Taken By The Maverick Millionaire. Anna Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ nearly gasped out loud at the audacity of the woman. How would Tom Russell take such a crack about his father? She strained to hear, but the abrupt click of a door closing suggested that Olivia had delivered her parting shot, and stalked off.

      Cate sagged with relief. Thank heavens. Now Tom would follow, and she could creep from her hiding place and hightail it back to Mike.

      There was the sound of a chair scraping, and the room fell quiet. She moved to the opening in the door to check that the coast was clear, and came up short. To her intense annoyance Tom Russell was still there at the table, frowning over some papers.

      Damn the man. She fretted with impatience. People would have started to arrive by now and she’d be missing her chances. She exhaled a frustrated breath, then took a harder look at him. In his unconsciousness of being under scrutiny, the lines in the tanned skin around his eyes and mouth suddenly seemed more deeply etched, as though from tiredness or strain. She felt a stir of sympathy. Perhaps even a Tom Russell could spend sleepless nights grieving. The loss of a parent was no small thing, as she could testify.

      She sighed, and, bracing for a wait, closed her eyes and leaned back against the sink.

      A shrill jangling broke out at her feet and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

      It was her mobile phone.

      She stood paralysed for helpless seconds while the ghastly tune went on. Then adrenaline rushed to her rescue and she was overcome by a false, fatalistic calm. She plunged her nerveless hand into her bag, brought the phone up and held it to her ear.

      ‘All right, Mike,’ she said. Her soft voice crashed into the charged silence. ‘I won’t be long.’

      She did the only thing possible. She put the phone away, and, her limbs stiff with embarrassment, jerked the door open and walked out of the ladies’ room, straight into the big, iron-hard frame of Tom Russell.

      CHAPTER TWO

      TOM’S first impression was of softness. Soft breasts pressed against his chest, soft, firm thighs, a delicious feminine fragrance rising from a tender white neck.

      He felt the woman gasp and try to recoil, but his hands swiftly gripped her upper arms. She trembled in his grasp, her white satin flesh alive with a sensual vibrance that instantly communicated itself to him.

      His gaze clashed with large sea-green eyes, sparkling up into his in alarmed calculation. Her rosy mouth was full, ripe and passionate. Some crazed part of his brain actually considered the possibility of sinking his teeth into her plump lower lip.

      Common sense told him this was no mere blonde. Ridiculous words like ‘spy’and ‘industrial espionage’jostled in his brain. Her parted lips made a tiny, anxious tremor and he felt a grim, cynical triumph.

      Well might she be anxious. Stirred against his will, he demanded harshly, ‘What the bloody hell are you doing in here?’

      Cate’s brain blurred into sensory overload. Steel-grey eyes, glittering with suspicion, scoured her face. She had a dizzy awareness of the faint, clean scents of soap and sandalwood, of fine, expensive fabrics brushing her skin. But underneath those outer trappings of masculine sophistication her feminine sensors picked up the heady, high-voltage buzz of pure essence of man.

      For whole seconds her lungs forgot to work, until she forced some action. ‘I was just—I was—’ She took a deep breath and said in a more assertive voice, though it might have skipped into a slightly higher register, ‘Would you let me go, please?’

      He tightened his grip for an instant, as if to demonstrate how completely he had her in his power, then abruptly released her. While she made an emphatic point of rubbing her arms, he whipped a wafer-thin phone from inside the jacket of his superbly tailored charcoal suit.

      ‘Explain yourself while I call Security,’ he commanded, flicking it open. He perused the dial, no mercy in the set of his chiselled mouth and jaw. She grappled with a million excuses, but one clash with the icy blaze of his grey eyes through their black lashes told her all of them would fail.

      The vision of herself being escorted from the cathedral between beefy security men, in the glare of a thousand cameras, was unthinkable. How would she explain to Harry? She’d be the laughing stock of the newsroom.

      She lifted her chin, and prepared to surrender the truth.

      ‘I was—visiting the Ladies,’ she said with an attempt at airiness, though she could feel a slight flush colour her cheeks. Privately, it was mortifying. Of all the people in the world to have to explain to…

      His eyes made a slow, thorough, entirely masculine survey of her down to her ankles, then back, lingering an insolent moment on her mouth. ‘Do you seriously expect me to believe that?’

      She stared at him in incredulity. ‘Well…’ A saving surge of anger brought the words flying to her tongue. ‘Why shouldn’t you believe it? People are innocent until proven guilty in this country, you know.’ She drew herself up to her full five-six. ‘And now I have to go. There are things I need to do.’ She made a brusque attempt to sweep past him, but his lean bronzed hand shot out and closed once more around her arm.

      ‘Not so fast.’ He moved very close to her, and again she felt that swamping effect on her senses. ‘Don’t try to play the innocent, Goldilocks. You’ve been lurking in there like a common thief, spying on a private conversation. Either explain yourself properly, or you will find yourself in court pretty bloody quick.’

      There was something so insulting about being called a name in that deep, cultured voice. Allowances needed to be made, she supposed, for a man coping with the loss of his father, but did he have to be so offensive? Certainly, neither her shoes nor her suit were brand new, but they were far from common.

      ‘I wasn’t listening to your conversation.’ In a determined effort she twisted from his grasp and retreated a strategic step. ‘I had important things on my mind.’

      He snarled a contemptuous expletive not at all appropriate for a church, and added, ‘Don’t make the mistake of assuming you’re dealing with a fool, darling.’

      The air fairly crackled with masculine aggression. Who knew what he might do? For all she knew, he might have minders who rubbed people out, like the mob.

      To get herself off the hook, she warmed to her innocence theme, ignoring his sceptical gaze raking her from head to toe as if she were some despicable form of alien low-life. Amazing how, in the living, breathing flesh, that stern, tightly compressed mouth could still be so sensuous and expressive.

      ‘I hardly heard a thing,’ she continued, earnest in her effort to allay his fears. ‘You can’t hear much at all in that room when the door’s closed.’

      ‘Rubbish. I heard your voice very, very distinctly.’

      She rolled her eyes. ‘Look, I was here first, remember? I didn’t know you were coming in for your romantic rendezvous, did I? I’m not a mind-reader. I came in to find the Ladies, and you chose to use this room, too. Maybe I should have let you know I was there, but I thought you and your—girlfriend would be less embarrassed if I just said nothing and tiptoed away.’

      He took a moment to digest this, and his gaze became less hostile, though more guarded, as if he’d seen the force of her argument but didn’t want to show it. It occurred to СКАЧАТЬ