CHAPTER TWO

      MARI FELT ALMOST as shocked as the two-hundred-plus pairs of eyes that swivelled her way; the place had great acoustics.

      ‘A lot, I object.’ Aware her voice was fading away weakly, she squared her shoulders and bellowed in a voice that bounced off the walls like a sonic boom. ‘A lot!’

      Poor grammar, but it was definitely an attention getter! She had the stage until presumably she was rugby tackled by the security guards, or sectioned under the Mental Health Act. What did it say—a danger to yourself or others? There was only one other she wanted to be a danger to, one other who... Stop thinking, Mari. You’ve got your moment—don’t let it slip away.

      ‘He...!’ Her second dramatic pause was not intended. The last person in the place, the only one who hadn’t yet turned did, and as her eyes impacted with the sloe-dark stare of her intended victim her throat dried to dust.

      One word slipped through her head—dangerous!

      In many ways he looked exactly as she remembered: proud, arrogant, actually with that thin-bridged nose, slashing sybaritic cheekbones and sensually moulded, cruel-looking mouth he looked positively pagan! What she hadn’t remembered about six years ago, before he had turned on her like the jungle predator he reminded her of, was her own humiliating reaction to the blatant sexuality he exuded. Even her scalp had tingled with a sexual awareness that made the muscles low in her belly tighten—that hadn’t changed either!

      Shamed acknowledgement grabbed her, and for a vital moment Mari lost her focus; she almost forgot what she’d come here for. She lifted her chin and ignored the squirming liquid sensation in her stomach. She had come here to give him a taste of his own medicine, see how he liked being humiliated.

      He didn’t seem to appreciate the clever role reversal. The last thing he looked was humiliated. The heavy-lidded eyes that held hers were the eyes of an eagle looking at its prey.

      She was no victim!

      Not this time, and if he had any doubts... Mari dropped her chin, closed her eyes and exhaled a long shaky breath to compose herself. Then, heart pumping, she lifted her head and stretched out a hand towards him, letting her fingers flutter.

      ‘You can’t do this, Sebastian,’ she appealed, pressing the hand now to her stomach. ‘Our baby, he will need a father.’ As she said this she couldn’t help but think of her own father. Where was he now?

      * * *

      The woman had had her audience in her pocket from the first throbbing syllable of heartbreak and desperation, and now Seb felt their attention switch to him, not giving him sufficient time to recover from the shock of recognition that had felt like the vibration of a shotgun blast when he’d turned and seen her standing there. While the aftershocks still reverberated in his skull, he schooled his expression into neutral—less damage control and more an unwillingness to provide entertainment for the masses.

      He saw her lips move and read, Do you know who I am?

       Know who she was...?

      In other circumstances he might have laughed. The number of occasions when he had lost control in his adult life could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and he wasn’t about to forget that particular one, or the woman responsible.

      But even if by some miracle he could have conveniently blanked the incident from his mind—it had not been one of his greatest moments—Seb could never have wiped the memory of that primal rush. It had electrified every cell of his body. He had never before or since experienced anything that came close to his response to her innate sensuality.

      Did she bring out the same animal response in all men? Men who, unlike him, could not recognise the response as a weakness; men who allowed their passions to rule their lives.

      Men who lacked his self-control—without it he might have been a man like his father.

      No longer able to fight the compulsion, his eyes dropped, moving in a slow sweep that took in every aspect of her from the glorious flaming head of Pre-Raphaelite curls that framed her perfectly oval face to the length of her endless legs to the sleek, sinuous curves in between. Everything was accentuated by a dress that was probably illegal in several countries...or was that the body?

      It was the lust that slammed through him—hard to imagine a less appropriate response in the circumstances—that brought reality like a boomerang rushing back to hit him squarely in the gut. He reacted to the weakness with an explosive rush of anger.

      ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ As he flung out the question in the periphery of his vision he sensed movement coming from the row that was reserved for the royal party. Hell, this was a disaster. Where was Security and where had they been when she had strolled in?

      Her smile, sheer, silky provocation, caused him to take an involuntary step forward, fury for a fatal split second blanking logic.

      ‘Now you know what it feels like!’ Mari flung with a bravado she was not feeling... Actually she was feeling really weird.

      The last thing Mari saw before the dancing black dots joined up and for the first time in her life she fainted was those dark implacable eyes staring with skin-peeling intensity at her.

      Before she hit the ground, Seb had been pretty sure that the graceful fainting stunt was just as phoney as the rest of her performance.

      But she wasn’t moving... If she had knocked herself out, he thought grimly, it would deprive him of the pleasure of making her choke on her words, though not even a full retraction would fix the damage she had just caused.

      He had spent years making the Defoe name stand for