Taken By The Maverick Millionaire. Anna Cleary
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forgotten his socks.
A strange sensation flooded her, of sympathy and amusement mingled with some poignant, melty feeling. How unexpectedly human it made him. She was overwhelmed with a need to turn and look at him, to touch one of the beautiful lean hands resting on his Armani-clad knee. Possible words of comfort welled up on her tongue, but she forced herself to keep gazing straight ahead, and had to be satisfied with drinking in the magnetism of his masculine aura, and luxuriating in the warm contact of his arm and shoulder.
When he rose to take the lectern, the coughs and shuffles of the congregation ceased, and the church fell silent. The air pulsed with anticipation. She held her breath for him, wondering how nervous he was.
If he was it didn’t show. Like a man born to rule, he rose to the occasion and spoke with dignity and authority, taking only an occasional glance at his notes. His voice resonated through the church like the darker tones of a cello.
It gave her a perfect opportunity to study the classic bone structure of his lean, harsh face. He was so tall and masterful, so sincere and grief-stricken and restrained, she felt moved. How he must have loved that dreadful old man.
It came as a shock. Affection for his only child was the one thing she’d never heard Marcus Russell accused of. She knew a stab of discomfort to wonder how much the unshrinking honesty of her obituary had added to Tom’s pain.
‘My father may not have been universally admired,’ he said, controlling the emotion in his voice, ‘but he was a generous benefactor to many charities. Those who knew him well knew that he was not “a mere leech, fat on the profits of greed”.’
The familiar words, read with grim distaste, jolted through Cate. Murmurs of sympathetic outrage rippled around the congregation.
She sank down in her seat. What if they knew the perpetrator of those words was here in their very midst?
From his commanding position at the lectern, Tom spoke to the sea of familiar faces before him without seeing a single one. Conscious this had to be the performance of his life, he measured his comments with care, searingly conscious of their irony. If people only guessed how generous his father had been to charity.
The question that had tortured fourteen sleepless nights tormented him afresh. Why had Marcus done it? How could a man of his experience have believed a desperate financial shortfall would change his son’s life for the better? Did he really believe a disaster could erase a man’s grief?
Something of the depths of his dismay must have leaked into his voice, because the hushed atmosphere suddenly seemed charged with dynamite.
‘In fact,’ he read on, frowning in the effort to concentrate on the task at hand, ‘far from “squandering his squalid profits on sordid pleasure”, throughout his life my father was a notable phil—’
A sudden connection pinged in his brain and with a little choke he broke off. The notes blurred, while in his mind’s eye, in perfect clarity, a name focused.
Cate Summerfield.
The people, the church, the rigorously composed thread of his address receded. He raised his eyes from the page.
Cate Summerfield, obituary writer, stared back at him from her pew, frozen in guilty acknowledgement. Her mermaid’s eyes were wide in alarm, her lips tight-pressed.
In the throbbing silence, the emotional tension ratcheted up to screeching pitch and sobs broke out, but Tom was hardly aware of them. For speechless seconds he grappled with the sheer enormity of it. The nerve of this dizzy little blonde to have shown her face, even to have set foot in the church. But to have eavesdropped on a negotiation that gave her the actual power to ruin him…
For a heart-struck instant he stared into an abyss. If the corporation went under thousands would lose their livelihoods. The Russell name would echo down the years as a byword of shame.
Conscious of a faint, unwonted moisture on his upper lip,
he had to grip the lectern tight to restrain himself from loosening his collar. But he wasn’t his father’s son for nothing. With an almost superhuman effort, he summoned his formidable powers of recovery and cut the unnecessary emotion to make a lightning situation assessment.
Damage control needed to be neat and complete. He must find something to offer her. Some way to zip her saucy mouth with its infuriating smile. He thought of a bribe and discarded it. How the Clarion would gloat. Although if there was something she wanted, something out of her reach…
What could he offer her? The answer boomeranged back at once. What else would she want, but what they all did? She was a reporter, after all.
Beyond that, he seethed, she was a woman. And in that crystalline instant he knew exactly how he could do it.
Cowering in her pew, Cate recognised sudden purpose in Tom Russell’s glinting gaze. She gathered herself to make a dash for the exit, but too late, for with an eloquent gesture that provoked a wave of sobs around the cathedral, he handed over the lectern to the officiating archbishop, and in a couple of strides was back beside her.
‘Stay put,’ he hissed in her ear, smiling, though his white, even teeth were gritted. ‘I’m not finished with you yet.’ He slipped his arm around her and held her close against his hard body, as though she were some stricken family member in need of support. Her senses plunged into uproar, but she shrank from making a scene, and submitted to the disturbing effects of feeling his long muscled thigh pressed against hers.
In a short, nerve-racking while the service came to an end, and she knew her time had come. As soon as the mourners rose to make their way out, her captor seized the opportunity, amid the confusion, to hustle her away from the goggling stares of his family members, down the aisle past the crowded vestry, and out through the door to the visitor’s car park.
As they emerged into the sunshine a long, low black limousine, its darkened windows blank and sinister, drew up alongside them. Visions assailed Cate of being strangled and dumped on some highway.
‘Get in,’ he said, opening the rear door. And when she hesitated to dive into what looked impossibly like some sultan’s cave, complete with oriental rugs, sumptuous cushioned seats and silken panelling—‘Please.’ In the sunlight his cool grey eyes glittered inscrutably against his tan. ‘We need to talk. I have a proposition for you.’
Please on his brusque tongue was unexpected enough to be reassuring. After a moment she bowed her head in acquiescence, climbed in and slid as best she could to the far side of the deeply cushioned divan-seat. With a few curt instructions to the driver, Tom Russell joined her, and closed the glass barrier.
His elegantly clad knee was only centimetres from hers. She moistened her lips, overly conscious of his high-octane masculinity in the opulent space. She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them when she saw his gaze flicker down to them.
‘Alone at last,’ he drawled.
‘I had no idea limos were furnished like this,’ she said nervously.
‘This was my father’s car.’ His lip curled. ‘His most recent mistress had a taste for the exotic.’
To her alarm the engine purred into life and the car moved towards the street-exit. ‘I thought you said you just wanted us to talk?’
‘Aren’t we talking?’ He lounged back to survey her with a considering gaze, his black lashes half lowered.
She wished she didn’t have to be so aware of him, and tried not to notice the relaxed idleness of his long limbs and smooth, tanned hands. ‘Shouldn’t you be with your guests now? I mean, as they—as they leave the church, don’t you want to be there in the front porch to shake hands with everyone?’
‘No, I don’t.’
They’d left the cathedral yard and were now weaving their way through traffic. Where to? she thought with panic. Some execution site?
She