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When she lifted her head from this action and automatically glanced in the mirror, she screamed. For Nathan was standing in the open bedroom doorway, glaring over at her as though he wanted to kill her.
She whirled round, and her eyes had never felt bigger as they took in his unshaven face and his chillingly cold grey eyes. Dressed in washed-out grey jeans and a crumpled blue windcheater, he looked far removed from his usual elegant, well-groomed self. He looked far removed from his usual self all round. Dear God, he had never looked at her like that before, so full of hardness and hatred.
After an initial freezing, Gemma's heart jolted into an erratic beat, her headache forgotten in the face of other more frightening feelings.
'So I was right,' he said in a voice made all the more terrifying for its control. 'You were here all along. I just jumped to the wrong conclusion.'
Gemma pulled the robe defensively around her quivering nudity. 'How ... how did you get in here? The gates are locked.'
'There's no lock on the jetty, Gemma. I came by boat.'
'I'm not alone, you know,' she bluffed, sensing his simmering violence. 'The housekeeper. .. '
'Won't be back till three,' he finished frostily, and produced Cora's note from his pocket.
Crippling it into a ball, he threw it in a corner. 'I came here,' he ground out, 'hoping and praying that somehow I'd be proven wrong about you, that all I had to do to set things right was say I was sorry for being so stupid as to have Lenore over. But I wasn't wrong about you, was I? You took the first flimsy excuse you could find to run to your lover. You blackened my name to my whole family while all the time you were letting that bastard Campbell screw you silly!'
Gemma hadn't realized till that moment what impression her presence in Damian's room would give, especially with her not being properly dressed.
Any irony over Nathan's turning things around and making her the accused one was lost in the wake of her anxiety to make him see the truth.
'You've got it all wrong!' she defended. But in vain, she thought. There was no reasoning in Nathan's face. No capacity to listen. Yet she had to try. Having him believe such a thing of her was untenable. 'I. . .I only came in here to get some aspirin. Here .. .look!'
She slid back the cabinet and pointed to the packet of tablets. Nathan's chilling gaze moved from the aspirin to the other packets on the shelf, then returned to survey Gemma's swiftly flushing face with a chillingly mocking expression.
Oh, why do I have to look so guilty? Gemma agonized.
'I know what you're thinking but you're wrong!' she cried. 'There's nothing between Damian and myself. I'm staying here as a guest,' she explained desperately, 'and I have my own room. I'll show it to you. It has my things in it.'
When she hurried forward and went to brush past him, Nathan grabbed both her arms and swung them behind her, holding her wrists in an iron grip while he pushed her back into Damian's room. He slammed her face- down on to the bed, his breathing ragged behind her.
'You might have your own room but this is where you've been spending your nights, you lying, cheating bitch! I've known it from the moment that hotel clerk described to me the man who came to collect you. You've been seeing Damian Campbell ever since that night of the ball, haven't you?'
'No!' she cried, terrified now. 'I swear to you, I haven't. I. . .I did run into him one day, but we ... we only had coffee.'
Nathan laughed. 'Damian doesn't just have coffee with women, Gemma. He doesn't just have anything. The man's well known for his perversions. One in particular. '
Gemma was horrified when she felt her robe being pushed up to her waist, exposing her bare buttocks.
'It seems you haven't progressed to that yet,' he muttered darkly. 'But you will. And he's welcome to you. You know, I sometimes wondered when you would change, when you would fall "out of love". I always knew you were far too young for true love. And far, far too beautiful. Extremely beautiful women rarely love. They're too bloody self-centered!'
'I do so love you,' she sobbed.
'Do you?' he jeered. 'Do you really? In that case you won't mind if I have a little of what you've been denying me these last couple of weeks.'
Gemma gasped when she felt him cruelly enclose her two wrists in one brutal grasp on the small of her back, when she heard the sound of his opening his trousers. He jammed a knee between her thighs, forcing them apart.
