His Most Exquisite Conquest. Robyn Donald

it wasn’t Dad’s fault, because Dad never quarrelled with anyone!’

      ‘For heaven’s sake, Lorri, stop being so naïve!’

      ‘Naïve?’ She gave a brittle little laugh. ‘You think I don’t know my own father?’

      ‘Apparently not.’

      She sent a sidelong glance up at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she bit out with her eyes narrowing.

      ‘It means that, much as I believe my father exercised his rights under that agreement—whether ethically or otherwise—I also believe that it’s time you, my misinformed little kitten, heard a few home truths about what really broke up their partnership.’

      ‘I already know that,’ Rayne tossed back assuredly. ‘It was professional jealousy. He knew what Dad had created was going to be worth a fortune and he wanted to reap all the rewards for it himself!’ She couldn’t believe she was saying things like this about Mitch Clayborne. The man who had taken her in. Offered her food and shelter and a safe haven to get her affairs sorted out when she’d found herself virtually stranded so far from home.

      ‘Jealousy, maybe. But not so much professional as deeply personal, I imagine,’ King was saying with a grim cast to his features. ‘My father quarrelled with yours because of the affair Grant was having with Mitch’s wife.’

      ‘You’re lying!’ She couldn’t believe King could dream up something so despicable.

      ‘Am I? Then why do you think there were never any proper claims made by your father to try and secure the rights to his software?’

      ‘Because you threatened him! I was there when you did it!’ she reminded him passionately.

      ‘And you think that was enough to stop him pursuing any claim against the company if he thought he could have, unless he hadn’t something to hide?’

      She wanted to protest, but his words rang with something so akin to the truth that they left her speechless. There were times when she had wondered why her father hadn’t fought harder to try and get the rights to MiracleMed into his name. Sometimes she had begged him to, but he hadn’t, and she’d thought it was because he just hadn’t had any fight left in him.

      ‘I came round that night—rightly or wrongly—to tell him to stay away from my father. I had very little else on my mind except that my stepmother had been killed and that Mitch was more than likely to be in a wheelchair for life. He’d known about the affair for weeks, which had led to Grant leaving the company. But it was the shock of being told by Karen that she was leaving Mitch to run away with your father that caused him to lose control of the car that night and swerve into that tree. He was going to leave you, Lorrayne. You and your mother. The dear, devoted husband and father.’ The censure which dripped through his words was evidence of just how little respect he had for Grant Hardwicke—or the institution of marriage. ‘Did you really not know?’

      Mortified, Rayne could only stare up at him. Finally she made a small negative gesture with her head.

      How could it be true? Her parents had loved each other, she reflected achingly. Or had King been right in calling her naïve? Had Cynthia Hardwicke known? Been aware of her husband’s infidelity? But no, she couldn’t have been!

      Painfully, she recalled her mother’s constant assurance that it was Grant’s memory that had given her the strength to fight through her recent illness. So what would it do to her now if she found out that all that love and devotion she’d thought he’d shown her had been just a sham? It would destroy her!

      ‘I’m sorry I’ve had to be the one to destroy all your illusions about love and commitment, my dearest.’

      ‘I’m not your dearest.’ She wasn’t ready yet to accept endearments from him after he had opened her eyes so cruelly.

      ‘Maybe not,’ he conceded which, contrarily, hurt her even more, ‘but you’re feeling bruised and cut up about it, naturally.’

      How do you know how I feel? she wanted to fling at him, but bit the words back. It wasn’t his fault that everything she’d believed in seemed to have crumbled to dust within the space of a few short minutes, even if it felt like it right at this moment.

      She turned away from him, her hands resting limply on the top of the balustrade.

      ‘He lied,’ was all she could say, staring out at the darkening sea, hurting so much she didn’t think she’d live to trust anyone ever again. ‘To me. To Mum …’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured deeply. And, after a few seconds, ‘Passion makes us do the most unprincipled things,’ he said.

      Didn’t she know it!

      ‘It’s the second strongest animal force in the universe.’

      ‘Only the second?’ she uttered disdainfully.

      ‘Perpetuation of the species.’ His tone was flat—unsentimental. ‘Preceded only by self-survival.’

      He made it all seem so cold. So basic.

      He laughed rather harshly when she told him so. ‘Isn’t it?’ he suggested with unyielding scepticism.

      ‘Is that all you think love is for?’ she challenged, wondering how she had got on to this subject with him as she faced him again. ‘Just to create babies?’

      ‘Yes, but then we aren’t actually talking about love, are we … Lorri?’

      He caught her hand, his fingers strong and warm, but angrily she tugged out of their grasp.

      ‘Don’t call me that!’ It was her father—her father, whom she had loved and trusted and looked up to, who had first started using that name. Everyone else had simply called her Lorrayne. ‘It’s Rayne to you!’

      Which suited him fine, King thought, having been used to calling her that. It suited the woman she had become and who had changed so dramatically from the thin and stammering—at least with him, he remembered wryly—little scarecrow whom he’d known as Lorri, and who had graced the office for a time with her quiet presence.

      ‘Then don’t hate me, Rayne, for simply acquainting you with the facts.’

      ‘I don’t hate you.’ Hate was just the flip side of a coin that suggested far too intense an emotion than she was prepared even to think about. ‘Why should I hate you?’

      ‘For knocking your gallant knight down off his horse?’

      ‘I’m getting used to it,’ she murmured with unshed tears in her eyes. Her emotions were too raw at that moment to stop herself from tagging on, ‘After all, you did it to me once before.’

      A frown knitted his brows as his gaze probed the moist hazel-green of hers.

      ‘I was mad about you,’ she admitted, not caring what she said any more.

      ‘I know.’

      His deep revelation shocked and surprised her. Had she been that obvious?

      ‘You noticed me?’ she breathed, having never beyond her wildest teenage dreams ever dared to hope.

      ‘You were a child,’ he remarked succinctly.

      ‘I was eighteen!’

      ‘As I said—a child,’ he repeated with a soft chuckle, lifting her chin with his forefinger, his thumb lightly brushing her pouting lips. ‘A little girl with big hungry eyes …’ Because he knew now why those eyes had kept tugging at something inside him ever since that night he’d walked in and saw her standing here on the terrace. ‘Huge hungry eyes,’ he continued, ‘that I remember thinking even then that one day some man would drown in. But which right then belonged to a love-sick teenager whose main reason for agreeing to help out in that office, I suspect, was to try and make me want to take her to bed.’

      ‘I wasn’t love-sick,’ she denied