Men of Power. Кэрол Мортимер
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‘Couldn’t I just meet you for a drink in a bar or something before you go on to dinner?’ she suggested, frowning. ‘What I have to ask will only take a few minutes, and—’
‘Scared, Kenzie?’ Dominick interrupted tauntingly.
She bristled. ‘Of you? Hardly!’ she dismissed scathingly, knowing that wasn’t quite true. Although she wasn’t scared of Dominick himself, she knew that, with his wealth and power, the sort of retribution he was capable of could be immense! ‘I just don’t see the point of completely ruining both our evenings, that’s all.’
‘Just mine, hmm?’ he mused scornfully. ‘You’re the one that asked for this meeting, Kenzie, not me,’ he reminded her. ‘In the circumstances, I believe I’m allowed to set the terms for that meeting. In which case, it’s dinner this evening or nothing,’ he stated.
She’d had a feeling he was going to say that!
‘Then I suppose I will have to agree to that, won’t I?’ she snapped, the hours, instead of minutes, she would now have to spend in Dominick’s company looming before her like a deep, dark chasm.
‘Don’t sound too eager, Kenzie,’ he taunted. ‘I might get the wrong idea.’
‘I wouldn’t if I were you!’ she came back tartly. ‘Nothing has changed. I just need to talk to you, that’s all,’ she added huskily.
‘It must be something really big, Kenzie, if you’re willing to see me again,’ he mused, finding himself smiling at Kenzie’s obvious frustration with the situation.
It was the sort of relaxed smile he hadn’t given for months. Four months, in fact. Since Kenzie had left him…
His smile evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.
Kenzie had left him, had walked out on their marriage, because, she had claimed, he was incapable of feeling the love for her that she had for him, and after only nine months of being married she simply couldn’t live with him any more.
But her claims that it had been his lack of love for her that had ended their marriage had all been a lie, a fabrication, in an effort to hide the affair she was embroiled in with Jerome Carlton.
He sobered completely at the thought of the other man in Kenzie’s life, and in her bed. He knew that, despite all the things she had said about the fidelity of love and marriage, she had been involved with another man for weeks before their marriage had finally come to its bitter end!
But now, it seemed, she wanted something from him, a favour, she said.
The retribution he had planned was for Jerome Carlton alone, but he knew that the shock waves of the other man’s fall from power would ultimately shatter Kenzie’s world too.
But now Kenzie had brought herself willingly back into his life.
It was like the spider and the fly…
KENZIE had no idea what she was doing sitting in a restaurant waiting to have dinner with Dominick Masters, her almost ex-husband.
He was late.
Deliberately so, she was sure, in an effort to unnerve her.
As if she didn’t feel nervous enough about this meeting already!
A fact Dominick would be well aware of. Just as he had to be aware that any situation serious enough for her to have the need to call him in the first place had to be such that she couldn’t just walk out of here before he deigned to arrived.
Which was why, she was sure, he was purposely keeping her waiting.
Much to the interest of the other diners, not that they expressed it overtly. The face of Kenzie Miller was well known from her catwalk days, and more recently from the advertisements she appeared in on worldwide television as well as billboards and promotions in stores. Kenzie Miller, the face of Carlton Cosmetics.
Kenzie Miller, international model, sitting on her own for the last fifteen minutes at a table set for two, obviously having been stood up by her date for the evening!
No doubt this was Dominick’s idea of a joke, a minor vengeance for her having walked out on him, but, favour or no favour, if he didn’t turn up in the next three minutes she was walking out of here—
He had just walked into the restaurant!
Even if she hadn’t seen him enter Kenzie would have known of his arrival. She could feel the familiar ripple of awareness down her spine at his proximity, and the warmth of her breasts as they began to tingle, while an even hotter fire began in the pit of her stomach.
It hadn’t gone away then, her complete physical awareness of Dominick.
Not that she had ever thought that it would.
It was just distressing to once again be confronted with the proof. He looked amazing, Kenzie acknowledged, in his dark tailored suit and white silk shirt. She imagined the long muscular length of his powerful body underneath, and watched his dark hair as his head moved, hair that she remembered burying her fingers in as she drew his head down to hers and…
He wasn’t even looking her way, damn him. She watched him looking perfectly relaxed as he paused to talk to the maître d’.
Her stomach felt as if it were churned up into knots, and she was suddenly struck by the enormity of what she was doing. But what choice did she have?
Really?
None.
Dominick was walking over to their table now, acknowledging several acquaintainces along the way, seemingly completely unaware of her presence. Or that he was almost twenty minutes late!
‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,’ he said coolly as he took his seat opposite hers at the table, looking just as devastatingly handsome as he always had. As devastatingly handsome as she had imagined while talking to him on the telephone earlier today. ‘I was—unavoidably detained,’ he drawled.
Dominick had seen Kenzie as soon as he’d entered the restaurant, and had been shocked how just looking at her could still render him momentarily speechless. His mouth had gone dry, and he had deliberately paused to talk to the maître d’ in order to give himself time to get over his initial response.
Kenzie looked beautiful this evening. Stunningly so, with her long dark hair loose down her spine, the figure-hugging green strapless dress she wore revealing bare satin shoulders and the creamy swell of her breasts. The dress was an exact match in colour for the emerald of her eyes, eyes surrounded by the darkest, longest lashes Dominick had ever seen, and her full lips held the promise of a passion he had come to know intimately.
But Kenzie wasn’t just beautiful; she had something else, a grace, an inborn sensuality that was apparent even in stillness, like now.
The first time he had looked at her he had felt as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus. Today, under totally different circumstances, he felt the same painful blow as he studied her beneath hooded lids.
None of that emotion showed in the harsh arrogance of his face as he looked across at her. ‘You’re looking well, Kenzie,’ he told her distantly as he nodded his thanks to the wine waiter who was pouring two glasses of the wine Dominick always ordered when dining here. ‘Obviously taking a lover suits you,’ he added harshly.
‘Letting your overactive imagination run away with you again, Dominick?’ she bit out tartly, firmly pushing away her awareness of him as she tossed the long length of her hair back over her bare shoulders to meet his gaze firmly.
She had dressed carefully for their meeting this evening, choosing to wear her hair down the way she knew Dominick preferred it, and a clinging green dress that showed off the perfection of her figure.
She