Fortune in the Stars (9 page)

There was disdain in the cold eyes that flickered over her
dejected figure.

'If it's any consolation, I wouldn't have allowed you to
leave even had the weather been good.'

'You wouldn't…you—' She floundered,
unable to believe her ears. 'My God, just who do you think you are?'

'A man who has a sister he loves and about whom he happens
to be extremely worried,' he replied, and it was the hint of an
underlying tone of utter desperation in those otherwise chillingly
expressionless words that nudged aside Penny's anger and frustration to
leave her with nothing but the wretchedness of an indescribable guilt.

'Dominic, I know you love her,' she whispered, that guilt
chastening her words. 'And knowing her fixation about turning up when
she says she will, I'd have been worried too had I not been aware that
there was something out of the ordinary happening in her life right
now. She said practically nothing, yet the way she did speak told me at
once that this man was different— no, hear me out…
Please,' she pleaded as he gave an angry exclamation. 'The few men Lexy
doesn't cold-shoulder as being after her money she treats in a most
cavalier fashion. She tells her friends
everything
about them…things the men concerned would probably want to
curl up and die if they ever got to know—'

'I'm not in the least interested in how my sister chooses
to discuss men with her friends,' Dominic cut in dismissively, his eyes
flashing anger.

'For heaven's sake, can't you understand what I'm saying?'
exclaimed Penny. 'I honestly suspect this man has achieved the
impossible—that he's swept Lexy off her feet! And all I can
say is good luck to them!'

'And she's suddenly so secretive that she won't even tell
you his name?' he drawled contemptuously.

'Yes,' muttered Penny, her eyes avoiding his.

'I've never heard such a load of romantic drivel in my
entire life,' he spat, striding towards her. 'I know my sister well
enough to know that, whatever her feelings for him, no man could sweep
her off her feet, as you put it, to the extent of rendering her
incapable of picking up a phone and explaining her absence.' He reached
out, taking her by the shoulders and hauling her swiftly to her feet.
'I'm giving you till the morning, Penny,' he snarled, his eyes black
with rage. 'And if my London contacts haven't come up with what I need,
I'm getting it out of you!'

'How—with the thumbscrews you carry around in
case of just such an emergency?' she yelled, struggling like one
possessed.

'Why should I inflict pain on you when I can get what I
want out of you by other means?' he said softly, sinking the fingers of
one hand into her hair and jerking back her head. 'And with such ease?'
he taunted, crushing her body to his as he kissed her with a slow
sensuality that suspended her ability to reason for just long enough
for that mind-sapping kiss to have ended by the time the idea of
putting up a struggle was beginning to occur to her.

There was a mocking half-smile on his mouth as he drew
away from her which deepened as his eyes moved slowly from hers to the
erect outline of her nipples against the soft material of her blouse
and then back to hers.

'And now for lunch,' he murmured, releasing her, then
turning and leaving the room.

Penny's eyes sank to where his had so briefly lingered, a
deep wash of scarlet painting her cheeks. Her body had become an enemy
over which she had no control. And as for her loyalty to Lexy, which
had landed her in this morass of humiliation, surely there had to be
some limit as to how far she was expected to carry it?

The
rest of that day and the night that followed were hours spent in heart,
soul and mind searching. And her searching led her back to her earliest
years and to the inevitability of the solitude that came with being an
only child in a family constantly on the move because of her father's
career. It had been the instinctive recognition of their kindred inner
solitude that had drawn together herself, Lexy, Sarah and Erica,
bonding four widely differing personalities into an oddly undemanding,
yet unquestioningly supportive friendship that doggedly survived
despite years of neglect and separation. Now there was only Lexy and
Sarah left with the ability to pierce her solitude within the unspoken
bounds of their friendship.

And now Dominic was barging uninvited through her shell,
disregarding all those unspoken rules constructed to preserve it
intact, and ultimately forcing her to rethink values which had been
formed over a lifetime.

Throughout those hours she found her thoughts veering off
at the wildest of tangents till at one point she could take it no more
and had found herself, at two in the morning, packed and dressed and
ready to risk trying to drive to Palma, before reason had belatedly
returned to her.

With limbs leaden with weariness and eyes hollowed and
dark-ringed, she had risen from her bed shortly after dawn had
staggered drunkenly across sullen skies. Cold and dejected and with a
disruptively new set of values struggling to form within her, she lay
soaking in a hot bath and agonised over her now-incredible past
smugness.

How easily she had looked down on as weak those women who
had become trapped in the snare of the same violent physical attraction
in which she now found herself. And even when the man now ensnaring her
had been discussed those years ago, how easily she had pooh-poohed the
very idea of any man possessing an animal magnetism that could have
such an effect. And what about Rupert and Linda? Had it been a
manifestation of that same overwhelming force she was now experiencing
that had negated Rupert's claims of love and Linda's of friendship?

It was only when she was dressed and sitting huddled on
her bed, wrestling with the problem of whether her loyalty to Lexy
should take precedence over her compassion for Dominic's obvious
anxiety, that it occurred to her that her feelings towards Rupert had
become reduced to no more than what constituted a vague twinge of
compassion.

Hell, she hadn't even been in love with Rupert! she told
herself exasperatedly, leaping down from the bed. She could have saved
herself this whole damned trip, she remonstrated illogically with
herself as she dawdled listlessly towards the kitchen in search of the
strongest coffee she could possibly brew.

The sight greeting her as she walked through the open door
was that of Dominic slumped on a chair at the scrubbed table, his head
cushioned against the arms sprawled out across its surface, and sound
asleep.

On bare feet now unpleasantly aware of the coldness of the
marble beneath them, she crept towards him. The pressure of the arm
against which his cheek lay had softened the sharply defined fullness
of his mouth almost to a pout.

Lexy's big, bad, beautiful brother, she chanted silently
to herself while the molten heat of a burgeoning longing rippled
through her veins. Big and beautiful he most certainly was, she
accepted, just as she accepted with an almost fatalistic resignation
the feelings now bombarding her…the most physically
beautiful man she had ever seen. But bad too, she forced herself to
accept as the heavy dark sweep of his lashes seemed to grow
irresistibly lusher and richer beneath her mesmerised gaze. And not
merely the badness to be chuckled over by an adoring sister, but a
calculating ruthlessness that made the animal magnetism of which he was
so utterly aware a dangerous weapon he would use, without so much as a
thought, as a means to his ends.

She gave an involuntary shiver as she remembered the
latent violence beneath the cool deliberation with which he had
demonstrated his power over her and delivered his threat. Yet even as
she was remembering she was consciously resisting the temptation to
reach out and smooth back the dark hair tumbling across his forehead.

She turned away with a small exclamation of self-disgust,
then tried to calm herself with the reminder that she was half dead on
her feet and in desperate need of the boost of caffeine strong coffee
would supply.

She reached across his prone form for the coffee-jug
beside him, her gaze skimming from the stubbled darkness of his chin
towards his eyes at the precise moment they suddenly opened, wide and
watchful.

'I was just about to make some coffee,' she said, pleased,
though more than a little started, to hear how completely ordinary her
tone had sounded.

'Good… I could do with one,' he muttered, his
words still slurred with sleep.

'The rain seems to have eased a little,' she said, the
stark strain now in her tone reflected in the jerkiness of her
movements as she filled and switched on the kettle and then rinsed the
jug.

'Yes…but the weather doesn't alter the fact
that you're trapped here, does it, Penny?' he observed
expressionlessly, tilting back in his chair to watch her every move
over his shoulder.

Determined not to respond to his blatant goading, she
prepared the coffee in silence.

'Does it, Penny?' he repeated as she brought fresh cups to
the table.

As she turned to get the coffee his hand reached out, his
fingers encircling her wrist in a pressureless band.

'If you're trying to frighten me, you're wasting your
time,' she told him quietly, making no attempt to free herself.

'Am I?' he murmured, the softness of his words contrasting
sharply with the strength with which he suddenly pulled her down on to
his knee. 'I'm not very often wrong about people, Penny,' he continued,
the silkiness of menace now in his tone. 'But let's hope I am about
you, because if I'm not I'd be very frightened if I were in your shoes.'

'I fail to see any logic in your threats,' Penny stated,
the unnatural calmness in her words masking the thudding of a heart
that was like a caged violence against her chest. 'You've stooped low
enough to threaten me sexually, yet the unfortunate fact of my physical
response to you—and which you've taken such gentlemanly
delight in pointing out to me—tends to make any such threat a
little empty, wouldn't you say?'

'Bravo, Penny, bravo!' Dominic drawled softly, his
incipient beard sharp against her skin as he nuzzled the nape of her
neck before rising abruptly to his feet and depositing her back on
hers. 'But you're a little behind the times.'

'Oh—in what way?' she snapped, busying herself
by pouring the coffee in an attempt to regain a measure of equilibrium
and to mask how thoroughly unsettled she was.

'Thank you,' he muttered, accepting a cup, his eyes coldly
watchful as he towered over her. 'I'm expecting a call from a friend in
London. He's checking on something he heard, but there was something in
his tone that got my sixth sense working overtime…something
over and above the fact that he was uncharacteristically loath to
discuss what it was he had heard, and felt obliged to check before
passing it on to me.'

Penny took her coffee to the table and sat down, curving
her hands around the cup for warmth. She had a pretty good idea what
the rumour was this friend had heard, and understood only too well his
reluctance to tell Dominic exactly with whom it was Lexy was involved.

'In fact, he was every bit as loath to discuss the subject
with me, Penelope dear, as you are… Odd, isn't it?' he
murmured with venomous sweetness.

'Well, I dare say your friend will ring back with whatever
it is you want,' she said with forced brightness, inwardly dreading the
moment. 'Then all your worries will be over.'

'What a comfort you are to have around,' he muttered
sarcastically, flinging his tall frame down on the chair beside hers.

Penny's eyes flickered towards his darkly shadowed face
and immediately away as the skin at the back of her neck began tingling
with the memory of the brief roughness of its touch.

'Mind you, if my worries were all over, I could settle
down to finding out whether or not you're the one I'll finally succumb
to,' he drawled softly. 'Mind you, that would only create another set
of worries to plague me, were I to—wouldn't you say, Penny?'

Penny flashed him the most withering look that her
feelings of total exhaustion allowed her to summon up. And despite her
exhaustion, she was alert enough to detect a strange element of
half-heartedness in his present baiting of her—as though his
mind were on other matters.

'I wouldn't worry too much, if I were you,' she replied.
'Habits of a lifetime aren't that easily broken.'

'God, what a relief!' he exclaimed dourly. 'I'd always
heard that love was one of those unpleasant occurrences that slunk up
and took unsuspecting folks unawares… Are you actually
telling me I'll have some choice in the matter when the time comes?'

'Dominic, I'm really not in the mood for this,' she
replied wearily; she had no intention of being the butt of his sarcasm
while he sought distraction from his groundless worries.

'But you know how I enjoy a lively discussion,' he
protested with patently false innocence. 'No wonder my star-struck
little sister made no attempt to bring us together. She must have
realised how badly suited we'd be. I thrive on argument, but according
to Lexy all Scorpios do—'

'You're
not
a Scorpio—Lexy
is. You're a Libran, for heaven's sake,' snapped Penny, weariness
sapping her of any sense of caution. 'And the reason she keeps any
woman she cares about as far from your clutches as possible is because
she's fully aware of your appalling record with women—as are
the couple of friends unfortunate enough to have slipped through her
protective net and fallen foul of your charms!'

'A Libran,' he murmured, as though hearing the word for
the first time—an impossibility with Lexy as a sister. 'An
appalling abuser of women… Well, well. I really must pay more attention to Lexy's astrological
incantations in future. Tell me, Penny, are you by any chance a Libran
too—an appalling abuser of men?'