Back in the Lion's Den (13 page)

‘I already did,’ he reminded her tersely. ‘And it isn’t an experience
I intend repeating with any other child. If my view doesn’t particularly correlate with yours, all I can say is that—like you—I’m not merely thinking of myself in all this. I’m thinking of the wider picture and the family I ultimately make myself responsible for. Daisy’s my niece,’ he continued pragmatically. ‘Nothing will ever change that. And as my niece I’ll encourage and support her and see that she never wants for anything—if you’ll allow me to do that—but I won’t take on the role of a father in her eyes, and I sincerely hope that you haven’t given her any reason to suspect I would.’

Hurting, angry, Sienna shot back in protest. ‘I’ve done no such thing! I told you—I’ve got no intention of settling down with anyone!’

‘Good. Then let’s keep it that way. I won’t ever try to step into Niall’s shoes, or presume to imagine that I could give Daisy—or any other man’s child for that matter—the understanding and emotional stability that only her own father could have given her.’

Which was a joke in itself, Sienna thought bitterly, resisting the urge to tell him just how ‘emotionally stable’ his younger brother had been.

‘And if you’re still harbouring any ideas about pitying me, then you can dispense with them now. If you’d lived through the undesirable set-up I lived through, you’d realise that I’m being totally practical.’

‘That’s not being practical, Conan,’ she advised, realising how strongly he believed it. ‘That’s being afraid.’

‘Call it what you like. The subject isn’t open for any more discussion,’ he stated harshly, and his coldness and then the slamming of the bathroom door hurt her almost as much as the first time Niall had hit her.

C
ONAN
came out of the villa carrying Sienna’s and Daisy’s cases. The morning was still and warm, with a mist lying over the distant mountains, but the sun shining on the water beyond the terraced gardens was making it appear piercingly blue.

The boot of the Mercedes was open, where his chauffeur had been loading his own luggage earlier, but at the moment he could only see Sienna tossing her jacket onto the rear seat of the car.

He knew he had hurt her by making his intentions clear, even if she had seemed quite adamant about not making a commitment herself. Whether she was simply bluffing or whether she meant it, he still wasn’t sure. He just hadn’t wanted her thinking that he was intending to settle down and play happy families when he clearly wasn’t. However, that still didn’t stop him feeling like a first-rate heel. A feeling only made worse as he remembered how she had refused to take any of the money he had promised her for coming here when he had offered it to her recently, and how she had firmly rebuffed any suggestion of his buying her a new car.

Daisy was still inside, saying her last goodbyes to Claudette and the staff, and so, grabbing this precious last chance to be alone with Sienna for heaven knew how long, Conan quickened his stride past the marble columns above the steps.

She was leaning with her bent arms resting on the roof of his car. The short yellow dress she was wearing with simple black pumps—which was no doubt from a high street store—
did as much, if not more for her in its chic simplicity, he decided, than any of the expensive designs she had obviously worn to please his brother.

She hadn’t heard him approaching, giving him time to enjoy the quiet pleasure of admiring her.

With silent masculine appreciation he took in the swanlike elegance of her neck beneath the shining dark cap of her hair, the way the flattering cut of the dress left one arm and shoulder completely bare, that delicate butterfly design on her silken skin.

He’d always disliked tattoos, and yet this one somehow seemed to underline the intrinsic gentleness in her character—as though its subject had actually chosen to settle there and was feeling too safe to fly away.

Impatient with himself for indulging in such sentimental codswallop, he gave himself a mental shake, and from just a few yards away said coolly, without any preamble, ‘You’ve been avoiding me.’ And wound up berating himself for catching her off-guard when she swung round, startled, because that was what he had been intending.

‘No, I haven’t,’ she responded cagily, looking up at him with one slender hand shielding her eyes.

But she had been, he assured himself. She had made sure of involving herself with whatever it was Daisy and Avril had been doing all the previous afternoon and evening, before she’d taken herself off to bed early under the pretext, he was sure, of having a headache. And he was certain that she’d only been pretending to be asleep when he’d looked into her room after knocking quietly on her door.

‘I’m sorry if what we were discussing yesterday upset you.’ He felt uncomfortable bringing it up. But why on earth should he? he wondered, lifting each heavy individual suitcase with remarkable ease into the boot.

Was
he sorry? Sienna viewed him guardedly. Sporting that dark executive image—he’d said he had a business meeting to attend as soon as they touched down in London—and with
the sunlight striking brilliance from the glittering gold of his eyes, he looked anything but penitent.

‘It didn’t.’ Her smile was forced. How could he still take her breath away when she now knew what he had been open enough to warn her of in his bedroom yesterday? There was absolutely no future for them. Not that she had been expecting that there would be, but it still hadn’t stopped it hurting to have him spell it out. ‘I’m made of sterner stuff than to fall apart merely by being told the truth,’ she told him, brazening it out. Taking a deep breath, she asked far more lightly than she was feeling, ‘So what happens now?’

‘You tell me. If you wish it, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t carry on as we are.’

So he’d really meant that yesterday, about not ending what they had. They could still carry on having great sex just so long as she realised that for him it didn’t mean anything other than that.

With her heart giving an almost painful lurch, she echoed breathlessly, ‘Carry on …?’

‘I don’t see why not. But it has to be your decision.’

Because he could just walk away from her without turning a hair, seeing her as just another satisfying interlude in his life, while she …

She would just have to grin and bear it when he
did
walk out of her life for good.

Except that it never would be for good, would it? she realised hopelessly. Because there was Daisy. Daisy who bound them both together and with whom he would naturally want to keep in touch, like the father he was determined never to be.

Turning her gaze away from him, to hide all that she was feeling, she uttered, ‘And if I decide against it?’

‘It would be a pity,’ he exhaled, his chest lifting beneath that immaculate white shirt, ‘when we seem to gel so well.’

‘In bed, you mean.’ He didn’t answer. How could he? she thought, when in doing so he’d be admitting to reducing what
there was between them to little more than an animal coupling?

‘As I said, it has to be your decision. But I don’t think you’re ready to let go, Sienna, any more than I’m prepared to let you. You know I can’t get enough of you, and you don’t have to say a word for me to know that it’s entirely mutual.’

‘I might be weak,’ she murmured, ‘but I’m not a total fool.’

Like hell she wasn’t! she thought, despairing of herself. If she’d listened to her head instead of her heart at the beginning she wouldn’t be in the mess she was in now.

‘Don’t think about breaking things off between us, Sienna. Right now I need you in my life like I’ve never needed anyone.’ Where had
that
come from? he asked himself, wondering how he could possibly have allowed any woman to impel him to admit a thing like that—let alone the woman against whom he had harboured a three year long grievance, and a desire to teach her a lesson without any regard for what the cost might be. ‘Right now you’re good for me—we’re good for each other,’ he appended, thinking how selfish he was in danger of sounding. But there wasn’t a woman anywhere he felt so desperate to keep in his bed. ‘Of course if you’re asking me to prove it to you …’

‘No!’ Her hands came up to protect herself from his particular brand of persuasion as his sudden nearness and that roughness in his voice—which could only be inspired by his desire for her—called to an answering need deep down inside. All right, he had been hurt, she thought. And badly. But then so had she. And she didn’t intend letting a man use her or hurt her—either physically or emotionally—ever again. Apart from which, she had Daisy to consider now. ‘This isn’t a very good idea,’ she told him tremulously, finding it took every ounce of emotional strength she had to be able to say it. ‘We had a fling. We had a good time. Let’s leave it like that.’ She was amazed at how nonchalant she managed to sound.

‘A
fling?
’ His face creased up as though he couldn’t fully
comprehend what she was saying. ‘Is that what you want to call it?’

‘Wasn’t it?’ she murmured, the lightness of her tone hiding the real anguish behind her words.

Something hardened his jaw and he started to say something, but was stalled by the sound of childish chatter.

They both looked up as the little girl came skipping out of the house ahead of her grandmother. Carefully negotiating the steps, she ran straight up to Conan and held up her hippo.

‘I told him we were going home, but he says he wants to stay with you,’ she told him breathlessly, the innocent little gesture striking at Sienna’s heart.

‘No, Daisy,’ she advised firmly, guessing just what Conan would think of that. ‘Uncle Conan’s coming back to England anyway, so Hippo’s only going to be lonely.’

‘No, he won’t!’ Daisy remonstrated, sticking out her bottom lip. ‘He says he wants to stay until he comes back.’

‘I said no, Daisy …’

The little girl squealed in protest, shrugging off Sienna’s hand.

‘Let her leave it if she wants to.’

Conan’s voice cut impatiently across the altercation between mother and daughter, leaving Sienna wondering, after they had said their goodbyes to Avril and were on the open road, whether his off-handedness sprang from his niece’s innocent attempts to squeeze her way into his affections, or from her own refusal to continue an affair that was going nowhere.

She had been back at the gym for a couple of weeks, juggling her courses with Daisy’s new schooling schedule and trying to keep her mind off Conan by plunging herself into the daily reward of helping others—particularly her older class members—to reach healthier levels of fitness, when he suddenly turned up out of the blue.

It was a Thursday, which she remembered telling him once
was usually her morning off. What she hadn’t reckoned on was that he would remember that.

It was with a surprised leap of her heart therefore, after coming back from dropping Daisy off and taking a shower, that she padded to the front door in her short cotton robe to find him standing there on the step.

‘Conan!’

Impeccably groomed as always, power-dressed in his dark executive suit, he made her feel at an immediate disadvantage, with her hair still damp and dishevelled, and far too conscious of being totally naked under her robe.

‘Hello, Sienna,’ he said, against a backing of excited barks. ‘May I come in?’

She pressed herself back against the door, and as he stepped in was reminded of the first time he had come here. Except now he stooped to pet Shadow, who had rushed in from the garden at the first peal of the doorbell, no longer viewing the dog as a cold reminder of that dreadful attack he had suffered in the past. But as he moved past her, with that evocative scent of cologne almost spelling his signature, she was far too aware that—unlike that first time he had come here—he now knew every secret pathway of her body; knew just what to do to make it respond with shameless abandon to his irresistible masculinity. Just as it was doing now—and without any help from him!

‘How’s Daisy?’ he asked, before she had gathered herself enough to say anything.

‘She’s fine.’ Searching for words, so that he wouldn’t guess how his dark allure was making her breasts ache and making that familiar heat at the heart of her pool into honeyed moistness in unwitting preparation for his hard invasion, she added croakily, ‘So, to what do I owe this unexpected visit?’

An elevated eyebrow acknowledged the tremor that destabilised her voice as he held back for her to precede him into the living room, his manners impeccable as always.

‘I wanted to let you know that Avril’s well enough to return
to London and will be moving into her new apartment within the next couple of weeks,’ he informed her smoothly, with no sign apparent of the kind of upheaval going on inside Sienna. It was an apartment that Conan was buying his mother especially to make it easier for her to see Daisy, she remembered Avril telling her before they had left France.

‘You could have phoned.’ She said it too curtly, and wondered if he could sense the panic that was rising in her.

‘I could have.’ His eyes were resting on hers—probing, too discerning—before they slid to the betraying movement of her rapidly rising breasts. ‘I’ve missed you, Sienna.’

Through an escalating tension she was aware of Shadow padding back out to the garden.

And I haven’t missed you?

With her body turning weak from the velvety caress of his voice, she couldn’t tell him how she couldn’t keep her mind on anything. That all she could see was his face swimming in front of her eyes every minute of every day. And that she woke up in the night aching for his loving and had to get up and walk about, make herself tea she didn’t want to stop herself succumbing to humiliating and unfulfilling self-release.

‘Don’t!’ She made to sweep away from him, put some distance between them, but strong fingers were suddenly clamping around her wrist.

‘Sienna …’

‘It’s over,’ she breathed, panic showing in her eyes as electricity crackled through her from the sensuous agony of his touch.

‘No, it isn’t.’

His determination outstripped any protest she might have made as his other hand reached up and tugged gently on the belt of her robe.

The garment fell open, leaving her exposed and vulnerable.

A tense heat radiated through her and she pressed her eyes tightly closed, feeling his gaze like a hot brand as he groaned
in satisfied acknowledgment of her body’s shameless betrayal. ‘You still want me, Sienna,’ he said deeply. ‘Every bit as much as I want you.’

Even now, as his hand slid up around one burgeoning breast and her body arched involuntarily towards him, she wanted to deny it. But it was only her head she was trying to fool, because as his mouth came down over hers her physical responses were telling her something else entirely.

Dear heaven! How long had it been?

Her arms went joyously around him, her body glorying in its triumph over her brain, her pulsing flesh exulting in the recognition of its master, its dark, exciting Svengali, whose command it craved to obey.

‘You can’t give this up any more than I can, can you?’ He broke their kiss to speak breathlessly, not needing to hear her answer because her instinctive responses said it all. ‘So why did you think you could?’

His voice was rough and ragged, his mouth and hands moving urgently over her body as though not knowing which part of her to savour first. But her need for him was just as desperate, her laboured breathing coming just as rapidly as his, her hungry fingers tugging at his shirt, pulling it out of his waistband so that she could slip her hands beneath it and feel the throbbing heat of his sinewy body before he lifted her up, with her legs entwined around him, and carried her in a few purposeful strides across the room.

They made love on her old wooden table, amongst the debris of unironed washing, pending bills and a box bursting with Daisy’s toys. It was a quick, hot, urgent coming together, but neither of them wanted anything else, both driven by the only thing that mattered right then, which was the swift, hard locking of bodies in an immediate climax so intense that Sienna cried out from the blistering pleasure of it, feeling the tremors that ran through Conan from the hard propulsion of his body until he gave a shuddering groan as he found his own release and collapsed heavily down on top of her.