AMANDA BROWNING - Trail Of Love

‘What do you want?’ she repeated hardily, raising her head in time to catch him taking a long, leisurely perusal of her from head to toe. It was as if he had actually touched her physically. As her nerves jolted into vibrant life, a tiny betraying gasp left her lips.

Which brought his eyes to them in an instant. ‘Some coffee would be nice. I’ve been waiting for hours.’

It was stunning the way her lips tingled as if he had stroked them. Her immediate response was to fly off the handle. ‘I’m not your servant! And I’m not responsible for you wasting your time on my doorstep!’ she very nearly shouted, chest heaving.

Ben Radford ambled a step closer. ‘You have a very short fuse, Kay Napier, and something tells me Lance isn’t the man to deal with it.’

‘Your opinion leaves me cold. And stop talking about Lance that way. I like him just the way he is!’

‘Do you really? Wouldn’t you rather he showed some hot male blood? Showed he wanted you?’ he probed on regardless.

Her hands clenched into tight fists. ‘I know he wants me. He doesn’t have to prove it all the time.’

He shook his head. ‘He’s no match for you. You’re fire and he’s ice. You’ll scare the life out of him, so that he’ll never satisfy you. In the end you’ll emasculate him and he’ll hate you for it,’ he added derisively, making her gasp in indignation.

‘You’re loathsome!’

He backed off thoughtfully, eyes piercing. ‘Why so outraged? Do you think you want a nice, cold, sexless little marriage?’

That he should have discovered so easily the reason for her own sudden ambivalence made the need to hide it vitally important. Regaining control, she clasped her hands together. ‘You have no right to say those things to me. How I choose to live my life is my affair,’ she said with stolid dignity.

To her relieved surprise that brought him up short and he dragged a hand through his hair, a sign that he wasn’t so cool himself. ‘You’re right. That wasn’t why I came here. You have the uncanny knack of throwing me off my stride.’ His tone said he didn’t like that at all.

‘Totally unintended, I assure you,’ Kay snapped, and he laughed, albeit grimly.

‘Now that I do believe!’

They faced each other across the room, as if battle lines had been drawn up.

‘I thought you were intelligent enough to heed my warning not to contact Charles again.’

At least here, her ground was relatively firm. ‘For your information, he telephoned me, not the other way around,’ she pointed out.

He wasn’t impressed. ‘As I told you he would. I also, if you recall, told you not to see him,’ he added unnecessarily as far as Kay was concerned. She remembered everything about that day far too clearly for comfort.

Instinctively she defended herself. ‘I saw no harm in it.’

Ben Radford laughed drily, as if he had just won a bet with himself. ‘Why should you? As far as you were concerned you had nothing to lose and everything to gain.’

He was nothing if not persistent. ‘Except you’re deliberately missing the point. I’m not after gain of any sort.’

‘So you say,’ he agreed sceptically, and Kay saw red again.

‘I’m not in the habit of lying, or of having my veracity called into question, Mr Radford. Did you ask Sir Charles why he wanted to see me?’ she challenged, and watched his lips thin.

‘He told me to mind my own business,’ he said shortly, and Kay could no more stop herself from grinning than she could live without breathing.

‘And you didn’t like that, did you?’ she murmured with a certain amount of satisfied glee. It was nice to know he didn’t get his own way all the time.

His fascinating blue eyes narrowed to mere slits. ‘You’re a dangerous woman, Kay Napier,’ he pronounced tautly, and her eyes widened.

She was dangerous? The only one posing a threat was him, and not along the lines he meant, either. A line of reasoning she must keep him from at all costs. ‘Oh, come on! This is ridiculous. You’re tilting at windmills!’ she gibed, and couldn’t withhold a shiver at the look he gave her.

‘I’m glad you find it amusing. Perhaps you’ll also find it amusing to be out of a job,’ he drawled icily.

Kay froze, all humour dying rapidly. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply.

Having caught her attention, he didn’t leave her dangling for long. ‘It just so happens that Matthew Winterbourne and my father were in the army together. A word in his ear and I doubt that you’d be employed there for very much longer. No financial institution would want their name connected with that of an attempted extortionist.’

Without looking in the mirror, Kay knew her colour had vanished. ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘Try me and see. All you have to do is continue to defy me.’

It was unbelievable, and she absolutely refused to kowtow. ‘Of all the hypocrites! I don’t know how you have the nerve! What you’re threatening is as bad as what you’re accusing me of!’

Ben Radford remained unperturbed. ‘I did warn you you wouldn’t like it if you crossed me.’

She slapped a hand helplessly against her thigh. ‘I don’t believe this! I’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing,’ she denied with total disbelief. She knew he could do what he said, or he wouldn’t have said it, and the implications this would have on her life. The reverberations of such a dismissal would spread like ripples on a pond. It was blatant manipulation and she despised him for it. ‘I won’t let you do this. I won’t let you run my life because of your own misconceptions. I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep on saying it. I’ve done nothing wrong.’

She was batting her head against a brick wall, for his expression didn’t soften one iota. ‘Obviously we see things differently. However, I’m hoping that from today we can begin to see eye to eye. All you have to do is sign this document, agreeing never to see Charles again, and renouncing all claim to being Kimberley Endacott.’ From his shirt pocket he produced a folded sheet of paper which he held out to her.

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