Chasing Summer: Date with Destiny / Marooned with the Maverick / A Summer Wedding at Willowmere. Abigail Gordon

that, he strode inside, picked up the keys from the coffee-table in the centre of the living-room, and returned, ushering her firmly outside and locking the door. Then, taking her elbow, he guided her along the hall, shepherded her through an open door, and deposited her on a cream leather sofa that was identical to the one in Ralph’s unit.

      ‘There!’ He left her and strode over behind the glass and chrome bar that curved around one wall. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

      Salome opened her mouth then snapped it shut. She couldn’t trust herself to speak just yet.

      A ‘masochist’? she was fuming, her excellent hearing having picked up his low comment. Low, in more ways than one. If that wasn’t the insult to end all insults. Brother, was she fed up with the way men perceived her. Fed up to the eye teeth!

      Unfortunately, this particular man had information she wanted, so it wasn’t in her interests to give him a blast of her Irish temper at that moment. But, by God, if he came out with another of those clangers, she was going to let him have it! And it wouldn’t be the softly spoken, elegant Mrs Diamond he would have to contend with, but Salome Twynan, street-wise and tough, a fighter from her earliest years, a girl who’d had to be, just to survive!

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘SO!’ Michael deposited two crystal tumblers on to the glass top of the bar. ‘What will you have to drink? Your usual?’

      Salome stared at him.

      ‘My dear lady,’ came the dry remark, ‘you don’t have to look so surprised. You and your husband were regulars at my restaurant for years. It’s my job to familiarise myself with my clientele’s likes and dislikes. I wouldn’t be much of a host if I hadn’t absorbed the fact that you only drink vodka and orange before dinner, and dry Riesling or white burgundy with your meals.’

      He pushed the long sleeves of the blue sweater up his arms, showing surprisingly little body hair, and glanced at the gold watch on his wrist. ‘Since it is now approaching five, I merely guessed the vodka and orange.’ Those cold black eyes lifted. ‘Was I wrong?’ he drawled. ‘Or have your tastes changed in the last year?’

      Salome’s green eyes flashed as they locked on to his hard gaze, certain that there was an underlying innuendo in those last words. Clearly he thought that, as Mrs Diamond, she had cleverly catered her tastes to what Ralph had liked, since he too had been fond of vodka and dry white wines. No doubt Mr Jump-To-Conclusions Angellini was now anticipating that such a professional gold-digger as herself might have moved on to the next man already, and adapted her likes and dislikes accordingly.

      A type of black humour curved her lips back into a seductive smile. ‘Why don’t you just pour me something you like?’ she purred. ‘I’m sure you have excellent taste.’ She gave him a heavy-lidded glance, thinking viciously that if he was fooled by such blatantly feigned behaviour then he deserved to be!

      He glared at her for a moment, then gave a dry, hard laugh. ‘Come now, Mrs Diamond,’ he scoffed. ‘You don’t really expect me to fall for the batting eyelashes and husky-voice trick, do you? Save it for an older, more vulnerable prey—one who’ll be so dazzled by your beauty that he won’t notice the dollar-signs clicking over behind those gorgeous green eyes of yours.’

      He folded his arms and frowned at her. ‘You puzzle me, though. You’re a clever woman—an expert, I would have imagined, on the male psyche. I can’t believe you seriously thought that I would be so gullible. After all, I know that you know I’ve never been blind to your—er—chosen vocation in life.’

      Salome could have reacted several ways. With a burst of true temper. Dignified outrage. Frozen silence. Even tears. She chose none of them. A cool smile crossed her lips and she had the pleasure of seeing a shocked look pass over her adversary’s face. ‘To be honest, it was an on-the-spot performance,’ she confessed bluntly. ‘A test, so to speak. But I’m relieved to see you came through it with flying colours. God knows how I would have coped if you hadn’t.’

      His back stiffened, his arms slowly unfolding to grip the edge of the bar, a barely controlled fury smouldering in those normally cold black eyes. The fact that she had finally got under his skin soothed Salome’s own suppressed anger.

      ‘But you were right about one thing, Michael, dear,’ she went on. ‘Your company is not to my liking, and neither am I a masochist. I came along here with you merely because I wanted to hear news about my husband.’

      ‘Ex-husband,’ he reminded her harshly.

      ‘Whatever.’ She uncrossed her legs and got to her feet, unable to sit there sedately any longer. She tried to keep a calm exterior, but inside her blood was well and truly up. ‘If you’re not going to have the decency to tell me what you know without any added insults,’ she said curtly, ‘then just say so and I’ll leave.’

      He didn’t say so. He just stood behind the bar, staring at her. Salome got the oddest impression that with her firm stance she had achieved more in changing this man’s opinion of her than she’d been able to do in her years as Ralph’s wife. There was a look of grudging respect in his eyes as they moved slowly over her.

      ‘I see there’s more to you than meets the eye, Mrs Diamond,’ he said at last.

      She snorted. ‘Am I supposed to be flattered by that remark?’

      His laugh was very dry. ‘No. I guess not.’

      ‘Then would you kindly put me out of my misery and tell me what you know about Ralph?’

      Again she was on the end of a sharp look. ‘And are you in misery about your...about Mr Diamond?’

      She shook her head in exasperation. ‘Wouldn’t you be, if the person you were married to chucked you out one day without so much as a word of explanation, then refused to see you?’

      ‘I would,’ he admitted slowly, ‘if I really loved that person, and knew I hadn’t done anything to instigate such behaviour.’

      Salome gritted her teeth. ‘Oh, of course,’ she ground out, ‘that couldn’t apply to me, could it? I’m Delilah and Jezebel all wrapped up in one, aren’t I? The sort of vampirish female that ensnares older men into her sexual clutches in order to fleece them of every cent, then tosses them to the wolves when the game grows tedious or a better meal-ticket comes along?’

      He was clearly startled by her verbal attack, but recovered well to shrug nonchalantly. ‘You said that. I didn’t.’

      ‘But you’ve been thinking it all right,’ she flung at him. ‘You thought it the very first night Ralph took me to your rotten damned restaurant!’

      He glared at her, eyes hard again. ‘You have to admit you did a good impression of the vacuous sex-object wife, married to a man old enough to be your father!’

      ‘Age has nothing to do with love,’ she argued. ‘And I wasn’t vacuous. I was shy. Tongue-tied...’

      ‘Oh, come now,’ he scorned. ‘Shy? Tongue-tied?’

      ‘Yes,’ she insisted. ‘At first.’

      ‘Well, you soon learned what was expected of you,’ he pointed out caustically. ‘I’ve never seen such an accomplished courtesan, dripping all over your escort, eating him up with your eyes, laughing deliciously at every joke he made. And the clothes you wore. Or didn’t wear, more accurately. Hardly the way a shy woman would dress!’

      A fierce blush coloured Salome’s cheeks at the essence of truth behind this accusation. Ralph had always chosen her clothes, and he had a penchant for evening wear that was very sexy. Low necklines and bare shoulders meant that underwear had always been at a minimum. Neither could she dismiss the fact that on subsequent visits to Angellini’s she had often gone over the top with