A Ruthless Passion

His golden eyes hardened. ‘Of course you do,’ he replied scathingly, leaning back in his chair and steepling his hands—just like all the finance managers who’d already rejected her, Cat thought with a flare of temper.

Eyes half closed, he said, ‘As the trustee of Glen’s estate I made sure your annual allowance was transferred to your account four months ago. You’re not entitled to any more for another eight months.’

‘I need an advance.’

‘How much, and why?’ he asked, silkily insistent.

‘Twenty thousand dollars.’

She didn’t know what she’d expected—outrage, anger, disgust? But none of those emotions showed in the harsh, good-looking face, although Nick’s iron control over his face and body blazed a clear warning.

Almost gently he asked, ‘Why do you need twenty thousand dollars?’

Cat opened her bag and extracted a photograph. Her fingers shook as she pushed it across the wide desk. ‘She needs an operation.’

He glanced down. Surprise, then something like black fury replaced the glitter in his eyes. He looked up and asked in a level, almost soundless voice, ‘Is she your child?’

‘No!’ Cat sucked breath into starved lungs.

This time he examined the photograph for long seconds before asking, ‘So who is she, and why do you need twenty thousand dollars?’

‘Her name is Juana.’

He lifted a dispassionate gaze. ‘Are you sponsoring her? Because no reputable aid agency demands twenty thousand dollars—’

‘I’m not sponsoring her. I’m responsible for her, and you can see why I want the money.’

Once more he looked down at the photograph. Still in that calm, toneless voice he said, ‘I can see she needs surgery, but what has that to do with your request for an advance on your allowance?’

‘She has a cleft palate,’ Cat told him crisply. ‘At first the doctor thought that she’d be fine with just the one operation to fix it and the hare-lip, but once they got her to Australia they realised she’d need ongoing surgery. They booked her in for the next operation when she was two, but she’s grown so much she’s ready now. In fact, to be entirely successful it has to be done within the next couple of months. And as she’s from Romit, and therefore not an Australian citizen, everything has to be paid for.’

Nick noted the way her lashes hid her eyes, admired the artistic tremor in her voice. To give himself time to rein in the hot anger that knotted his gut, he got to his feet and walked across to the bookshelves.

Deliberately choosing the position of power, he leaned a shoulder against a shelf and surveyed the woman in front of him. Normally he never bothered with the techniques of intimidation—he didn’t need to. Only with this woman did he craft every inflection in his voice, the movement of every muscle in his body.

He had to give her credit for nerve. After two years without a word she’d walked into his office as coolly as though she had a dozen valid reasons to demand this money, and she wasn’t giving an inch even now.

Of course, a woman with her assets had no reason to doubt herself.

Not that she was exactly beautiful. Cat Courtald—significant that she’d gone back to her maiden name!—had matured into an intriguing, fascinating, infinitely desirable woman, one with the power to sabotage both his will and his conscience. But then, he thought with hard self-mockery, recalling the times he’d touched her, she’d always had that power.

It had to be something to do with tilted blue eyes that smouldered with a secretive, lying allure, and skin like ivory silk, and a passionate, sultry mouth—and that was just her face! Her body almost tempted him to forget that this delicate, sensuous package hid a woman who’d sold herself to his mentor for security.

His rich mentor, he amended cynically. Four years later she’d tearlessly watched Glen’s coffin lowered into the ground, her tight, composed face a telling contrast to the grief she’d shown at her mother’s funeral.

She got to her feet to face him, her body stiff with anger. ‘I need the money for her, Nick, not for myself.’

This from a woman who’d never shown any sign of liking children! Yet, in spite of everything, he wanted to believe her. Like all good actresses she projected complete and total sincerity.

Her attempt to use the little girl in the photograph made him sick and angry.

‘Sit down, Cat,’ he said evenly, ‘and tell me how you got involved with this child.’

After a second’s hesitation, she obeyed, disposing her elegant limbs neatly in the chair before lifting her arrogant little nose and square chin to say in the voice that made him think of long, impassioned nights and hot, maddening sex, ‘I made myself responsible for her.’

Hunger ripped through him, ferociously mindless. Furious at his body’s abject response to that degrading, treacherous need, he turned and walked behind the desk. Hiding, he thought sardonically. ‘Why?’

‘She was born on the first of November last year.’

Nick frowned. ‘So?’

‘So it was exactly a year to the day after my mother died.’ The colour faded abruptly from her skin, sharpening her features. Yet she said steadily, ‘I was in Romit. Her mother died having her. I—I made myself responsible for her.’

Clever, he thought objectively, to choose Romit as the scene of this drama. Unable to do anything to stop the carnage, unable to get help to the victims, people had watched in worldwide anguish as the images of a savage civil war had flicked with sickening vividness across their television screens. Even now, with the rebels beaten and a peace-keeping force in residence, the people of Romit were the poorest of the poor. Residual guilt should certainly prise his hands from the pursestrings. ‘I see. Which agency is organising this operation?’

‘None.’

His mouth thinned. ‘Only a total idiot would fall for a story like that,’ he said callously. ‘What do you really want the money for, Cat?’

The light died out of her eyes, leaving them a flat, opaque blue as hard as her voice. ‘I knew you’d accuse me of lying, so I’ve brought my passport and a letter from the nun who runs the clinic where Juana’s being cared for. Sister Bernadette’s explained where the money will go and why it’s necessary now.’

Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this.

He frowned as she opened her bag and held out a battered envelope and her blue New Zealand passport. Her long fingers flicked open the pages. ‘Here are the dates I went into Romit,’ she said coldly, ‘and came out.’

How would those fingers feel on his skin? Would they cling and stroke? A volatile, potent cocktail of guilt and desire charged his body.

Repressing it, he focused on the stamped pages. God, he thought, fighting back a chill of fear. ‘What the hell were you doing in Romit in the middle of a civil war?’

‘I was working in a hospital—well, it was more a clinic, really.’

The customs stamps danced before his eyes as he recalled the hideous stories that had come out of the uprising. ‘Why?’

She stared at him as though he’d gone mad. ‘I told you— I was working.’

‘You? In a Third World country, in a hospital?’ He laughed derisively. ‘Pull the other leg, Cat.’

With a sudden twist of her body that took him by surprise, she got to her feet.

Automatically he followed suit. Before he could speak she said in a tight voice, ‘Read the letter, Nick.’

‘I don’t doubt for a moment that it purports to be from a nun in a clinic somewhere on that godforsaken island,’ he said curtly. ‘Easy enough to fake, Cat. You must have forgotten who you’re dealing with. What were you doing on Romit?’

She shrugged. ‘After my mother and Glen died a friend suggested I go and stay with her on the island—her father was attached to one of the UN agencies.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘The clinic was next door to their compound and running on nothing. When the fighting started at the other end of the island refugees poured in and they were desperately overworked at the clinic, so Penny and I helped. Then her father was pulled out; he insisted she go with him, but I stayed.’

‘Why?’ he asked harshly.

She stood with her head averted, hands held clenched and motionless by a fierce will. Outside a cloud hovered across the sun. In spite of everything, Nick had to stop himself from taking three strides and pulling her into his arms.