A Date With Destiny

He sucked in an indignant breath, expanding his considerable chest beneath the pale blue sweater he was wearing. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he admitted with cold civility. ‘I was out on my balcony just now, and thought I heard someone scream out. Naturally, I was concerned. Of course, I didn’t realise you were in here, Mrs Diamond. I thought this was your ex-husband’s apartment.’

The implication was quite clear. Anyone else, and he would come to the rescue. But she could scream her head off and he wouldn’t turn a hair.

‘This happens to be my apartment now,’ she told him tartly, before she realised what the man had actually said. Cursing herself for her stupidity, she slipped off the chain and pulled open the door. ‘You’ve seen Ralph recently, have you?’ she demanded, uncaring now if they liked each other or not. If this man had some information about Ralph, then she wanted it. Here at last she might find some answers.

Her visitor looked startled, his black eyes flashing astonishment as they flicked over her face. ‘You’ve been crying!’ he said, almost accusingly.

Now it was Salome who was taken aback. For she had already forgotten her recent tears. ‘Yes... no...I...’ Damn it all, what was the matter with her? Did she have to go all helpless and confused, just because he was shocked to find that a calculating bitch like herself could cry?

‘Does it matter?’ she flung at him. He blinked. ‘All I want to know is when was the last time you saw Ralph?’ she went on, her tone urgent.

He gave her a long, assessing look before speaking. ‘A few weeks ago.’

‘Do you mean at the restaurant or here?’ she persisted.

‘You were with Ralph the last time he came to the restaurant, and that was well over a year ago.’

‘Oh...’ She frowned and chewed her bottom lip. ‘It was here, then?’

‘Yes. We run into each other occasionally. But what’s this all about, Mrs Diamond? Surely you’ve been in touch with your ex-husband personally if this penthouse is now yours?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I haven’t...I...’ The lump gathering in her throat appalled her. The last person in the world she wanted to break down in front of was this man. ‘I haven’t seen Ralph for fourteen months,’ she finished in a strangled voice.

Sympathy did strange things to Michael Angellini’s face. It made him almost human. His mouth softened. And his eyes, which were usually as hard as flint, melted to a liquid ebony, washing over her with a look of surprising warmth and pity.

And then he did something else that stunned Salome. He touched her.

Oh, it wasn’t an intimate, or a bold caress. He merely reached out his hand to curve lightly over one shoulder. But it seemed to burn a hand-print on the skin beneath her dress. She froze, her eyes widening, her lips parting slightly.

‘I think, Mrs Diamond,’ he was saying, his hand tightening before releasing her tingling flesh, ‘that you could do with a drink. You seem very stressed. Why don’t you come along to my place, where I can get you something to settle your nerves?’

Salome stared at this man whom she had always detested, unable to get her mind off her response to his touch. Surely it couldn’t have been a sexual response? Surely not!

‘Are you all right, Mrs Diamond? You look...odd.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ she snapped in confusion.

A single dark eyebrow lifted and those black eyes hardened again. ‘Of course,’ he drawled. ‘Well, would you like to have a drink with me? Or would you rather be by yourself?’

Salome gave the darkly handsome face a hurried once-over, and was comforted to see she now felt nothing. Nothing at all! She sighed with relief. It had been shock, that was all, shock that her long-time foe had extended an unexpectedly sympathetic hand. No doubt she was susceptible to sympathy at the moment.

But the thought insinuated that he might have misinterpreted her reaction to his touch, and might even now be sizing her up as easy meat for his bachelor bed. The incident with Charles that morning had shown her that a man didn’t have to like her to lust after her.

‘You don’t have to feel obliged to accept,’ he said curtly as he noted her swift frown. ‘I won’t be offended in the slightest. I merely thought you looked like you could do with some company for a while. Believe me, I do realise you have never found my company to your liking in the past.’

Salome bristled. ‘What came first,’ she bit out, ‘the chicken or the egg?’

He stared at her for a moment, then laughed, drawing her gaze to his dazzling white teeth and the attractive dimple in his chin. But there was no laughter in his eyes. They remained as hard and cold as ever. For some reason this annoyed her even more than usual.

‘I think, perhaps, that I will take a rain-check on the drink,’ she said with an icy hauteur that belied her agitated pulse-rate.

The laughter died on his lips, his strong jaw clenching tightly. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ he grated out. ‘All I’m suggesting is that we have a drink together. Not another damned thing!’ Looking away, he ran an angry hand through his hair. ‘I’m not a masochist,’ he muttered under his breath, before swinging his eyes back and adding more loudly, ‘I thought you were anxious to hear about your ex-husband. Look, let’s have no more silly arguments. Where are your keys? Aah...I see them.’

With that, he strode inside, picked up the keys from the coffee-table in the centre of the living-room, and returned, ushering her firmly outside and locking the door. Then, taking her elbow, he guided her along the hall, shepherded her through an open door, and deposited her on a cream leather sofa that was identical to the one in Ralph’s unit.

‘There!’ He left her and strode over behind the glass and chrome bar that curved around one wall. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

Salome opened her mouth then snapped it shut. She couldn’t trust herself to speak just yet.

A ‘masochist’? she was fuming, her excellent hearing having picked up his low comment. Low, in more ways than one. If that wasn’t the insult to end all insults. Brother, was she fed up with the way men perceived her. Fed up to the eye teeth!

Unfortunately, this particular man had information she wanted, so it wasn’t in her interests to give him a blast of her Irish temper at that moment. But, by God, if he came out with another of those clangers, she was going to let him have it! And it wouldn’t be the softly spoken, elegant Mrs Diamond he would have to contend with, but Salome Twynan, street-wise and tough, a fighter from her earliest years, a girl who’d had to be, just to survive!

CHAPTER TWO

‘SO!’ Michael deposited two crystal tumblers on to the glass top of the bar. ‘What will you have to drink? Your usual?’

Salome stared at him.

‘My dear lady,’ came the dry remark, ‘you don’t have to look so surprised. You and your husband were regulars at my restaurant for years. It’s my job to familiarise myself with my clientele’s likes and dislikes. I wouldn’t be much of a host if I hadn’t absorbed the fact that you only drink vodka and orange before dinner, and dry Riesling or white burgundy with your meals.’

He pushed the long sleeves of the blue sweater up his arms, showing surprisingly little body hair, and glanced at the gold watch on his wrist. ‘Since it is now approaching five, I merely guessed the vodka and orange.’ Those cold black eyes lifted. ‘Was I wrong?’ he drawled. ‘Or have your tastes changed in the last year?’

Salome’s green eyes flashed as they locked on to his hard gaze, certain that there was an underlying innuendo in those last words. Clearly he thought that, as Mrs Diamond, she had cleverly catered her tastes to what Ralph had liked, since he too had been fond of vodka and dry white wines. No doubt Mr Jump-To-Conclusions Angellini was now anticipating that such a professional gold-digger as herself might have moved on to the next man already, and adapted her likes and dislikes accordingly.

A type of black humour curved her lips back into a seductive smile. ‘Why don’t you just pour me something you like?’ she purred. ‘I’m sure you have excellent taste.’ She gave him a heavy-lidded glance, thinking viciously that if he was fooled by such blatantly feigned behaviour then he deserved to be!

He glared at her for a moment, then gave a dry, hard laugh. ‘Come now, Mrs Diamond,’ he scoffed. ‘You don’t really expect me to fall for the batting eyelashes and husky-voice trick, do you? Save it for an older, more vulnerable prey—one who’ll be so dazzled by your beauty that he won’t notice the dollar-signs clicking over behind those gorgeous green eyes of yours.’

He folded his arms and frowned at her. ‘You puzzle me, though. You’re a clever woman—an expert, I would have imagined, on the male psyche. I can’t believe you seriously thought that I would be so gullible. After all, I know that you know I’ve never been blind to your—er—chosen vocation in life.’

Salome could have reacted several ways. With a burst of true temper. Dignified outrage. Frozen silence. Even tears. She chose none of them. A cool smile crossed her lips and she had the pleasure of seeing a shocked look pass over her adversary’s face. ‘To be honest, it was an on-the-spot performance,’ she confessed bluntly. ‘A test, so to speak. But I’m relieved to see you came through it with flying colours. God knows how I would have coped if you hadn’t.’

His back stiffened, his arms slowly unfolding to grip the edge of the bar, a barely controlled fury smouldering in those normally cold black eyes. The fact that she had finally got under his skin soothed Salome’s own suppressed anger.

‘But you were right about one thing, Michael, dear,’ she went on. ‘Your company is not to my liking, and neither am I a masochist. I came along here with you merely because I wanted to hear news about my husband.’

‘Ex-husband,’ he reminded her harshly.

‘Whatever.’ She uncrossed her legs and got to her feet, unable to sit there sedately any longer. She tried to keep a calm exterior, but inside her blood was well and truly up. ‘If you’re not going to have the decency to tell me what you know without any added insults,’ she said curtly, ‘then just say so and I’ll leave.’

He didn’t say so. He just stood behind the bar, staring at her. Salome got the oddest impression that with her firm stance she had achieved more in changing this man’s opinion of her than she’d been able to do in her years as Ralph’s wife. There was a look of grudging respect in his eyes as they moved slowly over her.

‘I see there’s more to you than meets the eye, Mrs Diamond,’ he said at last.

She snorted. ‘Am I supposed to be flattered by that remark?’

His laugh was very dry. ‘No. I guess not.’