Untamed Lover

She should stick her nose in the air and tell him that she wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in anything he’d done—so it was rather strange to find herself asking, ‘Where have you been all this time?’

He sipped his own drink and put the glass back down on the table. ‘First I went to Australia. Then the States. My main home is still in Australia.’

And now? she thought with a sinking heart. Even out of sight, Liam had never been entirely out of mind. Surely he wasn’t planning to re-enter her life? ‘So now you’re back for good?’ she said, voicing the fear.

‘That rather depends,’ he said obscurely, ‘on the outcome of our talk.’

Something in the way he said it alerted alarm bells in Scarlett’s head. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘You’d better tell me what this is all about, Liam.’

‘I told you. I have a proposition to put to you.’

Curiosity got the better of her. ‘What kind of proposition?’

He gave a distinctly wolfish smile. ‘I need a favour from you.’

She actually laughed aloud. ‘Well, if that doesn’t take the biscuit for arrogant, bare-faced cheek! You reappear after ten years and then try bargaining with me? You’re not in a position to negotiate.’

‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Scarlett,’ he said, in a tone of chilling assurance. ‘I always operate from a position of strength. It’s a lesson I learned very early on in life.’

Something about this new Liam made her feel uneasy. The years had redefined that ridiculously primitive masculinity he’d always exuded. Oh, it was still there, but tempered beneath the cool and worldly assurance he now carried with him. And, in a way, the impact was all the greater under its new guise. The hand of steel masked beneath the velvet glove...but just as hard and as impenetrable as ever...

He had been cold and unfeeling, she thought bitterly. He had walked away without giving her a second thought—well, she was damned if she’d let him back into her life on any terms!

She studied him, feigning impartiality. ‘Tell me what you’re asking,’ she said. ‘But I haven’t any money to give you,’ she added insultingly.

This brought a reaction. It was so fleeting that someone who had not made a hobby out of studying his harsh features might have missed it completely. But it was there, and Scarlett saw it. Rage, in about as undiluted a form as you could get it, burned like a blazing fire in those blue eyes. Rage, which somehow—sinisterly—managed to convey some kind of threat. And as she felt her heartbeat pick up she realised that it was a sexual threat, communicated silently to her traitorous and willing body.

Then it was gone. Instead, the eyes were narrowed, ill-concealed distaste replacing rage. ‘You think I need your money?’ he questioned softly. ‘That even if I did I would ever come crawling back to ask you? And I can imagine what you’d like in exchange for your money too.’ His eyes glittered with censure. ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Scarlett, but I played the role of stud just once in my life—and that was once too often.’

Scarlett stared at him in horrified disbelief. He couldn’t believe that—he just couldn’t! Surely he didn’t believe that it had just been the bed thing for her? He had been her entire world, her universe. For her, the sun had risen and set in Liam’s eyes. She shuddered at the memory before answering him.

‘While you may have the time or the inclination to sit around here discussing an episode of our lives best left forgotten—I do not.’ She stared at her wristwatch pointedly. ‘I have a party going on, guests waiting—so come on, out with it, Liam.’

There was the faintest upward pull at the corner of his mouth, and to her consternation she felt her cheeks flame at his silent acknowledgement of sexual innuendo.

‘Get on with it!’ She glared at him. ‘And tell me about your proposition.’

‘So delightfully put,’ he murmured, then crossed one long leg over the other. ‘Very well. We’ve tarried for long enough. You see, it’s not your money I need, Scarlett—it’s you.’

To her fury, her heart had resumed its excited little pitter-pattering. Some long-forgotten yearning deep within her flared into tentative life. She found herself swallowing. ‘What did you say?’ she whispered.

He smiled. ‘I want you to do me a little favour, Scarlett,’ he said softly.

The yearning crumbled into dust, but some glittering message which sparked at the depths of his eyes warned her not to simply ignore his statement. ‘What kind of favour?’

He smiled again. He looked invincible. ‘I have a big business merger going through. Contracts are about to be signed. All I need to do is put the icing on top of the cake, so to speak, so I’m holding a house party at one of my homes in Australia for my prospective business colleagues and their wives. I want everything to run like clockwork, and I need a hostess—someone who knows how to play the part to perfection—and who better than you, Scarlett?’ he finished mockingly.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_7668fc1c-1c5d-533d-a0fb-35c4f612a8d9)

SCARLETT stared at Liam as though he had just spouted horns and a tail. She shook her head from side to side in disbelief. ‘It’s a preposterous suggestion! Laughable! It doesn’t even deserve the dignity of an answer.’

He didn’t seem in the least bit perturbed by her negative response. ‘You won’t do it, then?’

She nearly choked on the last of the brandy she had been drinking to gain a bit of Dutch courage. ‘Of course I won’t do it! I don’t know how you’ve got the brass neck to even consider it! As if I’d endure even a minute more of your company than I have to—let alone take part in some farcical ‘‘house party’’ to impress your business cronies. And if I did meet any of them, I’d take great delight in telling them—’

‘How great I am in bed?’ he mocked softly, giving a deep laugh as he saw the colour which scorched over her pale skin.

‘That was completely unnecessary, and below the belt!’

He raised his eyebrows infinitesimally and gave a very sexy smirk. ‘I certainly hope so,’ he drawled.

Scarlett gave up. His sexual innuendo she couldn’t cope with—not when she was marooned out in the middle of nowhere with him. It was time to put her foot down—once and for all!

‘How many times do I have to tell you? Watch my lips, Liam! I am engaged to someone else! And, just in case that’s still not clear enough, watch my lips again! In five weeks’ time you and I will be divorced!’

‘So I take it the answer is no?’ came the mocking reply.

‘Have the last ten years done something to your powers of reasoning?’ she demanded. ‘Of course the answer’s no!’

He shook his head, as though mildly irritated, nothing more. ‘Oh, dear. And there was me hoping that we would be able to agree on this amicably.’

‘Which just goes to show how wrong you can be!’

‘Scarlett,’ he drawled, ‘I’m afraid that there isn’t really a pleasant way to say what I’m about to say—’

‘Then why bother?’ she cut in.

‘You’ll see. Do you have any knowledge of your stepfather’s affairs?’

She shot him a bewildered look. ‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded. ‘He’s always been completely faithful to my mother.’

‘Not those kinds of affairs,’ he chided. ‘Heavens, Scarlett—you always did have a one-track mind. I’m talking about his business affairs.’

What on earth did Liam know about Humphrey’s business affairs? ‘What about them?’

‘Your stepfather is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy,’ he stated baldly.

There was something about the flat, unequivocal statement that had the undeniable ring of truth about it. Scarlett tried to swamp the sudden fear which rose in her throat.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said quietly.

There was a grim expression on his face which hardened the brilliant blue of his eyes into shards of glittering sapphire. ‘Believe it,’ he said flatly. ‘This cottage I now own—as I do the majority of your stepfather’s old estate.’

Scarlett’s heart started thudding loudly. ‘Liar,’ she whispered.

He ignored the interruption. ‘His business is in trouble and his house is mortgaged up to the hilt. And if the bank were to call in its loans, well...’ He gave a sardonic smile as he paused for dramatic emphasis.

‘And why should the bank want to do that?’ she asked steadily. ‘And what has all this got to do with you? And me?’