The Mistress Scandal. Kim Lawrence

wasn’t even aware she’d been walking steadily backwards until her head made jarring contact with the opposite wall. Her knees folded and she found herself sliding down the wall until she was sitting, knees drawn up to her chest, staring upwards dizzily. The doorway was empty; perhaps she’d been hallucinating.

      ‘You’re going to pass out if you keep hyperventilating,’ a deep voice observed objectively.

      Cancel hallucination! He was kneeling right there beside her. God, he even smelled the same. Shockingly her stomach muscles spasmed hotly in excitement as she registered the light, expensive cologne with musky male undertones.

      ‘It’s my house and I’ll faint if I want to,’ she snarled.

      ‘And do you?’

      Actually, unconsciousness had a lot to recommend it right now!

      ‘I never faint,’ she told him emphatically.

      Although she had once almost lost consciousness from the sheer unadulterated bliss of being made love to. Did he remember …? Her wide eyes collided with his stunningly sensual dark orbs, spectacular eyes that her mother would have coyly termed ‘bedroom eyes’ … He did.

      ‘I suppose it’s too late to pretend I’ve never met you before?’ she croaked.

      She tried to match her ironic words with a smile, but her facial muscles wouldn’t co-operate. The omnipotent tyrant was wearing a beautifully cut lightweight suit; he looked spectacular. She developed a deep interest in his handmade leather shoes. It was the safest place to look until she regained control of herself.

      ‘I’ve never actually had a woman fall literally at my feet before.’ The nostrils of his chiselled nose flared as his dark glance moved slowly over her slim jean-clad figure.

      The way Alice recalled it that had been about the only thing she’d not done last time. Heat crawled over her skin and her chest felt impossibly tight as she recalled the texture of his dark olive-toned skin slick with sweat.

      ‘I know I look a complete idiot; there’s no need to dwell on the subject.’ Businesslike, she tucked her jaw-length brown hair behind her ears and, back pressed to the wall, levered herself upright in one supple sinewy motion. ‘You took me by surprise,’ she added defensively.

      Gabriel—how strange after three years to be able to put a name to the face, not to mention the body. He automatically extended a steadying hand which she pointedly ignored.

      She had thought perhaps delayed shock had exaggerated the memories of that night. No man really had a physical presence that could reach out across a room and turn your stomach inside out. She’d been wrong. It wasn’t just that he was physically just about the most impressive male she’d ever seen, it was more than that—much more. The ‘more’ was in the innately elegant way he moved, the dark intelligence lurking in his deepset eyes and the bone-deep aura of confidence.

      She’d sometimes wondered what would happen if their paths crossed again. Would he recognise her? Would she wonder what it was about him that had made her behave so crazily? Now there’s a prime example of wishful thinking! Why is this happening to me?

      Superficially he was very like Oliver; that was what had first made her stare that night. But it wasn’t the fleeting similarity to her dead husband that had made her carry on … and on …

      Oliver had been nearly six-five too, and broad across the shoulders. But the only exercise Oliver had had the time or inclination for in the last few years of his life had been the occasional round of golf. That combined with the fact he had rarely been without a glass in his hand outside working hours had softened and thickened him around the middle.

      There was nothing remotely soft about Gabriel MacAllister, then or now! His belly was washboard-flat and his hips were sleekly lean. Alice raised both hands to her cheeks; they felt inordinately hot.

      ‘Did you know?’ she asked with terse suspicion.

      ‘Dark, devious plot time?’ Gabriel suggested with a raspy scornful laugh that made her flush. ‘You mean have I spent the last three years trying to track down the woman who slipped into my bed and slipped out of it just as casually?’ A nerve jumped spasmodically in one lean cheek. ‘If it hadn’t been for the scratches I might even have thought you were a dream.’ The erotic, soul-stealing variety.

      ‘I tried to get on with my life … Alice.’ His voice was a low, mocking drawl. ‘Such a nice, sweet, innocent little name for a nice, sweet, innocent little housewife.’ He looked at her bare left hand where it lay curled tightly around her right forearm. ‘Still no ring, I see. Tell me, does your husband know about your little escapades?’

      The image flashed into her mind of the ugly expression on Oliver’s face when she’d flung her ring at him across the candlelit dining room.

      ‘Escapade in the singular.’ She hugged her arm even tighter over her breasts but felt no responding surge of security. She’d not noticed that night how uncompromisingly hard his angular jawline was.

      Was he asking her to believe that a ring would have protected her from his advances that night? Highly sexed men like Gabriel, used to getting their own way, were not, in her opinion, big respecters of social convention. He’d got what he wanted, so why was he complaining? She’d got something too, to remind her permanently of that night.

      Perhaps I ought to have let him think he was one amongst many? Better a trollop than a silly, weak-willed woman … or does a one-night stand qualify a woman for trollop status these days, irrespective of the extenuating circumstances?

      ‘I was the only one?’ Gabriel didn’t bother to hide his derisive disbelief. ‘I’m flattered.’

      ‘Don’t be. You were convenient.’

      She hadn’t intended her crisp words to be interpreted as a blow for liberated womanhood, but from the brief flash of hot anger which briefly illuminated his bronze-flecked eyes he didn’t like her response one little bit.

      ‘You’re very frank, Alice.’

      ‘Don’t call me that …’

      ‘Why not? It’s your name.’

      ‘I don’t like the way you say it.’ It was like a finger skimming the downy surface of her skin, or maybe a tongue. Her thoughts skittered to a dead stop and dark damp patches appeared down her back where her tee-shirt was adhering to her hot sticky skin. Be sensible. Don’t think skin, tongues or anything remotely similar around this man.

      ‘Is that why you’re shaking? You were shaking the last time …’

      ‘My car had been stranded in a snowdrift for two hours on that occasion,’ she reminded him huskily. What’s your excuse now, Alice? Unwillingly she met the derision in his dark, compelling gaze. A shiver slid like ice all the way down her shock-stiffened spine—no man had a right to be that good-looking!

      The emergency services had taken her and several other unfortunate travellers to a hotel. People forced together by adversity often shared a unique sense of camaraderie which broke down the usual reserves, and that had been the case that night. The plush foyer had been loud with voices of folk sharing stories and whisky, which the hotel bar had been liberally dispensing.

      Alice had felt an odd sense of detachment as she’d stood there with an untouched glass in her hand. Nobody there could have been aware that her numbness extended far beyond her icy fingertips. She’d felt as though her soul had been surgically excised—she’d been empty.

      Inevitably it would hurt at some point, but she had wanted to delay that inevitable moment for as long as possible. She’d had no idea where she was, and she hadn’t been interested enough to ask. She’d just got into her car after the funeral and started to drive. In her right mind she’d have curtailed her journey when the weather had gone from bad to impossible. That evening she’d recklessly driven on, even when the conditions had become a total white-out.

      The