Scandal In The Spotlight: The Couple Behind the Headlines / Redemption of a Hollywood Starlet / The Price of Fame

Sparks showered through her, straight down to the hot, aching centre of her, and she shuddered against him, trembling with the desire to have him thrusting up hard inside her.

But just when she thought she was about to collapse with need, Jack lifted his head and stared down at her, breathing heavily, his eyes blazing and dark and his face tight with restraint. Swallowing hard, he dragged in a ragged breath and took a step back.

‘No,’ Imogen muttered in protest.

‘We have to stop,’ he said roughly, drawing her dress and bra back into place with shaking fingers.

‘Why?’

His eyes dropped to her mouth and for a moment she thought he would declare he was joking and drag her back into his arms.

But he didn’t. Instead, he backed away even more and set his jaw. ‘Because we’ve already been more than five minutes,’ he said grimly, ‘and if we carry on like this I might very well end up getting us a proper room.’

‘A proper room?’ she echoed dazedly.

‘Well, this is a hotel, and beds are in dangerously close proximity.’

Imogen went dizzy at the thought of her and Jack hot and sweaty and naked in bed. ‘That would be fine by me.’ In fact, the sooner, the better.

‘What happened to you being the star of the show and all that concern about being missed?’

Oh. Damn.

She blinked as reality crashed back into her head and obliterated the heat. Yes. Of course. The Ball. Dinner. Her speech. She blanched. Her speech! In a matter of minutes, she had to get up in front of a hundred people and speak. Agh. ‘You’re right.’

‘You’d better go. Now. Before I change my mind and book that room.’

‘What about you?’ she said, wishing she didn’t have to leave.

‘I’ll follow in a few minutes.’

‘Will I see you after dinner?’

Jack hauled her into his arms and gave her a swift, hard kiss that made her head reel, and then shot her a look full of hot, dark promise before nudging her through the door and pointing her in the right direction. ‘You can count on it.’

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_c8077405-f148-57f2-b857-49793c893103)

COUNT on it?

Hah. She couldn’t count on anything, thought Imogen, stalking into the conservatory after dinner with as much speed and force as her dress would allow, which infuriatingly wasn’t a lot. Ideally, she’d have liked to pace and stomp but all she could do was totter over to an armchair and throw herself into it.

At least the glowering she could manage, she thought, staring gloomily out into the softly lit gardens.

Where had the evening gone so wrong?

After leaving Jack, she’d sailed into the dining room as if she were floating across the floor, aware that the electricity still flowing through her must be evident to anyone with eyes in their head, but unable to summon up the energy to do anything to hide it.

She’d taken her seat and smiled a hello to the other people at her table. She’d murmured her appreciation of the food and dipped in and out of the conversation. And all the while her thoughts had kept drifting back to that broom cupboard.

How she’d managed to get through the short speech she’d had to give thanking the sponsors and the guests she’d never know. Even as she’d been elaborating on the causes the trust had recently supported she’d felt a self-destructive urge to rip up her prompt cards and ask the audience, in a choose-your-own-adventure kind of way, what they thought might have happened next if Jack hadn’t stopped when he had.

Which would really not have impressed the illustrious gathering. Nor the trust’s board. And had it made its way into the press, it certainly wouldn’t have gone down well with the submissions committee at the university she’d applied to in the States.

Imogen let out a sigh and frowned. Oh, who was she kidding? She knew exactly when the evening had started to go downhill. It had taken a turn for the worse the moment she’d stepped down from that podium and spotted the woman Jack was sitting next to.

She’d been a blonde of indeterminate age. Beautiful in a ravaged kind of way. The sort of woman who commanded the centre of attention and revelled in it. And, judging by the way her hands had been all over him, one who’d clearly set her sights on Jack.

Not that he’d seemed to object, she thought sourly. Throughout dinner her gaze had kept sliding to him and every time she’d looked, he’d just been sitting there, letting himself be pawed to pieces.

Probably still was, because where was he anyway? Dinner had been over for ages and she’d hung around but there’d been no sign of him. So much for his promise to come and find her after supper.

Logic and common sense told her that there were a dozen different reasons he might have been delayed, but neither stood a chance against the overwhelming suspicion that he could well be checking out the broom cupboard with the blonde.

And how had he known about that anyway? Imogen frowned and swung her feet up to rest on the window sill. The way he’d steered her out of the lobby and down that corridor, as if he knew exactly where he was going …

She nibbled on her lip, vaguely aware that her mind was careering off in a dangerously extravagant direction, but too wound up to stop it. Why was she even bothering to wonder? For all she knew Jack was acquainted with the whereabouts of all the broom cupboards in every top London hotel.

That little voice hammering away inside her head and insisting she was wrong, that he wasn’t like that, was all very well but, despite what he’d told her that night in the taxi, and despite what she’d told herself over the past few days, she couldn’t get what she knew of his reputation entirely out of her mind.

Irrational, undoubtedly, but there it was. What with the betrayal she’d suffered recently and the knowledge that Max and Connie’s affair must have been going on right under her nose was it any wonder she was predisposed to mistrust?

Imogen glanced at her watch and sighed. Five more minutes to compose herself and then she’d be saying her goodbyes and getting out of here, because the night had turned out to be just as grim as she’d thought—although for entirely different reasons—and she’d had enough.

Jack scoured the ground floor of the hotel for Imogen. The things he had to suffer in the pursuit of a date!

As if having to bring ferocious desire and the memories of those scorching kisses under control hadn’t been trial enough, Jessica had been on particularly demanding form this evening.

From her behaviour at dinner one would never guess she’d ignored him most of her life, but it had taken Jack less than two minutes to figure out that his mother’s brief foray into lavish maternal affection was nothing more than an effort to impress her latest conquest, who happened to work in the same field as he did.

Which couldn’t have bothered him less. Jessica, who’d had him when she was a teenager and had promptly handed him over to her parents to raise him so that she could carry on partying, didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, and he’d never deluded himself into thinking otherwise.

So the stabbing at his gut was nothing more than indigestion, although if someone had asked him what had been on the menu he couldn’t have said. All he’d been able to think about for course after course was what had gone on in that broom cupboard and what might have happened if he hadn’t heard the echo of the gong announcing dinner.

Jack strode through the lobby, his temper beginning to simmer. He didn’t think he’d ever had such an uncomfortable couple of hours and Imogen’s disappearing act wasn’t helping.

Where was she? Did she think playing hard to get would somehow reel him in even more? Well, he thought, setting his jaw grimly, she needn’t have bothered. He was reeled in quite comprehensively already.

Or at least he would be if only he could find her.

Right. This was it. The last room. If she wasn’t here, he was going home. Yes, he very much wanted to continue where they’d left off but there was only so much volatile behaviour he was prepared to take and hers was hitting his limit.

Jack pushed open the door to the conservatory and scanned the space. Tall, lush palms brushed the walls, the subtle lighting casting long, dark shadows over the cane furniture, the pillars and the marble floor. But other than the fixtures and fittings, that was it. There was no sign of her here, either.

Disappointment walloped him in the stomach, roiling and churning and making him go all light-headed.

He shoved his hands through his hair and pulled himself together. So that was that, then. He’d be off. He’d forget all about Imogen and the insane notion that he somehow wouldn’t survive if he didn’t finish the business they’d started, and get back to being in control of his life.

It had been an absurd idea anyway. When had he ever chased a woman he was interested in quite so determinedly? When had he ever had to? And as for not surviving, well, that was ridiculous. Of course he’d survive. He always did.