Kitabı oku: «To Become A Bride», sayfa 3

She turned back to him, looking puzzled. ‘I don’t think so…?’ She shook her head, red hair framing the loveliness of her face.

So much perfect beauty, Jonas mused. What a pity her only reason for wanting to see him again was the hope of trying to get him to be less than discreet about his visit to the Summer estate today…! A wasted hope, he was afraid, but it would be interesting to see how she went about it…

‘You have no idea where I live,’ he told her, taking a pen and small notebook from the breast pocket of his jacket, quickly writing down his address before ripping the sheet from the pad and handing it to her. ‘I’ll be ready and waiting at seven-thirty tomorrow evening.’

Danie shoved the piece of paper in the pocket of her leather jacket, obviously annoyed with herself at the oversight. ‘I’ll try to be on time,’ she snapped before getting out of the car and slamming the door shut behind her.

Charles had barely had time to get back in behind the wheel of the Rolls Royce before the black motorbike, Danie bent grimly down over the engine, shot past them with a roar, then rapidly disappeared into the distance.

Jonas relaxed back onto his seat, a smile playing about his lips. Danie Summer’s tongue was as sharp as a knife, and she had an arrogance that bordered on contempt. But she was also incredibly beautiful, and the most intriguing woman Jonas had met for a very long time. If ever!

What a pity her only reason for wanting to see him again was the selfish one of wanting to know why he had been to see her father today.

And what a pity—for Danie!—that she was going to be unsuccessful!

CHAPTER THREE

‘DRESSED to kill’, she believed it was called. Danie studied her reflection in the mirror. The short green sequinned dress clung so lovingly to her body that she could wear only the minimum of clothing beneath it; she had dispensed with a bra altogether, and her panties were of the sheerest silk. Her hair was loose about her shoulders, like a rippling flame—red, with the merest hint of gold as it shimmered down her spine.

She had applied a little more make-up than usual, too—in fact, she didn’t usually bother with it at all!—her lashes long and silky, her eyes outlined with black kohl, giving them a look of wide innocence, her cheekbones aglow with blusher, the deep red gloss on her lips a match for the colour of her hair.

If Jonas Noble didn’t find her appearance attractive, then he simply wasn’t a normal flesh-and-blood man!

She had been so irritated when he’d refused her invitation to dinner yesterday, even more so when he’d then suggested they meet over twenty-four hours later. She had wanted to know what was going on then, not the next day!

But, in retrospect, the delay had been fortuitous. She’d had time to calm down, to collect her thoughts, to think rationally about how she was going to go about finding out the reason for Jonas’s visit to her father yesterday. And the only problem with the plan she had come up with, that she could see, was if she would be able to hold on to her temper long enough to try and seduce the information out of him!

She knew Jonas found her attractive, had seen his admiration for her looks in his face. There was no doubting the fact that he was handsome enough himself for her not to find flirting with him too arduous a task. It was the fact that he also annoyed her intensely that could pose a problem!

Besides, finding her physically attractive and actually being attracted to her as a person were two entirely different things—and Jonas had given every indication that he found her as irritating as she found him!

Not exactly a recipe for success, she acknowledged ruefully. Oh, well, she would just have to set about changing his opinion of her…

If she could have done this any other way, then she would have. She had gone back to the estate earlier today intending to talk with her father, only to find that he and Audrey had driven up to Scotland in preparation for a deal he was to complete there early tomorrow. Andie had also gone—back to her apartment in town, Danie assumed. Which was no help at all; Danie still had no intention of worrying either of her sisters with this until she was more sure of her facts.

Jonas Noble alone, it seemed, was the only person available to give her them…

Time to go, she decided firmly, picking up her small evening bag before throwing a light black cashmere wrap about her shoulders; she didn’t want to add tardiness to the list of faults Jonas had no doubt already found in her!

The address he had given her was in Mayfair. But she had expected to find Jonas owned an apartment, and the tall imposing three-storey house came as something of a surprise to Danie. Obviously, whichever field of medicine Jonas Noble had chosen to go into, it was very lucrative!

Jonas looked absolutely stunning in a black dinner suit and snowy white shirt, Danie discovered a few minutes later, when he opened the door to her ring on the doorbell!

The suit was obviously tailored to his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs, the white of the shirt showing that he had a healthy tan. But it was his face, no longer looking fatigued, that took Danie’s breath away, the hard planes once again softened by the warmth of his deep brown eyes.

Perhaps seducing this man wasn’t going to be so easy after all—for her own peace of mind; she might actually find herself genuinely attracted to him!

‘Danie Summer, I presume?’ he drawled, obviously mocking the change in her appearance from her workman-like garb of yesterday.

Steady, Danie, she warned herself as she instantly felt a flash of anger at his derision. ‘Jonas Noble, I presume?’ she returned with dry sarcasm at the change in his own appearance.

He smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners with genuine amusement. ‘You’re exactly as I remembered you, Danie!’

She wished she could say the same! But now that he was no longer exhausted by lack of sleep, showered and decked out in his own finery, relaxed with the prospect of the evening ahead of them, Jonas Noble was dangerously attractive!

She gave a nod of her head. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she returned—knowing it had been no such thing; Jonas’s remark was obviously referring to the sharpness of her tongue. Then she had better not disappoint him! ‘Are we going to stand here on the doorstep all evening, or are you ready to leave?’

His grin deepened. ‘I wonder if you would like to come inside for a drink before going to the restaurant?’

She was disconcerted enough by the change in his appearance and demeanour without finding herself alone in this beautiful house with him. She definitely would feel more comfortable going straight to the restaurant. Although she couldn’t help feeling an inner curiosity about his bachelor home…

‘Perhaps we could come back for coffee after our meal?’ she suggested as a compromise—if she hadn’t managed to wheedle the information she wanted from him during the meal, perhaps she would stand more chance in the intimacy of his home…

‘Perhaps we could,’ Jonas agreed, those brown eyes seeming full of laughter now.

At her expense, Danie guessed. Could she help it if this particular man brought out every defence she possessed? Besides, he was intelligent enough to realise that her about-face yesterday had to have a motive of its own!

Which didn’t bother her in the least, Danie mused on the drive to the restaurant. She would think him conceited in the extreme if he hadn’t put two and two together and come up with the right answer. But he was still here, accompanying her to dinner, and that was all that mattered.

‘Danie!’ Marco, the Italian-born, but brought-up-in-England, owner of the restaurant greeted warmly as she entered at Jonas’s side. ‘It’s so good to see you again. And you too, Mr Noble.’ He turned to Jonas. ‘I didn’t realise the two of you knew each other,’ he added speculatively.

‘We don’t,’ Jonas said, shaking the other man’s hand. ‘Yet,’ he amended with an enigmatic glance at Danie.

Danie forced the smile to remain on her lips, determined Jonas shouldn’t see that his remark had caused her any alarm. Even if it had!

She had no intention of getting to know Jonas Noble, tonight or any other night, and his own professionalism should have told him that to do so would be very indiscreet. She totally dismissed the idea that she was behaving less than fairly herself. She wasn’t the doctor in attendance to a member of her family, Jonas was, and if he didn’t feel it was unprofessional to become intimately involved with her, then perhaps he damn well ought to!

‘You are looking as beautiful as ever, Danie—’

‘Cut the flattery, Marco,’ she told the restaurateur shortly. ‘I’ve had very little to eat today, and I’m starving!’ she continued indelicately.

‘You heard the lady, Marco,’ Jonas drawled, taking a light hold of her elbow. ‘I have a feeling Danie is a woman who may turn violent if she isn’t fed! What do you think?’ he bent to murmur softly in Danie’s ear, as they followed a smiling Marco through the noisily crowded restaurant to their table.

She arched dark brows as she turned to look at him from beneath her lashes. ‘I’ve been wondering for years why I seem to have this impatience with the rest of humanity—and you’ve solved the riddle for me only a short time into our acquaintance!’ she said with a sweetly insincere smile.

Jonas laughed huskily. ‘You only “seem” to have impatience, Danie…?’ he returned pointedly.

She shrugged, moving to sit down as he held back her chair for her. ‘Sometimes I’m merely baffled by their lack of imagination,’ she dismissed airily.

Jonas looked admiringly at her across the width of their window table once Marco had left them to peruse the menu. ‘And have you always had an answer for everything?’ he finally said.

‘According to my mother my first word wasn’t “Daddy”, it was “no”!’ she told him.

A smile played about his lips now as he looked at her. ‘I can believe that.’ He nodded slowly. ‘What was she like?’

Danie blinked her bafflement at this sudden change of subject. ‘Who?’

‘Your mother.’ Jonas sobered. ‘She must have been a pretty incredible woman to have entranced a man like Rome. And she produced some incredibly beautiful daughters, too,’ he opined admiringly.

‘Flattery, Jonas?’ Danie taunted softly.

‘Not at all,’ he returned. ‘Physical beauty is all too easy to see.’

‘As opposed to inner beauty…?’ Danie challenged.

‘That’s sometimes a little more difficult to find,’ he acknowledged hardly.

This was all becoming a little too serious for what Danie had in mind for the evening. ‘My mother was one of the lucky ones; she had inner as well as outer beauty,’ she explained at Jonas’s questioning look. ‘She was tiny, with deep auburn hair that could look almost black in some lights, and then the fiery red of my own in sunlight. She had beautifully tiny features, almost like a doll,’ Danie remembered gruffly. ‘But it wasn’t her looks that drew people to her.’ She shook her head. ‘She was one of those people who was possessed of the ability to make others happy, to only see the positive rather than the negative in people. In fact,’ she added briskly, ‘my mother was the complete opposite of me!’

Instead of coming back with an affirmative comment, Jonas continued to look at her for several long, timeless seconds. ‘You still miss her,’ he finally murmured gently.

Danie flinched, a shutter coming down over her emotions. She had been seventeen when her mother had died, had spent all of those years secure in her mother’s love, within the warm glow of her mother’s world of sunshine and laughter; of course she still missed her! But it wasn’t something she intended discussing with Jonas!

‘I would be singularly lacking in emotion if I didn’t,’ she answered scathingly.

Jonas nodded. ‘My own mother brought my two sisters and myself up virtually alone after my father died when I was very young.’

Danie didn’t want to know that, either, didn’t want to know anything about his private life—it only succeeded in making Jonas seem more and more like a person in his own right. And that would never do!

‘Life can be a bitch, can’t it?’ She was deliberately flip-pant. ‘What do you feel like eating?’ She changed the subject, lifting her own menu up in front of her face.

She was more shaken than she cared to admit by the talk of their respective mothers. She had loved her mother with an innocent completeness, and she had heard Jonas’s admiration for his own mother in his one brief comment before Danie had turned to the menu so rudely.

But her own feelings about the cruel loss of her mother were other things that were locked away, only to be looked at when she was alone; she simply couldn’t share them with a man she barely knew…

‘Pasta, and then garlic prawns, I think,’ Jonas decided before placing the menu to one side. ‘If that’s okay with you?’ He quirked dark brows. ‘There’s nothing worse than having someone breathing garlic all over you when you haven’t eaten the stuff yourself,’ he explained at her questioning look.

Danie frowned. She had intended being friendly towards him—even if she hadn’t quite managed it so far!—in order to ask him the questions she wanted answers to, but she certainly hadn’t intended getting close enough for him to breathe all over her!

‘Go ahead,’ she answered casually. ‘I was going to have the garlic mushrooms, anyway.’ She made it obvious she certainly hadn’t intended asking his permission before eating garlic!

His brown eyes gleamed with laughter as Jonas easily read her mutinous thoughts. ‘And a red wine to go with it—if that’s okay with you?’ he enquired.

‘Fine.’ She put aside her own menu. ‘As I’m driving I’ll only be having one glass, anyway.’

‘We can always get a taxi back to my house,’ Jonas pointed out.

Which then posed the question; how would she get home from there…?

‘I rarely drink, anyway,’ she told him tautly, wondering if this man wasn’t perhaps taking too much for granted by her invitation, after all…! ‘And I prefer it when other people don’t, either,’ she added before he could comment. ‘I find it tends to make people rather silly, most unlike their normal selves.’

Jonas leant towards her a little. ‘Then I’m glad I don’t drink alcohol in great quantities, either!’

Danie didn’t see why he should be glad; so far he hadn’t given any indication he cared one way or the other whether she approved of him or not.

‘Please don’t deny yourself the pleasure on my account,’ she told him frostily.

‘I wasn’t about to,’ he assured her before turning to order a bottle of the red wine from the waiter who had been hovering beside their table for some minutes.

Luckily the ordering of their food took some time too—time enough for the subject of Jonas’s pleasure to be forgotten! She could have phrased that a little better, Danie berated herself. Although the subject of alcohol did give her another opening…

‘I don’t suppose it’s very sensible, in your profession, to ever have too much to drink,’ she voiced casually, although her gaze was narrowed sharply as she watched Jonas across the table. ‘You must be constantly on call to your patients?’

Jonas appeared unfazed. ‘Even doctors have some time off,’ he replied.

Deliberately so, Danie was sure. ‘And is tonight one of those occasions?’ She made her tone deliberately light; they were at least heading in the right direction in their conversation now!

His mouth twisted ruefully. ‘Unfortunately, I’m not just a doctor, Danie, I’m a consultant. I deal mainly with private patients, with fees to match. Those patients expect a personal service for those fees.’

‘That sounds fair enough,’ Danie agreed, anticipation beginning to well up inside her. ‘Are you—?’

‘Jonas!’ a pleased female voice cried out in recognition.

The woman appeared to have been on her way past their table when she spotted Jonas. She was a tall, willowy blonde, her beautiful face alight with pleasure, blue eyes glowing warmly.

Jonas stood up as he recognised the other woman, the smile on his own face as warm. ‘Grace!’ He bent and kissed her. ‘You’re looking extremely well,’ he told her approvingly.

The woman, Grace, looked better than ‘extremely well’, Danie thought irritably; she was absolutely stunningly beautiful, and her long straight hair shone like spun gold. From the familiar way Jonas had just greeted her, the two of them had—or still did—know each other ‘extremely well’!

Wonderful. Danie had come out this evening with the purpose of wheedling information out of Jonas Noble concerning her father, and almost within minutes of their arrival it appeared they had been interrupted by a woman who obviously knew Jonas on more than a friendly basis!

It was bad enough that it was proving difficult to pin Jonas down to the conversation she really wanted to have with him, without having the woman—or one of them!—in his life interrupting them too!

Jonas’s comment concerning the way Grace looked had been completely genuine, but as he turned and saw the disgusted expression on Danie Summer’s face he knew that she had completely misconstrued the situation.

He gave a slight shake of his head, his mouth thinning at the accusation he could read in Danie’s eyes. His annoyance at that accusing look wasn’t helped by the fact that ordinarily he would have felt no compunction about explaining his acquaintance with Grace. But, in the present circumstances, he simply couldn’t do that…

‘Danie Summer, this is Grace Cowley,’ he introduced stiffly. ‘Danie is a friend of mine, Grace,’ he explained, knowing Danie—sharply astute Danie!—wouldn’t fail to pick up the fact that he hadn’t said what part Grace played in his life.

Because he had no intention of explaining that to Danie. She was bright and intelligent, and, once an explanation was given as to how he had first become acquainted professionally with Grace, Danie would put two and two together and come up with the correct answer of four! He had to remember that a patient’s privacy, albeit that of a member of Danie’s family, was at stake here…

‘How lovely,’ Grace greeted Danie with warm sincerity. ‘It’s way past time some lucky woman snapped this gorgeous man up and made a family man out of him!’ The last was accompanied with a merry look in Jonas’s direction.

He smiled in appreciation of the suggestion, knowing his bachelorhood was considered a challenge by the majority of women in his acquaintance; the married ones tried to set him up with single female friends of theirs, and the single ones thought he was fair game.

‘I’ll marry when I’m good and ready,’ he said firmly. ‘How are Gerald and the family?’ he went on, knowing by her tense expression that Danie was listening avidly to every word of this conversation. Probably hoping to pick up some snippet of information on him that she could use once they were alone together again!

‘Gerald is sitting over there.’ Grace turned and waved across the restaurant at her husband. ‘And the twins are doing marvellously. Growing fast, of course,’ she added wistfully. ‘You must come and see us all some time,’ Grace encouraged determinedly.

‘I’ll do that,’ he returned noncommittally. ‘Now, we really mustn’t keep you from Gerald any longer…’

Grace gave a throatily appreciative laugh. ‘I can take the hint that the two of you want to be alone!’ She reached up and kissed Jonas on the cheek. ‘Nice to have met you, Danie.’ She smiled. ‘And remember, Jonas, I love weddings.’ At that, Grace wended her way back to the table where her husband waited.

Jonas sat down, deliberately avoiding looking at Danie, although he could feel her scathing glance on him. She had obviously drawn her own conclusions about his relationship with Grace, regardless of her husband and children.

Damn it, he wasn’t going to disabuse Danie of those assumptions! Why should he? Besides, he simply couldn’t, not without breaching a professional confidence…

Danie’s mouth pursed at his continued silence. ‘What an absolutely beautiful woman,’ she commented.

‘Absolutely,’ he answered tersely.

‘I—’

‘Our first course appears to be arriving,’ Jonas interrupted thankfully, sitting back to let the waiter put their respective plates in front of them.

Danie looked irritated by the interruption, and picked listlessly at her food, clearly having little interest in what she ate.

In contrast Jonas enjoyed every mouthful of his own starter with apparent relish. He hadn’t been needed at the clinic today, giving him a chance to catch up on chores that had necessarily to be put off until the weekend, and as a consequence he had eaten very little all day.

‘Obviously being in the company of a beautiful woman gives you an appetite,’ Danie suddenly bit out tartly. ‘I wasn’t referring to me!’ she exclaimed as he raised his eyebrows.

He glanced across the restaurant. ‘Grace is beautiful, isn’t she?’ he acknowledged clinically. ‘She’s also very happily married.’

Danie looked sceptical. ‘But obviously that wasn’t always the case.’

Jonas sighed. ‘It has been during our acquaintance. Look, Danie—’

‘Hey, it’s none of my business.’ She made an obvious effort to dismiss it lightly. ‘What happens in your private life is your own affair—’

‘This dinner is taking place in my private life,’ he interrupted.

‘Not exactly.’ Danie gave a laugh. ‘We met in your professional life.’

‘The two are completely separate as far as I’m concerned,’ Jonas told her.

‘Are you telling me the two never overlap?’ Danie looked at him with assessing eyes.

‘Never,’ Jonas answered firmly.

She was far from happy at his reply, he could see. But he couldn’t help that. It was the truth; he never mixed his professional life with his private one. He had agreed to have dinner this evening with Danie Summer, not with the relation of his patient, and the sooner Danie accepted that the better!

He sat forward in his seat, reaching across the table to touch her hand where she distractedly crumbled her bread roll on the plate at her side, his clasp tightening on hers as she tried to remove her hand from his. ‘I’m having dinner with you, Danie, not your family,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Can we just leave it at that?’

‘But—’

‘Who knows?’ he said teasingly. ‘If we forget all about how we met yesterday, you may just find you start to enjoy yourself!’

From the look on her face—frustration mingled with anger—there didn’t look as if there was too much chance of that!

Which was a pity. Because he was actually starting to enjoy this verbal fencing-match with Danie Summer. Not only was she an amazingly beautiful woman herself, but, once you got past that brittle shell, she was also bright and intelligent.

A highly lethal combination as far as he was concerned, Jonas was quickly discovering!