the engagement had broken up in a blaze of publicity, leaving Gabe bitterly unhappy behind an armour of grim control. And she hadn’t seen Sara since.
Think duty, Melissa advised herself curtly. And wear the little black dress you bought in Paris.
It was difficult to keep her mind on her work; during that interminable day she found herself drifting off into daydreams interspersed with periods of painful anticipation that brought heat to her skin, and made her chide herself for her stupidity.
But eventually she was ready. Dissatisfied, she turned away from the mirror. The black dress might be sophisticated, but it drained the colour from her skin so that the blusher she’d used stood out like two streaks of paint on her cheekbones.
Why had she never noticed that before?
Because it had never mattered. Under the tutelage of a tiny, exquisite mother, a true Frenchwoman with superb grooming and clothes, she’d learned to minimise her height and stay in the background. Until tonight she hadn’t wanted to impress any man enough to worry about whether a colour suited her or not.
Or whether she looked sexy.
Disgusted with herself for caring so much about Hawke’s opinion—a man who’d never given her any reason to indulge this stupidly adolescent reaction—she wrenched off the black dress and wiped away her blusher.
She surveyed her scanty wardrobe before setting her jaw and taking down a top in darkly bronze silk with fake bronze and gold ‘jewels’ around the V-neck. Sara had given it to her, along with velvet jeans in the same rich colour. Melissa had never worn them; she’d only packed them because she’d been told New Zealanders were noted for their informality.
So she’d be informal for Hawke Kennedy.
She scrambled into the top and jeans, then surveyed her long, narrow feet in despair. Not one pair of shoes suited the sleek jeans. Eventually she set her jaw and pulled on a pair of high-heeled boots in black.
Her mother would have called the whole outfit vulgar, and told her that the long, slim lines made her look taller. Well, she thought robustly, she didn’t care. At least she looked a little more alive in it. Although that was probably because the twisting and turning of getting dressed had produced a flush in her cheeks.
Frowning, she stared at her reflection. No foundation, she thought defiantly. Her skin was pretty good, even if she did say so herself. What lipstick? Her favourite peach didn’t go with the rich bronze of her clothes. She examined her lip gloss, a shade of soft coppery-pink. If she used that on its own it might look good with the clothes.
It did.
Eyes? Distastefully she examined the open eyeshadow palette. Normally she used muted greens, but tonight something compelled her to pick out a smoky golden brown and apply it with a slightly unsteady hand.
‘Actually, that’s not bad,’ she said slowly, after scrutinising herself.
The rich colour around her eyes intensified their almond shape and gave them a heavy-lidded smoulder that startled her. It also picked up hitherto unnoticed golden highlights in her irises.
And the soft sheen to her lips looked…well, slightly provocative.
Or had she just made a fool of herself? Would Hawke take one look at her with cynical eyes and realise that she’d gone to an awful lot of trouble to make herself look good for him?
Her mother’s voice echoed in her ears. That colour’s too bright for you, Melissa. It makes you look vulgar and brassy. Stay with classic colours and lines. With your height you need to be subtle, not blatant.
Melissa took a deep breath. Although her mother had rarely commented on her tall daughter’s lack of beauty and grace, Melissa knew she’d always been a disappointment.
Setting her too obvious jaw, she pulled her hair away from her face and pinned it severely at the back of her neck. There, that should show Hawke she hadn’t tried to be seductive.
Stifling a familiar sense of inadequacy, she said flippantly, ‘Sorry, Mama.’
But at the door she turned back, seized by a painful sense of her own inadequacy. She couldn’t go out like this. It would only take her ten minutes to change back into the little black dress…
A glance at her watch told her she was running too late for that. For a second she hesitated, then set her jaw.
She couldn’t face walking through the lodge and down the long, glassed-in corridor that led to the suite. Instead, she took the path along the lake edge, hoping that the serenity of the water and the mountains would calm the erratic pounding of her heart.
CHAPTER TWO
FROM the window Hawke watched Melissa stride into sight, tall and lithe and confident as a young goddess, her wide shoulders and long legs emphasising the graceful curves of breasts and hips. The glowing light of the setting sun played like a nimbus around hair the colour of dark honey, tied back to reveal the striking contours of her face.
A severe goddess, he decided—more Minerva than Venus. But then, he’d always preferred the challenge of intelligence to overt, eager sexuality.
Something stirred into life inside him, a lazily predatory instinct that startled him.
He ignored it. Desire could be inconvenient, and over the years he’d learned to manage it.
He’d known from their first meeting four years ago that Melissa Considine wasn’t a suitable candidate for an affair. Apart from the fact that Gabe was a good friend, she simply wasn’t his type; refreshingly down-to-earth, she exuded a simple, straightforward innocence that suggested a charming lack of experience.
However, because he never took anyone on trust, he had run a search on her during the day. Interestingly, it had turned up precious little; perhaps that innocence was real.
Or perhaps, he thought cynically, noting the subtle, sexy sway of her hips as she turned to look at the mountains, she’d just been remarkably discreet.
He could have contacted his head of Security, who’d probably have been able to dig deeper, but for some reason he hadn’t.
Still, he’d found out a few things. He ticked them off as he watched her come towards him along the lakeshore. Her father had died when she was nine, her aristocratic French mother five years later. She’d gone to a top-grade boarding-school in England, a finishing school in Switzerland. With an excellent degree in marketing under her belt she was now taking her master’s at a prestigious university in America. So she had a good brain—probably a first-rate one.
She stooped to pick up some small thing. Hawke’s eyes narrowed and the tug of hunger sharpened into a goad when she straightened and an errant little breeze moulded the thin material of her jacket around her magnificent breasts.
Heat kindled in his loins. Damn, he wanted her…
Tough, he told himself ruthlessly. She was only twenty-three, ten years younger than he was, and she’d been sheltered all her life. He shouldn’t have asked her to dinner. Hell, his one experience of an ingénue—an actress-debutante who’d developed a crush on him with no encouragement whatsoever and made a damned nuisance of herself when he’d let her down as gently as he could—had taught him not to take anyone at face value.
Young she might have been, but Lucy St James had thought nothing of weeping all over the tabloids about an affair that had never happened. He liked his lovers experienced and too sophisticated to demand any more than a passionate affair; that way, when they parted no one got hurt.
Just lately, however, he’d been thinking it might be time to consider marriage.
But not, he told himself caustically, watching Melissa stare out across the lake as though searching for a lover in the gathering dusk, with someone he’d asked to dinner purely as a courtesy to her brothers.
And that was a lie.
The