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

He shook away his errant fantasies, trying to pull himself together. It was probably because he hadn’t had a woman in his bed for some months, he decided, that his body was behaving like a rampant adolescent’s now. Still, he couldn’t deny that the prospect of stripping this unsuspecting little gold-digger bare—and in more ways than one—excited him immensely.

The café to which he took her was situated in a pedestrian thoroughfare, paved in the same peach and cream tones as the buildings which flanked it. Baskets of flowers—red and purple and pink—decorated ornamental street lamps, while luxuriant foliage grew in abundance outside the shops and cafés. There were orange trees, Rayne recognised, growing beneath the artistically wrought balconies of the buildings, whose pastel-coloured shutters and breath-catching architecture were a testament to human creativity, in contrast to the awesome cliffs that formed a mighty backdrop behind the buildings that stood at the head of the elegant avenue.

‘Here we are,’ King invited, pulling out a chair for her, the smile he gave her appreciative of her wonderment in spite of what he had been thinking about her earlier.

A little later, drinking coffee with home-baked rolls spread thickly with locally made jam, Rayne was relieved when King’s conversation touched only on things like the area and the recent airways strike. Safe, casual topics, she decided gratefully, until he suddenly enquired, ‘Do you usually take your holidays alone?’

Instantly she tensed up. That almost criticising note was back in his voice and now that he’d brought the conversation back to a personal level, she had to remind herself to be on her guard.

She thought of Matt Cotton, whom she’d been seeing on a purely platonic level for a year or so before they had parted six months ago. He’d been the only man she had ever considered getting serious with—serious enough to go on holiday with, at any rate. But after their relationship had moved up a notch, the first weekend she had slept with him when they had gone away together, she’d been so disillusioned by his suggestion that they move in together ‘to see how it goes’ that it had come as quite a shock to her to realise that she wanted more than Matt was offering. What she wanted was the sort of relationship that her parents had enjoyed. A lifelong commitment inspired by love and trust and respect for each other—and she intended to settle for nothing less.

Considering King’s question now about taking her holidays alone, and feeling that she was still on the end of a subtle line of interrogation, she enquired pointedly, ‘Would you have asked me that if I were a man?’

The arching of an eyebrow as those compellingly blue eyes tugged over her assured her that she was anything but.

‘If you were my woman, I wouldn’t be happy with you roaming around a strange country on your own.’

‘But I’m not your woman, am I?’ Bright emeralds fastened on steel as she met his gaze, reminded by the raw sensuality with which he was looking at her of how much she had once longed to be just that. The woman he drove home, undressed and adored in long, exotic nights of pleasure, while she writhed on his bed, allowing his lips and hands licence to every hidden treasure of her body.

Shockingly her breasts burgeoned into life without any warning, their weight heavy and aching, their tips excruciatingly tender against the full cups of her bra.

Surely she didn’t still want him in that way? Not now. Not after the way he had supported Mitch in treating her father as he had, when all he had been trying to do was claim what was rightfully his.

‘That’s right—you’re not,’ he stated, causing her to flinch from the way he managed to make it sound as though she was the last person he’d ever consider taking to bed. Which was ludicrous! When she would have rejected any overtures from him with every fighting cell in her body! ‘And you haven’t answered my question—which wasn’t intended with any lack of political correctness or offence to your femininity. Do you usually take your holidays alone?’

Fighting off a barrage of conflicting emotions, she shrugged and answered, ‘No, not usually. But as I told you last night, my mother’s been ill.’ Very ill, she appended silently, thinking of the operation and the treatment that Cynthia Hardwicke had had to go through during the past year. ‘There hasn’t been much time for holidays. But when her old school-friend invited her over to her villa, I realised I was on my knees from all the months of worry and that I was desperate for a holiday too. I’m ashamed to say it, but I think it hit me even harder than it hit Mum,’ she found herself admitting to him. ‘You can’t possibly imagine the unbelievable strain it can put you under when something like that happens to someone you love.’

A dark shadow seemed to cross his features. ‘Oh, believe me, I can,’ he assured her grimly.

She frowned, and then almost immediately realised. Of course. He was talking about his father.

‘What happened to Mitch?’ she enquired unnecessarily, because she remembered her parents telling her in the past. But a stranger wouldn’t know, would she? Rayne reminded herself. And that was what she was as far as King Clayborne was concerned. A stranger.

‘A road accident,’ he said, and his words were hard and clipped. ‘It deprived him of his mobility—and of his wife.’ Your stepmother, she nearly said, but didn’t. She wasn’t supposed to know, was she?

‘That’s dreadful,’ she empathised, because hearing it again—and so many years on—didn’t make it any less tragic. She couldn’t understand though why he sounded quite so … what? Bitter, she decided.

‘What about you?’ Putting down his cup, the inscrutable mask was firmly back in place again. ‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’

Rayne shook her head.

‘And your father?’

‘What about him?’ she enquired, sounding unintentionally defensive.

‘You haven’t mentioned him.’ The glance he shot her was a little too keen.

Rayne felt tension creep into her jaw. ‘He died—just over a year ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

No, you’re not, she thought acridly. But you will be! You and your father! I can promise you that!

Because she was certain that it was her parents’ financial difficulties following her father’s bankruptcy, and then the shock of his unexpected death from a heart attack that had made her mother ill. That was when she had vowed to right the wrong that the Claybornes had done to her family. After all Cynthia Hardwicke had been through, though, Rayne didn’t want to do anything to worry her. But with her mother having been persuaded to go off to Majorca, Rayne had been able to come away without too many awkward questions being asked.

‘So what do you do when you aren’t running around this country picking up strange men?’

She ignored the deliberate snipe. ‘I type a little.’

‘You type?’

‘Well, a lot, actually.’ Well, she did, didn’t she?

‘Are you saying you’re a PA?’

She chewed on the inside of her mouth, trying not to compound the lies. ‘No. I’m freelance.’

‘You work for an agency?’

She shook her head. ‘For myself.’

‘Typing.’

She didn’t know why he sounded so disparaging. ‘That takes up a fair proportion of my work.’ Which was true, she thought. It did. ‘What’s so strange about that?’

‘Only that you strike me as a woman who would have carved out a more determined career path for herself.’

Rayne was glad he couldn’t detect how her deception made her heart skip a beat. ‘I have.’ She saw the question in the heart-stopping clarity of his steel-blue eyes and letting her own slide away, told him trenchantly, ‘Seducing rich elderly men!’

His mouth twitched at the corners as though he were trying to assess the authenticity of her remark.

‘I think it’s time we left,’ he stated blandly.

The journey back was an uncomfortable one, not because of King’s driving, because he handled the Lamborghini like a dream. But since leaving the café he had barely said two words to her and now, motivated by the view from the ribbon of road that displayed the whole sweep of Monaco below them, Rayne tried to lighten the mood a little by remarking, ‘This scenery’s unbelievable. So is this weather! Was it as lovely as this in New York?’

‘Who said I was in New York?’

Mistake! Rayne admonished herself, feeling those perspicacious eyes roving over her like a hawk’s, waiting for her to show any weakness; waiting to pounce.

She shrugged and said as nonchalantly as she could, ‘Mitch.’ She could hardly tell King that she’d run a check on him before she’d been stupid enough to come here. Because that was how she was beginning to feel, she realised, despairing at herself. Utterly, utterly stupid!

Consoling herself with the thought that she was worrying unnecessarily and that it was only her jumpiness and her overreacting that was creating suspicion in his mind, she ventured to say carelessly, even though it was a lie, ‘He led me to believe you were over there on some business or other.’

‘Did he now?’

She saw his hands tighten on the wheel, the knuckles whitening above those long dark fingers. But surely Mitch would have known where he was, wouldn’t he? She swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling dry.

‘Do you come and see him often?’