Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

“I didn’t misjudge you, Maria.”

Luke spoke contemptuously.

“There was no chance of my doing so, the way you flaunted your relationship with Jones. But I was curious enough to consent when he brought your name up when we started looking for a new program manager.”

“What a shock for you when I accepted the position,” Maria snapped.

Luke laughed. “But I wanted it to happen. Haven’t you realized that I have plans for you?”

JAYNE BAULING was born in England and grew up in South Africa. She always wrote but was too shy to show anyone until the publication of some poems in her teens gave her the confidence to attempt the romances she wanted to concentrate on, the first published being written while she was attending business college. Her home is just outside Johannesburg, a town house ruled by a seal point called Ranee. Travel is a major passion; at home it’s family, friends, music, swimming, reading and patio gardening.

Ransacked Heart
Jayne Bauling

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘CAN you believe it, Maria? The two of us together again!’

Maria McFadden turned sparkling eyes on the fair man who called himself Florian Jones.

‘You might not be sounding quite so enthusiastic this time next week,’ she cautioned him laughingly.

‘I won’t let you rain on my parade,’ he retorted. ‘We were always good together.’

The tiny inner frisson of unease that silenced her laughter was unexpected, and she hesitated before responding, examining the message of her senses and dismissing it. Somehow Florian’s words must have summoned the memory of that first time they had worked together, long years ago, and that sensation of a shadow falling on her had come from the past.

Her stilted smile reappeared, placing a dent at one corner of her mouth, but she warted a few seconds longer, making sure that the ghost had retreated again. This was Taiwan. Her present and her foreseeable future lay here, and they looked good.

Taipei itself looked beautiful from the high balcony on which she and Florian stood, by night a glittering bowl from which the hum and roar of its mind-numbing traffic rose to compete with the sounds of the party going on in the large room behind them.

‘But this time I’ll be your boss. The job may go under different titles on different stations around the world, but essentially that’s what I’ll be from Monday on. even if you do earn more than me.’ No longer haunted, Maria offered the eventual reminder mischievously, and Florian grinned.

‘In a sense,’ he allowed carelessly.

‘Oh, you’re the star,’ she conceded mockingly, currently in a mood to indulge his ego. ‘But not tonight, my friend.’

‘No, it’s your night,’ Florian agreed generously.

‘And as the party is for me, let’s get back to it,’ she suggested happily. ‘It was sweet of Giles to think of it.’

‘The real boss, when you remember that commercial radio is about money,’ he emphasised. ‘And sweetness doesn’t have much to do with it, my love. You’re an important lady, now that we’re getting so competitive. Someone told me that even the ultimate big boss himself was planning to look in this evening—probably to inspect your body and soul, now that he owns them.’

‘You’re exaggerating as usual. I never committed those when I signed my contract.’

‘Nevertheless, we’re talking ownership here,’ Florian insisted as they turned towards the open door. ‘He owns us, the studios from which we broadcast and the building they’re in, although by now he must have recovered whatever his original investment was several times over. You have to hand it to the man. He’s only thirty-four, and he’s done the same thing all over the Far East, taking over struggling and usually amateur or pirate radio stations like this one once was, and putting in people like me who pull commercial sponsorship because we draw listeners. His other interests are all sound-orientated too; he owns recording studios all over the region, for instance—that sort of thing, with the emphasis on sound as a commodity. Big bucks, darling. I guess we could call him a sound entrepreneur.’

‘That’s what radio is all about—sound.’

Maria paused in the doorway, surveying her new colleagues and their partners, a handful of them local people but mainly men and women from all over the English-speaking world, because radio people had a gypsy tendency to move on every few years. You met up again every so often, as she and Florian had done now. The Taipei job was only unusual in that it would be a new experience to work in a country where English was not the official language, but the presence of a large population of Westerners, the bulk of them American, ensured high listenership figures even with the competition provided by the existence of other English-language stations.

Maria had loved radio with a passion from early childhood, her faith in its power to survive unimpaired through all the years when television threatened to make it obsolete, and justified now that it was enjoying an upsurge in popularity in so many countries, thriving new stations almost daily news at present.

‘He’s here,’ Florian observed from just behind her.

A question died unspoken as she saw him. Her heart stopped, and when it beat again the shadow had returned, if shadows had weight, because this one oppressed her, but only momentarily. Then she was able to take the mental step that brought her out into the light again.

Her eyes blazed.

Once he had possessed the power to disturb her, but no longer. Now there was only hatred left.

The extent of her fury disconcerted her fleetingly, fully alive and as fulminatingly intense as ever, despite all the years that had gone by since she had last felt like this.

‘That’s Luke Scott, Florian!’ she said sharply.

‘Sure, didn’t Giles ever mention him?’ Florian was surprised.

Maria’s tenderly passionate mouth tightened. Did Florian think she would be here if the name had occurred in the almost six months of correspondence between her and Giles? But perhaps he did. Florian was renowned for many things, but sensitivity wasn’t among them.

‘No, and neither did you,’ she said tautly, her party mood a distant memory. ‘Florian, don’t you remember? That—that man had me fired from that very first job, the one you organised for me back in South Africa when I left school!’

‘Hell, I haven’t thought about that station in years.’ Florian laughed and shrugged. ‘There are always so many firings in radio that it hardly seems a big deal any more.’

‘It was a big deal to me at the time,’ Maria snapped, her tolerance of his perpetual self-absorption vanished along with her brilliant mood.

‘Oh, come on!’ he began to protest easily.

‘Don’t you remember the way he did it?’ Maria’s eyes were pure topaz. ‘It was after that weekend gig in Zimbabwe—but I seem to remember that you took two weeks’ leave immediately after that, so perhaps you never knew. It wasn’t the usual rationalisation procedure, believe me! I arrived at work on the Monday and was handed a cheque and my personal belongings at the desk in the foyer and was then escorted out by Security. It took me a week to get myself together again, and by the time you got back from leave I’d left Johannesburg because there weren’t any jobs for me there. The subject never came up when our paths crossed in Sydney three years ago, did it? God, Florian! And my father——’

‘Well, as you say, a rationalisation process was under way. There were loads of retrenchments,’ Florian reminded her indifferently as she broke off, choking on complex, raging emotion. ‘If you remember, Luke Scott was with us for six months as a favour to the station’s director-general, who was a friend of his, because our listenership figures were dropping and we were losing advertising. He had carte blanche as long as he revived our fortunes—luckily he knew I was the station’s biggest asset. You were just a junior, a sort of Girl Friday with no qualifications, hoping to learn the ropes.’

‘I needed that job. It was paying for my Communi-cations course.’

‘Does it matter now? You made it in radio without it,’ Florian pointed out carelessly.

Maria shook her head angrily, aware of the futility of trying to explain the dilemma she had faced all those years ago to a man whose self-centredness precluded his ever having had to make a choice between his own interests and someone else’s.

Her eyes had remained on the tall, casually dressed man at the other side of the room, noting that little had changed in six years. He still held himself with the easy confidence she remembered, his dark head carried at an unconsciously arrogant angle, and he still had that polish to him, the patina of success.

He had been talking to a tall girl with white-blonde hair, but suddenly he turned his head slightly and looked straight at Maria, and every muscle in her body clenched in furious, shocked resistance. Reason said he couldn’t possibly have any recollection of a nine-teen-year-old nobody he had once caused to be dismissed from her first job, but the knowledge of her bones was stronger.

Luke Scott remembered her.

‘I thought he came to us from Hong Kong that time? But he’s English originally, isn’t he?’ she prompted Florian, as if she could alter the truth by uncovering an error.

‘Hong Kong is where he’s based. I told you, he has interests all over this part of the world. We don’t usually get this much hands-on attention from him, but I suspect that Cavell Fielding has something to do with his presence as he’s lending us her talents for the launch of our new look—or sound, I should say. The blonde. She’s his Hong Kong operation’s media liaison chief. Well, that’s her official, public position. Unoffi-cially and privately——’

‘Ah, Maria!’ Giles Estwick, the Englishman who handled the station’s financial affairs and commercial deals, had appeared at her side. ‘I was going to give the two of you a few more minutes out there, but if you’ve exhausted old times you can come and meet Luke Scott.’

‘I must find Nicky,’ said Florian, and drifted away.

A dangerous sparkle of anticipation in her eyes, Maria drew her shoulders back and walked across the room with her host at her side. There were women present who were more beautiful than she was, notably the blonde beside Luke Scott and Nicky Kai, the world-famous Taiwanese ex-model, but the languid sway of Maria’s hips above long slim legs drew attention, as did her unusual colouring, an exotic combination of olive-toned skin, streaky brown and blonde hair and eyes that could be anything from copper to amber, depending on her mood.

She was aware of Luke Scott watching her, but heedless of anyone else. Dark grey eyes, Celtic eyes, were ironic, as was his smile as Giles made the intro-ductions, including Cavell Fielding, and Maria returned it with her own piquantly imperfect smile.

‘But we’ve met before, haven’t we, Mr Scott?’

She was driven by a need to get in first, her mood openly aggressive.

‘Of course.’ He was urbane, and very slightly taunting. ‘Although I don’t recall that we ever actually spoke to each other.’

Maria laughed, a lovely liquid sound, but it required an effort of will to lift her hand and place it in his outstretched one, and resentment surged as his fingers closed round it briefly and were removed.

Shaking hands with the enemy. The distaste she experienced was so intense that she felt dizzy for several seconds.

‘I was too much in awe of you to utter in those days,’ she confessed, lightly dismissive and matching the subtle mockery of his tone.

It was a palatable version of the truth, and one she had spent years working at believing. Six years ago she had been tongue-tied in his presence, and terrified by the strength of her reaction to him, her fear manifesting itself physically, stopping the breath in her throat, tensing her muscles and making her nerves leap every time he moved or spoke to anyone, and the rare occasions on which his glance had strayed idly in her direction, it had actually hurt her. It had been as if he came from another, alien world, beyond her experience or comprehension, a glamorous, glittering man who made her think of diamonds, so hard and sharp were the edges of his personality.

‘This was in South Africa about—what?—six years ago,’ he told Giles and Cavell. ‘Your first job, wasn’t it, Maria?’

‘It didn’t last long,’ she said drily. ‘Yes, Florian Jones had organised it for me.’

‘And since then the two of you have got together in Australia once, and now again in Taiwan, of course.’

The contempt, or criticism, was probably hidden from the others, but Maria was acutely aware of it, and incensed.

‘I got him the Sydney job,’ she vouchsafed with delicate emphasis.

‘And since Sydney she’s been in Wellington, gaining experience as a programme manager.’ Giles was under-standably intent on selling her appointment to their real boss.

‘So Taipei isn’t even a promotion.’ Luke sketched a smile, his tone still laden with mockery.

‘Just a change,’ Maria asserted blithely, hating him—hating him.

‘And a challenge? Cavell is co-ordinating our media campaign, and she’ll want to discuss it with you—won’t you?’ The quick smile he directed at Cavell was utterly different from the one Maria had just received. ‘But right now, if you don’t mind, Giles, I think Cavell should meet Penny Seu Chen so that they can sort out Maria’s schedule for the next few days, as I doubt if Maria has had time to familiarise herself with it yet. Penny is here, isn’t she?’

It was so skilfully effected that Giles and Cavell were metres away before Maria realised what was happening. She looked at Luke and he looked back at her, a stretched quality to the silence between them.

Dear God, why should she still find him so disturbing after all he had done to her?

The deep grey eyes were shadowed, but she didn’t miss the glitter in their depths as they skimmed her vivid party make-up and party clothes, brief ivory skirt revealing the length of her legs, the matching top moulded to proud breasts, the emerald of the silky, fringed shawl tied tightly about her waist a bright splash of colour between the two.

‘And what are you planning to do about Nicky Kai?’ he asked her very softly.

‘I gave up worrying about Florian’s women years ago,’ she responded automatically, her cynicism where Florian’s personal affairs were concerned so complete it had almost become tolerance. ‘Not that I was aware that there was a problem there. Mr Scott——’

‘Then maybe you should start again,’ he cut her short. ‘Nicky honed her fighting skills in the toughest business in the world, modelling in Paris and New York, and she’s not ready to move on yet.’

It distracted Maria from the attack she had intended to launch.

‘I’m not here to steal Florian from Nicky.’ It was scathing.

He shrugged indifferently, but contempt lurked in his eyes.

‘Then perhaps you don’t mind sharing, the way you once shared him with the little South African girl who was having such a miserable pregnancy when I was there trying to breathe some life into that Johannesburg radio station six years ago.’

Stunned, Maria drew a sharp little breath. Then her face hardened.

‘Is that why I lost my job?’

‘You lost your job because the station was losing money and you were superfluous.’ It was brutal, devoid of apology. ‘There was no discipline, and too many niches had been conveniently created for too many friends, lovers and other attachments. You were a financial drain.’

She laughed sceptically. ‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me that the manner in which I was dismissed was standard procedure?’

‘Desperate situations require desperate remedies. But why is it still important? Parting you from Jones that time doesn’t seem to have curtailed your ongoing little adventure—not that I thought it would.’

‘That job was the adventure,’ she remembered, but he had deprived her of so much more than just adventure.

‘Somehow I suspect that emotion is clouding your memory of that period,’ Luke returned incisively. ‘Jones was very much part of the adventure. Wherever he was, there you would be, hanging around even when you weren’t on duty——’

‘I was learning about radio!’ Maria cut in furiously.

‘You even tagged along to that concert in Harare when he was one of the compères,’ Luke recalled.

Maria’s eyes glowed amber, and hostility held her rigid outwardly. Inside, she was shaking with rage.

‘And that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? The way I was dismissed? It had nothing to do with whether I was redundant or not. You’d passed judgement on my morals and decided to punish me for something you could only have had the vaguest idea about. I’d just like to know from what sort of position you assumed the right to do so, Mr Scott. Have you led such a pure life yourself?’ Smouldering now, her eyes strayed significantly in Cavell Fielding’s direction.

Disgust made his lip curl.

‘Probably not so pure, but at least I’ve stayed clear of triangles,’ he retorted flatly.

‘Lucky you!’ she mocked.

‘Luck hasn’t come into it,’ he contradicted her arrogantly. ‘Just good judgement.’

Her laughter was taunting. ‘I didn’t see much evidence of it when you were dealing with me!’

‘No, I didn’t misjudge you, Maria. There was no chance of my doing so, the way you were flaunting your relationship with Jones—and you haven’t learned a thing since then,’ Luke added contemptuously. ‘You got together again in Sydney a few years ago, I’m told, and here you are a third time. I didn’t think you’d be that stupid, but I was curious enough to consent when Jones brought your name up with Giles Estwick when we started thinking about looking for a new programme manager six months ago.’

‘What a shock for you when I accepted the position,’ Maria snapped. ‘What are you going to do now? The contract I signed legally binds the station as much as it does me. I suppose you weren’t around and you realised too late what had happened.’

He laughed. ‘But I wanted it to happen. I have plans for you, Miss Maria McFadden. Haven’t you realised yet?’

She didn’t want to understand him, but heated recognition rippled through her as she stared at his mouth, as unwillingly fascinated by its sensual curve as she had been six years ago, when all her breathlessly adored heroes had suddenly become prosaic and petty with the advent of the man from Hong Kong.

‘What do you want?’ It wasn’t the question she had meant to ask.

Instead of answering it, he gave her an ironically considering look. ‘You’ve got a lot more to say for yourself these days, haven’t you?’

She flung him a savage little smile. ‘Does remembering how awed I was give you a thrill? Was it an affirmation of your power? I was nineteen—of course I was in awe of you. I’d never met anyone like you, and the fact that there was a rumour that you were newly in mourning for your father just added to the mystique, because I was young enough to find tragedy romantic.’

For a time she had even innocently believed that Luke’s father’s recent death had been responsible for the anger she had sensed in him, until she gradually grew aware that it was something personal, directed at her, his dealings with most of the station’s personnel characterised by charm, his impatience with any inadequacies purely professional.

‘Hardly in mourning,’ Luke asserted distastefully, his features hard with something akin to rejection. ‘The man had died and I was getting on with my life.’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve realised since that you weren’t like the rest of us ordinary human beings who are unfortunate enough to be troubled by feelings like grief and guilt.’ It was bitterly resentful, her hatred burning high as she remembered the months running into years that it had taken for her to convince herself that the guilt she had felt after her own father’s death was a self-destructive trap and just one more wrong done to her by Luke Scott. ‘But I was an innocent in those days. There you were, come to save our pathetic little radio station, and just about the first thing you did was scoop that concert in Harare, and at the height of the cultural boycott, because you’d emphasised our independent nature. We were actually presenting it in conjunction with that soft-drinks company, our three best DJs the compères.’

‘And you came along for the ride?’

‘Since Florian could hardly have taken his wife with him when she was so sick all the time.’

‘I understand that he’s still married to her?’

A shadow crossed Maria’s face. ‘Yes.’

Luke’s mouth curved derisively. ‘It didn’t bother you six years ago, so why should it now? Nicky Kai doesn’t mind.’

She flung up her head, rage blazing in her eyes. ‘You seriously believe it, don’t you? That I was having an affair with Florian? And that I want to get together with him again now?’

‘Not forgetting your reunion in Sydney.’ He shrugged expressively. ‘Why not, if the two of you are so good together? You were congratulating yourselves on the fact earlier, I know.’

It took her a moment or two to realise what he was referring to and remember Florian’s words out on the balcony.

‘Eavesdropping!’ she accused him caustically.

There was something cruel about his smile now. ‘Don’t worry—any more intimate reminiscences escaped me, as I discovered a strong disinclination to hear the sordid details of your relationship.’

‘Then why raise the subject now?’ Maria countered. ‘You can’t have any real scruples about our supposed affair or we wouldn’t be working for you, so I can only assume that you’re making this personal attack for the sheer hell of it, because you once got a kick out of disapproving of me—despising me—and you’re trying to recapture the thrill of it all.’

The grey eyes glittered. ‘You and Florian Jones are employed because you’re both good at what you do——’

‘Thank you,’ she inserted tartly. ‘As it happens, that’s what Flo was referring to when you overheard us, Mr Scott—our professional relationship. So if you don’t mind, let’s keep this conversation equally professional, please.’

‘When what’s between us is so personal?’

The tone was silkily challenging, and Maria’s heart jumped in startled recognition before instinctive denial asserted itself.

‘There’s nothing personal between us.’

‘You owe me, Maria,’ Luke added intently.

‘I owe you nothing!’ she retorted tempestuously. ‘If anything, the reverse is true. You owe me, Mr Scott, except that nothing can ever compensate for what you stole from me six years ago.’

‘I didn’t steal anything from you, and what you lost, you had no right to in the first place.’ He was remorse-less, but his voice had dropped to a silken taunt as he went on, ‘But tell me what you think it is I owe you, Maria. I’m interested to hear.’

‘You’ve got nothing I want.’ Maria was scornful.

His smile was blistering. ‘You want.’

‘Other than this job,’ she added challengingly, some perverse part of her almost wishing he would attempt to deprive her of it so that she would have something real, present and immediate to fight him for.

‘Which you have. This time I’m not letting you off so lightly—which is what I was actually doing when I had you dismissed from that other one,’ he stated outrageously.

‘Hardly!’

‘I could have destroyed you six years ago,’ he continued.

‘And didn’t you just do your best?’ Bitterness rose. ‘My job—’

‘I’m not talking about your dismissal or even the fact that it parted you from Jones, and I think you know it.’ The claim was confident. ‘I’m talking about the way things were between us. As I say, I could have destroyed you, or so I thought at the time, but you’ve turned out to be a lot tougher than I had imagined…not vulnerable or confused at all. This time I don’t have to restrain myself; I don’t have to be merciful. I know what you are and that you can cope.’

‘With what? Being destroyed by you?’ she quipped wildly.

‘Weren’t you listening? I’ve realised that you neither required nor merited consideration. Nor do you now, and this time you won’t get it.’ Luke paused deliber-ately, his eyes holding hers. ‘You’re not stupid and you’re not innocent, Maria. You knew what it was all about six years ago—what was happening.’

It was as if she was bound by silken cords, soft yet irresistibly strong. Maria couldn’t move her head or even lower her eyes, and time had slipped. She was nineteen and choked by the immensity of her reaction to this man, unable to breathe or stir, and panicked by the conviction that Luke was seeing into her secret self, invading, bent on vandalising and stealing. Every time he looked her way, that frightening compulsion went sweeping through her, the urge to let him look, let him absorb her until nothing was left and she no longer existed as a separate, individual entity. She was a confident, outgoing girl who usually interacted quite happily with people of either sex and any age, but she was reduced to silence in Luke Scott’s presence, so deeply did he disturb her.

A trick of time. She was twenty-five, her hormones under control, her identity secure and her spirit her own, safe from thieves. She showed Luke her smile.

‘Weren’t you listening to me earlier? Yes, I know what was happening. You were a romantic figure, come to restore our fortunes. The awe I felt was probably the first phase of hero-worship—the sort of thing some people call a crush. Oh, it was uncomfortable.’ She gestured mockingly. ‘And confusing, since I never reached the stage of identifying my affliction. Maybe I do owe you something after all. If you hadn’t made me hate you, it might have gone on for months.’

‘Ah, hatred.’ Luke was smoothly reflective. ‘Much more comfortable.’

‘And it lasts.’ Maria looked straight at him with hard eyes. ‘I still hate you, Mr Scott.’

‘Then call me Luke, as there’s a certain intimacy to hatred. It’s a very personal thing,’ he taunted. ‘And there you were, insisting that there’s nothing personal between us.’

‘You must have hated me too!’ she flared, caught, and angry enough to show her resentment, past and present. ‘All right, your claim that I was superfluous is probably valid, so why wasn’t I made redundant in the usual way? Let go, as the euphemism has it? There’d have been no comebacks for the station. I didn’t belong to a union, I didn’t know anything about my rights then, and I know now that I didn’t have any in that particular case…But you actively made my dismissal a punishment.’

‘You must have thought you merited punishment, for the idea to have occurred to you at all.’

‘The way I was dismissed ensured that it occurred to me,’ Maria asserted tightly. ‘Except that I had no idea what I was being punished for.’

‘Because you felt no guilt about what you were doing?’ Luke probed inimically.

‘My supposed affair with Florian?’ Maria just man-aged to keep her voice low. ‘Even if you hadn’t been way out there, you had no right to make something from my personal life the grounds for dismissal.’

‘The method of your dismissal,’ he corrected her. ‘You were due to lose that job anyway.’

‘You admit it, then? That it was personal?’

‘We’ve just been agreeing that what’s between us is personal, haven’t we?’

‘Only in the most negative sense, and only then, not now.’ Maria was defiant.

Luke laughed with genuine amusement, but something hard and unyielding still lay behind the surface gleam in his eyes.

‘More than ever now. As I say, you owe me something, and if you’re determined to go on pretending you don’t know that, I’ll be delighted to tell you what it is some time soon, but not right now. We’re attracting too much attention. In fact——’his upper lip curled

fastidiously as he paused thoughtfully ‘—in fact, if we didn’t have our professional connection to serve as camouflage, I don’t think I’d care to be seen with you. It’s just a pity we don’t live in the era when a man could set his mistress up somewhere and know she’d be there waiting for him whenever he felt the urge to see her, but was never, ever seen with her in public.’

Immobile, barely breathing, Maria didn’t speak for several seconds. Then she said tightly, ‘I’m not your mistress.’

‘No, but you’re going to be.’

This time her silence was longer. She had known, hadn’t she? Oh, yes, she had recognised the sexual awareness that was the dark other side of Luke’s hostility—and had tried to ignore it, but it was impossible to go on pretending it didn’t exist now that the preliminary skirmishing was over and he was referring to it openly.

Apprehension was a physical pang, the ensuing denial a wash of red-hot feeling. Never!

The thought was frantic as she dragged a desperate breath into her lungs. She hated Luke Scott, so——

Just say no.

Maria suppressed rising panic that was fatally laced with hysteria. Where had that stupid slogan come from, the facile answer of those who thought there were easy solutions to all the world’s problems? Nothing was that simple.

The way he was looking at her——

‘When I’m so cheap and nasty?’ she jeered, a soft acknowledgement of the contempt with which he was regarding her.

‘Cheap,’ he granted her ruthlessly, and smiled as she glanced in the direction of Florian, who was now dancing energetically with the exotically lovely Nicky Kai. ‘No, Jones won’t be rescuing you, even supposing Nicky is into sharing. He can name his price and I’ll pay it because he’s a brilliant jock, but that’s it and he knows it.’

In a happier moment, Maria might have laughed at the idea of Florian troubling to rescue anyone from anything.

‘I don’t need rescuing.’ She lifted her chin. ‘No one has mistresses any more.’

‘I know, but what other word is there? We’d both balk at “lover”. People just get married or live together,’ Luke went on relentlessly. ‘But those don’t apply to us as they imply a sharing that’s total, and there’s only one area of my life that I can bring myself to share with you.’

The insult enraged her.

‘Unfortunately there isn’t a single square inch of my life I want to share with you,’ she told him levelly, the mad, febrile fluttering of her heart a private weakness.

‘This time I’m not considering you,’ Luke returned callously, and produced a brilliant smile. ‘Come, let me introduce you to people. Who haven’t you met yet?’

As they moved around the room, Luke introducing her to the people with whom she would be working, Maria struggled to put his threats out of her mind and minimise her own reaction to him, both six years ago and now. Whatever she had felt at nineteen, hatred was all that was left now, and hatred ought to impart strength. Luke Scott meant nothing to her; he couldn’t do anything to her if she refused to let him.

But she remained disturbed, acutely aware of him at her side and only grateful that he despised her too much to allow himself to be seen touching her in public.

Even the convention of a hand at her elbow would have been intolerable. That was how much she hated him.

She glanced at him, almost hopefully, but the impact of his virility and arrogance remained undiminished, and her fingers curled into her palms, painted nails slicing the soft skin. He was quite simply devastating, a combination of grace and power, allied to the pride implicit in strong, superb facial bones over which dark coppery skin was stretched tautly. He was clean-shaven, although a faint darkness marked his jaw at this hour; inevitable with his colouring, she knew, her eyes moving upwards to his jet-black hair and then—a betrayal of herself—down to where the open neck of his shirt provided tantalising glimpses of subtly gleaming flesh shadowed by softly curling dark hair, all so emphatically masculine.

It was a dangerous moment, fascination obliterating resentment, but when Luke suddenly turned his eyes her way again, the contempt Maria saw in them restored hatred.

CHAPTER TWO

‘CAN we give you a lift?’

Maria flung Luke Scott a hostile look as he and Cavell Fielding appeared just as she was taking her leave of Giles and Ursula Estwick, with Florian and Nicky on either side of her.

‘I’m going home with Florian and Nicky, thanks.’

It was deliberately dismissive, but a scorching anger rose in response to the searingly contemptuous look he gave her.

‘We’ve managed to wangle her an apartment just a floor below Nicky and me,’ Florian volunteered cheerfully. ‘Well, it was Nicky’s influence really, I have to admit. It takes Taipei’s most famous daughter to buck our letting agent’s system of waiting lists like that.’

‘It sounds like a convenient arrangement,’ Luke commented urbanely, and Maria saw his lip curl sar-donically, as if everything he believed of her had just been confirmed.

What did he think they were going to do? Toss a coin to determine on which floor Florian spent the night?

‘Cosy,’ she offered flippantly with a defiantly challenging smile.

‘Obviously,’ he drawled.

Maria met Cavell’s watchful sapphire eyes and a furious resentment gripped her, felt on Cavell’s behalf almost as much as her own, because Luke couldn’t have spoken to her as he had earlier, openly stating that he intended to make her his mistress, if he had had any real regard for Cavell, or women in general, for that matter.

‘See you tomorrow, then, Cavell,’ she confirmed an arrangement they had made during the course of the evening, ignoring Luke now but still acutely conscious of his attention as she thanked the Estwicks again and departed with Florian and Nicky.

‘Luke Scott doesn’t like you any better yet, Flo,’ Nicky commented amusedly when they were in a taxi.

‘I’m a woman’s man,’ Florian returned complacently as their driver eased his slow way out of one of the traffic jams that were a major problem in Taipei. ‘Other men can resent that.’

Maria shook her head, her smile a little cynical.

‘You don’t think his dislike might be a little more personal than that?’ she wondered casually.

‘As gorgeous as she is, I don’t go for women like Cavell Fielding.’ Typically, Florian laughed, natural vanity making him misunderstand her. ‘Although I suppose he might suspect her of fancying me! I have to say this, though—whatever it is, he’s never let it become a big issue. He ignores me when he can and I co-operate by keeping out of his way, because I like the job. He’s never allowed his dislike, personal or otherwise, to influence his professional judgement in any way. He knows I’m the best jock he’s got here. But generally it’s been unnecessary for us to have much contact. As I told you earlier, he spends most of his time in Hong Kong, where his major interests are.’

It was just a pity that Luke hadn’t decided to ignore her as well, Maria reflected wryly. The policy he applied to Florian would have suited her perfectly.

As it was, the most she could hope for was his speedy return to Hong Kong, but for now she supposed she would just have to endure a certain amount of contact, as he had warned her earlier at the party just before leaving her with Cavell Fielding and Penny Seu Chen.

‘I plan to be around over the next few weeks while we get this new image launched, and we expect you to be very visible. Obviously we haven’t gone for whole-sale personnel changes, so you’re the hook on which we’re hanging the idea, a new programme manager whose own image is the station’s—young, smart, sophisticated and committed to the music. Taiwan is one of the most Westernised countries in this region, and our last few surveys have shown that we’re attracting an extensive local listenership now, covering an age-group ranging from mid-teens to late thirties, so we want to ditch a lingering perception that we exist solely for the benefit of non-nationals. Giles Estwick will have discussed it with you, and you’ll have ideas of your own. Cavell will want to hear what they are, as well as some appropriate biographical details for Press releases, as she’s handling the publicity angle for us. She’s the best there is, so consult her if there’s anything you’re unsure of on that side.’

‘But only on that side?’ Maria had prompted derisively.

Luke’s smile was equally mocking. ‘Obviously we understand each other perfectly already.’

‘I understand you,’ she corrected him sharply. ‘I should. Rats aren’t exactly rare.’

‘Highly intelligent, though,’ Luke retorted dismissively, apparently uperturbed, but hostility still glinted in his eyes.

‘Every rule has its exception,’ she snapped.

She could work with Cavell, Maria had decided by the next afternoon. Along with a Chinese freelance photographer, Cavell had called for her that morning and whisked her round some of Taipei’s famous land-marks, the all-marble Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, a colourful Buddhist temple, and the Grand Hotel with its magnificent Chinese architecture, pausing only long enough at each for the young man to take the photos that would help introduce Maria to the Taipei public, before escorting her back to the apartment and approving the outfit she planned to wear to the dinner the radio station was hosting for the rest of the local media that night.

‘You’d better have the afternoon to yourself as I imagine the heat and humidity must be hitting you,’ she decided, preparing to depart. ‘We’ll see you tonight.’

‘Will everyone be attending?’ asked Maria.

‘Except for whoever’s on duty. It’s expected,’ Cavell added drily.

‘Mr Scott?’

‘Of course. He’s taking a personal interest in this.’

Personal. The word disturbed Maria for a while afterwards, although Cavell probably hadn’t given it any real thought, since she appeared so untroubled, her manner calmly confident and still strictly professional.

Maria was checking her public face, glittering tawny colour smudged lightly over her eyelids, darkening at the outer corners, lips defined with vivid colour, when the doorbell rang that evening, and she went to open it, expecting Nicky Kai, who had telephoned during the afternoon to suggest that the three of them share a taxi again tonight.

Surprise made her catch a breath, but it was the swiftly ensuing resentment that held it locked in her lungs for seconds after she should have expelled it as she stared questioningly at Luke Scott, casually elegant in a beautifully made lightweight jacket worn over a pale shirt and obviously expensive trousers with a discreetly fashionable belt.

‘Are you ready?’ he enquired, eschewing any conventional greeting.

‘What do you want?’ Maria demanded rudely, not yet fully recovered from the oddly physical shock of seeing him so unexpectedly.

Luke didn’t answer her immediately, but the grey eyes were eloquent as they dropped to the tiny cham-pagne-coloured skirt the slenderness of her legs made permissible, then travelled upwards again in slow appraisal of her strapless matching bustier, encrusted with transparent beads and revealing both her smooth olive-toned midriff and the upper swell of her high, proud breasts beneath the single fine circle of gold she wore about her neck.

‘Do you really want to go into that now?’ he challenged her softly, his ironic gaze returning briefly to her party face and the shiny, streaky curls that tumbled over her brow and about her neck, just skimming her bare shoulders. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t think we have time.’

‘I meant, why are you here?’ Maria elaborated bitingly, suppressing reactions more heated than simple anger.

‘To make sure you get to this dinner tonight.’ It was tersely volunteered.

‘Cavell never said anything about this,’ she protested tightly.

‘Cavell doesn’t know.’

She had already guessed that, and her smile was blistering as she registered his arrogance all over again. He not only believed that she would be a willing accessory to his two-timing Cavell, but that Cavell either wouldn’t realise what was happening or wouldn’t mind if she did.

‘Then forget it. I’ve already made arrangements to go with Nicky and Florian.’

‘Cancel them. God, do you think Nicky really wants you hanging around?’ Luke added disgustedly, his expression growing relentless.

‘Does Cavell?’

‘Cavell doesn’t come into this. Get used to the idea, Maria. I’m going to be partnering you at most of the functions you’ll be required to attend in your professional capacity over the next few weeks.’

‘That wasn’t in my contract, and there was no mention of it in the programme Giles and Cavell have outlined for me either.’ Maria produced a whisper of a laugh. ‘In fact, I could swear your image-maker wants me to come across as a free spirit, someone who doesn’t need the convention of a male escort—and I don’t. It won’t be a pretence.’

‘Nevertheless, you’ll have one,’ Luke told her inexorably.

‘You?’ Maria derided.

‘Who else? Unless you’ve moved unbelievably fast, Nicky Kai still has a claim on Jones, and while some of the other jocks may have shown signs of making themselves available as reserve players last night—yes, I noticed the attention you attracted—they’ll just have to wait their turn.’ The look Luke gave her was cautionary as she stirred rebelliously, brilliant lips parting. ‘And perhaps I should remind you that the contract you’ve just cited binds you as securely as it does us, unless you’re willing to face interminable legal hassles in an effort to extricate yourself.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ The passionate question was involuntary and, regaining a measure of both control and fighting spirit, she went on quickly in a lightly mocking tone, ‘And what’s Cavell Fielding’s reaction going to be when she does know about these…plans you have for escorting me? And not so much about the fact of them, as the reasons behind the fact?’

‘You seemed to understand it clearly enough last night, so why not now? I won’t have Cavell dragged into our personal affairs.’

It was offered as a warning, but the threat was unmistakable.

‘Our personal affairs!’ Maria sent him a smouldering glance as her mind screamed its resistance to the idea of there ever being anything personal between them, and every muscle in her body clenched in physical imitation of that wild denial.

Luke shrugged indifferently, his face hard but still astonishingly handsome.

‘How else should I phrase it? I can be a lot more crude if you want me to.’

‘I’m sure you can!’ Maria snapped, and flung out a hand, unconscious of the helpless appeal allied to imperative demand in the gesture as control slipped once more. ‘Tell me why you’re doing this, damn you!’

‘Why?’ he repeated, his eyes resting on the suddenly tempestuous shape of her mouth. ‘Because arriving with you makes it easier for me to leave with you—to take you home, Maria.’

And all that the phrase implied. He didn’t need to be more explicit. She flung up her head, bright satin-smooth curls shaking.

‘I’d rather die!’

It rang with pride and passion, the intensity of the emotion heightening the slightly exotic aspect of her peculiar beauty which was in reality merely the end sum of a wonderfully mixed ancestry of ordinary Celts, Latins and Anglo-Saxons.

Luke laughed, his amusement genuine for a moment.

‘How extremely dramatic!’

‘But true,’ she insisted, her eyes still stormy.

‘And passionate.’ Grey eyes were turned silvery by a gleam of speculation. ‘Do you make love as passionately as you hate?’

‘Love?’ Maria scorned, and saw his lips twist in acknowledgement.

‘You’re right—a badly chosen phrase,’ he conceded derisively as he looked at his watch again. ‘The limi-tations of our language…Ring Jones and tell him I’m taking you to this dinner.’

‘Because arriving with me will make it easier for you to leave with me?’ Maria threw his explanation back at him. ‘Easier being the limited English way of saying—less likely to excite comment and speculation?’

‘If you like,’ he allowed tautly.

‘And it will look more as if you’re carrying out a professional duty.’ Surging resentment drove her on. ‘So if you don’t want anyone thinking you might be with me for personal reasons, why bother?’

‘You know why,’ Luke asserted, suddenly harsh.

But she didn’t really. Oh, yes, she recognised the sexual awareness that was an integral part of his attitude towards her, and it made her uneasy, but he couldn’t really mean to do anything about it when he despised her so intensely. His talk was just that, talk aimed at intimidating her, but she would never give him the satisfaction of allowing him to succeed. Six years ago, her own bewildering awareness of him, the way it had made her feel threatened, must have been obvious to him when his simple presence, a glance in her direction, the sound of his voice, had been enough to unnerve her; but these days she answered back—and for some reason he was hell-bent on punishing her for what he believed her to be, humiliating her with constant reminders of his contempt.

But he would never actually touch her, Maria decided, directing a quick look at the resolute line of chin and jaw and the arrogant curve of his nose. Strength of character and a confident decisiveness were implicit in the hardness of that darkly handsome face, and while the curve of his lower lip was disturbingly sensual, there was a fastidiousness there too which ought to be reassuring. He wouldn’t be able to bring himself to touch her, because if he did, the contempt he felt for her would be extended to himself, and she thought Luke Scott was too intelligent a man to submit to anything so destructive. Like most successful, powerful men, he would cherish his self-respect.

She had no need to feel so uneasy in his presence. All she had to do was steel herself to get through the forthcoming weeks until he returned to Hong Kong and she was left to immerse herself in this new job in peace, free of the distraction he constituted.

Half convinced, she shrugged philosophically and turned to leave the apartment’s square entrance hall in which they were standing, aware of Luke following her into the luxuriously appointed lounge, a long elegant room which ended in sliding glass doors opening on to a balcony with a view she had spent part of the afternoon enjoying, pretty green parkland dotted with ornamental ponds linked by a winding, deeply cut stream that was spanned by the occasional arched stone bridge.

A hand on the telephone receiver, she paused in the act of reading Florian and Nicky’s number which was jotted down on the pad beside it, and threw Luke a challenging glance.

‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll give you away to someone?’ she taunted. ‘Florian and Nicky, for instance? Suppose I tell them that you want to escort me tonight for personal reasons?’

Luke shrugged, unperturbed. ‘Perhaps there isn’t that much need for discretion. You’re a beautiful woman, after all, intelligent and successful in your career—and unknown here. Other than myself, probably only Florian Jones knows what you really are and he at any rate obviously doesn’t find the reality at all unpalatable.’

Maria’s eyes flashed. ‘Oh, yes, Florian knows what I am, Mr Scott. You don’t.’

‘Get on with it,’ he urged her impatiently, indicating the telephone, and she did, speaking swiftly when Florian answered.

‘Flo? Did Nicky tell you what we arranged? Yes, only you don’t need to call for me after all. Mr Scott is here, so I’ll go with him and see you later…Satisfied?’ she added sweetly as she replaced the receiver, finding Luke still watching her.

‘Nicky’s present naÏveté surprises me slightly,’ he observed. ‘But perhaps she has yet to realise what she’s letting herself in for, using her name to get you installed here, allowing you to share their transport…It’s a very cosy set-up, as you admitted last night, but I don’t suppose she knows what it’s leading up to, if Jones has conveniently forgotten to mention the exact nature of your past relationship.’

‘I don’t know why you’re surprised, when you seem to expect other people to be naive enough to remain blind to what you’re trying to do,’ Maria flared edgily, thinking of Cavell especially. ‘But in fact there’s nothing naive about what Nicky is doing, as she knows the nature of our relationship perfectly well. She’s simply being as welcoming and hospitable as I’ve always heard the Taiwanese are, and trying to help me feel at home and among friends because she knows what it’s like to be a newcomer in a foreign city herself.’

‘And because she believes your relationship with her lover is a thing of the past.’ The suggestion was laced with condemnation. ‘But it’s not, is it? You can’t leave each other alone. The two of you have followed each other halfway round the world over the years, and she’ll shut you out once she realises that your affair is something you renew periodically.’

‘In between all our other affairs, I suppose? Where do you get these ideas from?’ Maria derided angrily. ‘Apart from anything else, these are the nervous nine-ties, in case you haven’t realised, not the sixties or seventies when no one thought twice about having lots of different partners.’

‘Oh, I know people such as you and Jones like yourselves too well not to make sure you’re safe.’ It was so cynically dismissive that she was momentarily speechless, and he added, ‘Shall we go?’

‘Yes, let’s,’ she consented cuttingly. ‘If we don’t hurry we’re likely to meet Florian and Nicky in the lift, and right this minute I don’t think I could bring myself to keep quiet about the things you’ve just been saying.’

She was still seething when they got into his luxury car, hired, he told her, as he didn’t keep one of his own here, his visits to Taipei being infrequent and usually brief.

‘Has Estwick spoken to you about the vehicle clause in your contract?’ he added, easing into the heavy evening traffic.

‘Yes, but I’ve said I’ll experiment for a while before making a decision. Taxis seem to be plentiful, and the fares are very moderate.’

‘Too plentiful. Along with all the motorbikes, they contribute to the traffic problem which is probably one of the worst in the world, and certainly one of Taiwan’s major problems, along with an over-competitive edu-cational system and political isolation.’

‘I’ve never seen so many motorbikes at once before,’ Maria confessed, staring disbelievingly at one in the lane alongside, two small children wedged between youthful-looking adults. ‘I checked out the problems before accepting this job, but the virtues seemed to balance them, which is usually the way anywhere.’

‘Cleanliness, low unemployment and crime rates,’ Luke suggested.

‘They were among the things that attracted me.’

‘But Jones was the real attraction, presumably.’

Maria drew a sharp breath. ‘Why does there have to be a man in it somewhere?’ she demanded.

‘There’s always a man with women like you.’ It was deliberately offensive.

‘Is that what this is all about?’ she demanded. ‘Except that you admitted last night that you don’t lead an absolutely pure life yourself, I could almost believe that you’re one of those buttoned-up celibates, offended by the mere idea of any sort of relationship, even if it’s between other people.’

Luke laughed. ‘No, Maria, I’m not celibate, but I’m probably more discriminating than you are, and I’ve always avoided triangles.’

‘Your hypocrisy is incredible!’ Temper sharpened her voice. ‘If that’s the creed you apply to your relationships, why are you doing this?’

‘Why not? You and I are both free, there’s no husband or wife languishing somewhere in the background, no children involved.’

‘Oh, of course, a piece of paper, a ring and a blessing make all the difference!’ She slanted him a scornful glance. ‘So why doesn’t Nicky Kai come in for a share of all this moral condemnation, since you know that Florian is still legally married?’

‘The marriage may exist legally, but hardly in fact. He hasn’t been back to South Africa in years.’ He paused. ‘But it was very much a fact when you were first involved with him, wasn’t it? His young wife was pregnant. Presumably you were the cause of their separation. Why was there no divorce?’

‘Rachel and her family don‘t believe in it.’ Maria snapped. ‘And it suits Florian because it gives him a valid excuse when the women he gets involved with start talking about marriage.’

‘You know him very well, don’t you?’ He slid her a contemplative look. ‘Does it suit you equally well?’

‘It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. You’re wrong about me, Mr Scott,’ she went on flatly. ‘I could tell you how and why, but I’m not going to, because I don’t care what you believe. Your thoughts and opinions just don’t matter to me.’

She hadn’t thought it out properly before, but it hit her squarely and solidly now. She would not explain herself to Luke Scott, because to do so would mean he mattered to her, and to let him matter in even the smallest way was to make herself vulnerable—to let him in at some level, and she had an intuitive sense of the havoc he could wreak once admitted to the number of those people who mattered in her life in their various ways.

Not that there was any real danger of his ever mattering to her. How could he? She hated him.

The dark grey eyes that glanced her way just before they moved across the chaotic intersection seemed to mirror that hatred, and she recoiled slightly.

‘Is it that you can’t think of anything plausible, or simply that you refuse to make excuses for what you are?’ he wondered insultingly. ‘I could almost admire you for it if it’s the latter.’

‘Almost, but not quite,’ she jeered in a brittle voice. ‘Because I’m still what you believe I am, still chasing Florian Jones around the world! Only, again, why does that make me worse than Nicky? As you’ve conceded, Florian’s marriage is no longer a fact except on paper, and Nicky isn’t his wife.’

‘It doesn’t make you worse, it just makes you weak,’ he told her insolently. ‘I’ve never been able to respect people who go back. Going back, starting over, is always either the easy option or a negative step in itself, retrogressive. It’s weakness…But then Florian Jones is your one great weakness, I suppose, since it’s obvious that you haven’t learnt a thing in the years since you first got involved with him. Or is it that your other relationships keep proving unsatisfactory, driving you back to him?’

‘My hundreds of other relationships, don’t you mean, Mr Scott?’ Maria prompted caustically.

In fact, only one serious relationship lay behind her, with a Wellington actor who read news bulletins in order to eat, and it had died owing to lack of feeling, disappointing them both at the time, but Maria had philosophically absorbed the lesson at the heart of the sad experience. She believed in love, but she had been too impatient, her eagerness to experience it persuading her to believe that what she had felt went deeper than liking and a mild physical attraction. In future, she would not go looking for love, or trying to manu-facture it out of other lesser emotions, but she still believed it would find her one day.

‘Hundreds?’ Luke was drily sceptical. ‘How have you found time to make such a success of your career? How many really?’

‘One,’ Maria admitted shortly, despising herself for confiding even that much. ‘It didn’t work out.’

‘Why not? No, don’t tell me. He didn’t measure up to Jones, the affair lacked the romance of having to follow a man around the world—perhaps even the bitter-sweet romance of uncertainty.’

‘There’s nothing romantic about my relationship with Florian,’ Maria asserted abruptly.

‘Wasn’t it a romantic gesture, accepting this job?’ Luke was slowing the car as they arrived at the restaurant, one of the most famous in Taipei, Maria knew, and an immaculately uniformed parking attendant was approaching. ‘And wasn’t he being romantic when he suggested that we consider you for this job? Which of you is responsible for the long periods of separation, or are they merely dictated by your careers?’

‘I’m sure you’ve made up your mind as to the answer to that, along with everything else, Mr Scott,’ she responded levelly, disconcerted by a need to conceal an unexpected surge of bitter frustration.

‘No, I’ve only made a guess,’ he returned coolly.

‘As your guesses instantly become convictions…’ she shrugged, not bothering to complete it, and neither of them spoke again until a commissionaire had ushered them into the foyer of the building housing the restaurant and they were inside a lift.

‘Just one more thing before we become part of a crowd, Maria,’ said Luke as the door slid shut and they began to move smoothly upwards.

‘What?’

The abrupt challenge was distracted because she was struggling to contend with an unexpectedly physical reaction to finding herself alone with him in such a confined space. It had happened before, when they had descended from her apartment, but then the presence of another person had diluted the effect to an extent where she was able to ignore it.

Now she wished fervently for an old-fashioned attendant to match the commissionaire downstairs and the man who had driven Luke’s car away to park it.

She felt panicky, as if something precious deep within her was menaced by his closeness, and once again as shockingly unsure of herself as she had always been in his presence six years ago.

‘I want you to stop calling me Mr Scott,’ he advised her blandly. ‘My name is Luke.’

Maria dragged a breath into her lungs and managed a tight smile.

‘Oh, but people might think there’s something personal between us if I do that,’ she mocked faintly.

The arresting copper-toned features tautened. ‘I’ve said I over-emphasised the need for discretion. Try it, and don’t tell me you’d rather die.’

‘I think I might,’ she retorted.

‘Say it!’ He was insistent, and she stiffened resentfully.

‘Why? Because you know how much I’ll hate it?’

‘Will you?’

Suddenly the tone was velvety. He was half turned towards her, and Maria saw him lift a hand and watched it move towards her, coming to rest against her bare midriff, warm fingers shaping themselves lightly to its gentle curve.

The odd fleeting stasis that gripped her was complete. Breathing and blood were stopped; her mind emptied, muscles went paralysed and even her heart skipped, missing a beat.

Then it was over, replaced by its opposite, restored life an explosion of rioting sensation. Her flesh was vibrantly alert, too sensitive, her heart thudding like a runner’s, wild hot panic flooding her reactivated mind. A single beat of awareness deep, deep in her woman-hood made every muscle clench in frantic denial.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she said tautly through stiff, barely moving lips.

‘Then call me by my name.’

His fingers stirred lazily against her skin, and she clamped her teeth together over a gasp.

‘This is harassment!’

‘It would be if you didn’t owe me,’ Luke conceded indifferently, no trace of compunction there to soften his mercilessly intent expression.

‘Luke, damn it!’

Her mind made the sacrifice for the sake of screaming flesh and she conceded defeat with a blistering fury, rage a fever in her eyes, darkening their colour to sherry.

‘Keep practising,’ Luke quipped amusedly, and with-drew his hand as the lift glided to a halt.

Maria didn’t need to look at his face or see the confident way he carried himself as he stepped out of the lift with her. His subtle satisfaction seemed to permeate the space around them. She could literally feel it, absorbed by her pores and entering her bloodstream, an alien message of warning, invader already and threatening ownership, but the acrid flavour on which she was choking was that of her own resentment.

‘Have you gone speechless on me again?’ he murmured tauntingly as Cavell Fielding came forward from the restaurant’s extravagantly decorative entrance opposite them, a slight widening of her sapphire eyes the only surprise she evinced at seeing them together. ‘The silent nymph you were six years ago fascinated me, but the woman with so much to say for herself is infinitely more stimulating.’

‘I’II think of something.’ Maria’s voice was milky-soft.

Only what? The intensity of her response to him a minute ago filled her with self-loathing, but she was afraid too, because suddenly it seemed as if hatred was no longer enough to counter the threat he presented, and yet it was the only answer she possessed.

Quite deliberately, she summoned the memory of the anguish of six years ago, the job she loved summarily barred to her and her Communications course sacrificed; and she dwelt especially on the dilemma that had torn at her then, the agonising conflict between her obstinate determination to pursue an uninterrupted career in radio at a time when there were no positions to be had in Johannesburg but possibilities in Durban, and a heart-wrenching reluctance to leave her parents alone when advanced emphysema was shortening her father’s life so cruelly.

The hatred was enough, answer to the strange, stifling power that Luke Scott had over her, but now a new suspicion preyed on the edges of her consciousness of it, the shadowy suggestion of a conviction that the hatred had its genesis in something darker and more complex than the realities she was calling to mind.

Six years ago! Luke’s words and their possible implication slammed belatedly into her brain as she was being introduced to the entertainment editor of a local newspaper, but natural incredulity dismissed them as more talk, just words carelessly plucked from an inadequate language. Maria didn’t believe that the child she had been then could have fascinated him. If it were true, he would have done something about it. That was the sort of man he was.

Yes, there was something sexual between the two of them now, but any interest he had felt six years ago would have been connected solely with the phenomenon of the awe he had inspired, so overwhelmingly intense that it had reduced her to awkward, agonised silence every time he was around.

The restaurant that had been chosen to introduce both the radio station’s new programme manager and image to the media was splendidly stylish, opening on to a lantern-illuminated balcony all the way down one side, décor and menu strictly Chinese.

Maria thought the evening went well and could only hope those to whom this launch meant so much were equally pleased with the way she acquitted herself. At her side, introducing her to people, encouraging her to elaborate on some of her ideas for the future, Luke was urbane, expressing only suave approval, and no one could have guessed at the personal contempt he felt for her, not a hint of it—or anything else personal either—allowed to show through his sophisticated public manner.

She herself had not yet fully recovered from the trauma of those moments in the lift, but it probably didn’t matter. Who was there here who knew her well enough to discern and identify any flaws in her own polished public persona? Certainly—she hoped—not Luke himself, and while her acquaintance with Florian Jones went back to their high-school days in South Africa, she knew he was impervious to anything that did not affect him directly.

‘You do this very well,’ Luke commented smoothly later.

‘I’d rather be doing it on my own,’ Maria responded waspishly, taking advantage of the fact that no one was near enough to overhear them for the moment.

‘Sorry,’ he drawled with blatant insincerity.

‘Why don’t you go and talk to Cavell?’ The suggestion was tartly offered.

‘She’s working,’ Luke returned dismissively, and it was true, she realised, following his glance and seeing Cavell in conversation with a television reporter.

‘So am I,’ she reminded him pointedly.

‘We all are.’ There was something savage in his smile.

The look Maria gave him was inimical. That was what he hoped people would think, she knew, and so far only she was aware that he was here, relentlessly at her side, for personal reasons.

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHOSE idea was it that you should live here?’ Luke asked as he and Maria stepped out of another lift, this one mercifully crowded, on their return to her apartment.

‘Oh, obviously it has to be something Florian and I arranged between us, doesn’t it?’ Maria retorted sar-castically. ‘Naturally, being the sort of people we are, we felt no compunction about making use of Nicky, letting her sweet-talk the letting agent…Why haven’t you warned her about me, by the way?’

Her mind was preoccupied with a moment just several seconds in the future. Luke had brought her home as he had intended. It had been impossible to thwart him under the glare of media attention back at the restaurant, and she was still trying to decide how to deal with the situation if he wanted to come in with her when they reached her apartment—and she knew he would want to. That was what this was all about.

‘Oh, I’m not worrying about Nicky,’ Luke dismissed the challenge amusedly. ‘She’s tough, she knows how to look after herself and her interests. In fact, the two of you have a lot in common. You’ve both followed international careers, acquiring a cosmopolitan patina, you’ve both been involved with the same man…Have you compared notes yet? And I suspect that you’re as resilient in your own way as she is, so things could get interesting when she does realise that you’re out to steal her man.’

‘I am not out to steal her man!’ Maria snapped automatically.

Her steps had slowed, as if in sympathy with her mind’s reluctance to confront the looming moment.

Dear God, was this anticipation or apprehension, and why should she feel either? She had turned other men—men she didn’t hate—away at her door before now without going through all this prior angst, meeting the moment with the tact or firmness it required when it came, but not before.

‘You’re planning to share him?’ Luke probed derisively. ‘The way you did with his wife? Were you equally friendly with her?’

‘Rachel was one of my best friends from school.’ It was almost a relief to be being attacked on this particular issue, because there were other far more personal ones to be dreaded. ‘I actually introduced her to Florian.’

He threw her a sardonic glance. To your eternal regret?’

‘Yes!’ Maria said vehemently, her thoughts flying briefly to Rachel, for whom marriage was a trap in a way it could never be for Florian.

‘Why, when her existence never stopped you?’ he mocked.

‘My affair with Florian, since that’s what you choose to believe, has nothing to do with you—past or present—but why isn’t it stopping you?’ she demanded.

‘Ah, one rule for yourself, another for everyone else?’ Luke was still taunting, but naked hostility blazed in his eyes momentarily.

But they had come to the door of her apartment and the moment was here and now, impossible to delay.

She shot him an eloquent little smile and said decisively, ‘Goodnight.’

Humour gleamed in the dark grey eyes as he understood her. ‘Not yet, Maria.’

‘Right now, Luke,’ she retorted smartly, determined not to reveal her apprehension.

‘Why?’

‘Entertaining the proprietor wasn’t part of the job description,’ she offered, her tone creamy as she nerved herself to continue the debate if necessary.

‘Even if it’s the job I want to discuss with you?’

‘It’s not, though, is it?’ Of that, at least, she was confident.

Luke laughed. ‘No, as always, this is personal.’

‘Then goodnight again,’ she responded evenly as she inserted her key in the lock.

‘Why?’ he enquired idly once more.

Maria drew a breath and smiled resolutely. ‘Because even if my personal feelings were a whole lot warmer than hatred, I hardly know you.’

‘There’s nothing cold about your particular brand of hatred,’ he contradicted her. ‘It’s a passion.’

‘Then it’s the only sort of passion you’ll ever get from me!’

It was too confrontational, she realised as soon as she had said it, seeing something spark in his eyes, the instinctive, age-old masculine response to the sort of rejection men would always interpret as a challenge.

Then he disconcerted her by laughing again, but the sound was laced with a derision she found intolerable.

‘Does the occasion really merit the heavy dramatics? What do you imagine I’m planning to do? Seduce you tonight? As you say, we hardly know each other.’ He paused, allowing her to assimilate it before adding, ‘Having waited six years, I can probably wait a little longer. It’s almost a habit.’

The outrageous claim squashed incipient embarrassment, and in her distraction Maria allowed him to push her gently aside and take command of her key, turning it swiftly. They were inside her apartment, Luke already closing the door again, before she found her voice.

‘Six years? I don’t believe you! You haven’t been waiting six years, Luke.’ The disbelieving protest was almost indignant. ‘You couldn’t have!’

‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ All humour had vanished as he turned to face her, dropping her key on to the stand beside the door, his features stamped with hostility. ‘And yet it’s true. That’s what you owe me, Maria. Six years—six years in which I’ve never quite succeeded in getting you out of my mind.’

‘It’s not true!’

Panicked, she didn’t want it to be true, because if it was, it increased the threat he constituted a thousandfold.

‘Why are you so incredulous? You must be used to the way men react to you. There can’t be a man alive who sees you and doesn’t want to take you to bed, who doesn’t wonder what you’re like, although some might be able to resist the temptation to try and find out once they realise what you are. I thought I could.’ Luke’s lips twisted. ‘Is that why you’re so sceptical, Maria? Because I didn’t act, didn’t come looking for you again? I’d have despised myself. I despised myself anyway, haunted by things as superficial as a way of moving, a combination of colour and shape, an asymmetrical smile, the chance attributes of someone who holds herself so cheap she’ll squander herself on a man as truly valueless as Florian Jones, and ignore both his marriage and his other affairs. No, I wasn’t going to come after someone like you.’

‘Then what are you doing here now?’ Maria flared, the insults having begun to register humiliatingly, boring hotly into her.

Luke wore an expression of distaste, like a mask, so hard was its set.

‘Bending with the wind that brought you to me,’ he quipped, the humour harsh and followed by a shrug. ‘When Estwick passed on the fact that Jones had mentioned you as a possible candidate for this job and your previous experience confirmed that you were amply qualified to do it, I thought—what the hell! Chance, fate or whatever you want to call it was offering me the opportunity to finally get you out of my system. It would be worth it, if it put an end to such irritations as the inconvenient way I’d suddenly find myself visualising you when I was with other women…So here we are, and that’s

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