An Enticing Debt to Pay. Annie West
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she lied about being the one who’d ripped him off?
Her soft eyes were huge in her finely sculpted face, giving her an air of fragility despite her punk-short hair and belligerently angled chin.
Jonas wasn’t sentimental enough to let looks mar his decision-making. Yet, absurdly, he found himself hesitating.
He didn’t want to believe Ravenna guilty.
Far easier to believe her rapacious mother had organised this swindle. After years keeping his emotions bottled up he’d almost enjoyed the roaring surge of fury against his father’s mistress that had borne him across the channel in a red-misted haze.
But what bothered him most was the recognition he didn’t want it to be Ravenna because he remembered her devastating innocence and honesty years ago. He didn’t want to reconcile that memory with the knowledge she’d become a thief.
Jonas’ lips twisted. Who’d have thought he still had illusions he didn’t want to shatter? He’d been too long in the cut-throat business world to believe in the innate honesty of mankind. Experience had taught him man—and womankind were out for all they could get.
Why should this revelation be so unwelcome?
‘You say you wrote the cheques?’
Again that jerk of tension through her. Her pulse tripped against his palm and he resisted the absurd impulse to caress her there.
She nodded, the movement brief but emphatic.
‘How did you get access to the cheque book?’ Piers would have been canny enough to keep it close at hand, not lying around. ‘Were you living here with them?’
‘No, I—’ She paused and her gaze shifted away. Instinct told him she hid something. ‘But I visited. Often. My mother and I have always been close.’
That at least had the ring of truth. He remembered her misery in her teens, not simply because she hated school and the vicious little witches who made her life hell there, but because she didn’t want to disappoint her mother by leaving. She cared what her mother thought.
Enough to learn her mother’s ways in seeking easy money from a man? Had she modelled herself on Silvia?
The notion left a sour tang of disappointment on his tongue.
‘You’re hurting me!’
Jonas eased his grip, but didn’t let her go. He was determined to sort this out. Until then he’d keep her close.
‘Why did you need the money?’
Her eyebrows arched and she tilted her head as if to inspect him. As if he weren’t already close enough to see the rays of gold in the depths of her eyes.
‘You’re kidding, right?’ Her tone of insouciant boredom echoed the attitude of entitlement he’d heard so often among wealthy, privileged young things who’d never worked a day in their lives. Except something in her tone was ever so slightly off-key.
Suspicion snaked through him.
He pulled her closer, till her body mirrored his. He felt the tension hum through her. Good! He wanted her unsettled.
‘A girl needs to live, doesn’t she?’ This time there was an edge of desperation in her tone. ‘I’ve had...expenses.’
‘What sort of expenses? Even shopping at the top Parisian fashion houses wouldn’t have swallowed up all that money.’
Her gaze slid from his. ‘This and that.’
A cold, hard weight formed in the pit of Jonas’ belly. He was surprised to feel nausea well.
‘Drugs?’
She shook her head once, then shrugged. ‘Debts.’
‘Gambling?’
‘Why the inquisition? I’ve admitted I took your money. That’s all that matters.’ Her gaze meshed with his and a jagged flash of heat resonated through Jonas. It stunned him.
How could a mere look do that? It wasn’t even a sultry invitation but a surly, combative stare that annoyed the hell out of him.
Yet aftershocks still tumbled through his clenching belly and he found himself leaning closer, inhaling her warm cinnamon and hot woman scent.
This couldn’t be happening.
He refused to feel anything for the woman who’d stolen from him. Especially since she was Silvia Ruggiero’s daughter. The thought of that family connection was like a cold douche.
Deliberately he chose his next words to banish any illusion of closeness. ‘Why steal from me when Piers would have indulged a pretty young thing like you? I’m sure he’d have been amendable to private persuasion.’
‘You’re sick. You know that? Piers was with my mother. He had no interest in me.’ She drew herself up as if horrified. Either she was a brilliant actor or she drew the line at men old enough to be her father.
‘In my experience he wasn’t discriminating.’
Ravenna yanked her hand to free it from his grasp but Jonas wasn’t playing. He wrapped his other arm hard around her narrow back, drawing her up against him.
Just to keep her still, he assured himself.
It worked. With a stifled gasp she froze. Only the quick rise and fall of her breasts against his arm where he still held her hand revealed animation.
‘Speaking from personal experience, are you, Jonas?’ Her voice was all sneer. ‘What are you doing now? Copping a feel?’
His jaw ached with the effort to bite back a retort.
Unlike his father he’d never been a sucker for a pretty face and a show of cleavage. Sure, he appreciated a sexy woman. But he was discriminating, private in his affairs and loyal to whomever he was with. His intellect and his sense of honour took precedence over cheap thrills.
When he married there’d be no shady liaisons on the side, no whispered rumours and knowing looks to embarrass his family. None of the pain to which Piers had subjected them.
Jonas stared down at the firebrand who’d managed to tap into emotions he’d kept safely stowed for years. In one short interlude she’d cut through years of hard-won self-control so he teetered on the brink of spontaneous, uncharacteristic, dangerous action. He almost growled his fury and frustration aloud.
He wanted to lean down and silence her sassy mouth, force those lush lips apart and relieve some of his frustrated temper in steamy passion and a vibrant, accommodating woman.
She’d be receptive, despite that accusatory look. That was what made the idea so tempting. Ravenna might hate him for making her face what she’d done. But it wasn’t merely anger she felt for him—not by a long chalk.
‘Oh, I choose my women very carefully, Ravenna.’ His voice was a low, guttural burr. ‘And I never take anything from a woman that’s not offered freely.’
Dark satisfaction flared as he assessed her reaction with a knowing eye.
He read her rapid breathing and the flush that began at her cleavage and highlighted her cheeks. The way her tongue furtively slicked her lower lip. The indefinable scent of feminine arousal.
‘Really?’ Her breathless challenge didn’t convince. ‘Well, keep that in mind. I’m not offering you anything.’
Jonas was torn between wanting to kiss her senseless and wanting to put her over his knee. He leaned in a fraction and heard her soft exhale of breath. A sigh...of surrender or triumph?
Suddenly it hit him anew that he was in danger of succumbing to the allure of a Ruggiero female. Of an unprincipled thief who threw her crime in his teeth.
Who enticed with her soft body and tell-tale physical signals.
‘Is that so?’ he murmured,