A Sudden Engagement

‘Then what was it like? Some kind of sick joke? Some.…’

To her relief she managed to pull herself together for long enough to get her handbag open and remove the small newspaper clipping she always carried around with her.

‘Remember this?’ she demanded, gathering enough composure to sound almost as terse as he had done himself.

He read the article in silence, handing it back to her.

‘That actress,’ she said unsteadily ‘the one you said would make an excellent typist—that was her first role, my first role,’ she threw at him with bitter passion. ‘And I lost it, because of that review, because of you.…’

He listened to her in complete and unmoving silence, unnerving her with his cool scrutiny, his apparent ability to remain unaffected by what had happened.

‘And so?’

‘And so I decided to prove to you just how convincing an actress I could be,’ she told him triumphantly. ‘Certainly convincing enough for your mistress!’

‘By relying on circumstances rather than ability,’ he told her cruelly. ‘Effective, but by no means convincing.’ His eyes narrowed as he studied her, slowly assessing the tumbled curls and gamine features. ‘I still stand by what I said—you weren’t right for that part, and you didn’t have the ability to make yourself right for it.’

His calm words astounded Kirsty. She had expected him to be furious with her, to rant and rave while she remained cool and aloof, and yet somehow he seemed to have turned the tables on her, by reminding her that she had used circumstances rather than ability to convince Beverley Travers that they were lovers. Impotent anger prompted her to demand rashly, ‘Do you get some sort of kick out of destroying people, out of ruining their lives…?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ The emotionless words silenced her. ‘I’m a critic, doing my job, not some sort of a crank on an ego trip. I leave that to the acting profession,’ he jibed mockingly. ‘Thank God they don’t all have your vengeful tendencies! You’ve been reading too much Shakespeare.’ His expression changed suddenly, thick dark lashes veiling his eyes from Kirsty, as he frowned, apparently deep in thought. Now was her chance to leave, Kirsty decided, inching towards the door. She had almost reached it when he moved, reaching it before her to lean against it, his expression cruelly mocking and infinitely dangerous as he asked softly, ‘Going somewhere?’

‘To my room.’ She had intended to sound calmly serene, but even to her own ears her voice had a distinct wobble.

‘After depriving me of the company of my—er—mistress, was the rather antiquated term you used, I believe? Oh no, my dear,’ he drawled with a soft menace that drove the colour from Kirsty’s face. ‘In view of what you’ve just done, I think it’s only fair that you make some sort of reparation, don’t you?’

He looked so calm and controlled, standing there, flint-grey eyes surveying her mockingly, hands in the pockets of the immaculately cut dark trousers, a leashed power about him that warned her that this was no idle threat, despite the enormity of his words. She licked her lips nervously, trying to meet his ironic gaze with a look equally cool and failing miserably, her protesting, ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ sounding more fearful than firm.

‘No? You’re lying—but,’ he told her in an exceedingly dry tone, ‘I’m beginning to think you’re right—you are a better actress than I supposed. Come on,’ he told her in a hard voice. ‘You know exactly what I mean. You’ve deprived me of a bed partner for the night, to put the matter in its crudest terms, and that being the case I think it only fair that you take her place.’

He was mad! Kirsty thought, searching desperately for some means of escaping the suite that didn’t necessitate getting any closer than she already was to that lean, coiled, masculine body, taut with a suppressed violence she was only now beginning to become aware of, so easily had he masked it with his laconic stance and coolly controlled face.

‘You can’t mean that!’ she protested piteously, knowing even as she spoke that it was useless. He had meant it. The sharp flintiness of his glance told her that, the hard implacability of his mouth, and the way it lifted mockingly as he stared down into her flushed and frightened features.

‘Amazing!’ he taunted at last. ‘What a pity I’m your sole audience. That was almost worthy of an Oscar; pity there aren’t any parts for distracted innocents any more, you’d fill the bill to a T.’

‘Please…’ Kirsty had gone beyond reasoning, the dark urgency in her eyes unknowingly piteous as she stared up at him.

‘Please what?’ Drew mocked. ‘Throw a crust to the starving orphan? No way,’ he added in a much harder voice. ‘No one asked you to force your way in here, or act that cute little number you just played. How old are you?’ he demanded curtly. ‘Eighteen—nineteen? As spoiled as they come; used to widening those big brown eyes and having men drown in them, I don’t doubt. Well, it takes more than limpid eyes and a few tears to fool me! If you learn nothing else from this episode, at least you’ll learn not to start what you can’t finish.’

‘You can’t mean this!’ Kirsty protested, her throat closing in horrified realisation that he did, and that all the pleas in the world weren’t going to move him. He was made of solid granite, completely unfeeling, as cold as Arctic ice, impregnable. He must be to even contemplate taking her in place of Beverley Travers. She shuddered, shock taking the last remnants of colour from her face, her mouth drooping, as she sought desperately for some way of convincing him to change his mind. ‘You don’t even know me.…’ she managed at last, hating herself for the childish protest, when he laughed—an unexpectedly warm sound, his mouth curling upwards, tiny creases fanning out from his eyes.

‘Since when has that been a bar to physical satisfaction?’ he asked her coolly. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of instant attraction—love at first sight?’

He was taunting her now, and she hated him for it, her hands curling impotently into her palms as she searched for some stinging retort, something cutting enough to get him away from that door long enough for her to get through it. Too late now to regret her impulsive action, and wish she had never set eyes on him. Too late by far, she acknowledged as the look in his eyes told her he had read her mind and had no intention of letting her get within a yard of the suite door.

‘You can’t want me,’ she burst out childishly at last. ‘You love Beverley Travers!’

‘But because of you she walked out of here,’ he reminded her cruelly, ‘and as for not wanting you.…’

Kirsty’s skin burned as his glance slid slowly over her body, narrowing with devastating explicitness on the softly rounded swell of her breasts, before pinning her to the spot where she stood. ‘I’m a man,’ he told her softly, ‘and you’ve got an extremely sexy body. Just thank your lucky stars that I don’t go in for physical violence—because after what you’ve done tonight, there isn’t a court in the land that wouldn’t acquit me of whatever charge you choose to bring against me.’ His eyes rested contemptuously on the tangled silky curls she had so deliberately disordered. His mute assessment disturbed her.

‘Very effective,’ he drawled at last, ‘but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve seen you after I’ve made love to you.’

‘Made love!’ Kirsty injected as much scorn as she could into the two words. ‘Don’t you mean raped me, because I certainly won’t.…’

‘Won’t what?’ Drew Chalmers asked silkily, levering himself off the door, and walking towards her with a steely determination mat made her turn and flee blindly in the opposite direction, not caring that it led only to the bedroom of the suite. ‘Respond to me?’

His long legs outpaced her easily, and the breath left her body on a pained gasp as he reached for her, lifting her off her feet, the impotent thud of her small fists against the powerful muscles of his chest hurting her more than it did him.

He carried her as though she weighed no more than a small child, kicking the bedroom door closed behind him, the expression in his eyes as he surveyed the rumpled disorder of his bed making her blood run cold.

‘I think,’ he told her with icy cold clarity, ‘that on this occasion we’ll dispense with the champagne and get on with the matter in hand, don’t you?’

It came to Kirsty then that behind the cool façade, molten anger boiled and that he meant to degrade and punish her, and that what was going to happen to her had nothing to do with a man satisfying his physical desire for another woman and everything to do with a particularly cruel and degrading form of revenge, and all the fighting spirit drained out of her, a suffocating sense of helpless inevitability overwhelming her.

She was dimly aware of Drew Chalmers dropping her ungently on the bed, and then locking the door, before he came towards her.

‘How did you know I would be here tonight?’ he asked casually, as the bed depressed under his lean length, the fine fabric of his pants brushing against the silky slenderness of her legs.

‘I didn’t.’ Kirsty recoiled instinctively from the intimate contact with his body, tensing as his gaze narrowed on the pale triangle of her face.

‘You’re overdoing things,’ he warned her softly. ‘And it won’t work. That frightened virgin act went out years ago—if it was ever in,’ he added cynically. ‘You’re a fraud and a cheat,’ he added softly. ‘You made damned sure you could use circumstances to suit your own ends and did so without a qualm, but when the tables are turned you don’t want to take the nasty medicine, do you? Well, little girl, it’s high time someone showed you that sometimes you have to be forced to take it for your own good!’

It was useless trying to tell him that she had had second thoughts the moment she entered the bedroom of his suite, or that she had, in Shakespearean terms, decided upon her plan of action in a mood best described as ‘pot-valiant’. Now, when the effects of the wine and cocktail had completely worn off she lay rigid with terror on the bed, unable to decide what was worse—her present situation or the humiliation of the one she would find herself in when Drew Chalmers inevitably discovered the truth.

What would he say if she told him that she was a virgin? Call her a liar, she decided bitterly, willing the weak tears she could feel blocking her throat not to fall, but once again the hatefully drawling mockery of his voice told her that he had guessed when she turned her head slightly and it was ruthlessly turned back with fingers that gripped her chin unkindly and held it while the moon silvered her face, revealing her expression to him while his was concealed from her.

‘Crying? Crocodile tears and very pretty, but alas, completely unconvincing. Do you know what the young innocent you’re trying to portray would actually do in your circumstances? Well, she certainly wouldn’t simply lie here, all passive resistance and melting tears,’ he told her brutally, ‘she’d be terrified.’

His brutality broke through the strange calm that had descended on her and she struggled to evade the crushing grip of his fingers on her chin, her eyes darting defiance at him as she stormed bitterly, ‘How do you know? Do you make a practice out of brutalising inexperienced virgins? Is that how you get your kicks? Is that.…’

Her breath was cut off by the sudden fierce pressure of his mouth, as it moved impatiently over hers, stifling her ability to think, swamping her with a terrifying sensation of panic, of swirling blackness and a bottomless pit into which she was being relentlessly drawn.

The tension held her body stiff with rejection; she gulped in air as his head lifted, arms braced against his chest to push him off.

He was breathing heavily, a dark glitter in his eyes, as he said unevenly, ‘The way I get my kicks is by having a warm, responsive woman in my arms, and by God, that’s what you’re going to be, if I have to spend all night making you respond to me!’

He wanted her to respond to him. Kirsty couldn’t understand it, unless it was part of his plan to humiliate her by first arousing her and then rejecting her. She had read about such things, and wondered at them, because so far none of her boy-friends had aroused any feelings in her even approaching such an intensity of feeling, and she was beginning to wonder if they existed only in works of fiction.

‘I never will,’ she told him stubbornly. ‘I hate you!’

‘Hatred is akin to love, or had you forgotten?’ he mocked her, turning her on to her side, one arm curved round her so that her breasts were pressed against the fine silk of his shirt, the hard contact oddly disturbing.

Suddenly it became difficult to breathe normally. Strange sensations vibrated through her, her senses relaying to her an awareness of him that frightened and alarmed her. She could smell the warm maleness of his skin; feel the hardness of sinew and bone beneath the palms she had pressed against his shoulders to fend him off.

‘Why don’t you simply relax and enjoy yourself?’ The self-assured drawl sent shivers of reaction across skin already far too sensitised to his proximity. The arm constraining her moved, and Kirsty breathed a sigh of relief, suddenly suspended as she felt his fingers tugging at her nightdress.

Her instinctive protest froze on her lips as the dark head bent towards her, cool male lips teasing the soft tendrils of hair curling round her forehead, brushing lightly against her skin and evoking a reaction that made her quiver softly. By the time she realised that Drew had eased her nightdress from her shoulders and it was too late for her to do a thing to prevent him, because whichever way she moved, trying to stop him, he outmanoeuvred her, his sudden harsh, ‘Look, if you want me to rip the damn thing off you, just say so,’ freezing her into a tense stillness, her protests dying in her throat as the nightdress was tugged downwards over her hips and discarded to lie in a pool of silk on the floor.