A Seductive Revenge

‘We haven’t—yet—that’s why I’m following her,’ Josh explained patiently.

Alec suddenly had a cold premonition in the pit of his belly. ‘What are you going to do when you do meet her?’ he enquired, suddenly fearful of the reply.

On several occasions Flora Graham had had the opportunity to publicly condemn her father but she’d steadfastly refused to do so. Josh could still hear the beautifully modulated voice, which fairly shrieked of privilege, defending her parent as she’d responded with clinical precision to her public interrogations; his smile deepened. The father might be out of circulation, having chosen to spend time in a rehabilitation centre rather than serve an equally derisory prison sentence, but the daughter was still around, and, according to his sources, about to leave town.

The drug-dealing doctor whom weeks before the tabloids had hated had suddenly, with the typical fickleness of the popular press, become a pitiful figure, a victim, who’d harmed nobody but himself and had actually acted honourably when it had counted. It was the final straw! Normally Josh was extremely tolerant of weaknesses—at least in others—but this case was a notable exception.

The heavy eyelids drooped over his silver-shot eyes. ‘The details are a bit hazy as yet, but making her deeply unhappy is the general theme I’m aiming for.’ And if that meant sleeping with her, so be it.

It was over an hour after she’d left the motorway before Flora knew for sure she was being followed—as scummy rats went, this one was quite efficient. She glared at the image of the red coupé in the rear-view mirror and something inside snapped. The voracious media had made her life a misery for the past months…wasn’t it enough that she was reduced to sneaking out of town like some sort of criminal?

Enough was definitely enough! She braked sharply as the lay-by, half hidden from the winding road by a copse of trees, came into view. She wasn’t exactly overcome with surprise when the flashy red car, its wheels sending up a flurry of loose chippings, pulled in a little way in front of her.

Knuckles white on the steering wheel, she took a deep, steadying breath—it was about time she stopped acting like a victim and gave them a taste of their own medicine! To hell with reticence and diplomacy! Her heels beat out a sharp tattoo as she marched purposefully towards the car. She made no attempt to confront the driver, instead she knelt beside the rear wheel and, after a moment’s adjustment, heard the satisfying hiss of air escaping from the tyre.

Revenge might just have something to recommend it, she decided with a smile. She was rubbing her hands together in satisfaction when the driver of the vehicle emerged.

‘What the hell?’

She recognised the thickset figure as one of the most persistent amongst the pack of journalists who had camped on her doorstep for days on end. It was the sheer incredulity in his face as he stared at the slowly deflating tyre that made Flora laugh, though in retrospect she swiftly acknowledged that the laugh probably hadn’t been such a good idea—he was a big man and in a very ugly mood.

Why hadn’t she sensibly driven to the nearest police station to get rid of her unwanted companion? What she’d been too angry to take into account earlier now struck her with sickening force—this was a very lonely road in a fairly remote area. At that moment, as if to emphasise the sinister implications of the situation, the wind gave an extra strong gust causing the tall trees to whisper menacingly overhead. She could almost hear them snigger, Talk yourself out of this one, Flora.

‘You little cow!’ The driver seemed to have recovered from his catatonic state and he was walking slowly towards her.

Flora found her feet stupidly wouldn’t move from the spot as the big bulky figure approached her.

‘That’s criminal damage.’ The words sounded so much like those of a sulky, thwarted child that Flora’s moment of panic vanished.

‘So is going through someone’s dustbins,’ she corrected with some feeling, ‘and if it isn’t it should be! Take your hands off me!’ She gasped in outrage as the big ape wrapped one beefy paw around her forearm; his grip didn’t loosen when she pulled angrily away and the stylish felt cloche she wore on her head slipped over one eye.

He wasn’t going to hurt her, but it gave Tom Channing a sharp thrill of satisfaction to know that under that haughty façade Miss Ice Cool might be scared. All those weeks under the cruel light of public scrutiny and her composure hadn’t cracked—not even once! People in her situation were meant to feel out of control and vulnerable but somehow this stuck-up little cow managed to act as if she didn’t notice the flashing bulbs wherever she went—it just wasn’t natural!

To add insult to injury even her friends had turned out to be untraditionally tight-lipped and stubbornly loyal. They’d closed ranks and to a man had refused to dish the dirt! She’d grown to represent everything about her class he detested. In a brief moment of rare honesty he realised that the fact probably had a lot to do with his reluctance to let the story die a natural death even though public interest in the scandal had waned. This was a crusade of a deeply personal nature now.

‘What you going to do about it if I don’t, Miss Graham?’ he taunted, revelling in the heady feeling of being in control.

‘Is there a problem here?’

The man holding her turned around with a frustrated snarl on his face. If Flora had been looking at her stalker she might have appreciated the comical speed with which his combative glare became a weak, conciliatory grin. Only Flora wasn’t looking at him, she was looking—well, actually, to be strictly honest, which she tried at all times to be—she was staring. Staring at the owner of the rich deep voice, riveting long-lashed slate-grey eyes, and sinfully sexy mouth.

There was quite a lot of him to stare at—he must be six-four or six-five, she estimated, paying silent, stunned homage to the sheer perfection of this athletically built specimen. His shoulders wouldn’t have looked out of place competitively employed in an Olympic swimming pool and she could almost see those sprinter’s legs eating up the track…everything in between looked just about perfect too. He broadcast raw sex appeal on a frequency every female with a pulse would have picked up at fifty yards. On second thoughts, maybe there wasn’t a safe distance from this man!

Flora let out a tiny grunt of shock as her breath escaped gustily past her slightly parted lips. She wasn’t the sort of girl who made a habit of mentally undressing men, especially a married man as this one obviously was—the cute little boy beside him was too much of a carbon copy not to be his son, and then there was the little matter of the wide gold band on his left hand!

Fantasising about married men was not a pastime Flora indulged in—in fact, considering that she’d been very publicly dumped by her ever-loving fiancé, she ought not to be capable of anything so frivolous! I’m probably just a disgustingly shallow person, she concluded, reviewing her worryingly resilient heart critically.

‘Just a little misunderstanding…’ Her stalker saw the direction of those narrowed grey eyes and his hand dropped self-consciously away from Flora’s arm. Although the tall guy was smiling—the curve of his mouth didn’t soften those chiselled features or spookily pale eyes an iota—and he had a grubby-faced toddler glued to his leg, didn’t lessen the fact he looked a dangerously tough customer. There was something vaguely familiar about him too…

Flora fastidiously gave a disbelieving snort and flicked her fingers against the invisibly soiled area of her sleeve. Angrily she straightened the drunken angle of her hat. Next he’d be saying he’d accidentally followed her.

She bit back the scathing retort on the tip of her tongue—once you started acting spontaneously it was hard to stop—and summoned a tight smile. More detailed explanations would inevitably mean the handsome stranger getting a potted version of the whole sordid saga. It struck her as perverse that she suddenly felt so squeamish about such a small-scale exposure after what she’d managed to survive.

‘I might take issue with the “little”—’ her deep blue eyes swept scornfully over the persistent journalist’s face ‘—but I’m fine, thank you.’

Happily the stranger, despite his unconvinced expression, didn’t take issue with her lie. He turned to the hack who was nudging his flat tyre with the tip of his boot.

‘Flat…?’

The journalist jerked his head in response and shot Flora a murderous glare. ‘I’m not carrying a spare,’ he realised with a groan.

‘Bad luck,’ Josh responded blandly. His natural inclination was to assume that anyone giving Flora Graham and her family a hard time couldn’t be all bad, but in this case he was prepared to modify his views; he had disliked the guy on sight—a real sleaze bag!

As he turned his head he caught Flora’s violet-blue eyes and winked. Dazed by the blast of charm aimed in her direction, she helplessly grinned back at him.

Josh froze and didn’t catch what his son said in his urgent infant treble. He was mega unprepared for the transformation from cold goddess to warm, vibrant woman. The faint wrinkles around her suddenly warm blue eyes and the conspiratorial crooked little smile were bad enough, but it was the slight indentation in her porcelain-smooth left cheek that was the real clincher. A dimple! He found he really objected deeply to the fact Flora Graham had a dimple; neither the glimpses he’d had of her outside the courtroom or the image of her impassively enduring television interviews had even suggested such a thing.

Flora was accustomed, even before her face had been plastered across the front page of several tabloids, to men looking at her—this definitely wasn’t that sort of look! Which was a relief because the pleasure of being admired for something as superficial as the neat arrangement of her regular, and to her mind somewhat insipidly pretty, features, or the tautness of her slim, athletic figure had palled years ago. She knew to her cost that none of these would-be admirers gave a damn about what sort of woman lay beneath the attractive window-dressing.

Whilst she didn’t mind this hunk not being bowled over by her beauty—a small ironic grimace flickered across her features at the notion—something about that stare did trouble her. A small frown puckered her smooth forehead, and distant warning bells sounded in her head. She closed her mouth and surreptitiously explored with her tongue the possibility she had some unsightly remnant of her lunch stuck in her teeth.

‘My phone’s not working, mate. Have you…?’ The journalist tentatively approached the silent couple.

‘No reception up here…probably the mountains,’ Josh elaborated, gesturing with a strong, shapely hand towards the breathtaking but forbidding scenery. ‘I seem to recall there was a garage about half a mile back…’

Flora had followed the direction of his hand, registering automatically the strong, shapely part, and she found herself comparing this stranger with the landscape—more rugged and dangerous than pastoral. She dismissed the instinct of moments before that had suggested something wasn’t quite right; after all, if her instinct was so reliable what had she been doing engaged to Paul, the ratbag?

‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a lift…?’ The sardonic quirk of one dark brow brought a rush of colour; it was clearly visible even through Tom Channing’s carefully nurtured designer stubble, which was meant to underline, along with the single gold ring in one ear and the scuffed shoes, his hard-man street credibility. It narked him no end that this big guy had buckets of the stuff and he didn’t even try. ‘That’s a no, I take it,’ he concluded bitterly.

Flora had to bite her lip to prevent herself from grinning as she watched the burly figure flounce off to his car muttering—carefully not loud enough for her companion to hear—under his breath.

‘I think you hurt his feelings.’ It was hard not to gloat so she gave up trying; she was due a bit of gloating. ‘You’re not meant to drive with a flat tyre, are you?’ she added innocently as the red car bumpily drew away.

‘No.’

‘I thought not.’ Flora gave a contented sigh.

‘Daddy!’

This time the urgent tugging at his trouser leg got Josh’s attention.

‘What is it, champ?’

‘I think I’m going to be sick!’

Stunned at the speed with which this prediction came true, Flora stared in fascinated horror down at the unpleasant mess congealing over her pale biscuit trousers and favourite soft, handmade loafers.

‘I feel better now.’ Liam sighed and looked up happily at his father.