Taken By The Maverick Millionaire. Anna Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ charged with dynamite.

      ‘In fact,’ he read on, frowning in the effort to concentrate on the task at hand, ‘far from “squandering his squalid profits on sordid pleasure”, throughout his life my father was a notable phil—’

      A sudden connection pinged in his brain and with a little choke he broke off. The notes blurred, while in his mind’s eye, in perfect clarity, a name focused.

       Cate Summerfield.

      The people, the church, the rigorously composed thread of his address receded. He raised his eyes from the page.

      Cate Summerfield, obituary writer, stared back at him from her pew, frozen in guilty acknowledgement. Her mermaid’s eyes were wide in alarm, her lips tight-pressed.

      In the throbbing silence, the emotional tension ratcheted up to screeching pitch and sobs broke out, but Tom was hardly aware of them. For speechless seconds he grappled with the sheer enormity of it. The nerve of this dizzy little blonde to have shown her face, even to have set foot in the church. But to have eavesdropped on a negotiation that gave her the actual power to ruin him…

      For a heart-struck instant he stared into an abyss. If the corporation went under thousands would lose their livelihoods. The Russell name would echo down the years as a byword of shame.

      Conscious of a faint, unwonted moisture on his upper lip,

      he had to grip the lectern tight to restrain himself from loosening his collar. But he wasn’t his father’s son for nothing. With an almost superhuman effort, he summoned his formidable powers of recovery and cut the unnecessary emotion to make a lightning situation assessment.

      Damage control needed to be neat and complete. He must find something to offer her. Some way to zip her saucy mouth with its infuriating smile. He thought of a bribe and discarded it. How the Clarion would gloat. Although if there was something she wanted, something out of her reach…

      What could he offer her? The answer boomeranged back at once. What else would she want, but what they all did? She was a reporter, after all.

      Beyond that, he seethed, she was a woman. And in that crystalline instant he knew exactly how he could do it.

      Cowering in her pew, Cate recognised sudden purpose in Tom Russell’s glinting gaze. She gathered herself to make a dash for the exit, but too late, for with an eloquent gesture that provoked a wave of sobs around the cathedral, he handed over the lectern to the officiating archbishop, and in a couple of strides was back beside her.

      ‘Stay put,’ he hissed in her ear, smiling, though his white, even teeth were gritted. ‘I’m not finished with you yet.’ He slipped his arm around her and held her close against his hard body, as though she were some stricken family member in need of support. Her senses plunged into uproar, but she shrank from making a scene, and submitted to the disturbing effects of feeling his long muscled thigh pressed against hers.

      In a short, nerve-racking while the service came to an end, and she knew her time had come. As soon as the mourners rose to make their way out, her captor seized the opportunity, amid the confusion, to hustle her away from the goggling stares of his family members, down the aisle past the crowded vestry, and out through the door to the visitor’s car park.

      As they emerged into the sunshine a long, low black limousine, its darkened windows blank and sinister, drew up alongside them. Visions assailed Cate of being strangled and dumped on some highway.

      ‘Get in,’ he said, opening the rear door. And when she hesitated to dive into what looked impossibly like some sultan’s cave, complete with oriental rugs, sumptuous cushioned seats and silken panelling—‘Please.’ In the sunlight his cool grey eyes glittered inscrutably against his tan. ‘We need to talk. I have a proposition for you.’

      Please on his brusque tongue was unexpected enough to be reassuring. After a moment she bowed her head in acquiescence, climbed in and slid as best she could to the far side of the deeply cushioned divan-seat. With a few curt instructions to the driver, Tom Russell joined her, and closed the glass barrier.

      His elegantly clad knee was only centimetres from hers. She moistened her lips, overly conscious of his high-octane masculinity in the opulent space. She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them when she saw his gaze flicker down to them.

      ‘Alone at last,’ he drawled.

      ‘I had no idea limos were furnished like this,’ she said nervously.

      ‘This was my father’s car.’ His lip curled. ‘His most recent mistress had a taste for the exotic.’

      To her alarm the engine purred into life and the car moved towards the street-exit. ‘I thought you said you just wanted us to talk?’

      ‘Aren’t we talking?’ He lounged back to survey her with a considering gaze, his black lashes half lowered.

      She wished she didn’t have to be so aware of him, and tried not to notice the relaxed idleness of his long limbs and smooth, tanned hands. ‘Shouldn’t you be with your guests now? I mean, as they—as they leave the church, don’t you want to be there in the front porch to shake hands with everyone?’

      ‘No, I don’t.’

      They’d left the cathedral yard and were now weaving their way through traffic. Where to? she thought with panic. Some execution site?

      She took the risk of meeting his sardonic gaze. ‘But isn’t there some sort of a—gathering or something? I mean, don’t you have refreshments, or a luncheon party, or—or—’ The limo took a turn towards the eastern suburbs. She struggled to think of some compelling reason for them to turn back. ‘Don’t you have things you want to say to your guests,’ she tried in desperation, ‘to thank them? You know, for their concern, and their good wishes?’

      A tinge of amusement crossed his face. ‘Those self-indulgent sink-holes of the nation’s wealth? No, I’m more interested in the things I want to say to you. But now you remind me…’ He pressed something in the pleated silk wall and a door slid open, revealing an elegant little cabinet containing decanters and glasses. He selected a crystal balloon glass and poured a drop into it of pure liquid amber. ‘Cognac?’

      To be honest, she wasn’t very good with alcohol. It had a tendency to go straight to her head. But when was the last time she’d been in a travelling pasha’s den with a billionaire? She accepted the balloon with as casual a nod as if she drank the stuff every day of the week, and stole a glance into its depths. Fire glowed in it, and it seemed to be alive with a strange, electric beauty. She inhaled, and the intoxicating aroma rose to fill her head.

      She risked a tiny sip. It melted into her lips, and suffused her mouth and throat with a seductive, tingling warmth that irradiated her entire being like the rays of the sun on a winter’s morn.

      Her eyes watered with the effort of trying not to cough, but she still had to, anyway.

      He waited for her to recover, an amused quirk disturbing the stern line of his chiselled mouth. ‘I want to make a deal with you.’

      ‘What sort of a deal?’ Though warmed by the cognac, she reminded herself to be cautious. She said hoarsely, ‘I hope you know nothing will tempt me to compromise my journalistic standards.’

      He broke into a laugh. СКАЧАТЬ