A Reluctant Mistress Read online

  ‘Me too,’ she teased, hiding her fleeting wistfulness behind a smile.

  He came over and kissed the back of her neck. ‘I’ll shower and change as fast as I can. With any luck we might be able to get away from this quickly.’

  It was unlikely. If she’d learned anything this past month it was that Clay was seen as a coming man; leaders of the industry he’d chosen to make his career in respected him and wanted slices of him.

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said, reaching up to touch his cheek.

  ‘I saw something else I thought you might like,’ he said, dropping a small parcel on the marble counter.

  Frowning, she looked at it.

  ‘Open it,’ Clay commanded with a tilted smile.

  He bought her small things all the time—a golden lion charm dropped on her pillow a few days after she’d told him that his eyes reminded her of a lion’s, a book she’d wanted to read, an antique feather boa the exact colour of her eyes, a print she’d admired—but he’d never bought her jewellery before. Her fingers trembled as she undid the paper and opened the box. Hope flared—and died as she saw earrings, each a glittering green stone surrounded by diamonds.

  ‘Yes, they match your eyes,’ Clay said, picking out one of the beautiful things to hold against her face. His smile narrowed. ‘Exactly.’

  Natalia bit her lip. Words tumbled to her mouth, were discarded. At last she said, ‘Clay, I can’t accept these.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t—I wasn’t expecting anything…’

  ‘I know.’ Some secret emotion glimmered in his eyes. ‘It pleases me to give you things. Don’t be so prickly, darling. Earrings, however expensive, are not a chain of ownership. They don’t compromise that liberty you value so highly.’

  She could only accept such extravagance if it was given with love. Rallying, she said, ‘You think that whenever you lower your voice an octave I’m putty in your hands, don’t you?’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, kissing first one earlobe and then the other. ‘Wear them for me, Natalia.’

  She’d wear them because they gave him pleasure. If she had to go she’d leave them behind. ‘I haven’t got anything for you,’ she said foolishly.

  Clay laughed, a smokily sensual sound. ‘You’re the only gift I want,’ he said, straightening up. ‘I’d better get ready.’

  While he showered she put on the dress Liz had given her and slid the loops of the earrings through the lobes of her ears, looking at her reflection with troubled eyes. In spite of the care Clay had taken to match her eyes, jewellery was oddly impersonal, whereas the book he’d bought her had been chosen with her taste in mind.

  So had these, she tried hard to convince herself.

  And he’d certainly understood her needs when he’d bought the sketching pad and the pencils; she’d flung herself into her forgotten hobby with the vehemence of long deprivation, sketching wherever they went.

  Although she hadn’t tried to capture Clay on paper.

  Tomorrow, she decided, setting her lips firmly. Tomorrow she’d stop drifting in this sensuous haze and get on with her life. She’d make plans, search out something to do, a career—at twenty-three she was still young enough to train, even to change her mind if she wanted to.

  The room in one of the city’s most luxurious hotels was opulently furnished and decorated, with huge arrangements of flowers—tulips from the South Island and white scented lilies, probably from tunnel-houses, Natalia decided with an ironic little smile. They looked stunning.

  So did the guests. Most of the men were in dinner jackets or severe dark suits. Aware that she was one of the few women not dressed in black, Natalia was even more conscious of the weight of the emeralds and diamonds in her ears. And if she had been able to ignore them, enviously appreciative glances would have reminded her.

  Clay was at her side, his hand resting lightly on the small of her back. Was he being more possessive than usual? Did it have anything to do with the earrings?

  Stop it, she ordered. You’re overreacting, and it’s stupid.

  They were talking to a small group of people, mostly men, mostly sheep farmers from the South Island high country whose main export was exquisitely fine merino wool. A flash of colour caught her eye—a soft, very pretty pink dramatised by a hint of silver—worn by a young woman heading towards them. With an involuntary smile on her lips, Natalia looked at the other brave, unfashionable soul.

  The woman didn’t respond; her eyes were fixed on Clay’s face.

  Then Clay suddenly saw her—and froze.

  Fiercely, swiftly, Natalia glanced at the woman from beneath her lashes. Not beautiful, although she had stunning blue eyes and lovely skin. A generous, quivering mouth, a good figure, and money; that dress hadn’t been cheap.

  Urbanely Clay broke off his conversation and looked down at Natalia. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ he asked.

  Natalia knew she should say yes, knew she should give him the chance to speak to this woman by himself. Her mouth hardened as she fought an ignoble, selfish jealousy. ‘No, thank you,’ she said, despising herself for yielding to it.

  Humiliation swept over her, because of course he knew. Her spine stiffened; she met his level glance with hidden defiance.

  Clay turned. ‘Hello, Tess,’ he said easily. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’

  Relief was mirrored in blue eyes, trembled in her smile. ‘Clay,’ she said in a light, clipped voice, ‘how lovely to see you. I was beginning to think I didn’t know a soul in the room except for Dad and Steve.’

  ‘Tess, this is Natalia Gerner,’ Clay said. ‘Natalia, meet Tess Jamieson.’

  ‘Tess Farrier,’ the woman said rapidly, giving Natalia a swift, friendly smile before turning back to Clay. ‘When I left Dean I went back to my own name. Quite frankly, the less I’m reminded of the Jamiesons the happier I’ll be—just like you!’

  Dean Jamieson’s ex-wife was older than she looked—late twenties, Natalia decided, concentrating on that because it was better to fix on unimportant details. If she’d let Clay go off to get her drink she might not have ever known who the woman in the pink dress was. No doubt it served her right.

  At least Tess didn’t seem to realise who Natalia was. Of course, she probably didn’t know—after all, Dean wouldn’t have told his wife that he’d been trying to bed his neighbour in Northland.

  And what did she mean by that last comment?

  ‘Clay, is it true that you bought Pukekahu?’ Tess went on eagerly.

  ‘Yes.’

  Tess Farrier laughed bitterly. ‘I’ll bet Dean didn’t know you were the buyer! If I hadn’t left him he’d have held on to Pukekahu and let it rot into the ground just to spite you. So you can thank me for finally getting you the place—he had to sell because my father insisted on hiring a horrendously expensive Auckland lawyer, and he’s sticking Dean for all he’s worth. Pukekahu wasn’t in the Jamieson Family Trust, so it was the obvious one to go.’

  ‘You realise he’s here?’ Clay asked quietly.

  ‘Of course I know he’s here! That’s the object of the exercise—to show him I’m not weeping at home on my own.’ Tess gave Natalia a sudden, rueful smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’ve been very rude, but—well, when my ex-husband was tom-catting all around New Zealand, Clay was the only one who understood how I felt. He hates his stepbrother too—though not as much as Dean hates him.’

  Thank God for the mask of her cosmetics. Thank God for Clay’s hand on her arm—for a horrible moment it was the only reason she stayed on her feet. Natalia nodded, pretending that she’d known, pretending that everything was all right. She tried very hard to relax the tense muscles in her jaw and shoulders, but Tess Farrier’s blinding smile knotted them again.

  ‘Oh, there’s Dad,’ Tess said, waving. ‘I’d better go. Great to see you, Clay, and to meet you, Natalia. I’m surprised I haven’t seen Dean—I know he’s here.’ She gave another smile, this one jaded and cynical. ‘Flattering all the
delegation wives and trying to cut himself a special deal, so Dad says. Bye.’

  She bestowed a real smile on Clay, then switched it to Natalia; it lost something in the translation. Still smiling, she headed towards a solid man with the lined brown face of a farmer, who nodded at Clay across the intervening people.

  Blindly, Natalia stared around the room. She couldn’t think, and blessedly couldn’t feel.

  ‘We’ll go home,’ Clay said, his hand supporting her, his voice cool and objective, as though being found out in lie after lie didn’t worry him at all.

  Nauseated, she went with him, but the evening wasn’t over yet. As they went through the doors and out into the foyer a figure detached itself from a group, and Dean Jamieson’s voice fell like a clap of doom.

  ‘Nat!’ he exclaimed. ‘What—?’

  Clay’s hand gripped her arm so fiercely that she almost cried out in pain; it relaxed immediately, but he didn’t let her go.

  ‘Hello, Dean,’ she said, her voice echoing thinly in her ears.

  He took a step towards them, his handsome face incredulous, his eyes flicking from Natalia’s face to Clay’s and then back again. Amazingly he turned the swift drop of his jaw into a slow, sneering smile. ‘Well, little stepbrother,’ he taunted, ‘still eating my leavings?’

  Natalia froze, appalled at both the lie and his open provocation.

  In a controlled, dangerous voice Clay said, ‘Dining off acorns yet, Dean? It won’t be long. You’re not the man your father was, and I hear that Jamieson Pastoral was hard hit by the drought. You should have spent some money on Pukekahu when you owned it—the North had plenty of rain.’

  He didn’t seem to exert any pressure on Natalia, but they were past Dean before he was able to come up with a rejoinder beyond an ugly flush.

  In the car Natalia recalled the reference—the prodigal son in the parable who’d wasted his inheritance and been reduced to caring for the swine and sharing their acorns. She looked down at her hands, still in her lap.

  Traffic swished past, lights flaring through the soft drizzle, white and yellow and scarlet, reflecting in a dazzling shimmer off the wet road. Beside her Clay drove without speaking, his dark clothes absorbing light.

  Silence weighed her shoulders, blocked her throat. No emotions, she told herself; you can’t afford the luxury of emotions yet.

  But in Clay’s house she turned to him, her eyes glittering, and asked passionately, ‘What the hell is going on? Why didn’t you tell me that Dean Jamieson is your stepbrother?’

  Dropping the car keys on to the hall table, he said deliberately, ‘I told you I was adopted—Olivia Freeman was my adoptive mother. She was Jamieson’s second wife—his first marriage produced Dean. I presume Olivia couldn’t have children. Whatever, Dean hated both Olivia and the brat she brought into the family.’

  Rage was far simpler to deal with than the pain of betrayal so she let it roar through her, cutting away any prospect of common sense. In a voice so cold it should have frozen him right through to his bones she said, ‘Then why are you Clay Beauchamp, not Clay Jamieson?’

  He came across and took her hands in his. ‘You’re cold,’ he said, frowning.

  She jerked them away, clenching them into fists because more than anything else she wanted to leave them in his warm grip. ‘What is this all about?’

  ‘The name change is quite simple. When Olivia died I decided that I no longer wanted to be called Jamieson. I went back to my birth mother’s name.’ He spoke with an infuriating patience. ‘Pukekahu was Olivia’s childhood home.’

  Natalia pressed her lips together to hold back the cry of feral pain. ‘I’d already worked that out. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone to know.’ His eyes narrowed in a granite face. ‘Tess was right—he’d have burnt the station to the ground and sown it in salt rather than let me buy it.’

  ‘But afterwards? After you’d bought it? Why didn’t you tell me then?’

  He said with sudden violence, ‘Because I loathe him—and it was fairly common knowledge that you’d had an affair with him. I was so jealous I couldn’t bear the thought of it, so I pushed it to the back of my mind. I didn’t want him spoiling what we have.’

  Natalia drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Control, she reminded herself—keep your temper under control. Very quietly, very firmly, she told him, ‘I did not have an affair with him.’ Heat crawled across her skin. ‘I know I made love with you when I scarcely knew you, but I don’t make a habit of it. Yes, I found Dean attractive, and we went out together for a while, but I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what’s causing you so much angst. When I found out that he was married—something he’d neglected to tell anyone in Bowden—I sent him on his way.’

  ‘I see.’

  His level tone told her nothing, but the hair on the back of her neck lifted. She looked up into eyes as enigmatic and unreadable as those of a wild animal, guarded, almost pitiless.

  An image of masks floated in the front of her brain—masks that hid so much, altered faces she’d known all her life into mysterious strangers. Clay had kept his secrets well.

  He was watching her with half-closed eyes, his expression unyielding. ‘If we’re discussing things kept hidden, why did you tell me you barely knew him?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘I DIDN’T know him at all,’ Natalia said, colour burning along her cheekbones, her voice crisp and clear. ‘I thought he was an attractive, interesting, charming man. When I found out that he was a louse I felt like a complete and utter idiot for being taken in.’

  ‘It sounds as though you knew him very well.’ Clay’s voice was coolly neutral, his eyes guarded and watchful.

  ‘I didn’t have an affair with Dean,’ she reiterated between her teeth. ‘Yes, I was stupid enough to be interested in him, but I don’t sleep with everyone I’m interested in. And I despise liars. Especially those who lie by omission.’ Her tone was scathing.

  When Clay didn’t answer she went on incredulously, ‘What made you think that your brother and I were lovers?’

  ‘He’s no brother of mine,’ he said curtly. ‘As for the other—’

  ‘It was a stupid question,’ she interrupted, hands clenching at her side. ‘No doubt the good people of Bowden told you all about the non-existent affair! That was Dean getting his own back—as well as trashing my reputation he told everyone who’d listen that I’d known all along that he was married.’

  She had seen Clay’s eyes wary and cool and dispassionate, molten and tender and lazily sensuous, but she had never seen them as cold and hard as yellow quartz. ‘But you didn’t,’ he said without expression.

  Natalia’s head came up. ‘No,’ she said quietly. Did he believe her? It was impossible to tell.

  ‘You’d made love before.’

  The colour leached from her face, pointing up the fragile bones. ‘When I was eighteen—twice. We thought we were in love, and we’d planned to get married after we’d finished university. Then my mother died and I knew I wasn’t ever going to get away from Xanadu, so making love with him was a kind of farewell.’

  She had to stop, to drag in a breath, to listen to the lurching beat of her heart.

  Ask him, she told herself. Ask him.

  How did you ask your lover whether he’d wooed you and made love to you, persuaded you into a relationship as revenge on a man he hated? No, she thought, that was sheer melodrama—Clay wasn’t so twisted that he’d do that.

  But the thought niggled, like poison in honey; she could still hear the note of scathing disdain in Clay’s words when he spoke of Dean.

  ‘I see.’ Clay’s voice was still non-committal. ‘I shouldn’t have asked—it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Did you—?’ She stopped. She couldn’t ask; Clay wouldn’t say, Well, yes, as it happens, it did occur to me that one way I could really drive my stepbrother crazy was to take as a mistress the woman who wouldn’t sleep with him, so I set out to do that.

&nb
sp; No, she wasn’t thinking straight. He thought she’d been Dean’s lover.

  He asked, ‘Did I what?’

  Quickly she substituted, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you believed I’d had an affair with Dean?’

  His mouth hardened. ‘I found it distasteful that you should have fallen prey to his shoddy, meretricious appeal.’ He watched her with hooded eyes, his well-cut evening clothes turning him into an intimate stranger. ‘And I was bitterly jealous—as jealous and resentful as poor bloody Phil. I didn’t want you feeling sorry for me, as you felt sorry for him. Why does it matter so much? It’s made no difference—you’re here with me.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said numbly, relinquishing hope.

  Clay wanted her, he enjoyed making love to her—he even lost himself in the carnal pleasures of her body—but he didn’t want any sort of commitment. She had given herself entirely to a man who saw her as a lover, not a wife.

  Yet for her the passion and enjoyment they found in each other was no longer enough. If she couldn’t have everything, she’d rather have nothing. Eating acorns was not her style—she’d rather die, she thought passionately, than have Clay feel sorry for her. Her hand clenched at her side; the green silk glinted as the skirt clung to her skin and then sighed free. Odd that she should have been wearing Liz’s gorgeous silk dress the night she met Clay and now, the night she realised it was all over.

  Somewhere she’d read something about hope—‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’ She could quote from the Bible too, she thought painfully.

  And hope deferred died. She knew that now. Hers was bitter ashes in her mouth when she said, ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘Perhaps we should have told each other. Is Dean the reason you asked if I was married?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.’

  ‘If you’d asked Dean he’d have lied.’ Clay’s calm, judicial tone was chilling.

  ‘I know,’ she said, turning away. ‘He didn’t feel the existence of a wife should stop us becoming lovers. It took me some time to convince him that I thought otherwise.’