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'Oh, hello,' she said, a pulse beating at the base of her throat with such
vehemence that she almost put a trembling hand up to cover the fact
from his gaze.
'You looked right through me at dinner,' Joel said under his breath, and
now she was certain about that hardness in his tone. She met his grey
eyes directly, flinched and looked away. His powerful face held more
than £oldness. Unless she was very much mistaken there was a
distinctly cruel line to his mouth, an angry tension which gave her the
feeling she had made herself a dangerous enemy today.
CHAPTER FIVE
'I DON'T know what you're talking about/ Suki said in a faintly
unsteady voice.
'Oh, yes, you do. I don't like having someone look right through me the
way you've been doing all evening.'
'You're imagining things.'
'I'm imagining nothing.'
'If we haven't spoken until now it's pure accident.'
His mouth twisted savagely. 'Don't give me that, Suki. When Sir
Humphrey brought you over you talked to Angela and pretended I was
invisible.'
He was making her so nervous that she felt every nerve-end quivering
like a plucked violin string. She glanced down, her lashes sweeping
against her flushed cheek. 'Do you know Sir Humphrey well?'
'Changing the subject?' he asked curtly.
'I hadn't expected to see you here . . .' she began, and Joel interrupted
with a short laugh.
'I'm sure you hadn't or you would have had one of your headaches
and ducked out of the evening, I suppose.'
'I don't have headaches,' Suki said, looking up to meet his eyes. 'I
always keep professional engagements.'
The black brows shot up. 'And that's what this is?'
She half smiled. 'I'm afraid so these people aren't my type, you
know.' She flung a glance around the room, giving a wry smile. 'No,
not my type at all, any of them.'
'What is your type?'
'Musicians, singers people in the business.' She glanced up at him,
her slanting green eyes holding a smile. 'I stay in my own territory, Mr
Harlow.'
'Isn't that rather limiting?' His grey eyes were hard and fierce. 'Not to
say cowardly. If you refuse to risk yourself in any real relationships,
Suki, you'll wither inside, you know that. Every time you refuse to
take a chance you're denying that you're alive at all, and in the end you
won't be, you'll be dead, a walking ghost.'
Her face was highly flushed. She threw a nervous look around,
terrified someone else would have heard his low, rapid words.
'Be quiet!' she muttered, turning to fly. 'I'm not listening to you!'
She felt his hand detaining her, effortlessly wrenching her back to face
him.
'Sooner or later you're going to listen, because I'm going to make sure
you do,' he told her. 'You're a scared little coward, Suki.'
'I'm not!'
'God, your opinion of yourself must be rock- bottom,' he said, his eyes
on her angry face.
'I don't think it's my opinion of myself that bothers you,' she retorted.
'It's my opinion of you.'
'And what's that?' His face had tautened, the strong lines of it stiff, and
he watched her intently through narrowed eyes.
Suki almost backed away from giving any answer, but something in
the challenge of that stare made her lift her head in defiance and
answer him.
'I think you're a man who's always had everything he wanted and has
come to believe he's entitled to reach out a hand for everything he
fancies,' she said.
'Charming,' he said. 'Go on.'
'Isn't that enough?'
He laughed in a low, angry way, his eyes brooding on her. 'More than
enough, but I can see from your face that it isn't all you'd like to say so
go ahead and say the rest.'
Suki smiled sweetly. 'Mr Harlow, I get the feeling we're playing some
sort of truth game, but of a very dangerous variety.'
'Truth's always dangerous,' he said.
'Then why meddle with it?'
'In the normal way, I wouldn't,' he said. 'I'd realise you didn't like me
and walk away without a backward glance.'
'Then why don't you do just that?' she demanded hurriedly, getting a
direct, hard stare from those grey eyes.
'Because I want you too badly to do anything of the kind.'
She caught back a startled gasp, lowering her eyes, and felt him take a
step closer. Softly he went on: 'And because the more I see of you the
more I realise you've been in a deep-freeze for years, and you're so
packed in ice you don't even realise it. But I've seen you singing and I
know that isn't all there is to you under the ice there's more passion
than you know what to do with and I want it, Suki. I want to be the
one to smash through the ice and unleash all that burning feeling.'
Suki trembled, glancing around in scarlet embarrassment to make sure
nobody else was in earshot. She caught Angela Whitmore's watchful
eyes and hurriedly looked back at Joel.
'Be quiet!' she whispered. 'What do you think you're doing, talking to
me like that with all these people around?'
'If you don't like it, give me a chance to talk to you alone,' he came
back at once.
'No!' she burst out.
'I'm not going away, Suki, and I'm not giving up.'
Her eyes flickered over his face, reading the fixed, immovable
determination with a sinking sense of shock and dismay. His eyes
were steady and implacable, glinting in silvery appraisal as she met
them, his taut cheekbones leading the eye down to that strong jawline.
She searched that face for some sign of uncertainty and found none.
He meant what he said. She had been pursued many times in the past,
but they had always given up when she made it clear that she didn't
want to know. Joel Harlow was made of different stuff. He wasn't
giving up.
'You'll be wasting your time,' she said at last with husky unsteadiness.
'I don't-think so,' he told her. 'I might have done if you hadn't
encouraged me.'
'I did nothing of the kind!'
'Oh, yes,' he mocked. 'When I kissed you . . .'
Colour swept up her face to her hairline and she half turned away to
hide it from him. Softly he added: 'It confirmed my suspicions. The
passion's in there, all right, and all it needs is the right man to break
through to it.'
'That won't be you,' Suki muttered. 'Oh, yes, it will. I don't care how
long it takes, you see, or what I have to do to get you, but the minute
you came on stage that night I knew I had to have you. You set the
whole place on fire. I couldn't take my eyes off you.' He smiled drily.
'You may deny it, but what you sell is dreams, and you certainly sold [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]