Susan Stephens Selection: The French Count's Mistress / The Spaniard's Revenge / Virgin for Sale / Bedded by the Desert King

The Count responded to the hard edge in her voice with a stare of almost hypnotic intensity before swinging around to address his colleagues. ‘Gentlemen, forgive me. We will reconvene this meeting tomorrow morning at nine.’

Round one to her, Kate thought, relaxing minutely. She waited in silence until the room cleared, lifting her chin in resolute defiance as the men walked past her, gazing with naked interest at the woman who presumed to interrupt the schedule of the Count de Villeneuve.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ the Count invited as the door finally closed on the last of them.

Kate glanced at the two easy chairs facing each other across a fireplace carved from a single block of Carrara marble and then back again to the confident individual standing in front of her. The Count’s suggestion would immediately put her at the receiving end of his legendary hospitality rather than on the opposing side of what might well turn into a legal dispute between them. ‘I prefer to stand, if you don’t mind.’

‘As you wish.’

As if sensing her unease, the Count remained where he was…too far away to touch, but close enough for her to detect the scent of warm clean man overlaid with the aroma of citrus fruits and spice.

‘Kate, se passe? Have you forgotten me?’

Kate’s face flared red as she met his amused gaze. How could she forget? Instinctively her gaze slipped to his lips.

‘Is it all coming back to you now?’ he murmured with what she suspected was more than a hint of satisfaction.

The heat teasing her senses was proof enough…but that same delicious sensation served as a warning too. ‘I haven’t come here to reminisce,’ she said firmly. ‘My only concern is for the present—’

‘Mine, too,’ he assured her smoothly. Turning on his heel, he strode away from her across the peach-veined marble floor to where an intricately inlaid cherry wood desk stood in front of a tall arched window. ‘Won’t you come and sit down?’ he invited, holding out a chair opposite to his own comfortably padded leather swivel seat.

His gaze was like a silken lasso drawing her across the room, Kate thought, fighting the urge to move.

‘Come,’ he urged gently, as if dealing with a highly bred mare. ‘Come and tell me what’s on your mind, Kate. Whatever your problem, I’m sure I can find a solution for you.’

His containment was driving her crazy, she realised, consciously steadying her breathing. His inflexible control had always brought out the worst in her. But, even as she told herself that she had changed beyond recognition in the years since they had last met, she found herself thrusting one hand on to the swell of her hip and speaking to him in the same furious tone she had once adopted as a self-willed teenager.

‘Talking won’t solve this problem, I’m afraid.’

‘May I ask what would satisfy you?’ he enquired, the gleam in his eyes betraying not only his recognition, but his enjoyment of her lapse.

The answer that sprang unbidden into Kate’s mind made her eyes widen with alarm. Guy de Villeneuve was in his late thirties and occupied the front cover of Time magazine with almost monotonous regularity. Kate, for all her commercial success, was just brushing twenty-six and had a life devoted to work, where there was no time for romance, let alone the type of relationship her over-active imagination had just conjured up.

‘Now you’re here it won’t hurt you to relax,’ he continued reasonably. ‘Can you come away from the door? I don’t bite.’

It was impossible to read his face…but it had been more than ten years, Kate reminded herself. She was out of practice. But if he thought he could make her nervous…make her forget the reason for her visit… She started walking towards him with her head held high and her dancer’s carriage almost concealing the slight limp that was the legacy of the accident that had almost killed her.

‘It would be a start if you could explain why La Petite Maison has been so badly neglected,’ she agreed frostily.

Now it was the Count’s turn to grow still as he watched her progress towards him. ‘Ah, that,’ he murmured distractedly.

‘Yes, that,’ Kate agreed. ‘Well?’ she pressed. ‘How do you explain it? I have been paying money into the Villeneuve estate office for almost six months now. Money I imagined would more than cover any necessary maintenance on the cottage until I was in a position to come over here and take charge for myself.’

‘Oh, par pitie, Kate!’ His elegant gesture silenced her. ‘It was understood by all the tenants that as soon as I had restored the estate to its original purpose the holiday cottages would have to go.’

‘Well, I wasn’t informed,’ Kate said as she settled into the chair he was holding out for her. ‘Under the circumstances, don’t you think your behaviour has been a little high-handed?’

As he took the seat facing her the Count’s powerful shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘I apologise for the oversight. When Madame Broadbent passed on I received no word regarding her intentions for La Petite Maison. I had no reason to believe that she left the cottage to you. Without the benefit of formal communication I drew the only assumption possible—’

‘Which was?’ Kate cut in. What was wrong with her pulse? She always remained calm when difficulties in business cropped up—that was her strength, she reminded herself forcefully. And La Petite Maison certainly represented a difficulty, if only because she had allowed her many other interests to take precedence.

The letters from Aunt Alice’s solicitor had coincided with the closure of a deal that would see her Internet travel service open at several sites in Japan…she had barely scanned the documents from France.

‘I concluded that Madame Broadbent’s heirs merely wished to keep the cottage in good repair— Please, let me finish,’ the Count insisted quietly when Kate’s agitation threatened to become vocal. ‘As that was not in line with my own plans, I instructed my estate manager to return all monies paid. On top of that there would have been a generous capital payment in line with the sums I have released to regain full title to all the other properties. Some banking hiccup—’

‘You can stop right there,’ Kate insisted, pushing a slender hand through her barely contained hair and dragging the rest of it down from the clip in the process. ‘I don’t want your money, but I do want everything I paid into the Villeneuve estate office to be spent on the cottage.’

‘I can’t do that—’

‘Can’t, or won’t?’ she demanded tensely.

The Count missed a beat, but his eyes had grown dangerously warm as he leaned over the desk to gaze at her. ‘Ah, Kate,’ he drawled. ‘You always were too impetuous—’

‘That isn’t an answer,’ she warned, trying not to notice the attractive way his eyes crinkled at the corners and the dense sweep of ebony lashes that framed the molten steel gaze. His scrutiny was bad enough when she wanted to talk business, but the effect it was having on her senses was nothing short of catastrophic. ‘If you refuse to do anything about the cottage,’ she said, ‘just return the money and I’ll sort it out myself.’

‘All right,’ he agreed, surprising her with his sudden capitulation. ‘I’ll have all the money repaid into your bank account tomorrow morning.’ But, just as Kate felt some of her tension seep away, he added starkly, ‘But the cottage reverts to me. You will accept my offer.’

‘Blackmail?’ she said as she got to her feet.

The Count’s fist slammed down on his desk. ‘T’exagere!’ Gathering himself quickly, he stood up, his dark, brooding expression an unmistakable mark of reproof. ‘I prefer to call it an amicable arrangement,’ he said in a low voice.

‘It’s a very one-sided arrangement,’ Kate observed, with remarkable composure considering she was confronting a gaze grown more dangerous than she could ever remember, ‘and hardly amicable since I don’t want any part of it.’

‘Perhaps when you hear what I have to say you might change your mind.’

Kate’s heart was thundering out of control, but still she managed evenly, ‘I doubt it.’

‘So you won’t even listen to my offer?’

As he stood towering over her, waiting for her reply, Kate drew herself up, but even when she was at full stretch he was still a good head taller…and there was a glint in his eyes that suggested he was actually entertained by her stand. Now she was mad. ‘Don’t patronise me, Guy. I’m a grown woman with my own business to run.’

‘And I thought you’d forgotten how to say my name,’ he growled softly.

His voice was as dark and deliciously beguiling as bitter chocolate, Kate realised as she struggled to keep her mind focused on the purpose of her visit.

Perhaps it was the timbre of his speech, or maybe the pitch, but something primitive was strumming her senses with a persistent and unmistakable beat. And if past experience had left her with the misleading notion that she was immune to machismo, Guy, Count de Villeneuve had just proved her wrong. And he knew it, she realised as their glances clashed.

‘Don’t change the subject,’ Kate warned, rallying fast. ‘You know what I’m here for and it isn’t a trip down memory lane.’

In a few electric moments their eyes met and held. Then, raising his eyebrows the merest fraction, he said, ‘I think we should both calmly put our cards on the table.’

‘I won’t change my mind.’

‘As you please, Kate,’ the Count said as he dropped on to his chair. ‘But whatever you’ve got to say, make it brief. I’ve got a great many things to do.’ He tossed her a look that was suddenly a good deal less tolerant, and she noticed how one of his hands seemed to want to mash the end of a bone-handled paperknife. The unconscious gesture was so much at odds with his strong watchful face that Kate was forced to wonder if she was as disturbing to him as he was to her. One thing was clear: he would soon lose patience with her again. It seemed that even Guy de Villeneuve’s fabled courtesy had its limitations—

‘Well?’ he pressed. ‘Do you intend to join me any time soon? Or would you prefer just to stand there and stare?’

The roughness in his voice was even more seductive than the charm, Kate realised as she moved to perch on the very edge of the chair. Smoothing her delicate aquamarine-tinted muslin skirt around her bare tanned legs, she watched him select a folder from the neat pile in front of him. But her gaze, like her thoughts, soon began to wander.