Dark Fire

‘Don’t ask,’ Paul advised kindly, directing a purely masculine look at the man opposite. ‘He won’t tell you anyway. Flint’s work is highly confidential.’

Thoroughly irritated by the unspoken male conspiracy, Aura fluttered her lashes and cooed, ‘How fascinating. Is it dangerous, too?’

‘Sometimes,’ Flint said, the intriguing, gravelly texture in his voice intensifying. ‘Does danger excite you, Aura?’

From beneath half-closed eyelids he was watching the way the light shimmered across her hair. Uneasily she shook her head; an unknown sensation stirred in the pit of her stomach. Perhaps, instead of letting her hair float around her shoudlers in a gleaming burgundy cloud, she should have confined it into a formal pleat.

‘No, far from it,’ she said, trying to make her tone easy and inconsequential. ‘I’m a complete coward.’

‘Aura,’ Paul said, touching her hand for a second, ‘is not into risk.’

As she turned her head to give him a quick, tender smile, she caught in the corner of her eye the ironic movement of Flint’s lips.

‘Yet you’re getting married,’ he said speculatively. ‘I’ve always thought that to be the greatest risk in the world, giving another person such power in your life. Unless, of course, the other person is too besotted to be any threat.’

‘Ah, you’ve guessed my secret,’ Paul retorted, his blue eyes warmly caressing as they rested on Aura’s face.

Without reason, Aura was hit by a wave of profound disquiet. Her gaze clung a moment to Paul’s, then slid sideways as the wine waiter appeared.

When the small business of handing the drinks out was over, Paul began talking of a political scandal that had erupted a couple of weeks before. Hiding an absurd relief, Aura listened to the deep male voices, sipping her wine a little faster than usual because something was keeping her on edge.

No, not something; someone, and he was sitting next to her. If she lowered her eyes she could see Flint’s long fingers on the round tabletop, his bronze skin a shocking contrast to the white, starched damask cloth. He had a beautiful hand, lean and masculine and strong.

He had to spend a lot of time in hot sunlight to acquire a tan like that, she thought vaguely. Of course, he had just returned from the tropics, but, even so, he was far darker skinned than either her or Paul. It was one of the reasons those glittering golden eyes were so spectacular, set as they were in black lashes beneath straight black brows.

The hum of conversation receded, became overlaid by the sudden throbbing of her heart in her eardrums. From beneath her lashes Aura’s gaze followed his hand as he lifted his wine glass and sipped some of the pale straw-coloured liquid. When he’d greeted her the rough hardness of calluses against her softer palm had made her catch her breath, and set up a strange, hot melting at the base of her spine. It had receded somewhat, but now it was starting all over again.

She didn’t know what was happening to her, although instinct warned her it was dangerous. With a determined attempt to ignore it, she joined in the conversation.

To share a meal with someone who disapproved profoundly of her was nothing new; hatred she could deal with.

But Flint Jansen despised her. He had taken one look at her, and for a frightening second contempt had flickered like cold flames in the depths of his eyes. The moment her eyes had focused on that harshly commanding face, an intuition as old as her first female ancestor had warned her that he was no friend of hers, that he never would be. For some reason they were fated to be enemies.

And Paul hadn’t noticed.

She looked up at him, half listening as he expounded some interesting point of law to the other man. Apart from her cousin Alick, Paul was the most intelligent man she had ever known, yet he thought they were getting along well.

Flint’s textured voice dragged her glance sideways. He was smiling, and even as she tried to jerk her eyes free his gaze snared hers.

For the length of a heartbeat green eyes and gold clashed. His mouth curved in the smiling snarl of a tiger playing with something small and not worthy of it.

A question from Paul shattered the tension, his beloved tones both an intrusion and a shield. As Flint answered, Aura breathed deeply.

Stop it, her brain screamed. But she had no idea what it was. Her reaction was totally new to her; it seemed that a new person had moved in to inhabit her body, a bewildering renegade, a woman she didn’t know.

She had to calm down, reimpose some sort of control over her wayward responses.

Something Paul said brought a smile to Flint’s face, revealing strong white teeth that did more uncomfortable things to the pit of Aura’s stomach. Snatching at her slipping self-possession, she concentrated fiercely on the words, not the man; on the occasion, not her reactions.

He had excellent manners. He was entertaining in a dry, wittily cynical fashion. When Aura spoke he listened attentively with nothing more obvious than lazy appreciation in his hooded eyes, yet she felt the track of his eyes like little whips across the clear ivory of her skin. And she sensed his contempt.

Oh, he was clever, he hid it well; he was a man whose feelings were caged by a ferocious will. But Aura had spent too many years noting hidden, subliminal signals to be fooled. This was not the casual disdain of a man faced by a woman out to feather her nest. Flint Jansen’s anger burned with a white-hot intensity that made him more than dangerous. And all that savage emotion was directed at her.

It bewildered her and upset her, but the most astonishing thing was that in some obscure way it was exciting. She looked across the table to the shadowed, clever face slashed by the scar, a countenance almost primitive in its force and power, and a feral shudder ran down her spine, set off warning signals all through her, flashpoints of heat and light leaping from cell to cell.

Shaken, at the mercy of forbidden and equivocal sensations, she managed to disguise her response with a sparkling glow of laughter and bright conversation, while Paul watched her with pride and the tiniest hint of possessive smugness. Amazingly, the secret, seething undercurrent of ambiguous emotions appeared to swirl around him without touching him.

She didn’t begrudge him his pride; all men, she knew, wanted to stand well in the eyes of their fellows. It was at once one of their strengths, and rather endearingly childish.

‘Paul tells me we’re having a party tomorrow night,’ Flint said coolly while they waited for dessert.

Natalie had insisted that as mother of the bride she owed friends and relatives a drinks party. Behind Aura’s back she had wheedled Aura’s cousin, Alick Forsythe, into paying for it, and because she refused to entertain in the small unit she and Aura lived in now it was being held at Paul’s apartment.

Aura nodded, hoping her irritation didn’t show. ‘Yes.’ She sent Flint a sideways glance.

His eyes darkened into tawny slits, and for one pulsing second he watched her as though she’d started to strip for him. Then his lashes concealed eyes cold and brilliant as the fire in the heart of a diamond.

Aura’s mouth dried. ‘You’ll meet my mother and my bridesmaid, and an assortment of other people. It should be fun.’

‘I’m sure it will be.’

Aura resented his bland tone, but more the sardonic quirk of his lips that accompanied it. Although she had fought against the whole idea of this wretched party, now that it was inevitable she was prepared to do what she could to make it a success.

By the time the evening wound towards its close Aura was heartily glad. Every nerve in her body was chafed into painful sensitivity, her head ached dully and bed had never seemed so desirable.

By then she knew she would never like Flint Jansen, and found herself hoping savagely that his job kept him well away from them. The less she saw of the beastly man, the better. Fortunately the feeling was mutual, so she wasn’t likely to be plagued with too much of his presence after she and Paul were married.

She expected to be taken straight home, but as Flint held open the car door for her with an aloof, studied smile Paul asked, ‘Do you mind if we go back to the apartment first, darling? I’m expecting a call from London, and I’d like to be there when it comes.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Halfway there she yawned. Instantly Paul said, ‘Poor sweet, you’re exhausted, and no wonder. Look, why don’t I get off at home, then Flint can drive you the rest of the way? That way you’ll be tucked up in bed at a reasonable hour.’

‘Oh, no, there’s—’

Aura’s swift, horrified, thoughtless answer was interrupted by Flint’s amused voice from the back seat. ‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ he said lazily. ‘Where does Aura live?’

Bristling, but recognising that protests would only make her antagonism more obvious, Aura gave him her address.

‘Really?’

The hardly hidden speculation in his tone made her prickle. ‘Yes,’ she said stiffly.

‘I know how to get there.’

The hidden insolence in his words scorched her skin with a sudden betraying flush. Aura’s tense fingers clasped the beaded work of her fringed Victorian bag. She most emphatically did not want to be cooped up with Flint for the twenty minutes or so it would take to get her home. However, as there was no alternative she was going to have to cope as well as she could.

‘Goodnight, sweetheart. Try not to push yourself too hard tomorrow,’ Paul said when the transfer of drivers had been effected. He bent down and kissed her gently. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night.’