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‘Oh, yes,’ he said softly, mockingly. ‘I disgust you. Sure. It came across loud and clear last night!’
Her green eyes burned with angry accusation. ‘It must have done, or you would never have left me alone, Nick!’
His mouth curved in a cynical smile. ‘Well, maybe I have other plans for you,’ he said softly. ‘Later on in the day…’ He shook out the New York Post, cynical blue eyes flicking over the small newsprint again.
Serena ignored him, and buttered a slice of toast, but inside she was shaken. This argument was too personal. His kiss last night had been too personal. In fact—everything so far about this little ‘visit’ was too personal.
They had got through the last three years without ever having personal conversations. Normally, they were polite strangers with very little to say to each other. The arrangement worked very well. Why was Nick suddenly tampering with it? Flicking a series of switches and provoking personal confrontation…?
Because he’s got nothing better to do, she thought bitterly. He lived life at a whirlwind pace, blasting his way through obstacles, rarely stopping to think of the consequences of his actions on the people he blasted out of his way.
Odd that he should operate like that, given his family background. His parents were wealthy Bostonian bankers. Nick had been born into a world of American grace and privilege, and had not quite fitted in. His dynamic personality and quick, enquiring mind had stuck out like a sore thumb in that world.
But, although their strange marriage had given her brief glimpses into his past, she was aware that their conversations never turned to personal subjects.
Like sex, for instance, she thought with a prickle of unease.
Nick had opened this visit with sex, and the subject was still lingering between them like a crackle of electricity, making Serena distinctly nervous.
Shooting him an anxious look, she said huskily, ‘Nick, you are leaving this morning, aren’t you?’
He didn’t look at her. ‘I’ll be leaving just as soon as the jet’s ready. The pilot’s going to call me.’
‘Oh…’ She nodded, bit into her toast with small white teeth.
Serena wanted him out of the apartment as soon as possible. Tomorrow was a big day for her. She didn’t want Nick complicating it. His presence here today was unexpected and unwelcome, but at least it wouldn’t blow a hole in her private life. Whereas tomorrow…
Suddenly Nick got to his feet. ‘I’m going to take a shower and get dressed,’ he announced, throwing the newspaper on to the table. ‘If the pilot rings, take a message for me.’
He strode out of the room, leaving her burning with resentment. He treated her like his secretary. Well, not quite, she thought with a flash of anger towards him, because he was probably having an affair with his secretary.
Clearing the table, Serena put the dishes in the dishwasher. The luxury apartment block on Fifth Avenue was kept in perfect order by the people who ran it. There were no personal staff here, although all Nick’s other homes did have personal staff.
This was one of her favourite homes. Nick had excellent taste, and all his homes were furnished in a similar style with French antiques, pale green or cream and gold colours, and a general air of Bostonian elegance. It appealed to her sense of beauty, and was in keeping with her love of ‘old money’ as opposed to flashy new. Her own family background was not as luxurious or stylish as Nick’s, but she had often wished it were. The threadbare, faded beauty of Flaxton Manor had been charming, but hard to live with, particularly when springs leapt out of ancient sofas and cut one’s legs, or whole sections of roof caved in after rainfall.
Serena went to her bedroom and took a delicious shower. With wet hair, she wrapped a cream towelling robe around her slender body and padded into the bedroom.
It would be a good idea to hide her paintings from Nick in case he saw them. The last thing she wanted was for him to find out she was flourishing as an artist behind his back.
Going to her wardrobe, she opened it, then picked up the packing cases crammed with her numerous paintings, and lugged them into the wardrobe with a groan. The canvases were very heavy. She locked the door and went to her dressing-table to blow-dry her hair.
Later, she strolled into the living-room in a peacock-blue silk shift dress, her long red-gold hair in her usual style, falling seductively over one eye.
She looked at the telephone and frowned. It was ominously silent. Was Nick really diverted here unexpectedly? His fleet of air staff was usually so efficient. If there was something wrong with the jet…
Nick’s bedroom door burst open and he strode in. ‘I’m bored!’ he announced in that cool Bostonian voice, running a hand through his freshly washed black hair, devastatingly attractive in a blue-grey business suit, every inch the powerful, sexy tycoon. ‘I don’t want to sit around here all day waiting for a call! Let’s go out!’
‘Out?’ Serena repeated, staring.
‘Sure. Why not?’ He strode to the telephone and switched on the answering machine with long, quick fingers. ‘Do some shopping, have some lunch.’
Her lips parted. ‘But we never go out together…’
‘Don’t we?’ He straightened, face cynical. ‘I never noticed.’
‘You’re always too busy being Nick Colterne to notice,’ she said with a haughty flick of her lashes, then, ‘Anyway—what about the jet? If they call—’
‘They can leave a message like everybody else,’ he drawled, and ran his insolent blue eyes over her slender curves. ‘I like the dress. Very sexy. Needs some shoes, though. Go and put them on and let’s get out of here.’
Serena’s mouth tightened. ‘Don’t order me about, Nick!’
‘Why not?’ he drawled, a sardonic smile on his hard mouth.
‘Because I don’t like it!’ she snapped, hating him with a sudden fierce passion.
‘Well, isn’t that just too bad?’ he drawled softly, a mocking smile on his ruthless mouth as he studied her, challenging her to do what she suddenly realised she wanted to do: slap his cynical face and wipe that smile right off it.
Their eyes warred in a moment of hair-raising electricity. Then Serena tightened her lips and stormed into her bedroom, trembling with rage, to fling open her walk-in wardrobe and get her high heels, jamming them on her feet in a burst of uncharacteristic fury.
‘Don’t slam about, beautiful!’ Nick drawled from the doorway, leaning there, hands in trouser pockets, watching her with mockery, and she turned, eyes flashing wide with sudden fear in case he moved into the room and saw the tell-tale packing cases.
‘So sorry, Nick,’ she said sweetly, and closed the doors of the walk-in wardrobe. She locked the doors.
Nick watched with narrowed eyes. ‘Why are you locking the doors?’
‘Just a habit.’ She smiled at him, watching him through her gilt-tipped lashes.
His lashes flickered on razor-sharp cheekbones. ‘Not hiding your lover in there, I hope?’ he murmured, and suddenly the mockery was gone from his face, the ruthless cut-throat shark sending waves of excited fear through her.
‘We don’t all live like you, Nick,’ Serena said with cold contempt. ‘We don’t all indulge our carnal desires with impunity!’
He laughed softly, blue eyes insolent as they roved to her breasts. ‘Carnal desires? Now there’s an interesting phrase…’
That look took her breath away, made her veins pulse with sudden fierce heat, and she hated him for it, hated his stark sexual appetite and the ruthlessness with which he indulged it.
‘I thought we were going out!’ she snapped, furious to find she was almost trembling as his blue eyes moved lazily, cynically over her body, taking in the narrow waist and the sensual curve of her hips, so seductive in the peacock-blue silk shift dress.
He straightened, bored with toying with her. ‘Sure. Come on. Let’s hit Manhattan and buy a few stores.’
They went down in the luxurious lift. Nick was coolly indifferent to her, jingling change in his pockets, eyes narrowed in thought. Serena stood beside him, feeling superfluous, as she always did, and hating him.
New York was in the grip of this heat wave, and the sun blazed down on the city that was a living twentieth-century masterpiece of modern art, its jagged spires piercing a hot blue sky, its pavements moneyed and fast-paced. It was the Oxford of ambition.
‘Hi, Mr Colterne!’ The doorman saluted cheerily. ‘Lady Serena!’
‘Hi!’ Nick strode by him like a whirlwind. The chauffeur opened the limousine door. Nick got into the luxurious rear. All very fast, very smooth. Nick didn’t have to alter his stride once.
Serena slid in beside him. The door shut. Her green eyes surveyed his tough profile in the back of the limousine as he looked at his watch, the crisp white cuffs shooting back, the Rolex glittering on his hair-roughened wrist.
‘Eleven,’ he said flatly. ‘Take us to Faulke’s.’
The chauffeur pulled away with a smooth surge of power. Serena glanced out of the window. She adored New York. The pace, the cosmopolitan atmosphere, the stark steel skyscrapers and the elegance of the older establishments.
Nick prowled around Faulke’s, ordering things left, right and centre. Saleswomen followed him with admiration, fluttering their eyelashes while he cynically inspected their red mouths and slim bodies. Serena watched him operate, hatred in her eyes.
They had lunch at the Plaza. Heads turned as they walked in. Waiters swarmed all over them, and Nick dismissed them with a curt wave of his hand, striding across the restaurant with Serena behind him.
‘We haven’t done this in a long time,’ Nick observed as they sat at the elegant table drinking Château Lafite and waiting for their main course. ‘When did I last bump into you, anyway?’
‘Christmas,’ she said flatly. ‘At Flaxton Manor.’
‘That’s right. And it’s June now.’
‘How the months drift by,’ she said, disliking him intensely.
‘Do they drift by, Serena?’ he asked with a cool lift of dark brows. ‘Or are they beginning to speed up for you lately?’
She tensed, watching him with sudden wariness. ‘Speed up? Why should they speed up?’
A slow, sardonic smile touched his hard mouth. ‘Well, now, they might one day. You never know. After all—you can’t spend the rest of your life flying aimlessly around the world with nothing to do and no lover to make—’
‘I do wish you’d try to be polite!’ she said tightly, green eyes flashing as she cut into his insulting sentence midstream. ‘It’s bad enough having you here without warning, without having to put up with your bad manners too!’
His face tightened into a hard mask. ‘Don’t speak to me like that, Serena,’ he said, his blue eyes suddenly as ruthless as his steel-edged tone.
‘Or what?’ she challenged suddenly, although her blood pulsed in fierce, unexpected response to the look in his eyes, and her voice was unsteady, threaded with sudden desire to provoke.
‘Or I’ll take you home and take you to bed,’ he said under his breath, menace lacing his voice, his mouth very hard. ‘How’s that for a threat?’
She was breathless, her lips parted and her breathing erratic.
‘Good girl,’ he murmured, hard mouth curving with a cynical smile. ‘Now—tell me what you’ve been up to since Christmas at Flaxton Manor. I feel I ought to have some idea of my wife’s activities.’
‘As if you care!’ she said thickly, loathing him intensely. ‘You only married me for my title and my inheritance. I could die tomorrow and you wouldn’t care.’
‘Hardly,’ he drawled. ‘We don’t have any children yet, so nobody would inherit a damned thing.’
‘You know what I mean!’ she said angrily.
He laughed under his breath, watching her with steely eyes. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to avoid answering any of my questions?’
That made her catch her breath and look at him closely, deeply aware of that ruthless mind and the speed at which it moved. Her heart was thumping unsteadily and she realised she was under threat of exposure if she didn’t tread very carefully indeed.
‘Ask anything you want,’ she said with a sudden, curving smile.
His dark lashes flickered. He was coolly amused. ‘A dutiful wife,’ he mocked.
Their main course arrived at that moment, ending the conversation, to her relief. Her sole was delicious, light and very fresh, served with crisp vegetables. Nick ate steak tartare, one of his favourite dishes, and typically Nick, all that blood and raw meat.
‘So what do you do in your spare time these days, Serena?’ Nick deftly swung that lethal weapon back on her as they drank coffee. ‘You have so much of it. You must do something.’
She gave him a sweet smile. ‘I have cocktail parties, see people for dinner.’
‘Ring-a-ding-ding!’ drawled Nick sarcastically.
‘I like being lazy,’ she said coolly. ‘We don’t all have to run around the world axing people to bits and making billions of dollars.’
‘I don’t axe people to bits,’ he said flatly. ‘And without my billions of dollars, your precious manor would have gone to the wall. Remember that, next time you start levelling criticism at me.’
‘How could I forget?’ Serena said tightly. ‘You bought me along with the manor, and ruined my life!’
He gave a dangerous smile, drawling, ‘Well, honey, you sure weren’t worth the price!’ and her face went white with appalled realisation of how painful their marriage could become if they ever spent too much time together.
Suddenly, Monique Dupré was advancing on their table, ravishing in flame-red, her bony face and even bonier body those of an ex-model, now moved on to become the art critic of one of the quality New York papers.
Serena stiffened with jealousy and dislike. Her eyes flashed back to Nick’s tough face. Monique was one of his mistresses. She didn’t know how many he had, but she knew she would hate every one of them as much as she hated Monique.
‘Nick, darling!’ Monique purred, sliding red-taloned fingers over his powerful shoulders. ‘I didn’t know you were in town.’
‘Surprise visit,’ drawled Nick, standing up, cynical eyes on her red mouth as he bent his dark head and kissed it.
Searing jealousy flooded Serena’s veins like acid. Bitterly, she looked the other way. What else could she do?
‘Lady Serena,’ Monique said politely, noticing her white, tense face. ‘Long time no see.’
Serena looked at her with angry dignity. ‘Hello, Monique. How’s the art world of Manhattan?’
‘I would have thought you’d know more about that than me,’ Monique said softly, her dark eyes watching Serena’s face as colour flooded into it.
‘What on earth makes you say that?’ Serena said at once, her tone icy, then looked at Nick. ‘We ought to be getting back. The pilot may have called. Or don’t you want to leave now?’
There was a brief silence. Nick studied her with narrowed eyes, then said briskly, ‘Sure. You’re right.’ He beckoned a waiter with one hand, and stroked Monique’s bony cheek with the other. ‘I’ll give you a call, Monique. Take care.’
The limousine took them back to Fifth Avenue and their apartment. Serena prayed there would be a message on the answering machine. The sooner Nick left, the better.
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