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‘Ah…I can see he didn’t tell you that—he hates to admit to his failures…perhaps that’s why he never seems willing to learn from his mistakes. Well, it’s true; Steve and I know each other a lot better than you seem to think we do. He’s always been clever at presenting a good image of himself but underneath all the charm and sophistication he is a serious control freak. He’s far too rigid in his thinking for a woman like you. You do realise that he’s still on the rebound from his marriage? His divorce only became final a couple of months ago…would that be around about the time that you two met…?’
Kalera refused to dignify the sly insinuation with an answer and he added, ‘Has he told you how acrimonious the divorce was, and why he hardly ever sees his son—?’
‘Of course he has,’ she interrupted tightly. She wasn’t going to let him frighten her with lurid tales of Stephen’s broken marriage. Thanks to her upbringing she had a deep respect for people’s right to keep their thoughts and feelings private. At the various communes which her free-spirited parents had inhabited, there had never been any real personal privacy, either physically or psychologically, and young Kalera had grown to loathe the ubiquitous group meetings endemic to such places, where everyone was expected to expose their most intimate secrets in the interests of universal ‘truth’ and self-enlightenment. Cruel opinions and petty spite were praised for their ‘honesty’ while those who had no emotional dramas to enact were criticised for ‘holding back’ by repressing their true feelings.
Kalera thought a little repression would have been healthier for all concerned. She didn’t want or expect to know everything that had gone on in Stephen’s past life, just as certain areas of her own past were closed off to him. She certainly didn’t expect him to be perfect. The fact that he still couldn’t forgive his ex-wife for the affair that had destroyed their marriage was understandable—he was a proud man who possessed a touchingly old-fashioned code of morals. She hadn’t met six-year-old Michael as yet, because his mother’s vengeful bitterness over the divorce proceedings was such that, for the sake of his son’s emotional well-being, Stephen had felt it advisable not to insist on exercising his visitation rights under the custody agreement. But Kalera was confident that she would be able to befriend the boy when the time came for the visits to resume.
‘If there’s anything else I need to know, I’d rather find it out from Stephen, thank you very much,’ she said, to forestall any more tale-bearing.
Her stubborn loyalty caught Duncan on the raw. ‘Dammit, Kalera,’ he exploded. ‘I’m only trying to help!’
‘Yes—to help make trouble between Stephen and I so you won’t have to suffer the inconvenience of training another secretary to withstand your tantrums!’ she blurted out.
Duncan stopped dead, ignoring the couples who cannoned into them. ‘Is that what you think this is about?’ he growled.
‘Well, isn’t it?’
An unholy expression crossed his face and Kalera hastily decided that her question could remain safely rhetorical. Arching her upper body away from him, she gingerly tested his grip by pushing lightly against his chest. The broad, flat plane vibrated beneath her palms, the thin silk of his shirt no barrier to the throb of his vital life force. Her own pulse accelerated in response to the quick, hard beat and she fought to quell her unruly awareness. ‘Uh—maybe we should go back to the table now—I’m sure my dessert must have turned up by now…’
‘Not sweet enough, Kalera?’ He purred the sickly cliché, his arm sliding more securely around her waist as his torso tracked hers. ‘I beg to differ; if anything your problem is that you’re too sweet. But by all means let’s continue our little chat in front of Stephen—I’m sure he’d be fascinated…’
He bent one knee and Kalera suddenly found herself in a deep dip, arched over his arm in a classic posture of feminine submissiveness, her hair almost sweeping the floor. For an instant she felt as if she was falling through time and space, her only connection to reality a pair of smouldering blue eyes that challenged her to enjoy the ride. A few chuckles tinkled in her burning ears, confirmation—had she needed it—of the exhibition they were making of themselves.
‘Kind of makes you think of the phrase “it takes two to tango”, doesn’t it?’ Duncan murmured, his back taking the strain of their combined weight as he slowly eased them both upright again. He raised his eyebrows at her delicately flushed face. ‘So…do you really want to involve Stephen, or should we just keep dancing while we settle our unfinished business?’
Kalera bit her lip. As far as she was concerned there was nothing to settle, but Duncan in this dangerously volatile mood was impossible to predict. If she attempted to thwart him, heaven knew what mischief his fertile brain might hatch.
‘He’ll be wondering where I am…’
His shrug was magnificently uncaring. ‘He knows you’re with me.’
‘Precisely.’
Her arid reply made him chuckle in rich delight. He threw back his head, the sable hair blending invisibly into his collar as he closed his eyes and began to move to the music again, drawing her into the sinuous, syncopated rhythm as if she were an extension of his own body. Both his arms were now loosely linked around her waist and, looking up at his darkly attractive face, Kalera was struck by a shivery premonition of disaster.
‘You wouldn’t really, would you?’ she murmured, tearing her eyes away from his narrow mouth before she was tempted to wonder whether he would taste the same, or whether, like a superior vintage, he had matured with age…
His eyelids flickered but didn’t lift. ‘Wouldn’t really what?’
Her husky voice was even deeper than usual. ‘You im
plied you were going to tell Stephen about what we—about what happened.’
‘No—I said I thought he ought to know.’
Her fingers pleated the black silk shirt-front in an unconscious attitude of pleading. ‘Why? Because you want to hurt him? If this is to do with an old quarrel between you and Stephen, why can’t you leave me out of the argument?’
‘Because you, my dear, have planted yourself firmly in the middle of it.’
Exasperation conquered her desire to appease. ‘I am not your dear!’
‘Not for want of trying.’ His eyes opened to mere slits of glittering wickedness. ‘But no…I suppose you’re right; in bed it was darling that you begged me to call you—’
‘That was a long time ago,’ she gritted, the endearment short-circuiting her memory banks, throwing out a shower of white-hot sparks which coalesced into the haunting spectre of a man in the throes of violent passion, his thick, straining limbs gleaming like polished teak against rumpled white sheets…
‘Eighteen months, two weeks and three days and—’ he tilted their entwined hands so he could look at the jewelled gold watch strapped to his wrist ‘—eleven hours…darling.’
Oh, God, he remembered the exact date, even the precise time, for goodness’ sake! And all this time she had thought that she was the only one to be cursed with perfect recall of her fall from grace…
