Bought With His Name

At first she was too relieved to have escaped to be aware of the soft footsteps shadowing the tapping of her high heels, and it was only some sixth sense that made her hesitate, nerves stretched like taut wire as her ears and eyes searched the darkness—no longer protective, but terrifyingly alien, masking all manner of danger. Nothing moved. She must have been imagining those faint sounds, Genista told herself. She turned, her sharp cry of protest cut off as strong fingers circled her throat.

‘So you thought you’d eluded me, and now instead you find you’ve run straight into a trap’ Luke jeered in a whisper. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to harm you—much as I’d like to squeeze this soft throat of yours until you’re begging me for mercy. Surely you didn’t think I’d let you get away with humiliating me so easily?’

His grip of her throat prevented Genista from replying. Terror had given way to anger, and she struggled wildly, trying to free herself from the steel-like arm he had flung round her waist, pulling her back against him.

‘When I walked in that room tonight and saw you, I thought I was seeing a dream. Your beauty caught me by the throat; there seemed to be an instant rapport between us, or so I thought. But I was wrong, wasn’t I, Genista? All you saw was another man to build up and then let down. I’ve heard about women like you who get their kicks from that sort of thing.’

His grip on her throat had relaxed sufficiently for her to speak, her eyes mirroring her contempt as she stared up at him.

‘Instant rapport?’ Scorn laced the words. ‘Oh, come on. You can’t expect me to believe that? I wasn’t born yesterday, Luke. I know what men like you are looking for when they look at a woman. Someone who’s accommodating in bed; someone who won’t make a fuss when she’s tossed aside to make room for the next in line. A little divertissement; a means of passing the time. You looked at me like a man who was trying to work out how long it would take you to get me into bed. Your vanity is so enormous that it never even occurred to you that I might not want to be there. You wanted me and that was enough. You deserved everything you got from me, Luke, so don’t expect me to apologise. After all, I wasn’t doing anything to you that you haven’t probably already done to many, many women.’

‘Is that a fact?’ She could feel his body tighten with tension. ‘I never argue with a lady.’ He emphasised the last word, and Genista could feel the tightly leashed anger emanating from him—anger which he had no right to feel, she reminded herself. ‘And contrary to what you seem to think, I’ve never gone in for physically humiliating them—until tonight.’

Before she could unravel the meaning hidden in the words he had spun her round, his arms locking tightly round her so that the palms of her hands were pressed against the hard warmth of his chest. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and she could feel the crispness of his body hair beneath the thin cotton. Her mouth was dry with apprehension, perspiration breaking out over her body in a heated wave, despite the coolness of the evening.

‘Let me go!’ The words were betrayingly unsteady, and she knew from the satirical gleam of the cold grey eyes that she had not been able to hide her fear from him.

‘This is for my own satisfaction,’ Luke told her, as his head descended with slow deliberation. ‘It’s a pity no one else can witness it, but until I can find a way of getting public satisfaction for what you did to me tonight, it will have to do.’

What followed was like something out of a nightmare. His lips were cool; deceptively gentle at first, moving lightly against the numbed flesh of her own. Luke’s weight bore her backwards, until she was leaning over his arm, her body vulnerably exposed to his eyes and hands—a situation of which he took full advantage as his free hand moved leisurely over her body, stopping nerve-rackingly just below the full curve of her breast, where her heart was beating like a trapped bird. It was a long time since a man had touched her so intimately. Richard had been the only one to do so—fumbled, uneasy caresses, nothing like the assured, knowledgeable touch of this man, who seemed to know instinctively the moment when her cool control would give way to deep shudders, which he mercilessly exploited, his hand sliding under the thin stuff of her top, pushing aside her bra to stroke her nipple roughly with his thumb.

When her mouth parted in shocked protest, his hardened over it, his kiss callously enforcing his superior strength. Bitter resentment filled Genista. What he was doing was tantamount to assault, and there was nothing she could do about it. The harsh pressure of his mouth was bruising the tender flesh of her lips, forcing them back against her teeth, with relentless, grinding pressure, his hand on her breast eliciting a response that shocked and humiliated. Since Richard no man had ever aroused her sexually; Richard she had loved and even with him she had been shy and reserved, and yet here was this contemptuous stranger, teaching her that her body was capable of a treachery she had never dreamed existed, because, despite her own horror and abhorrence, physically she had responded to him, and they both knew it.

When he released her, satisfaction gleamed in the steel-grey depths of his eyes, and childishly Genista rubbed the back of her hand against her mouth as though by doing so she could obliterate the memory of his touch. Where his hand had touched her breast it seemed to throb with an aroused awareness which awakened some deeply primitive core she had not known she possessed.

‘My place or yours?’

The crude question brought her abruptly back to reality.

‘Neither,’ she said coldly. ‘I meant what I said, Luke. I don’t want you.’

‘But I want you,’ he said silkily, ‘and you seem to have forgotton that this time I have the upper hand. You aren’t surrounded by your friends this time, Genista. We’re all alone here and there’s no one to stop me forcing you into my car and taking you back to my apartment—and I will do if I have to, make no mistake about that.’

‘You’d force me, merely to appease your masculine pride?’ A little of her disgust must have showed in her voice, because for a second she saw something flicker in his eyes, and then they hardened.

‘Why not? It might be quite an experience.’

‘Meaning you don’t normally have to use force, I suppose?’ she said bitterly. She was feeling badly frightened, but she wasn’t going to let it show.

‘Not normally,’ Luke agreed urbanely, but there was a tightening of his mouth that warned her that he was annoyed. ‘As I say, it might be quite an experience—for me. I doubt if you would enjoy it very much. Not even an experienced woman enjoys being raped.’

Raped? Genista stared at him.

‘I’ll report you to the police,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Rape is a criminal offence. You’ll be thrown into prison …’

‘No way,’ Luke told her cruelly, shaking his head. ‘Do you think after the way you were behaving at the party that any jury would believe you weren’t willing?—and I’d make sure they knew all about it. You were leading me on. How old are you? Twenty-four? Twenty-three? Old enough to have had several previous lovers. That never goes down well in court.’

It was a nightmare, Genista thought unsteadily. This simple could not be happening, but it was, and if she didn’t go with Luke willingly now she was quite sure that he would put his threats to good effect. Rape! The word shivered horrifyingly through her. Several previous lovers, Luke had said. She bit back a hysterical laugh. She hadn’t even had one—Richard had seen to that! She took a deep breath, her mind working overtime as she tried to find a means of escape. She could always run, but Luke would soon overtake her. Her brief contact with his body had shown her that he was lean and well muscled, more than a match for her!

‘Well?’

‘I’ll come with you.’ She took a deep breath and tried to relax her tensed muscles. ‘But it must be my flat.’

She could feel him looking at her, trying to read her mind. She held her breath, hoping he could not guess what she had in mind.

‘Very well,’ he agreed slowly. ‘Give me your doorkey. As a sign of good faith,’ he mocked. ‘I’m not having any doors slammed in my face this time, Genista, either metaphorically or actually.’

With shaking hands she opened her bag and removed her key. He took it in silence, his fingers biting painfully into her arm as he led the way back to his car.

It was a sleek dark red Maserati. Luke was obviously not short of money, Genista reflected as he opened the passenger door and waited until she was seated before closing it.

‘Don’t bother trying to open the door. I’ve locked it,’ he told her sardonically, before walking round the car and sliding in beside her.

The confining interior of the car heightened her feeling of alarm. The upholstery was cream hide, the smell mingling with the sharply masculine fragrance of Luke’s cologne. It was a masculine car, driven by a very masculine man, she thought, watching him change gear smoothly. The lights changed and they moved off with a smooth roar.

‘Where do you live?’

She gave him directions automatically. If she hesitated and he took her to his own flat she dared not think of the consequences. What had started out as a simple exercise to show him that he simply could not have whatever he wanted, just because he wanted it, had turned into a nightmare of alarming proportions. The revenge Luke wanted to mete out in payment for the way she had humiliated him was something she could not endure, and would not have to endure if she was lucky. The hands resting lightly in her lap tensed, and she crossed her fingers childishly, uttering a silent prayer that the commissionaire of her apartment block would be in the foyer when they drove up.

She felt rather than saw the way Luke’s eyebrows rose when she indicated that he should stop. The apartments had their own underground car park, but she wasn’t going to direct him into that. Instead she let him pull up outside the discreetly expensive block, waiting passively for him to help her out of the car.

‘You live here?’

The sharp enquiry heightened her fear.

‘Yes.’ She had bought her apartment when she first came to London. In many ways it had been a mistake, because the other occupants were mainly middle-aged couples, and apart from the occasional ‘Good morning’ or comments about the weather they had not exchanged any conversation.

The foyer was brightly lit from within, George sitting solidly behind his desk, and Genista felt a little of the tension drain out of her. He recognised her straight away, and started to smile as she walked in. Taking her courage in both hands, Genista turned to Luke, a false smile pinned to her lips.

‘Thank you so much for a wonderful evening,’ she told him, hoping that her voice did not sound as artificial to George as it did to her. ‘I’ll say goodnight now.’

For a moment she thought he was going to force a showdown. She could feel George watching them, and wondered feverishly if she should have pretended that he was accosting her in some way, and then just when she felt sure that her gamble had not paid off, she heard him say smoothly,

‘Goodnight, Genista.’ His hand slid from her arm to her wrist, lifting her fingers to his lips and touching them with a panache that was making George goggle. ‘You must think of our parting not as an end, but as a beginning.’

Genista could tell that George thought he was witnessing the tender beginning of a love affair, but beneath the lightly drawled words and the soft look she sensed an implied threat. Luke was warning her that he still intended to have his revenge!

Only when she was quite sure that the Maserati had pulled away did she turn towards the commissionaire, her voice shaky with released tension.

‘George, I seem to have misplaced my key,’ she told him. ‘Would you be an angel and let me in? I think I’d better have the lock changed as well. You can’t be too careful these days.’

‘I’ll see to it myself tomorrow, miss, if you like,’ George offered. ‘I’ll just lock the main doors and then I’ll come up with you and open your door for you.’

He’d always had a soft spot for her, right from the first day she moved into Mallory Court, he told his wife later. There was something about her. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful. She made him feel all protective-like somehow. High time she got herself a boy-friend, he added, and by the looks of it the one she’d now found herself was doing alright for himself. Fast, powerful sports car …

Unware that she was the main topic of conversation in the commissionaire’s flat, Genista prepared for bed. There were faint bruises on her throat, and she touched them lightly, shuddering. Jilly had warned her that Luke could be dangerous and she had laughed at her. She wasn’t laughing now, and she was only thankful that it was extremely unlikely that she would ever see Luke Ferguson again. First thing tomorrow she must remind George about changing her lock. When his anger cooled she doubted that Luke would pursue her any further, but she wouldn’t be able to sleep in her bed at night knowing he had a key to her apartment. Her hand crept towards her breast. The flesh still tingled from his touch, emotions she had not experienced for years rushed through her, and she was remembering Richard. Luke … Richard … her father … they were all the same. All men were the same; she turned her face into her pillow and allowed the frightened tears she had been bottling up from the moment Luke kissed her with such merciless contempt to flow freely at last.

CHAPTER TWO

GENISTA overslept—an almost unprecedented occurrence, and as she struggled to make her way to work through the crowded underground rightly or wrongly she blamed Luke Ferguson. He was the reason she had lain awake half the night, tormented by all manner of strange emotions. Forget the man, she told herself, stopping in her tracks so suddenly that the man walking behind her bumped into her, as she remembered that she had not seen George again about changing her locks. She bit her lip. She would have to try and ring through from the office. She didn’t think Luke would try to use her key. He had struck her as a man of too much pride to attempt to see her again—unless his desire for revenge still burned as fiercely as it had done last night. She was being over-imaginative again, she told herself. It was over.

Bob was already seated at his desk when she walked in, his head bent over some papers. Computerstore was only a small concern; everyone worked together in one large office, except the owner and Managing Director, Brian Hargreaves, who was usually out somewhere selling the company’s services. Since the news of their takeover had broken no one had seen Brian, although there were rumours that he had been offered a position on the board of their new owners. If that was the case they would need two new staff members; someone to replace Brian and someone to replace Greg, who had left the firm to take up a job in the States. Greg’s loss did not particularly worry Genista. She could tolerate Greg, but she knew that beneath his surface charm lurked a particularly malicious streak which had often manifested itself in the manner in which he took her refusals to go out with him.

‘Hello there! You’re late!’

Jilly breezed into the office behind Genista, sighing enviously over Genista’s pale lilac and cream separates. ‘You always have such lovely clothes,’ she complained. Jilly and her fiancé were saving up to get married and consequently there was very little money to spare for new clothes. Genista had bought her outfit from Jaeger—one of the benefits of having private means, she reflected wryly. No one could have been more surprised than Genista herself when, six months after the death of her parents in a landslide in the tiny Alpine village where they were spending their ‘second honeymoon’, she had received a letter from a firm of solicitors in Australia informing her that she was the sole beneficiary under the will of her mother’s uncle. Genista had vague recollections of her mother talking about an uncle who had left England in disgrace, but she had never dreamed that he had built up a vast sheep station in the Australian Outback, which had been sold to his partner on his death, with the proceeds going to Genista as his only surviving relative. The money would keep her in modest luxury for the rest of her life, carefully invested, but she could not envisage life as a lady of leisure, so she had come to London, bought her apartment and set about finding herself a job which would fill the huge gap the death of her parents had left in her life.

‘Hey, come back! Where were you? Having second thoughts about last night?’ Jilly teased. ‘So would I in your shoes. He was gorgeous—and very plainly fell hard for you. When he walked into the room and saw you he was almost transfixed—just like something out of the movies!’

Jilly was making her feel uncomfortable.

‘It wasn’t at all like that,’ she protested. ‘You’re seeing things through rose-coloured glasses. All he wanted to do was go to bed with me. That’s all men like him ever want.’

‘If you believe that then you’re the one with eye trouble—like you’re wearing blinkers,’ Jilly retorted spiritedly. ‘Honestly, Gen, I sometimes don’t think you’re for real! The most gorgeous male I’ve ever seen in my life walks into a party, takes one look at you and gives a pretty fair impression of a man who’s met the love of his life, and all you can do is say that he wanted to go to bed with you. You haven’t the faintest idea! If that was all he wanted, why didn’t he accept the invitation Mary was offering so blatantly?’

‘Perhaps he prefers redheads,’ Genista said flippantly. Jilly was being absurd. People in love were notorious for it. So she thought Luke had fallen for her, did she? She hadn’t noticed!

‘Who was he anyway?’ Jilly asked. ‘I’ve never seen him around before, have you, and most of the others were the usual crowd.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Genista admitted. ‘We didn’t get as far as exchanging life stories.’ She had no intention of telling Jilly what had happened after she had left the party; Jilly’s questions awakened her own curiosity. Luke had come to the party alone, and had plainly not known many of the other guests. If it hadn’t been for his air of arrogant command, and the powerfully expensive Maserati he had driven she might have put him down as one of Greg’s ex-university friends; or someone who lived in the same block, but now that she thought about it, there had been an air of aloofness about Luke; a sort of aloneness, which didn’t tie in with his being one of Greg’s gregarious friends.

‘I don’t suppose you exchanged phone numbers?’ Jilly pressed wistfully, plainly convinced that her friend ought to have encouraged Luke’s attentions.

‘No.’ Genista purposefully made the word sound final, although a tiny part of her mind wondered what Jilly would have said had she told her that Luke did have her key.

‘Join me for lunch?’ Jilly questioned.

‘I’ll try. We might have to work through. Bob wanted to work late last night, but he had to go home.’ A small frown furrowed Genista’s forehead. She glanced across to where Bob Norman was still bent over his papers. He hadn’t seemed his normal calm self after he had spoken to his wife the previous evening, and Genista hoped there was nothing wrong at home. Elaine was a charming person, although very much lacking in self-confidence. She and Bob had one son who attended a small public school, and privately Genista thought it was wrong that Elaine should live so much through her husband and son, although of course it was none of her business.

Bob smiled at Genista when she sat down at her own desk.

‘Sorry I’m late. I overslept, and then Jilly collared me to chat about last night’s party,’ she apologised.

‘So I saw,’ said Bob with a smile. ‘Don’t let it worry you. Oh, by the way,’ he added almost as though it were an afterthought, ‘I’ve heard that our new boss is going to pay us a visit this morning. He rang me at home last night. He was hoping to get back from Amsterdam in time to do the honours, but there’s been a hold-up with the Van der Walle deal.’

‘Do you know much about our new owner?’ Genista asked him, abandoning the chart she had been studying.

Bob shook his head. He was a tall, well-made man, still very attractive, his dark hair tinged with silver, a twinkle in his blue eyes as he studied Genista’s downbent head. His manner towards her was fatherly, teasing almost, and Genista was able to enjoy his company without worrying that he might think she was attracted to him—Bob was very happily married; one of the very few who were, Genista often thought.

‘All kinds of rumours were floating about while you were away,’ he told her, ‘but nothing concrete. The entrepreneur who built up the L.F.N. Corporation is something of a mystery man, apparently, and doesn’t go in for publicity. Greg’s met him. He called round at Brian’s flat when he was there.’

‘And promptly found himself a new job,’ Genista commented dryly. ‘Hardly a good omen.’

‘Oh, you know Greg—or you should do by now. An easy life and a lavish expenses account and he was happy. I suspect when he heard the firm was being taken over he saw the writing on the wall. Brian Hargreaves is an excellent man in his field, but as an administrator he’s inclined to be a little lax.’

Genista knew that this was true. Computerstore had a good reputation and did very well, but it could have done even better with tighter financial control, and certain members of the staff had very light duties in proportion to their generous salaries.

‘You’ve no need to worry,’ Bob assured her, as though he had read her mind. ‘You’re a very able worker, Gen, and there’s no way I could manage without you.’

His phone rang, and Genista moved away as she heard him say sharply. ‘Elaine!’

It was unusual for his wife to ring him at work, and she wondered again if something was wrong at home. Although they worked closely together and she had met Elaine, Bob was inclined to keep his private life private, and Genista had no wish to pry. She busied herself with her own work, which had piled up during her holiday, and when a sudden disturbance by the main door broke her concentration she glanced at her watch, surprised to see that the morning was almost gone.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Bob leave his desk, and rather than appear curious she bent her head over her own work again, even though she had guessed that the disturbance had been caused by the arrival of their new boss. No doubt Simon, their commissionaire, had shown him up from their reception area. Genista could hear the familiar sound of Bob’s voice; his introduction as he paused by the desk used by the technical sales team. Her desk was next in line, and it was very tempting to glance up while the newcomer was talking and snatch a quick look at him, but Genista fought the temptation, and was glad that she had done when he and Bob moved away from the technicians after a very brief exchange of conversation, and walked towards her.

‘Now let me introduce you to Gen, my assistant,’ she heard Bob saying. ‘She’s a real asset to the firm. A hard worker …’

‘Yes, I’ve already heard a great deal about Jennifer.’

Genista felt as though someone had just poured ice-cold water down her spine. She would have recognised that voice anywhere!

‘Jennifer?’ she heard Bob say in a puzzled voice. ‘Oh, I see! No, the Gen is short for Genista, not Jennifer. I suppose really it’s a crime to shorten such a beautiful name.’

‘Genista!’ There was no discernible inflection in the cool male voice as he repeated her name. Genista had been staring at the faint stripe of darker grey running across his pale grey tie while he spoke, but now she lifted her eyes from the tie to the cool grey eyes which almost matched it, her stomach lurching betrayingly, despite the fact that she had recognised his voice the moment she had heard him speak.

‘Genista!’