Her Christmas Fantasy. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ could see that he didn’t like her question from the way his mouth tightened and hardened before he replied bitingly, ‘Probably because the idiotic woman who runs the place refuses to listen to reason.’

      ‘Really?’ Lisa asked him scathingly. ‘You seem to have a way with women. Has it ever occurred to you that a little less aggression and a good deal more persuasion might produce better results? Not that any amount of persuasion will change my mind,’ she added firmly. ‘I bought those clothes in good faith, and since the shop hasn’t seen fit to get in touch with me concerning their supposedly wrongful sale I don’t see why—’

      ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ She was interrupted furiously. ‘Look, if you must know, the clothes belong to my cousin’s girlfriend. They had a quarrel—it’s a very volatile relationship. She walked out on him, vowing never to come back—they’d had an argument about her decision to go on holiday with a girlfriend, without him apparently—and in a fit of retaliatory anger he gave her clothes to the dress agency. It was an impulse…something he regretted virtually as soon as he’d done it, and when Emma rang him from Italy to make things up he asked me to help him get her things back before she comes home and discovers what he’s done.’

      ‘He asked you for help?’

      There was very little doubt in Lisa’s mind about whose girlfriend the absent Emma actually was, and it wasn’t Oliver Davenport’s fictitious cousin.

      The look he gave her in response to her question wasn’t very friendly, Lisa recognised; in fact it wasn’t very friendly at all, but even though, concealed beneath the sensual elegance of her newly acquired trousers, her knees were knocking slightly, she refused to give in to her natural apprehension.

      It wasn’t like her to be so stubborn or so unsympathetic, but something about him just seemed to rub her up the wrong way and make her uncharacteristically antagonistic towards him.

      It wasn’t just the fact that he was demanding that she part with her newly acquired wardrobe that was making her combative, she admitted; it was something about the man himself, something about his arrogance, his…his maleness that was setting her nerves slightly on edge, challenging her into a mode of behaviour that was really quite foreign to her.

      She knew that Henry would have been shocked to see her displaying so much stubbornness and anger—she was a little bit shocked herself.

      ‘He was about to go away on business. Emma’s due back at the end of the week. He didn’t want her walking into the flat and discovering that half her clothes are missing…’

      ‘No, I’m sure you…he…’ Lisa corrected herself tauntingly ‘…doesn’t…’

      She saw from the dark burn of angry colour etching his cheekbones that he wasn’t pleased by her deliberate ‘mistake’, nor the tone of voice she had delivered it in.

      ‘You have no legal claim over those clothes,’ he told her grimly. ‘The shop sold them without the owner’s permission.’

      ‘If that’s true, then it’s up to the shop to get in touch with me,’ Lisa pointed out. ‘After all, for all I know, you could want them for yourself…’ She paused. His temper was set on a hair-trigger already and although she doubted that he would actually physically harm her…

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she heard him breathe softly, as though he had read her mind.

      Inexplicably she realised that she was blushing slightly as, for no logical reason at all, she remembered exactly what she had been thinking about him—and his body—earlier in the day. Just as well he hadn’t second guessed her private thoughts then!

      ‘So you’re not prepared to be reasonable about this?’

      She be reasonable? Lisa could feel her own temper starting to rise.

      ‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you that you could be putting someone’s whole relationship at risk by your refusal?’

      ‘Me putting a relationship at risk?’ Lisa gasped at the unfairness of it. ‘If you ask me, I’m not the one who’s doing that. If your relationship is so important to you, you should have thought of that before you lost your temper and decided to punish your girlfriend by selling her clothes—’

      ‘Emma is not my girlfriend,’ he told her with ominous calm. ‘As I’ve already explained to you, I am simply acting as an intermediary in all of this for my cousin. But then I suppose it’s par for the course that you should think otherwise. It goes with all the rest of your illogical behaviour,’ he told her scathingly.

      ‘If you ask me,’ she told him, thoroughly incensed now, ‘I think that Emma…whoever’s girlfriend she is—yours or your cousin’s…is better off without you. What kind of man does something like that…? Those clothes were virtually new and—’

      ‘Exactly. New and expensive and paid for by my cousin, who is a rather jealous young man who objects to his girlfriend wearing the clothes he bought her to attract the attentions of other men…’

      ‘And because of that he stole them from her wardrobe and sold them? It sounds to me as though she’s better off without you…without him,’ Lisa corrected herself fiercely, her eyes showing her contempt of a man—any man—jealous or otherwise, who could behave in such a petty and revengeful way.

      ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ she continued, patently anything but. ‘But explaining to Emma just exactly what’s happened to her clothes is your problem and not mine. I bought them in good faith—’

      ‘And you’ll be able to buy some more with the money I’m willing to refund you for them, especially since… Oh, I get it,’ he said softly, his eyes suddenly narrowing.

      ‘You get what?’ Lisa demanded suspiciously, not liking the cynicism she could see in his eyes. ‘Those clothes were virtually brand-new, this season’s stock, and I’d be very lucky indeed to pick up anything else like them at such a bargain price, especially at this time of year, and—’

      ‘Oh, yes, I can see what you’re after. All right then, I don’t like blackmailers and I wouldn’t normally give in to someone who plainly thinks she’s onto a good thing, but I haven’t got time to waste negotiating with you. What would you guess was the full, brand-new value of the clothes you bought today?’

      ‘The full value?’ A small frown puckered Lisa’s forehead. She had no idea at all of what he was getting at. ‘I have no idea. I don’t normally buy exclusive designer-label clothes, especially not Armani…but I imagine it would have to be several thousand pounds…’

      ‘Several thousand pounds.’ A thin, dangerous smile curled his mouth, his eyes so coldly contemptuous that Lisa actually felt a small, icy shiver race down her spine.

      ‘Why don’t we settle for a round figure and make it five thousand pounds? I’ll write you a cheque for five thousand here and now and you’ll give me back Emma’s clothes.’

      Lisa stared at him in disbelief.

      ‘But that’s crazy,’ she protested. ‘Why on earth should you pay me five thousand pounds when you could go out and buy a whole new wardrobe for her for that amount…?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I don’t—’

      ‘Oh, come on,’ he interrupted her cuttingly. ‘Don’t give me that. You СКАЧАТЬ