Her Christmas Fantasy

‘You get what?’ Lisa demanded suspiciously, not liking the cynicism she could see in his eyes. ‘Those clothes were virtually brand-new, this season’s stock, and I’d be very lucky indeed to pick up anything else like them at such a bargain price, especially at this time of year, and—’

‘Oh, yes, I can see what you’re after. All right then, I don’t like blackmailers and I wouldn’t normally give in to someone who plainly thinks she’s onto a good thing, but I haven’t got time to waste negotiating with you. What would you guess was the full, brand-new value of the clothes you bought today?’

‘The full value?’ A small frown puckered Lisa’s forehead. She had no idea at all of what he was getting at. ‘I have no idea. I don’t normally buy exclusive designer-label clothes, especially not Armani…but I imagine it would have to be several thousand pounds…’

‘Several thousand pounds.’ A thin, dangerous smile curled his mouth, his eyes so coldly contemptuous that Lisa actually felt a small, icy shiver race down her spine.

‘Why don’t we settle for a round figure and make it five thousand pounds? I’ll write you a cheque for five thousand here and now and you’ll give me back Emma’s clothes.’

Lisa stared at him in disbelief.

‘But that’s crazy,’ she protested. ‘Why on earth should you pay me five thousand pounds when you could go out and buy a whole new wardrobe for her for that amount…?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I don’t—’

‘Oh, come on,’ he interrupted her cuttingly. ‘Don’t give me that. You understand perfectly well. Even I understand how impossible and time-wasting an exercise it would be for me to go out and replace every single item with its exact replica…even if I knew what it was I was supposed to be buying. Don’t overplay your hand,’ he warned her. ‘All that mock innocence doesn’t suit you.’

Mock innocence!

As she suddenly recognised just what he was accusing her of, Lisa’s face flushed a brilliant, furious scarlet.

‘Get out… Get out of my flat right now,’ she demanded shakily. ‘Otherwise I’m going to call the police. How dare you accuse me of…of…?’ She couldn’t even say the word, she felt such a sense of outrage and disgust.

‘I wouldn’t give you those clothes now if you offered to pay me ten thousand…twenty thousand,’ she told him passionately. ‘You deserve to lose Emma… In fact, I think I’m probably doing her a favour by letting her see just what kind of a man you are. I suppose you thought that just because you bought her clothes for her you had a right to…to take them back… If I were her… If I were her…’

‘Yes? If you were her, what?’ he goaded her, just as furious as she was herself, Lisa recognised as she saw the small pulse beating fiercely in his jaw and the banked-down fury in his eyes.

‘I wouldn’t have let you buy them for me in the first place,’ she threw emotionally at him, adding, ‘I’d rather—’

‘Rather what?’ he challenged her, his voice dropping suddenly and becoming dangerously, sensually soft as he raked her from head to foot in such a sexually predatory and searching way that it left her virtually shaking, trembling, her body overreacting wildly to the male sexuality in the way he was looking at her, the sensual challenge in the way his eyes deliberately stripped her of her clothes, leaving her body vulnerable…exposed…naked.

‘You’d rather what?’ he repeated triumphantly. ‘Go naked?’

Lisa couldn’t speak; she was too shocked, too outraged, too aware of her feminine vulnerability to the blazing heat of his sexuality to risk saying anything.

‘But then in actual fact, according to you—since you refuse to believe the truth and accept that I am acting for my cousin and not for myself—you are wearing clothes that I have chosen…bought…’ he added softly, his glance slipping suggestively over her body for a second time, but this time more slowly, more lingeringly…more…more seductively, Lisa recognised as she felt herself responding helplessly to the sheer force of the magnetic spell he seemed to have cast over her.

From somewhere she managed to find the strength to break free. Stepping back from him, putting a safer distance between them, averting her eyes and her over-flushed face from his powerful gaze, she demanded huskily, ‘I want you to leave. Now. Otherwise…’

‘You’ll call the police. I know,’ he agreed drily. ‘Very well, since it’s obvious I can’t make you see reason… I won’t forget how co-operative you’ve been,’ he added, sending a small shiver down her spine as she saw the look in his eyes. ‘Although I can understand why you’re so loath to part with your borrowed finery.

‘The suit looks good on you,’ he added unexpectedly as he turned towards the door, pausing to look at her before lifting his hand and outrageously tracing a line with the tip of his index finger all the way along the deep V of the neckline of the waistcoat just where the upper curves of her breasts, naked underneath it, pressed against the creamy fabric.

‘It’s a bit tighter here on you than it was on Emma, though,’ he told her. ‘She’s probably only a 34B whereas you must be a 34C. Nice—especially worn the way you’re wearing it now, without anything underneath it…’

Lisa swallowed back all of the agitated, defensive remarks that sprang to her lips, knowing that none of them could do anything to wipe out what he had just said to her, or the effect his words had had on her.

Why, she wondered wretchedly as he opened her front door and left her flat far more calmly than he had entered it, did her body have to react so…so…idiotically and erotically to his touch? Even without looking down she knew how betrayingly her nipples were still pressing against the fine fabric of her waistcoat—as they certainly hadn’t been doing when he’d first arrived. As they had, in fact, only humiliatingly done when he had reached out and touched her with that lazily mocking fingertip which had had such a devastating effect on her senses.

It was because she was so overwrought, that was all, she tried to comfort herself half an hour later, the front door securely bolted as she hugged a comforting mug of freshly made coffee.

She would have to ring the shop, of course, and find out exactly what was going on, and if they asked her to return the clothes then morally she would have no option other than to do so.

How dared he accuse her of trying to blackmail him…? Her. The coffee slopped out of the mug as her hands started to shake. As if she would ever…ever do any such thing. She felt desperately sorry for the unknown Emma. It was bad enough that he should have sold her clothes, but how would she feel, knowing that he had touched her, another woman, so…so…? No, in her view Emma was better off without him. Much better off.

How dared he touch her like that…as though…as though…? And he had known exactly what he was doing as well. She had seen it in those shockingly knowing steel-grey eyes as she’d read the message of male triumph and awareness that they’d been giving her. He had known that he was arousing her—had known it and had enjoyed knowing it.

Unlike her. She had hated it and she hated him. Emma was quite definitely better off without him and she certainly wasn’t going to be the one to help him make up their quarrel by returning her clothes.

At least he was not likely to be able to carry out that subtle threat of future retribution against her—thank goodness.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_5ddf8418-d722-5123-b2d0-6229fd1fea02)

LISA STOOD IN FRONT of the guest-bedroom window of Henry’s parents’ large Victorian house looking out across the wintry countryside.

They had arrived considerably later than expected the previous evening, due, in the main, to the fact that Henry’s car had been so badly damaged whilst parked in a client’s car park that their departure had been delayed and they had had to use her small—much smaller—model, much to Henry’s disgust.

They had arrived shortly after eleven o’clock, and whilst Henry had been greeted with a good deal of maternal anxiety and concern Lisa had received a considerably more frosty reception, Henry’s mother giving her a chilly smile and presenting a cool cheek for her to kiss before commenting, ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t put back supper any longer. You know what your father’s like about meal times, Henry.’

‘It was Lisa’s fault,’ Henry had grumbled untruthfully, adding to Lisa, ‘You really should get a decent car, you know. Oh, and by the way, you need petrol.’

Lisa had gritted her teeth and smiled, reminding herself that she had already guessed from Henry’s comments about his family that, as an only child and a son, he was the apple of his mother’s eye.

Whilst Henry had been despatched to his father’s study, Lisa had been quizzed by Henry’s mother about her family and background. It had subtly been made plain to Lisa that so far as Henry’s mother was concerned the jury was still out on the subject of her suitability as Henry’s intended wife.

Normally she would have enjoyed the chance to visit the Yorkshire Dales, Lisa acknowledged—especially at this time of the year. Last night she had been enchanted to discover that snow was expected on the high ground.

Henry had been less impressed. In fact, he had been in an edgy, difficult mood throughout the entire journey—and not just, Lisa suspected, because of the damage to his precious car.

It had struck her, over the previous weekend, when they’d been doing the last of their Christmas shopping together, that he was obviously having doubts about her ability to make the right impression on his parents. There had been several small lectures and clumsy hints on what his family would expect, and one particularly embarrassing moment when Alison had called round to the flat just as Henry had been explaining that he wasn’t sure that the Armani trouser suit was going to be quite the thing for his parents’ annual pre-Christmas supper party.

‘What century are Henry’s parents living in?’ Alison had exploded after Henry had left the room. ‘Honestly, Lisa, I can’t—’

She had stopped when Lisa had shaken her head, changing the subject to ask instead, ‘Any more repercussions about the clothes you bought from Second Time Around, by the way?’

Lisa had told Alison all about her run-in with Oliver Davenport, asking her friend’s advice as to what she ought to do.

‘Ring the shop and find out what they’ve got to say,’ had been Alison’s prompt response.

‘I’ve already done that,’ Lisa had told her. ‘And there was just a message on the answering machine saying that the owner has had to close the shop down indefinitely because her father has been taken seriously ill.’

‘Well, if you want my opinion, you bought those clothes in all good faith, and I feel that their original owner deserves to know exactly what kind of miserable rat her boyfriend is… I mean…selling her clothes… It’s…it’s… Well, I’d certainly never forgive any man who tried to pull that one on me. I think you did exactly the right thing in refusing to give them back,’ Alison had said comfortingly.

‘No. No further repercussions,’ Lisa had told her in response to her latest question. ‘Which I find surprising. I suppose I did overreact a little bit, but when he virtually accused me of trying to blackmail him into paying almost more for them than they had originally cost…’

Her voice had quivered with remembered indignation as she recalled how shocked and insulted she had felt to be confronted with such a contemptuous assessment of her character.

‘You overreacting—and to a man… Now that’s something I would like to see,’ Alison had told her.

‘Who are you discussing?’ Henry had asked, coming back into the room.