Back in the Lion's Den (9 page)

‘I think you’d better get dressed,’ he advised, pushing himself up, away from her.

On his feet, he was already reinstating his clothes. ‘I was right,’ he said as she sat up, looking hurt and bewildered. ‘This isn’t a good idea.’

Abandoned as he closed the bedroom door behind him, not really sure of what she had done wrong, Sienna could only deduce, with a stinging slap to her pride, that it was her lack of sophistication and her failure to please him that had put him off.

Which was no more than she deserved, she reproached herself, for imagining she could make him like her—never mind allowing him to take such liberties with her body! She could only put it down to slight mental derangement caused by her very vulnerable state. She knew what he thought about her and it wasn’t very complimentary! And even if her opinion of him had changed considerably since yesterday, it didn’t mean that his had softened in any way towards her. It clearly hadn’t! she realised shamefully. She would just have to be careful never to let him catch her off-guard again.

Daisy was helping one of the gardeners with his planting, Sienna noticed when, still embarrassed by the intimacies she had allowed herself to share with Conan, she came down into the garden a little later.

Ascertaining that the man didn’t mind, and that Daisy wasn’t hindering his work, she looked gingerly about her to see if Conan was around. He wasn’t, but surprisingly she found Avril in her usual floppy hat, pruning a bright yellow shrub that bordered the terrace.

Intending merely to enquire how she was, and to thank her for the flowers she’d sent up to her room the previous day, she was even more surprised when, after she’d done that, the woman gestured her towards a shady bower clothed with
climbing burgundy roses which cleverly screened a smoky glass-topped wicker table and two matching chairs. There was a large jug of iced orange juice on the table.

‘I understand you had a bit of an accident last night?’ the woman remarked, filling two tall glasses from the jug and handing one to Sienna.

So Avril knew about that, Sienna realised, her colour rising, wondering who had told Conan’s mother—Conan or Claudette?—and also whether Avril knew that her younger son’s widow had spent the night and half the morning in her elder son’s bed!

‘Yes, I’m sorry about the vase,’ she said contritely, deciding to bluff her way through it. ‘Was it valuable?’

‘Not particularly. It was a gift from my late husband when we became engaged.’

‘Oh, gosh! I’m sorry,’ Sienna repeated, feeling awful.

Avril, though, was waving her apologies aside. ‘Don’t be. It wasn’t one of my favourites. Besides, I’m surprised it survived this long.’

The woman was being surprisingly blasé, Sienna thought, over losing something that must have meant a great deal to her. She wondered if the other woman was putting on a brave face to spare her discomfort.

‘I know I can’t replace its sentimental value, but would you at least let me buy you another?’ Sienna offered, still feeling dreadful about it.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Avril scolded lightly. ‘As you said, it’s irreplaceable. So don’t try.’

Feeling a little chastened, Sienna was surprised when a sun-speckled hand covered hers where it was resting on the table. ‘Besides, if I want another Conan will buy me one.’ There was a strangely wistful note in the woman’s voice as she added, with an almost rueful smile, ‘He usually supplies me with everything I need.’

Sienna felt her cheeks burning again just at the mention of
Conan’s name, as sensual images of what had transpired in his room earlier caused her blood to race.

‘He’s a good son.’

An eyebrow cocked curiously under the floppy hat. Had Avril picked up on the rather breathless way she’d said that? Sienna wondered, dismayed, and was sure of it when the woman responded by advising, ‘Don’t imagine that you can get close to him, Sienna. Many women have tried—women who, if you don’t mind me saying so, were a lot more steel-edged and sophisticated than you are. They’ve all been disappointed.’

‘Perhaps he just hasn’t found the right woman yet,’ she returned, without thinking, and then wondered why she’d said it. Just as Avril must be wondering, she thought, when she saw that eyebrow climb even higher under the floppy hat. ‘Don’t worry. You’ve got no reason to fear that I’m likely to be taking another of your sons away from you,’ she appeased, forcibly reiterating what she had promised Avril that evening Conan had come in and surprised them. And though she hadn’t intended to sound bitter, she knew she did.

‘Oh, I lost Conan a long time ago,’ the woman startled her by saying. ‘I think that’s why I couldn’t accept you as easily as I should have, Sienna. I couldn’t bear the realisation I was losing my other son as well.’

Which she had—in the end. So pointlessly and so finally, Sienna thought, feeling for Niall’s mother and yet amazed by her admission. She decided against reminding her that it was only her unfriendly attitude towards her younger son’s new wife that had stopped her from gaining a daughter.

‘What do you mean you lost him?’ she pressed, needing to know what Avril had meant by that remark about losing Conan. ‘How? I thought that you and he were—’

‘Were what? Close?’ A strained little laugh infiltrated the still scented air, and the face across the table was suddenly ravaged by some private emotion. ‘We put on a united front,’ she informed Sienna almost bitterly. ‘This family’s always been
very good at that.’ She lifted the glass in her hand and took a long draught of her orange juice. There was a small round patch of condensation on the table where the glass had stood. When she put it down, her face was turned away, as though she was studying the deeply perfumed roses interlaced with the latticework of the bower. ‘I let him down, Sienna. And it’s something for which I shall reproach myself for the rest of my life.’

‘Let him down?’ she prompted, puzzled. ‘How?’

The woman gave her head a couple of quick shakes, as though she was trying to clear it of a subject that was too personal or too painful for her to talk about.

‘You must have done something right,’ Sienna assured her with a smile. ‘Or he wouldn’t have turned out quite as confident and successful and level-headed and … dependable as he is today.’

Another knowing look was angled in her direction. ‘Well … he certainly seems to have scored a hit with you.’

She hadn’t realised how much she had been eulogising and, blushing furiously, keen to distract Avril from suspecting how Conan affected her, she uttered without thinking, ‘Where did he get those scars?’

‘Scars?’ Beneath the floppy hat both eyebrows lifted in questioning surprise.

So Avril hadn’t known how intimate they had been. But she did now!

Sienna realised. Because how else would her daughter-in-law have known about those old wounds, she guessed Avril must be thinking, if she hadn’t seen Conan totally naked?

‘Didn’t he tell you?’ the woman enquired, somewhat cagily.

‘Only that they were caused by a dog,’ Sienna informed her, deciding to brazen it out. ‘And he said something about being somewhere he shouldn’t have been.’

‘Which was in the grounds of a private business premises which had been securely locked for the night.’

‘Conan?’ Sienna queried, bemused. What was Avril saying? That he had been a tearaway? Was that what the woman had meant by losing him?

‘Not quite what you’re thinking,’ Avril said knowingly, aware of the path Sienna’s thoughts had taken. ‘He went in after Niall—and after he had already warned him what would happen if he went over that fence. But Niall was born with a need always to do what was reckless and dangerous and downright inadvisable …’

Which was how he had had that accident, Sienna thought, guessing from that crack in his mother’s voice that she was thinking the same thing.

‘He wouldn’t listen,’ Avril was continuing. ‘He was only just twelve years old to Conan’s sixteen at the time, but he
had
to test his brother’s authority. Had—as it turned out—to put his brother’s life on the line. Because of course when Conan heard the rumpus, with the dogs barking and Niall shrieking, he just went over that fence into those grounds without a thought for his own safety. Niall was pinned down by one of the dogs, but the other one …’

She couldn’t go on. She didn’t have to. Sienna could visualise it all too clearly, even without seeing the anguish scoring the pale, fragile lines of her mother-in-law’s face.

No wonder he’d seemed so … tense, she thought, her heart aching for him, when Shadow had jumped up at him that night he’d first called at her house. It also explained why he’d been so angry on that other occasion when Jodie had said she’d left Daisy in the garden with Shadow.

‘He was in hospital for a couple of days,’ Avril went on, her voice strung with the same anguish as she continued. ‘And both boys were let off with a warning as there were no previous offences and my husband was such an upstanding member of the community.’

‘But Conan was all right,’ Sienna stressed, realising the distress that reliving the incident was causing his mother. ‘It could have been far, far worse.’

‘Oh, yes. He was all right,’ Avril supplied with an undertone of acidity. Or was it remorse? Sienna thought, wondering why. ‘And things would have stayed all right if my husband hadn’t been determined to get to the bottom of it. He wasn’t exactly a man known for his restraint. Niall was too frightened to tell him the truth, and it was beyond Conan’s ethics to drop his brother into the front line of his father’s anger. You see, Sienna, my husband could be a very intimidating man. So he made Conan pay—or tried to. He’d always made him pay for everything—except Conan was big enough and strong enough by then not to take it any more. He left the following spring and I didn’t see him again for years, until after my husband died. As I’m sure you already know, Conan wasn’t his son. He was the result of a one-night affair I had with a young pilot while I was on holiday in the Channel Islands. I was carefree, irresponsible and crazy. Crazily in love for those few hours, or so I convinced myself. I didn’t even know his last name.

‘Conan and I were close for those first few years. But then after I married Niall’s father and my younger son came along the favouritism started, with Conan never being able to do anything right in his stepfather’s eyes. He was so bitterly jealous of Conan—always goading him. Belittling him. I suspect it was my fault for loving Conan so much. He hasn’t said as much, but I know he blames me for allowing it to happen. After all, I could have done something about it. Got him away from his stepfather. Divorced him. But in spite of all that I suppose I still loved him. And anyway, I was afraid that if I did it would be my word against his and he’d get custody of Niall—and that was more than I could bear to contemplate. So you see, Sienna, I sacrificed Conan’s welfare for the sake of his brother and I shan’t blame him if he never forgives me. Because I shall never, ever forgive myself for that.’

Stunned, Sienna regarded Conan’s mother, her own features almost as harrowed. Avril hadn’t meant to spill it out,
she decided, and yet when all the pent-up anguish of a lifetime had started pouring out of her she hadn’t been able to stop.

‘Perhaps it’s time to forgive yourself,’ she suggested, doing as Avril had done earlier and slipping a hand over hers. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t think badly of you,’ she murmured, her heart nevertheless going out to him. ‘Otherwise he wouldn’t worry about you quite as much as I know he does.’

‘You know … you really are quite a perceptive and sensitive little thing.’

A rare warmth broke through the anguish scoring Avril’s strained features. Like a chink in a wall letting the sunlight in, Sienna thought, giving her an insight into how beautiful the woman must once had been.

‘I didn’t ever dream that the little girl I resented would have the ability to make me open my heart to her—let alone try to make me feel better. And I
am
feeling a little better—both mentally and, I’m pleased to say, physically, too, over the past couple of days,’ she expressed. ‘Which is why I really don’t want to see you get hurt. I know you have some sort of crush on Conan—there’s no use denying it,’ she interjected with a wry smile as Sienna made to try. ‘Good heavens! I’m not altogether surprised—I’ve seen the effect he’s had on women over the years. But I don’t want to see you winding up unhappy over losing another of my sons, and I think you’d be on a collision course with disaster if you set your compass on Conan. He’s too hard-bitten for you, Sienna. Apart from which, I think it’s only fair to tell you that if you’re living in the hope of his returning any feeling you think you might have for him, there’s already one young woman of his acquaintance who considers herself first in the queue.’

She meant Petra Flax. Sienna didn’t even need to ask. Not that she wanted to seem as though she was that interested, because she wasn’t—was she? she assured herself. She’d made a big enough mistake in tying herself down the first time. She didn’t have any plans for making the same mistake again any time soon.

‘Good luck to her,’ she murmured casually, excusing herself to go and check on Daisy, and deciding as she wound her way back through the scented garden that it was only because she’d been unwell that she felt so low.

C
ONAN
woke up in bed, trembling and sweating. At first he thought he had caught Sienna’s virus, until he realised it was only the effects of his dream.

Bringing her here had revived too many memories, he thought angrily. Of how much he had wanted her and how much he had beaten himself up over it, which in turn had reminded him of Niall, and of the darker past.

Getting up, he shrugged into his robe. The scent of her still clung to the garment from her wearing it two days ago, and, chastising himself for the way his body responded to it, he fastened the belt and went quietly downstairs without bothering to turn on a light.

Her shyness had surprised him. So had his own scruples. She had been ready for him, and yet he’d denied her. Denied himself, he thought with an ironic twist to his mouth and that familiar ache whenever he thought about her stirring in his loins. But why?

A prickly feeling down his spine lifted the hairs at the nape of his neck.

Feeling that he wasn’t alone, he glanced round, his brows drawing together as he realised why. The dog had obviously padded down after him, and was standing in the doorway watching him.

A vision flashed through his brain. A set of bared white teeth. A huge snarling snout. And a black silhouette springing up out of the darkness. He felt the clamp of angry jaws,
and the warm, bruising power of its body, then the pain and the fear. Fear such as he had never known before or since.

Clammy-skinned, he shook off the unwanted emotion in the way he had shaken off his dreams. ‘You show up everywhere you’re not wanted, don’t you?’ he drawled over his shoulder, opening the fridge.

The hiss of the cap being twisted off the bottle of mineral water he’d taken out was a soothing normality before he sat down with it on the cushioned cane sofa that ran along one wall, welcoming the burn of the chilled water as it slid down his throat.

Bringing her here wasn’t doing much for his peace of mind or his self-respect, he thought self-deprecatingly. Because heaven only knew the feelings she generated in him weren’t feelings he would normally have been too proud of. But then what man
would
be proud of harbouring such animosity towards his brother’s widow, while wanting to do the most intimate things to her that his mind could dream up?

The dog padded over to him, unaware of his rising tension.

Or perhaps it was, he thought. Every cell in his body was shooting onto instinctive alert as the dog came much too close—close enough to lay a big hairy head on his bare knee.

Hesitantly he reached out, and with long tentative fingers ruffled the fur on the surprisingly gentle head. It felt warm, offering him a comfort he’d never expected to find.

‘We’re two of a kind, aren’t we?’ he murmured thickly, relaxing, experiencing for the first time a strange affinity with the animal. Didn’t he come from the same ball-park as this four-legged freak? A nobody from nowhere? At least that was what his stepfather had tried to convince him he was. Of uncertain pedigree. With half his lineage unknown. The only difference was that this poor creature had been rescued, while there had been no one and nothing to rescue him.

Memories rose like dark demons, clouding his eyes and slashing harsh lines across his face, but forcefully he shook them away.

It was the past that had made him what he was. Driven. Motivated. A success in the eyes of the world. Sometimes it took all that he was made of to remind himself of that.

Hearing a sound, he glanced up, his wits sharper even than Shadow’s.

Or perhaps the dog was just wallowing in stringing out this unexpected affection from him, he thought wryly, as its head swivelled round a second after he’d spotted Sienna standing in the doorway.

‘Am I interrupting something personal?’ she whispered, sounding surprised as well as amused. ‘Do the two of you want to be left alone?’

She was wearing a short cotton polka dot robe, fastened loosely over a matching nightdress which showed off the soft movement of her breasts as she came in.

‘What is it with the pair of you?’ The barest smile touched his lips, and a toss of his chin indicated both her and Shadow, who had left him for this new and more appreciated visitor, his long tail waving gently. ‘Can’t you leave a man to his own devices without needing to invade his privacy?’

‘I heard a sound. I looked in to see if Daisy was all right and noticed that Shadow was gone. I just came down to see where he was, but if that’s how you feel …’

‘Stay where you are.’

The deep, low command brought her head up, pulling her round as she was about to make her exit.

‘But I thought you said …’

‘Your sex doesn’t have the monopoly on meaning the opposite of what you say,’ he advised, with something tugging at the corners of his stupendous mouth.

‘On what men
believe
is the opposite of what we say?’ she was quick to amend firmly. ‘There’s a difference.’

‘As I’m well aware.’

Which he would be, she thought. Intuition alone assured her that, regardless of his opinion of her, Conan Ryder was a man who would respect women just as surely as he knew
how to pleasure them. The thought of what had transpired in his bed made her blood pulse quickly through her veins, so that it was a little breathlessly that she said, ‘Are you asking me to stay?’

‘Be my guest.’

She didn’t take up his invitation to join him on the cane sofa. Sharing that particular seat would heighten her already screaming responses and make her more vulnerable to his devastating masculinity, and she wasn’t sure she could handle the outcome of that, no matter how much she wanted it.

Instead she propped herself against the huge wooden table that stood in the middle of the room, her hands splayed out behind her.

‘Do you want something to drink?’ He gestured towards the fridge with the bottle he was drinking from.

Sienna shook her head, her hair a dark cap in the subdued light from the under-cupboard wall fittings which were all Conan had switched on. Her mouth felt dry, she realised, but it wasn’t water that her foolish body craved.

Conan’s mouth tugged carelessly on one side before his own dark head dropped back against the chintzy cushions of the sofa, the thick sweep of his lashes pressing down over the inscrutable gold of his eyes.

He looked hot and unusually tired, Sienna thought, glimpsing—surprisingly—a rare vulnerability behind that self-contained façade he presented to the world.

He was everything a woman could want, she realised, secretly studying him, her hungry eyes taking in the strong, lean bone structure that assured he would always stand out in a crowd, even without that added air of authority he exuded, or the head-turning lines of a physique that was primed to peak condition.

His reflexes were quick as a cobra’s which, with that daunting ruthlessness, must have long ago earmarked him as a leader. Yet sensing vulnerability, remembering what Avril had told her, Sienna felt her heart swell with an emotion she
didn’t want to question too closely, and murmured in a voice made husky from that emotion, ‘What’s wrong?’

Her trembling question parted his lashes, bringing his unsettling gaze with unwavering directness to hers.

‘Does something have to be wrong?’ His smile, as he sat upright, said there wasn’t. But there was, she thought, sensing it in every taut muscle of his powerful body. ‘Do you know me so well that you think you can detect every nuance in my mood and character?’

‘I don’t think any woman could ever know you that well, Conan.’

His mouth moved contemplatively. ‘You think I’m that deep?’

‘I know you are.’

‘And do you consider yourself qualified to plumb the depths?’

‘I wasn’t aware qualifications were required even if I thought of myself as a contender,’ she breathed, wondering where this conversation had come from. ‘Which I’m not.’

‘And now I’ve upset you.’

‘No, you haven’t,’ she said quickly, catching the sound of Shadow’s claws on the quarry tiles as he trotted out of the kitchen, almost certainly to the comfort of Daisy’s bed.

‘Haven’t I?’ With his dark head cocked, Conan’s gaze was far too shrewd, much, much too probing.

‘It takes a lot more than that to upset me, Conan.’

There was a crack in her voice, he noted, that he couldn’t quite account for. Contention, maybe, but if it wasn’t then something was certainly affecting her.

She was outspoken, which he liked. In fact he found it distinctly refreshing. Most women he had known who were contenders for his bed had usually started out by agreeing with everything he liked, did and said—not challenging him at every given opportunity like this little madam. And yet that husky quality to her voice was doing untold things to his libido.

She was leaning back, supporting herself against the table, the action causing her robe to part and pushing up her beautiful breasts so that their soft upper swell was clearly visible to him above the simple nightdress.

He wanted her, he realised at that moment, swallowing a mouthful of cold water to try and temper his urges, more than he had wanted any woman in his life. Wanted her even as she was looking at him as doe-eyed as an innocent, and with that sort of anguished groove between her velvety eyebrows.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he found himself asking her.

Sienna’s breath seemed to shiver through her lungs, lifting her far too tender breasts to that hot masculine gaze.

Her lips parted as she dragged in air, hesitating, unintentionally provocative as she sought the courage to tell him, say the things she wanted—needed—to say.

‘I only—’ She swallowed, put off by that invisible barrier she could feel as tangibly as a shield of iron between them—a barrier she had always sensed Conan had deliberately erected between himself and the rest of the world. Like a dark and vigilant observer, aloof and protected by his own impregnable wall of immunity. ‘Avril told me what happened when you got attacked by that dog. And about your father. I mean …’ her throat worked nervously again ‘… your stepfather. What went on.’

Anger, like a dart of green lightning, flashed momentarily in his eyes, before his lashes came down, sweeping it away, leaving only a grim emotion that stretched his tanned skin taut across his angular features.

‘What did she tell you? That he brutalised me mentally and physically?’ He unfolded his long length from the padded seat and came towards her, the plastic bottle still in his hand. ‘That he gave me the shelter of his home and the respectability of his name and made me pay for both of them through and through?’ His bitterness was so palpable it dragged across her skin like the serrated edge of a knife.

‘I’m sorry.’ It sounded trite and utterly ineffectual against the depth of emotion that welled up for him from some hidden place deep inside her—such a breath-catching emotion that it was a moment before she could continue. ‘She feels she let you down in not leaving him. That she put up with the way he treated you out of fear of losing your brother. She’s tortured by it, Conan.’

‘Is she?’ he exhaled through the grinding tension of his jaw. ‘And what else did she tell you? That he brutalised her too? That he made her pay for every occasion when she took my side against his? A respected barrister. A man at the cutting edge of his profession. A so-called “pillar of society.”‘ Derision coloured his tone, his mouth contorting in distaste. ‘He made her pay and never stopped making her pay until I was old enough to take matters into my own hands and knocked him flat.’

Sienna could feel the colour draining out of her cheeks, unable to imagine a man like Conan ever being driven into losing his cool like that.

‘I see that she didn’t,’ he said grimly, assessing the shock and disbelief on her small blanched face. ‘She wouldn’t leave him, so in the end I had to. If I hadn’t, I think I might have killed him.’ He was so close now that she could feel the anger emanating from him as he put the bottle down on the table beside her. ‘Life was intolerable for us all until I did. My mother was suffering and being made to pay because of me, and Niall was just caught in the middle.’ He remembered his brother’s tears and his frightened trembling, his sobbed and heartfelt promises—always sincerely meant after he had been too weak to admit to some wrongdoing—that he would never get him into trouble again. ‘After I’d left my stepfather got what he wanted. His wife and his own son to himself, and from what I gather peace reigned from then on in the household. It seemed I was the source of all my stepfather’s problems. The font from which all his jealousy sprang.’

The horror of all he had said sent a chill through Sienna,
causing her to shudder physically. Straightening up, she automatically put her hand out to him, her slender, pink-tipped fingers shaping the taut outline of one hard masculine cheek.

‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’ Her feeling for him almost choked her, her words erupting from her on the tide of emotion that was flooding every fibre of her being.

His mouth lifted at one corner: a half smile—superficial, ironic, self-mocking.

‘Is that why you were looking at me the way you were looking at me just now? Out of pity?’ he challenged thickly. It struck him then that this was the first and only time he had ever bared his soul to anyone. It left him feeling uncomfortably exposed and vulnerable.

‘I think pity would be wasted on you, Conan,’ she said with unerring frankness. ‘As well as being an insult,’ she added tremulously, as she brought both hands into play to caress the soft towelling sheathing his broad shoulders, marvelling at how all that strength and latent power beneath her fingers could contain such a well of hidden anguish.

His smile this time was warm and unmistakably sensual, and Sienna’s heart leaped as he caught her hand, turning it over to press his lips to the sensitive area of her wrist, allowing his teeth to graze gently along the inside of her arm. ‘Clever answer,’ he murmured silkily.

Riveted by his action, by his scent and his warmth and the breath-catching reality of his closeness, with a sensuous little shudder, she uttered, ‘I’m not trying to be clever, Conan.’