Rules Of The Game. PENNY JORDAN

these …’ he tapped the portraits, ‘I would have thought you had already found your forte.’

      ‘Please hurry up and get undressed,’ Vanessa snapped, too on edge to correct him and tell him that she wasn’t Nadia.

      ‘So impatient,’ his golden glance mocked her, encompassing her flushed face, and the sparkling anger of her sapphire eyes, ‘and so very flattering. Women are seldom so direct!’ His eyes continued to mock her, and Vanessa had to clench her fingers into her palms to prevent herself from snapping a hostile retort. ‘Okay,’ he drawled when he saw her expression. ‘I get the message.’ He picked up a board carrying the slogan the company were using to launch the product and his eyebrows rose, laughter gleaming in the amber depths of his eyes, before he strolled across to the screen.

      Vanessa busied herself checking her Nikon, steadily refusing to admit the increasing tension building up inside her, trying to blot out the brief rustling of clothes.

      ‘Ready?’ He walked towards her as nonchalantly as though he were still wearing his jeans and shirt instead of only … With a tremendous effort of will Vanessa dragged her eyes away from his lithe body, telling herself she was a coward for being relieved that he had not dispensed with his clothing entirely, but had retained a pair of very brief briefs. His body was tanned and supple, his ribcage and stomach hard and flat. His body struck her as being that of an athlete rather than a man who spent hours in the gym building unflatteringly overdeveloped muscles. Rich colour stung her face as he drawled, ‘Where exactly do you want me?’ And she sensed that he was amused by her embarrassment. Stifling it, she pointed to the small ‘beach’ watching professionally as he sat down on it.

      The set was designed for a reclining shot and she suppressed a sigh as she asked him stiltedly to move. She had worked with several male models but he was the most physically over-powering she had ever come into contact with—and the least professional … He seemed to have little or no idea of what was expected of him, and when she complained for the third time about his pose, he said lazily, ‘Well then you’d better come over here and show me exactly what you do want.’

      The spotlights were hot, but they alone were not responsible for the prickles of perspiration she could feel breaking out on her skin as she directed his movements. At one point her breasts were on a level with his eyes and although her body was perfectly respectably concealed by the clothes she was wearing his glance seemed to strip that protection away, her face and body hot with colour as she tried to deny her physical response to his scrutiny. As he moved in obedience to her commands, his forearm brushed against her breasts. She stepped back instinctively almost overbalancing, forced to witness the amusement in his eyes—amusement which darkened to something else—something alien and half frightening as he witnessed her immediate rejection of their physical intimacy.

      ‘Beautiful and clever,’ he murmured softly, ‘the dove fleeing from the hawk, not knowing that her very flight promotes his pursuit, unlike you, who I am sure knows very well what effect she has on the male sex.’ Vanessa started to protest, the words stifled in her throat as he reached out carelessly and unbuttoned the top of Gavin’s shirt exposing the pale curves of her breasts, one lean, brown finger tracing a lazy path down from where the pulse thudded at the base of her throat to the valley between her breasts. ‘Your skin is so pale and soft, an enticement to any man to taste and touch it. Is that why you keep it this colour? Because you know that when a man looks at you, so pale and fragile, he can’t help visualising your body beneath his own? Pale and beautiful like the moon, but not as cold one trusts?’ There was amusement in his voice, as though the words he was saying to her were perfectly common-place.

      ‘And you, I suppose, are the sun,’ she snapped back at him, disturbed by the effect he was having on her, by the liberty he had taken without her doing a thing to stop him.

      ‘Is that how you see me?’ His teeth were white against the dark tan of his face, his eyes a shower of gold as he smiled at her.

      ‘Very symbolic, don’t you think?’ Somehow he had moved and his fingers were at her nape, propelling her slowly towards him. ‘I think of you as the moon, and you think of me as the sun. If those two planets were ever to come together, the effect would be cataclysmic, wouldn’t you say?’ His voice was light, but his eyes … Vanessa shuddered as she read the message so explicitly portrayed in his eyes, and knew that he was already anticipating making love to her, and quite unashamedly letting her know it. This man is dangerous an inner voice warned her. Like the sun he will burn and destroy you if you get too close, and her skin as he had said was pale, far too pale for her to risk being scorched by any sun-god.

      She jerked away from him, resisting the pressure of the fingers playing against her nape, and overbalancing. To support herself she flung out her hands, grasping the nearest solid object, recoiling when she realised it was his shoulder, his skin warm beneath her tense fingers, his body relaying a thousand differing and yet similar sensations to hers. So gradually that she was barely aware of it, her fingers uncoiled, their touch a gently feminine caress, her eyes registering her bemused and conflicting emotions. The brief, searing contact of a warm male mouth against the pulse beating so desperately at the base of her throat, made her jerk back, her eyes widening in dismay. He laughed, softly, deep in his throat.

      ‘I am not Dracula you know, intent on stealing away your life blood, although I must admit when you look at me like that, like a frightened doe hearing the sounds of the hunter it does tempt me to …’ He was tending his head to her throat again, and she was completely powerless to stop him Vanessa thought wildly.

      The sudden, shrill ring of the telephone arrested them both, and Vanessa made good use of his momentary relaxation to slip away from him. The phone was in the back part of the studio, in the small room that Gavin used as his office. It was a call from someone enquiring about wedding photographs and by the time she had dealt with it Vanessa had managed to convince herself that she had imagined that frightening pull on her senses, that surge of feeling so intense that for one moment she had been in danger of drowning under it.

      Forcing herself to appear calm she walked back into the studio and then came to an abrupt halt. There was no sign of the model! She walked over to the screen and glanced behind it. His clothes had gone too. Frowning she walked back to her camera, and then noticed the note propped up on it. Just remembered I have to go somewhere—next time can I suggest I ‘pose’ somewhere more comfortable! Dark colour surged into her face. She couldn’t ignore the suspicion that he thought it had all been a game. Anger surged through her as she contemplated the implications of his note. What did he think she was? Some sort of … of sexual deviant who enjoyed photographing nude men! She was so angry that her hands were trembling. She paced the studio furiously, rehearsing what she was going to say to Gavin when he returned. If this was his idea of a joke! If he had deliberately set this whole thing up! She knew her brother disapproved of her single state and of her life-style. She was missing out on life he had told her, but if he thought he was doing her a favour by introducing her to some … some studio lothario …

      She was still seething ten minutes later when she heard Gavin’s footsteps on the stairs, but the angry words tumbling on her lips were forgotten as he rushed in and she saw his harassed expression. ‘I’ve missed him then?’ he groaned, running irate fingers through his hair. ‘Dear God that’s all I need. How on earth am I going to persuade him to use us as the team’s official photographers after this débâcle? What did he say, Van? Was he very angry? It’s all the fault of that stupid girl at the town hall. She told me I had to be at the party, but according to his aide, he was coming here to meet me. He wanted me to do a shot of him for the local paper—you know they’re doing an article on him. I suppose he was furious when he got here. They say he doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and of course you wouldn’t know why he was here.’

      A cold, horrible feeling of disquietude was beginning to seep through her. At least it had started as a seep, now it was a fully fledged mill race. ‘Gavin … who exactly are you talking about?’ she asked her brother.

      He gave her a brief impatient frown. ‘Jay Courtland of course. I told you I was supposed to be meeting him today at the Welcome Party, but apparently the arrangements had been changed and they hadn’t