His Most Exquisite Conquest: A Delicious Deception / The Girl He'd Overlooked / Stepping out of the Shadows. Robyn DonaldЧитать онлайн книгу.
he’d expressed, although that unusual glint in his watery blue eyes had assured her he didn’t believe her. ‘You’d be a good match for him. He needs someone who’ll stand up to him once in a while, and I must admit it would be no hardship to me if you were to stick around.’
Which she definitely wasn’t going to! Rayne thought now, with the same stab of guilt she’d felt yesterday in realising that she was unintentionally getting herself caught up in Mitch’s affections.
She was getting far too involved with both men, and she had never intended that, she thought despairingly. The longer she stayed, the more she was becoming embroiled in their everyday lives, their worries, their concerns and, where King was concerned, she didn’t even have to spell out the problem to herself there.
Quite simply, that crazy fever she had been suffering from as a hapless teenager had returned in full force, threatening to consume her with its intensity because she had no protection against it. His cruel words and actions then should have immunized her for life, and she thought they had until she had met him again the other night. How he made her feel was like an ever-changing strain of some deadly virus that couldn’t be controlled, and the second time around it was even more potent and deadly than the first. It didn’t help either, telling herself that she was a woman now and therefore should have known better. Known how to ride the torments of this lethal attraction until it passed. Because it wouldn’t, she was shocked to realise. Because the only drug that would alleviate her symptoms was in the full-blown act of his possession of her. And then the relief, she thought, would only be short-lived, because once she had allowed herself to cross that line with him she knew she would never be able to have enough of King Clayborne. Like a drug, after its effects had worn off, the symptoms would return until she could indulge herself again, which would mean taking him into her until she could feel his power and his energy filling her up and seeping into every clamouring cell of her body, by which time she would be a hopeless addict.
No, she resolved, coming to a standstill at last on the beautiful pale Indian rug and making her decision.
First thing in the morning, she determined with a sudden painful contraction of her stomach muscles, she was going to let them both know exactly who she was and what she was doing there.
‘MONSIEUR CLAYBORNE? Non, he is not up yet,’ the housekeeper informed Rayne when she enquired where he was. ‘And Monsieur King …’ Hélène Dupont always referred to him as that, Rayne noticed, as though to call him simply ‘King’ would somehow detract from the respect she felt he commanded ‘… I believe he is still giving an interview on the terrace.’
‘An interview?’ Rayne queried, her curiosity aroused.
‘It’s to do with the documentary he is sponsoring. The one about clean water for some African villages. I believe he is heavily committed to that. They rang early. It was unexpected,’ Hélène told her before concluding, ‘I think he will be about half an hour more.’
‘Thanks,’ Rayne responded, her smile strained, her insides knotted up, as they had been almost continuously since she’d made her decision to tell the truth, so much so that she’d scarcely slept last night.
Finding out about the charitable work that King was involved in didn’t make her feel any better about deceiving him. In fact, it made her feel a whole lot worse.
She hadn’t, until now, even considered him having a compassionate side. Not really compassionate. Not until he had comforted her on that cliff-top the other morning. But then hadn’t he seen to it that her mother got her flowers when she was having difficulty ordering them? And rushed back from New York as soon as he’d been alerted to his father’s state of health?
But then again, perhaps his main reason for coming back from New York was to suss her out, Rayne reflected disparagingly. After all, he’d already been forewarned that she was there. And as for the flowers? Well, he wanted to get her into bed, didn’t he? And there could be other reasons for wanting to help people less fortunate than oneself. Like the publicity, for starters.
With his influence and money he could easily afford to help fund an irrigation programme for people in Africa. And it wouldn’t do his company’s image any harm at all to have favourable deeds associated with the Clayborne name.
And now she was being as cynical as he was, she thought, in willing herself to believe those things about him when, had she not known him better, and particularly after what Hélène had told her, she would have said he was a man of principle—a man who wouldn’t stoop to stealing another man’s intellectual property and helping to ruin his life.
But he had, she thought bitterly, standing there at the foot of the stairs and closing her eyes against the truth. That Kingsley Clayborne, the man who had broken her heart as a teenager and who now had her craving his attentions with every weak, betraying cell in her body, just wasn’t the man she wanted him to be.
Half an hour later, Mitch still hadn’t put in an appearance and King was still tied up with his visitor on the terrace.
Coming downstairs again into the deserted opulence of the sitting room, Rayne could still hear their muted voices drifting in from the sun-soaked terrace. The male interviewer’s tones were rather even and uninteresting in contrast to the deeper, richer modulations of King’s.
How could any woman not find herself drawn to him and in the most fundamental way? Rayne wondered, listening to him. When everything about him was unadulterated perfection? The way he looked, the way he conducted himself, the way he dressed. That sexy yet authoritative voice that had the power to make every woman he spoke to go weak at the knees.
Then there were the other traits of his personality, too. Determination and drive and that restless energy about him that made up the whole man, and amounted to a pretty formidable package which made him impossible to ignore.
In fact it gave her goosebumps all over her body, just as it was doing now. Goosebumps and a multitude of nervous flutters in her stomach from the thought of what she had to do and the consequences of what telling him the truth might be.
Hearing the scrape of chairs on the terrace, accompanied by phrases that warned her that the interview was drawing to a close, suddenly Rayne lost her nerve. Wasn’t it Mitch she should be confronting first anyway?
She had almost reached the stairs when she caught the sound of the men’s footsteps across the tiled floor and she quickened her own, keen to get away before they reached the hall.
‘Oh, Rayne …’ Too late, the honeyed resonance of King’s voice drifted towards her, lifting the hairs at the nape of her neck, exposed by her loosely piled-up hair. ‘Have you seen Hélène?’
‘Not for some time,’ she said shakily, turning round, her breath locking from the impact of his dark-suited executive image, from his poised elegance and commanding stature.
Why was it that other men seemed to diminish beside him? she wondered with painful awareness. She had only a fleeting impression of his younger, shorter companion because her gaze was held—against her will, it seemed—by the steel-blue snare of King’s.
Beneath her simple white top and jeans, her body pulsed from the pull of his powerful magnetism and it wasn’t until he broke the contact to say something to his tawny-haired visitor that Rayne, remembering her manners, turned to speak to the man.
As she did so, her greeting, like her smile, died on her lips and Rayne could feel her blood starting to run cold.
‘What are you doing here?’ the interviewer asked.
‘Do you two know each other?’ King enquired with a rather quizzical expression.
Rayne wanted to deny it, her mind chaotically processing what the chances were of the journalist who’d come to interview King being someone from her past. And not just someone.