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‘You’ve had time to change, I see. Tell me, is this still classed as work?’
Alana bristled. Hot, burning irritation was rising. ‘Of course I changed—it’s a party. And, yes, this is still work.’
His eyes swept down, taking in what she knew to be a perfectly suitable albeit very unexciting dress. It was a black shift, high-necked and under a matching jacket. Unrevealing.
‘You’ve changed, too,’ she pointed out, feeling ridiculously self-conscious. But, whereas she felt sure she merged into the background, he was managing to stand out in a crowd of identically dressed men in a traditional black tuxedo, white shirt and black bow tie.
His eyes met hers again. ‘Don’t you want to take off your coat? It’s warm in here.’
Warm!
She could feel a trickle of sweat roll down between her breasts as if his words had just turned the room into a sauna. ‘No, I’m fine.’ But all at once the jacket which had felt positively lightweight now felt like a bear skin. To be confronted with him up close and personal was overwhelming. Her eyes wanted to look their fill of his broad, lean body, wanted to rest and dwell and see if he filled out his suit as well as she suspected he did. Who was she kidding? As well as she knew he did. She didn’t have to look to feel the latent power of his taut body envelop her in waves.
Before she knew what she was doing, she felt her hand come up in a telling gesture to smooth her hair behind her ear. It was a nervous habit. His eyes narrowed and followed her movement, and Alana flushed. Damn. She did not want to look like she was in any way aware of him.
A smile quirked his mouth. ‘Your hair is perfectly…tidy.’
Was he laughing at her? And then she remembered what Rory had said. She glared up at him. Her hand dropped. ‘Is it true that you requested me for this interview?’
He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘It’s tiresome, but every now and then I have to give in to press demands. So, yes, I requested you…in the hope that, perhaps with you asking the questions, it would prove a more diverting experience than I’m used to.’
His eyes were hot and sensual. Everything professional in her reacted to his dismissive and high-handed manner. She smiled sweetly, and something treacherous ignited in her belly when she saw a flare of something in his eyes. She ignored her body’s response. ‘Mr Lévêque. If you think that just because I’m a woman I’m going to confine my questions to what your favourite colour might be, then you’re sadly mistaken.’ At that moment she made a mental note to stay up all night if she had to, to research this man.
His eyes narrowed and cooled, and she shivered slightly.
‘And if you think that because you’re a woman I would dismiss your ability on that basis alone, then you are much mistaken. Any interest I have in you as far as the interview goes is purely professional. I’ve had your work investigated, and you impressed me.’
Alana was completely taken aback, and immediately felt like apologising. But, looking up at him now, she felt that cool wind still washing over her. She could almost believe that she had imagined his hot look of just moments ago. That she had imagined everything leading up to this point. She had an uncanny prescience of what it would be like to be this man’s enemy.
‘Well, I’m… That is, I hadn’t thought that—’
He cut off her inarticulate attempt to apologise. ‘Like I said, my interest in you is purely professional…as far as the interview goes. However…’ He stopped and moved closer. The air around them changed in a heartbeat. Became charged.
Alana sucked in a breath. His eyes were hot again, making her feel very disorientated.
‘I can’t promise that my interest doesn’t extend beyond the professional.’
As with earlier in the stadium, Alana felt as though the huge, packed ballroom had just shrunk around them. Adrenaline pumped through her along with the desire to flee.
‘Mr Lévêque. I’m very sorry, but you see—’
‘Are you married?’ he asked so quickly and abruptly that Alana was stunned.
‘Yes,’ she answered automatically, and saw something dark flash across his face. And then she stepped back and shook her head. What was this man doing to her brain? ‘No. I mean I am, I was, married.’ She bit her lip and looked out to the room briefly, desperately willing Rory to come back and interrupt them. She looked back up at Pascal with the utmost reluctance. His eyes glittered, and a muscle twitched in his jaw. She wondered how they’d got onto such personal territory so quickly, and then his words came back: I can’t promise that my interest doesn’t extend beyond the professional.
A whole host of emotions and memories was threatening to consume her. And the fact that she was here, in an environment so evocative of her past, was quickly becoming claustrophobic. She took a breath, deeply resenting that he was making her talk about this. ‘I was married. My husband died eighteen months ago.’
Pascal opened his mouth as if to say something, and Alana was already tensing in anticipation. But her prayers had been heard, and Rory bounded up at that moment with drinks. He thrust a glass of champagne at Alana before handing what looked like a whiskey to Pascal. And then panic struck. She put the glass on a nearby table, some of the champagne sloshing out over the rim.
She opened her bag to pull her phone out. Ten missed calls. She groaned, ‘I am in so much trouble.’
She turned to Rory. ‘I have to go.’ She looked at Pascal briefly, welcoming the feeling of panic which was distracting her from his overpowering presence.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m already late for another engagement.’
She started backing away, valiantly ignoring Rory’s none-too- subtle facial expressions. She bumped into someone and apologised. She felt her hair come loose from its sleek chignon and pushed it behind her ear. She was literally coming apart.
‘It was nice to…meet you, Mr Lévêque. I look forward to the interview.’ Liar. He just watched her, a small, enigmatic smile playing around that hard mouth, and stuck one hand deep into a pocket. Alana could already see women hovering, ready to move back in again, and something curdled in her stomach.
‘Me, too,’ he said softly, and lifted his glass like a salute— or a threat. ‘Á demain, Alana.’ Till tomorrow.
It was disconcerting to say the least to try and conduct a coherent conversation while the remnants of the hottest lust he’d ever experienced still washed through his body in waves. Even the welcome knowledge that she wasn’t married failed now to impinge on his racing mind. He was still trying to clamp down the intensely urgent desire to know exactly whom she had gone to meet and where. Was it a date?
‘So, what made you decide to ask for Alana Cusack to interview you?’ Her boss, Rory Hogan, the head of the sports division of the national TV channel, laughed nervously. He was beginning to intensely irritate Pascal with his obsequious behaviour—and also by drawing his attention to the uncomfortable fact that, in the space of the short car journey earlier, Pascal had gone from dismissing Alana Cusack from his head to making a series of calls to find out exactly who she was, and then requesting her for his interview the next day.
Following an instinct, he decided not to dismiss this man straight away. ‘I decided to use her because she’s the best reporter you’ve got, of course.’
Rory’s flushed face got even more flushed. ‘Well, thank you. Yes, she is good. In fact, she’s rather surprised us all.’ The other man looked round for a second and then moved closer. Pascal fought against taking a step back; Rory was becoming progressively more drunk.
‘The thing is, you see, she was only given a chance because of who she is.’
Pascal’s interest sharpened. He injected a tone of bored uninterest into his voice. ‘What do you mean?’
Rory laughed and waved an arm around. ‘See all these women hanging on?’
Pascal didn’t have to look; they were practically nipping at his heels. His lip curled with distaste. Situations like this always attracted a certain kind of woman—eager for marriage to a millionaire sportsman, and the platinum-credit-card lifestyle his wages could afford. The women who had achieved that status lorded it over the ones who hadn’t, but it didn’t make them any less predatory.
‘Well, she was one of them. The queen of them, in fact. Y’see, she was married to Ryan O’Connor.’
Pascal sucked in a breath, shocked despite himself. Even he had heard of the legendary Irish soccer-player. That knowledge fought with the mental image of Alana in front of him just now, in that unrevealing black dress that had covered her from neck to knee, her hair as tidy and smooth as it had been earlier.
Rory was on a roll now. ‘When they got married, it was the biggest wedding in Ireland for years. The first big celebrity -wedding. The Irish football team were having back-to-back wins. Alana was seen as their lucky mascot; she went to all the matches. It was an idyllic marriage, a great time…and then she wrecked it all.’ Rory flushed. ‘Well, I mean, I know she’s not personally responsible, but—’
‘What do you mean?’ Pascal was rapidly trying to remember what he knew about Ryan O’Connor, still slightly stunned at what Alana’s boss was revealing.
‘Well, she threw him out, didn’t she? For no good reason. And Ryan went off the rails. Ireland’s luck ran out, and then he died in that helicopter crash just days before the divorce was through. We ended up giving her a job because she was unbelievably persistent, and she knows sports inside out. It’s in her blood; her father played rugby for Ireland.’
Pascal was still trying to reconcile the image he had of Alana with the women around him in their tiny dresses that left little to the imagination. And yet, he could see her now as she’d been backing away just moments ago; she’d been flushed in the face, and a lock of hair had been coming loose. It had been that which had sent his lust levels off the scale. He’d had a tantalising glimpse of her coming undone, of something hot beneath that über-cool surface.
But the thought that she had been one of those women made everything in him contract with disgust. Yet she certainly hadn’t been flirting with him, despite knowing who he was. Unless it was just a tactic. In which case, he vowed to himself now, he’d play with her to see how far she was willing to go and walk away when he’d had enough. One thing was for certain—he wanted to seduce her with an urgency that was fast precluding anything else.
The next day Alana looked at herself in the mirror of the ladies toilet at work. Nervously, and hating herself for feeling nervous, she smoothed her already smooth hair. She’d tied it back in its usual style for work, and now tucked it firmly behind her ears. She leant close to check her make-up. She’d had to put slightly more on than usual today to cover the circles under her eyes. She’d arrived home late last night, and had then stayed up researching as much information about Pascal Lévêque as she could.
The fact that she hadn’t had to stay up long said it all. He rarely gave interviews; the last one had been at least two years previously. He was the CEO of Banque Lévêque, and had reached that exalted position at a ridiculously young age. Now in his mid-to-late thirties, he had brought a conglomerate of smaller archaic banks kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, turning them into Banque Lévêque and making it one of the most influential financial institutions in the world.
Alana saw the flush on her cheeks and scrambled for some powder to try and disguise it. There had been little on his childhood or family, just one line to say that he’d been born in the suburbs of Paris to an unwed mother. Nothing about his father.
Her mouth twisted cynically. She wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest to learn that he was married. From her experience, the holy sanctity of marriage was a positive incitement for men to play away. She stopped trying to calm her hectic colour down; it was useless, and if she put any more make-up on, she’d look like a clown. She met her own eyes and didn’t like the glitter she saw.
The wealth of information she’d found on his personal life—quite at odds with the paucity of information on his family or professional life—had put paid to the suspicion that he could be married. Picture after picture of stunning beauties on his arm abounded on the Internet. It would appear that he’d courted and fêted an indecent amount of the world’s most renowned actresses, models and it-girls. However, no woman ever seemed to appear more than twice.
The man was obviously a serial seducer, a connoisseur of women. A playboy with a capital P. And Alana Cusack, from a nice, comfortable, unremarkable middle-class background, with a relatively attractive face and body, was not in his league. Not even close.
He was rich. He was powerful. He was successful. He played to win. He was the very epitome of everything she’d vowed never to let into her life again. She packed up her make-up things and gave herself a quick once-over. Her dark- navy trouser suit, and cream silk-shirt buttoned up as high as it would go, screamed professional. She adjusted the string of faux pearls around her neck. With any luck he’d have met and seduced one of the many women at the party last night, and not even remember the fact that he’d shown any interest in her.
‘Let’s get started, shall we?’
Alana spoke briskly, and barely glanced up from her notes when Pascal was shown into the studio. But she felt the air contract, the energy shift. The excitement was tangible. She hadn’t even experienced this level of palpable charisma from some of the world’s most famous sportsmen. She’d been given a thorough briefing from an attendant PR-person not to stray into personal territory, and above all, not to ask him about relationships with women. As if she even wanted to go there.
She felt rather than saw him sit down opposite her. She could hear the clatter of people getting ready around them with lights and the camera. Derek was with her again today, and he said now, ‘Just a couple of minutes; I need to check the lights again.’ Alana muttered something, feeling absurdly irritated. She just wanted to get this over with.
‘Late night last night?’
She looked up quickly and glanced round to see if anyone had heard. No one appeared to have. She hated the intimate tone he’d used, as if drawing her into some kind of dialogue that existed just between them. It was less than twenty-four hours since she’d met him in the first place. She had to nip this in the bud. She looked at him steadily, ignoring the shockwaves running through her body at seeing him again.
‘No.’ She was frosty. ‘Not particularly. You?’ Why had she asked him that? She could have kicked herself.
He smiled a slow, languorous smile that did all sorts of things to her insides. She gritted her teeth. He was immaculate again today in a dark suit and pale shirt, a silk tie making him look every inch the stupendously successful financier that he was. ‘I went to bed early with a cup of hot cocoa and dreamt of you in your buttoned-up suit.’
Before she could react to his comment, his eyes flicked over her in a brazen appraisal. ‘A variation on a theme today, I see. Do you have a different suit for every day of the week?’
A molten, heated flush was spreading through Alana like quickfire. She was so incensed that he was already toying with her that she couldn’t get words out. They were stuck in her throat.
‘OK, Alana, we’re ready to go here.’
Derek’s voice cut through the fire in her blood. She glared at Pascal for a long moment and struggled to control herself. He hadn’t taken his eyes off hers, and now he smiled easily, innocently. With a monumental effort, Alana found her cool poise. And after the first few questions had been asked, and Pascal had answered with easy, incisive intelligence, Alana began to relax. She’d found a system that was working. She just avoided looking at him if at all possible.
And that was working a treat until he said, ‘I don’t feel like you’re really connecting with me.’
She had to look at him then. ‘Excuse me?’
His eyes bored into hers, an edge of humour playing around his lips that only she could see. ‘I don’t feel the connection.’
Alana was very aware of everyone standing around them and looking on with interest. She wanted to get up and walk out, or hit him to get that smug look off his face. ‘I’m sorry. How can I help you feel more…connected?’
He gave her an explicit look that spoke volumes, but said innocuously, ‘Eye contact would be a help.’
She heard a snigger from one of the crew in the room. A familiar pain lanced her. There was always the reminder that people wanted to see her fail. She smiled benignly. ‘Of course.’
Then the interview took on a whole new energy because, now that he was demanding that she make eye contact with him, she couldn’t remain immune to the effect he had on her. And he knew it. She struggled through a few more questions, but with each one it felt as though he was sucking her into some kind of vortex. The sensation of an intimate web enmeshing them was becoming too much.
In a desperate bid to drive him back somehow, she deviated from her script, and could sense Rory’s tension spike from across the room as she asked the question. ‘How did a boy from the suburbs in Paris develop an interest in rugby? Isn’t it considered a relatively middle-class game?’
Now she could sense the PR-person tense, but they didn’t intervene. Clearly Pascal Lévêque was not someone to be minded, unlike other celebrities. He would stay in absolute control of any situation. For the first time, he didn’t answer straight away. He just looked at her, and she felt a quiver of fear. He smiled tightly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You’ve done your research.’
Alana just nodded faintly, sorry she’d brought it up now.
But then he answered, ‘It was my grandfather.’
‘Your grandfather?’ She avoided looking down at her notes, but she knew there had been no mention of a grandfather.
He nodded. ‘I was sent to the south of France to live with him when I was in my teens.’ He shrugged minutely, his eyes still unreadable. ‘A teenage boy and the suburbs of Paris isn’t a good mix.’
Something in his eyes, his face, made her want to say, ‘it’s OK; you don’t have to answer’, and that shocked her, as she never normally shied away from asking tough questions. And she didn’t know why this question was generating so many undercurrents. But he continued talking as if the tension between them didn’t exist.
‘He was hugely involved in league rugby, which is a more parochial version of the game. Very linked to history in France. He instilled in me a love for the game and all its variations.’
Alana had no doubt that she’d touched on something very personal there, and the look in his eyes told her she’d be playing with fire if she continued. All of a sudden, she wanted to play with fire.
‘You never considered playing yourself?’
His eyes were positively coal-black and flinty now. He shook his head slightly. ‘I discovered that I had a knack for using my head and making money. I prefer to leave rolling around in the dirt to the professionals.’
Alana coloured. Was he making some reference to the fact that she was playing dirty, straying into the no-go area of questions into his past? She looked down for a moment to gather herself, and realised that she’d asked all the scripted questions. And then some. She opened her mouth to start thanking him and signing off, when he surprised her by leaning forward.
‘Now I have a question for you.’
‘You do?’ she squeaked. His eyes had changed from black and flinty to brown and…decidedly unflinty.
‘Will you have dinner with me tonight?’
Shock and cold, clammy fear slammed into Alana. And then anger that he was asking her in front of an entire crew. The camera was still rolling. She could feel tension snake through the small studio. She tried to laugh it off, but knew she sounded constricted. ‘I’m afraid, Mr Lévêque, that my boss doesn’t approve of us mixing business with pleasure.’
Rory darted forward, while motioning for the crew to start wrapping up. ‘Don’t be silly, Alana, this is an entirely unique situation, and I’m sure you’d be only too delighted to show Mr Lévêque gratitude for taking time out of his busy schedule to do this interview.’
Pascal sat back, fully at ease. ‘This is my last evening in Dublin. I thought it would be nice to see something of the city. I’d like your company, Alana, but if you insist on saying no, then of course I will understand.’
He stood up and looked down at Rory, straightening his cuffs. ‘Can you have the tape of the interview sent over to my hotel? I’m sure it’s fine, but I might take the opportunity to approve it fully if I’ve got some time on my hands.’
In other words, surmised Alana from the tortured look on Rory’s pale face at the possibility of losing their biggest scoop to date, Pascal could turn right round and deny them the right to broadcast it. She stood up then, too, and spoke quickly before she could change her mind.
‘That won’t be necessary, Mr Lévêque. I’d love to have dinner with you. It would be a pleasure.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘I DON’T appreciate being manipulated into situations, Mr Lévêque.’
Pascal looked at Alana’s tight-lipped profile from across the other side of the car, and had to subdue the urge to show her exactly how much she might appreciate being manipulated. He knew she felt the simmering tension between them too. At one point during the interview earlier, when she’d had the temerity to dig so deep—too deep—their eyes had stayed locked together for long seconds and he’d read the latent desire in those green depths even if she tried to deny it.
‘I prefer to think of it as a gentle nudging.’
She cast a quick look at him and made some kind of inarticulate sound. ‘There was nothing gentle about it. Your unspoken threat was very clear, Mr Lévêque—the possibility that you could deny us the right to the interview.’
‘Which is something I could still very well do,’ he pointed out. As if on cue, Alana turned more fully in her seat. Her eyes spat sparks at him, and he felt a rush of adrenaline through his system. He was so tired of everyone kowtowing to him. But not so this green-eyed witch.
‘Is this how you normally conduct your business?’ she hissed, mindful of the driver in the front.
He moved closer in an instant, and Alana backed away with a jerk. She could smell his unique scent; already it was becoming familiar to her. One arm ran along the back of the seat, his hand resting far too close to her head, his whole body angled towards her, blocking out any sense of light or the dusky sky outside, creating an intimate cocoon.
‘There’s nothing businesslike about how you make me feel. And let’s just say that I don’t normally have to use threats to get a woman to come for dinner with me.’
Alana was reacting to a million things at once, not least of which was her own sense of fatal inevitability. ‘No, I saw your track record; it doesn’t appear as if you do.’
‘Tell me, Alana, why are you so reluctant to go out with me?’
And why are you so determined? she wanted to shout. Her hands twisted in her lap, and Pascal caught the movement. Before she could stop him, he had reached down and taken her hands in his, uncurling them, lacing his fingers through with hers. Alana could feel a bizarre mix of soporific delight and a zing of desire so strong that she shook.
‘I…don’t even like you.’
‘You don’t know me enough to know if you like me or not. And what’s flowing between us right now is nothing to do with like.’
It’s lust. He didn’t have to say it.
‘I…’