The Seduction Scheme

“This is mutual attraction,” Ben contradicted. “We both knew that from the moment we set eyes on each other.”

“Your ego is unbelievable!” Rachel gasped. “I wouldn’t have you if you came gift-wrapped.”

“If you prefer, we’ll keep our personal and professional relationship strictly separate. That’s fine by me.”

“We don’t have a personal relationship,” she felt impelled to point out.

“We will, Rachel….”

KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Anglesey, Wales. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons and the various stray animals which have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

The Seduction Scheme

Kim Lawrence

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

THE waiter lifted the lid of the silver tureen with a flourish. A closet romantic at heart, he gave a smile of satisfaction when the attractive young woman gasped in surprise.

Rachel was surprised. She’d known Nigel was going to propose tonight—he’d dropped enough hints—but she hadn’t expected a gesture as theatrical and grand as this. Mouth slightly open, she stared at the diamond nestling on the velvet cushion as if it might leap out and bite her any minute.

Nigel Latimer leant forward eagerly in his seat; well satisfied with his companion’s reaction, he nodded the waiter away with a conspiratorial grin.

‘It doesn’t bite,’ he said, reaching over and taking hold of her hand. ‘Try it on,’ he urged. ‘My God, Rachel, you’re trembling.’ Rachel, who was always so composed and in control. He was delighted and faintly surprised that his efforts had made such an impact.

Rachel tore her eyes from the sparkling ring to the spot where her hand was covered by a larger one. ‘This is such a shock,’ she lied shakily. It would offend him if she snatched her hand away, so being a considerate young woman she didn’t.

Actually it had been obvious for weeks that this moment would arise; she’d thought about it a lot and now the moment was here she still didn’t have the faintest idea what she was going to say! What a time to become indecisive.

She looked into Nigel’s handsome, confident face, at his nice clean-cut features, the silvered hair that gave him the distinguished air that went down so well with his patients—he looked every inch the successful, competent surgeon. Shouldn’t it be excitement, not consternation that made her stomach muscles spasm? Some people didn’t know when they had it good—and she, apparently, was one of them!

He expected her to say yes—and why shouldn’t he? He was the answer to most women’s prayers: good-looking, kind, wealthy. She sometimes wondered how a man like him had stayed single into his forties. Rachel found it unsettling when he called her the perfect woman he’d been waiting for all his life. His expectations of her were very high, so that she always felt almost as if she was playing a part for him. Perfect women always said the right thing at the right moment. How would he react if he discovered the less than perfect side to her nature?

He must love her to distraction to pursue her in the face of extreme provocation from Charlotte, her daughter. Did she love him? Did it matter? Weren’t other things like companionship and compatibility more important? She was thirty now, past the age of expecting the fulfilment of adolescent fantasies.

The thoughts flickered through her mind in the blink of an eye. She felt a trickle of sweat slide down between her shoulder blades as she tried to respond the way she ought to. What’s wrong with me? she asked herself. The first signs of concern were beginning to appear on Nigel’s face when the waiter reappeared and apologetically announced that there was an urgent phone call for Miss French.

It wasn’t just a desperate desire for a breathing space that made Rachel leap to her feet; the only person who knew she was here was the baby-sitter. What was Charlie up to now? she wondered in alarm.

She returned a few moments later and it was immediately obvious to her escort that all was not well.

‘What’s wrong, darling?’ Nigel was at her side in a second.

Rachel bit back a terrified sob. ‘Charlie’s disappeared!’

‘There you are!’ Benedict Arden flinched as a pair of small arms suddenly snaked around his leather-clad middle. ‘See, I told you I wasn’t alone.’

This last comment wasn’t addressed to him but was thrown defiantly in the direction of a prosperous-looking middle-aged couple who were regarding him with dubious disapproval.

Having presented the sort of appearance for almost all the thirty-four years of his life that would dispose people like this couple to regard him in a benevolent light, Benedict permitted himself a small ironic smile at this fresh reminder of how important first impressions were before his thoughts returned to the more pressing issue: who the hell was this kid?

‘This is your father?’ Pity was mixed with scepticism in the woman’s voice.

‘Good God, no!’ Revulsion flared in Benedict’s voice as he took a step backwards.

He was relieved to find his wallet was where it ought to be, in the breast pocket of his leather jacket. The jacket was air force issue; he’d inherited it from his grandfather and it proved that he hadn’t just inherited the face of a man he’d never known, but his build too.

The jacket combined with hair that had become long enough to be troublesome, plus a liberal sprinkling of dark stubble over his angular jawline, gave him an almost sinister aspect. At first glance, Benedict would be the first to admit, not the sort of character anyone would expect to find hugging a child, but then he wasn’t doing the hugging.

The thin arms unwound and a pair of reproachful blue eyes looked up at him. Looking down into a delicate face, Benedict realised for the first time that the child was not, after all, a boy, but a girl—a girl dressed in androgynous jeans and tee shirt. The realisation didn’t soften his expression; the menace that would have made sensible souls cross the road didn’t appear to make any impact on the child.

‘He’s my brother,’ she continued, not taking her remarkable china-blue eyes from his face. ‘My stepbrother, actually; my father married his mother,’ she elaborated, warming to the theme. A furrow developed between her brows as she mentally composed a full family history. ‘His father’s dead now.’

Benedict blinked as his parent was heartlessly disposed of. This kid was unbelievable. You had to admire her sheer cheek, even if she was mad or dangerous, or possibly a combination of both! His lips quivered.

‘It was probably the drink.’ This, if recent comments had been true, was the direction his son was driving him in—so long as the vintage was good, of course. Nothing but the best for Sir Stuart Arden.

He felt the swift exhalation of relief that made the child’s slight frame shudder and immediately regretted this frivolous response as the blue eyes smiled approvingly up at him. He wanted to groan; the last thing he wanted to do was encourage this lunatic child. As far as she was concerned he’d become some sort of co-conspirator. Like an idiot he’d let the obvious opportunity to deny absolutely all knowledge of her to pass him by. Well, he’d soon rectify that! He had plans. He thought it unlikely that Sabrina had been pining away for him, despite her assurances, and there had been a dearth of single female company on the property his grandmother had left him in the Australian outback.

‘Do you think it’s responsible to allow a child like this to wander around the city at this time of night?’ The woman’s lips pursed in distaste as she looked him up and down. The man’s expression showed no less disgust, but more caution. He was also keeping a safe distance from the dangerous-looking character.

‘No, I don’t,’ Benedict replied honestly. He could readily share this woman’s sense of outrage. His eyes narrowed in anger as he thought of the irresponsible parents who robbed children like this one of their innocence by letting them roam the streets alone.

‘Y-yes, well…’ she stammered, thrown off her stride as much by the glint of anger in his dark eyes as his unexpected agreement.

‘They tried to make me go with them, Steven.’ The child had a very clear and penetrating voice. The male half of the couple looked embarrassed and alarmed as several people on the pavement, which seethed with a cross-section of humanity, glanced in their direction. ‘Mum says I shouldn’t talk to strangers!’

‘We only wanted to take her to the police station.’

‘Be my guest.’ He felt dawning sympathy for this pair of Samaritans. He wanted nothing more than to hand the responsibility for this disreputable child back to someone who was obviously more qualified, not to mention more eager than himself. The joke had gone on long enough. As he took a step towards them the man backed hastily away.

‘Well, all’s well that ends well,’ he said, taking his more reluctant wife’s arm firmly. ‘Goodnight.’ The woman continued to cast suspicious glances over her shoulder as she was led away. Benedict watched their departure with dawning dismay.

‘I thought they’d never go.’ The skinny child abruptly released the hand she’d been holding. ‘You were very useful.’ She nodded towards him.

Benedict sighed; a conscience was a very uncomfortable thing to have sometimes. ‘They were only trying to help. That’s pretty commendable.’

‘I don’t need help.’

‘The police station seems a good idea to me.’ No matter how streetwise this kid seemed, he couldn’t leave her to her own devices in an area that was crawling with undesirable persons. The child’s next words made it obvious she considered him one of those undesirables.

‘The police would have believed them.’ She nodded in the direction where the couple had been swallowed up by the assorted bodies that thronged the pavement. ‘You don’t look like the sort of person the police would believe at all. I picked you because you look scruffy and mean,’ she told him frankly. ‘I’d say you were trying to kidnap me and I’d scream very loudly. They’d believe me; that man thought you were going to hit him,’ she ended triumphantly.

The kid’s logic was flawless and her self-possession was staggering. A glance at his reflection in the plate-glass window told him she was right.

Recoil in horror had about summed up his mother’s reaction to her younger son’s appearance. His father had been less restrained. ‘My God, he’s gone native’ and ‘Get that bloody hair cut!’ had been a selection of the more moderate pieces of advice he had offered. His teenage sister’s response had been less predictable.

‘You’ll be mobbed by women who want to see if you’re sensitive and misunderstood under the dark, dangerous exterior. Sexily sinister,’ she’d said, quite pleased with her alliteration.

He’d found such perception in one of such tender years worrying; accustomed to female attention, he had already been aware of a subtle difference in that attention since he’d got back home—women were strange creatures. And talking about precocious—he had a more immediate problem than his hairstyle to worry about.

‘If you don’t want to go to the police station…’ Maybe this kid was already well known there, he surmised. He felt a stab of fury at the sheer injustice that any child’s future could be so depressingly predictable. ‘How about home?’ He doubted home meant the same thing to this child as it did to him.

She still kept her distance, but his comment seemed to make her pause. ‘The taxi driver said I didn’t have enough money to go all the way home. I’ll walk the rest of the way. I wanted to be back before…’ The shrug was pure bravado. ‘I’ll be all right.’ She bit her lip.

Despite the stoical exterior she couldn’t keep the small tremor from her voice. It occurred to him that maybe she wasn’t half as blasé as she pretended to be. The poor kid was probably scared stiff.

‘I’ll pay for your taxi.’

’You?’ The young lips curled with scorn.

‘You don’t think I’m good for it?’

‘I’m not about to get into a car with a stranger.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it. I’m not going in your direction.’ Walking through a minefield had to be easier than this!

‘Why do you want to help me?’

Good question, Ben. This child certainly had an unnerving ability to cut to the heart of the matter. ‘Such cynicism in one so young.’ He suddenly remembered he was talking to a child. ‘Cynicism is…’ he began kindly.

‘I know what cynicism is; I’m a kid, not an idiot.’

And that puts me in my place nicely, he thought, stifling an urge to smile in response to the youngster’s scornful interruption. ‘And I’m your guardian angel, so take my offer or leave it.’ He made it sound as though he didn’t give a damn.

‘I think you’re mad, but I do have a blister.’ She looked down at her feet. ‘New trainers,’ she added, scuffing her toe on the ground.

‘Follow that cab!’

The driver was quite happy to oblige once Benedict had paid up front. He’d be prepared to pay a lot more just to have the opportunity of telling that scrap’s parents what he thought of them! Something about those eyes had made his protective instincts kick in with a vengeance.

The building the black cab drew up in front of was not in the sort of neighbourhood he’d expected. Rows of Edwardian villas lined the roads, and there was an air of quiet affluence. He watched as the kid walked up the driveway of a house as he got out of the cab.

She didn’t see him until she had the key in the lock of the ground-floor flat. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’d like a word with your father.’ Actually he’d quite like to throttle the irresponsible idiot.

‘I don’t have a father.’ Her whole stance said, Want to make something of it?

‘Well, your mother, then.’

‘She’s out. She won’t be back until very late.’ The door opened a crack and, slippery as an eel, she disappeared inside, closing the door behind her. ‘Her boyfriend’s going to propose to her tonight!’ The last words were muffled as the door swung closed.

Images of a heartless, selfish woman so involved in her own pleasure that she neglected her child made his chest swell with righteous indignation. He’d heard definite tears in that tough little voice as the door had closed. Without actually thinking past his need to tell this woman exactly what he thought of her, he leant hard against the doorbell.

The baby-sitter had begun to scream again at the mention of the police.

‘Police? Is that really necessary, Rachel?’

Rachel French rounded on her escort, her grey eyes smouldering with anger. ‘Necessary! It’s eleven-thirty at night, Nigel, and my ten-year-old daughter is not only not in bed, she is not in the flat, or the building. She could be anywhere!’

Actually, considering the discussion they’d had earlier in the day, Rachel had a pretty shrewd suspicion where her errant child was heading. This knowledge only increased the wholesale panic that threatened to reduce her to a gibbering wreck. Fear lodged like a physical presence in her chest; she could smell it and taste it. She glanced at the baby-sitter who had collapsed onto the sofa. She couldn’t lose it now; one incoherent wreck was enough! Her fingernails gouged small half moons in the soft skin of her palms, but her expression stayed composed.

‘It w-wasn’t my fault!’

‘I didn’t say it was. Charlie is very…resourceful. Did you say something, Nigel?’ she enquired icily as a disparaging sound emerged from his throat.

‘Resourceful is one word for her; I could think of others…’ He’d been goaded by the frustrating events of an evening which he had planned so meticulously into forgetting his usual tactful reticence.

‘At another time I’d be only too delighted to hear your opinion…’

‘Rachel, darling, I’m—’

‘In the way,’ she supplied, her urgency making her brutal as she shrugged off the unwanted protection of the arm he had draped across her shoulders. ‘Susan, what time was it when you last actually saw Charlie? Not just heard the music in her bedroom, actually saw her. I know you’re upset, but it’s very important.’ She stifled her natural impulse to wring the information out of the girl and forced herself to sound calm and reasonable. It took every ounce of her will-power. ‘We need to know how long ago she left.’

‘I…I’m not sure,’ the girl sniffed. ‘I was revising…the finals are next week.’

Rachel bit back the scathing retort that hovered on the tip of her tongue. To say her interest in this young woman’s academic future was tepid would have been an exaggeration.

‘You were being paid to look after the child, not study.’ Nigel’s accurate but ill-timed observation reduced the young woman to incoherent sobs once more.

‘Nigel,’ Rachel snapped, ‘will you be quiet?’ The loud and continuous sound of the doorbell interrupted her. ‘Charlie!’ she breathed, hope surging through her body.

‘Will you stop that and go away?’ The door opened a crack. ‘I didn’t want Susan to know I’ve been—’

‘Charlie!’

‘Mum!’ The child released her hold on the door and Benedict took the opportunity to push it open. The source of the first cry stood at the other end of the hallway. A slim-fitting lavender-coloured floor-length gown was gathered in one hand, a mobile phone in the other. She let go of both; one slithered around her shapely calves and the other hit the big, distinguished-looking man with the silver-grey hair directly on the nose.

‘I’ll kill you, you little wretch,’ the low, intriguingly husky voice that evoked a response like fingers gently moving up his spine announced lovingly.

Benedict didn’t think this was likely, unless you could hug a person to death. The woman had dropped onto her knees and the child had walked straight into her arms.

‘Are you all right? How could you?’ Rachel was torn by equally strong desires to berate and kiss her daughter. ‘Hush, it’s all right now,’ she murmured as the slender frame was shaken by silent sobs.

Rachel noticed the man standing behind her daughter for the first time. How sad—the lights were on but there was definitely nobody home! It instantly struck her as tragic that someone so sinfully beautiful was lacking the intelligence to lighten those heavy-lidded, almost black eyes. She pressed her daughter’s damp face into her bosom and looked briefly into the blank face. Jaw slack, eyes glazed and vacant, he stared back dully. Latin extract, she decided; there was nothing Anglo Saxon about his olive-toned skin and glossy black hair.

‘Who’s this, Charlie?’

‘That’s…Steven. He fetched me home. I thought I’d get back before you were home, Mum. How did you know…?’

‘Susan rang us, of course.’

‘Susan doesn’t usually look in after John arrives. Just my luck!’

‘John?’ Rachel turned her attention to the baby-sitter who hovered nervously in the background.

‘My boyfriend. He sometimes comes to keep me company. He had to go home early tonight.’ Her tear-stained young face turned an unattractive shade of red as she studiously avoided Rachel’s eyes.

‘How fortunate for us he had a prior engagement.’ Rachel pushed the wing of soft brown hair that had escaped her smooth chignon from her face and the sparkle of anger faded from her eyes. She could afford to be magnanimous now she had her daughter back. Her fingers slid down Charlie’s silky, jaw-length blonde hair and she felt weak with relief. Things could have been so different.

Her eyes returned to the magnificent hunk in the doorway. A very unlikely Samaritan, she thought, gratitude misting her eyes.

Benedict hoped the groan was only inside the confines of his skull—incredible eyes! Pale skin that had an almost translucent quality and slightly slanted almond-shaped eyes that made the onlooker overlook the fact that her features weren’t strictly symmetrical.

‘I’m sorry, Miss French; it’s just John and I don’t get to see one another much. We’ve both got part-time jobs to supplement our grants and—’

Rachel’s weary voice cut through the young woman’s babble. ‘I’ve no objections to you having your boyfriend’s company, Susan. I just don’t like you neglecting Charlie. It’s been a long night. Perhaps you should be going home.’

‘Right…sure, I’ll get my things.’

She turned her attention back to her daughter, noting the sure signs of exhaustion in the delicate young face. ‘Well, young lady, was it worth it?’ The post-mortem and the chastisement would come later.

‘You know where I went?’

‘It didn’t take a genius, love.’ The argument they’d had over her standing with hordes of equally youthful, adoring fans in front of a theatre in the hope of catching a glimpse of her favourite boy band as they arrived at an awards ceremony had dragged on for two days. Charlie had capitulated rather too easily, which ought to have set the alarm bells ringing.

‘Actually there was such a crowd, I couldn’t see a thing,’ Charlotte confessed. ‘The taxi driver overcharged me and there were these nosy people…’

‘Quite a little adventure,’ Rachel murmured with great restraint. She knew it didn’t do any good to dwell on what might have happened, but it was hard to control her wayward imagination.

‘Is that all you’re going to say?’ Nigel asked incredulously.

Mother and daughter turned with identical frowns to look up at him. Although there was little physical similarity, at moments like this their relationship was very apparent. Rachel straightened up gracefully, her arms around her daughter’s shoulders, the two of them unconsciously presenting a united front.

‘At this precise moment, yes,’ she said quietly.

‘The child needs punishing; she needs to know what she did was wrong.’

‘It’s none of your business!’ Charlie flared, pulling out of her mother’s arms.

Rachel sighed. ‘That’s no way to speak to Nigel. He was very worried about you.’

‘No, he wasn’t! He doesn’t even like me.’

Rachel winced as her daughter slammed the sitting-room door behind her. ‘Sorry about that, Nigel.’ She noted with dismay the pinched look around his nostrils.

Even though she knew Nigel’s ill-judged comments stemmed from the best possible intentions, Rachel couldn’t help but sympathise with her daughter’s viewpoint. It had been just the two of them for so long, she couldn’t help but resent his well-meaning efforts to share the burden of responsibility herself at times. Do I want to share the responsibility? a tiresome voice in her head piped up.

‘Are you?’ He ran a hand through his well-ordered hair and sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Rachel,’ he said stiffly. ‘It’s just tonight was meant to be special…’

‘Well, we’re not likely to forget it.’ Her impish grin faded as there was no glimmer of answering humour in his handsome face. ‘Perhaps we should just forget tonight ever happened.’

‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to marry me?’ Incredulity filled his voice.

‘Of course I’m not.’ Am I? The thought filled her with guilt as she looked at the hurt expression on Nigel’s face.

Her intention to kiss him, Rachel moved forward. She’d kicked off her high-heeled shoes earlier and the silky fabric of her long gown caught a loose nail in the skirting-board.