Sarah Holland - Master Of Seduction

‘Better not, Miss Baccarat. I stopped believing in romance a long time ago.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said, eyeing him with cat-like suspicion. ‘I had you pegged for an arrogant, cynical swine as soon as I saw you.’

He laughed. ‘Good for you.’ The blue eyes danced with rakish amusement as he looked down his arrogant nose at her. ‘Honest as well as beautiful.’

‘Flattery won’t work with me.’

‘It’s not flattery. You are honest—and beautiful. I didn’t notice it when you first boarded. You just seemed like another pretty little dolly in a red dress. But dollies don’t have serious integrity, and you do appear to have, even if it is a little misguided.’

‘Forgive a mere dolly having the presumption to ask, but how can integrity be misguided?’

‘Because it misses the mark.’

‘And what particular mark might that be?’

His brows arched. ‘The truth.’

Emma smiled through her perfect white teeth. ‘You’re very patronising.’

‘Am I?’

‘I fear so. But don’t let it worry you. I fully intend to patronise you into the ground before this cruise is out.’

He laughed again, eyes smiling into hers as he leant idly beside her, tall and handsome and well aware of it. ‘Well, that’s what you were doing this afternoon. That’s why I broke in and stopped you pussyfooting around. You’re so used to being with people who still live in fairyland that you automatically feed them palliatives instead of saying what you really think.’

‘There’s no point in trying to destroy their illusions, Mr Kinsella. They wouldn’t listen even if you did try.’

‘Well, I won’t argue with that. You have to leave them wandering blindfold through a maze, bumping into things, never recognising them for what they are, labouring under the delusions of love, romance, happyever-after…’ He laughed harshly and shook his dark head. ‘It’s enough to make one horribly cynical.’

She laughed too, green eyes blazing with a strange mixture of dislike, admiration and understanding. ‘But you are horribly cynical.’

‘So I am!’ He laughed then, but as the breeze gently played with his jet-black hair his smile faded and he drawled, ‘It’s very isolating, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

They seemed to have reached a point of mutual agreement without realising it, and Emma didn’t stop to think about what she said next, because it just seemed like a natural progression of the conversation, which she thought was still an argument.

‘I often wonder,’ she said, ‘if I’ll ever be able to be completely honest with another human being, because everyone I meet always tries to persuade me that black is white and white is black.’

‘Like addicts trying to get you hooked on their particular drug.’ He nodded coolly, unsmiling. ‘Religion isn’t the opium of the masses any more—romantic love is. And, as with all drugs, once the haze clears, one cannot tolerate real life. One has a clear-cut choice: take some more of the drug, or face reality.’

Emma shuddered. ‘I prefer reality.’

‘Me too.’ He studied her with a smile. ‘But, as you so rightly said, one despairs of ever finding someone with whom one can be completely honest. It’s as though everybody else is living on another planet. I used to find it depressing, but I’m so used to feeling isolated from the people I love that I——’ He broke off suddenly, staring at her, then gave a slow smile, looking right into her eyes with a frown, and drawled sardonically, ‘What an extraordinary conversation!’

The sea breeze flickered through Emma’s hair as she smiled at him, thinking the same thing.

Patrick gave a cool, wry laugh. ‘What made me tell you all of that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Emma smiled lazily at him. ‘I’m just wondering the same thing myself, about what I told you.’

‘Most embarrassing,’ he drawled with a rakish laugh. ‘Let’s not tell anyone we had this conversation!’

‘Agreed!’

‘Shake on it.’

Their hands moved out, touched, clung.

Suddenly, a peculiar silence descended on them, one of deep intimacy, respect and mutual understanding. Emma’s toes curled. Her hand was in his and she just kept smiling, felt her heart begin to beat faster. He smiled too, eyes glittering down into hers, then, very slowly, he stopped smiling, and as he did she felt her heart thud, her body jump as though energised by some unstoppable force, and her eyes drop like fire to his hard, handsome mouth.

When she looked up she saw that he was staring at her mouth too. His gaze flashed up suddenly to meet hers. Their hands tightened together, and the unexpected violence of sexual attraction reared up between them so powerfully that Emma felt her whole body shake with it.

‘Ahoy there!’ Liz called cheerily from along the deck.

Patrick and Emma leapt away from each other as though burnt—or as though they’d been caught in some illicit, deeply intimate act.

‘Where are all the others?’ Liz tottered towards them in a peacock-blue silk dress, high heels and a cloud of Joy perfume. ‘Don’t tell me Charles and Toby are still in town!’

‘No, they came back to the ship at around six…’

Emma struggled for composure as Patrick talked to his sister, but she was deeply shaken, and so was her body—her heart was pounding much too fast, her pulses racing like wildfire, and the tension suddenly coiling in her stomach was at once frightening and exciting.

Stupid, she said to herself, sipping her drink too quickly, alarmed by the tremor of her hands. We were only talking. No need to get so pathetically romantic about it all of a sudden, as though I genuinely wanted to kiss him.

Of course I don’t want to kiss him, she thought, and stared at his firm, handsome, sexy mouth.

‘So,’ said Liz with a smile, ‘what have you two been talking about up here on your own?’

Emma’s eyes met Patrick’s in a fierce blaze of mutual understanding. She looked away quickly, but not before she had noticed how very handsome his face was, the tough bones beneath the tanned skin strikingly male, revealing a formidable personality in the hard, sensual set of his mouth, the uncompromising line of his jaw, and the sexy droop of those heavy eyelids.

He’s quite superb, she thought with a shock as she heard her voice say with false gaiety, ‘Oh, we were just talking about St Tropez.’

Patrick shot her a quick, unsmiling stare that made her blush. She had lied. Why had she lied? She couldn’t understand it.

‘Good old St Tropez!’ Liz was pouring herself a drink. ‘Patrick, did you tell her how many times you’ve been here?’

‘Yes, I did,’ Patrick lied, and now it was her turn to stare at him. He looked away from her, raking a hand through his jet-black hair. She saw him raise his glass to his mouth, take a drink, then look back at her with a hard, narrowed stare that focused on her eyes, then on her mouth, then moved slowly down her body in a rapid, unsmiling assessment, as though he had only just noticed her body—but how he noticed it now, in every detail, fast, fast, fast, whizzing over the curve of her full breasts, the narrow slenderness of her waist, down past her slim hips and on down over her legs—long, shapely legs—right down to her narrow ankles.

‘I love St Tropez.’ Liz was oblivious to their silent intimacy. ‘It’s such a beautiful place, full of so many…’

Patrick’s eyes met Emma’s suddenly, and the dark, dangerous desire she saw revealed in them made her want to run screaming from this sunlit deck.

‘Oh, look!’ Liz broke off her rhapsody of St Tropez. ‘Here come good old Toby and Charles!’

Emma dragged her hectic gaze from Patrick’s, breathing in shallow, inaudible little gasps as she struggled to come to terms with what she was feeling— and what he was so obviously feeling too. She told herself it couldn’t possibly be real. It must be some kind of mistake or accident. After all, nobody really felt physical attraction so powerfully. That was just something that happened in storybooks, films, romantic novels.