Dark Paradise

Kate shrugged. ‘Let’s just say I have a built-in immunity to men of your sort, Mr Lincoln, and leave it at that!’ She paused. ‘You have no real reason to ruin Alison’s marriage, after all. You were never really serious about her, or you’d have asked her to marry you.’

‘Perhaps I’m not the marrying kind.’

She shrugged, ‘But Jon is, and Alison is his wife, and he loves her. It would be terrible for him if it all went wrong. Have you even considered what the consequences might be, if she goes with you?’

‘Oh, I’m not that heedless, Miss Marston,’ he said. ‘I’d take adequate precautions against any—consequences.’

Kate almost ground her teeth. ‘I didn’t mean that, and you know it!’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know it.’ He swallowed the remainder of his whisky and got to his feet in one fluid, angry movement. Alarmed, Kate took an involuntary step backwards, and he laughed.

‘Scared, Miss Marston? So you should be. You have a bloody nerve coming here to preach to me about my morals, using your—disinterested affection for someone else’s husband as an excuse. What a two-faced little bitch you are!’

‘Attack, of course, being the best form of defence.’ Kate spoke contemptuously, but her heart was thumping violently. ‘What’s the matter, Mr Lincoln? Have I actually got to you? Could you be suffering a belated bout of conscience?’

‘No,’ he said grimly. ‘Old-fashioned bad temper, coupled with another emotion you’re probably too perfect to recognise, by your own reckoning anyway.’

He tossed the empty tumbler on to the sofa behind him without even sparing a glance to see if it had landed safely, and came towards her.

Kate gasped, and turned to run for the door, but he’d caught her before she even took two paces, taking her by the shoulders and swinging her round to face him. His face was a mask of anger, the blue eyes blazing.

He said with soft clarity, ‘Not so fast, paragon. Let’s see how secure that pedestal of yours actually is.’

She realised what he meant to do, and aimed a blow at him with her clenched fist. He avoided it easily, jerking his head to one side, swearing under his breath, and the next moment both her arms were pinioned behind her back, his hand clamped like a vice round her wrists. His other hand fastened in her hair, not gently, forcing her to be still as his mouth came down on hers.

She shuddered weakly, closing her eyes, bracing herself against the first bruising onslaught. Only it did not come. Instead his lips closed on hers with bewildering gentleness, exploring their softness with warm sensuousness.

She stood passively enduring the featherlight kisses pressed to the corners of her mouth, the delicate grazing of his teeth against the soft fullness of her lower lip.

She was desperately and shamingly aware that her breathing was changing, quickening as the long deliberate caress went on, and she tried to pull away. Immediately his grasp tightened in her hair, and with a little choked gasp of pain, she was forced to submit.

The pressure of his mouth against hers was subtly more insistent now, his tongue stroking teasingly along the contours of her lips, silently coaxing her to part them, and allow him a deeper, more passionate intimacy, and she felt her whole body shiver as she fought its traitorous urging to let him have his way.

She couldn’t believe what was happening to her. She was being deliberately punished, and she knew it, yet deep within her, a soft, sweet trembling was beginning to take control, compelling her to move towards him so that their bodies touched as well as their mouths, prompting a first bewildered response to his kisses.

A little aching sigh escaped her, as her lips parted, yielding him the sensual dominance he sought.

But the mere fact of his victory seemed to be enough. Matt lifted his head and put her away from him, his smile slow and contemptuous as he looked down at her.

‘No,’ he said softly, ‘you’re not blessed with any special immunity, darling. Want to argue the point further—in bed, perhaps?’

‘Let go of me!’ Her voice cracked on the words.

He stepped back, raising his hands ostentatiously, his dark face sardonic. ‘You’re free, Miss Marston. Unless you have anything else you want to discuss with me.’

She shook her head, staring blindly down at the carpet. ‘No—I was a fool to come here—I should have known—should have realised it wouldn’t be any use.’ Her voice shook. ‘You really don’t care, do you? You’re so used to destroying people, ruining their lives in those programmes of yours, that it doesn’t matter to you any more. I—I don’t know how you can live with yourself.’

She went towards the door, and this time he made no attempt to prevent her from leaving. But Kate felt his anger following her like a shadow as she fled down the dim corridor towards the lift and some kind of safety.

She looked like death the following morning, but that was hardly any wonder considering how little she’d slept. And you didn’t have to be actually asleep in order to have nightmares, she’d discovered too.

She decided she must have been suffering from temporary insanity. That was the only feasible explanation she could find for the way she’d acted. Just what had she hoped to achieve? she asked herself in a kind of despair. Some sort of appeal to Matt Lincoln’s finer feelings? Some hopes, she thought with bitter irony. He was a tough ruthless man at the top of his profession. He had no need to bother with those kind of refinements, as his behaviour towards herself had clearly shown.

She groaned inwardly, feeling the hot colour surge in her face as she unwillingly recalled those few moments she had spent—not in his arms, certainly, because he’d never held her like a lover—but under his power.

She had been seduced, she was forced to acknowledge, and God only knew where it might all have ended if Matt Lincoln had not decided to call a halt.

It should have been me, she accused herself miserably. I might not have been able to use my hands or move my head, but I could have kicked him, bitten him, given him a swollen lip for the make-up girls to disguise.

Passive resistance had done no good at all. And at the end, she had been very far from passive, she remembered with shame.

And she had achieved nothing, except to reveal herself as the worst kind of naïve meddler, and to tell herself that she had meant well wasn’t the slightest comfort. Didn’t they say the road to hell was paved with good intentions?

The cheerful babble of the coffee percolater did nothing to raise her spirits, and she switched it off irritably, giving the inoffensive machine a subdued glare.

From now on, she resolved, she was going to mind her own business, no matter what happened. And her business was her work, and the illustrations that Barlow and Herries were waiting for.

Her chin set determinedly, she marched across the landing into the studio. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d soothed away some inner pain with the anodyne of work, and from what life had taught her already, it wouldn’t be the last.

Normally, she worked fast, with ideas crowding on her as she sketched and discarded, using sheet after sheet of paper as she tried to capture the spirit behind the typed words of the script. But she couldn’t pretend she possessed anything like her normal concentration, she thought wearily, as she crumpled yet another sheet and hurled it towards the brimming wastebasket.

The tap on the studio door was almost a welcome interruption. It would be Maria, Kate thought, flexing her shoulders as she straightened up from her drawing board. She had heard her go out earlier, and guessed she was on her way to the shops, and in particular the small home bakery just round the corner to collect some bread for them both.

Bread and honey, she decided as she called ‘Come in,’ and some of the previously rejected coffee. Probably Maria would join her.

All the breath seemed to escape from her body in one jolting gasp as Matt Lincoln walked into the room.

She slid off the stool, uncomfortably aware of the increased rate of her heartbeat.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I met your landlady on the steps. She told me to come straight up.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Were you hoping to have me arrested for trespass?’

‘Well, she had no right,’ Kate said stormily. ‘Will you please get out of here right now!’

‘Well, you’re consistent, I’ll give you that,’ he said grimly. ‘Morning, afternoon or evening, it’s always the hard word.’

‘What else to do you expect?’ Kate glared at him. ‘How did you find out where I live?’

‘I could ask you the same question,’ he drawled. ‘But I won’t. Let’s just say I’m as good a detective as you any day of the week, and call it quits, shall we?’

She stared at him bitterly, resenting the intrusion, although she knew she had brought it on herself by her own actions. He looked incredibly tall, the sloping attic ceiling emphasising his height, and he seemed to fill the available space completely. Her space, Kate thought angrily. Her privacy.

‘Quits, then,’ she said with an effort. ‘Now will you please leave—I have work to do.’

He took in the litter of crumpled paper around her feet and trailing to the wastebasket. ‘Going well?’ he asked pleasantly.

‘A new project,’ Kate said shortly. ‘And early days yet.’ She paused. ‘Please will you go.’