suspected, one whom he had confided in totally, it was Lawrence who had overseen her having the training that had made it possible for her to do this job.

But her overall knowledge of publishing was minimal and it was, she suspected, simply her own ignorance causing her to feel as puzzled as she did by her professional dealings with Hester Cranleigh.

‘Don’t you think it’s about time you got around to spitting it out?’ demanded Damian sourly, his demeanour indicating, as it so often did, that he was here only reluctantly—an attitude Rosanne found infuriating, given that it was he who had insisted on such meetings.

‘To spitting what out?’ she asked coldly, her face tightening with the effort it took to control her anger.

‘Whatever it is you’re so laboriously turning over in your mind,’ he replied. ‘For one so inclined towards secrecy, you can be extraordinarily transparent at times.’

‘I’m not secretive,’ she denied hotly, then almost groaned aloud as she realised that during the past couple of weeks her fear of giving herself away must have made her seem almost paranoidly secretive.

‘How exactly do you see yourself, darling—as an open book?’ he murmured derisively. ‘Dinner after dinner, I’ve listened in awe to your masterly parrying of every single question Hester has put to you. In fact, I’m so nearly convinced you’ve something to hide that I’m toying with the idea of putting a private detective on you—just for the heck of it,’ he finished off casually.

Rosanne struggled to keep a grip on herself as she heard her own sharp intake of breath.

‘Feel free,’ she retorted with as much careless concern as she could muster. ‘Though it seems criminal to waste that sort of money merely to have it confirmed I’m a normal, humdrum sort of girl doing a job she enjoys and who happens to have a perfectly healthy penchant for privacy.’

‘Now that was a minefield of a statement, if ever I’ve heard one,’ he stated softly, his narrowed eyes coolly assessing. ‘Humdrum your life may be, but normal it most certainly isn’t, judging by what little Hester has managed to worm out of you in these past couple of weeks.’

Rosanne gritted her teeth in frustration with herself for having so rashly placed herself at the mercy of his incisive tongue.

‘In fact,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘that primly virginal picture you’ve managed to paint of yourself has put ideas into her head—if I’m not mistaken, she harbours the delusion we could be turned into an item.’

‘Into a what?’

‘Into a couple,’ he replied, eyeing her coldly. ‘Or rather into a billing and cooing couple of lovebirds— Hester’s constantly on the look-out for the girl of her dreams for me,’ he added morosely.

‘Forgive me if this sounds obtuse,’ said Rosanne, only just resisting a strong urge to pick up her keyboard and smash it over his head, ‘but your terribly subtle approach to me on the day I arrived led me to believe that you had every intention that we should become what you refer to as an item.’

‘Yes, but not the sort of item Hester has in mind,’ he replied, without so much as a flicker of embarrassment. ‘I’ve a nasty feeling she has Bridie standing sentry outside your bedroom door by night,’ he added with an exaggerated sigh.

‘Bridie?’ echoed Rosanne, having difficulty keeping her face straight.

‘She’d hardly entrust something like that to James, now, would she?’ he murmured innocently, while his eyes twinkled lasciviously.

‘I’m sure she wouldn’t,’ replied Rosanne. She really had to admire his gall, she thought weakly. He had made it quite plain that, whatever dreams Hester might have on his behalf, she herself didn’t feature in his own—yet now he was flirting with her! ‘Anyway, I thought Hester had plans for you and the slavishly adoring Nerissa,’ she added as an uncharacteristically demure afterthought.

‘You really are most unobservant, Ros,’ he sighed. ‘That threatened dinner invitation to the Blakes hasn’t materialised since you arrived on the scene—to my mind a most ominous development.’ He suddenly flashed her the most wicked of smiles. ‘You know how I live in terror of Hester—not to mention Bridie—and wouldn’t, therefore, dare lay so much as a finger on you without extreme provocation.’

‘Very wise,’ murmured Rosanne, more than a little surprised to find herself responding so easily in kind to this almost indolent flirtation in which he was indulging.

‘So how about your sneaking along to my room tonight? I’m in sore need of a dose of slavish adoration.’

Rosanne managed to compose her face into a look of deep contemplation, then shook her head with a sigh of regret.