Part-Time Father. Sharon Kendrick

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      All at once she was filled with the most tremendous exhilaration, exultant with the sense of her own power to anger this man. ‘You can’t stop us marrying!’ she told him coolly.

      The grey eyes narrowed calculatingly as he registered her change of mood. ‘No, you’re quite right. I can’t.’ And here he paused, so that there was a brooding, forbidding silence before he resumed speaking. ‘But what I can do is to withhold any of the financial hand-outs from my company to which Duncan has quickly become accustomed. This house is legally mine, although I have always intended to transfer the deeds to my mother and Duncan, since I have enough homes of my own. However, I could change my mind…’ He gave her a questioning look. ‘I imagine that Duncan’s attraction might wane if he didn’t come with all the trappings you’d expected?’

      Kimberley had met many cynical, ruthless men during her years in the City, but this one, this dark and cruel stranger, made the others look like amateurs.

      She lifted her head proudly. ‘If I wanted to marry Duncan, then nothing you could say or do would stop me,’ she said truthfully. ‘So you’ve lost, haven’t you?’

      ‘I never lose, Kimberley,’ he contradicted her softly. ‘Never.’

      She fixed him with a look of mock-polite disbelief, fascinated in spite of herself to know just how far he would go to achieve what he wanted. ‘Oh, really?’

      ‘I have a proposition to put to you.’

      ‘Go on,’ she said, very quietly.

      He spoke with a certain reluctance. ‘I’m prepared,’ he said heavily, ‘to offer you a financial incentive of your own if you agree to call the wedding off. If, on the other hand, you refuse and the wedding goes ahead, then I’m warning you that you will receive nothing from Duncan’s inheritance unless I am satisfied that the marriage is a good one, and one with solid foundations. Do you understand?’

      The grey eyes were so hard and so cold, making a mockery of the rugged perfection of his features, and another shiver of apprehension sent icy claws scrabbling all over Kimberley’s skin. ‘It isn’t just because I’m older, is it?’ she whispered, shaken by his venom, her desire for revenge for his insults momentarily forgotten. ‘Or even because you think that I’m marrying Duncan for his money? You really don’t like me, do you?’

      He went perfectly still, so still that he might have been carved from some unforgiving stone. ‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t think I do like you, if liking can be gauged after such a short acquaintanceship, but you are correct in your assumption in one way— your age and your greed are not the real reasons why I want you to call the wedding off.’

      ‘Why, then?’

      ‘It’s simple. Because you are not the right woman for him.’

      Stunned by the sheer unremitting force with which he spoke, Kimberley stared into his hard, cruel face. ‘What on earth gives you the right to say that?’ she whispered.

      ‘This does,’ he said, in a voice which was brutal with some unnamed emotion, and he caught her by the waist and bent his dark, savage face to kiss her.

      Something happened to her—something irrevocable and mind-blowing. Something which was to change her life forever. What the hell had he done to her with just one kiss? she wondered desperately. Because sexual desire, fiery and hot and potent as life itself, began blazing its way through her veins as his mouth found hers.

      Oh, God, but it was heaven.

      Heaven.

      She opened her mouth to him as though she had waited all her life for that sweet, punishing kiss. She found herself trembling, almost swaying, now wanting more, much more than his kiss. She wanted him to touch her where no man had ever touched her; she wanted those long fingers to remove her T-shirt, to kick away her jeans. She wanted him to lay her down on the floor and make love to her right there…

      But then reality crashed in with a sickening sensation as, distantly, somewhere in the house, she heard the sound of someone shouting. She felt his hands drop from her waist, felt, too, his tongue withdraw from her mouth, where it had been inciting her with provocative little movements which had mimicked what no man had ever done to her.

      She gave a kind of automatic protest as he lifted his head up and stared down at her dazed face, and she read the contemptuous look in his eyes.

      ‘I rest my case,’ he said insultingly.

      Kimberley straightened her spine and stared back at him, hiding her shame behind the frosty glitter in her blue eyes.

      In her eyes sparked the hatred she felt for him. To illustrate his point he had treated her no better than a whore, and in a way she had responded no better than a whore. The way she had felt in his arms had frightened her with its intensity, so that all her carefully fought for self-control had vanished like the wind. She was the vanquished, he the victor. He had all the power, and she had none. And she never wanted to see him again, not as long as she lived.

      Never.

      But then Kimberley discovered something else. She could see that behind the contempt which distorted the angular features there remained a hunger—a savage, sexual hunger which made his eyes glitter blackly and beat a frantic pulse at the base of his neck. He wants me, she thought, yet he despises me. And he’s a man who gets exactly what he wants.

      Oh, my God, thought Kimberley weakly. He’ll come and find me. And what if I can’t—what if I just can’t resist him? What will a man who despises me offer other than instant heartbreak?

      Unless she somehow contrived to make him despise her so much that he’d leave her alone forever.

      She gave a small, smug half-smile, and allowed the kind of cold, calculating look which she knew he would be expecting to come into her eyes.

      ‘This—er—financial incentive you’re offering,’ she purred. ‘How much are we actually talking about?’

      Some light in his eyes died. If she had thought she’d read scorn and derision there before, it was nothing to the look which now replaced it. He looked at her as though her very presence contaminated the air surrounding him.

      He mentioned a sum, and she allowed a rapacious little smile to curve her lips upwards as she nodded. ‘I’ll do it,’ she told him. ‘On one condition.’

      He shook his head, the contempt hardening his mouth into an unforgiving line. ‘No conditions, sweetheart,’ he drawled coldly. ‘Unless I make them.’

      She shook her head. ‘I won’t do it unless you agree not to tell Duncan anything about what’s happened here this afternoon. I want to tell him— to break things off—in my own way.’

      He stared at her incredulously. ‘Do you really think I’d hurt my brother like that? And, much though I’m tempted to tell him about his lucky escape, I’m really not cruel enough to disillusion him with the knowledge that he fell in love with a cheap little tramp. Do I make myself clear?’

      ‘Perfectly.’ She held out a slim white hand, which was miraculously free from tremor. ‘And now, if we can conclude our business.’

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