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СКАЧАТЬ no sound from above. The luxury interior fittings obviously included soundproofing.

      However, for added safety, she closed the bathroom door and perched on the closed toilet seat to await her rescue. When fifteen minutes had passed by the tick of the excruciatingly accurate platinum watch on her wrist she paced back out into the cabin and peered out of the porthole, but all she could see was the stylish super-yacht parked in the next slip.

      After twenty-five minutes she could bear it no longer. Perhaps Joshua had taken Chris across the boardwalk to his condominium. All the two-storeyed condominiums that edged the dock had electronically coded security gates that opened from the boardwalk into private courtyards, and it might be possible for her to slip off the boat without being seen, unless the two men were standing at one of the huge picture windows overlooking the canal.

      She silently cracked open the cabin door and peeped down the empty corridor towards the companionway. Everything was quiet. She decided that she would creep as far as the stairs and see if she could hear any conversation from the lounge. Her hand had just touched the smooth, polished stair-rail when there was a slight sound behind her.

      ‘Looking for this?’

      She spun around, hoping that Pierre had tidied up his accent.

      Christopher Wade stood in the open doorway of one of the end cabins, her navy jacket dangling from a coat hanger on his finger.

      He was looking very casual in white jeans and a striped T-shirt, and behind him an open suitcase lay on the threequarter bed. Regan realised that whatever had brought him back to Palm Cove for the second consecutive weekend, he hadn’t arrived expecting big brother to give him houseroom. In view of the tension between them he had evidently chosen to stay on the boat.

      ‘Yes, I was, thank you,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as nervously shrill to him as it did to her own ears. ‘I spilled a drink on myself and Pierre was cleaning it for me.’

      ‘He left it hanging on the shower door of the main bathroom. I found it when I went in to recharge my razor.’ His gaze went from her slender figure to the cabin door she had foolishly left ajar. ‘I knew it couldn’t be Carolyn’s—she never wears navy.’

      She sustained his steady blue gaze with extreme difficulty as he slipped the jacket off the hanger and held it out to her. ‘It seems to be cured of whatever befell it—do you want to put it back on?’

      She cleared her throat. ‘No, thanks—I’ll just carry it; it’s a bit warm.’ She smiled as she took it from him, but his expression was uncharacteristically cool.

      ‘You’re going to have a fairly tender bruise there tomorrow,’ he said quietly, and touched the soft skin at the outermost swell of her breast, where it was exposed by the cut-away armhole of her top. ‘In fact, you’re going to have quite a few by the looks of it,’ he continued, his eyes moving over her bare throat and shoulders. ‘And here I always thought Josh’s bark was worse than his bite…’

      Regan fell back a step, clutching her jacket to her chest, feeling worse than naked, her cheeks stinging hot.

      ‘I—I—’

      ‘I wondered why he seemed so unusually twitchy when I wanted to come down and settle in. He tried to convince me that I’d be better off at the condo—when we both know I’m the last person Carolyn would want around as a chaperon.’

      ‘I’m sorry—’ Regan’s awkwardly expressed compassion caused a muscle to jump in his jaw, making him look markedly like his brother did when he was in a smouldering temper.

      ‘Oh, so you’re already in on that sordid family secret, are you?’ he guessed bitterly. ‘Josh is usually more discreet about his problems. I wouldn’t have thought he was the type to indulge in careless pillow talk, but then neither did I think he regarded sex as a combat sport—’

      ‘That’s enough, Chris,’ Joshua’s voice crackled out as he came down the stairs two at a time, jumping the final distance and coming up behind Regan. ‘There’s no need to embarrass yourself more than you have already.’

      ‘I’m not embarrassed.’

      ‘Well, you should be. You’re insulting a guest and I thought I’d taught you better manners. Come on, Regan, I’ll give you a lift back to the house.’

      ‘Why hustle her off in such a rush just because I’ve inconveniently turned up? Could it be you’re the one embarrassed at being caught with your pants down?’

      Joshua stepped in front of Regan, shielding her from his brother’s crudity.

      ‘You’re asking for a punch in the mouth!’

      ‘Why? Because I’ve found out the truth?’ Chris said rawly. ‘That you’re not as lily-white as you like everyone to believe? I always knew you were a manipulative bastard, but to con Sir Frank into bringing your mistress up here so that you can flaunt your affair under Carolyn’s unsuspecting nose—’

      ‘I am not flaunting her, and she is not my mistress!’

      ‘You’re going to tell me you two were innocently playing checkers before I came on board? Don’t make me laugh! Regan has your brand stamped all over her—God, she even smells of you.’

      Regan went hot all over. She hoped he was talking about the expensive cologne!

      ‘Dammit, Chris—’

      ‘No—damn you! Don’t you know how humiliated Caro would be if she knew? She trusts you, dammit!’ His voice was thick with torment. ‘She was so very quick to believe that I would let her down that she wouldn’t listen to anything I said afterwards—but big Josh—oh, no, never! She really believes that you’re the saint and I’m the sinner. And she likes Regan, she thinks of her as a friend…and all this time her new friend and her so-called fiancé have been—’

      ‘Don’t say it!’ Joshua ground out as Chris teetered on the brink of obscenity.

      His brother laughed harshly. ‘I knew you were attracted to her, but I naively thought that—being such a stickler for men doing the right thing by their women—you’d merely suffer the tortures of the damned denying yourself.’

      Instead of trying to douse the inflammatory situation with his cool reason, Joshua inexplicably chose to pour gasoline on the flames. ‘Or, if I gave in to the attraction, that I’d feel compelled to confess all to Carolyn? Is that what you were hoping would happen, Chris? So that you could rush in and replay the big dramatic scene that you flubbed a couple of months ago, this time with you as the valiant saviour and me as the faithless villain? Forget it. You had your chance and blew it. As it happens, I’ve decided that Carolyn will make an ideal wife. There’s a distinct commercial advantage in a businessman being associated with a beautiful, well-bred wife bouncing the evidence of his potent virility on her pretty knee…’

      Regan felt Joshua’s callous, careless taunt like a blow to her heart, but Chris looked utterly shattered. His young face was haggard as he looked at the brother he had idolised for so many years with an expression of pure loathing.

      ‘You bastard. You think you’re going to have it all, don’t you? I won’t let you do it! If you hurt Caro—’

      ‘If СКАЧАТЬ