Annie West - An Enticing Debt to Pay

Much later, when Ravenna was nine, her mother had been accused of stealing from the house where she worked. Ravenna remembered Mamma’s ravaged, parchment-white face as the police led her away under the critical gaze of the woman who employed her. It didn’t matter that the charges had been dropped when the woman’s daughter was found trying to sell the missing heirloom pieces. Silvia had been dismissed, presumably because her employer couldn’t face the embarrassment of having accused an innocent woman.

Mud stuck and innocence didn’t seem to matter in the face of prejudice.

Look at the way Jonas already judged her. If she went to trial he’d dredge up her past and every scurrilous innuendo he could uncover and probably create a few for good measure. His air of ruthlessness that chilled Ravenna. His lawyers would make mincemeat out of her mother.

Ravenna couldn’t allow it. Especially since her mother had stolen to save her.

Hot guilt flooded her. How desperate Mamma must have been, how worried, to have stolen this man’s money! She must have known he’d destroy her if he found out.

Which was why Ravenna had to act.

She stepped forward, her index finger prodding Jonas’ hard chest. It felt frighteningly immovable. But she had to puncture his certainty. Attack seemed her best chance.

‘Don’t pretend to know my mother.’ Furtively she sucked in air, her breathing awry as her pulse catapulted. ‘You weren’t even living at home when we moved to Deveson Hall.’

‘You’re telling me you masterminded this theft?’ His tone was sceptical. ‘I think not.’

‘You—’ her finger poked again ‘—aren’t in a position to know anything about me.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’ Warm fingers closed around her hand so that suddenly she was no longer the aggressor but his captive. Tendrils of sensation curled up her arm and made her shiver. ‘I know quite a bit about you. I know you hated school, especially maths and science. You wanted to run away but felt you had to stick it out for your mother’s sake.’

Ravenna’s eyes widened. ‘You remember that?’ Her voice faded to a whisper. She’d assumed he’d long forgotten her teary confession the day he’d found her wallowing in teenage self-pity.

‘You hated being made to play basketball just because you were tall. As I recall you wanted to be tiny, blonde and one of five children, all rejoicing in the name of Smith.’

It was true. Living up to her mother’s expectations of academic and social success had been impossible, especially for an undistinguished scholar like Ravenna, surrounded by unsupportive peers who treated her as a perennial outsider. For years she’d longed, not to be ‘special’ but to blend in.

‘And you didn’t like the way one of the gardeners had begun to stare at you.’

Ridiculously heat flushed her skin. That summer she’d been a misfit, neither child nor adult. She hadn’t known what she wanted.

But she hadn’t minded when Jonas Deveson looked at her or, for one precious, fleeting moment, stroked wayward curls off her face.

Ravenna blinked. She wasn’t fifteen now.

‘You remember far more of that day than I do.’ Another lie. Two in one day had to be a record for her. Maybe if she kept it up she could even sound convincing.

Did she imagine a slight softening in those grey eyes?

No. Easier to believe she’d scored her dream job as a pastry chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant than that this steely man had a compassionate side.

‘You haven’t changed that much.’ His deep voice stirred something unsettling deep inside.

‘No? You didn’t even recognise me.’ She pulled back but he didn’t loosen his grip. He held her trapped.

For a moment fear spidered through her, till she reminded herself he had too much pride to force himself on an unwilling woman. His hold wasn’t sexual, it was all about power. The charged awareness was all on her side, not his.

She had no intention of analysing that. She had enough to worry about.

‘You’ve changed a lot.’ Her tone made it clear it wasn’t a compliment. At twenty-one he’d been devastatingly handsome but unexpectedly kind and patient. She’d liked him, even more than liked him in her naïve way.

Now he was all harsh edges, irascible and judgemental. What was there to like?

‘We’re not here to discuss me.’ His eyes searched hers. Stoically she kept her head up and face blank. Better to brazen out her claim than show a hint of doubt.

Yet inside she was wobbly as jelly. The past days had taken their toll as she saw how grief had ravaged her mother, making her seem frail. Ravenna had sent her away from the apartment so ripe with memories of Piers. She’d offered to pack up the flat and deal with the landlord, but even those simple tasks were a test of Ravenna’s endurance. Now this...

‘We’re here to discuss my money.’ Jonas’ fingers firmed around her. ‘The money stolen from my account.’

Ravenna swallowed hard at his unrelenting tone.

Just what was the penalty for theft and forgery?

* * *

Jonas felt her hand twitch in his.

A sign of guilt or proof she lied about being the one who’d ripped him off?

Her soft eyes were huge in her finely sculpted face, giving her an air of fragility despite her punk-short hair and belligerently angled chin.

Jonas wasn’t sentimental enough to let looks mar his decision-making. Yet, absurdly, he found himself hesitating.

He didn’t want to believe Ravenna guilty.

Far easier to believe her rapacious mother had organised this swindle. After years keeping his emotions bottled up he’d almost enjoyed the roaring surge of fury against his father’s mistress that had borne him across the channel in a red-misted haze.

But what bothered him most was the recognition he didn’t want it to be Ravenna because he remembered her devastating innocence and honesty years ago. He didn’t want to reconcile that memory with the knowledge she’d become a thief.

Jonas’ lips twisted. Who’d have thought he still had illusions he didn’t want to shatter? He’d been too long in the cut-throat business world to believe in the innate honesty of mankind. Experience had taught him man—and womankind were out for all they could get.

Why should this revelation be so unwelcome?

‘You say you wrote the cheques?’

Again that jerk of tension through her. Her pulse tripped against his palm and he resisted the absurd impulse to caress her there.

She nodded, the movement brief but emphatic.

‘How did you get access to the cheque book?’ Piers would have been canny enough to keep it close at hand, not lying around. ‘Were you living here with them?’

‘No, I—’ She paused and her gaze shifted away. Instinct told him she hid something. ‘But I visited. Often. My mother and I have always been close.’

That at least had the ring of truth. He remembered her misery in her teens, not simply because she hated school and the vicious little witches who made her life hell there, but because she didn’t want to disappoint her mother by leaving. She cared what her mother thought.

Enough to learn her mother’s ways in seeking easy money from a man? Had she modelled herself on Silvia?

The notion left a sour tang of disappointment on his tongue.

‘You’re hurting me!’

Jonas eased his grip, but didn’t let her go. He was determined to sort this out. Until then he’d keep her close.

‘Why did you need the money?’

Her eyebrows arched and she tilted her head as if to inspect him. As if he weren’t already close enough to see the rays of gold in the depths of her eyes.

‘You’re kidding, right?’ Her tone of insouciant boredom echoed the attitude of entitlement he’d heard so often among wealthy, privileged young things who’d never worked a day in their lives. Except something in her tone was ever so slightly off-key.