Sleeping Partners. Helen Brooks

company is every bit as important to you as mine are to me. I think that is what your sister was getting at.’

      She knew what Cassie was getting at but she couldn’t very well say so, Robyn thought helplessly, knowing she had been put in her place by an expert. She glared at him, hating him for making her feel such an ungracious, churlish boor, and then as Cassie shifted uncomfortably at the side of them Robyn tried to straighten her face into a more acceptable expression.

      ‘Robyn works too hard, Clay.’ Cassie was clearly in ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ mode. ‘I know she’s trying to build the business up but nothing is worth killing yourself for. Of course it doesn’t help that her bank manager is less than far-sighted,’ she finished with all the delicacy of a charging bull-elephant.

      Dinner party or no dinner party, this was finale time. ‘Excuse me.’ Robyn’s voice was throbbing with outrage as she nodded at Clay, taking Cassie’s arm in a vise-like grip as she did so and hauling her sister out of the room before anyone could say another word.

      She didn’t let go until the pair of them were safely in the kitchen with the door shut behind them, and then she pushed her sister onto one of the breakfast stools with the command of, ‘Sit,’ her face flushed and her brown eyes sparking.

      ‘Robyn, please, just let me explain—’

      ‘Not another word, Cass.’ She was angry, so angry her voice choked before she took a deep breath and continued. ‘You’ve gone too far and you know it, don’t you? If I had wanted my private business broadcast to all and sundry I would have said so. Everything I tell you is in confidence, and you knew—you knew—Clay was the last person I’d want to confide in. I couldn’t have made it plainer the other day,’ she finished vehemently.

      ‘I’m sorry.’ Cassie didn’t look at her and her voice was meek.

      ‘Sorry isn’t enough, Cass. You tricked me into coming tonight too. You didn’t even give me the chance of refusing when you knew Guy’s brother wasn’t going to make it. Well, I’m going now and I tell you it’ll be a long time before I forgive you for this. I mean it!’ Robyn’s voice was high with outrage.

      Cassie had always been unsquashable and pregnancy had only served to make her more serene. She raised her eyes now, her voice placid and her face composed as she said, ‘He would be perfect for what you need, Robyn. His own businesses are so vast he wouldn’t meddle or get involved with yours, but with just a fraction of what he’s worth backing you you’d never look back. And he’s a friend of the family. It’s ideal.’

      ‘He’s a friend of yours and Guys, Cass, let’s get that straight. I don’t know him; I don’t want to know him and if I ever see him again in all my life it’ll be too soon!’

      They both heard the knock on the kitchen door and spun round to face it, and it dawned on Robyn—Cassie too, by the look on her face—that the person outside must have heard every word of that last statement because Robyn’s voice had not been moderate.

      Robyn knew who it would be before the door opened and Clay’s dark cool voice spoke. It went with the whole miserable evening somehow. She prepared herself for the explosion.

      ‘Do I take it this is a bad moment?’ He was speaking directly to Cassie; Robyn might not have existed. ‘Guy asked me to tell you that May and her husband are leaving; babysitter deadlines.’

      ‘Oh, yes, yes, of course. I must… Yes.’ If Clay hadn’t had a grain of intelligence Cassie’s flustered voice and scarlet face would have alerted him to the fact that he just might have heard something personally detrimental.

      But Clay was intelligent, formidably so, Robyn thought miserably as she watched her sister skuttle out of the room as though the devil himself was at her heels. But the devil wasn’t following Cass, he was here with her, she acknowledged silently, as icy eyes drilled into her. ‘So…’ It was grim. ‘I see the spoilt brat is still a spoilt brat?’

      ‘What?’ She couldn’t believe her ears. ‘What did you say?’

      ‘I should imagine you will rise to the top of the tree with very little effort,’ the devastatingly cold voice continued gratingly. ‘Ignoring anything you don’t want to acknowledge, bulldozing your way through without a thought of anyone else or any higher concepts—the business world will just love you, Robyn. Do you use that delectable body as well as your brain to get what you want? You started early, I should know that, so—’

      Nothing in the world could have stopped her lashing out at him and it caught him completely off guard. His head snapped back with the force of her hand across his face and for a moment there was complete stillness in the kitchen, the sound of voices and music from outside unbearably normal in what was suddenly a terribly abnormal world.

      Robyn was shaking now, her dark brown eyes enormous in her chalk-white face. She could see her hand print forming on one tanned cheek, the red lines a reproach in themselves, and she stared at him, shocked beyond measure at what she had done. She had never, in all her life, struck anyone, and for it to be Clay Lincoln! And at Guy’s birthday party!

      And then she backed away as Clay came forwards without saying a word, his face frightening. ‘Don’t…don’t you dare hit me. I’ll call for someone—’

      ‘Hit you?’ It stopped him in his tracks. He swore, softly but vehemently and with enough force to scare her further. ‘Is that the sort of man you think I am? The sort who strikes women?’

      ‘I don’t know what sort of man you are.’

      ‘Really?’ It was deadly. ‘And yet you’ve been insufferable all evening. Care to tell me why?’ he asked cuttingly.

      She had backed as far as she could go, the edge of the sink pressing into her lower back, but she still drew herself up as she said, ‘Me, insufferable? Me?’

      ‘Oh, don’t tell me!’ He folded muscled arms over his broad chest. ‘I’m the one who’s been aching to pick a fight. Right?’

      ‘I—I haven’t wanted to pick a fight, merely…’ Her voice trailed away. How could you explain the unexplainable?

      ‘Yes?’ He was eyeing her with complete and utter disdain.

      She set her jaw, the old defiance which had been severely shaken coming to her aid. ‘I don’t have to explain anything to you,’ she stated tightly. ‘Not a thing!’

      ‘Wrong.’ He was watching her with unrelenting eyes, and then something in his expression changed as he added, thoughtfully now, ‘You don’t add up, Miss Brett, and I don’t like that. I remember a somewhat precocious teenager, bright, undeniably lovely, but fresh, eager, alive. There wasn’t a trace of sourness or scepticism there, so what happened?’

      You. You happened. You blew my word apart and you don’t have the faintest inkling, do you? From his comment labelling her precocious and a spoilt brat as a teenager, he’d obviously put his own interpretation on that night years ago. He’d imagined she’d been trying out her new-found womanhood on any available man, was that it? That he had been the luck of the draw on which to cut her puppy teeth? Whereas in reality…

      And that crack about using her body to get what she wanted! He had made it quite plain how he viewed her now as well. He was hateful, loathsome. How ever could she have imagined herself in love with him? She must have been stark staring mad!

      ‘Cass will be concerned if I don’t get back to the others,’ she said stiffly, ‘so if you’ve quite finished?’

      ‘I haven’t even started,’ he said softly, but he stood aside for her to pass him, his dark face unfathomable.

      If she had been thinking straight she might have known he wouldn’t just let her leave, not after all that had transpired, but her head was a whirl and hot emotion sat in the place where common sense normally dwelt.

      She swept past him, only to find herself swung round by hard male fingers on her wrist and then she was in his arms