Mistress of Convenience. PENNY JORDAN
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for the right words.
‘I’m sorry if you feel you can’t believe me,’ she began politely. ‘But I assure you that I am telling you the truth. I do not work for the magazine any more and no one from it is responsible for my being here! Like I just told you, I am here on holiday!’
She was picking her words too carefully for them to be genuine, Luke decided.
‘On holiday? Alone?’ he challenged her softly. One dark eyebrow rose tellingly, and Suzy was hotly conscious of his merciless and unkind gaze sweeping her face and then her body.
‘I needed time on my own…to…to think…’
She had to get away from him!
‘Time on your own? A woman like you?’
The razor-edge contempt in his voice made her face burn, but before she could say anything he continued silkily, ‘So, if you aren’t, as you claim, working for Roy Jarvis any more, then who are you working for?’
His question caught Suzy off guard, and she had to wrench her thoughts away from the pain his insult had caused her in order to answer it.
‘I’m not working for anyone at the moment. I haven’t got another job yet…at least…’ She paused, her eyes darkening as his question reactivated her own anxiety about her future. After the contempt he had already shown her there was no way she was going to tell him that in order to make ends meet she had taken a job in a local supermarket.
Suddenly she had had enough.
‘Why are you questioning me like this?’ she demanded wearily. ‘Just because you’re here, guarding some government bigwig, that doesn’t give you the right to…to treat me as some kind of…of criminal. What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?’ she demanded nervously, fear trickling through her veins as she sensed that somehow something had changed, that the anger she had sensed in him before had been replaced by a steely determination.
‘How do you know who is staying at the villa?’ Luke questioned quietly.
For a moment Suzy was too bemused to answer him. Was it that that was responsible for the intimidating change in him?
‘I heard someone talking about it,’ she told him honestly. ‘I thought he was supposed to be here on holiday, but of course now that I’ve seen you, and those men who were leaving, I realise…’
Her voice trailed away, when she saw his expression, and Luke prompted her softly.
‘Yes? What is it exactly that you now realise? Something you know your boss Jarvis would be very interested in? Something that you just can’t wait to report to him?’
Suzy stared at him aghast.
‘No! No—nothing like that. He isn’t my boss anymore,’ she denied. ‘I’ve already told you that.’
Something about the way he was watching her made her feel very afraid.
‘So I was right.’
Suzy could feel her heart bumping heavily against her ribs as the deceptively soft words penetrated her awareness.
‘You realise, of course, what this means?’
Suzy stared at him uncomprehendingly. He had lost her completely now, she acknowledged, and she fought to drag her unwilling mind away from her worry about the physical effect Lucas Soames was having on her emotions to what he was saying to her.
‘What what means?’ she asked.
Lucas’s mouth thinned. He had no time for games, no matter how much Suzy Roberts might enjoy her play-acting. One minute the ingénue, another the femme fatale. A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw as he tensed his body against memories he didn’t want to have. Memories of the feel of Suzy’s body against his own, the taste of her mouth, the scent of her skin…
Savagely he turned away from her. This—she—was a complication he just did not need. It was bad enough that Jarvis had sent anyone here at all—but that it should be her!
Angrily, he examined the facts—and his options! Yes, they both knew why Suzy was here, but just how much did she know? How much information did she actually have?
He had destroyed the photographs she had taken of the African President’s private guards, but he could not eradicate that information from her memory. And he certainly could not allow her to pass it on to anyone else—and most especially not to Roy Jarvis, to publish in his wretched magazine!
There was only one thing he could do now, little as he relished the prospect!
Luke had had his fill of reporters, both male and female! He had seen at first hand the damage, the devastation their single-minded determination could cause. He had seen fighting men’s lives risked and innocent civilians’ lives lost for the sake of a ‘hot’ story. And he had seen…His mouth twisted, his expression hardening even further.
He’d seen children under school age, half starved, fighting for water and food…whilst excited reporters tried to film their pitiable situation. And worse! Much, much worse! He moved, and the scar low on his belly pulled against the wound it covered.
He had learned over the years to mistrust the media at large.
And Ms Suzy Roberts was not going to be an exception to his rule that all media personnel were to be treated as guilty and kept under strict surveillance!
Luke’s gaze narrowed.
Despite the fact that he was trained to keep his body still for hours on end, he suddenly felt he needed to move, step back a little from Suzy, and he grimly suppressed the unwanted knowledge that her proximity was affecting him.
‘You realise, of course, that I can’t let you tell anyone what you’ve seen?’ Luke informed her.
A cold thrill of horror ran through her.
‘But I’m not going to tell anyone,’ she protested.
‘I suppose the best and easiest thing to do would be for me to confiscate your passport and then have you thrown in jail,’ Luke said calmly.
‘What?’ Suzy’s face paled. ‘No—you can’t do that…’ She could hardly believe what she was hearing, but one look at Lucas Soames’s face assured her that he was deadly serious.
‘Oh, I think you’ll find that I can,’ Luke assured her.
‘But, knowing what you are capable of doing in order to get what you want, I think the best place for you right now is where I can make sure you aren’t able to make any kind of contact with Roy Jarvis.’
‘What—what are you going to do?’ Suzy asked anxiously,
‘I’m going to take you back to the villa with me—as my partner.’
‘WHAT?’
Suzy was totally lost for words as she struggled to comprehend what he had said. His partner! But that meant…Fear and then longing shot through her like a firework showering her insides and touching every single nerve-ending she possessed. Partners…lovers…soul mates! No. She just wasn’t strong enough to withstand this kind of torture!
‘No—no! You can’t do that. I won’t!’ she protested shakily.
He had already released her wrist, and as she spoke she was backing away from him, adrenalin pulsing through her veins. She had to get away! She had to!
As soon as she was out of his arm’s reach she turned and started to run, driven by her instinct to flee, to protect herself, to hide herself from the danger she knew lay waiting for her!
Intent on her escape, she did not even think about sticking to the path which led back to the resort,