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

‘No,’ she answered, inhaling again. ‘It was in the glove compartment of the car with my driving licence.’

‘And your credit cards? Where have they been while Mitch and I have been financing your every requirement? Your meals. Trips into town. The flowers for your poor ailing mother?’

The disparaging way he referred to Cynthia Hardwicke sent anger coursing through Rayne in red-hot shafts.

‘My mother has been sick! Very sick!’ she retorted fiercely. ‘And don’t you ever dare to refer to her illness like that again! And my credit cards were stolen! They took my bag. My traveller’s cheques. All my money. Everything! It was only when Mitch jumped to the conclusion that I’d lost my passport as well and invited me back here that … well … that I let him think so. I felt he owed it to me. Or to Dad at least.’ And it was her father who had said that windows of opportunity didn’t just open on their own—that you had to create them. ‘I needed to talk to him but I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and it just seemed like the perfect chance I’d been waiting for.’

‘I’ll bet it did! So what have you been hoping to gain out of all this if, as you say, you’re far too honourable to contemplate blackmailing him with the threat of selling some cracked-up story to the papers? Are you in league with this Faraday character? Is that it? Was that why he turned up here so coincidentally today?’

‘That was only coincidence,’ she retorted with bright wings of colour staining her cheeks. ‘And I wasn’t going to blackmail Mitch. I was hoping—if I could talk to him—let him know who I was and what my father went through—that it might prick his conscience in some way. That I might be able to appeal to his better nature.’ Hotly then, she couldn’t help adding, ‘I didn’t imagine for one moment I could ever appeal to yours!’

‘So why didn’t you tell him who you were? Right away? The day you got here?’ he interrogated, ignoring her last derogatory remark about himself. ‘Or was the prospect of sharing a house with such a newsworthy name too much for your journalistic instinct to pass up?’

‘I didn’t because he seemed so shaken up after those lads had taken his wheel,’ she answered, ignoring him in turn, even though she was railing inside at his high-and-mighty attitude, ‘I didn’t want to do or say anything that might have upset him even more. And the day after that he still wasn’t well.’ And then you arrived, she remembered with her mouth firming in rebellion, although she didn’t tell him that. Didn’t let on that she feared and regarded him with far more respect than she feared and regarded his father, not least because of the frightening strength of her attraction to him. ‘And then when Hélène said he had a heart problem and high blood pressure …’ Her shoulder lifted in a kind of hopeless gesture. ‘I didn’t want to be responsible for making him ill.’

A thick eyebrow was lifting again in patent scepticism. ‘Do I detect a conscience, Rayne? Surely not! And you’ll have to excuse me,’ he tagged on, with no hint of apology in his voice. ‘It’s Lorri, isn’t it? But then it’s difficult keeping up with the change of identity.’

‘It isn’t a change of identity. Rayne Carpenter’s the name I write under,’ she said, admitting it now.

‘Why? So that your victims won’t know who you are when they read the sensationalist dirt you’ve managed to dredge up about them?’

‘I don’t write that sort of news story.’ Chance would have been a fine thing! She had never got beyond covering house-fires started from flaming chip pans and local demonstrations about library closures, whatever Nelson Faraday had led him to believe. ‘I only write the truth.’

‘Or your warped version of it.’

‘Is it warped to expect some credit for my father’s work? I’m not after any personal or financial gain, whatever you may think.’

‘No. Just making strong allegations about a man who isn’t well enough to defend himself. Well, I’ll defend him, Lorri. And you’ll find I’m not half so weak—or so smitten—as my father is. Grant Hardwicke did a lot of the work on MiracleMed. I believe I’m right in saying that. But he did it under a corporate umbrella.’

‘Which was what you told him the night you came round and threatened him!’ she reminded him. ‘And just for wanting recognition for what was rightfully his! He created that software long before he ever joined forces with Mitch. He just didn’t have the resources to launch it. He was honest and hardworking and never cheated or lied to anyone in his entire life. And you made him ill,’ she uttered, aggrieved, and with such painful emotion in her voice it was difficult to breathe. ‘You and Mitch! He might still have been alive today if you hadn’t!’

Though she was saying it, some small part of her acknowledged that it wasn’t strictly true. That there were other events that had contributed to the strain her father had been under. Like his bouts of drinking that had only made their family life harder. And the way he’d seemed to lose the will to do anything—even look for a job towards the end—which had only added to his increasing sense of worthlessness.

‘I admire your loyalty to your father,’ King surprised her by expressing. ‘But I didn’t see him as quite the paragon of virtue you obviously did. We’re all human, dearest, and Grant Hardwicke could be as opportunistic and self-motivated as the next man.’

‘That’s a lie!’

‘Is it?’ King’s mouth was a tight, inexorable line. Looking back, he still couldn’t believe the man’s crocodile tears when he’d told him about Mitch’s accident. But then he hadn’t been crying for Mitch—his closest friend and colleague. All he’d been concerned about was his own personal losses and all he might have stood to lose if his accusations of theft had ever been brought to the public’s notice. ‘Far be it from me to want to hurt you, but I can be every bit as ruthless as you’re accusing me of being if—’

He broke off abruptly as a flushed-faced Hélène suddenly came rushing down the stairs towards them, her features looking pinched within their frame of greying bobbed hair. ‘Oh, monsieur! You had better come quickly. It’s Monsieur Clayborne!’ Her hand went to her chest. ‘He has the pain …’

King was springing away from them without any further prompting, taking the open staircase two steps at a time.

He was already at his father’s bedside when Rayne raced up to Mitch’s room with the housekeeper close behind her. One look at the elderly man who was sitting on the edge of the bed, still only half-dressed, revealed that he was in extreme pain.

‘Call an ambulance!’ King directed urgently towards Hélène.

While the housekeeper was summoning help on the bedroom telephone, Rayne hurried over to the bed.

Oh, please! she prayed. Let him be all right! Don’t let it be my fault that this has happened!

‘He needs to lie back,’ she instructed, sensing that this was one occasion when King needed someone’s help and advice, with all her basic first aid training rushing to the fore. And when he looked at her questioningly, ‘It’s all right. I know what I’m doing,’ she assured him, suggesting how he could help, already plumping pillows and generally helping to make his father as comfortable as she could. Now wasn’t the time to tell him how she had taken a first aid course after her father had died, when she’d read how anyone could make a difference in a medical emergency.

Glad that at least she hadn’t contributed to this situation by actually telling Mitch who she really was, she watched King through eyes suddenly blurry with relief, gently easing his father back against the pillows, catching his deep, low murmurs of reassurance—despite his own concern—as he tried to put the older man’s mind at rest.

Oh, to have him speak to her with that depth of emotion! She felt a surge of longing that was quite out of place in the current situation, or within the bounds of anything approaching logic. Why did she want anything more from him other than—as he’d pointed out to her downstairs—the pleasure her body craved from him? Surely she wasn’t allowing herself to think of him in any capacity beyond that? Because if she were, she warned herself harshly, then she was being a total fool.

The ambulance didn’t take long to arrive.

‘Can I come with you?’ Rayne appealed to King, hot on his heels as he flew down the stairs while the medical team were bringing Mitch down in the lift.

‘You?’ he emphasised, his expression a contrary mix of surprise and blinding objection. She had been quick to help his father, King thought. And she looked concerned. Genuinely upset. But with a woman—particularly this woman—who could tell? ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he told her succinctly, leaving her staring after his dark retreating figure and feeling as though she had been slapped in the face.

‘What is it, King?’ Mitchell Clayborne was staring at his son’s broad back as King in turn stood staring out of the window of the private clinic. ‘God knows I haven’t been the best of fathers, but I would have thought the news that I’m not going to be consigned to the history books just yet would have made you a bit happier than you seem.’

Sighing heavily, King dragged himself away from an absent study of the clear evening sky, his mouth pulling down on one side at his father’s dry remark. Mitch certainly sounded better, and his breathing was easier than it had been a few hours ago, but he had no intention of causing the man any undue distress.

‘It’s nothing that can’t wait,’ he answered.

‘And it’s nothing that I’m not man enough to take—even wired up like a puppeteer’s blasted dummy! Tell me.’

It was clear to King that the man would be more likely to die of a heart attack from being kept in suspense rather than from being told the truth.

‘It’s about Rayne,’ he breathed, the air seeming to shiver through his nostrils.

‘What about her?’ Mitch brought his head off the mountain of pillows, suddenly looking alarmed. ‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’

King nodded. He couldn’t believe how fond of her his father had become.

‘What, then?’ Mitch demanded with considerably less than his usual strength.

King hesitated, but only briefly. ‘She’s Lorri Hardwicke,’ he stated, drawing another deep breath.

Mitch stared at him for a long worrying moment before closing his eyes.

‘Shouldn’t I have realised it!’ he exclaimed somewhat breathlessly at length, with an unusual tremor in his gravelly voice.

‘Do you know why she’s here?’

‘I think I can guess,’ Mitch returned. ‘But tell me anyway.’

‘She’s saying what Grant said all those years ago. That Claybornes took the credit for MiracleMed when it really belonged to him. In short, she’s accusing us—but you in particular—of, at best, gross professional misconduct and, at worst, outright theft.’

Had he gone too far? King wondered anxiously, wanting to kick himself for telling him when he saw the pain that darkened Mitch’s eyes and heard the way his breathing had suddenly became more laboured.

‘She’s right, King.’

‘What?’ Above the sound of footsteps hurrying along the corridor outside and the intermittent bleep of Mitch’s monitoring machine, King’s response was one of almost inaudible shock.