A Secret Seduction: A Secret Until Now / A Sinful Seduction / Secrets of a Shy Socialite

Breathe, she told herself. You’ve coped with worse.

Such as once she had got back to her room in the university residence, when she had locked the door and stood under a shower for forty minutes but still hadn’t been able to wash off that feeling of self-disgust, shame and the bitterness of disillusion.

Finally she had stopped indulging in the orgy of misery and given herself a stern talking-to.

‘What are you going to do, Angel? Stay in here for ever?’ Wiping the steam off the mirror, she had glared at her tear-stained face. ‘Your problem is you’re a dreamer, a stupid dreamer. You wanted deep and meaningful, you wanted to wait, you wanted the first time to be with someone who made you feel special. Well, you didn’t get the prince—you didn’t even get the frog!’ She quite liked frogs. ‘So what? Big deal, just suck it up, Urquart.’

It had been good advice then and it still was.

Her chin lifted. ‘Angel Urquart, and I’m not actually here to enjoy myself, just to work.’ She failed to inject any warmth or animation into her voice, but she managed to deliver the comment with composure. You’re doing well, Angel, she told herself as she clenched her fingers tight, driving her nails into the softness of her palms.

Now he wasn’t touching her she was able to channel some cool of her own. The cool only went skin deep but that didn’t matter. What mattered was showing the cheating, lying bastard that there was nothing he could do to hurt her; she had suffered the infection and built up a natural immunity.

‘I hope you’ll find a little time in your schedule to enjoy what we have to offer, Angelina.’

The predatory gleam in his heavy-lidded eyes shouldn’t have shocked her and definitely shouldn’t have produced a hot ache at the juncture of her thighs but it did both.

Why surprise? she asked herself. You jumped into bed with him after five seconds six years ago. Why wouldn’t he file you under the heading marked convenient, easy, or most likely both, since you’ve clearly fulfilled both from his point of view?

Pushing away the wave of shame, she embraced the anger coursing through her veins. Smiling, she shook back her dark hair and adopted a dumb expression.

‘It’s Angel, and I’m not actually big on multitasking.’ She was confident she could crush his expectations. She might even enjoy doing so. ‘You have a beautiful home.’

A home, a wife and to her knowledge at least one child, her child. But for all she knew there could be more, possibly a dozen children...? Did Jasmine have half-sisters, half-brothers...? Not a possibility Angel had considered before, and not one she wanted to consider now!

‘This isn’t my home. It’s a hotel, Miss Urquart.’ He paused, the line between his dark brows deepening as he scanned her face. She had gone pale, her full pink lips were blanched of colour and she looked as though she was about to pass out.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ She heard him ask with more irritation than concern. The rushing sound in her ears made her think of the ocean, which along with a couple of continents was what she needed to put between this man and her before she felt all right. But failing that... She snatched a glass from the tray of a passing waiter, but didn’t hold on to it for long.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?’

Her green eyes fluttered wide and she stared with utter astonishment as in a seamless motion he tipped the contents of the untouched glass he had taken from her fingers into a flower arrangement. Her jaw dropped as she felt her temper fizz. This man was totally unbelievable!

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ The words didn’t deliver the verbal punch she had intended. Instead her voice had a breathy, vulnerable quality. Teeth clenched, she continued to glare up at him, dabbing her tongue to the beads of sweat that clustered along her upper lip. She rubbed a hand across her forearm and found her skin was moist but cold.

He did not enter the debate but, after subjecting her to a narrow-eyed scrutiny, concluded with an air of resignation, ‘You need some fresh air.’ When he had contemplated her horizontal, a dead faint and ambulances had not entered the picture. So much for a little light flirtation. Alex preferred the woman in his bed to be sober and fully conscious!

He kept telling her what she needed—that night he had known what she’d needed before she had, and he had given it to her. She stiffened as she felt a hand in the middle of her back.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘You are repeating yourself and, in reply... Excuse me...’ The small group parted like the sea in response to his soft-voiced request. ‘I am saving you from yourself.’

You’re six years too late for that, she thought, deciding that struggling to evade him would just draw people’s attention. As it was she was conscious in the periphery of her vision of a few curious looks as they moved towards the door.

Outside he spoke to a hovering member of staff and a chair appeared. He pressed her down into it. ‘Better?’

She nodded and turned her face to the sea breeze. ‘It was a bit warm in there.’ Actually it was warmer outside but she no longer felt as if the room were closing in on her. Once her head stopped spinning and the tightness in her chest eased she would be fine. ‘Thank you. Don’t let me keep you from your guests.’

CHAPTER THREE (#uf9ff38c7-3705-5089-92cf-ce5ad2294efa)

‘YOU ARE BEING irritatingly childish.’

This lofty condemnation brought her head up with a jerk...mistake! Angel closed her eyes and waited for the world to stop spinning, opening them a moment later when she found a glass placed at her lips. She responded to the terse instruction to drink; the alternative would have been choking because he did not have what could be termed a gentle bedside manner!

She turned her head away and mumbled, ‘Enough.’

‘You are welcome.’ He watched as she dabbed the back of her hand to the excess moisture on her lips and his focus slipped as the memory surfaced of them softening and parting beneath his. The muscles in his angular jaw tensed and the sinews in his neck stood out as he forcibly ejected the memory, but not before he heard the throaty sound of her plea—please...!

That husky plea had been all it had taken to silence the voice in his head, the one that had been telling him he ought not to be doing this.

He had done it and he wanted to, needed to, again. The struggle then like now had been to keep his passion on a leash. Something about this woman seemed to tap directly into his primal instincts.

‘What happened in there?’

My past came back to bite me. ‘Other than you overreacting,’ she accused him, not willing to admit how close she had come to passing out in public. ‘I’ve told you it w—’

His cold eyes narrowed with irritation as he cut across her impatiently. ‘It wasn’t the heat.’

She narrowed her eyes and fixed him with a glare. Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity would have tactfully gone along with the heat excuse and not pried and prodded. ‘Do we have to have a post-mortem? I got a bit light-headed. It happens. Now I feel much better. I’ll have an early night.’

Perhaps the problem was that she had had too many early nights... The thought did not improve his frame of mind. While he was not looking for a long-running thing—there seemed little point waiting for boredom to set in, as it always did—he did like exclusivity.

He was not a possessive man but sharing was a deal breaker.

‘It does not happen for no reason.’

Angel started to feel guilty as he continued to scrutinise her face as though he would find the answer there.

‘Will you stop looking at me like that?’ she husked. ‘You’re making me feel like a criminal. I haven’t broken any law.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I think I’d have remembered.’

‘Have you taken anything?’

Still taking breaths of fresh air to clear the muzziness in her head, she flashed him a confused look, then, as his meaning suddenly dawned on her, lost all colour. The heat returned in a searing wave of outrage until her smooth cheeks glowed.

And the insults just kept coming!

‘You’re accusing me of being a...a...a...junkie!’ And then he had the cheek to look astonished when she got upset. This man really was outrageous, she fumed.

He felt relief. Her outrage might be a case of the lady protested too much but his instincts told him otherwise. ‘No need to overreact.’

She clenched her teeth. The pat-you-on-the-head, patronising quality of his drawled response made her want to scream.

‘I’m simply excluding possibilities before I call a doctor.’