Unchained Destinies

Mariann nodded blithely. After doing out their Devon home and her London friends’ flats, she reckoned she could call herself that. ‘That’s right,’ she said, thinking she was almost home and dry. A little more proof and he’d be convinced. Perhaps some colourful Cockney would help! ‘Okey dokey, swivel your peepers this way—’

‘Do you think,’ he interrupted with a heavy sigh, ‘that you could speak normal, undecorated English? I don’t think my jet-lagged brain can cope with riddles.’

‘I meant’ she said, cheerfully in command of the situation, ‘for you to see what else we were doing.’ Hoping to convince him by sheer self-assurance, she opened tins enthusiastically. ‘Sultana skirting boards, flapjack ceiling and cane-sugar door panels with a cream surround. What do you think? Come on, be honest.’ Mariann leapt up eagerly and her big smile broadened with delight at his shattered expression.

‘Sounds like a greengrocer’s shop in the West Indies,’ he said caustically.

‘Too right!’ she sympathised. ‘But there’s colour charts for you,’ she added, disclaiming all responsibility for the manufacturer’s wild fantasies.

‘This building is part of Budapest’s historic Castle district,’ he said wearily. ‘You’re working in what was once an eighteenth-century salon—’

‘But the colours would look stunning!’ she cooed.

‘If this is a joke…’ he began in stiff anger.

And she couldn’t resist teasing him. ‘Too unconventional? I thought it might be.’ She sighed. ‘Colours are supposed to reveal your inner character.’ She eyed his suit with a professional air and let her gaze linger for a fraction too long on the lines of the beautiful body beneath. Wasted on a man like that…

‘Enlighten me as to my character,’ he said in clipped tones.

With pleasure! she thought. ‘A guy who believes in straight-down-the-line commitment with no sideturnings, who’s organised, ruthless to a fault, with no grey areas and no maybe,’ she replied, sounding annoyingly husky. Conventional or not, he looked devastating. But then his earthy, raw sensuality would fight its way through anything he chose to wear. Stopping herself from wool-gathering, she waved an expressive hand towards her kaleidoscopic pile of clothes. ‘What do mine say?’

He scanned the heap of reds, oranges and shocking pinks. ‘They don’t “say”, they shout,’ he grated in disapproval. ‘They scream in raucous tones that you’re as fast and as brash and as exciting as a fairground ride. A chameleon landing on those clothes would have a nervous breakdown.’

‘You’re funny!’ she said in surprise. She was grinning good-naturedly at his assessment, not in the least bit bothered by it because she was proud of brightening a grey world, one hand jammed into her tiny waist above the womanly swell of her hip, her long legs and bare feet planted assertively apart.

‘Hilarious. Stick your tongue out,’ he commanded abruptly.

She almost obeyed. ‘What?’ She gaped in astonishment.

Suddenly he was as close as a tango dancer, looming over her, his snazzy-suited body authoritative and slightly menacing. A faint quiver of nerves rippled from her head to her toes. When his hand enclosed her bare arm like an iron manacle again, she wondered seriously whether she could actually get away with deceiving him. Those eyes of his could penetrate flaws inside iron girders.

‘Stick your tongue out,’ he repeated softly, and Mariann found herself swaying towards him, helplessly mesmerised by his smoulderingly sexy eyes.

She fought the urge to lift her mouth to Vigadó’s inviting lips. He was even more wickedly sexy in the flesh than on paper, and of course that was how she had expected him to stay—a paper threat. It hadn’t been her intention to be around when he arrived. If he’d stuck to his schedule, she thought resentfully, like any normal businessman, whose life was run by his Filofax, she would have extracted all the information she needed and been on her way before he ever knew he’d been invaded by decorators!

Or tempted her with his undeniably enticing mouth.

He lifted an insistent eyebrow. ‘Your tongue,’ he murmured.

Her head cleared a little. What could he do to it? she reasoned. Cut it off? Intrigued, she obliged, her eyes challenging his while she stuck out her tongue with an energetic thrust that turned the gesture into an out-andout insult.

‘Awrr righ’?’ she enquired insolently.

A square of beautifully soft linen appeared in his hand and was gently moistened on her outstretched tongue while she covertly watched him—his long black lashes curling like a child’s on his cheeks, his come-and-kissme mouth flowering before her eyes in a shockingly sensual enjoyment. Her heart began to thud faster and hastily she retracted her tongue, aghast that she was responding with such primitive eagerness to his compelling, raw sexuality.

She liked men. She liked kissing. Perhaps a cuddle. No more. More led to expectations, to commitment, to ‘going steady’. And then obsessions, which she feared. Her sister Tanya’s happiness, her mother’s, father’s, brother’s—all had been nearly destroyed by obsession. And even the powerful István had been scarred by its denial. It was frightening, to be possessed by emotions.

To kiss this man would be an experience. But Vigadó gave out the impression that he’d never settle for less than complete surrender in return for his time and effort. Pity. She’d have liked to know what it felt like to have that amazingly carnal mouth on hers. It looked so wickedly, excitingly mobile…

She stiffened. He’d taken her face in one hand and slowly, solemnly rubbed at the paint splashes on her forehead, beneath the dip of her Marilyn waves. She jerked back and he continued on less dangerous areas of her brow. Snow from the sub-zero blizzard outside had dampened his hair and the freezing wind had given his face a healthy glow. He was so near, she mused, that she could feel the icy chill rising from his skin.

He smiled. It looked rather calculating to her and she sought to break the tension between them with a merry quip, but he got there first. ‘Now we’ve cleared up the flapjack, we can proceed,’ he murmured huskily. ‘I wonder which of us is the hungriest? Who will devour whom?’

Mariann blinked. Did he mean the paint, or her? Dark eyes burned into hers. And then she felt the tip of his tongue touching her jawline and all hell broke loose inside her. Something odd had happened to her stomach. She shook her head slowly till she had some control over her voice—confused as to why her throat had closed up in collusion with her body.

‘You can’t eat me. You’d get poisoned,’ she managed to croak out.

‘Oh?’ he murmured, his eyes mocking. ‘Venom in your blood?’

‘Lead in the paint,’ she countered shakily.

He chuckled in a sinister way. ‘Thanks for the warning,’ he said silkily. ‘I will look out for all the dangers when I’m tempted by beautiful and mysterious decorators putting in a bit of overtime.’

Mariann lowered her eyes modestly, her heart fluttering like crazy. There’d been a wealth of hidden meaning in his words. Tread carefully, she told herself. This man would be suspicious of his own mother.

‘Flatterer!’ she accused, feeling the desperation clouding her brain.

‘Don’t flirt,’ he warned in a low tone. If I want a woman, I take her—without any need for coy messages of encouragement.’

She tried to force her throat to open again, deciding to make a stand. Because she mustn’t fail! So a big smile and, ‘Who’s flirting?’ she defied.

‘You were,’ he said curtly.

‘Why would I do that?’ she shrugged.

‘Why indeed,’ he stated starkly.

Mariann licked her lips nervously. Fencing with this Don Juan was a tactical mistake. She must make her exit soon, find a way to close that incriminatingly open filing cabinet and carry on the decorating farce for another day.

‘If you don’t like the colours,’ she babbled, ‘we could do mango and cocoa-brown with fudge…’ The look in his eyes—beech-nut brown, or Havana? she wondered a little breathily—told her that it was time to stop. As usual she’d gone just a little too far. Her sense of fun had run away with her.

“Don’t push it,’ he said tightly. ‘You’re on dangerous ground.’

The beech-nut browns took another swift tour of her body. This time he made her feel so alarmingly naked that she wished she’d worn overalls. By now, the T-shirt was clinging rather indecently to her hot, damp breasts. The shorts weren’t much better. When she’d cut the hems for ease of movement, she’d been sublimely indifferent to states of the office staff—after all, she was playing a part and András and János knew better than to even glance below her neck, because she was ‘Viggy’s’. But this was Viggy himself. And he not only stared, he had a way of igniting her flesh and making it seem…more fleshy, more sexy than ever before. And that scared her.

‘Sorry. Tell me what colours you want and I’ll do them,’ she said contritely, every inch of her aware of him—and hating the magnetic pull he was exerting over her. ‘It’s a shame,’ she said, struggling for normality. ‘I reckoned my scheme would look terrific——’

‘You reckoned?’ he interrupted sharply. ‘My office manager should have made that kind of decision, not you. Sándor Millassin.’

‘Antal,’ she corrected, watching him closely.

‘Of course,’ he replied, as bland as milk. ‘I forgot.’

She knew that was an out-and-out lie. Vigadó Gabór had the reputation of having a memory like an elephant. He was checking up on her! Must do better she told herself angrily.

‘Look, Antal was in a flap,’ she said, giving him an edited version of the truth. In fact, it was because the manager had been in so much of a flap, with his office in such chaos and the dreaded Vigadó due that month, that her bluff had worked. Antal had swallowed everything she’d told him about ‘Viggy’s’ generosity towards her. ‘Apparently you’d suddenly decided to switch your headquarters to Budapest and he wanted everything to look smart for you. He was far too busy making offers for the building next door and ordering equipment to bother with minor details like colour charts.’

Vigadó wandered to the window and stared out at the broken ice patterning the Danube below. The converted mansion stood high on a dramatic rocky outcrop above the city. Now the blizzard had stopped it was possible to see the whole panorama of the snow-blanketed city across the white-flecked river.