His Most Exquisite Conquest: A Delicious Deception / The Girl He'd Overlooked / Stepping out of the Shadows

But then again, perhaps his main reason for coming back from New York was to suss her out, Rayne reflected disparagingly. After all, he’d already been forewarned that she was there. And as for the flowers? Well, he wanted to get her into bed, didn’t he? And there could be other reasons for wanting to help people less fortunate than oneself. Like the publicity, for starters.

With his influence and money he could easily afford to help fund an irrigation programme for people in Africa. And it wouldn’t do his company’s image any harm at all to have favourable deeds associated with the Clayborne name.

And now she was being as cynical as he was, she thought, in willing herself to believe those things about him when, had she not known him better, and particularly after what Hélène had told her, she would have said he was a man of principle—a man who wouldn’t stoop to stealing another man’s intellectual property and helping to ruin his life.

But he had, she thought bitterly, standing there at the foot of the stairs and closing her eyes against the truth. That Kingsley Clayborne, the man who had broken her heart as a teenager and who now had her craving his attentions with every weak, betraying cell in her body, just wasn’t the man she wanted him to be.

Half an hour later, Mitch still hadn’t put in an appearance and King was still tied up with his visitor on the terrace.

Coming downstairs again into the deserted opulence of the sitting room, Rayne could still hear their muted voices drifting in from the sun-soaked terrace. The male interviewer’s tones were rather even and uninteresting in contrast to the deeper, richer modulations of King’s.

How could any woman not find herself drawn to him and in the most fundamental way? Rayne wondered, listening to him. When everything about him was unadulterated perfection? The way he looked, the way he conducted himself, the way he dressed. That sexy yet authoritative voice that had the power to make every woman he spoke to go weak at the knees.

Then there were the other traits of his personality, too. Determination and drive and that restless energy about him that made up the whole man, and amounted to a pretty formidable package which made him impossible to ignore.

In fact it gave her goosebumps all over her body, just as it was doing now. Goosebumps and a multitude of nervous flutters in her stomach from the thought of what she had to do and the consequences of what telling him the truth might be.

Hearing the scrape of chairs on the terrace, accompanied by phrases that warned her that the interview was drawing to a close, suddenly Rayne lost her nerve. Wasn’t it Mitch she should be confronting first anyway?

She had almost reached the stairs when she caught the sound of the men’s footsteps across the tiled floor and she quickened her own, keen to get away before they reached the hall.

‘Oh, Rayne …’ Too late, the honeyed resonance of King’s voice drifted towards her, lifting the hairs at the nape of her neck, exposed by her loosely piled-up hair. ‘Have you seen Hélène?’

‘Not for some time,’ she said shakily, turning round, her breath locking from the impact of his dark-suited executive image, from his poised elegance and commanding stature.

Why was it that other men seemed to diminish beside him? she wondered with painful awareness. She had only a fleeting impression of his younger, shorter companion because her gaze was held—against her will, it seemed—by the steel-blue snare of King’s.

Beneath her simple white top and jeans, her body pulsed from the pull of his powerful magnetism and it wasn’t until he broke the contact to say something to his tawny-haired visitor that Rayne, remembering her manners, turned to speak to the man.

As she did so, her greeting, like her smile, died on her lips and Rayne could feel her blood starting to run cold.

‘What are you doing here?’ the interviewer asked.

‘Do you two know each other?’ King enquired with a rather quizzical expression.

Rayne wanted to deny it, her mind chaotically processing what the chances were of the journalist who’d come to interview King being someone from her past. And not just someone. But Nelson Faraday!

‘We worked together,’ she admitted when she could wrench her tongue from the roof of her mouth, hoping against hope that the slick-talking journalist wouldn’t give her away, not before she’d had the chance to do it herself.

‘In what capacity?’ King asked, still wearing that interested smile, but behind the urbane veneer Rayne could sense every sharp instinct honing in like a stalking tiger’s.

‘I was the office junior,’ Rayne put in quickly. ‘When I started, Nelson here was already destined for greater things.’ So great that she’d packed him up after only a couple of evenings out with him because she hadn’t liked his cut-throat methods of reporting. But this man knew more about her than was comfortable. In fact, it was downright mortifying, Rayne thought, in view of where she was and who she was with.

‘You’re too modest,’ her ex-colleague told her, much to Rayne’s overriding dread and dismay, because it was clear the man had picked up on her reluctance to talk. She could tell he was assessing what she might be doing in this billionaire’s pad and, from the way his eyes took in both her and King, knew that his mind was already working overtime. ‘She might have been the office junior when she started out on that provincial little rag, but everyone could see she had the nose of a bloodhound and that once she’d got going there’d be no one to touch Lorrayne Hardwicke for sniffing out a scoop.’

It was clear Nelson Faraday was still holding a grudge, Rayne realised, horrified, her eyes darting guardedly towards King.

There was tension in his jaw and in the sudden granitelike mask of his features. His cheekbones seemed to stand out prominently beneath the olive of his skin.

‘Oh, dear …’ The other man was putting up a good show of looking shamefaced, because he couldn’t have failed to notice the atmosphere that had grown cold enough to freeze the heat of the Mediterranean day. ‘Did I say something I shouldn’t have?’ he remarked with an award-winning performance of mock innocence.

‘No, of course not,’ Rayne put in quickly, wise to Nelson Faraday’s tactics and to what he must be thinking. That she was either romantically involved with Clayborne’s dynamic helmsman or she was there to dig up some dirt on the family. Which was too close to the truth, she thought, with her heart frantically pumping.

‘You certainly didn’t,’ King remarked with a pasted-on smile, the cynicism with which he said it making Rayne shiver.

‘Well, it’s lovely seeing you again, Lorrayne.’ The younger man was backing away, his eyes suddenly wary beneath the implacable steel of King’s. ‘I’ll forward a copy of the article to you, sir.’ Nelson was lapsing into total deference, as he always had with his most prized interviewees, and King Clayborne had to be among his most prized of all.

‘You do that.’ King’s tone was clipped, lethally low.

His anger was roused and she was about to bear the brunt of it, Rayne realised, knowing she deserved no less. Knowing she should have told him—told them both—from the start.

Like a coward, though, as soon as the other man had left, she started towards the stairs, wanting to get away from King until he had calmed down.

‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ Strong fingers suddenly clamped onto her wrist, preventing her precipitous flight up the stairs. ‘So you’re Lorri Hardwicke. Well, well.’

‘Let me go!’ She could feel his white hot anger pulsing against her as those determined fingers tightened relentlessly around her soft flesh. ‘I was going to tell you! Both of you!’ she gasped as he pulled her towards him.

‘You were? Well, that’s very magnanimous of you!’ he scorned. ‘And when exactly were you going to do that? When you’d got your “scoop”, or whatever it is you’re after? What exactly is it you’re after, Rayne?’ His face was livid, his voice so dangerously soft that with one fearful yet furious yank she managed to pull free.

‘What was rightfully my father’s!’ she shot up at him, massaging her wrist, numb from the pressure he’d applied.

‘And what is that?’ he breathed equally softly, every long lean inch of him powerfully intimidating, like a dangerous adversary she’d been unfortunate to cross. Well, he wasn’t going to intimidate her!

‘You know very well!’ There were family loyalties at stake here. ‘You stole that software from him! You and Mitch! You knew MiracleMed was his and you stole it!’

‘And you, my dear young woman, have been very much misinformed if you think you can make a serious allegation like that.’

‘I haven’t been misinformed! I know the hours he put in—at home, as well as in the office. And don’t speak to me like that. I don’t need to be patronized by you!’

‘Just the pleasure I can give that beautiful body when it suits you.’

‘No!’ Shame washed over her like scalding water.

‘Don’t deny it, Rayne. You’re as enslaved by your desire for me as I am for you. Or was that all part of the act?’ he tossed at her roughly.

‘No!’ What could she say? How on earth had they got on to this? ‘That … that just happened,’ she stammered, stepping back as he moved nearer, knowing that even now, if he touched her, she would have no defence or resistance against his particular brand of humiliation. And it would be humiliation. He’d make certain of that.

‘I’ll bet it did! And I’ll bet you’ve been laughing all the way to the bank in thinking I was so taken in.’

‘You were never taken in.’

‘Maybe not. But Mitch was. So what is it you want?’ he demanded. ‘Money?’

‘That’s the only thing that matters to people like you, isn’t it?’ She was near to tears, but tears of anger and frustration which had been bottled up for so long. ‘Well, it might surprise you to know that some of us put honour and respect before making ourselves rich at other people’s expense.’

‘Really?’ A masculine eyebrow arched in obvious derision. ‘There didn’t seem to be much honour and respect in the way you engineered your scheming little way into this house. Those thieves didn’t take your passport, did they, Rayne?’

His question, so direct and demanding, seemed to suck the air right out of her body. King Clayborne might be a lot of things, but a fool wasn’t one of them.