A Seductive Revenge

‘And being a father places me above suspicion…and temptation?’ He silently reviewed the lists of world-class baddies who’d been doting dads, but resisted the impulse to point out the obvious flaws in her argument. ‘I must admit I’ve never quite looked at it in that way before. I’m overcome by the confidence you place in me.’

Flora didn’t think he sounded overcome, just irked. Perhaps even happily married men preferred to think they could still be considered dangerous.

‘There’s nothing wrong with being domesticated,’ she told him kindly. Actually she didn’t think half a dozen kids could make this particular specimen appear domesticated. She was a sensible, mature woman—mostly—with her feet firmly on the ground, and even her stomach showed a dangerous tendency to go all squidgy when she looked into those hooded silvery eyes.

‘And it’s nothing to do with paternity as such.’ She frowned earnestly. ‘Don’t you ever just get a gut feeling with some people that you can trust them?’ She closed her mouth with an audible snap…where the hell did that come from?

Squirming with humiliation, she gazed at the dark colour that stained the sharp, high angle of his achingly perfect cheekbones. Now I’ve embarrassed him—small wonder! You don’t go around telling total strangers you have gut feelings about them—gut feelings suggest a degree of intimacy! He probably thinks I’m making a pass at him or something. It was true about the gut feeling, though…

Josh broke the awkward silence. ‘Liam’s been cramped in the car all morning; he needs a chance to stretch his legs.’ To her relief he was acting as if she’d said nothing out of the ordinary. ‘If you want to change I’ll keep an eye out for coach parties.’

‘Well, if you’re…thanks…’

Josh kept one eye on his son who was building a tower with the stray rocks he’d gathered and the other on the wing mirror of his four-wheel drive, which kept him up to date with the state of play of Flora’s contortions in the back seat of her small car.

Now wasn’t the time to be worrying about the general scumminess of such behaviour. He couldn’t afford the luxury of scruples if he was going to make Graham pay. He was going to hit him where it hurt and Graham’s Achilles’ heel was his daughter—he adored her. The moment Josh had seen the interview of the two of them together he’d known that this was the way to make him pay. As for the girl, she hadn’t even been willing to admit her father had done anything wrong. As always when he needed reminding of why he was doing this, he brought the picture of Bridie’s sweet, laughing face to mind—or he would have if what was going on in the car hadn’t distracted him.

Any travellers seeking a respite from their journey at that moment wouldn’t have been treated to the sight of Flora’s underwear. She wasn’t wearing any—at least not from the waist up, which was the bit he could see. Her breasts were fairly small, pointed and high. They bounced energetically as she stretched upwards, pulling a thin cashmere polo shirt over her head. With a muffled curse of self-disgust Josh tore his eyes away.

Who was he kidding? This had nothing to do with revenge; it was pure voyeurism. That was bad, but not so bad if all he’d wanted to do was look!

He heard the sound of her feet on the rough ground but didn’t turn around. He watched as Liam carefully selected a stick and knocked down the tower of rocks he’d so lovingly constructed.

‘I worry about his aggressive instincts sometimes.’

‘I wouldn’t, it’s perfectly normal,’ Flora comforted. She smiled as the youngster laughed out loud before he started to rebuild his destroyed creation. ‘I’m sure you did the same.’

‘No, my brother Jake built them and I knocked them down, then he knocked me down. These days people pay him a lot of money to build things and nobody knocks them down.’

‘He’s a builder?’

‘No, an architect.’

‘And what do you do?’ She bit her lip. ‘You don’t have to answer that—once I get into interrogation mode there’s no stopping me,’ she babbled in embarrassment.

‘So what does that make you?’ He responded to Liam’s pouting plea by producing a sweet from his pocket. ‘Only one,’ he warned before handing it over. ‘A police woman…?’ he suggested, straightening up from his crouched pose and brushing his hands against the seat of his well-worn denims.

‘No, a solicitor.’

‘Pity…’

She looked enquiringly at him.

‘I’ve always had a soft spot for a girl in uniform.’

His smile and the way her heart started to beat wildly filled her with panic. ‘Is Liam an only child?’ A swift diplomatic change of subject was urgently required.

Josh didn’t reply straight away; when he did his grey eyes held a shadowy expression that disturbed her. Was she imagining the tenseness in his greyhound-lean body?

‘Yes, he is.’

He was young, maybe thirty; he and his wife could produce a lot more children all as enchanting as Liam. Flora, who had never been aware of any strong maternal instincts, felt a surge of envy and a deepening sense of dissatisfaction with where her life was going.

‘So am I.’

A nerve throbbed in Josh’s lean cheek. ‘That must make you all the more precious to your parents.’ His eyes were curiously intent on her face.

‘Father; my mum died five years ago.’

He touched her hand—hardly even a touch, more a brushing of her skin; the gesture seemed unpremeditated. Flora didn’t move. She continued to stare at the busy, happy child, aware all the time of an invisible web of nerve-endings she hadn’t even known existed surge to zinging life all over her body. Her skin felt so alive it hurt—pleasure bordering on pain. She found herself completely unprepared for this raw, sensual awakening.

The symptoms dissipated but didn’t vanish when his hand fell away. Way out of proportion or what? Her puffily exhaled breath turned white in the chill of the lengthening autumnal afternoon.

‘I better be going,’ she said, swallowing hard and stirring the loose ground with the toe of her casual flat shoe.

Josh noticed the replacement was just as expensive and exclusive as the one she’d worn earlier. Daddy’s indulged little girl…it didn’t work; his rage only responded sluggishly to the prod.

‘Thank you,’ she began with a frank, open smile. ‘For everything.’ If she drew this out much longer he was going to realise she felt reluctant to leave…it was quite absurd.

His mental preparations hadn’t prepared him for this. Making love to Flora Graham wasn’t something he was supposed to want to do. It was supposed to be a means to an end, a ‘close your eyes and think of revenge’ sort of situation! It was easy to exploit someone who obviously didn’t have a heart or feelings. This stupid woman didn’t only have them, she didn’t even keep them decently disguised.

This could be so easy; she’d been shaking like a nervous thoroughbred when he’d touched her. The sexual chemistry was a bonus to be exploited, he told himself. She trusted him, her father had just been publicly disgraced, her fiancé had dumped her, she was vulnerable, seduction would be a walk in the park. Telling her the truth would be a pleasure. All he had to do was go gently…

Nobody had ever accused Josh Prentice of taking the easy option!

He had a mouth which knew exactly what to do to reduce his victim to a state of helpless and humiliating cooperation. The searing onslaught of his clever tongue and lips went beyond the physical.

Flora staggered backwards when the pressure ceased and the big hands that had held her face fell away. She continued to stagger until her spine made contact with a convenient tree; the rough surface abraded her back through the thin, hooded top she now wore over a polo shirt. Breathing shallow and fast, she reached behind her to clutch the comforting solidity of the bark in what had become an almost surreal world.

‘Why,’ she asked in a voice which hovered on the brink of tremulous, ‘did you do that?’ Good, her voice was beginning to get back to normal.

Kissing her didn’t seem to have put him in a mellow frame of mind, although at the time it had seemed to her he’d been enjoying himself! She was humiliatingly aware of the ache in her taut, peaking breasts.

‘I had to see for myself if you were as stupid as you look!’ he snapped cuttingly.

The outrage on his voice made her blink. ‘And am I?’ she enquired in a dazed voice.

‘With bells on, woman!’ he raged. ‘Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation? I could have been anyone and you come out with all that airy-fairy crap about trust. Trust!’ He choked. ‘I could be Jack the bloody Ripper for all you know and all you can do is look at me as if I…’ With a snort of disgust he broke off. ‘Just because you like the way someone looks, it doesn’t make them all the things you want them to be.’ He was warning her, you couldn’t get fairer than that. Or more stupid, a quiet inner voice sighed.

Two spots of dark colour stained the soft contours of her pale cheeks. Was I really that obvious?

‘What makes you think,’ she snapped with cold precision, ‘that I like the way you look?’

He threw back his head and laughed; it was a bitter sound. ‘Like you don’t like the way I kiss?’ One dark, strongly delineated brow shot satirically upwards. ‘I noticed the way you hated that.’

Flora’s face was burning with mortification at his soft, derisive jibe—so what if she might have co-operated for a split second? ‘Most men wouldn’t be complaining,’ she said, glaring up at his hatefully handsome face. She bit her lips as she realised it was too late now to dispute the claim she’d in any way enjoyed being kissed by him. ‘But then you only kissed me out of the goodness of your heart to show me how foolishly trusting I was being…teach me a lesson…’

There was more than a grain of truth in her sarcastic jibe, but it wasn’t the entire story. He ran an exasperated hand through his dark hair. ‘I kissed you,’ he hissed in a driven voice, ‘because I wanted to.’ Abruptly he turned away from his contemplation of the trees; his deep-set eyes burned into her.