The Final Seduction. Sharon Kendrick

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      ‘I agree that this isn’t what I would normally wear to walk on the beach,’ she allowed. ‘But this suit was designed by one of Milan’s most desirable couturiers.’ She saw him pull a face, and as the events of the last days took their toll something inside her snapped.

      ‘Most women would give their eye-teeth to own an outfit by this designer!’ she fumed. ‘And as for my hair! For your information, it is shaped and tinted with highlights and lowlights every six weeks, by one of Milan’s finest cutters. Have you,’ she heard herself asking inanely, ‘any idea of how much it costs to look like this?’

      But as soon as the words were out and she saw the look on his face she wished she could unsay them.

      Distaste wasn’t the word.

      ‘I should have guessed that money would have been at the top of your agenda! So no change there.’ He gave a scornful little laugh. ‘Well, for your information, kitten—you were done.’

      ‘Done?’

      ‘Yeah, done. Conned. Fleeced. Cheated.’

      Shelley couldn’t believe her ears. ‘What?’

      ‘You heard,’ he whispered softly. ‘You’ve become one of those women who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, haven’t you, Shelley? Seems like I had a lucky escape.’

      ‘Or maybe you just don’t like the way I dress because the clothes I wear indicate that I’m an independent woman now?’

      ‘Independent?’ His lips curled like an old-fashioned movie star’s. ‘I don’t think so! Being a rich man’s plaything doesn’t usually fall into the category of independent.’

      She didn’t have to defend herself to him, so why did she suddenly feel as though she was in the witness box?

      She chipped the words out like ice. ‘I virtually ran the art gallery in Milan, for your information!’

      ‘What? Flat on your back?’

      Shelley opened her mouth to snap back at him, but no words came. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She had imagined seeing Drew again one day; of course she had. Every woman thought of the man they had almost married from time to time. And she had had lots of imaginary conversations with him inside her head. But they had been nothing like this. Rather, some of them had gone along the lines of him narrowing his eyes in appreciation and giving a long, low whistle while a look of profound regret would give his body a kind of deflated look, before he said something like, ‘Wow!’

      Others had been stupidly unrealistic versions involving white lace and rice and confetti, but she had banished those very early on. They used to make her pillow damp with tears.

      But not this. She met the mockery in his eyes.

      ‘Actually,’ she said, with acid-sweetness, ‘while you’ve been busily hammering nails into pieces of wood, I’ve learnt to speak fluent Italian, as well as how to—’ She looked pointedly at where the denim was at its thinnest, stretched tautly over his mouthwatering thighs. She swallowed. ‘Dress.’

      ‘Just not very attractively,’ he amended silkily. ‘Shelley, your arrogance is simply breathtaking.’

      ‘Then it’s a good match for yours, isn’t it, Drew?’

      ‘So where is he?’

      She played dumb. ‘Who?’

      ‘Your lover, your mentor, your stallion—’

      ‘Please don’t call him that!’

      ‘Why not? Does the truth offend you?’ He looked around the empty beach with exaggerated scrutiny. ‘I expect he’s somewhere warm and comfortable, is he, polishing the leather of his hand-made shoes?’

      ‘Why, you…you…Philistine!’ Her eyes swivelled to his feet. He wore a scruffy old pair of canvas deck-shoes, without socks. Without socks! Marco would have sooner gone to prison than gone out in footwear like that! He would have said that those were shoes for a tramp. And yet somehow Drew managed to look nothing like a tramp. He looked, Shelley realised with a lurch of horror, he looked incredibly sexy…

      ‘You look like you should be standing on a street corner begging for small change!’ She glared at him.

      His body tensed, as though he was fighting some dark, internal demon, and then he shook his head slightly. ‘I guess we’ve traded all the insults we need to. Why don’t you tell me how long you’re here for, Shelley? Just passing through? Or have you come to put your mother’s old house on the market?’

      She didn’t stop to think, but then maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe she had known all along just what her answer to this would be. ‘Why would I be passing through? Milmouth doesn’t take you anywhere. No, I’ve come home, Drew,’ she told him, observing his frozen reaction more with pain than with pleasure. ‘Home to stay.’

      The screech of a gull could be heard over the whining wind and the relentless smack of the waves hitting the beach.

      ‘You’re staying?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘For how long?’

      ‘I haven’t decided—and if I had I wouldn’t be telling you! My plans are flexible.’

      He considered this. ‘And where exactly will you be staying, Shelley?’

      ‘At my mother’s house, of course. Where else?’ She glared at him again. ‘Sorry. Have I said something funny?’

      He shook his head, still laughing. ‘Ironic more than funny.’

      ‘That’s a little too subtle for me, Drew. Care to let me in on the joke?’

      He shrugged, and Shelley’s eyes were irresistibly drawn to the hard, strong body moving beneath the thick knit. ‘Just that I can’t imagine your rich lover gearing up for a night of passion in your mother’s old house. Apart from the limitations imposed by the room sizes—the walls are paper-thin!’

      ‘That’s not only coarse, it’s also inaccurate. Marco has never been a snob!’

      ‘No? Well, then it must be you who has the image problem, mustn’t it, Shelley? Because you never brought him back to Milmouth, did you? Not once!’ he accused. ‘Not even—’ and he drew a deep breath ‘—to your mother’s funeral!’

      Should she tell him that it hadn’t seemed right to do so? That her mother had hated Marco nearly as much as she had adored Drew? It would have seemed disrespectful to her mother’s memory to bring along the man she had never stopped blaming for the disintegration of her dreams.

      For in Veronica Turner’s mind Shelley and Drew would still have been engaged if Marco had not happened along. For a long time Shelley would have agreed with her, but now she recognised that Marco had probably done her a big favour.

      Shelley herself had been sick with grief and regret. In fact she had barely been able to function. But apparently that was the normal reaction to sudden death. It had seemed the easier option to handle things on her own. To avoid situations which might create ugly scenes…

      ‘Oh, СКАЧАТЬ