Back in her cabin, she stripped off her clothes. Feeling vulnerable, she had put on a little make-up and dressed differently to give her confidence a boost. Now, as she removed her make-up with a cleansing wipe and walked into the en-suite bathroom, she wondered why she"d bothered. She piled her hair up and tucked it under a shower cap, then turned on the water and took a quick shower. Stepping back out, she dried herself, pulled off the shower cap and shook her hair out. She slipped on the towelling robe provided, and tied the belt loosely around her waist.
Sighing, she walked back into the bedroom-and froze. Rion was standing by the table, her phone in his hand.
"What are you doing with that?" she demanded, dashing across to him and grasping at her phone. "That is my private property and you have no right to touch it."
"I heard you in the shower and answered it for you," he said, with the arch of an ebony brow. "Someone called Trevor wanted you to confirm your date of arrival."
Rion was angry. His expression was bland, but she could tell by the glitter in his eyes and the tension in his huge body.
"I will later," she shot back, and shoved the phone in the pocket of her robe.
But Rion was not finished.
"I told him I didn"t know the exact date but that you were my cruising companion for the next four days, if that helped."
"Oh, h.e.l.l!" she exclaimed.
As Rion reached for the belt of her robe, she batted his hand away in her agitation and glared furiously up at him.
"What on earth did you say that for?"
"I told him the truth. Something you seem reluctant to do. You seem nervous, Selina. Does Trevor believe he is your only lover?" he queried cynically.
"Don"t be ridiculous. Just tell me you did not give him your name."
"As it happens, no, I didn"t." His stormy eyes narrowed on her flushed, furious face. "The poor devil was so shocked you were with another man he never asked me. In fact he actually apologised for disturbing you and hung up. But why does my name matter?" he demanded curtly.
"Isn"t that obvious? I don"t want anyone knowing I am with you," she fired back. "Certainly not Trevor, as he happens to be Beth"s husband. I have already lied to Anna, and told Aunt Peggy and Beth I"m on a holiday cruise around the Mediterranean with hundreds of other pa.s.sengers. Beth will have a million questions when she hears I am with a man. Thank G.o.d she does not know it is you. She hates you."
"I"m not that fond of her either," Rion said dryly, and reaching for her shoulders pulled her closer. "But you-now, that is a different matter, Selina." And he dipped his head and brushed her lips with his.
She shivered, intensely aware she was naked beneath the robe, and glancing up saw the gleam in his eyes. Where had his anger gone? With his white shirt open to reveal the strong column of his throat he looked dangerously s.e.xy and very sure of himself.
"I don"t condone lies, but I can understand your reasoning and overlook the falsehood because you are a woman and can"t help yourself. A beautiful, incredibly sensual woman ..." he said with a smile. "I also realise why you were so cranky at dinner. You dressed to flirt because you were feeling neglected all day." He was so sure of himself he didn"t try to cover his arrogance.
"You are unbelievable." Selina stared at Rion in a kind of fascinated horror. His reasoning was so wrong it was almost funny. She wondered what he would say if she told him the truth-that she still loved him and her behaviour had been a defence mechanism to hide the fact.
"What did you want me to do after your little act?" The smile left his face. "Change my schedule? Demand to know who the Arab sheikh was? You know me, Selina. Who I am ... what I do. And what I never do is jealousy."
"You could have fooled me," she shot back furiously. "Answering my phone with your macho posturing-you have put me in the impossible position where I will have to lie to Beth yet again and invent a man friend. Sometimes you make me sick, Rion. Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?"
"Well, I am thinking of you right now," he drawled mockingly, his hand moving from her shoulder around the nape of her neck.
Selina lost it. She pummelled him on the chest. "s.e.x is not thinking of another person," she flung at him, her amber eyes flaring wildly. "For you it is simply what you want and get with no thought for anyone else." She saw the blaze of fury in his night-black eyes and didn"t care. "Well, tough-it is not on the agenda tonight." She was shaking with temper and staggered back a few steps, moisture hazing her vision, her emotions haywire. "Get out, Rion. Just get out ..."
Rion saw the shimmer of tears in Selina"s eyes and the black anger he felt at her tirade faded a little. She was upset, emotional, and he was useless at dealing with emotional women. He didn"t do emotions.
"Don"t worry, I"m going. A hysterical woman and knowing I am your dirty little secret is a bit of a turn off. I"ll see you in the morning," he said bluntly and left, closing the door behind him.
CHAPTER NINE.
"THIS is ridiculous, Rion. I don"t like shopping and I don"t need a new dress. I"d rather stay on board."
It was three-thirty in the afternoon; the yacht was docked in the Grand Harbour of Malta. Rion was wearing an immaculate silver-grey suit, white shirt and striped tie, every magnificent inch of him screaming dynamic, wealthy and powerful male. Selina, wearing her white linen pants and a shirt, was glaring defiantly up at him.
"I beg to differ. Nice as they are, the only three dresses you appear to possess-the yellow, blue and black-are not suitable for the dinner party tonight. Justin and his wife will expect the best. You need something glamorous-and not black. Spend what you like, and get shoes, jewellery-whatever it takes. Now, get in the car, or I will be late for my meeting. The chauffeur will drop me off, then ferry you around the shops and return you to the yacht."
"Right-fine." She leapt into the backseat of the car, insulted.
She was still smarting from last night, and the telephone call she"d received from Beth at dawn this morning had not helped. Beth had wanted to know who the man was. Trevor had told her he sounded quite commanding and jealous, and Beth had asked for the whole story of her holiday romance and if he was a keeper ...
Lying to her friend, she"d told her it was another pa.s.senger-a widower who was holidaying on his own, with whom she had struck up a friendship, just a friendship, and was enjoying his company. Whether Beth had believed her or not she wasn"t sure, but she"d changed the subject to work and ended the call.
Rion slid in beside her, his arm along the back of the seat, his thigh brushing Selina"s, making her body instantly aware of him. And that infuriated her even more. She would spend his money and enjoy doing it, she decided. She could donate the lot to charity, she thought, when they got to Greece in two more days.
All of a sudden the thought was not so satisfying ...
Rion wanted glamorous-and, taking a last look at her reflection in the mirror, Selina grinned. The hairdresser had done wonders, and glamour was what he was getting-in spades. She left the cabin.
The silk crepe dress in midnight-blue had cost a fortune, as had the shoes that she had teamed with it-so much that her conscience had got the better of her and she had refrained from buying the jewellery Rion had casually suggested.
Rion heard Dimitri gasp and turned his head. He did a double take as Selina walked towards him.
"Is this glamorous enough for you?" she asked.
Rion was speechless. This was a Selina he had never seen before. Her gorgeous hair was swept up in a crown of curls on top of her head, a few strands of curls left to fall artfully either side of her beautiful face. Her huge amber eyes were cleverly accentuated by the use of eye-shadow and mascara, her lush lips painted a deep scarlet. Her make-up was subtle but perfect.
As for the dress she wore-no wonder Dimitri had gasped. It left little to the imagination. Jewel-encrusted straps over her shoulders widened into two triangular pieces of material that just about covered her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and tucked into a tight band beneath. The skirt hugged her hips and thighs to end a couple of inches above her knees. She was wearing sheer silk stockings and on her feet were jewelled shoes with killer heels.
"You look exquisite-if a little daring," Rion drawled, eyeing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and looped an arm around her waist. He spun her around. The straps over her shoulders curved under her arms and left her back bare almost to the base of her spine, where a concealed zip held the fabric taut across her rear.
She shot him a glance over her shoulder. "Great, isn"t it?" A feline glitter was in her amber eyes.
"You can"t wear that!" He grasped her arm and spun her back to face him. She looked spectacular in the dress and she knew it-but it was for his eyes only ... "One spectacular cleavage is enough. You are almost showing two. Change to the black."
Captain Ted walked in. "The car has arrived on the dock. Your guests are getting-" He stopped, his eyes widening on Selina.
"Right-we are coming," Rion said, and moved his hand from her arm to splay it across her back. He bent his head towards her as he led her outside. "Too late now to change, but be warned: I really missed you last night, and two can play your game," he murmured huskily, and let his fingers trail down her spine. He felt her quiver.
That Rion had admitted he had missed her shocked Selina into silence.
And she was having second thoughts about the dress as they stood at the top of the gangway to welcome their guests. Held close to Rion"s side, with his hand caressing her back, was a kind of torture and her breath hitched in her throat. She shot him a sidelong glance. "Stop it," she hissed.
"s.e.xual attraction works both ways-painful, isn"t it?" He grinned and straightened up. "Our guests have arrived." And thankfully for Selina his hand slid from her back and he took a step forward.
Her body still heated from his seductive touch. She glanced at the couple who had joined them on deck and then looked again, her amber eyes widening in horror. She froze, the blood turning to ice in her veins.
Selina concentrated on the woman. She was in her mid-forties, and very elegantly dressed. But all the time her mind was spinning, hoping she was wrong about the man ...
She heard the man introduce his wife to Rion. Then Rion slipped his arm around her waist again, his fingers pressing her side, but she did not so much as flinch.
"Selina, this is Justin Bratchet and his wife, Alice."
Numb with shock, Selina shook hands with Alice first and tried to smile, spouting the social niceties, until finally she had no choice but to look at the man-Justin Bratchet.
She felt her flesh crawl as she shook hands with him, and forced a smile to her lips. "Nice to meet you," she lied, and pulled her hand free with indecent haste.
The dinner was informative, but also a living nightmare as far as Selina was concerned-from which she escaped as fast as she could.
Rion saw the couple ash.o.r.e at the end of the evening and walked back on board. The evening had been a success, his meeting earlier had gone well, and the deal-after a bit of adjustment-looked like being a cinch. Though Selina"s behaviour had been a bit odd. He had sensed her tense the minute she"d met the couple, and he"d seen the look in her eyes as he introduced her to Justin. He had a gut feeling she knew the man. And she had excused herself from seeing the couple off the yacht with the plea that she needed the bathroom, which was odd.
Maybe Selina had b.u.mped into Bratchet on her travels? This morning Rion had searched Selina"s name on the internet-something he had never done before. She"d taken some finding, but he"d been surprised at what he"d discovered. She was listed as a translator for a top international agency noted for its discretion and hired by governments and the like. There was a shot of her looking stunning but businesslike, standing at the side of an Arab sheikh at an international trade fair in China. Other delegates included a few heads of state. Selina was obviously at the top of her career ladder and had to be making a very comfortable living. Maybe he was wrong about her and she wasn"t a typical gold-digging female ...
Reaching his cabin, he opened the door and saw at a glance she wasn"t there. Kicking off his shoes, he removed his jacket and tie and dropped them on the bed, flicking open the b.u.t.tons of his shirt. He walked next door, contemplating removing that incredible gown with a smile on his face which broadened when he saw the view of Selina"s slender back. She had removed her shoes and was minus her stockings-lace-trimmed, he noted. Pity. He had wanted to peel them off.
His sensual smile vanished when he realised she was talking on her phone and that was the reason for her hasty retreat.
The click of the door opening alerted Selina, and abruptly she ended the conversation and rang off. She turned around. "Oh, it"s you," she said inanely.
Rion gazed straight back at her from below thick, curling lashes, his expression bland. "Obviously. Who did you want it to be? The man on the phone?" he queried, and in two lithe strides he was towering over her.
"It wasn"t a man-it was Aunt Peggy," Selina said, but could not look him in the eyes.
"You called her at twelve at night?" he prompted, and tipped up her chin with one long finger so she had no choice but to look at him.
"Yes," she said thinking fast. "It is a little earlier in England."
Rion raised a brow, dark eyes gleaming with suspicion. "I"ll believe you-but what else might I have got wrong, I wonder? I had the distinct feeling you had met Justin Bratchet before tonight. Have you?"
Shaking her head, she dislodged his finger and taking a step back, gave an emphatic "No!" relieved she could tell the truth.
"Yet you seemed to recognise him. Maybe from your travels? I looked you up on Google today and discovered you really are a high-flyer in your profession."
"You did what?"
"You are listed on the website of the international agency you work for."
"Oh." She was glad she"d had the foresight to tell Beth not to list her on the charity"s website. She valued her career, and at least one of her previous employers would not be happy discovering what she did in her spare time. "Anyway, I don"t know and have never met Mr Bratchet before, and with luck I will never meet him again," she said adamantly.
"You could have fooled me. I have met the man a few times in New York and I know he has a reputation of being a bit of a womaniser. You seemed to be encouraging him."
She had, because she"d wanted to find out where he was going, and had succeeded. But she couldn"t tell Rion that.
"When he asked you what you did you responded flightily-"As little as possible." Which I know is a lie. Why?"
"Because it is easier to tell that type of rich man who thinks he is G.o.d what he wants to hear-satisfied?" she snapped. She had said more than she ought. Plus Rion, barefoot and with his shirt undone, was an endearing sight.
"You really have it in for the poor man," Rion returned, studying her flushed face. "So he likes women and flirts? Hardly an offence."
"Yes, well, you would say that-given he is your friend. It is his wife I feel sorry for, poor woman."
"Your sympathy is wasted on Alice. She was a widow when she married Justin three years ago. He takes care of her and her daughter, and now her grandson. She has. .h.i.t the jackpot; trust me, she will never leave him. I recognised the type the minute I met her."
"Okay-if you say so," she agreed. It was late and this conversation was going nowhere.
"Is that another example of telling a man what he wants to hear?" Rion asked sardonically and reached for her shoulders to draw her close. "Not that I mind in this instance," he mocked, and kissed her with a hungry thoroughness that left her breathless.
He pulled the shoulder straps of her dress down her arms and she helped, wanting to block the horrible evening from her mind and craving what she knew only Rion could give her. She gazed up into his l.u.s.trous dark eyes, shaded with pa.s.sion, and her heart raced.
"I knew you were braless," Rion groaned. "You have perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s," he murmured, his dark gaze lingering on the creamy mounds for a moment before he lifted his eyes to hers. "You have no idea what you do to me, Selina. I have been aching to remove this dress from the second I saw you wearing it."
"I thought it would appeal to you," she replied.
Rion smiled and began removing his clothes. Breathless, she simply stared as he revealed his magnificent bronzed body to her avid gaze, and she reached for the dress at her waist, eager to wriggle out of it.
"No, let me," Rion commanded. He picked her up and laid her down on the bed and stretched out beside her. "I want to take it off."
He folded an arm around her and she was suddenly on her stomach. He trailed a string of kisses down her spine and slowly peeled her dress over her hips. Her whole body trembled as his clever fingers stroked and caressed while his lips continued their devastating path down her thighs, the backs of her knees. With the dress finally removed he turned her over and kissed and caressed his way back up her body. Finally his mouth took hers in a deeply pa.s.sionate kiss as he settled between her thighs.
Selina wrapped her arms around him as if he was the only solid matter in the universe, her hands caressing his satin-smooth skin, tracing the length of his spine as she planted frantic kisses on the broad chest, the dark male nipples. She heard his guttural growl as, lifting her hips, he surged into her willing body, and she cried out with the exquisite pleasure of his possession, the feeling intensifying with every powerful thrust, growing into a mindless, mutually ecstatic climax.
But later-much later-listening to the steady sound of Rion"s breathing, she realised that tonight even the oblivion of o.r.g.a.s.mic s.e.x was not going to help her sleep.
Luckily she had never told Rion about the rescue centre Beth and her husband ran in Cambodia for a children"s charity. Selina had helped to set it up and finance it.
She and Beth had spent their last summer vacation before finishing university travelling through Thailand and Cambodia. Beth had met Trevor, an American, and it had been love at first sight. It was Trevor who had shown them the horrific child s.e.x trade in Cambodia and explained how unscrupulous dealers travelled the countryside, telling poor families who lived off the land that they had a job for their son or daughter in a big city hotel, as a maid or boot boy, and offering them money. Of course there was no hotel work-though the children were kept in a hotel of sorts, where they were abused and forced into the s.e.x trade. The really tragic part for Selina was that the children, after having to suffer such vile abuse from adults every day of their young lives, were too ashamed to tell their parents what was really happening to them.
Planeloads of men flew into the capital regularly from Europe, j.a.pan and the USA, on specially organised s.e.x trips. A lot of them wanted children-the younger the better.
Trevor had explained that the reason he knew so much about the trade was because his father worked for the American government, and the USA was one of the few countries to have pa.s.sed a law enabling them to extradite any American citizen arrested for paedophilia in Cambodia and take them back to the USA to stand trial. The sentences there were a lot harsher. It had been listening to his father talk about his work and seeing the damage done for himself that had made Trevor determined to set up a rescue centre.
Beth, always pa.s.sionate about injustice, was his perfect partner, and during that holiday the idea for a rescue charity was born. Selina had never touched her divorce settlement because she"d still had her father"s trust fund. She"d left university the following summer and donated the money to help set up the charity. With the help of Beth"s father the legal technicalities had been dealt with, and property bought. It had been converted into a fifteen-bedroomed centre with schoolrooms, craft rooms-everything necessary to help the children to regain their self worth and equip them with the skills to earn a legitimate living.
Beth and Trevor had got married at Christmas. Selina had been a bridesmaid. The following year, the rescue centre had opened, and with the help of a Cambodian politician, a police inspector and a local lawyer, they"d taken in ten children. Selina had stayed for three months to help, then spent the next three months in Australia, working as a translator for a tourist firm on the Gold Coast that specialised in Chinese tourists, and taking her diving certificate in her spare time. Then she had signed on with the international agency she still worked with now.
To date the centre had rescued over forty children-some of them as young as six. All had been counselled and some had returned to their families. Some had learnt new skills and found legitimate work, others were still at the centre, and sadly a couple of the older girls-if you could call fourteen old-had gone back to the s.e.x trade. They were already HIV-positive and sure that in their culture no man was ever going to marry them ...
Accepting a gla.s.s of fresh orange juice from Louis, Selina refused any food. Cradling the gla.s.s in her hand, she crossed to the huge gla.s.s doors that opened out onto the deck and paused for a moment. The sun was hot in a cloudless sky, as it had been for the whole trip-which was now almost over. She felt her heart contract with the knowledge.
Rion was seated at the table, wearing the familiar khaki shorts. His tanned shoulders were slightly hunched as he forked scrambled egg into his mouth with one hand, his other tapping something into a laptop.