willing?—and I’d make sure they knew all about it. You were leading me on. How old are you? Twenty-four? Twenty-three? Old enough to have had several previous lovers. That never goes down well in court.’
It was a nightmare, Genista thought unsteadily. This simple could not be happening, but it was, and if she didn’t go with Luke willingly now she was quite sure that he would put his threats to good effect. Rape! The word shivered horrifyingly through her. Several previous lovers, Luke had said. She bit back a hysterical laugh. She hadn’t even had one—Richard had seen to that! She took a deep breath, her mind working overtime as she tried to find a means of escape. She could always run, but Luke would soon overtake her. Her brief contact with his body had shown her that he was lean and well muscled, more than a match for her!
‘Well?’
‘I’ll come with you.’ She took a deep breath and tried to relax her tensed muscles. ‘But it must be my flat.’
She could feel him looking at her, trying to read her mind. She held her breath, hoping he could not guess what she had in mind.
‘Very well,’ he agreed slowly. ‘Give me your doorkey. As a sign of good faith,’ he mocked. ‘I’m not having any doors slammed in my face this time, Genista, either metaphorically or actually.’
With shaking hands she opened her bag and removed her key. He took it in silence, his fingers biting painfully into her arm as he led the way back to his car.
It was a sleek dark red Maserati. Luke was obviously not short of money, Genista reflected as he opened the passenger door and waited until she was seated before closing it.
‘Don’t bother trying to open the door. I’ve locked it,’ he told her sardonically, before walking round the car and sliding in beside her.
The confining interior of the car heightened her feeling of alarm. The upholstery was cream hide, the smell mingling with the sharply masculine fragrance of Luke’s cologne. It was a masculine car, driven by a very masculine man, she thought, watching him change gear smoothly. The lights changed and they moved off with a smooth roar.
‘Where do you live?’
She gave him directions automatically. If she hesitated and he took her to his own flat she dared not think of the consequences. What had started out as a simple exercise to show him that he simply could not have whatever he wanted, just because he wanted it, had turned into a nightmare of alarming proportions. The revenge Luke wanted to mete out in payment for the way she had humiliated him was something she could not endure, and would not have to endure if she was lucky. The hands resting lightly in her lap tensed, and she crossed her fingers childishly, uttering a silent prayer that the commissionaire of her apartment block would be in the foyer when they drove up.
She felt rather than saw the way Luke’s eyebrows rose when she indicated that he should stop. The apartments had their own underground car park, but she wasn’t going to direct him into that. Instead she let him pull up outside the discreetly expensive block, waiting passively for him to help her out of the car.
‘You live here?’
The sharp enquiry heightened her fear.
‘Yes.’ She had bought her apartment when she first came to London. In many ways it had been a mistake, because the other occupants were mainly middle-aged couples, and apart from the occasional ‘Good morning’ or comments about the weather they had not exchanged any conversation.
The foyer was brightly lit from within, George sitting solidly behind his desk, and Genista felt a little of the tension drain out of her. He recognised her straight away, and started to smile as she walked in. Taking her courage in both hands, Genista turned to Luke, a false smile pinned to her lips.
‘Thank you so much for a wonderful evening,’ she told him, hoping that her voice did not sound as artificial to George as it did to her. ‘I’ll say goodnight now.’
For a moment she thought he was going to force a showdown. She could feel George watching them, and wondered feverishly if she should have pretended that he was accosting her in some way, and then just when she felt sure that her gamble had not paid off, she heard him say smoothly,
‘Goodnight, Genista.’ His hand slid from her arm to her wrist, lifting her fingers to his lips and touching them with a panache that was making George goggle. ‘You must think of our parting not as an end, but as a beginning.’
Genista could tell that George thought he was witnessing the tender beginning of a love affair, but beneath the lightly drawled words and the soft look she sensed an implied threat. Luke was warning her that he still intended to have his revenge!
Only when she was quite sure that the Maserati had pulled away did she turn towards the commissionaire, her voice shaky with released tension.
‘George, I seem to have misplaced my key,’ she told him. ‘Would you be an angel and let me in? I think I’d better have the lock changed as well. You can’t be too careful these days.’
‘I’ll see to it myself tomorrow, miss, if you like,’ George offered. ‘I’ll just lock the main doors and then I’ll come up with you and open your door for you.’
He’d always had a soft spot for her, right from the first day she moved into Mallory Court, he told his wife later. There was something about her. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful. She made him feel all protective-like somehow. High time she got herself a boy-friend, he added, and by the looks of it the one she’d now found herself was doing alright for himself. Fast, powerful sports car …
Unware that she was the main topic of conversation in the commissionaire’s flat, Genista prepared for bed. There were faint bruises on her throat, and she touched them lightly, shuddering. Jilly had warned her that Luke could be dangerous and she had laughed at her. She wasn’t laughing now, and she was only thankful that it was extremely unlikely that she would ever see Luke Ferguson again. First thing tomorrow she must remind George about changing her lock. When his anger cooled she doubted that Luke would pursue her any further, but she wouldn’t be able to sleep in her bed at night knowing he had a key to her apartment. Her hand crept towards her breast. The flesh still tingled from his touch, emotions she had not experienced for years rushed through her, and she was remembering Richard. Luke … Richard … her father … they were all the same. All men were the same; she turned her face into her pillow and allowed the frightened tears she had been bottling up from the moment Luke kissed her with such merciless contempt to flow freely at last.
GENISTA overslept—an almost unprecedented occurrence, and as she struggled to make her way to work through the crowded underground rightly or wrongly she blamed Luke Ferguson. He was the reason she had lain awake half the night, tormented by all manner of strange emotions. Forget the man, she told herself, stopping in her tracks so suddenly that the man walking behind her bumped into her, as she remembered that she had not seen George again about changing her locks. She bit her lip. She would have to try and ring through from the office. She didn’t think Luke would try to use her key. He had struck her as a man of too much pride to attempt to see her again—unless his desire for revenge still burned as fiercely as it had done last night. She was being over-imaginative again, she told herself. It was over.
Bob was already seated at his desk when she walked in, his head bent over some papers. Computerstore was only a small concern; everyone worked together in one large office, except the owner and Managing Director, Brian Hargreaves, who was usually out somewhere selling the company’s services. Since the news of their takeover had broken no one had seen Brian, although there were rumours that he had been offered a position on the board of their new owners. If that was the case they would need two new staff members; someone to replace Brian and someone to replace Greg, who had left the firm to take up a job in the States. Greg’s loss did not particularly worry Genista. She could tolerate Greg, but she knew that beneath his surface charm lurked a particularly malicious streak which had often manifested itself in the