Back in the Lion's Den (12 page)

He could feel her gaze following him as he paced away to the bathroom. He felt like a heel, he thought, but he couldn’t lie to her. She had come to him that night when he had most needed her tender femininity and he had taken full advantage of it—over and over and over again.

As he dispensed with the condom and got himself back into some sort of order he thought back to four weeks ago, when he had first brought her here, and particularly to that antagonised scene with her in the pool.

It had been his intention to have a fling with her. Get his anger and his rampant desire for her out of his system. But it hadn’t worked out as simply as that. The more he had of her, the more he wanted. And the more he took, surprisingly, the more it seemed she was prepared to give. It didn’t help his conscience
either to discover that, far from the lying little cheat he had always believed her to be, she appeared to be open and honest and entirely different from the girl he thought he had known.

There was nothing of the high-maintenance, possession-loving creature who had worn her designer clothes and jewellery like trophies three years ago. She dressed very simply, never seemed interested in any of the exclusive shops whenever she had the chance to browse around them. And whenever he had taken her and Daisy out for the day she’d always tried to insist on paying for her and his niece’s share herself.

She was proud and dignified and unbelievably desirable. She was also making him question his own actions—and he didn’t like that. Whatever she said, she was getting too involved with him—and
he,
he realised, like a fool, was in danger of allowing her to. He didn’t want to hurt her, but neither did he want an emotional involvement with her. Even if he was being brutal, she had to know.

She was standing by the bed, pulling on her blue chequered shirt, when he came back into the bedroom wearing his robe. A glimpse of her bare breasts above the tight clinging jeans almost threw his determination to the winds.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Her heavy-lidded eyes, he noticed, were dark and brooding.

‘Like what?’ she replied curtly, knotting the ends of her blouse just above her tiny waist.

‘Like I’m the big bad wolf and you’re Little Red Riding Hood.’

Perhaps I feel like Little Red Riding Hood, she thought silently. Chased. Caught. Pounced on. And ravenously devoured. It didn’t help telling herself, no matter how bad she was feeling, that she had done her fair share of the devouring too.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,’ he was saying, ‘because I’m not the soft-hearted sentimentalist you might have convinced yourself I was.’

The sun picked out snatches of red in her gleaming black hair as she brought her head up. ‘You? Soft?’ she said with a brittle little laugh. ‘I think any woman—or man—would have to have their head read if they
ever
made the mistake of thinking you were soft.’

‘Then what’s eating you, Sienna?’

What’s eating me, she thought, as she turned away and made a show of straightening the duvet, is that I love you. And even though I’ve never said it, you’ve as good as thrown it right back in my face.

‘Nothing,’ she murmured with a little shrug.

He couldn’t see her face, only the taut movements of her back, and the way her jeans clung smoothly to the contours of her delightful little bottom as she tried to restore some order to the wreck of his love-scented bed.

‘I’ve never lied to you, or given you any reason to expect the promise of a commitment,’ he added tonelessly.

Thumping a pillow with unnecessary force, she said coolly, without glancing round, ‘Have I ever asked you to?’

‘No.’ His eyes were darkly reflective as he stood there watching her. He’d messed this up good and proper, he thought, wanting to kick himself, knowing that he should have had this conversation with her weeks ago. ‘And I’m not suggesting that we should end what we have.’

‘Really?’ She spun round, clutching another pillow tightly to her chest. ‘What exactly
do
we have, Conan? Great sex?’

Something tugged at one corner of his mouth. ‘You must admit it’s pretty spectacular.’

Which was an understatement! she thought. They had been slightly more than obsessed with each other! At least in bed.

‘So you’re saying we go on as we are? With no strings attached?’

‘If you’re prepared to do that. I just want to be open with you, so you know from the start where you stand and you can make a decision. Just as long as you’re aware that I’m not proposing to marry you.’

He couldn’t have put it more plainly.

‘So you want us to go on having great sex, so long as it’s kept on a purely physical level?’

‘You don’t have to make it sound so cold-blooded,’ he remarked, reaching for his glass of wine, which still remained untouched on the tray he’d brought up before they had been overtaken by the scorching inferno that continued to consume them with no sign of ever burning itself out.

‘Don’t I?’ She tossed the plumped pillow back on the bed. ‘So what did you expect? My loving gratitude? There aren’t many women who wouldn’t feel a little put out by such a high-handed, presumptuous statement. “Just as long as you’re aware that I’m not proposing to marry you”,’ she mimicked, her hands clutching her elbows, punctuating each word with a little shake of her body. ‘Well, for your information, Conan Ryder, who said I
wanted
to marry you? If you must know, I had enough of marriage and so-called connubial bliss with your wonderful brother. Why would I want to jump in feet first and tie myself down to
you?
’

Of course, he thought. She hadn’t had a particularly good time of it with his brother. But she was saving face. He was sure of it. It made him want to take her in his arms and kiss away her painful indignation. But that was just sex driving him—he was sure of that too—and suddenly he felt angry with her for making him feel so guilty.

‘Well, that told me, didn’t it?’ he said, putting down his glass and holding the feeling in check as he played along with what he strongly suspected was an all-out attempt to maintain her dignity. His annoyance though was being swiftly replaced by something fast approaching admiration. The reaction of most women he dismissed from his bed after an affair had run its course was usually one of tears or bitter recriminations. Sienna wasn’t outwardly displaying either. But then neither was he dismissing her from his bed. ‘Which will just teach me to presume.’

‘Yes, it will!’ she underlined, wondering how—even when
there was no future in it—when she hadn’t even expected him to offer her one—she was going to find the strength to walk away from all that he was proposing. Which was little more than pure and simple ecstasy until such time as he called the shots by deciding he wanted to move on. ‘But just for the record … If I were to agree to what you’re suggesting—which I’m not,’ she tagged on hastily, ‘aren’t you worried that I really might fall in love with you? Or worse.’ With a feigned and shuddering little laugh she lifted her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Heaven forbid! You might suddenly find yourself in love with
me!
’

‘Stop it, Sienna.’ Suddenly he couldn’t bear what he could see clearly she was doing to herself. He didn’t want pretence. He would have preferred tears, or at best a tirade of abuse from her. ‘I don’t intend allowing myself ever to fall in love with you. It won’t happen. Do I make myself clear?’

‘As crystal.’ But her voice cracked as she said it. Why should it matter? she challenged herself. When another commitment with a man was something she had been determined to steer clear of? When falling for him didn’t mean putting herself back into the kind of emotional tyranny she had known before? Still reeling from his statement, however, she uttered with all the dignity she could muster, ‘Could you at least tell me what puts you in a position so enviously above the rest of us that you’re able to set such store by your own immunity?’

She was too far removed from his social circle for him ever to fall in love with. He still didn’t like her. She satisfied him in bed but was far too shallow to satisfy his intellectual needs.
The possibilities rang through her brain and none of them were complimentary. Or perhaps it was simply that he was in love with Petra Flax.

He had been pulling on his clothes, and his shirt was now hanging loosely over his chinos as it had been before they had both been overcome by their escalating need for each other.

‘I came from one fractured family,’ he told her grimly, pulling
up his zip. ‘I don’t ever intend putting myself back into the hell-hole of another.’

His voice was so hard-edged she could feel the bitterness emanating from him. ‘What do you mean?’ she queried, frowning. How could any relationship he might choose to form with a woman possibly compare with the family life that he had had?

‘I’ve no intention of becoming a stepfather to another man’s child,’ he shocked her by saying. ‘Even if that child
is
my niece.’

Because he didn’t care about his niece’s mother enough. That was what he was saying, surely?

‘I don’t expect you to understand. Just trust me. It would be much too complicated.’

How?
she almost asked, but managed to stop herself in time. Because that would be like openly admitting that she
did
love him and
was
looking for more permanence when she wasn’t, wouldn’t it? she reasoned hectically. But she couldn’t just leave it like that.

‘Even if I was saying I wanted something more—which I’m not—but some other woman might,’ she felt she ought to tag on, ‘how could Daisy—or any other woman’s child—complicate things?’ she pressed, unable to comprehend exactly what he was saying.

He thought of his loneliness, of his mother’s fear of showing any affection towards him, of the rows and the jealousies and the divided loyalties that had eventually ripped them apart.

‘I mean that eventually I might want children of my own. And closer blood ties are bound to create favouritism—jealousies. How could I be sure someone else’s child wouldn’t take second place to my own? Or I might try too hard not to let that happen and wind up being unfair to my own offspring. I’ll marry eventually, but I’ll never risk becoming the kind of father my stepfather was to me.’

You aren’t that kind of person,
she wanted to say, but he’d think she was only hankering after marriage if she did.
Instead, wanting genuinely to know, she asked tentatively, ‘Are you perhaps worrying that you might follow him in other ways? That because of your upbringing you might wind up …’ she was having difficulty saying it but she pressed on anyway ‘… wind up treating your wife and children in the same way he treated you and your mother?’

‘By being physically brutal?’ he supplied, looking appalled, not seeming to notice the way she winced as he said it. ‘No. I abhor violence,’ he appended, and from the way his firm mouth contorted she could tell he meant it—with a vengeance. ‘I don’t think there’s a situation on earth that can’t be resolved with diplomacy and communication. But a child needs its own father, and if it hasn’t got that then nothing in the world is worth supplying what could only be a poor substitute.’

He meant that too, she realised, only fully understanding now, from the intensity with which he spoke, just how deeply his childhood had scarred him. But a poor substitute for what? she wondered bitterly. For a man who shrieked at his child until she screamed from the terror of it? For a man who flew into rages until she was afraid to take her baby home?

‘Not that it affects me in any way,’ she murmured, her throat raw from the anguish of remembering, ‘but from a man of your obvious intelligence isn’t that a rather short-sighted view? Do you imagine that every stepfamily in the land is suffering agonies of torment just because yours did? That every child who loses a parent—for whatever reason—shouldn’t have the right to expect a loving surrogate father or mother in their place?’

‘No,’ he said, breathing out heavily through his nostrils. ‘What I’m saying is that it wouldn’t work for
me.
And if you think that’s a rather short-sighted view—well, I’m afraid it’s the only one I’ve got.’

Which was just unfortunate for her, Sienna thought, if she had been pinning her hopes on a wedding ring. Nevertheless she was hurting—but for him too, because he sounded so
bitter, his voice harsh from the unforgettable misery of his childhood.

‘Supposing one day you meet someone you really fall in love with and she has a child—or children?’

‘It won’t happen.’ His tone was inexorable.

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because I’d be careful not to get involved with her in the first place.’

‘What about me?’ she ventured, trying to sound casual in spite of everything. ‘Weren’t you just a little bit worried that you might find yourself getting involved with me?’

‘Not in that way,’ he stated, and every syllable he uttered seemed to lacerate her heart.

‘And what way is that?’ she quizzed, swallowing emotion, unable to help the feeling that she was bleeding inside. For her being
involved
with someone could only mean being in love.

‘I mean not with wedding bells and confetti and happy ever afters, Sienna. And if you’ve been imagining that that’s where we were headed, then I’m truly sorry if I misled you.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ she replied, chiding herself for caring so much when he had done nothing to indicate that she was any more than just another pleasurable diversion in his life—the kind he no doubt indulged in all the time with the opposite sex. Except, unlike the more sophisticated, far more sensible women who would normally share his bed, she’d been stupid enough to fall in love with him. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t thinking of myself in all this,’ she put in, pulling her thoughts up quickly. Even if she was the worst possible kind of romantic fool for getting herself into this situation, there was no way Conan was ever going to know about it. ‘I was thinking of you.’

‘Me?’ A self-mocking note of laughter escaped him. ‘Lose no sleep over that, my dear deluded innocent. I can assure you I’m perfectly happy.’

‘No, you’re not. OK, maybe you are—but with such a closed attitude to life you’re going to miss out on a lot.’