Elizabeth Oldfield - Dark Victory

‘Aarrgh!’ Cheska yelped, as in a flurry of windmilling arms, skidding legs and spiralling body she slithered out from the weeping willow, down the bank of the pool and into the dark green water.

Above her, Lawson Giordano’s head whipped round and he stared. He clambered to his feet. ‘Francesca Rider?’ he said, in stunned disbelief. For a moment or two he gawked down at her, and then he started to laugh.

Pink-faced and with untidy clouds of brown hair tumbling over her eyes, Cheska glared. A dry spring and summer had reduced the level of the pond, so the water barely reached her thighs and the legs of her black cycling shorts. She had also, by some miracle, managed to remain upright. And she was unhurt. She swept back her hair. OK, OK, she thought tetchily, her impromptu descent could be construed as somewhat comic, but she resented providing amusement for a man who had once savagely condemned her and then proceeded to exploit her for his own ends. Exploit her ruthlessly.

Cheska folded her arms across her chest. ‘It isn’t funny, she declared, her voice frigid.

Although it required an effort and a moment or two, Lawson Giordano managed to clamp down on his laughter—though a crooked grin annoyingly remained.

‘You think not?’ he said.

‘I do!’ Cheska snapped. ‘And it’s your fault that I fell.’

‘Mine?’

She glowered up at him. ‘I didn’t expect anyone to be here, and—and you startled me.’

Dark brown eyes made a swift but expert appraisal of her slim figure in the Lycra shorts and matching cut-away top.

‘You thought I might be a lust-crazed rapist, scouring the fields for scantily dressed maidens and about to pounce?’ Lawson Giordano suggested.

Cheska’s glower intensified. She had not considered herself scantily dressed—until he had mentioned it. But now she felt like a fugitive from some Las Vegas strip show!

‘You were looking at the house and I thought you might be what’s commonly called “casing the joint”,’ she retorted, and realised he was staring.

Cheska flushed. In folding her arms, she had pushed up the high breasts which sprang from her narrow body and now the honeyed curves seemed in imminent danger of spilling from her low-cut neckline. Hastily dropping her arms, she waded two or three steps across the muddy floor of the pool to the side, but when she reached it she frowned. The bank, which was covered with ferns and stones and yellow wands of loosestrife, was almost vertical. How did she climb up it?

Looming above, Lawson Giordano made a tall silhouette against the dazzle of the morning light. ‘May I give you a hand?’ he offered, in the low, smoky voice which she remembered so well.

When he held down a golden-skinned arm covered with a floss of black hair, Cheska eyed it warily. She did not want to touch him. She did not want to have any physical contact with the man. No, thanks. Never again.

‘I can manage on my own, thank you,’ she informed him, with the grand hauteur of a duchess.

Lawson shook his head. ‘You can’t,’ he said.

After undertaking a more detailed scrutiny of the bank, Cheska gave a silent scream. While she was loath to admit it, he seemed to be right. Her teeth ground together. She not only balked at touching him, she also objected to Lawson Giordano’s taking control of the situation—as he had always been so magnificently in control of situations before. But what was the alternative? She was damned if she would scramble up to him on her hands and knees.

Cheska forced a grit-eating smile. ‘I can’t’ she agreed, and clasped the large hand which he had continued to hold down.

It would serve him right if, instead of him pulling her out, she pulled him in, Cheska reflected, as her rescuer planted his long legs apart and prepared to haul. A dipping would be no more than he deserved and apt punishment, in view of his laughter, and his cruel manipulation of her in the past. Indeed, nothing would give her greater satisfaction than to manipulate him, by jerking at his hand so that he hurtled past her down the bank, to splash headlong into the water. And if he should sink for the regulation three times—tough luck! She had no badges for life-saving.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Lawson warned.

Cheska was looking at him in astonishment, wondering if she had a plate glass forehead, when with one powerful pull he yanked her out of the water, up the ferny slope and on to the side. Her legs skitter-skattered like pistons until—wham!— she thudded up against the firm-muscled wall of his chest.

Oh!’ she gasped.

In reflex, she clutched at his shoulders, and in reflex his arms went around her waist. Breathing hard, they stood together, body pressed against body, eyes gazing into eyes.

‘You always were a bloody-minded, uncooperative little bitch, and you haven’t changed,’ Lawson said roughly, then his dark head came down, blotting out the sun, and he kissed her.

Taken by surprise, Cheska opened her mouth to protest. That was her first mistake, for, as her lips parted, his tongue thrust between them, a predatory invader. Her second mistake was not to push him away. But how could she, when he had begun a seductive exploration of her mouth, when he was tasting her—and she was tasting him? A clean, male, intoxicating taste which revived all kinds of memories. As the kiss deepened, Cheska’s head started to spin and her knees seemed to buckle. She clung tighter to his shoulders; it was vital if she was to remain upright. But clinging to him had been her third mistake, she realised, for when Lawson drew back a minute or two later he was smiling, a confident, amused, knowing smile.

‘I—I have changed,’ Cheska stammered, needing to break the spell which he seemed to have cast, desperate to stifle the frenetic thump-thump of her heart. Letting go of his shoulders, she placed her arms stiffly down by her sides. ‘I have,’ she repeated, her voice firmer this time.

A brow lifted. ‘You’re no longer susceptible?’

‘Susceptible?’ she queried. To what?’

Lawson traced the tip of a tapered index finger slowly across her bare midriff, leaving a trail of heat tingling in its wake.

‘Me.’

Cheska took a brisk step in retreat. ‘No way,’ she said tartly.

‘That wasn’t the impression I received a moment ago.’

Her fingers curled into balls, their nails biting into her palms. She was furious with herself for having reacted so unthinkingly, so naively—and furious with him for daring to comment on it. It had seemed odd that Lawson Giordano should kiss her, but now she knew why. He had been testing her. He had been checking whether the sexual fire which he had once ignited with such casual ease could still be coaxed into flame. And she had obligingly boosted his male ego by providing the answer!

‘You always were an arrogant bastard and you haven’t changed,’ Cheska declared, in a sharp reworking of his earlier condemnation of her.

At the back of her mind, it registered that he had not changed physically, either. His hair was still black and wavy, worn a mite too long for fashion and curling over his shirt collar. His eyes continued to be heavy-lidded and a lustrous yellow-flecked brown. His mouth remained…well, beautiful. The granite-cut upper lip hinted at imperiousness, the lower was full and sensual. Cheska felt an irritating and totally unwelcome frisson. Five years ago, his dark Latin looks and muscular physique had meant that Lawson Giordano had been almost insolently masculine. He still was.

‘You’re saying you’re not susceptible?’ he drawled.

‘I’m saying that the only reason you weren’t kicked on the shins just now, or kneed in the groin,’ she added, with a razor of a smile, ‘was because you took me unawares.’