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She mimicked Hayley’s sulky pout and it must have been successful, for the younger girl took a step back, clutching her pink handbag to her glittering breasts, and sent Blake an angry look of scorching reproach.
‘I’m Nora—Nora Lang,’ said Nora helpfully, stirring the pot. ‘Blake and I—well, we…’ she ran a hand through her tousled curls, drawing attention to the suggestive pink marks on her cheeks and her sensuously bitten lips, as well as the brevity of her attire ‘…I suppose I could say we were just good friends, but in the circumstances that would be rather silly, wouldn’t it?’
Hayley glared disdainfully at Nora with hard china-blue eyes, showing no hint of apology or discomfort.
‘Uncle Prescott told me that you came down here alone,’ she insisted stridently to Blake, wielding the name as an implied threat with such practised ease that Nora, who had been suffering a pang of empathy, felt her sympathy wither.
‘Yes, well, “Uncle Prescott” isn’t privy to everything that goes on in my personal life,’ Blake replied coolly. ‘Nowhere in my employment contract does it say that I have to clear it with the Chairman of the Board if I want to spend the weekend with the special woman in my life.’
Hayley’s bee-stung mouth fell open and Nora sensed her own jaw sagging in stunned disbelief. She started to jerk away, experiencing a thrill of alarm, when Blake’s arm snapped across her lower back, his heavy hand settling on her hip-bone, locking her against his hard flank. ‘As I was saying before Nora so charmingly interrupted, you should have talked to me before driving all the way out here, Hayley. I could have saved you the trip.’
Hayley went pale with anger. ‘You never seemed to mind me dropping in before!’ she said petulantly, digging around in her handbag to produce a bright pink cell-phone. ‘And anyway, I did call. I texted and left a message on your mobile to say I was coming, because every time I dialled it kept cutting straight to the answerphone!’ She brandished the phone in his face.
‘Perhaps the fact that I wasn’t responding to my messages should have warned you that I didn’t want to be disturbed.’ Blake’s cruel bluntness added to Nora’s growing fear that she might have just made the biggest mistake of her life! ‘I have asked you to stop turning up unannounced—to avoid just such an awkward situation as this,’ he continued. ‘I know that, as his late brother’s stepchild, Scotty wants you and me to be friends, but even my family respects certain boundaries in my life. Naturally, I wouldn’t have chosen to have you find out about Nora like this, but perhaps it’s best that it’s out in the open—’
‘Then why did she say no one was supposed to know? You’ve never bothered to try and hide your mistresses before.’ Hayley slashed wildly out at Nora. ‘I suppose she’s married or something!’
‘Or something,’ murmured Blake, his hand tightening warningly on Nora’s hip as she stiffened. ‘And Hayley—you and I didn’t have a date last night. You told me last week that you were hosting a party on your uncle’s yacht and invited me along. I said I’d see if I could make it. I didn’t know then what Nora was planning
to do for the weekend. As you might have gathered, I find her utterly irresistible and our time together is precious…’
‘Blake!’ Nora was jolted out of her dumbstruck silence by his outrageous embroidery, realising how thoroughly he had turned the tables. Instead of trying to talk himself out of trouble, he was intent on digging them in deeper, blatantly using Nora as an excuse to extricate himself from the sticky tentacles of an inconveniently possessive woman!
Before she could articulate her thoughts, he had pulled her up on to her toes and kissed them out of her head with devastating efficiency. He hadn’t yet shaved and the scrape of his beard brought back torrid memories. By the time he let her go her brain was so oxygen starved that black dots danced in front of her eyes.
Through the mist of darkness she saw Hayley watching them with a disturbingly malign intent. She still had the shiny pink cell-phone clutched in her talons as she backed across the porch.
‘You won’t care if I tell Uncle Prescott you’re here with her then!’ she threatened, still refusing to dignify Nora with a name.
‘That’s up to you,’ said Blake, relinquishing Nora to her uncertain balance as he moved to see his unwelcome guest on her way, ‘but before you blow this trivial encounter out of proportion, you might want to consider whether you want it known that you intruded into my love-nest under the mistaken impression that you’d be welcome. It might be less amusing for your more bitchy friends if we can simply agree that this never happened.’
Nora’s last glimpse of Hayley was of a blonde fury flinging herself into the convertible, a vindictive glitter of thwarted rage in the sullen blue eyes.
Suddenly recalling that discretion was the better part of valour, Nora felt silently for the tread with her bare toes as she began to back stealthily up the stairs.
The security door clanged into place and the front door swung closed with a definitive thud. Nora froze into wary stillness as Blake turned in a fluid ripple of muscle, his laser-like gaze zeroing in on her apprehensive face.
‘I hope you’re planning to iron that shirt when you’ve finished with it,’ he said mildly.
‘O-of course I will,’ she stammered, smoothing the badly crumpled front, disconcerted by his calm. She would have been furious, had been furious, whenever he had questioned her honour.
‘It is my shirt, isn’t it?’ he enquired, coming to stand at the bottom of the stairs, leaning a casual hip against the carving that decorated the end of the bannister rail.
She tensed. ‘Um…yes, I—found it in your wardrobe….’
He didn’t immediately demand to know what she had been doing rifling through his possessions. His inscrutable grey eyes dropped to her toes, curling to grip the stair carpet, then meandered slowly up her tense legs and over the creased white cotton to where the rumpled collar sagged to one side, almost sliding off her shoulder and revealing the small swell of one freckled breast.
‘It suits you.’
‘Oh!’ Her eyes widened and she unconsciously clamped her thighs together to suppress the warm tingle that surged through her lower body at the unexpected compliment.
‘Especially with nothing underneath…’
Uh-oh! Nora gulped as she remembered that this was one of Blake’s masterly tactics—soften up your trembling victim with distracting trivialities and then pounce with tooth and claw when the guard drops. Best to try and get her explanations in first!
‘Look, Blake, I’m sorry. I…I didn’t mean—I overheard what was going on and I misunderstood—I—I just thought—’
‘You thought I was an unscrupulous brute who’d callously seduce the boss’s spoiled stepniece in order to feed my insatiable lust for money and power,’ he said pleasantly.
