A Secret Seduction: A Secret Until Now / A Sinful Seduction / Secrets of a Shy Socialite. Elizabeth Lane
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on, Angel,’ he urged, mocking her with his electric-blue eyes. ‘Live dangerously.’
Angel looked away, remembering what had happened the last time she had lived dangerously. Now she was a mother who was going to provide her daughter with what she had craved as a child: a calm, nurturing environment to grow up in. Combustible relationships were not on the agenda and there was no escaping the fact that sparks flew every time she came within the same square mile as Alex.
Unlike yesterday, she was in a position to actually appreciate the wind-in-your-face experience of cutting through the water in the fast speedboat. She sat back, knowing the journey would not last long, though it turned out to be a little longer than she anticipated. Instead of mooring where the film crew were dropped off, he continued on, following the coastline.
The filming had all taken place at the side of the island that faced the mainland. They had been requested not to leave the immediate area so she had never seen this side of the island, and she immediately saw how different it was—much greener and more lush.
He cut the engine and brought the boat expertly up to the edge of the small wooden pier.
‘There used to be a road from the other side of the island but it fell into disrepair. The only access now is by water or helipad.’
It turned out there was no road this side either. The stony, near-vertical route he drove the open-topped four-wheel drive along barely deserved to be called a track. Halfway up the hill Angel, who was hanging onto the overhead strap, turned her head and yelled, ‘If you’re going to drive like this, you might at least put two hands on the steering wheel.’
He threw her a lazy smile. ‘You’re a back-seat driver.’
Angel didn’t respond. They had just topped the crest of the hill and she was staring at the scene revealed in front of her. The pristine sand was as silver white as the Hebrides, the long waving grass behind it dotted with wild flowers, and set in the middle of the green rippling carpet was a white marquee and pitched under it was set a long table. Two figures were unloading items from the four-wheel drive vehicle parked close by.
‘If I’d known I would have dressed.’
She half expected the couple who were unloading food to wait on them, but they drove away after a quick word with Alex. As she watched them vanish and responded to the light touch between her shoulder blades that made her conscious of every prickling inch of her skin she realised just how alone they were.
She gave a laugh to cover her nerves and approached the shaded table covered with a white cloth laid with silver and crystal.
‘This is your idea of a picnic?’ It might be some people’s idea of a seduction scene. Discounting the possibility and the flip of excitement low in her pelvis, she was sure that he wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble for nothing. The question remained—a lot of effort, but why?
‘I don’t like sand in my food.’
‘You could always concrete over the beach.’
‘An idea, but I have to think about my eco credentials.’
‘Especially as they’re so profitable.’
The muttered response drew a thin smile from him. ‘You are, as always, eager to assign the worst possible motives to my actions.’
She opened her mouth to deny this charge and closed it again, her eyes sliding from his as she mumbled, ‘I can be a cynic.’
‘If you’re interested in all things eco you might like to look around my house sometime.’
Following the direction of his gesture, she frowned, seeing only a grassy hill above the high-tide mark, but then a glint of light reflected off glass caught her attention.
‘Goodness!’
‘Yes, it’s easy to miss at first, isn’t it?’ The architects had fulfilled their brief and made the structure blend in with the landscape, but they had gone one step further—they had made it part of the landscape.
Excavated into the hillside, his sanctuary with its turf roof and no manufactured walls was invisible from most angles, but the clever design meant that every room was flooded with light from the massive glass panels that faced the sea.
‘You live there?’ It was not the power statement that she had assumed any home of his would be.
‘I stay there occasionally. It suits my needs, but it is not equipped for entertaining, hence...’ He gestured to the table.
‘Won’t you sit down?’ He pulled out one of the chairs and, feeling both awkward and anxious, she took her seat.
The first fifteen minutes did not give her any insight into him as a person. His conversational skills were as she had expected but he managed to avoid any personal questions, instead turning them back on her. It was deeply frustrating.
‘You do not care for seafood?’
Angel, who had been pushing her food around her plate, set her fork down and decided the best approach was a direct one.
‘Why did you ask me here? Not to talk about the food, I’m sure.’ Nibbling on her lower lip, she caught hold of one of the crystals that weighed down the cloth, rolling it between her fingers.
‘Why did you come?’ he countered.
She set her elbows on the table and stared across at him. ‘Do you always respond to a question with another question?’
His brows knitted as he forked a large prawn into his mouth. ‘I am resisting the temptation to say pot, kettle, black.’
‘Not very well,’ she inserted sourly.
‘The answer to your question is, yes, I do, when the answer interests me.’
‘I was bored and hungry.’
‘You haven’t eaten much.’
‘I’m watching my weight.’
‘Do you ever worry about your part in the message that the media sends out to young girls?’ His tone was deceptively casual but the eyes that met hers were anything but.
‘Message?’
‘The pressure to achieve an impossible level of perfection, like the women they see in the magazines. The message that equates beauty with happiness. Of course, I was forgetting you have a daughter of your own. I’m sure you are well aware of the pressures facing young women.’
She stiffened, her heart beating fast as she twisted the linen napkin between her fingers. He knew, somehow he knew! Or he thought he knew....
‘Jasmine is not a woman. She’s a child.’
‘True, but they grow up so quickly and I believe that anorexia sufferers are getting younger and younger.’
She shook her head, angry now, and got to her feet. Looking down at him lessened the feeling of being a mouse being toyed with by a large feline. ‘Why are you suddenly so interested in my daughter?’
He laid his own napkin down with slow deliberation, holding her eyes as he got to his feet. ‘Because I had this idea... It’s crazy, but in my experience those are the ones that it pays not to ignore. So I did a little research and a few surprising things came up, like the fact that your daughter was born eight months to the day after we spent the night together and there was no one before.’
‘Or after.’ Did I really say that?
He didn’t react, but she could feel the emotions rolling off him.
Angel didn’t blink; she didn’t breathe. She shrugged and struggled to hold on to her manufactured calm.
‘So you want to know if you’re Jasmine’s father? Couldn’t you just have come out and asked? Did it really require all this elaborate stage-managing?’
‘It occurred to me that you