The Only One

On her way to the door Brooke had been stopped by her solicitor, who insisted on appropriating another glass of warm white wine for her.

‘Surely you’re not leaving already Brooke?’ he complained. ‘I wanted to talk to you about this donation to the hospital.’

‘Sam, I’m not going to change my mind,’ she told him positively. ‘They need that money far more than I do. I’ve got the Lodge,’ she persisted, when he would have interrupted, ‘and I have the ability to earn my own living. What more do I need?’

‘A job,’ he told her wryly. ‘My dear girl, have you thought yet? Where are you going to find a job round here? Abbot’s Meade is a small country town, there’s nothing here for a woman like you….’

‘Apart from my roots,’ she reminded him equally wryly. ‘Sam, when are you going to accept that I don’t want a glamorous high life. I’m quite content to stay here….’

‘Maybe now,’ he agreed, ‘but what about in five years’ time? Surely you don’t intend to stay single all your life?’

‘And London is a better hunting ground for husbands?’ she mocked him. ‘Or perhaps you were thinking that if I didn’t make the donation to the hospital I could buy myself one, after all it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened in this family; an old name in exchange for new money.’

Someone else claimed his attention and as she watched her solicitor turn away Brooke eyed a nearby rubber plant and then looked distastefully into her glass of unappealing wine, unaware that she was being observed.

She had just finished pouring the contents of her glass into the peat when she saw him.

At close quarters he was even more magnetising than he had seemed across the width of the room. Slate grey eyes appraised her thoughtfully, the smile that touched his mouth a combination of insolence and experience. She disliked him on sight, Brooke acknowledged, repressing the small shiver of response quivering through her—an unusual reaction for her, and one she was careful to conceal from him, like a quarry suddenly scenting its hunter.

‘Why did you do that?’ He gestured towards her empty glass, his smile assured and knowing—knowing the effect his particular brand of intense masculinity must have on her sex, Brooke thought, covertly studying him. Perhaps it was time someone gave his massive ego a jolt. Smiling with saccharine sweetness she responded. ‘I’m a reformed alcoholic forbidden to touch spirits or wine.’

For a moment he seemed taken aback and then amusement glinted in the depths of his eyes, no longer cold, but warmly slumberous, their expression flashing warning signals to Brooke’s brain.

‘Umm … and what could drive a beautiful woman like you to seek refuge in drink, I wonder?’

‘Oh, all the usual things,’ Brooke responded nastily, ‘but most particularly men who look at me as though they’re sizing me up for their next meal.’

‘That frightens you?’ If anything he looked even more amused.

Brooke snapped her teeth together and spoke through them. ‘No, it offends me—just as it would offend you if the boot were on the other foot.’ When he continued to look amused, she added coolly. ‘I can see that you aren’t convinced, but believe me if you had to fend off every member of the female sex who found you attractive and who thought that that gave her the right to make a play for you, you’d soon realise how offensive it can be.’

‘Really? I’ve always found a simple “No thanks” perfectly adequate.’ He flashed white teeth in a faintly cruel smile, and Brooke found herself wondering cattily who had done his dental work. If it wasn’t for that slight chip in one of them she might almost have believed they had been falsely enamelled.

‘Then I’m saying “No thanks” to you right now,’ she told him recklessly, suddenly searingly angry without really knowing why she should be. She glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to see an irate wife bearing down on them. Why was it that women always acquitted their erring husbands of the blame? She had received more frosty looks from her own sex than she could count, and if they had but known it her interest in their dull husbands had been less than nil.

‘Are you now?’ The deep voice was unexpectedly soft, shooting warning flares along Brooke’s nerve endings. ‘I wasn’t aware that you’d been asked.’

There were several responses she could have made. She could have pointed out that the way he was looking at her was invitation enough, but she was too stunned to speak, and he used his initiative relentlessly watching her colour change and deepen as she fought against her growing anger.

‘When you’re angry your eyes change from green to gold,’ he remarked softly. ‘Did you know that? What are you doing here? You look as out of place as a goldfish in a village pond.’

‘If that was meant to be a compliment you can keep it,’ she told him crisply, spoiling it by adding, ‘anyway in Japan goldfish do inhabit the village pond.’

‘And women know their rightful place,’ he tormented her, ‘so what conclusions are we to draw from that?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ Her expression was disdainfully uninterested. She glanced at her watch, a twenty-first present from her uncle and bought in the days before she discovered the state of his financial affairs. It was a gold Piaget and she treasured it more because he had given it to her than because of its value.

The grey eyes watching her had suddenly darkened, flashing storm signals that startled her. ‘A present from a grateful admirer?’

His voice was taunting, his expression one she was familiar with on male faces. So he thought the watch had been given to her by a lover; well let him.

Pinning a false smile to her lips she responded coolly, ‘Of course…. And now if you’ll excuse me….’

‘You’re leaving? Why?’

His arrogance infuriated her afresh. What business of his was it if she chose to leave?

‘Because I’m bored,’ she told him sweetly.

‘The company not good enough for you? Perhaps there isn’t anyone here wealthy enough to supply you with another of these?’ His fingers circled her wrist just below her watch, stroking the fragile bones, sensitising her flesh in a way that Brooke couldn’t believe possible. She was torn between wanting to tug her wrist away, and giving way to the melting sensation of pleasure spreading up her arm, making her finger-tips tingle. The intensity of her response startled her to the point of not being able to correlate her thoughts, and the rough drawl of his voice broke the physical spell momentarily binding her to him as he continued mockingly, ‘But I’m sure they’d be willing to give you other if less valuable baubles in return for some of your time….’

‘Only my time?’ Inwardly Brooke was seething, but she hid it well, as she had grown used to doing.

‘Or perhaps you’re playing for higher stakes,’ the soft drawl continued. ‘One large item is so much more worthwhile than several cheaper ones, and easier to earn,’ he added cynically.

It wasn’t the first time Brooke had come up against such an attitude, and she doubted that it would be the last. By some trick of fate the delineation of her facial features was such that she possessed a slumberous, almost sensual quality that men automatically assumed meant that she was sexually available. That, in a way, she could understand and excuse, but what she couldn’t forgive was their immediate reaction that being available meant she could be bought—and by the highest bidder. This man it seemed was no different from the rest, and despite the fact that he lacked the smooth polish of many of the other men in the room with him, he did possess all the discreet trappings of wealth. Brooke’s mouth tightened. He was an arrogant, over-confident male who seemed to think he could just reach out and take whatever he wanted from life. Perhaps it was time someone taught him a lesson.

‘Meaning?’ Brooke queried, mentally holding her breath.

‘Meaning,’ came the audacious response, ‘that I’m in a position to provide the one large item.’ A lazy smile accompanied the lightly spoken words, his expression saying that this conversation was really unnecessary, as the result was already a foregone conclusion. For one moment Brooke was tempted to blast him with the full force of her wrath, but caution, and a searing need to humiliate him as he had just humiliated her, intervened. How dare he imagine that she was his simply for the buying; that she would ever dream of agreeing to the sort of sordid bargain he had just suggested? Her quick brain agilely sifting through their conversation, Brooke thought she had found a way to make sure he would never again look at a woman with the same contemptuous confidence with which he had just smiled at her.

‘Which do you prefer,’ she was asked as she remained silent, ‘cash or kind?’ When she turned shocked gold eyes towards cold grey ones, Adam shrugged and said easily, ‘I do prefer to get these annoying details sorted out beforehand, don’t you? It makes life easier all round.’

‘You prefer paying for your sex?’ Brooke asked him, hardly able to believe she was having this conversation.

The broad dinner-suited shoulders shrugged. ‘I believe in an honest exchange of commodities—yes, and women always intend men to pay in one way or the other don’t they?’ He added less pleasantly, ‘It’s just that the majority of them prefer their payment in emotional coin—far more damaging to the pocket in the long run.’

‘Meaning?’ Again Brooke put the brief question.

‘Meaning that I’m not in the market for emotional involvement,’ Adam told her coolly. ‘I always like to make that clear right from the start.’

‘Very wise of you, I’m sure.’ Brooke hid her surprise under a veil of indifference. From his attitude she wasn’t the first woman he had approached in this way, by a long chalk. How had the others reacted? Or was this the first time he had mistaken his quarry? Brooke wasn’t blind to the fault of her sex; there were women, and she knew plenty of them, who would be quite happy to accept his offer—providing it was more prettily packaged to be sure, and yet one look at him had been sufficient for her to know that he possessed a sexual magnetism that few women would be able to resist, and that they would want him for himself alone.

‘So, do we have a bargain?’

Caution warned her to refuse—to stop the game while she still could, but a deep inner burning anger overruled caution and she heard herself saying calmly, ‘Yes, I believe we do.’

‘So … tonight, then?’

He didn’t waste much time, Brooke reflected, concealing her consternation. ‘Very well, tonight. I live in the Lodge at the end of the drive.’

‘I’ll be there at ten.’

No pretence of wining and dining her first, Brooke noted, one half of her applauding his cynical down-to-earth attitude while the other half was horrified, cringing away from the implications of his comment. Obviously he was a man well used to getting what he wanted, but tonight she was going to blast a hole into that immense self-conceit which she told herself a little fancifully was going to be not just a blow for herself, but for the whole of womankind—or at least that part of it young and attractive enough to catch the eye of Mr—–? She frowned, realising that she didn’t even know his name, subduing the hysterical bubbles of laughter rising up inside her, at the thought that she had verbally committed herself to going to bed with a man whose name she didn’t even know, and who didn’t know hers.

‘I’m Brooke Beauclere by the way,’ she introduced herself, rectifying the omission.

‘Adam Henderson.’ He watched her carefully, but she made no response to the name, which was unfamiliar to her. Nor did he offer to shake her hand, instead, sliding his grip from her wrist to her hand, lifting it palm upwards to his mouth and placing his lips against it. The brush of his tongue against her palm made her jump in surprise, a thousand tiny nerve endings pulsing into life as his lips moved down to her fingers, nibbling erotically at her skin. When he finally released her hand she felt hot and disorientated. No one had ever made her feel like that before, but as she pulled herself together she reminded herself that practice makes perfect, and that no doubt he had learned long, long ago, just how to make a woman responsive to him. He certainly didn’t look the type of man who would expect his partner to lie back and think of England, and he must want something for his money other than an unresponsively receptive body, Brooke thought cynically.