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A quick, cool smile flashed across his face. ‘I’d almost forgotten how clever you are with words, Dorian. Now that we’ve done with the pleasantries, perhaps you’ll answer my question. Why are you leaving Barovnia?’
She stared at him. ‘I don’t have to answer that.’
‘No,’ he said, nodding his head, ‘no, you don’t. You can just sit here until the sun comes up, and—’
‘I’ll have missed my plane by then.’
He shrugged lazily. ‘There’ll be another.’
But not until midday, she thought in sudden desperation. And I can’t stay here any longer, Jake, I can’t…
‘I can’t,’ she said, a little breathlessly. ‘My—my boss wants me in New York immediately.’
Jake’s teeth flashed in a quick smile. ‘Your boss told you to stay here until your job was finished. I may not have the phrasing exactly right, but—’
‘You have been tapping my phone!’
‘Why are you running away, Dorian?’
Their eyes met. ‘I’m not.’
Jake reached into his pocket and held out her passport. ‘And why,’ he asked softly, ‘are you trying to use this when you know it’s illegal?’
Dorian glared at him. ‘My passport isn’t illegal.’
‘Really? That’s not what Mr Sojac tells me. He says you have no entry stamp.’
‘Of course I haven’t. How could I, when I never entered the country through Customs?’
‘No.’ His eyes grew cold and hard. ‘You never entered to the applause of your colleagues, either, but then, it was just your hard luck that I managed to spoil your plans.’
She stared at him, her breasts rising and falling with the rapidity of her breathing. She could feel her anger slipping away; it was being replaced by bleak despair, but she mustn’t let that happen.
So what if he thought she’d betrayed him? The truth was that he had betrayed her, and in the cruellest sort of way. She had to keep remembering that, remembering how she despised him…
‘Jake.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Please. Don’t do this.’
‘Don’t do what?’ He opened the little blue book and peered into it, leafing idly through the pages as if he might come across something interesting. ‘What a pity,’ he said. ‘You don’t seem to have done very much travelling.’ He looked at her. ‘Don’t you like to travel?’
‘Dammit, Jake—’
‘But then, of course, travel is expensive.’ He frowned as he flicked the passport shut. ‘Well, not to worry. Now that you’re about to become a hotshot columnist, your boss will send you anywhere you want to go. The Far East. South America. Paris, London.’ His face darkened. ‘Of course, you want to be sure he doesn’t try to send you where you’re not welcome.’
‘What is it, Jake? Do you want me to beg?’ Her voice was steady, but her hand shook as she held it out to him. ‘If you’ve any decency at all, you’ll give me my—’
‘Decency.’ His voice caressed the word. ‘And what would you know of decency, Dorian?’
‘Give me my passport!’
He smiled coolly. ‘If you want it that badly, come and get it.’
‘Jake, dammit!’ Dorian slammed her hand against the desk. ‘This isn’t a game!’
‘Sure it is. And you play games so well. Don’t you want to play another?’
‘You—you—’ A word burst from her lips as she flew across the room. ‘Give me that!’ she demanded.
Jake laughed as he raised the passport over his head. ‘Give you what? This?’
Tears rose in her eyes. ‘I hate you, Jake Prince,’ she panted as she stretched for the little blue booklet. ‘Damn you to hell!’
‘No,’ he said, and suddenly he wasn’t laughing any more, ‘no, Dorian, you can’t damn me to hell.’ He caught her wrists in his hands, spun her around, and backed her against the desk. ‘You already did that once, you see; you don’t get a second chance.’
Her breath sobbed in and out of her lungs as she struggled against him. ‘Let go of me, Jake! I swear, if you don’t, I’ll—I’ll—’
‘You’ll what? Call the cops? The militia? The king?’ He laughed. ‘Don’t waste your time, Dorian. I am the cops. And the militia. And the king, in effect, remember? I’m all those things—and I’m also the man you betrayed.’
‘I betrayed you? That’s a laugh.’
‘You’re damned right you betrayed me.’ He let go of her wrists and clasped her shoulders in his hands. ‘You set me up. You fed me little titbits of sex and sweet compassion, so you could lead me like a lamb to the slaughter.’
‘No. That’s not true.’
‘Are you trying to pretend you didn’t send a telegram to WorldWeek?’
‘I was only doing my job. But you—’
‘And what a job you did,’ he said coldly. ‘Setting me up for the cameras—’
‘That’s a lie!’ Angry tears rose in her eyes and she swiped them away with her hand. ‘I tried to warn you—’
‘When, Dorian? Just tell me that!’
‘I did try! I tried to tell you during the night, when you awakened me. And—’
‘Yes.’ Jake shifted his weight, so that his body brushed lightly against hers. ‘I remember waking you. I remember it very clearly.’
She remembered too, oh, yes, she remembered. His kisses. His whispers. The feel of his hands and his mouth…
‘And—and then the next morning,’ she said quickly. ‘I kept saying I said I had to talk to you. I was going to tell you about the telegram I’d sent.’
‘So what? Maybe you’d decided you’d made a mistake, calling for the reserves. Hell, you’d drawn stuff out of me that would make for quite a story. Keeping it an exclusive would have made it more valuable.’
Dorian stared at him. ‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ she whispered. ‘You—you used me, Jake. I was just—I was a toy, something to play with…’
Her throat constricted. What was the point in this? Jake hated her, and she—she hated him. Nothing they could say would change that, and if it was hard to stand this close to him without reaching out and trying to smooth away the tiny lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes it was only because—because…
Her heart fell. It was because she loved him, and she always would, despite what he’d done to her. If there was a special place in hell for a man who’d treated a woman as Jake had treated her, then there had to be a place there, too, for a woman foolish enough to go on loving such a man.
Tears rose in her eyes, and she turned her head away.
‘Please,’ she said in a choked whisper, ‘let me go home.’
‘Why? So you can get back to New York and write your story? What are you going to call it, The Lady and The Barbarian?’
‘No. I—I won’t write anything like that. I’ll just—I’ll write about—about a man who—who…’
She fell silent. She would not write this story at all, she thought, and the realisation came as no great surprise. Perhaps she’d known it all along. She would never write about Jake. How could she, when no matter what she said or how she said it she would violate not just his privacy, but the precious time they’d shared?
Jake clasped her chin and forced her to look at him. ‘About a man who what
? What’s your story for WorldWeek going to be about?’
Dorian took a deep breath. ‘Nothing. There’ll be nothing in the magazine.’
‘I see.’ He glared at her. ‘So you sold out to the highest bidder. Who was it, Dorian? American TV? The British penny papers? I hear Stern pays damned well.’ He jerked her head up. ‘Who’d you sell your soul to?’
‘No one.’ She met his eyes. ‘I’m not going to write anything at all. I know you don’t believe me—’
‘You’re right, I don’t.’
‘So I’ll sign a release, or whatever it is you call it. Just have your lawyers send it to me—’
She cried out as his hands slipped to her shoulders and he half lifted her to her toes.
‘What kind of fool do you take me for? You go off to New York, and it’s too late for me to do anything. No, Dorian, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.’
‘What, then?’ The tears she’d tried so hard to stop began to trickle down her cheeks. ‘What do you want from me, Jake? What can I do to prove that—that I’d sooner die than hurt you?’
The admission hung between them, drifting in the air like smoke from a dying fire. Dorian wanted to call the words back, but it was too late. Jake’s hands slid from her shoulders to curve lightly around her face.
‘I’ll tell you what you can do,’ he said, his voice suddenly soft and gentle. ‘You can kiss me.’
‘No. Jake, no. Don’t. I don’t—I can’t…’
He bent his head and brushed his mouth lightly over hers. It was a soft, gentle kiss, and she tried to turn away from it, but he held her fast, his lips moving over hers tenderly, sweetly, and, despite her determination not to reveal herself to him more than she already had, she gave a little sob and swayed towards him. Her arms linked around his neck as he gathered her to him, and she returned his kiss with the same tenderness and passion.
They stayed that way for a long, long time, lost in each other’s arms, and then, finally, Jake drew back.
‘Did you really think I’d let you leave Barovnia so easily?’ he asked softly.
Dorian leaned her forehead against his chest. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked in a broken whisper.
‘Because I want to hear you admit the truth.’ He held her from him and looked into her eyes. ‘You’re in love with me.’
