do you cope with all that emotional energy? You must be like a pressure-cooker, getting ready to explode.’
She sat there silently hating him and saying nothing.
Dominic watched her, waiting for an answer.
The clock ticked softly on the mahogany mantelpiece.
‘But this is so exciting!’ Dominic said softly, eyes deadly. ‘I do love mysteries, and I feel sure you’re one of the biggest mysteries I’ve ever met. I simply must try to unravel you.’
Natasha shot him a look of ill-concealed hatred.
‘It must be something to do with your past,’ he murmured, eyes narrowing in thought. ‘But it can’t be here in London, or my agents would have found it. Therefore, it must be before you came to London. QED.’
‘Will you just go away and mind your own business?’ she said with sudden fierce dislike, because he was much too clever to be allowed to run amok through her past with those damned agents of his.
‘I was right, then,’ he said sardonically, smiling. ‘And it must be something to do with a man, or you wouldn’t now be so determined to avoid them at all costs.’
‘Will you just mind your own——?’
‘So what exactly happened to make you shy away from men? Obviously, there are a number of things that could have caused it. So let’s tick them off. After all, you know what Sherlock Holmes maintained: eliminate the impossible, and whatever you are left with, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. So let’s start with the possibility of some kind of sexual attack.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’
‘Well, I did consider sexual violence when I first met you, but not for very long because you’re the one who kissed me—and very passionately, too.’
Her eyes flared. ‘You know why I kissed you!’
‘Your motivation is not under the microscope, sweetie. Let’s just stick to the point.’
‘The point is that I want you to go!’
‘And the point is that somebody in the past—some man—inflicted some kind of damage on you which makes you avoid getting involved. It can’t have been sexual damage, because sex clearly isn’t the barrier.’
‘Will you stop this?’ she demanded fiercely, as fear rose in her.
‘No, it must be emotional, because that’s what you’re really afraid of, isn’t it? You’re afraid of getting emotionally involved with a man, any man, doesn’t matter——’
‘I asked you to stop!’
‘And if that’s the case, then it must be a man in your home town in Kent who——’
‘Stop it!’
‘A man in Kent who hurt you so badly that——’
‘Shut up!’ Natasha shouted hoarsely and got to her feet with such sudden violence that her chair toppled backwards, crashing into a glass cabinet.
It shattered.
They both flinched as the glass exploded in hundreds of pieces on to the carpet. Then they stared at each other. Natasha was appalled by the dark intense understanding in his eyes, and suddenly saw herself as he must see her—nervous, edgy, frightened, strung out like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof.
The door burst open.
‘What the hell was that?’ Dolly demanded. ‘I thought I——’ She stopped, staring at them both, eyes shocked—as well she might be, because only a Martian would not sense the frazzled air of powerful emotion blazing between Natasha and Dominic.
‘I knocked a chair over,’ Dominic said raggedly, and ran a hand through his tousled black hair. ‘I’ll pay for the damage, of course.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ Dolly said. ‘A friend of mine will fix the glass for——’
‘I insist,’ Dominic bit out roughly.
Dolly stared for a second, then said, ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’ She hesitated, staring at Natasha. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Natasha replied at once, her voice shaking. ‘In fact, I think I’ll accept your earlier invitation and come to the party with you and Bobby, after all.’
Dominic’s dark head swung to stare furiously at her. ‘We still haven’t gone over the details of your trip to Russia or——’
‘I’ll look at the papers tomorrow,’ she said tightly. ‘Please just leave them there and go.’
His mouth tightened. He looked from her to Dolly, then back at her again, and his eyes were jet-black with rage because he knew what she was doing and felt powerless to stop her.
‘Fine,’ he said harshly, striding towards the door. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon to check that you know what you’re supposed to be doing.’
‘Sweet of you!’ she drawled thickly, hating him, and he threw her another black look before striding away down the hall.
The front door slammed behind him.
Dolly looked at her as they both heard his footsteps on the stairs. ‘What the hell was all that about?’
‘Nothing,’ Natasha said thickly, unable to confide in her, for some reason, even though Dolly knew all about Tony, and had never betrayed her confidence, not in all the time she had shared this flat with her. But somehow, the effect Dominic Thorne was having on her was so exceptional that Natasha was afraid to confide in anyone about it.
It’s too strong, she realised, horrified.
He’s already obliterating Tony from my mind, and the reasons are so numerous I couldn’t even list them.
Where Tony had been in his early forties, greying, balding and coldly uncommunicative, Dominic Thorne was thirty-seven, dramatically handsome, sexy, powerful, dynamic, intelligent, sensitive, cynical, gorgeous, rich…
As a man in his own right, Dominic wiped the floor with Tony. But as a man in relation to Natasha, he positively ground Tony out like an old cigar under his expensive, self-assured heel.
And as for her sexual feelings towards Tony—well, she had had none. It had all been platonic, more like play-acting than real love, more like teenage adoration for an unattainable man.
But Natasha knew her sexual feelings for Dominic Thorne were as hot and dangerously hungry as they could get, and if he ever did more than kiss her, she would lose her grip on safety forever.
I’ve only met him three times, and I’m already emotionally, mentally, sexually and spiritually involved with him. In a big way. More deeply than I ever have been before, and if I don’t nip it in the bud, right here and now, I’ll end up obsessively, passionately, irrevocably in love with him.
Danger reared like a hissing serpent. Natasha stepped back in fear from it. She mustn’t feel like that. Never, ever, ever…
THE party she attended with Dolly was wonderful fun, but after Dominic’s visit, Natasha wasn’t really in the mood for fun. In fact, she was unable to think of anything but Dominic.
Sitting on the doorstep of the party house at midnight, she stared into the warm, moonlit sky.
How could he have been so damned clever—and so unfeeling? Even if he had guessed the truth behind her isolated, loveless life, he didn’t have to hit her in the face with it, force her to admit to it. It could be argued that he’d just been feeling his way, watching her reactions to see whether he was on the right