Susan Stephens - Susan Stephens Selection

‘Which was?’ Kate cut in. What was wrong with her pulse? She always remained calm when difficulties in business cropped up—that was her strength, she reminded herself forcefully. And La Petite Maison certainly represented a difficulty, if only because she had allowed her many other interests to take precedence.

The letters from Aunt Alice’s solicitor had coincided with the closure of a deal that would see her Internet travel service open at several sites in Japan…she had barely scanned the documents from France.

‘I concluded that Madame Broadbent’s heirs merely wished to keep the cottage in good repair— Please, let me finish,’ the Count insisted quietly when Kate’s agitation threatened to become vocal. ‘As that was not in line with my own plans, I instructed my estate manager to return all monies paid. On top of that there would have been a generous capital payment in line with the sums I have released to regain full title to all the other properties. Some banking hiccup—’

‘You can stop right there,’ Kate insisted, pushing a slender hand through her barely contained hair and dragging the rest of it down from the clip in the process. ‘I don’t want your money, but I do want everything I paid into the Villeneuve estate office to be spent on the cottage.’

‘I can’t do that—’

‘Can’t, or won’t?’ she demanded tensely.

The Count missed a beat, but his eyes had grown dangerously warm as he leaned over the desk to gaze at her. ‘Ah, Kate,’ he drawled. ‘You always were too impetuous—’

‘That isn’t an answer,’ she warned, trying not to notice the attractive way his eyes crinkled at the corners and the dense sweep of ebony lashes that framed the molten steel gaze. His scrutiny was bad enough when she wanted to talk business, but the effect it was having on her senses was nothing short of catastrophic. ‘If you refuse to do anything about the cottage,’ she said, ‘just return the money and I’ll sort it out myself.’

‘All right,’ he agreed, surprising her with his sudden capitulation. ‘I’ll have all the money repaid into your bank account tomorrow morning.’ But, just as Kate felt some of her tension seep away, he added starkly, ‘But the cottage reverts to me. You will accept my offer.’

‘Blackmail?’ she said as she got to her feet.

The Count’s fist slammed down on his desk. ‘ T’exagere! ’ Gathering himself quickly, he stood up, his dark, brooding expression an unmistakable mark of reproof. ‘I prefer to call it an amicable arrangement,’ he said in a low voice.

‘It’s a very one-sided arrangement,’ Kate observed, with remarkable composure considering she was confronting a gaze grown more dangerous than she could ever remember, ‘and hardly amicable since I don’t want any part of it.’

‘Perhaps when you hear what I have to say you might change your mind.’

Kate’s heart was thundering out of control, but still she managed evenly, ‘I doubt it.’

‘So you won’t even listen to my offer?’

As he stood towering over her, waiting for her reply, Kate drew herself up, but even when she was at full stretch he was still a good head taller…and there was a glint in his eyes that suggested he was actually entertained by her stand. Now she was mad. ‘Don’t patronise me, Guy. I’m a grown woman with my own business to run.’

‘And I thought you’d forgotten how to say my name,’ he growled softly.

His voice was as dark and deliciously beguiling as bitter chocolate, Kate realised as she struggled to keep her mind focused on the purpose of her visit.

Perhaps it was the timbre of his speech, or maybe the pitch, but something primitive was strumming her senses with a persistent and unmistakable beat. And if past experience had left her with the misleading notion that she was immune to machismo, Guy, Count de Villeneuve had just proved her wrong. And he knew it, she realised as their glances clashed.

‘Don’t change the subject,’ Kate warned, rallying fast. ‘You know what I’m here for and it isn’t a trip down memory lane.’

In a few electric moments their eyes met and held. Then, raising his eyebrows the merest fraction, he said, ‘I think we should both calmly put our cards on the table.’

‘I won’t change my mind.’

‘As you please, Kate,’ the Count said as he dropped on to his chair. ‘But whatever you’ve got to say, make it brief. I’ve got a great many things to do.’ He tossed her a look that was suddenly a good deal less tolerant, and she noticed how one of his hands seemed to want to mash the end of a bone-handled paperknife. The unconscious gesture was so much at odds with his strong watchful face that Kate was forced to wonder if she was as disturbing to him as he was to her. One thing was clear: he would soon lose patience with her again. It seemed that even Guy de Villeneuve’s fabled courtesy had its limitations—

‘Well?’ he pressed. ‘Do you intend to join me any time soon? Or would you prefer just to stand there and stare?’

The roughness in his voice was even more seductive than the charm, Kate realised as she moved to perch on the very edge of the chair. Smoothing her delicate aquamarine-tinted muslin skirt around her bare tanned legs, she watched him select a folder from the neat pile in front of him. But her gaze, like her thoughts, soon began to wander.

Ten years before she had been a gawky teenager with a helpless crush on a French aristocrat. Today she sat before the same man, close enough to see the silver wings that time had laced through his thick, wavy black hair—sat before him as a successful woman in her own right, thanks to the runaway success of her Internet travel business. But how did that help when her heart was beating so fast she could hardly breathe? Awe and desire had once consumed her adolescent dreams. It was a real shock to discover that the Count could still provoke those same complex feelings—only now it was worse, far worse, she acknowledged. Now she wasn’t an innocent young girl, but a successful working woman with all the appetites that went with the dynamic territory she inhabited. And there had been no time to assuage those appetites during the crazy rollercoaster ride to the top—or any real temptation before this moment, she realised as she drank in the athletic figure beneath the impeccably cut suit.

‘Ready, Kate?’

She snapped back to attention instantly, irritated by the lapse. She had come to level a complaint against this man, not sum up his potential as a lover! As her fingers strayed to check the fastenings on her casual blouse, she cursed the fact that she hadn’t thought to change into one of her Armani suits. Infuriated by the state of the cottage she had reacted without thinking, jumping into her rented Jeep to beard the lion in his den. But an outfit that had been perfectly acceptable in the balmy French countryside had suddenly become an embarrassment to her when she was locked in confrontation with a man like Guy de Villeneuve. It was far too revealing, for one thing, and had obviously sent out the wrong signals. The Count’s responses so far suggested that he found her capricious and provocative, rather than lucid and determined.

Kate’s mind blanked as a pair of perceptive grey eyes levelled a gaze of remorseless enquiry upon her face and a very seductive mouth began to curve in the suspicion of a smile. Then with mercurial speed his glance switched to her naked shoulders and began drifting over the sun-kissed flesh to where a swell of ivory showed with each breath she took. And the flimsy skirt was practically transparent, she remembered, hastily wrapping it around her legs.

The low voice reached her across the desk even though his attention appeared to have returned to the documents in front of him. ‘Careful…it would be a shame to crush such a lovely skirt.’ The compliment might have sounded innocent enough to anyone who didn’t know the Count, but Kate remembered him well enough to realise that his senses were so keenly tuned he missed nothing—nothing at all. And that was a real concern as she had just eased position in response to a rogue shaft of sensation.