under his nose in broad daylight. It just went to show how susceptible he was. It also proved how easily his stubborn independence could be taken from him, and would have been if this supposedly ministering angel King saw before him hadn’t leapt up and given chase.
He affected an air of effortless charm. ‘It seems I should be thanking you for looking out for my father, Miss …’
‘Carpenter. Rayne Carpenter.’
It wasn’t her real name. Well, not entirely. It was her mother’s maiden name and the name Rayne had used in the small provincial newspaper she used to write for. But then introducing herself as Lorrayne Hardwicke would only have earned her a one-way ticket out of there, she thought with a little shiver, even though she had been planning to tell his father exactly who she was in the beginning. At first … before those thieves had intervened and thrown all her well-laid plans awry.
‘You’re the best reporter I have, but you’ve got to come up with a story!’ her editor had told her six months ago, before he’d been forced to let her go when her mother’s worrying illness and inevitable operation had forced her to take too much time off.
Well, she could come up with a story! she thought now, with her teeth clamped almost painfully together. It was one exposé she wanted, and one everyone would want to read. Except that this one was personal …
She saw a muscle twitch in the man’s hard angular jaw as he came closer—close enough for her to catch the scent of his cologne—as fresh as the pines that clothed the steeply rising hillside.
‘I’m Kingsley Clayborne. But everyone calls me King,’ he told her, holding out a hand.
I know who you are!
Her confidence wavered. She didn’t want to touch him. But fear of his checking up on her if she showed any sign of unease or aversion to him forced her to plaster on a bright smile. Taking the hand he was offering, she found herself responding before she could stop herself, ‘I’ll bet they do!’
Feeling her slender hand tremble in his, King let his fingers find a subtle path across the blue vein pulsing in her wrist. He noted the way it was throbbing in double-quick tempo. There was something about her eyes too. Deep hazel eyes flecked with green, which were darkly guarded as they fixed on his. But fix on them they did, with a contention that was as challenging as it was wary, and which mirrored the superficial smile on her beautiful bronze-tinted mouth.
He knew his father could take care of himself. He was a man of the world, for heaven’s sake! But Mitch was also vulnerable to a pretty face, and therefore to unscrupulous gold-diggers—and this Rayne Carpenter was one hell of a cagey lady.
Even so, he wasn’t blind to the long, elegant line of her pale, translucent throat, or the way it contracted nervously beneath his blatant regard. Any more than he could fail to notice that her breasts—the cleft of which was just tantalisingly visible above the neckline of her chic but simple black dress—were high and generously proportioned. Quite a handful, in fact.
Hell! He was surprised by how acutely his body responded to the femininity she seemed to flaunt without any conscious effort, especially when his keen mind was telling him that Miss Rayne Carpenter was definitely one to watch. But there was something about her …
Some memory tugged at his subconscious like the fragment of a dream, too elusive to grasp, but still powerful enough to deepen the crease between his thick, winged brows, compelling him to enquire, ‘Have we met before?’
Beads of perspiration broke out over Rayne’s body, as tangible as that strong hand that was clasping hers, prickling above her top lip and along the deep V between her breasts.
She gave a nervous little laugh and said, ‘I hardly think so.’
She wasn’t sure whether he had let her go or whether she had been the one to break the contact, but as her hand slipped out of his she realised that she was desperate to take a breath.
Deep inside her something stirred. Resentment? Dislike?
What else could have produced this overwhelming reaction to him that had her blood surging, not just from his question, but from the unwelcome and disturbing touch of his hand? After all, anything she might have felt for him he had killed off a long time ago, she assured herself caustically. But it had been more than a touch, she reasoned, despising him—as well as herself—for the way he was making her feel.
With one simple handshake she felt as though she’d been assessed, undressed and bedded by him, because behind that probing scrutiny that had trapped the breath in her lungs there had been a fundamental appreciation of a man for a woman. Yet there was still no sign of recognition …
Her breath, marked with trembling relief, shivered shallowly through her when he accepted her denial of having met him before. But then everyone she met nowadays who hadn’t seen her since she was a teenager remarked on how much she had changed. Seven years ago she had had no real curves and her hair had been short and spiky, as well as a different colour. And back then, of course, she would simply have been known as Lorri …
‘Those thieves must have reckoned on your being a definite pushover, don’t you think?’ he remarked smoothly. ‘For the three of them to have targeted you so precisely?’
She took a step back, finding his dominating presence much too stifling, his question baffling her even as it warned her to be on her guard. ‘I’m sorry …?’
‘I mean that they must have noticed you taking more than a passing interest in my father to be so certain you’d rise to their bait when they took that wheel and rush off and help him as you did.’
Could he hear her heart hammering away inside her?
‘I don’t like seeing anyone taken advantage of,’ she said pointedly, and then, with barely concealed venom, ‘for any reason.’ Now, with her head cocked to one side, she demanded, ‘What exactly are you insinuating, Mr—’
‘King.’
Perhaps ‘Your Majesty’ would please you more!
She had to bite her lower lip to stop from crying it aloud. He was rich and powerful now. As well as ruthless, she decided bitterly.
Even then, all those years ago, when she’d crashed in on the ugly scene between him and her father, she had seen a side to him she hadn’t realised he’d possessed. A steel edge to his personality, coupled with a determined lack of scruples for a young man who, while still only twenty-three, had been forced, through his father’s accident, to learn the ropes quickly so that he could pick up the reins of a company about to explode on the world.
‘I couldn’t help but take an interest in him—or in what he was doing, certainly!’ she breathed now, hating him for the part he had played in destroying her father, while warning herself that nothing would escape this man’s notice or bypass the keen circuits of his cold, intellectual mind. ‘I was struck by the way he’d overcome his obvious difficulties to be able to drive himself around like that. I wasn’t aware that admiring someone’s capabilities actually constituted a crime.’
‘It doesn’t.’ His smile seemed to light his face like the evening sun lit the rooftops of Monte Carlo, leaving her struck by its transformation from a dark enigma to one of pure blinding charm.
Rayne’s throat worked nervously. Was he backing off?
‘As you’ve probably been told, my father’s chauffeur left … rather suddenly. Hence the reason he was without a driver, although, I should say, thanks to you, that that breach has been miraculously filled.’
She nodded, ignoring the sarcasm lacing his words.
Her heavy hair moved softly around her shoulders, King noticed, the warmth of the evening light turning it to flame.
His thick black eyelashes came down as he followed the rivers of fire to where they ended just above her contrastingly pale breasts. ‘I gather you didn’t lose everything at the hands of those criminals.’