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Kalera adopted a soothingly vague expression as she accepted a dessert menu from the waiter whose desire to linger suggested an unprofessional interest in their intriguing conversation.
‘Not long—about an hour or so, I suppose,’ she said, deliberately playing down the drama. She knew exactly how long it had been. She had been left to stew for precisely one hour and fifty-one minutes before Duncan had returned to deliver his pithy lecture on the pitfalls awaiting gullible young widows who fell prey to smooth-talking villains.
She looked over the menu, forcing herself to choose something even though her sweet tooth had been soured by the subject of their conversation. Stephen’s frustration with the interruption was evident as he selected the cheeseboard and sent the flapping-eared waiter briskly on his way before leaning forward again.
‘And then what happened?’
Kalera was reluctant to go into too much detail. Duncan’s comments had not been flattering, either to herself or to Stephen. In fact they had been flagrantly insulting. She had known that the two men harboured an intense dislike of each other but until today she hadn’t recognised the true depth of their mutual hostility.
Her efforts to gloss over the worst bits in the retelling were in vain. For once Stephen seemed insensitive to her distress, insisting that she describe the abrasive encounter word for word, and wanting to know not only what Duncan had said, but how he had looked and sounded when he had realised she would not be cowed into calling off her engagement.
‘And that’s all he said about me?’ he probed, after she had informed him that he had been called a low-down, underhanded, cheating rat; a poor loser who had to compensate for his personal and business inadequacies by blaming others for his own mistakes; a vain, jealous, egocentric man who pursued his selfish goals without caring who he hurt in the process.
‘All! Isn’t that enough?’ asked Kalera, who had been humiliated by Duncan’s assumption that the only possible reason an attractive man could be interested in her was because of him. And he had the nerve to call Stephen egocentric! He had even had the gall to hint that Stephen had tried to cosy up to other female employees of Labyrinth in the past, but that Kalera was the only one naive and stupid enough to fall into his honey-trap.
‘It’s the oldest trick in the industrial espionage book!’ Duncan had declared in disgust. ‘Find a lonely, love-starved female in a sensitive job and seduce her into a secret affair so that her judgment is so clouded by infatuation she doesn’t even notice that her handsome new lover is pumping her for information…and refuses to believe it even when she’s confronted with cast-iron proof!’
Smarting from the image of herself as a pathetic emotional accident waiting to happen, Kalera had icily pointed out that he had produced no proof of anything other than his own paranoia and, given the fact that his own judgment was clouded by unreasonable prejudice against her fiancé, she would thank him to stop making slanderous remarks unless he was prepared to defend them in court!
‘So, he believes that I only asked you to marry me in order to worm his secrets out of you and to deprive him of your valuable services?’ Stephen’s aristocratic mouth curled into a contemptuous sneer. ‘Did his fertile imagination also suggest a motive for my madness?’
‘I thought you asked me here for dinner, not a postmortem,’ Kalera pleaded, his persistence beginning to grate on her nerves. ‘Do we have to talk about it any more? I’m just glad it’s over and done with, and you must admit it turned out better than we expected. Duncan even apologised for the way he overreacted—said it was just the shock—’
‘I’ll bet it was a shock!’ Stephen laughed grimly. ‘Royal doesn’t like it when the tables are turned. He likes to be the one to do the shafting. You should have told him where he could stuff his apology and walked out
anyway.’
His unaccustomed crudity made her eyes widen. ‘Stephen!’
‘Well…I don’t trust him,’ he said, a moody look pushing out his lower lip. ‘I just can’t believe he wants you to stay on as his secretary when he knows you and I are engaged. I wouldn’t if our positions were reversed. I wonder what he has up his sleeve? He’s a devious swine—I doubt he’s doing you any favour by letting you work your notice. He probably intends to make your life hell for the next few weeks. Whatever he pays you it won’t be enough…’
It wasn’t a matter of money, but of principle and pride, thought Kalera. In the midst of a disarmingly eloquent apology Duncan had somehow extracted a promise from her that she would stay on until the end of the month to help train her successor. She couldn’t break her word when Duncan’s willingness to keep her on was an act of faith in her integrity; nor did she want to forfeit the respect and liking of her friends at Labyrinth by slinking away from her job as if she were guilty of some wrongdoing.
‘I’m sure I can handle it,’ she said, hoping that he was wrong. ‘I’m tougher than I look, you know.’ She straightened her narrow shoulders, laid partially bare by the classic cut of her simple, sleeveless silk sheath. Her slender, breakable body often led people to overlook her inner strength and mistake her serenity for lack of assertiveness.
‘I know.’ Stephen cupped his hand over hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘I just don’t like the idea of you being hurt because of me. I never wanted to put you through this…’
She felt a familiar tightening in her chest followed by a blossoming of sweet contentment, and turned her hand palm up in his grasp, twining her fingers with his. He lifted their clasped hands to his mouth and gallantly saluted her knuckles with a soft kiss.
She loved the way that he could make her feel cherished and special with simple statements of caring rather than extravagant compliments. She recognised the same emotional reserve in him that existed in herself. After Harry was killed so tragically and so young, she hadn’t wanted to fall in love again. She hadn’t thought that she would ever find another man so perfectly suited to her needs. But then fate had thrown Stephen across her path and his gentle persistence had won her wary heart.
His gaze shifted and suddenly he stiffened, the tender light in his melting brown eyes instantly extinguished. ‘Did you tell Royal that we were coming here this evening?’
Kalera raised her finely arched brows at his curtness. Surely Stephen wasn’t going to turn paranoid on her too! ‘No…at least—I might have mentioned that we were going out to dinner after we shopped for the ring, I suppose, but I don’t think I said where. Why?’
‘Because he’s here—in the restaurant—and he’s coming over,’ said Stephen through his teeth. ‘And you can bet it’s not to offer his best wishes.’
Kalera’s head snapped around, her fine hair spraying over her silk-clad shoulders as Duncan Royal came to a halt beside her chair. It was only long experience of his eccentric taste in clothes that prevented her mouth from falling open at the sight of his attire. He was dressed from head to toe in black, his sculpted silk velvet jacket cropped like a matador’s, the wide lapels and cuffs stiff with flamboyant gold embroidery. Everything about him, from his clothes to the expression on his darkly amused face, reeked of challenge.
‘Well, well, well…if it isn’t the happy couple,’ he drawled, looking down at them with a tigerish smile. ‘What an extraordinary coincidence.’
His gaze shifted to their entwined fingers and before Kalera could curb the impulse she had guiltily snatched her hand from Stephen’s loosened grasp. She immediately picked up her glass and pretended to be drinking from it, but the glint in Duncan’s eye told her that he wasn’t fooled.
‘Mind if I join you for a while?’
Kalera was rendered speechless by his audacity.
‘Yes!’
