The Return of the Stranger. Kate Walker

he wanted her to want him as much as he had ever hungered for her. And most of all he needed her to acknowledge it. Publicly. Only then would it heal the scars of the slashing wounds she had once dealt him.

      Fancy Heath? You have to be joking! she had said to Arthur Charlton and the scathing note on her tongue still burned like acid in his memory. I mean—look at him? No money, no job—no class! The Nicholls family may have fallen on hard times, but we do have some pride. How could anyone want him?

      He had come here for revenge but his vendetta had been against her brother and her husband and that was being worked through just as he planned. The financial dealings that had yet to be revealed might have given him a darker satisfaction, one of the mind, but this was personal. This would bring a very different sort of fulfilment. A heated, sensual, carnal satisfaction. One that already had his body tightening and hardening in anticipation of the delights to come.

      ‘You did that once before,’ she said now, her voice unexpectedly rough at the edges. ‘The walking away bit. When you left I thought that was for good.’

      ‘So I did—and if I had had my way, had any sense, I would have stayed away.’

      He’d meant to stay away. Meant to sever all connections with Hawden and the life he had had here but fate had intervened. The dirty tricks and bad deals Charlton and Nicholls had tried to pull on one of his companies, not knowing who owned it, had revived so many bitter memories. Once and for all he had resolved to deal with the two men who had made his early life such a hell. But he had taken some time to put his plans into place, make them watertight. And in that time Arthur Charlton had fallen victim to his decadent, sordid lifestyle so that now there was only Nicholls left to deal with.

      But he hadn’t reckoned on the fact that Kat would still have this devastating hold over him. That he would take one look and find himself incapable of walking away.

      ‘But other matters brought me to Hawden …’

      ‘What other matters?’

      Heath smiled down into her face.

      ‘I have scores to settle, as you must know.’

      Looking into her defiant, long-lashed eyes, Heath suddenly knew a twist of the double-edged sword that his plan for revenge now offered him. All he had to do was to tell her why he was here. Reveal all the cards he held in his hand—and he did hold all of them; he had made damn sure of that before he had even left Brazil. Everything was signed, sealed, tied up so watertight that there was no chance of even a single item in this house, on this estate sliding out of his grasp. He had the Charltons and the Nicholls exactly where he wanted them and all he had to do was call in their debts.

      But where was the satisfaction in using that against Kat? What sort of gratification could he get from taking a sledgehammer to this situation when he could do things so much more subtly? Much more enjoyably. No, he didn’t want her to know yet why he was really here.

      Joe and Arthur had robbed him of money and position. Kat’s betrayal, her rejection of him, had been something different. A betrayal of the heart, of the soul. He would show her how it felt to have your heart taken and stamped on.

      He would make her want him as much as he wanted her. After all, if she fell for him now it was only because he was wealthy, because of who he had become. She had never wanted the Heath he had been.

      But he didn’t want to blackmail her into his bed. He needed her to come to him willing—wanted her to come to him wanting, needing, hungry. Because she couldn’t help herself. As he couldn’t help himself where she was concerned.

      She already did; he could see it in her eyes. But she was damned if she’d admit it. She would admit it before he was done. She’d admit it and come to him and beg him to take her. He had never forced a woman in his life and he didn’t intend to start now.

      The youth he had once been would have thrown any caution to the winds and reached for her, grabbed her … But he was no longer that adolescent. Time and experience had taught him the wisdom of holding his counsel, hiding his true feelings. Once he had told this woman how he felt and she had laughed in his face. There was no way he would ever risk that again. This way he would get what he wanted and more.

      ‘S—scores to settle.’ She took a step back from him, mentally at least even if she didn’t move at all physically. ‘Against who?’

      She already knew the answer, Kat acknowledged privately. If he had come back to ‘settle scores’ then he could only have come looking for the men who had treated him so appallingly in the past. But how far did his need for vengeance go? Who else would be included in it?

      Once again that cold cruel smile flickered over his lips, bringing no light to eyes that remained as cold as polished jet.

      ‘You have to ask? Your brother—your husband too, were he alive.’ ‘And me?’

      ‘I told you—I wanted to see you just once.’

      It was so softly spoken it sounded almost gentle. But there was nothing gentle about the burn of those dark eyes, the way that his beautiful mouth was tightly compressed, taking all the sensuality from it and turning it into a cold, hard line.

      ‘So now you’ve seen me—what?’ She didn’t know what she was asking for. What she wanted the answer to be.

      This time that smile was positively feral. It stripped away all the apparently civilised control he had imposed from the moment he’d walked into the room and replaced it with a cold, fierce anger. Under the veneer of sophistication and worldliness he was still the wild, untamed creature she had once known. The dangerous, wild-spirited creature who had answered to no one.

      ‘I told you—I’m leaving. You’ll have to forgive me if I decline your offer of tea.’

      Could his voice have been any more mock-polite, the slap in the face effect any more deliberate?

      ‘You’re not coming back?’ The thought of losing him all over again tore at her heart.

      ‘That depends.’

      ‘On what?’

      ‘On you.’

      ‘What do I have to do with it?’

      His impatient twist of his head, the brilliant emerald in his ear lobe catching the light and sending sparks flying, told her how irritated he was with the question.

      ‘I would have thought that that was obvious. Do you want me back—will you welcome me here?’

      How she wished she could answer that straight. How she wished he could still be the Heath she had once known, the Heath she had longed to have back again. But that was not the Heath who now stood before her. And she was no longer the Kat she had been as a child.

      ‘I thought not.’

      She had hesitated too long. And those cold black eyes had seen the doubt in her face, the way she had had to rethink her decision.

      But what else could she say? She had looked into that dark closed face and known a new and very different feeling from one she had ever known before. One she had never experienced with Heath in all the time she had known him. She looked into his hard-boned face, into the deep black pools of his eyes, saw the jet-hard gleam that was in them and knew. Fear.

      Fear was what she sensed, what she felt crawling over her skin like ice-cold footprints marking out a path along every nerve. A sense of dread that warned her that something was to come, something that brought danger and darkness into her life along with this man who had once been her friend.

      Who was so obviously her friend no longer.

      ‘I will leave you to your tea.’

      Heath was turning away again, obviously taking her response for dismissal and, for all the turmoil of emotions tangling inside her, Kat couldn’t let him go like this. Not with everything so raw between them. With so much she wished she could say if only she could find the words.

      ‘Don’t