Ruthless Lover. Sarah Holland
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paintings from Nick in case he saw them. The last thing she wanted was for him to find out she was flourishing as an artist behind his back.
Going to her wardrobe, she opened it, then picked up the packing cases crammed with her numerous paintings, and lugged them into the wardrobe with a groan. The canvases were very heavy. She locked the door and went to her dressing-table to blow-dry her hair.
Later, she strolled into the living-room in a peacock-blue silk shift dress, her long red-gold hair in her usual style, falling seductively over one eye.
She looked at the telephone and frowned. It was ominously silent. Was Nick really diverted here unexpectedly? His fleet of air staff was usually so efficient. If there was something wrong with the jet…
Nick’s bedroom door burst open and he strode in. ‘I’m bored!’ he announced in that cool Bostonian voice, running a hand through his freshly washed black hair, devastatingly attractive in a blue-grey business suit, every inch the powerful, sexy tycoon. ‘I don’t want to sit around here all day waiting for a call! Let’s go out!’
‘Out?’ Serena repeated, staring.
‘Sure. Why not?’ He strode to the telephone and switched on the answering machine with long, quick fingers. ‘Do some shopping, have some lunch.’
Her lips parted. ‘But we never go out together…’
‘Don’t we?’ He straightened, face cynical. ‘I never noticed.’
‘You’re always too busy being Nick Colterne to notice,’ she said with a haughty flick of her lashes, then, ‘Anyway—what about the jet? If they call—’
‘They can leave a message like everybody else,’ he drawled, and ran his insolent blue eyes over her slender curves. ‘I like the dress. Very sexy. Needs some shoes, though. Go and put them on and let’s get out of here.’
Serena’s mouth tightened. ‘Don’t order me about, Nick!’
‘Why not?’ he drawled, a sardonic smile on his hard mouth.
‘Because I don’t like it!’ she snapped, hating him with a sudden fierce passion.
‘Well, isn’t that just too bad?’ he drawled softly, a mocking smile on his ruthless mouth as he studied her, challenging her to do what she suddenly realised she wanted to do: slap his cynical face and wipe that smile right off it.
Their eyes warred in a moment of hair-raising electricity. Then Serena tightened her lips and stormed into her bedroom, trembling with rage, to fling open her walk-in wardrobe and get her high heels, jamming them on her feet in a burst of uncharacteristic fury.
‘Don’t slam about, beautiful!’ Nick drawled from the doorway, leaning there, hands in trouser pockets, watching her with mockery, and she turned, eyes flashing wide with sudden fear in case he moved into the room and saw the tell-tale packing cases.
‘So sorry, Nick,’ she said sweetly, and closed the doors of the walk-in wardrobe. She locked the doors.
Nick watched with narrowed eyes. ‘Why are you locking the doors?’
‘Just a habit.’ She smiled at him, watching him through her gilt-tipped lashes.
His lashes flickered on razor-sharp cheekbones. ‘Not hiding your lover in there, I hope?’ he murmured, and suddenly the mockery was gone from his face, the ruthless cut-throat shark sending waves of excited fear through her.
‘We don’t all live like you, Nick,’ Serena said with cold contempt. ‘We don’t all indulge our carnal desires with impunity!’
He laughed softly, blue eyes insolent as they roved to her breasts. ‘Carnal desires? Now there’s an interesting phrase…’
That look took her breath away, made her veins pulse with sudden fierce heat, and she hated him for it, hated his stark sexual appetite and the ruthlessness with which he indulged it.
‘I thought we were going out!’ she snapped, furious to find she was almost trembling as his blue eyes moved lazily, cynically over her body, taking in the narrow waist and the sensual curve of her hips, so seductive in the peacock-blue silk shift dress.
He straightened, bored with toying with her. ‘Sure. Come on. Let’s hit Manhattan and buy a few stores.’
They went down in the luxurious lift. Nick was coolly indifferent to her, jingling change in his pockets, eyes narrowed in thought. Serena stood beside him, feeling superfluous, as she always did, and hating him.
New York was in the grip of this heat wave, and the sun blazed down on the city that was a living twentieth-century masterpiece of modern art, its jagged spires piercing a hot blue sky, its pavements moneyed and fast-paced. It was the Oxford of ambition.
‘Hi, Mr Colterne!’ The doorman saluted cheerily. ‘Lady Serena!’
‘Hi!’ Nick strode by him like a whirlwind. The chauffeur opened the limousine door. Nick got into the luxurious rear. All very fast, very smooth. Nick didn’t have to alter his stride once.
Serena slid in beside him. The door shut. Her green eyes surveyed his tough profile in the back of the limousine as he looked at his watch, the crisp white cuffs shooting back, the Rolex glittering on his hair-roughened wrist.
‘Eleven,’ he said flatly. ‘Take us to Faulke’s.’
The chauffeur pulled away with a smooth surge of power. Serena glanced out of the window. She adored New York. The pace, the cosmopolitan atmosphere, the stark steel skyscrapers and the elegance of the older establishments.
Nick prowled around Faulke’s, ordering things left, right and centre. Saleswomen followed him with admiration, fluttering their eyelashes while he cynically inspected their red mouths and slim bodies. Serena watched him operate, hatred in her eyes.
They had lunch at the Plaza. Heads turned as they walked in. Waiters swarmed all over them, and Nick dismissed them with a curt wave of his hand, striding across the restaurant with Serena behind him.
‘We haven’t done this in a long time,’ Nick observed as they sat at the elegant table drinking Château Lafite and waiting for their main course. ‘When did I last bump into you, anyway?’
‘Christmas,’ she said flatly. ‘At Flaxton Manor.’
‘That’s right. And it’s June now.’
‘How the months drift by,’ she said, disliking him intensely.
‘Do they drift by, Serena?’ he asked with a cool lift of dark brows. ‘Or are they beginning to speed up for you lately?’
She tensed, watching him with sudden wariness. ‘Speed up? Why should they speed up?’
A slow, sardonic smile touched his hard mouth. ‘Well, now, they might one day. You never know. After all—you can’t spend the rest of your life flying aimlessly around the world with nothing to do and no lover to make—’
‘I do wish you’d try to be polite!’ she said tightly, green eyes flashing as she cut into his insulting sentence midstream. ‘It’s bad enough having you here without warning, without having to put up with your bad manners too!’
His face tightened into a hard mask. ‘Don’t speak to me like that, Serena,’ he said, his blue eyes suddenly as ruthless as his steel-edged tone.
‘Or what?’ she challenged suddenly, although her blood pulsed in fierce, unexpected response to the look in his eyes, and her voice was unsteady, threaded with sudden desire to provoke.
‘Or I’ll take you home and take you to bed,’ he said under his breath, menace lacing his voice, his mouth very hard. ‘How’s that for a threat?’
She was breathless, her lips parted and her breathing erratic.
‘Good girl,’ he murmured, hard mouth curving with a cynical smile. ‘Now—tell me what you’ve been up to since Christmas