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‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ she exploded as he switched off the ignition. ‘Why on earth are you playing these stupid games?’
“‘Games”, Miss Johnson?’ He raised a dark, satanic eyebrow as he gazed at her with a bland, cool smile on his lips. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, yes, you damn well do!’ she accused him bleakly, grimly aware of the dark, insidious attraction of the man lounging so casually in his seat beside her. Maybe if she hadn’t been feeling quite so tired and exhausted, she would have been better equipped to ignore the muscular shoulders beneath the thin fabric of his short-sleeved cream shirt, and the long-fingered, strong hands lightly grasping the wheel.
Life was so unfair! Surely, if there was any justice in the world, Ross ought to have gone thoroughly to seed over the past six years? Unfortunately—instead of having become seriously overweight, with a paunch and receding hairline—he was still fit, slim, lithe and as diabolically attractive as ever. Besides which, there ought to be a law against allowing men to wear shorts, she told herself acidly. Because the sight of Ross’s bare, deeply tanned and muscular brown legs almost touching her own was definitely not helping her to concentrate on her problems.
Making a supreme effort to pull herself together, Flora took a deep breath.
‘Leaving aside the other interesting questions, such as how a one-time mining engineer has managed to become a best-selling author,’ she told him scathingly, ‘what I really want to know is why he’s also pretending not to know his wife?’
‘You’re right—that’s definitely an interesting question,’ he drawled mockingly as he got out and came around to her side. ‘Maybe the answer, dear Miss Johnson, is that since my wife was such a spoilt and tiresome woman I’m doing my best to forget that I was ever married...’
‘Believe me—your wife feels exactly the same way about her crummy, despicable husband!’ she ground out through clenched teeth, swearing under her breath as she tried to open the passenger door. ‘I really hate these trendy four-wheel-drive vehicles!’ she muttered, savagely banging her fist on the dashboard. Only to find herself becoming even more furious as he gave an infuriating chuckle of laughter.
‘Oh, dear—we really do seem to be losing our temper, don’t we?’ he murmured, calmly opening the door before scooping up her in-flight bag from the rear seat and walking towards the small blue and white cottage.
‘You...you damned man!’ she shouted furiously, tumbling out of the Land Rover and almost running to keep up with him as he strode up the steps to the front door. ‘You always were bloody-minded, and...and as obstinate as a pig!’
Calmly placing a key in the lock, he opened the door before turning slowly towards her. ‘That sounds a fair description of my wife,’ he drawled smoothly. ‘In fact, it seems as if you’ve already had the misfortune of meeting the lady. If so, you’ll know that she’s a bad-tempered, completely self-absorbed person, who’s quite incapable of thinking of anyone or anything—other than her own selfish interests.’
‘That’s a really foul thing to say!’ she cried. ‘I’m not like that. I—’
‘My dear Miss Johnson!’ he interjected swiftly. ‘I was, of course, referring to my wife. Surely you can’t imagine that I was talking about you? Especially since you’re apparently such a very, very good friend of Bernie Schwartz,’ he added, the bland smile on his lips sharply at variance with the bleak, chilly gleam in his blue eyes.
Flora stiffened. ‘And just what’s that last snide remark supposed to mean?’
Ignoring her tense, angry figure, Ross merely shrugged his broad shoulders before carrying her luggage into the main sitting room of the cottage.
Trailing slowly behind him, Flora realised that she’d been acting like an utter fool. She might loathe this hateful man, but trading insults wasn’t going to achieve anything. Not when she needed his assistance to save her career. Unfortunately, however much it might stick in her throat, she had no alternative but to eat Humble Pie.
‘Look...I’m sorry if I lost my temper just now,’ she told him stiffly. ‘It’s been a long day, and I expect I’m suffering from jet lag. But the thing is...I’ve got a problem and I need your help.’
‘My help...?’ He gave a scornful laugh. ‘You must be joking! If you want to cry on someone’s shoulder I suggest that you’d better go and weep all over Bernie Schwartz.’
‘Oh—for heaven’s sake!’ Flora gave an impatient, heavy sigh. ‘That’s the whole problem. I can’t discuss this matter with Mr Schwartz.’
Ross studied her grimly for a moment. ‘Do I gather that congratulations are in order?’
‘What...?’ she muttered, frowning at him in confusion.
‘You and Bernie, of course.’
‘Well, I’m obviously pleased to have got this job, if that’s what you mean. But the fact is that Mr Schwartz, and everyone at ACE Cosmetics—not to mention that awful Claudia woman—all think that I’m single. It’s in the contract, you see.’
He shrugged. ‘No—I’m afraid that I don’t see,’ he retorted, before turning to leave the room.
‘Oh, please...!’ she cried, swiftly grabbing hold of his arm and hurriedly explaining the situation in which she now found herself. ‘And if they find out I’m still married to you I’ll be for the high jump,’ she added desperately. ‘You’ve simply got to help me.’
Ross stared at her silently for what seemed a long, long time.
‘Well, well...the plot thickens, doesn’t it?’ he said slowly, studying her intently from beneath his heavy lids. ‘So, you want me to pretend that we’ve never met before now?’
‘Why not? After all, you were giving a very good impression of not knowing who I was when we landed from the aircraft just now,’ she pointed out quickly. ‘The point is: it’s vitally important that everyone connected with ACE continues to believe that I’ve never been married.’
‘But why should I help you?’ Ross drawled coolly. ‘It’s no skin off my nose if you get sacked from this job.’
‘How can you do this to me?’ she moaned, waving her hands distractedly in the air.
He laughed. ‘Very easily! In fact, it might be quite amusing to stand by and watch the balloon go up.’
‘Oh, that’s great—thanks a bunch!’ she stormed. ‘Leopards never change their spots. So, I should have realised that you’re still the same thoroughly obnoxious, rotten bastard who walked out on me all those years ago. Right?’
As she saw his lips tightening into a grim, narrow line, and the dark flush of colour beneath his tanned cheeks, she was gripped by a sharp sense of fierce satisfaction. Despite knowing that she was every bit as much to blame for the break-up of their marriage, Flora was finding enormous release in being able—at long last!—to give voice to her deeply buried feelings of painful heartache and bitter, dark resentment at the way she’d been treated.
‘I’m amazed that our marriage lasted as long as it did.’ She gave a shrill, high-pitched laugh. ‘It was just like you to waltz off and leave me without even one word of explanation!’
‘As I recall, there were plenty of “words”,’ he ground out in a clipped, hard voice as he took a determined step towards her. ‘But would you listen to anything I had to say? Oh, no—that was asking too much, wasn’t it?’ he added grimly, catching hold of her arm as she tried to turn away. ‘You were far too preoccupied with your so-called glamorous career—too full of yourself and too damn selfish to pay any attention to your husband.’
‘And what right did you have to expect me to throw up everything I’d worked for just because you’d been offered a job in some fly-blown, disease-ridden jungle in South America?’ she snarled, desperately trying to wriggle out from beneath his powerful grip on her shoulders. ‘Did you listen to anything I had to say? Did you hell!’
‘That was different,’ he growled.
‘Oh, right! So you admit that there was one law for you as my husband—and quite another for me in the role of wife...? Nice one, Ross!’ she grated scornfully. ‘Besides, I notice that you clearly didn’t stay in South America for more than five minutes. So, it looks as if I made the right decision after all!’
‘You always were a first-class bitch!’ he hissed, pulling her struggling figure hard up against the length of his tall, firm body.
‘And you were always a total bastard!’ she panted. ‘If I’m going down the tubes with ACE I’ll damn well take you with me. I’ll tell them—I’ll tell the whole wide world just what a vile, rotten...devious...’
But even as Flora hunted frantically in her mind for a few more nasty adjectives to describe her foul husband she was forcibly silenced as he swiftly lowered his dark head. A brief second later his lips were on hers, fierce and contemptuous, as though he intended to totally drain her of the will to defy him ever again.
Her heartbeat was pounding like a sledgehammer beneath the stormy force of his cruel mouth, her soft breasts crushed tightly against his hard frame, and she knew that Ross was using this kiss as a punishment for her defiance; the brutal arrogance of his flesh was demanding her complete submission to his iron will.
Not until she was almost fainting, her tired and weary body trembling weakly against him, did she feel his lips softening for a few, brief moments before he slowly raised his dark head.
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of their heavy breathing, and she stared numbly up at Ross, too emotionally exhausted to say or do anything, knowing that without the support of his arms she would have slumped helplessly to the floor.
But if she was incapable of speech he seemed to have no problem in finding his voice.
‘I’ve no intention of apologizing for what happened just now,’ he grated. ‘And if you’ve got any sense in that beautiful head of yours—which I very much doubt—you’ll keep well out of my way for the rest of your stay on this island.’
‘Don’t...don’t you dare threaten me, you...you foul bully!’ she gasped huskily. ‘Believe me, if I had one of my father’s shotguns to hand I wouldn’t think twice before putting a bullet through your stupid head!’
‘You’re all heart, darling,’ he murmured sardonically. ‘But then, I always say that you can take the girl out of the farmyard—but you can’t take the farmyard out of the girl. And it looks as if I’m right—especially if your new “rustic” hairstyle is anything to go by,’ he added scornfully, lifting a curly lock of her long blonde hair.
‘Leave me alone!’ she snapped, unable to prevent an involuntary shiver at the touch of his fingers brushing against her skin.
He gave a short bark of angry laughter as he spun on his heel and marched swiftly towards the door. ‘Don’t worry—I’ve got far better ways of spending my time than dancing attendance on an empty-headed blonde bimbo!’
‘Get lost!’ she yelled, almost beside herself with rage. ‘And I hope I live long enough to dance on your grave!’
‘I’m sure that you will, Flora,’ he drawled coolly.
Opening the door, he paused in the doorway, his tall, broad-shouldered figure a dark silhouette against the bright sunlight as he delivered his parting shot. ‘But at least I’ll have the satisfaction—when I’m six feet under and pushing up the daisies—of not having to watch the last waltz being performed by a wizened, lonely, toothless old hag!’
Shaking with nervous exhaustion, her ears ringing with the loud bang of the front door being slammed shut behind Ross’s departing figure, Flora waited with bated breath until she heard the sound of his vehicle fading away in the distance. Only then did she feel capable of staggering a few feet across the floor, before sinking down into a rattan chair.
Trust the bastard Ross Whitney to make sure that he had the last word! she told herself grimly, shutting her eyes for a moment and allowing the waves of mental and physical exhaustion to flood through her weary body.
Goodness knows, almost from the first moment that she’d succeeded in gaining the Angel Girl contract she had been troubled by bad vibes about the job. And how right she’d been! Because this whole trip to the Caribbean had been clearly doomed from the start. And now, having stupidly thrown away her only opportunity of gaining the support of Ross, there seemed no way of avoiding the forthcoming disaster.
How could she have been such a blithering idiot? It wasn’t as though she was a teenager and didn’t know any better. She was supposed to be a sophisticated woman of twenty-six, for heaven’s sake! So, why on earth had she allowed herself to become involved in a stupid, no-holds-barred fight with Ross? And to have effectively torpedoed her only chance of solving her problems with the cosmetic company?
Groaning out loud at her own folly, Flora buried her face in her hands for a moment. Unfortunately, it was no good putting all the blame for the disastrous scene which had just taken place on Ross. Although it had been partly his fault, of course. The foul, rotten man had always known how to make her madder than a hornets’ nest—in just about five seconds flat—but there’d been absolutely no call for some of those nasty, snide remarks.
All the same...maybe if her nerves hadn’t been at screaming point, after such a long and tiring day, she might have been able to cope with her ex-husband. He had, after all, been the one who’d deserted her—suddenly vanishing into thin air, never to be seen again from that day to this—leaving her to face the lonely tears and all the problems involved in sorting out the shattered pieces of their brief marriage.
In fact, now she came to think about it, Ross had obviously been having the time of his life here in the Caribbean. While she’d been slaving away on the catwalk and in front of the cameras, her swine of a husband had probably been living the life of Reilly: swigging rum, making love to dusky maidens and writing those rubbishy books of his.
Nice work if you can get it! she told herself grimly. So, what now gave him the right to claim the moral high ground? Why was he still bothering to blame her for what had happened in the past?
However, despite running the disastrous scene back and forth through her tired mind, she failed to find any answers to those questions. In fact, she only succeeded in giving herself a thumping headache.
Realising that she couldn’t sit in the chair all day, Flora wearily began to unpack her cases. After taking some aspirins, and deciding that maybe a shower and a change of clothes might at least make her feel slightly better, she made her way to the small bathroom.
Unfortunately, even after showering and washing her hair, she still felt nerve-rackingly tense and jittery. Which wasn’t surprising, she told herself glumly. That encounter with Ross had been bad enough, but it was nothing to the explosion which was likely to break over her head once Claudia learned that she was married. And to have even hoped that her lousy ex-husband would help to save her bacon had been foolish in the extreme.
Gazing dispiritedly at herself in the dressing table mirror, trying to ignore the strained expression on her pale face as she dragged a brush through her damp curls, she cursed her ex-husband’s good memory. It had clearly been a bad, bad mistake to have ever told Ross about her past. Because he obviously hadn’t been able to resist the cruel jibe he’d made about her upbringing on the farm in Cumberland. And, knowing the swine, he’d undoubtedly have a lot of fun telling everyone on the island about it as well.
She gave a heavy sigh. There was nothing she could do if Ross decided to broadcast the news. But so what if he did? She was over twenty-one years of age. And besides, she was sufficiently successful nowadays not to care if her father, or her dreaded stepmother, did try to track her down, Flora told herself defiantly, gazing blindly into the mirror as she recalled the harsh memories of her childhood.
The only child of elderly parents, she had grown up on a large farm in the north of England. An ugly, gawky little girl—originally christened Florence, but more generally known as ‘our Flo’—she’d been fiercely protective of her weak, fragile mother, who’d died when her daughter was only fourteen.
Not that her father was a cruel man, Flora quickly reminded herself. It was just that such a dour and stern, upright churchgoing man had clearly had no time or inclination to cope with a teenage daughter—not when he would obviously have preferred to have fathered a son, who could have been of some use on the farm. However, if Flora had hoped that following her mother’s death both she and her father could have forged a new and warmer relationship, she had been doomed to disappointment. Only a few months after her mother’s death, Mr Johnson had announced that he was marrying a widow who owned a large farm adjacent to his own.
Unfortunately, her father’s announcement that his new wife and ‘our Flo’ were bound to get on like a house on fire, proved to be entirely false. Flora and her stepmother had hated each other on sight. And since the new Mrs Johnson had brought to her marriage not only a large farm but also two large, aggressive sons from her first marriage, Flora had found herself virtually frozen out of the new family, being treated as an unwelcome guest in what had once been her own home.
With hindsight, Flora could now see that her stepmother hadn’t been entirely to blame for the two years of misery that followed. Having to cope with a rebellious teenager was clearly enough to try the patience of a saint. And the difficult situation had been further exacerbated by the fact that as Flora had turned fifteen the once plain, awkward child had rapidly developed into an outstandingly beautiful girl, attracting the unwelcome attention of her two stepbrothers.
Flora had loathed what she thought of as the great, glumping, hairy boys, and spent as much time as she could in the homes of her schoolfriends, accompanying them on holiday whenever possible. Which was why, in a moment of teenage bravado, she and her best friend, Vicky, had entered a modelling competition when on holiday with Vicky’s parents in Bournemouth, on the south coast.
Flora could shudder now as she looked back at her young, teenage self, prancing around the stage in fits of giggles with absolutely no idea of how to even walk in a straight line. And she hadn’t won, of course. It had, after all, been nothing more than a lark. Which was why she’d been astounded to be approached after the competition by a scout from the Meredith Taylor Agency, whose clients apparently included many of the top international names in the modelling business.
Arriving home and informing her father and stepmother that she was being entered by the agency for the “Look of the Year” competition, she had been at first downcast and then rebelliously angry at being told there was no way they would allow her to partake. However, having by then turned sixteen, and with the bit firmly between her teeth, Flora had been determined to grab an opportunity—any opportunity—of escaping from what had become a very unhappy home life. And so, waiting until the coast was clear, she’d managed to hitch a lift into the nearest big town, where she’d caught a fast train to London.
What an idiot I was! Flora told herself now, almost shuddering at the thought of how, like so many silly young girls, she could have ended up amongst the flotsam and jetsam, sleeping rough on the streets of the capital city. However, with the Meredith Taylor Agency looking after her, Flora had easily won the competition, and within months she was appearing on the catwalks of Paris and Milan.
She had invented a new personality for herself by officially changing her name to Flora Johnson and claiming to have been born somewhere north of the border in Scotland—and over the next few years her career had taken off like a rocket. Not afraid of hard work—especially as it was nothing to the tough, physical labour used on the family farm—and ruthlessly ambitious to achieve both the stardom and the high-earning power of the top models, Flora had remained totally committed to her career. Which was why, even now, she completely failed to understand why she’d allowed herself to be persuaded to visit that low dive of a nightclub in Paris.
It was such an incredibly stupid thing to have done. And not only because she’d needed an early night before a busy photographic session the next morning. If she had remained in her hotel bedroom, she’d never have made the really bad mistake of meeting that awful man—Ross Whitney!
Giving herself a quick shake, Flora firmly suppressed the hurtful memories of her brief marriage. There was no point in trawling over that ground again. And if she was going to have to face the music this evening, it might be a good idea to put her feet up for a few minutes.
Fully intending only to have a short nap, she was woken by the strident ringing of a telephone, and was horrified to discover that it was now pitch-dark. Fumbling for a switch on the bedside table, it then took her some time to locate the phone, eventually tracking it down to a small table in the adjacent sitting room.
‘Flora! What in the hell are you doing?” Ross’s voice grated harshly in her ear.
‘I...I must have fallen asleep,’ she muttered. ‘What time is it?’
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