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'You might have been able to read Charles's mind but not mine, Joanne,' he said calmly, 'so please don't make the mistake of thinking you can. And I wasn't insinuating anything about Charles, before further crimes are laid at my feet. I'm quite aware of the platonic relationship between you both-'a father and daughter affection' were the words used to explain it, I think,' he said easily, 'by none other than his wife.'
'You asked Clare about me?' she screeched, her voice reverberating around the car's plush interior and causing the man at the wheel to wince visibly. 'How dare you?'
'Who better to ask?' His sidelong glance took in her scarlet face and he actually chuckled before adding, 'Calm down, Joanne, calm down; it wasn't like that. On the way to pick you up this evening I called by Charles's house with some papers for him to sign, and it was Clare who mentioned you as it happens. They're very fond of you, aren't they?' he said quietly. 'You're quite one of the family.'
She wasn't sure if he was being nasty or not but her temper was still at boiling point and she didn't trust herself to speak anyway. What an impossible man, she thought angrily. If ever she had needed confirmation that her decision to leave Concise Publications had been the right one, she'd just had it. Working as Charles's publishing assistant had been nothing but pleasure, but as Hawk Mallen's…
'Did you enjoy your job, Joanne?' It was as though he had read her mind, and she noted the past tense with a little flutter in her stomach. So, she was out on her ear, but then why this dinner tonight? she thought bitterly. So he could gloat, was that it?
'Yes, I did.' In spite of all her efforts to the contrary she couldn't quite keep the thread of antagonism from showing. 'It was interesting, exciting.'
'And from what Charles tells me your input was considerably more than one could normally expect from a publishing assistant; would you say that was fair?' he asked mildly.
She shrugged carefully. 'I've no personal commitments so there was no need to clock-watch if that's what you mean.'
'Not exactly.' The sleek, low beast of a car had just growled reluctantly to a halt at some traffic lights, and he stretched in the leather seat as he waited for amber, the movement bringing powerfully muscled thighs disconcertingly into her consciousness as she glanced his way. Her head shot to the front as though she had been bitten, the colour that had just begun to recede surging into her cheeks again.
What was it about him? she asked herself helplessly. Sexual magnetism? The aphrodisiac of wealth and power and authority? Sheer old-fashioned sex appeal? It was all those things and more, and it was devastating. He would have been dynamite on the silver screen, she thought ruefully. Pure twenty-four-carat box-office dynamite.
He didn't speak again as the Cizeta-Moroder sprang away from the lights, but as they travelled along the well-lit London streets her nerve-endings were screaming at her awareness of him, and she had never felt so out of her depth in all her life.
When they drew up outside the refined elegant building of the Maltese Inn he uncoiled his big body from the low-slung car with easy animal grace, moving to the passenger side in a moment and opening her door for her.
'You aren't going to leave it here?' She stared at him in surprise once she was on the pavement, but in the next second a massive uniformed doorman, who looked more like a prize fighter than anything else, was at their side.
'Keys, Bob.' Hawk dropped the keys into the man's outstretched hand with a warm smile along with a folded banknote. 'Look after her.'
'As always, Mr Mallen, as always. Good evening, miss.'
'Good evening.' Joanne smiled into the big ugly face with a naturalness that had been missing in her dealings with Hawk, something the piercing blue eyes noted and filed.
There was another doorman ready to open the gleaming plate-glass door into the entrance lobby, and another who ushered them through that and into the area beyond, where the reception area, powder rooms and cloakrooms were, the nightclub itself being up a flight of wide, graciously curved stairs that would have
done credit to any Hollywood movie.
Having divested herself of her jacket, Joanne was painfully conscious of the plainness of her dress and jewellery as she joined Hawk, the surrounding area seeming full of glittering women, with diamonds on their wrists, throat and ears, and all wearing dresses that must have cost a small fortune.
She was aware of the subdued buzz that Hawk was drawing, especially from the female contingent, as they walked towards the stairs, and it took all her will-power to keep her head high and her face cool and contained as they climbed the marble steps to the nightclub beyond.
That Hawk himself had noticed the covert glances became apparent when, on reaching the top of the stairs, he leant down and whispered in her ear, 'Don't worry, they are the same with everyone; they're trying to work out what us being together means.'
They aren't the only ones, Joanne thought wryly, her nerves as tight as piano wire.
'Too much time and too much money breeds mischief,' Hawk went on cynically, 'as many a damaged reputation has discovered.'
'I wouldn't know.' She glanced back down into the glittering array beneath them as they turned to go through the doors into the dimly lit nightclub, and there was more than one pair of beautifully painted eyes that stared brazenly back at her.
'You don't gossip?'
It was said mockingly but with more than a touch of scepticism, and Joanne paused just inside the room, meeting his sardonic gaze as she said, 'No, I don't Why? Is that so unbelievable?'
'Yes.' The sensual mouth quirked apologetically. 'I told you I don't lie,' he continued softly, 'and you did ask.'
'You seem to have a very low opinion of the female sex, Mr Mallen,' she said tightly. 'Or am I mistaken?'
It was a direct confrontation, and he smiled slowly, his eyes turning to liquid silver tinder the muted lighting and his dark skin accentuated by the whiteness of his smile. 'I can't answer that on the grounds that it might incriminate me,' he said lightly.
'I see.' She was about to say more, a lot more, but the appearance of the head waiter, with a smile as wide as London Bridge, put paid to the flood of angry words, and as they were led to what was obviously a superior table, right on the edge of the large dance-floor, she found herself once again overawed by her surroundings.
