AllFreeNovel
Share Us
y spoken words caressed her brow, and her head jerked back in shock.
The damn man could read her mind! 'And we mustn't spoil your investment,' she scoffed, favouring him with a smooth dismissive glance.
Jake chuckled. 'So, prickly Katy, relax and enjoy the dance—it might never happen.' His dark eyes gleamed with mocking amusement, as he added wickedly, 'But I wouldn't lay money on it.'
Katy loved dancing, and wryly she accepted that sparring with Jake was a losing game. She relaxed slightly against him: dancing was safer. For a large man Jake was remarkably light on his feet. While one tune ran into another the soft lights, romantic music, and the seductive warmth of Jake's body all conspired against her better intentions, and as they moved in perfect unison around the floor her body, with a will of its own, melted against him.
The music increased in tempo, and Jake bent low so that his cheek brushed hers. 'Do you want to continue? Or shall we sit this one out?' he murmured huskily.
The sound of his voice and the up-beat music finally broke through the sensuous daze of the past few moments. Katy raised her head to look up into his shadowed face. 'What's the matter, Jake—too old for the modern stuff?' she sniped in an effort to hide how much the intimate body contact between them had affected her.
'Not at all,' he shot back, and before Katy's startled eyes he stepped away from her, his long body moving with sinuous grace to the sound of the heavy beat. 'Come on, Katy, show me what you can do,' he challenged, and, throwing his dark head back, he laughed out loud at her open-mouthed amazement.
Katy accepted his challenge, and for the next few sets she completely lost herself in the music and the seductive invitation in her partner's gyrations.
She was smiling when Jake finally put his arm around her shoulder and led her back to the table. Her emotions were in turmoil, but for a short while she had thoroughly enjoyed herself.
Seated once more, she gratefully picked up the glass of by now rather flat Perrier water and finished it off.
'Would you like another drink?' Jake asked rather breathlessly with a smile.
He can really be quite human, she thought, for an instant the past forgotten. 'No,' she replied truthfully, and seconds later she wanted to take the word back.
Jake drained his glass and stood up, the slight smile vanishing from his handsome face to be replaced with a hard implacable look. 'Good. Then we can leave.'
Katy murmured, 'Well, maybe it's not that late.' But Jake ignored her and, with a firm hand at her elbow, helped her to her feet.
Carefully he wrapped her stole around her shoulders, and with a brief word to the waiter, and the exchange of some money, he led her firmly towards the exit. She was free for a moment as Jake slid into his own overcoat, but she was too tired to move. She stood like a zombie while he said goodnight to the doorman, and once more his arm draped casually over her shoulder as he led her to the car.
Seated inside the luxurious interior, she fastened her seatbelt with a shaking hand. She knew Jake would not leave her tonight without an answer to his proposal. God knew, she had explored every avenue she could think of to help her father, but the closing of the car door sounded like the slamming shut of a prison cell to her tired mind.
Jake was the only viable proposition. She grimaced, dimly aware that he had slipped in behind the wheel and was carefully manoeuvring the Rolls into the light stream of traffic. A 'viable proposition' did not begin to describe Jake Granton.
'Your place or mine?'
The blunt question could not be ignored. Katy glanced at the clock on the dashboard. One in the morning. Wearily she leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes for a second. She was both physically and mentally exhausted, and hopelessly ill-equipped to start arguing with Jake. She had to draw on every last bit of energy to respond sarcastically, 'My, such finesse— you do surprise a girl.' She cast a sidelong glance at his rugged profile; his concentration was centred on the road ahead.
'The time for finesse is over, Katy. I tried it before with you and it got me nowhere.' His lips twisted in a grim smile. 'So which is it to be, Katy?' he asked coldly.
'My apartment, of course,' she managed to reply lightly, deliberately ignoring the deeper unspoken question. 'Dancing with you was quite a novel experience, but I'm tired and I want to get home.' She began to rattle off her address.
'I know where you live, Katy,' he cut her off abruptly. 'The time for prevarication is over. I want a straight answer—yes or no. Do you agree to my proposition?'
Katy stared long and hard at the half-shadowed face; it was impossible to read. She shrank down in her seat as a fierce tension gripped her. 'Jake, you said by nine tomorrow.'
She was not ready to accept his cold-blooded proposal, to actually give him the words. To admit she would sleep with him for money, because that was the bottom line. True, it was a fantastic amount of money, but it would confirm Jake's opinion of her, and deep down it hurt more than she would have believed possible.
'Today,' he corrected flatly. 'And a few hours are not going to make any difference.'
Jake was unfastening his seatbelt before she'd even noticed the car had stopped; he reached across and opened hers, and she flinched as his arm brushed lightly against her breast.
'They might to me,' she managed to respond. 'I do have a few ideas of my own to save the firm. They just need a little time to finalise. Claude...' She knew she was grasping at straws, but if she could just put Jake off...
'Claude is a dead loss,' he told her sardonically. 'Haven't you realised yet I am a very powerful man, and a good deal of the international fashion world happens to be financed by my banks? I received a very interesting call earlier this evening. Why else did you think I came to collect you? I had no intention of letting you wriggle out from under.' He smiled triumphantly down into her horror-struck face, amused at the blunt double entendre and her startled reaction.
Katy could not believe what she was hearing. 'Claude's firm?'
'Yes, my dear; in fact, your friend has rather a large overdraft.' He confirmed her worst fears. 'Indirectly I suppose you could say I have been paying your rather exorbitant salary for the last few years. As I see it, the only difference in this new arrangement... is that you won't have to work for it.'
