Elusive Obsession. Carole Mortimer

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ once she had handed the flowers over to Diana, although she hastily made her excuses and left again when he just returned her gaze coldly.

      Diana held on to the bouquet of roses. ‘That wasn’t very kind,’ she told Reece Falcon critically, knowing she wouldn’t really have expected anything else from him!

      ‘“Kind” isn’t a word that I’ve heard often to describe me,’ he acknowledged derisively. ‘From my son?’ He looked at the roses with narrowed eyes.

      Her arms tightened about the flowers defensively. ‘Yes.’

      He nodded, as if he had never doubted it. ‘Then I’ll call at your hotel tomorrow morning and we can have breakfast together. Unless——’ his mouth twisted mockingly ‘—you’re one of those models who live on lettuce leaves and black coffee?’ He arched dark brows questioningly.

      She knew that some of her friends did have a problem keeping their weight down, although she thought a diet of lettuce leaves was probably a slight exaggeration; it didn’t surprise her at all that Reece Falcon should be totally familiar with the problem some models had—no doubt he had been involved with more than one of them in the past!

      ‘One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about being in Paris,’ she drawled, ‘has been my fresh croissants and creamy coffee for breakfast,’ smoothly answering his derision.

      He gave an acknowledging inclination of his head. ‘In that case, I’ll be at your hotel for breakfast at eight-thirty. Too early for you?’ he challenged.

      She shook her head coolly. ‘Perfect.’ Because by that time she would no longer be at the hotel but at the airport, waiting for her flight home!

      ‘Tomorrow morning, then.’ Reece Falcon nodded abruptly before striding confidently away.

      Because he didn’t doubt, as he had decided it would be so, that the two of them would be sitting down to breakfast together in the morning at eight-thirty!

      Arrogant.

      Self-centred.

      Autocratic.

      No wonder Chris found him just too much to try to live up to.

      Well, if Reece Falcon thought that she was impressed by his arrogance he was sadly mistaken! Now that she had met the man, actually spoken to him, she disliked him even more intensely than she had before.

      And she had already hated with vehemence the man who had ruined her father, made his life so unbearable that he had been left with no alternative but to take his own life…!

CHAPTER TWO

      SHE was Divine.

      International model. Travelled extensively. Was in demand for her unique brand of beauty all over the world. Always, as one of the highest paid models in the world, travelling first class, with champagne and roses—red roses, of course, her favourite flowers!—all the way.

      Her suite at the George the Fifth was no exception—beautifully furnished with understated elegance, her bedroom dominated by the huge canopied bed she now lay in. But for all this quiet richness of her surroundings, and her own physical exhaustion, Diana lay wide-eyed and unable to sleep beneath the coolness of the bedclothes.

      She wasn’t even sure how she came to be back at the hotel at all; she vaguely remembered the comfort of the limousine Charles had arranged to be at her disposal during her stay in Paris, but nothing of her journey through the streets still crowded with people in the outdoor cafés and restaurants, and she certainly didn’t remember entering the hotel itself and coming up to her suite.

      Because of Reece Falcon…

      She had been preparing herself for weeks for their first meeting. But when she had thought about it—and she had thought about it, often!—the meeting had always been by her own design, not sprung on her out of the blue as it had been earlier tonight.

      It had shaken her much more than she could ever have imagined!

      It had nothing to do with the way Reece Falcon looked—although God knew that was ominous enough. No, it had been the first sound of his voice again after all these years. She could have been blindfolded and would still have known the sound of that voice anywhere, was never likely to forget how the man had sounded who had forced her father to take his own life.

      Because she wasn’t just Divine. Wasn’t just Diana Lamb, either. Her real name was Divinia Lambeth. Daughter of Howard Lambeth, a man Reece Falcon had taken delight in ruining.

      She got restlessly out of the bed, giving up all idea of even trying to sleep, her cream silk nightshirt flowing smoothly over her body to mid-thigh, her legs long and golden beneath its length as she padded over to the window, gazing out over the beauty that was Paris by moonlight.

      Not that she actually saw any of that, her thoughts too deep inside her as she cursed herself for not handling the meeting earlier this evening with Reece Falcon more calmly than she had. She had thought she could cope with it, had encouraged her friendship with Reece Falcon’s son because she had believed that—and she had been reduced to a quivering wreck after only a single meeting with the man she had grown up hating with a vehemence she knew often bordered on obsession.

      Not content with forcing her father into taking his own life rather than facing the public scandal her father knew would follow after revelations were made about his business affairs—although that had been more than enough reason for the young Divinia to hate him!—Reece Falcon was also responsible for destroying anything that might have been left after the loss of her father.

      Everything they had had needed to be sold in an effort to pay off her father’s creditors, and once Reece Falcon had claimed the family home as his own there hadn’t been that much left to sell! But Divinia’s life had changed irrevocably after her father’s death, the indulgent childhood she had known wiped out in a single act. Her only consolation in all that had been that Janette had lost her extravagant lifestyle too. After what Divinia had heard during her father’s conversation with Reece Falcon concerning her stepmother, she had felt the woman didn’t deserve to have anything from her father anyway; she might have only been nine years old then, but she certainly hadn’t been too young to realise that her stepmother had betrayed her father in some way. And with the passing of the years, her own maturity, she had been able to guess in what way Janette had been persuaded to betray her husband. The young Divinia had despised her beautiful stepmother almost as much as she hated Reece Falcon!

      Which had been unfortunate, considering Janette had been made her sole guardian. And at nine Divinia hadn’t been left with any choice but to do as Janette decided she should. But Janette had only been twenty-five herself at the death of her husband, and had certainly had no intention of being hampered with a nine-year-old stepdaughter now that she was on her own and there was no money for a nanny. Somehow Janette had managed to salvage enough money from the chaos to send Divinia back to her private school; it would have been kinder if she hadn’t.

      Everyone at the school, including Divinia’s own friends, was aware of the way her father had died and the reason for it, and while a few of her really close friends had remained loyal a lot more chose to shun her; it had almost been as if her father’s failure might rub off on them and taint them too. The following eight years of her school life had been miserable ones for her, and there was little respite from its overpowering СКАЧАТЬ