Kitabı oku: «Purchased For Revenge», sayfa 3

CHAPTER THREE

ALONG the line of the sea’s edge, to the south, there was still the glimmer of light. Eve stood at the yacht’s rail in the cooling air, looking out to sea, not wanting to see the garish brightness of the shore.

Not wanting to think about the ordeal ahead.

Alexei Constantin was coming to dine with her father. And she would have to do her duty as her father’s hostess, be gracious and polite, ensure that the conversation flowed smoothly, that the staff performed to the standard her father required, ensure the evening went well.

How could the evening go well? How could it be anything other than a horrible nightmarish ordeal?

Her hands tightened over the rail. She had spent the previous night tossing and turning in bed, bitter and hopeless and angry with herself—and all day she had dreaded the coming dinner. How could she cope with seeing again the man she had made such a fool of herself over? Engaging in some idealised moonlit tryst, a fleeting kiss, then making her swift flight from the scene of her stupidity? The man who had turned out to be the predator slowly circling her father? A man who, whether he was Alexei Constantin or not, saw nothing wrong in dancing with her one moment, then picking up a prostitute in the space of a handful of minutes and taking her off for some expensive, professionally serviced sex?

But she was going to have to cope with it, she knew. If she tried to pretend she was feeling ill, the repercussions from her father would be severe. Financially punitive. It was the way he controlled her. Threatening to hold back money.

She could not risk that. Not when her father’s money was so desperately needed. And for that reason she steeled herself for the ordeal ahead. Her mother had taught her well, because it was how she got through her own life. Her mother’s stringent drilling would get her through the evening.

As for her frail, pathetic fantasy—that was dead. Quite dead.

What was the saying in English? thought Alexei, as he started to eat the elaborately prepared food placed in front of him. Take a long spoon when you sup with the devil?

Well, he was supping with the devil tonight, all right. His own personal devil.

But as of tomorrow morning, when the news of AC International’s Australian acquisition was made official—giving the coup de grâce to Hawkwood’s failing fight to remain independent—his devil would finally be exorcised.

The years of calculating, planning, executing, would be over.

Justice would finally be served on Giles Hawkwood.

Oh, it would not be the killing blow, he knew, but he would not need to finish him off. Others would do that. Enemies even more ruthless than he. Serving Hawkwood with the justice he so thoroughly deserved.

But now, while the man did not yet realise his time was up, Alexei could watch him—coldly and silently—behaving as if there were still time to escape, time to do a face-saving deal that would allow him to emerge from this takeover bid with advantage.

Not that he was raising the subject now. No. Now, as Giles Hawkwood entertained his nemesis, the subject was quite different. It was art. The topic had been picked by Eve Hawkwood.

Alexei rested veiled eyes on her, forcing himself to do so. He wished to God she were not here. Her presence was a distraction, diluting and disturbing his focus on Hawkwood’s coming annihilation. Though he’d known she would be at this travesty of a dinner, the reality of seeing her again was worse than he had expected. In the last twenty-four hours he’d ruthlessly refused to let himself think about her.

Yet the first sight of her as he’d walked into the stateroom had made a mockery of his resolution. It had been like a punch to the solar plexus.

It still was. But now he was slamming down hard on his reaction to her. He had to. It was essential. Essential to be able merely to look at her with his eyes veiled, betraying none of the turbulent thoughts within. Refusing to allow her to use her skills on him.

And she was, as she had been the day before, very skilful indeed.

She was wearing cream tonight, another simple column of fine layers of fabric, caught at each shoulder with a pearled clasp. It was a demure design, and yet the impulse that filled him, instantly and insistently, was not a response to the demure design. It was a response that made him want to stride across to her, slide his hands down her bare arms and draw her towards him as he had done last night, in the moonlight, by the sea’s edge…

He hauled his mind back from memory and desire.

She was not that woman. That woman was a mirage.

She was Eve Hawkwood, a woman prepared to engage in sex with men chosen for her by her father, for his own financial advantage—and hers.

Not that one would guess it. It was not her cool, untouchable appearance, but her whole manner and demeanour. She sat, poised and graceful, her crystal-cut tones moving effortlessly, smoothly, from one innocuous topic to another as she played the dutiful role of attentive dinner party hostess. Making not one reference, by sign or by word, to what had happened not twenty-four hours ago, when he had kissed her in the moonlight.

It was as if it had never happened.

But then, of course—his mouth twisted briefly—what he had thought had happened, had not. All that had really taken place was that Eve Hawkwood had, whether opportunistically or calculatedly, tried out her wiles on him.

Well, she wasn’t trying them out tonight—not in that way, at any rate. Tonight a different Eve Hawkwood was on show. The society hostess—a role she executed to perfection.

She had already exhausted the flora and fauna, folk customs and natural features of Dalaczia, and had now moved on to art.

‘Do you collect art, Mr Constantin?’ came the polite enquiry, with a slight lift of her eyebrow in his direction as she gracefully forked up a mouthful of sole Veronique.

‘No,’ he replied.

It was almost true. He owned only one work of art—a Dutch still life of flowers. Though small, scarcely more than the size of a computer screen, its tumbling, vibrant blooms painted in exquisite detail so that minute ladybirds were visible on leaves and drops of water gleamed on petals, it was like an icon to him.

Ileana had loved flowers…

For a moment the pain was as harsh as ever.

He could see again, so vividly, so real, the way her dark fall of hair had caught the sunlight as she’d picked a meadow flower and given it to him—the smile on her face the one that was just for him, her special smile…

No—the steel door slammed down, impenetrable to all memory, all pain.

Forcibly, he turned his mind back to where he was now—the present. The past was gone; it would never come back. The present was now. And the future—the future would bring justice. That was all he asked of it.

‘It doesn’t appeal to you, art?’ Eve Hawkwood’s crystal tones came again.

Alexei reached to lift the glass of vintage wine to his mouth.

‘Art is not for private consumption or financial investment,’ he replied tersely.

He watched her raise delicate eyebrows at his assertion.

‘An admirably purist view,’ she responded.

Pure? What did Eve Hawkwood know of pure? Derision curled in Alexei. A sudden desire to pierce her appearance of demure untouchability—so deceptive, so deceiving—possessed him.

‘Besides—’ he looked straight at her ‘—so much art was commissioned as pornography—Louis XV of France liked to see his mistresses naked on canvas for his private pleasure.’

Not a flicker showed in Eve Hawkwood’s eyes at his deliberately provocative remark. She merely maintained an expression of polite but indifferent interest in a guest’s conversation.

‘The decadence of Louis XV’s private life must certainly have been a factor in the growing disillusion with the French monarchy in the eighteenth century,’ she merely observed concurringly, and paused to request some more mineral water from a steward.

‘Talking of nudes, Constantin.’ Giles Hawkwood’s heavy tones suddenly interjected into the pause, as he swivelled his head towards his guest. ‘I’ve got a private film collection of my own I can show you. Every colour and size of girl to suit all tastes—as many as you like at a time, in any combination. I had them filmed to my own specification. Acts like a catalogue—they all work for the same agency, and I fly them in when I want them. The agency gets fresh girls all the time—never delivered a dud yet.’ He leant back heavily in his chair, taking a large mouthful from his glass of wine, from which he’d been drinking freely all evening. ‘Last time they sent me a woman who could do things with her thighs you wouldn’t think physically possible!’ He gave a crack of crude laughter. ‘You should come along some time—I’ll organise something special for you. Something really memorable.’

Another crack of laughter came from him, and he drained his glass, signalling to the steward to refill it. While the man was pouring, Giles Hawkwood looked across at his guest with pouched eyes.

‘You’ll have to tell me what you like, Constantin. I can lay on any type of girl you want—and any equipment and accessories you enjoy. All top quality. Just say the word.’

He started to drink from his refilled glass.

Alexei’s face had stilled. Drained of all expression.

He felt his fists start to curl—felt murderous rage sear through him.

No! He would not soil his hands on Giles Hawkwood. The man was dead meat already—he simply did not know it yet.

Forcibly, with rigid self-control, he made his hands relax. To his left he saw from the edge of his vision that Eve Hawkwood was continuing with her meal. His eyes turned to her. She was cutting a piece of lamb on her plate, and it was as if nothing exceptional had been said at all, as if she were perfectly at ease as the subject of her father’s sexual proclivities arose.

And yet—

There was a rigidity in her jaw that was almost imperceptible, but Alexei could detect it all the same. A momentary glazing of her eyes, as if she were shutting something out of her consciousness.

Then, as she proceeded to spear the chunk of meat with her fork, she remarked, ‘I can remember reading an article once—it was quite serious, I believe—about how one could use nude portraiture as a guide to the nutritional habits of the societies that produced those works of art. It might have been pretentious, but I suppose it must be true, after all. Who considers Rubens’ rotund females to be healthy these days?’

There was just the right amount of light humour in her voice, just the right amount of amused questioning. It would have served just as well if she’d been talking to a bevy of bishops or a division of dowagers.

Did she think she was going to get an answer? Alexei’s eyes narrowed even more. Then, abruptly, he spoke. It was an impulse that came from somewhere he thought had ceased to exist in relation to Eve Hawkwood.

But it was something to do with the punishing rigidity of her throat, the blankness in her eyes, the visible whiteness around her fingernails as she lifted and lowered her fork. The jerkiness with which she was eating her lamb.

She was hiding it, but Eve Hawkwood’s stress levels were sky-high.

Why?

There was only one reason. Could only be one reason.

Because Eve Hawkwood was as repulsed by her father as he was.

Alexei’s eyes were riveted to her.

Was that it? Was that what was going on behind that flawless composure, that social surface that Englishwomen of her class presented to the world as effortlessly as they cut their vowels on crystal?

Except that now, right now, it wasn’t effortless. The fan of tension around her eyes, the rigidity of her expression. That required effort. Effort to maintain.

His eyes narrowed fractionally.

What was going on under that blank surface?

And suddenly, as he started to speak, he felt emotion spear through him.

Was I wrong about her? Is she not her father’s creature after all?

And if she weren’t—if Eve Hawkwood weren’t what those surreptitious rumours about her said she was, if she didn’t select her lovers from those men whom her father instructed her to, for his own ends—then maybe, just maybe, what had happened last night, that extraordinary, consuming moment of insanity that had possessed him, that had made him follow after her, seek her out, claim her—kiss her—was not an illusion at all…

The emotion speared him again. He did not know what it was. He had never felt it before.

But it was powerful. Very powerful.

And, because of that, he needed to control it. Absolutely. Totally. Completely.

So as he spoke he pitched his voice to match her own.

‘Health and beauty do seem to be in opposition these days. Obesity was relatively rare in the past, as it still is in much of the non-western world. In the west the opposite holds true,’ he contributed dryly.

He watched her give a slight smile to acknowledge his comment, and saw the web of tension around her eyes slacken minutely as the conversation reverted to acceptable topics.

‘Indeed,’ she responded, picking up on his remark. ‘We’re obsessed with thinness—to the detriment of our health.’

Alexei lifted his glass.

‘You, however, succeed in achieving the perfect medium—as rare as that is.’ He tilted his wine glass in a swift and silent toast, his eyes resting on her, taking in, whether he wanted to or not, the slender but softly rounded curves of her body, veiled by the creamy layers of her dress, and all the more exquisite for it. It enhanced so subtly the extraordinary beauty she possessed. And suddenly, without his volition, the iron guard he had imposed on himself all evening dropped.

It was only for a fraction of a moment, but it was enough. The damage had been done. He had let something show; he knew he had. Something that had been in his eyes last night as he’d approached her, as she’d stood pooled in moonlight beneath the scented pines, remote, beautiful, drawing him to her as no other woman had ever done…

His guard had dropped because she’d made him doubt what he knew about her, made him question his judgement of her.

Which is she? The woman I first thought her or her father’s corrupt creature, using her body for his ends?

The question burned through him. He had to know—

His eyes went on resting on her, letting her see what had been in his eyes the first time he had seen her, silver-framed in the entrance to the casino, pure and beautiful. Was that a lie? Suddenly, it was the most important question in the world.

Eve set down her wine glass. It took all her self-control. But then every moment of this excruciating evening had required every bit of her hard-won self-control. Only by imposing total discipline on herself was she getting through it.

Her mother, she knew, would be proud of her.

Nothing, absolutely nothing of what she was feeling was showing. And that was essential. Utterly essential.

Seeing Alexei Constantin again was disastrous. She had acknowledged that in the first moment he’d walked into the stateroom, and she’d had to glide forward and take his hand in greeting. Not to have done so would have been socially unacceptable, because he was her father’s guest and she, whatever else she would have given years of her life to be, was her father’s hostess.

But even as the cool, long fingers had closed over hers, so very briefly, she’d known she should have done the socially unacceptable, however much her rigid training had told her never, never to do so. Because simply touching his hand, so fleetingly, had been disastrous. Disastrous because instantly, though she’d tried to fight it, she had been there, once again, out in the hotel’s gardens, in the moonlit darkness, alone with a man who—

Who wants your father’s company and who buys sex.

The cruel, condemning words were like stones, crushing her. Crushing hope. Making a mockery of memory.

But memory mocked her still, had mocked her all evening as she’d sat at her father’s table making endless small-talk, as a good hostess should. And now it was more than memory that mocked her.

How could she be so helplessly aware of Alexei Constantin as to want to do nothing more than gaze at him, drink in the planes of his face, the line of his mouth, the dark, chill pools of his eyes? How could she be so punishingly aware of the way his long fingers curved around the stem of his wine glass, the way his sable hair feathered on his brow, the way his high cheekbones flared beneath the dark, veiled orbs of his long-lashed eyes, the way the lines about his mouth indented into his tanned skin, the way the superb cut of his tuxedo sat perfectly across the lean breadth of his shoulders…?

How could he still make her heart beat like a wild bird in a cage, even though she knew who he was—what he was?

It was a torment. Exquisite and punishing.

Shaming and humiliating.

To still be affected by the appearance of a man, even while she knew what he was. A man cut from the same cloth as her father, tainted by the same loathsome vice.

Only one final humiliation was spared her. He had made no reference, given her no reminder, of what she had so stupidly done the night before. There was nothing at all of the way he had locked her eyes to his in the entrance to the casino, or the way he’d advanced on her, with purpose and intent, out in the gardens, or even the way his eyes had rested on her as he’d taken her off onto the dance floor in the nightclub.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing, of that.

And then out of nowhere, he’d made that remark about her appearance. Had looked at her. Locked his eyes to hers.

Devastatingly. Disastrously.

She had had no time to prepare against it.

Another emotion had been uppermost in her conscious mind—an emotion she had not expected to feel about Alexei Constantin.

Gratitude. Numb, dumb gratitude that he had followed her conversational cue after her father had made his vile, repulsive and churningly embarrassing invitation to participate in one of his ‘parties’.

She hadn’t thought to wonder why Alexei Constantin had not taken up the invitation, had only cast about—desperately—for some bland remark she could make to return the conversation to an acceptable topic, to continue with this punishing farce of an evening.

A wave of sick weariness washed over her. If she could just get through the rest of the meal, then at last she would be able to escape to her cabin.

Escape from her father.

And, even more imperatively, escape from the man who was nothing more than a cruel mockery of the foolish, hopeless, unattainable fantasy she had so briefly thought him to be.

Alexei sat back in his chair, an almost empty wine glass playing in his fingers. He was alone, finally, with his prey. Giles Hawkwood had dismissed his daughter along with the stewards at the end of the meal, slipped the buttons on his dinner jacket, and leaned back more heavily in his seat, reaching into the humidor at his right to select a cigar and clip the end. The crystal port decanter was already at his left. Alexei had refused any, indicating that he preferred to finish his wine.

He had watched Eve Hawkwood walk away, taking her polite leave, graceful and gracious to the last. His eyes had followed the straight line of her back, the way the lamplight caught the pale coil of hair at the nape of her neck, how the folds of her gown graced the slender length of her legs. He’d been struck by her elegant beauty. Could she really be as corrupt as her father?

Was the appearance the truth or the lie?

The question tormented him. Even now, as Giles Hawkwood, with his corrupt pouched eyes, set out his final bid to save his doomed skin—a face-saving merger, not an outright acquisition.

Alexei could have laughed in his face.

But he knew that if he made any move at all it would not be to laugh. It would be to reach forward, dump his wine glass on the table, close his hands around Giles Hawkwood’s throat and choke the life out of him—

Instead, he went on sitting there, his eyes veiled, long lashes half swept down, letting Hawkwood spell out the complex web of share structure he was proposing. Holding companies and nominees and multiple tiers of ownership and voting stock, and disparate listings on a range of stock exchanges so complex it would send auditors into a tailspin. But, for all the complexity and financial sophistication, it all boiled down to one thing and one thing only. Giles Hawkwood was trying to keep his company under his own personal control as his own personal empire.

Alexei did not listen. Not just because Giles Hawkwood was already beyond salvation, but because something other than his prey’s destruction was occupying his mind.

Is she her father’s daughter? How can I know for sure…?

The question obsessed him, going round and round in his brain as Giles Hawkwood laid out his labyrinthine scheme for evading the fate Alexei had set for him. A fate which, clearly, he would do anything to avoid.

Anything?

Alexei stilled. Just what was Giles Hawkwood prepared to do to save his skin? Suddenly, Alexei knew exactly how to find out the truth about Eve Hawkwood.

Deliberately, he waited until the moment was right. Then, taking a slow, ruminative mouthful of his wine, he spoke.

‘A merger,’ he said, his veiled eyes resting on Giles Hawkwood’s face, ‘would require more than share-swaps and mutual cross-holdings of stock, whatever the composite corporate structure.’

He paused. Giles Hawkwood’s expression had changed. Minutely, but perceptibly. Alexei almost allowed himself a vicious smile. The man thought his bait was being taken. Well, let him think that for a few minutes longer.

Giles Hawkwood’s eyes narrowed in their pouches.

‘Go on,’ he said. There was a watchfulness about him, a tension he sought to hide. But, given the amount of alcohol he had so unwisely consumed that evening, to Alexei it was rife in the set of his jowled face.

‘There’s one asset you possess that you haven’t put into play yet.’ Alexei’s voice was low, controlled.

Giles Hawkwood absently swirled the brandy in his glass.

‘Enlighten me.’

Alexei placed his hand flat on the tablecloth, fingers splayed, as he sat, outwardly relaxed, in his chair.

‘Your daughter,’ he said softly, ‘is very beautiful.’

His eyes never left his prey’s.

A fat smile started on Giles Hawkwood’s face. Alexei could see the satisfaction lighten in his eyes. And less perceptibly, but there all the same, the relief.

‘Ah, yes, Eve,’ he drawled. ‘As you say—very beautiful. Exceptionally so, wouldn’t you say?’

His heavy voice was blatant. So was the coat tail he next trailed.

‘A…relationship with her…would not be out of place, Constantin, were we to become…partners.’

Alexei’s eyes dipped and he gave the slightest shake of his head.

‘I’m not the marrying kind—’

There was a brief, coarse laugh for answer. ‘Just the red-blooded kind that likes a good—’

He used a word that came from his mouth as naturally as any euphemism. Alexei said nothing, showed nothing. Merely waited.

Giles Hawkwood drank from his brandy, then settled himself back more comfortably in his chair, his girth pushing at the arms.

‘So, Eve’s caught your eye, has she? Well, why not? If she weren’t my daughter I’d be happy enough to—’He broke off and gave another coarse laugh. Then he reached for another cigar.

His mood had lightened, Alexei could tell. For himself, he could feel the pads of his fingers splayed on the table pressing down into the fine white damask. Emotion was knifing through him, but he was controlling it. Controlling it as tightly as it would be necessary to control the finger pressure on a loaded gun. He chose his next words with infinite care, picking exactly the ones he wanted.

‘Oh, she’s beautiful, all right. But…’ the long lashes swept momentarily down, then back up again ‘…appearances can be deceptive. Some women are beautiful—but cold. She may be beautiful but…’ He paused minutely, his eyes never leaving his prey. ‘Is she any good?’

Giles Hawkwood set his cigar down in the ashtray. He looked straight across at Alexei, his shoulders easing. Then he spoke.

There was no hesitation, no reluctance, no evasion.

‘Why not go and try her out?’ he invited.

She was lying in the bed, her hair loose at last, a pale, moonlit swathe across the pillow. The sheet hardly covered her long, delicate limbs, slanting half exposed. She was wearing some kind of negligee, Alexei could see, but it was nothing more than a swathe of silk, one strap loosened from her shoulder.

She was asleep.

Or at least pretending to be asleep.

He stood for a while, looking down at her. There was no light in the luxuriously appointed cabin, the one that Giles Hawkwood had directed him to, only the pale reflection from the ship’s lights playing on the water, reflecting into the room from the uncurtained windows. A breath of air from the sea indicated the windows were open as well as uncurtained.

It was cool in the cabin, cool and quiet, with only the slightest swell of the tideless sea beneath the hull.

He could not even hear her breathe, could only dimly make out the rise and fall of her breasts as she lay, long eyelashes shuttering her grey eyes.

She looked so innocent…so pure…

For a moment something shafted deep inside him. Surely, surely no woman could look so beautiful, so innocent—and yet not be so?

But Eve Hawkwood was no innocent. The veil of her beauty was just that—a deception, a lie. The truth was very, very different.

She was a woman prepared to be sexually available to a man her father wanted to appease. The corruption that rotted the man who had fathered her had rotted her as well.

He felt something crawl over his skin.

He had wanted the truth about Eve Hawkwood, and now he had it.

His hand reached out. He watched it do so, of its own volition. He wanted to call it back, but did not. Let it—let him—take one last taste of a woman who would now be beyond temptation.

His palm rounded over her breast. He felt the blood surge in his body, desire leap in his veins. For one exquisite, pleasurable moment he let her breast ripen under his hand, feeling her nipple engorge and strain against his palm. A low moan came from her throat, and he saw her lips part. Her silk-veiled nipple grazed against his skin, teasing at the juncture of his palm and fingers. His blood surged again. He felt his body tighten, flooding through his defences.

He almost succumbed. Almost he lowered himself down beside her, to peel her negligee from her, to expose her swelling breasts, to tweak those hard, ripe nipples with his fingers, to rouse her from her feigned sleep. Because how else could her body be responding to his caress if she were not totally, absolutely conscious of what he was doing? To let his hand slide down the lush length of her silk-clad body, draw that veil up and glide his hand between her parted thighs to seek, and find, the moistening entrance to her body and prepare it for his pleasure…

She gave another low, husked moan in her throat, her eyelids moving over her still-shut eyes. Her body stirred softly, languorously.

Eve Hawkwood was signalling her readiness to make her body available at her father’s bidding…

His hand lifted away. Cold drenched through him.

God, but she had nearly succeeded! Nearly drawn him down into her silken web. Nearly made him succumb to her, and what she offered—to him, and to any man her father chose for her.

Abruptly, he stepped away, and turned on his heel. The air in the cabin felt thick suddenly, despite the freshness from the open window. Rank and foul, as if the corruption all around him were choking the air.

He had to get out. Get out of this cabin, out of this place. He should never have come here—never indulged in the baiting of the man he was going to destroy. Doing so, indulging in the savage satisfaction of knowing that his prey had no escape, had been a contamination. A contamination he should never have exposed himself to.

He walked from the cabin, flinging back the door, striding along the wide companionway, back into the stateroom.

Giles Hawkwood was still there. He had poured himself yet more port, lit yet another cigar. He looked sleek, satisfied, relishing his reprieve from ruin. As Alexei walked in he twisted his head, his expression changing. He opened his mouth, ready to speak.

But he got no chance.

Ruthless now. Going straight for the jugular. No more toying with his prey.

Just the swift, killing blow.

‘Check the newsfeeds from Sydney. I’ve just acquired Rencorp. That gives me a clear majority holding in Hawkwood. It’s over. You’re finished.’

Then he walked from the room.

Justice had at last been done on Giles Hawkwood.

As for his daughter—she was finished too.