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  “You know, I think I could help you.”

  He was unreadable. “From your father and your ex-husband‘s point of view, they see no reason why they shouldn’t bully you into returning to the marriage they arranged.”

  “So?”

  “So attach yourself to me,” Rupert advised. “Oh, don‘t look like that. I‘m not suggesting anything irreversible. Just a brief public affair.” He gave an ironic laugh. “I‘m peculiarly well qualified, as far as publicity goes.”

  “I can‘t. I don’t like affairs.” In a rush of desperation she added, “l don’t like sex—it was one of my husband‘s chief complaints. And I don’t suppose I’ll change now.”

  “I see,” he said slowly, as if he’d just been presented with an interesting problem. Then he flashed her a disarming grin. “We can still tell the papers we’re having an affair without making it true. Of course, its not as much fun…”

  Harlequin Presents first edition February 1987

  ISBN 0-373-10957-1

  Original hardcover edition published in 1986

  by Mills & Boon Limited

  Copyright © 1986 by Sophie Weston. All rights reserved.

  Philippine copyright 1986. Australian copyright 1986.

  Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  The Harlequin trademarks, consisting of the words HARLEQUIN PRESENTS and the portrayal of a Harlequin, are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises Limited and are registered in the Canada Trade Marks Office; the portrayal of a Harlequin is registered in the United States Patent and Trademarks Office.

  Printed In U.S.A.

  scanned by fullybook v.1

  Chapter One

  ‘So what’s he like?’ demanded Lesley Button with avidity, almost before the door was shut upon them.

  For a moment Cressida did not answer. She was watching the chauffeur ease himself into the front seat of the limousine and adjust his cap. He turned the key and the highly tuned engine sighed into life. Cressida touched a switch beside her and the sound-proof partition which her father had insisted on slid smoothly up between the driver and his passengers.

  She relaxed at last, stretching her legs out into the luxurious space in front of her.

  ‘The aeroplane was cramped,’ she remarked. ‘I feel like one of those uncrushable dresses that could do with a good shaking out.’

  Her secretary had no patience with this inconsequentiality.

  ‘Don’t change the subject. What’s he like?‘ Cressida turned weary eyes on her in faint amusement. Her secretary was very little younger than herself—indeed, they were very good companions as a result—but she retained the enthusiasm of a schoolgirl. After three days of non-stop negotiations and a particularly rough transatlantic flight, it made Cressida feel pale.

  She told Lesley so, with a wry laugh. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know,’ she added, ‘only for God’s sake don’t bounce like that,’ as Lesley sat forward eagerly, ‘or I shall probably do what I managed not to do in the plane, and throw up.’

  Lesley grinned. ‘The trouble with you is you don’t appreciate your luck,’ she said blithely. ‘Travelling the world, staying in the best hotels, courted by the world’s financiers, dining with the most dashing bachelor in the universe..

  Cressida shut her eyes. ‘And that’s just tonight,’ she agreed politely. ‘Who knows what excitements tomor¬row may bring?’ She opened her eyes and gave her secretary a long look. ‘You want to change places?’ Lesley wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, maybe a little,’ she temporised. ‘I’d take dinner with Rupert Dearham any day of the week,’ she offered.

  ‘Nope.’ Cressida shook her copper head decisively. ‘No partitioning. You take the whole package or nothing.’

  Lesley flung up her hands. ‘Oh, well, in that case, no deal. I’ve got a private life to think of.’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Cressida with irony. ‘Talking of which, how is he?’

  ‘Promoted,’ said Lesley in a tone of quiet satisfaction. ‘And talking of marriage at last.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cressida was surprised though she took care not to show it. Lesley had been going out for nearly two years with an ambitious executive who was more often out of the country than in it. His movements were unpredictable and Lesley’s life had been a succession of broken dates and empty evenings. Cressida, recognising the condition, had been silently sympathetic, hoping that eventually Lesley would grow out of her infatuation as she herself had done. Though she had done it too late, of course. Now she tried to hide her dismay, saying, ‘Well, congratulations.’

  Lesley was not deceived. ‘Marriage isn’t a bad thing in itself, you know, Cress. Some people even enjoy it.’

  Cressida shrugged. ‘Sure. I guess I’m just not much of an advertisement for it, that’s all.’ She moved her shoulders, as if the gesture would shake off the bad memories. ‘Don’t pay any attention to me, Lesley. Jet- lag makes me grumpy.’

  Lesley’s eyes danced. ‘Even with the prospect of dining with Rupert Dearham ahead of you? Why, half London would give its eye-teeth to change places with you. The female half,’ she added conscientiously.

  ‘And they would be welcome, with or without the exchange of teeth,’ returned Cressida. ‘All I want is a bath and bed with a good book.’

  ‘You,’ Lesley informed her in a tone of outrage, ‘are blasee. Oh, come on, Cress,’ she added, ‘don’t be mean. Tell all. Is he as handsome as the pictures? And they say he’s terribly charming. Did you lose your heart?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ said Cressida, ticking off her answers on the fingers of her gloved hand. ‘Handsome— yes. Charming—probably, though not, so far, to me. And no, no heart-loss.’

  Lesley eyed her narrowly. ‘Yet you catch an earlier flight back from New York in order to have dinner with him?’

  Cressida lowered her eyes demurely. ‘Business,’ she said sweetly, ‘is business.’ Her lashes lifted and Lesley saw the gleam of mischief that very few people were privileged to see. ‘My Papa set it up while I was taking a shower some time round about 2 a.m. New York time yesterday.’

  ‘No!’ Lesley was stunned.

  The look of amusement deepened. ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘Maybe not at your father,’ admitted Lesley who had worked in London when Jerome Sebastian was still running the UK operation himself and knew a good deal about his imperious temper as a result ‘But Lord Dearham is another story. Surely Mr Sebastian can’t order him around.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Cressida with irony. ‘That’s why I’m to give the man dinner this evening. Since my father has blown it by trying to bully the man, I am to overwhelm him with tact and diplomacy. And a bigger offer,’ she added cynically. ‘Always provided, of course, that I don’t fall asleep on him first.’

  ‘Oh, what a shame,’ said Lesley, genuinely upset. ‘When I got your telex about tonight’s dinner party, I thought you must have lost your heart to him.’

  Cressida looked at her in surprise. ‘Did you? But you know 1 never entertain my personal friends in the London flat. It’s the company’s and I only use it for company parties. I wouldn’t take any man there just because I was in love with him—in that unlikely eventuality.’

  ‘In that unlikely eventuality,’ Lesley mimicked, ‘you’d take him to the nearest room where you could shut the door on the world: and the hell with who paid the rent.’

  Cressida looked unconvinced. ‘If you say so. But in this case, I’m afraid, it’s strictly business. Lord Dearham said he had to fly back to London and we could talk about it there, since my father would not accept that the discussions in New York were the end of the matter. Papa—or so I am told, as I say, I wasn’t actually present—said that I would be here tonight and Lord Dearham must dine with me in Park Square. From what I can gather, the man was running late anyway and would have missed his plane if he’d stayed to argue.’ She shrugged. ‘So he said yes.’ She sent Lesley another teasing look. ‘If that sounds to you like the start of a great romance, then you’re even more of an optimist than Papa.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Lesley, sighing. ‘No, I have to admit that it doesn’t.’

  Cressida chuckled suddenly. ‘Don’t look so disap¬pointed. It would be much worse if it were the start of a big romance.’

  ‘Oh, Why?’

  ‘You know his reputation as well as I do,’ Cressida said calmly. ‘A wild affair—champagne, diamonds and lots of stories in the newspapers—and three months later he’s going up the Amazon or over the North Pole leaving the lady in the case with just her press cuttings and her diamond bracelets to keep her warm. You wouldn’t really wish that on me, would you, Lesley? A champagne hangover and a broken heart?’

  Her voice was light, mocking, but there was an undercurrent of pain that Lesley knew her too well either to mistake or to refer to. .

  ‘You wouldn’t break your heart,’ she said. ‘You’re not like those silly girls he
usually sees.’

  ‘No?’ Cressida looked out of the window, carefully keeping her face averted from Lesley’s perceptive eyes. ‘I don’t think any of us are very different from any of the rest when a man walks out on us. I guess you’d say we were all silly,’ she said in a brittle voice. ‘I’ve seen it happen too often—and not just to me. Believe me, men like Rupert Dearham are worth keeping away from.’

  Lesley was moved to protest. ‘You can’t say that. You hardly know him. Just because you’ve had meetings about Sebastians taking over his company, it doesn’t give you the right to pronounce on his whole character.’

  ‘Right?’ Cressida considered it. ‘No, perhaps not. But it gives me a reason to think very hard about the man. And you will allow that I have a right to protect myself, I suppose.’

  Lesley was curious. ‘You feel you need to protect yourself from Rupert Dearham?’

  Cressida suppressed a shudder.

  ‘Every woman needs to protect herself from men like Rupert Dearham,’ she said soberly. ‘They can do a lot of damage.’

  She thought about him as she had first seen him at that negotiating table in New York. He was very tall and loose-limbed with a quantity of shining fair hair. He was very tanned, too, as befitted an explorer, she supposed. He had looked tough and strongly muscled compared with all the other men in the room.

  Cressida had shivered when their eyes met. Not that he had appeared to be interested in her. She had never seen such blank indifference, in spite of his ingrained courtesy.

  She had wondered afterwards what that little shiver of hers had meant. It had almost been like a tremor of awareness, even reluctant attraction, as if she had recognised a long-expected intruder into her life. The thought had distracted her. She had had to put it away firmly in order to concentrate on the discussions that ensued. But every time she looked at Rupert Dearham it was there: like a splinter under the skin she could neither remove nor quite forget.

  She had thanked her stars that she was no longer at an impressionable age and that experience had taught her to steer clear of men, all men, or she could have been hankering after Lord Dearham in very little time. And that would have been disastrous.

  Lesley said slowly, ‘You mean you felt he threatened you?’

  Cressida repudiated the suggestion hastily. She knew how her secretary deplored her single life and determination not to marry again. She said it was a waste whereas Cressida knew quite well that it was the only way to ensure that she did not break apart, as she so nearly had at the end of her wretched marriage.

  ‘No. Not me personally. But he makes me uneasy in general. He looks like a handsome playboy. He even behaves like one. Of course, he is ridiculously handsome but he has all the other tricks as well. Everything is a joke. He pretends he can’t add up to save his life. Claims he can’t understand business, he’s just a simple explorer.’ She hesitated.

  ‘But——’ prompted Lesley, intrigued.

  ‘I’m not sure, but I don’t trust him. He’s too——’ she hesitated, ‘—determined.’

  ‘Determined? On what?’

  ‘He knows his own mind and he sticks to it. You don’t expect that in a playboy. Or at least, I don’t. There’s something almost—well, almost implacable about him. I think,’ said Cressida slowly, ‘that in some circumstances I might even be frightened of him.’

  That startled Lesley. ‘Frightened of him! Why on earth?’ A thought occurred to her. ‘He didn’t try to make a pass at you or anything?’ for she knew exactly how Cressida reacted to any indication that a man was interested in her.

  But Cressida laughed the idea to scorn. ‘We were locked in a smoky room full of puffing lawyers and dehydrating sandwiches,’ she assured her secretary. ‘It would have been beyond even Lord Dearham’s celebrated charm to make any successful passes in that atmosphere, even if he had wanted to, which, as far as I can tell, he didn’t. No, it’s deeper than that. It’s——’ she paused, frowning, and then said abruptly, ‘he wasn’t in the least impressed by Papa. Not the money, not the power, not what he was being offered. He didn’t even care when Papa started shouting.’

  Lesley, who knew Jerome Sebastian in that mood and had seen the effect it had on subordinates and colleagues alike, shared his daughter’s amazement.

  ‘He didn’t shout back or anything. Some people do, the ones who stand up to him. But not Lord Dearham. He didn’t even try to argue with him. He just sat there—looking rather elegant and bored—and let Papa rant on. And then he said “No”. Nothing else. No reasons. No token expression of regret. Just “No”. And he wasn’t putting on an act, either, I’m sure of it. He was calculating all the time. He came to that meeting not sure what his answer should be and he made up his mind while Papa was trying to bully him. And none of it showed on his face. His eyes didn’t change at all.’ Cressida looked at Lesley almost in horror, remembering that absolute self-possession. ‘And I suppose that’s what frightens me—the lack of feeling.’

  In spite of hersef, Lesley was impressed. She had read the newspapers’ version of Lord Dearham’s exploits over the years and he sounded, she thought, a charming, lighthearted sort of fellow, just the type of man to shake Cressida out of her routine of work, work and yet more work. In love and happy herself, Lesley Button was more than ever concerned about the lack of affection in her employer’s life.

  Not, she would have agreed, that Cressida lacked friends though she saw little enough of them, with the hours she worked and the amount of transatlantic hopping she did. Her record on the breaking of dates was not very much better than Lesley’s Simon’s. But there was no man in her life. No man was every allowed to get near her. It was rumoured in the Sebastian Building that that was due to the influence of old Jerome who wanted to keep his daughter’s nose to the grindstone, amassing even more money to be swallowed up by the Jerome coffers.

  But Lesley Button knew differently. If there was no man in Cressida’s life it was because that was what Cressida had chosen. Even if she had been as ugly as sin and as disagreeable as a wet Sunday there were plenty of men only too happy to wine and dine the heir to the Sebastian millions. And she was neither. Though Lesley would not have admitted it to anyone other than herself, however, she did think that Cressida was unduly sober for her years. After all she was not yet thirty, though she behaved as if she were her father’s contemporary and had all the cares of the world on her shoulders beside.

  In Lesley Button’s view, a little skimming the surface with a practised charmer like Rupert Dearham would have done Cressida a great deal of good. She sighed, recognising that it was out of the question. Cressida had been quite unmistakable on that. And perhaps it was just as well, if he were more than he seemed. Lesley knew, none better, that Cressida would not welcome another calculating businessman in her life. Not after——

  ‘Oh, we’re home, said Cressida, interrupting her thoughts. ‘I shall have time for a bath, thank God. But only if I hurry. That damned plane was so late … Look, would you mind if I left you to organise the cases while I dive into the bath? Then help yourself to a drink and come along to my room. You can tell me who else is coming and menus and things while I’m dressing.’

  ‘Right,’ said Lesley with composure. She had done such things before on several occasions. Cressida’s schedule was often too tight to allow for more than the briefest of showers before she changed. An unexpected travelling delay could throw it out completely. ‘You ablute, I’ll follow.’

  Cressida jumped lightly out of the Rolls with a quick smile of thanks at the chauffeur, and was making for the porticoed entrance.

  ‘Give me ten minutes in the asses’ milk,’ she said wryly and disappeared.

  The chauffeur under Lesley’s direction unloaded three matching cases and a battered leather music-case. The briefcases left in the boot she directed him to take direct to the Sebastian Building where he was to leave the Rolls for the night. He looked surprised.