His Mistress Proposal?: Public Scandal, Private Mistress / His Mistress, His Terms / The Secret Mistress Arrangement

‘I’m glad you won when you did,’ she said, wary of his meaning as she hurried to keep up with him. ‘He was scoring so well there at the end I was afraid—’

He halted her with a blistering look. ‘Only because I let him,’ he bit out. ‘Ten-zip would have been more gratifying for me, but it would have been counter-productive. When you beat a man that completely, you don’t humiliate him as well—unless you want to make a bad enemy,’ he said, stepping back to let her precede him into the cottage. ‘I may happen to think Bentley’s a pompous bastard with an over-inflated opinion of his self-worth, but he’s Ashley’s fiancé, so a certain amount of diplomacy is required in getting the message across …’

‘What message?’ she asked, nervously hugging the towel around her.

‘That you’re under my protection,’ he replied, his voice redolent with dark satisfaction.

Her face registered her instinctive objection to the implication and he was swift to strike.

‘You want me to tell him you’re not?’ he invited with dangerous softness.

The consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about. She swallowed. ‘I’m sure he won’t try anything like that again—’

‘Did he say that?’

‘Well, no, but—’

‘But what? Did he have reason to think you wanted him to try it on with you? Did you and he arrange to sneak off for a watery rendezvous—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I think he’s repulsive!’ she snapped.

‘Then what in the hell did you think you were doing in the pool with him?’ His rage broke loose in a low roar. ‘Damn it, don’t tell me you don’t know what a lecher he is. I’ve seen the way he leers over you when Ashley’s not around. Why the hell did you let him get close enough to grab you—?’

‘I didn’t let him do anything,’ she protested, buffeted by his unleashed fury, trying to persuade herself that his anger wasn’t really directed at her.

His brown eyes smouldered with hostility. ‘You shouldn’t have gone down to the pool alone.’

She blinked, rocked by the accusation. ‘Are you blaming me?’

‘At the very least you could have got out as soon as you saw him coming—’

‘I didn’t see him coming, that was the problem.’ It was her turn to blister him with a look. ‘You are blaming me,’ she said incredulously.

His olive skin darkened and he shifted his feet. ‘That swimsuit fits you like a second skin,’ he muttered.

Her eyes widened. ‘That’s because it’s designed for swimming,’ she pointed out sarcastically. ‘Do you expect me to wear my clothes when I go into the pool? How dare you try and blame me for Ross’s behaviour? His lack of self-control is his own problem, not mine!’ She stepped up to poke him in the chest with an outraged finger as she spoke. ‘He wanted to play a game of tag, obviously as an excuse to feel me up, and I said no. How much clearer could I have been? I never invited him to touch me and I never will. Believe me, Ashley is welcome to the puffed-up sleazebag.’ She ripped off her towel and threw it at him. ‘I won’t apologise for looking like this. Just because I slept once with you does not make me a slut!’ she articulated starkly.

Streaks of colour mounted his hard cheekbones as his hand fisted in the damp towel. ‘I never thought you were,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘I’m not that much of a hypocrite—’

‘You virtually accused me of making it easy for him!’ she cried.

‘I didn’t say that. It’s him I don’t trust. I don’t want him anywhere near you,’ he said with sullen belligerence. ‘I don’t like him touching you. I don’t like the way he looks at you. He’s damned lucky I only gave him a few unfriendly taps. If he does it again he won’t be coming up for air again quite so quickly.’

Remembering the flying elbows, head-dunkings and jarring full-body smashes during the lawless one-on-one, Veronica marvelled at his understatement.

Then his words fully sank in and a possible source of his indiscriminate rage suddenly hit her between the eyes.

Her stomach flipped.

Was Luc jealous?

He was certainly acting like the quintessential territorial male, radiating a violent antagonism that signalled his dominance to challenger and female alike.

Or, given his murky recent past, was he just being dog in the manger?

She wished she hadn’t made her dramatic gesture with the towel. Now she had nothing to hide behind. Except words. She stood straight and proud.

‘I’m sure he won’t. After all, he’s already warned me against trusting you—’

He glowered. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

She couldn’t back down now. The festering wound would never heal if she ignored it. ‘He told me about you and Karen. He said you were more than just acquaintances—’

‘And you believed him?’ His thick fury almost convinced her, but she had seen the tell-tale shutters go up at the mention of her sister’s name. ‘He lives in Australia, for God’s sake. What the hell would he know?’

‘He said Ashley had photos of you and Karen at a dinner—’

‘A dinner?’ he interrupted scathingly. ‘Is that all? No porno pics of us actually getting down and dirty, then?’ he lashed out, his words dripping with acid. ‘For God’s sake, how could you give credence to anything that cretin says? You said yourself he’s a sleazebag! The only way he can make himself look good is to make someone else look bad!’

She knew he was right, but she also knew that lies were often based in truth, and trust was a two-way street.

‘There’s no smoke without fire.’

The trite phrase seemed to be the last straw. ‘Well, if you’d rather believe him than me, go ahead!’ he exploded. ‘Unlike you I don’t choose to run my life guided by the opinions of muckraking slime!’

He stormed out the door, leaving Veronica’s head ringing as if she had been hit by a stun-grenade. He had never actually addressed the allegation at all, she thought numbly. Instead, all his anger had been directed at the fact that she had taken Ross’s word as gospel.

But she hadn’t … not really. Her own self-doubt had made the idea seem all too credible, but, still, she had harboured the secret expectation that Luc would flatly deny the accusation as a slanderous lie. If he had, she would have believed him in a heartbeat.

That he hadn’t was a sickening blow to her unacknowledged feelings, leaving her fiercely grateful that she had fought the powerful attraction that had tempted her to abandon her pride and her principles to a transient affair.

CHAPTER SEVEN

FORCING herself into motion, Veronica walked into the bedroom, her mind a blessed blank as she undid the ties at the nape of her neck and peeled the clinging-wet bathing-top over her head, dropping it carelessly on the tiled floor beside the bed on the far side of the room. She frowned as she looked around, blinking an annoying blur from her eyes.

‘Looking for this?’

Veronica spun around, rubbing fiercely at her wet lashes.

Luc came into focus as he stepped into the room, holding up her towel. ‘Sorry, I forgot I was carrying it when I flounced off.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘I thought you might need it.’

With a gasp Veronica snatched up the nearest thing from the bed to cover her swaying breasts. Unfortunately it turned out to be a small, decorative cushion barely equal to the task. She hugged it to her chest with both arms.

His eyes didn’t waver from her pale face and suspiciously bright eyes, his smile fading. ‘I’m a little touchy on the subject of personal loyalty right now,’ he said more sombrely. ‘I’m afraid I was making you pay for someone else’s sins. In the circumstances you had every right to ask what you did—and expect a straight answer, even if it’s not a very edifying one. Sometimes a kiss is nothing more or less than a kiss.’

‘W-what?’

‘I’m talking about Karen,’ he said abruptly. ‘That public dinner just after they first came to London was the only time I ever kissed her, although, strictly speaking, Karen was the one doing the kissing. She’d had a few drinks too many and started throwing herself at me. Melanie was embarrassed, so I acted amused, and played along, trying to keep the flirtation light to avoid creating an awkward scene at the table, but Karen took it for encouragement. She developed a bit of a crush on me for a few weeks afterwards—kept ringing me, turning up at my office or on my doorstep, that kind of thing. She made a nuisance of herself until I asked Melanie to have a quiet word with her. I haven’t seen her since.’