Kitabı oku: «The Return Of The Stranger», sayfa 2

Where he stood in the light from the window she could see the marked skin of his cheek, the thin scar that spoiled it, running along one cheekbone. And the memory of how he had come by that, who had put it there, caught at her nerves and tugged them hard. The mark that had been made by the glancing blow of a cast-off horseshoe, flung with deliberate viciousness at him by her brother Joseph in one of his irrational rages. The horse Joe owned and had ridden at a local show-jumping championship had been well and truly beaten by Heath’s own mount, loaned to him by her father. Typically, Joseph had taken out his fury and his jealousy in an act of violence that had horrified her.

Had Heath been to see her brother as well as coming here? Just the thought of the confrontation between them made a sensation like cold footprints slide down her spine, making her shiver in uncomfortable response.

That ‘decided that one day I would call to offer you my congratulations’ scraped painfully against her already too-taut nerves. It implied that he had been planning his return for some time. If he had come back earlier would anything have been any different?

A bitter memory sliced into her mind. That of arriving at the village church on her wedding day not quite four years before, and standing at the back of the aisle, just inside the doors. The organ had already begun the familiar notes of the ‘Wedding March’ but just for those seconds she had paused, looked around. Looking for one dark, harsh but infinitely familiar face. Allowing herself just a moment’s—what?

Hope?

But of course Heath hadn’t been there. Her brother and Arthur had treated him appallingly. There was no way he would want to be there to witness the joining of their two families in marriage. He had been the only one to warn her against the Charlton family. If she had listened to him then she might have spared herself so much heartache.

‘How has that changed things?’ she repeated, her tone insisting on an answer.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

His turn was slow, almost dance-like, pivoting on his heel as he came face to face with her again. ‘You own all of this.’

A gesture of one strong hand took in the whole of the house, the garden and the estate beyond the window.

‘Little Miss Kat has got everything she wanted. The big house, the status, the oh-so-elegant way of life …’

He wielded his words like a rapier, flashing, stabbing, making her wince inwardly. Everything he said revived the memories of the last time she had seen him, the anger that had flared in him then. And later his total rejection of her. The bitter burn of the knowledge of how far she had been from having ‘everything she wanted’ made her lash out in self-defence.

‘Not everything I wanted!’

If only he knew that she had never had any sort of a marriage, not in the real sense of the word. That the man who had been such charming, witty and attentive company through her teenage years, helping to distract her from the empty space in her life where Heath himself had once been, had turned into a petty and increasingly malicious tyrant almost from the moment that he had put a wedding ring on her finger on her twenty-first birthday. That the big house had become a hated prison; the elegant way of life nothing but a lie.

‘My husband died!’

‘I know … But that’s no great loss. Though originally it was your husband that I thought I would have come to see.’

‘Why? What did you want with Arthur?’

‘We had—business to discuss.’

The emphasis on that word ‘business’ sent a shiver of warning down her spine. So many ‘business’ meetings lately had resulted in worse news piling on bad news.

‘What sort of business?’

‘It’s hardly relevant now.’

Heath’s expression deliberately blanked off so that she could have no idea what was going on behind those opaque ebony eyes.

‘I can’t believe that Arthur would ever want to do any business deals with you. He never said anything about it.’

‘Your husband talked about his business with you?’ Was there something else behind that question? Something that put the darker note into his voice? ‘Well—no.’

Arthur hadn’t talked to her about anything if the truth was told. He had issued orders, insisted on how things were to appear. But she had only been a couple of weeks into her marriage when she had discovered that a trophy wife was all her husband wanted. A woman who could look elegant at his side, display around her neck or dangling from her ears the jewellery that was the Charlton heirlooms everyone knew about, and organise the society parties he put so much emphasis on.

Of course she now knew just why those parties were so important to him. The image they had been planned to present to the world while he hid the reality behind a smokescreen. The truth had been that he had never really wanted a wife, not in the true sense of the word. Their marriage had been as fake as the ‘heirlooms’ that were really only paste copies, the originals sold long ago.

‘That—wasn’t Arthur’s way.’

‘I thought not.’

His response caught on her nerves. It took her back to his declaration that he had business to discuss with her late husband. What connection had he had with Arthur’s business dealings?

The question had formed on her lips only to be caught back sharply as the sound of light, hurrying footsteps in the hall gave notice of a new arrival. And knowing who it must be, Kat knew she couldn’t continue her questioning now.

CHAPTER TWO

THE door swung open and the slim, blonde-haired figure of her sister-in-law came into the room. Isobel had obviously been into town on a shopping spree. Half a dozen elegant carrier bags swung from her hands and she had the smug look of someone who had just given her credit cards a hammering.

Inwardly Kat sighed at the thought that she and Isobel were going to have to have a heart to heart about their situation. Obviously the younger woman had not taken in—or had refused to accept—the gravity of their situation. Quite frankly she was amazed that those credit cards hadn’t bounced. They very soon would. Once all their creditors realised the seriousness of the situation there would be a huge number of final demands for payment.

But that was a showdown she didn’t want to have in front of Heath. Isobel was so like Arthur in her determination to go her own way and listen to no one. So she forced herself to keep calm, even to smile at Isobel while inside every nerve was screaming a protest at her sister-in-law’s actions.

‘I’ve had a fantastic time!’ Isobel declared. ‘Lacey’s had their new summer range in and they had some gorgeous stuff. I …’

Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of the tall, dark man standing by the window, a silent, watchful observer of this new arrival in the room.

‘Hello!’ she said, the rising lift in her voice, the sparkle of her smile making Kat’s heart twist, her nerves tugging painfully as she recognised the signs she knew only too well.

Isobel had spotted someone she fancied. That much was obvious. And the man who had sparked her interest was none other than Heath. Which Kat supposed shouldn’t have surprised her. Compared with the skinny, scruffily dressed boys her sister-in-law usually hung around with, Heath was all man. His height and his bearing seemed to fill the room, those deep-set black eyes burned like burnished jet under dark, arched brows and when he smiled …

Dear heaven, when he smiled, his face was transformed, Kat admitted, feeling her stomach twist and lurch almost as if she were on board a ship that had suddenly pitched sharply downwards in the waves. It was shocking to realise that this was the very first time that his sexy mouth had even curved into any sort of a smile or that his forcefully carved face had shown any warmth, since he had appeared in the room so unexpectedly.

‘Hello, Isobel.’

It seemed as if that trace of the accent on Heath’s words had deepened, darkened, making him sound so much more exotic, so much more foreign.

‘You know who I am?’ her sister-in-law was definitely intrigued and the smile that played over her mouth was a blend of curiosity and provocation.

‘Of course. You are young Isobel all grown up.’

‘And you are?’

Isobel fluttered her long, mascaraed eyelashes flirtatiously, and Kat felt the twist of something cruel in her heart as she saw Heath switch on another swift, easy smile in response.

It was even more shocking to realise that the sharp burn of reaction had a double-edged source, one that made her mouth dry in horror as she recognised it for what it was. When he smiled, Heath looked so very different, so devastatingly sexy that the heat of her response was like a flash of electricity along her nerves. But it was blended with something else, something that was far less comfortable to endure. Deep in her memory where she had tried long ago to bury it, she could hear the echo of Arthur’s voice, vicious and savage-toned. You’re still dreaming of your bit of rough—that gipsy. That’s what turns you on.

‘Don’t you recognise Heath?’ she put in hastily, rather too sharply.

‘Heath?’ her sister-in-law queried. ‘Heath who?’ And the jolt of realisation brought Kat up sharp against the fact that she had no idea how to answer that question. She hadn’t even thought about what Heath might be calling himself now.

She hadn’t thought of anything beyond the fact that he was here, back in her life again.

‘Heath Montanha,’ Heath supplied, those dark eyes of his still fixed on Isobel.

And no wonder. The girl who had been little more than a child at eleven when Heath had left the village all those years before had blossomed in the time he had been away. She was a small blonde bombshell, curvy and sensually glamorous, beside whom Kat always felt too tall and rangy, taken back to the tomboyish adolescent she had been who had never quite fitted in anywhere.

Anywhere but with Heath.

Remembered pain twisted in her gut as she recalled how once he had always been at her side, her friend, her support. Heath had never needed to belong in the way that she had longed to. He had laughed at the girls who had thought they were so cool, turned his back on any need to be conventional or fashionable. It had been her own need to find the femininity that she had felt had been so lacking in herself that had drawn her to the sort of society offered by the Charltons. That had ultimately led to the ‘dream wedding’ that was supposed to give her everything she had ever fantasised about.

A dream wedding that had opened the door to a private nightmare.

‘Heath Montanha?’

Not Nicholls, Kat added to herself. Well, who could blame him? Obviously the thing he had most wanted to do once he was away and free of the village was to discard the name of the family he had never belonged to in the first place. And the name of the man who had once made his life such hell.

‘Such an exotic name! What nationality is that?’

Isobel was openly flirting now, her voice light and teasing, her smile straight into those dark, watchful eyes.

‘It’s Brazilian.’

‘You went to Brazil? Why there?’

It was Kat who asked, unable to suppress her curiosity.

‘Why not? After all you were the one who once told me that my father could have been an emperor of China.’

Memory stabbed like the sharpest stiletto as she recalled the light-hearted way they had created an imaginary ancestry for him. A rich, powerful background that would enable him to hold his own against Joseph and Arthur’s tyranny. They had been on the same side then. And she had believed that nothing could come between them.

‘You remember that?’

‘I remember,’ Heath acknowledged and the emphasis he put on the words sent a shiver down her spine.

What else did he remember? And more importantly, how did he remember it?

‘I’d love to go to Brazil.’

Isobel was determined to drag Heath’s attention back to her. Not that there was any dragging needed, Kat acknowledged. Isobel had always had the effect of an open honeypot on men. Men who had never looked at Kat in quite that way. Certainly men of the type that Heath had become had never looked at her like that.

Even her husband had never looked at her in that way. Not even on her wedding day, when every woman had the right to feel beautiful. As soon as they had been alone, he had criticised her appearance and set himself to try to change everything about her. It was only later that she had come to realise just why he had been that way.

‘Rio de Janeiro … the sun—the sea—samba dancing.’

Isobel let her curvaceous body sway in time to imaginary music inside her head.

‘But don’t you think you should offer our visitor some refreshment, Kat? How long has he been here and you haven’t even offered him a drink?’

‘I was just about to.’

It wasn’t the truth and a quick sidelong glance from Heath’s dark eyes told her that he knew that only too well. The thought of her sister-in-law reproving her for her neglect of hospitality for the man who as a boy had always had the door of this house slammed in his face twisted something deep inside. She had no doubt that exactly that thought had come to him too.

She had once promised herself that if she had ever found herself in a position of wealth and comfort where she could welcome Heath then she would do so with open arms. Now she was exactly where she dreamed of being but too much had come between them to ever let that happen.

‘Perhaps I should ring for tea. If you would like that …’

The words were barely out of her mouth before she was hearing in her own head how they must have sounded to Heath. And seeing the way that his lips curled she could almost read just what was going through his mind. That she had deliberately played the ‘lady of the manor’ card, offering afternoon tea as if she were her mother-in-law and not a young woman of nearly twenty-five. Though the truth was that she hadn’t felt young for too long. Not for almost four years.

‘Tea?’ he drawled mockingly. ‘How very English.’

‘Well I am—we are English,’ Kat snapped defensively, her tone too sharp for politeness as the suddenly vicious twist to his beautiful mouth said only too clearly.

‘While I am just a mongrel, hmm?’

There was open challenge in those blazing jet eyes now. Challenge and a dark, cynical derision that had all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stiffening in wary sensitivity.

‘That isn’t at all what I meant!’

‘And why not? It is true after all. I am of mixed blood as you always suspected—and not pure-bred English like you and your family.’

Memory stabbed again at the thought of how they had once speculated on just what his ancestry might be, what exotic background could have created his dark dramatic looks.

‘You found out about your true background?’

‘I did. And your husband would have been delighted to know that it was every bit as far from his aristocratic pedigree as he always believed it was.’

And he wasn’t going to enlighten her any further, his tone declared adamantly. He had no intention of letting her in on anything he had found out about himself. If anything marked how wide the chasm that divided them had become then it was that.

‘Are we having this tea or not?’

Isobel’s impatiently petulant voice broke in on the intense concentration of his gaze on her face, making those deep dark eyes blink just once, slowly, before he deliberately looked away, in the direction of her sister-in-law.

‘Perhaps not,’ he drawled silkily. ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t stay. I have business to attend to.’

He was picking up his coat as he spoke, tossing it over his shoulders like a cloak as he had worn it on his arrival, and turning towards the door. That was the second time today he had mentioned business deals but never explained himself. Once more that icy sensation slid down her spine.

I’ll be back one day. And then you’ll see how everything you think you have can all be turned on its head.

Suddenly afraid that he would walk out of her life again as he had done once before and that this time he would never come back, she hurried after him.

‘Heath—wait …’

He was almost all the way down the long, tiled hall, never hesitating or looking back. But then, just at the last moment, he paused and turned back very slowly.

‘You never said why you came. What you are doing here.’

‘Why did I come to the Grange today? Surely the answer to that is obvious.’

‘Not to me.’ Her voice croaked embarrassingly as she forced out a response.

Heath smiled briefly once again. It was a smile of ice, totally without any hint of warmth in it.

‘I came to see you, of course. Why else would I be here?’ ‘To …’

‘To see you, Lady Katherine,’ Heath repeated, the words sliding over her like a stream of ice water, making her skin shiver miserably. ‘To look into your face just once and then walk away—this time for good.’

CHAPTER THREE

THAT had been the plan, Heath acknowledged.

He had told himself that he would just see what she had become, and then walk away. He would shake the dust of the Grange from his feet and go back to the life he now had—a life of success and power, so very different and so very distant from the life he had once lived—endured—here in Yorkshire. If her husband had still been alive then he might have stayed, to have the satisfaction of seeing his plans all fall into place, his revenge become complete. He would have enjoyed seeing Arthur Charlton and Joe Nicholls brought as low as they had once brought him. Nicholls already knew why he was here, knew that he had lost everything, and until now Heath had thought that that would have to be enough.

But that had been before he had come face to face with the woman that Katherine had become. Seeing her, seeing the stunning woman she was now, feeling his heartbeat quicken, his blood pulse through his veins, his body hardening in yearning hunger, he had known that he could no more turn and walk away than he could cut out his own heart and throw it at her feet as she had once made him feel he might.

He had thought that he was over her, but seeing her had taught him, in the space between one heartbeat and another, that that thought had been desperately deluded. There was no way he was ‘over’ this woman. It had nothing to do with revenge, and everything to do with passion, with the sexual hunger that ate him up from inside—and always had—just from knowing that Katherine Nicholls existed.

If he had wanted her once when she was a girl, before she had developed into the full power of her beauty, then now he felt that he would die if he didn’t have her in his bed, just once. If he didn’t know the full satisfaction of making love to her, feeling her soft body underneath him, opening to him, hearing her cries of delight as she reached her climax.

And she would come to orgasm; he had no doubt about that. No woman could look at him in the way she had done in the first moment that he had walked into the room without a blistering connection between them on the most basic, most primitive level. The burn of awareness that had been in his body had been reflected in her eyes. He had seen it looking back at him from their once-cool blue depths, turning them molten and cloudy, the pupils so wide they seemed to have darkened the whole of her eyes.

And he had known then that he couldn’t stick to his original plan and walk away. He wanted her too much to do so. More importantly he wanted her to want him as much as he had ever hungered for her. And most of all he needed her to acknowledge it. Publicly. Only then would it heal the scars of the slashing wounds she had once dealt him.

Fancy Heath? You have to be joking! she had said to Arthur Charlton and the scathing note on her tongue still burned like acid in his memory. I mean—look at him? No money, no job—no class! The Nicholls family may have fallen on hard times, but we do have some pride. How could anyone want him?

He had come here for revenge but his vendetta had been against her brother and her husband and that was being worked through just as he planned. The financial dealings that had yet to be revealed might have given him a darker satisfaction, one of the mind, but this was personal. This would bring a very different sort of fulfilment. A heated, sensual, carnal satisfaction. One that already had his body tightening and hardening in anticipation of the delights to come.

‘You did that once before,’ she said now, her voice unexpectedly rough at the edges. ‘The walking away bit. When you left I thought that was for good.’

‘So I did—and if I had had my way, had any sense, I would have stayed away.’

He’d meant to stay away. Meant to sever all connections with Hawden and the life he had had here but fate had intervened. The dirty tricks and bad deals Charlton and Nicholls had tried to pull on one of his companies, not knowing who owned it, had revived so many bitter memories. Once and for all he had resolved to deal with the two men who had made his early life such a hell. But he had taken some time to put his plans into place, make them watertight. And in that time Arthur Charlton had fallen victim to his decadent, sordid lifestyle so that now there was only Nicholls left to deal with.

But he hadn’t reckoned on the fact that Kat would still have this devastating hold over him. That he would take one look and find himself incapable of walking away.

‘But other matters brought me to Hawden …’

‘What other matters?’

Heath smiled down into her face.

‘I have scores to settle, as you must know.’

Looking into her defiant, long-lashed eyes, Heath suddenly knew a twist of the double-edged sword that his plan for revenge now offered him. All he had to do was to tell her why he was here. Reveal all the cards he held in his hand—and he did hold all of them; he had made damn sure of that before he had even left Brazil. Everything was signed, sealed, tied up so watertight that there was no chance of even a single item in this house, on this estate sliding out of his grasp. He had the Charltons and the Nicholls exactly where he wanted them and all he had to do was call in their debts.

But where was the satisfaction in using that against Kat? What sort of gratification could he get from taking a sledgehammer to this situation when he could do things so much more subtly? Much more enjoyably. No, he didn’t want her to know yet why he was really here.

Joe and Arthur had robbed him of money and position. Kat’s betrayal, her rejection of him, had been something different. A betrayal of the heart, of the soul. He would show her how it felt to have your heart taken and stamped on.

He would make her want him as much as he wanted her. After all, if she fell for him now it was only because he was wealthy, because of who he had become. She had never wanted the Heath he had been.

But he didn’t want to blackmail her into his bed. He needed her to come to him willing—wanted her to come to him wanting, needing, hungry. Because she couldn’t help herself. As he couldn’t help himself where she was concerned.

She already did; he could see it in her eyes. But she was damned if she’d admit it. She would admit it before he was done. She’d admit it and come to him and beg him to take her. He had never forced a woman in his life and he didn’t intend to start now.

The youth he had once been would have thrown any caution to the winds and reached for her, grabbed her … But he was no longer that adolescent. Time and experience had taught him the wisdom of holding his counsel, hiding his true feelings. Once he had told this woman how he felt and she had laughed in his face. There was no way he would ever risk that again. This way he would get what he wanted and more.

‘S—scores to settle.’ She took a step back from him, mentally at least even if she didn’t move at all physically. ‘Against who?’

She already knew the answer, Kat acknowledged privately. If he had come back to ‘settle scores’ then he could only have come looking for the men who had treated him so appallingly in the past. But how far did his need for vengeance go? Who else would be included in it?

Once again that cold cruel smile flickered over his lips, bringing no light to eyes that remained as cold as polished jet.

‘You have to ask? Your brother—your husband too, were he alive.’ ‘And me?’

‘I told you—I wanted to see you just once.’

It was so softly spoken it sounded almost gentle. But there was nothing gentle about the burn of those dark eyes, the way that his beautiful mouth was tightly compressed, taking all the sensuality from it and turning it into a cold, hard line.

‘So now you’ve seen me—what?’ She didn’t know what she was asking for. What she wanted the answer to be.

This time that smile was positively feral. It stripped away all the apparently civilised control he had imposed from the moment he’d walked into the room and replaced it with a cold, fierce anger. Under the veneer of sophistication and worldliness he was still the wild, untamed creature she had once known. The dangerous, wild-spirited creature who had answered to no one.

‘I told you—I’m leaving. You’ll have to forgive me if I decline your offer of tea.’

Could his voice have been any more mock-polite, the slap in the face effect any more deliberate?

‘You’re not coming back?’ The thought of losing him all over again tore at her heart.

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On you.’

‘What do I have to do with it?’

His impatient twist of his head, the brilliant emerald in his ear lobe catching the light and sending sparks flying, told her how irritated he was with the question.

‘I would have thought that that was obvious. Do you want me back—will you welcome me here?’

How she wished she could answer that straight. How she wished he could still be the Heath she had once known, the Heath she had longed to have back again. But that was not the Heath who now stood before her. And she was no longer the Kat she had been as a child.

‘I thought not.’

She had hesitated too long. And those cold black eyes had seen the doubt in her face, the way she had had to rethink her decision.

But what else could she say? She had looked into that dark closed face and known a new and very different feeling from one she had ever known before. One she had never experienced with Heath in all the time she had known him. She looked into his hard-boned face, into the deep black pools of his eyes, saw the jet-hard gleam that was in them and knew. Fear.

Fear was what she sensed, what she felt crawling over her skin like ice-cold footprints marking out a path along every nerve. A sense of dread that warned her that something was to come, something that brought danger and darkness into her life along with this man who had once been her friend.

Who was so obviously her friend no longer.

‘I will leave you to your tea.’

Heath was turning away again, obviously taking her response for dismissal and, for all the turmoil of emotions tangling inside her, Kat couldn’t let him go like this. Not with everything so raw between them. With so much she wished she could say if only she could find the words.

‘Don’t …’

She wanted to reach out and stop him, but at the same time the shivery warnings held her back so she didn’t know whether to move forward or not. Her legs seemed to tangle together, her feet tripping over each other as her body fought with her mind.

Suddenly several things happened at once and she didn’t quite register any of them until it was too late.

Her steps faltered, feet catching on a raw edge of one of the tiles, pitching her forward in the same moment that Heath paused, turned back. She was falling, heading for the floor and unable to do anything about it, her breath leaving her body in a shaken cry, when Heath’s instincts kicked in, swift and sharp. His arms came out to catch her, whipcord muscles taking her weight and holding tight, hauling her up before she hit the ground.

The movement swung her round, still off balance, so that she landed hard against the strong wall of his chest, her breasts crushed against his ribs, her head just over the heavy, rhythmic thud of his heart. The scent of his body, warm, clean skin mixed with some cologne that had a tang like lime, surrounded her, making her head swim. Only his strength held her upright, her eyes blurring in sudden confusion—and something else that shuddered through her like a heated pulse.

For the space of a couple of raw, uneven breaths, she felt him tense, distance himself as far as he could without actually moving away from her, knew that her own body had stiffened too, in shock and unease. She knew that she should pull away but couldn’t find the strength to do so. And in the same moment she felt a terrible sense of danger, blending with an equally stunning sense of having come home. The two sensations warred with each other, pulling her heart, her mind in different directions so that she didn’t know which one to act on. Indecision held her still, frozen, unable to think, scarcely able to breathe.

But then his grip on her arms loosened, hands smoothing down to where the skin was exposed by the short sleeves of her dress, the warmth of his palm stroking over her skin in a way that took that sense of shock and disorientation with it. The tension eased, changed, seeped away, and her heart skipped a beat, the sudden release letting her relax against him.

‘Kat …’

She heard his voice above her head, the warmth of his breath stirring her hair and she allowed herself a smile; her sense of relief a glow that lit her up from inside. Perhaps she had been reading everything so wrong. But she had barely recognised the sudden gentleness, given herself up to it, when a heartbeat later all that tension and more was back but in a new and very different way.