Sarah Holland - An Obsessive Love

‘And you.’ Dolly shook his hand, smiling openly. ‘Hey—are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a beer? Bobby left loads round here. He and the boys came round to watch the football.’

Dominic laughed, eyes moving admiringly over her figure. ‘You have a lot of boyfriends, then?’

‘They’re boys and they’re friends.’ Dolly laughed. ‘But that’s about it. So what’ll it be—whisky or beer?’

‘Whisky will be fine.’ He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans, shot a sidelong glance at Natasha’s tight, angry face. ‘I’ve never met two such different women sharing a flat together. Does it work well?’

‘Oh, wonderfully well.’ Dolly unearthed a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label from under a pile of magazines.

‘But you’re so bright and bubbly,’ drawled Dominic, while Natasha stood there, hating him, ‘and Natasha is so cool and mysterious.’

‘You called me tempestuous the other day,’ Natasha snapped, eyes flashing passionate, jealous green. ‘Make up your mind!’

He looked at her, a sardonic smile on his mouth. ‘Temper, temper…’ he said softly, mockingly, and his smile deepened as he watched the hot, betraying colour rush up her face.

‘Here we are!’ Dolly handed him the bottle of Johnnie Walker and a glass. ‘Not much left, I’m afraid.’

‘Thanks.’ His eyes roved over her with admiration again. ‘Where do you work, Dolly, and who—?’

‘Dolly is going out shortly,’ Natasha cut in tightly, ‘and we mustn’t keep her. She has to be ready when her boyfriend arrives.’

‘She looks stunningly ready to me,’ drawled Dominic, eyes roving with even more blatant sexual admiration over her.

‘Would you please come back to the dining-room with me, Mr Thorne?’ Natasha snapped. ‘I believe we have a lot to discuss!’

Turning on her heel, she strode angrily along the hallway, hearing Dominic say an amused goodbye to Dolly before following her, catching up with her easily on those long, muscular legs of his.

As soon as he entered the dining-room, Natasha closed the door behind him and walked elegantly to the table, hating him for flirting with Dolly and tempting her to make such a fool of herself with her pathetic, absurd and completely unjustified jealousy.

‘You said my visa had arrived…?’ Her voice was icy.

‘Yes, it has.’ He moved to the table too and sat down opposite her, watching her from underneath those heavy, Slavic eyelids.

Natasha felt suddenly uncomfortable. The gleam in those steel-blue eyes sent her pulses racing and her stomach somersaulting. She needed to know what he was thinking.

Irritably, she said, ‘Why are you just staring at me like that?’

‘Because I’m intrigued by your behaviour,’ he said softly, arching black brows. ‘First you kiss me passionately, then you reject me with icy hostility—and then you seethe with jealousy when I flirt with your flatmate.’

Scarlet colour suffused her cheeks. ‘I can assure you I did not feel remotely jealous!’

‘Hmm.’ His smile was sardonic. He toyed briefly with the empty glass in front of him, studied the whisky bottle, but did not pour himself any. Then he looked back at her, and there was a glint of mockery in his blue eyes that made her temper flare.

‘I wasn’t jealous!’

‘Did I contradict you?’

‘No.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘But I noticed a look in your eyes that made me think you——’

‘And you notice a lot about me, don’t you?’

She fell silent, lashes flickering.

‘I mean,’ he drawled lazily, ‘for a woman who feels nothing for me and doesn’t want to get involved.’

At once she looked away, heart thudding fast, realising for the first time just how clever, how shrewd, how very perceptive this man was.

‘You’re a mass of contradictions, aren’t you?’ He was watching her with those steel-blue eyes. ‘That icy, polished façade hides a very tempestuous woman. So far, I’ve seen you show blazing fury, intense passion, seething jealousy—and I’ve even seen you burst into tears. Perhaps it’ss good that you don’t want to get involved with me. If you did, I——’

‘But I don’t want to get involved with you.’ Her strange, intense green eyes flashed up with glittering hostility at him. ‘I don’t want to get involved with anyone.’

‘Apparently not,’ he murmured, watching her intently. ‘Certainly, no man at the office managed to get anywhere with you. And you don’t have a boyfriend, do you? I know, because I had you checked out, remember, and there was no mention of any man in London.’

Natasha looked at the polished surface of the table, rigid with tension, hating him for being so damned clever, afraid of where he was leading with this line of thought.

‘You’ve lived in London for four years, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said tightly.

‘And no man, in all that time?’ He clicked his tongue softly, shook his dark head, smiling like a Siberian tiger ready to pounce. ‘How do you cope with all that emotional energy? You must be like a pressure-cooker, getting ready to explode.’

She sat there silently hating him and saying nothing.

Dominic watched her, waiting for an answer.

The clock ticked softly on the mahogany mantelpiece.

‘But this is so exciting!’ Dominic said softly, eyes deadly. ‘I do love mysteries, and I feel sure you’re one of the biggest mysteries I’ve ever met. I simply must try to unravel you.’

Natasha shot him a look of ill-concealed hatred.

‘It must be something to do with your past,’ he murmured, eyes narrowing in thought. ‘But it can’t be here in London, or my agents would have found it. Therefore, it must be before you came to London. QED.’

‘Will you just go away and mind your own business?’ she said with sudden fierce dislike, because he was much too clever to be allowed to run amok through her past with those damned agents of his.

‘I was right, then,’ he said sardonically, smiling. ‘And it must be something to do with a man, or you wouldn’t now be so determined to avoid them at all costs.’

‘Will you just mind your own——?’

‘So what exactly happened to make you shy away from men? Obviously, there are a number of things that could have caused it. So let’s tick them off. After all, you know what Sherlock Holmes maintained: eliminate the impossible, and whatever you are left with, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. So let’s start with the possibility of some kind of sexual attack.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

‘Well, I did consider sexual violence when I first met you, but not for very long because you’re the one who kissed me—and very passionately, too.’

Her eyes flared. ‘You know why I kissed you!’

‘Your motivation is not under the microscope, sweetie. Let’s just stick to the point.’

‘The point is that I want you to go!’

‘And the point is that somebody in the past—some man—inflicted some kind of damage on you which makes you avoid getting involved. It can’t have been sexual damage, because sex clearly isn’t the barrier.’

‘Will you stop this?’ she demanded fiercely, as fear rose in her.

‘No, it must be emotional, because that’s what you’re really afraid of, isn’t it? You’re afraid of getting emotionally involved with a man, any man, doesn’t matter——’

‘I asked you to stop!’

‘And if that’s the case, then it must be a man in your home town in Kent who——’

‘Stop it!’

‘A man in Kent who hurt you so badly that——’

‘Shut up!’ Natasha shouted hoarsely and got to her feet with such sudden violence that her chair toppled backwards, crashing into a glass cabinet.