She'd left her hair loose to wave in soft tendrils about her shoulders, and had used just a smudge of eyeshadow to enhance her eyes, which now stared back at her, wide and speckled with light beneath fine, arched brows. She wished she looked older. She frowned at the artless reflection irritably. Older and sophisticated and more… More cosmopolitan.
She grimaced at her thoughts, snatched up her bag from the chair and left the room quickly, running down the stairs on light feet.
'Hi.' It had only been twenty-four hours since she had seen Carlton last but as she entered her father's room and he turned towards her, drawing her into him with a casual arm round her waist and kissing her lightly—for her father's benefit, no doubt, she thought testily—her senses went haywire. Her response to him only intensified the feeling of vulnerability, of unworldliness she had felt in the bedroom and she didn't like it but…there was absolutely nothing she could do about it either.
'Hello.' She moved away from him as soon as he released her in the pretence of folding back the covers on her father's bed. 'You won't be late to bed, Dad?'
'Fuss, fuss, fuss.' David fixed her with hard, gimlet eyes, clearly annoyed at being treated like a child, and Carlton surveyed her through narrowed grey slits that told her he had recognised her manoeuvre and didn't like it. She stared back at them both as an unfamiliar recklessness snaked through her veins. Just at this moment in time—and she knew it wouldn't last—she didn't care about what either of them thought.
'Well?' She smiled with dazzling brightness at them both before settling her gaze on Carlton's dark face. 'Shall we go?'
'Of course.' She saw the narrowed glance he. gave her as they walked through the hall and realised, with a little thrill of gratification, that for once he wasn't quite sure where she was coining from. Her satisfaction at her little show of defiance ebbed drastically once they were in the car, however, and the magnetic pull of his big, powerful body took full sway over her senses.
'You look very beautiful tonight.' His voice was as cool and controlled as always but she caught a husky edge to it that had her glancing into his dark face. His expression was implacable and she could read nothing in it but as he looked back at her, just for a lightning moment, the brilliant intensity of his eyes made her breath catch in her throat.
Why did he want to marry her? she asked herself silently. Was it just because she fitted some preconceived idea he'd had of what his future wife, the mother of his children, had to be like?
She imagined the weight of his powerful body holding her prisoner, his hands and mouth moving over the softness of her feminine curves and felt weak with a strange mixture of excitement and fear and a hundred other emotions that flushed her skin and made her unutterably glad that he couldn't read her mind.
She had never thought, even in her wildest dreams, that she could feel this way about a man she didn't love but then Carlton was no ordinary man. The poor excuse for her annoying weakness was unsatisfactory and she knew it.
'You can return the compliment, you know.' His voice was mocking now, dry and sardonic, and that made it easier for her to respond in like vein.
'You want me to say you're beautiful?' she asked in tones of exaggerated surprise.
'It'd be a start.' He shot her a glance of derisive cynicism. 'Frankly, I'd take anything I could get at the moment.'
'I'm sure your ego is quite big enough as it is,' she said tartly. 'It doesn't need any help from me.'
'Oh, it does, Katie.' There was a rueful note in the deep voice now. 'I hate to disappoint you but I'm only human, you know.'
'You don't seem it half the time.' The moment the words had left her lips she regretted them, thinking that they would spoil the evening before it had started, but surprisingly he didn't fire back with a caustic rejoinder. Instead he pulled the car off the road into a quiet, gated pull-in and cut the engine as he turned to face her.
'Don't I?' His hand tilted her chin as he looked deep into her eyes. 'Then that is my misfortune, perhaps, because I assure you I am very human, Katie. I bleed when I'm cut and I feel pain as keenly as the next man.'
'But you wouldn't let anyone see like the next man might,' she whispered tremblingly as his hand moved to the nape of her neck and stroked the silky skin gently.
'Ah, now there you might be right…' As his mouth moved over hers in a kiss that was all-consuming she felt almost as though she was melting into the hard male body pressed against hers, but within moments she was free as he moved fully into his own seat and the big car growled into life.
'I've booked a table for half-past eight,' he said quietly, his tone so matter-of-fact that she could have kicked him.
He was an impossible man! She studied him from under her eyelashes as the c
ar moved away. Every time she thought she had a glimmer of insight into that hard, intimidatingly male mind he did or said something that completely destroyed the illusion. And it was beginning to hurt.
Her eyes narrowed as her subconscious tried to bring something to the surface even as her mind rejected the shadow of disquiet. She was in a situation that had been forced upon her; she had had no choice, and all she could do was make the best of things. That was all she was trying to do. She nodded mentally. Just get through as best she could.
Their entrance into the nightclub caused a discreet little ripple of commotion that was not lost on Katie and she knew it was all due to the tall, dark man at her side. The manager appeared at their elbow with a beaming smile as a waiter scurried ahead, almost clearing the way to a table for two in a prime position to one side of the small dance-floor.
She saw that a bottle of champagne was already waiting, nestled in an ice bucket; their chairs were pulled aside for them to be seated with an air of deferential humility and she could almost feel several pairs of female eyes boring into her back as she slid gratefully into her seat.
'OK?' His eyes were dark on her flushed face and she nodded quickly before forcing herself to glance around the room with studied nonchalance. What a place! And what an entrance! Was it always like this with him? For the first time the fact that he was something of a celebrity due to his enormous wealth and power fully registered on her senses. As her gaze travelled full circle she saw that the smoky grey eyes were still trained on her face, their dark depths intuitive. 'You'll have to get used to it, Katie,' he warned her quietly.
'Get used to it?' She didn't like it, this ability of his to read her mind, and there was more than a thread of antagonism in her voice. 'I don't know what you mean.'
'I think you do.' He leaned back in his chair slightly, his eyes speculative. 'There is great interest in my wealth, the significance of which is fuelled almost weekly by people like Jennifer writing their rubbish in the tabloids.' The deep voice was bitingly acidic. 'Now, other than become a recluse, the prospect of which does not appeal in the slightest, the only option open to me is to live life exactly the way I want to, ignoring that which can be ignored.'
'And that which can't?' she asked quietly as she looked into the hard, handsome face opposite with a little shiver.