Passionate Fantasy. Sharon Kendrick

morning applying mascara.

      She had ummed and ahhed about what to wear. Mr Darius Speed would doubtless be used to women in up-market designer clothes, which was tough, since she didn’t have any. Kitty had chosen instead a smart pair of cotton shorts in jade-green, with a matching silk scoop-necked T-shirt. There were a million colours you couldn’t wear with ginger hair— but fortunately green wasn’t one of them. It would actually have been preferable to wear long sleeves to cover up her freckly arms, but the weather in Perth, Western Australia was sweltering and since Kitty had arrived two months ago she had had to abandon her much loved camouflage of jumpers and cardigans.

      It was hard to believe that she was actually being interviewed for the job of cook to a man with the formidable reputation of Darius Speed. She would have thought that he’d have a top chef flown in from somewhere, but no—it seemed that he was interested in her, Kitty Goodman, with nothing to her name but a diploma from catering college.

      What Mr Speed didn’t know was that Kitty was specifically interested in him, and not the job. Not romantically interested, of course, as so many women were—that was if you could believe half of what you read in the gossip-columns.

      No, Kitty’s interest was of a far more noble nature—she was on a mission for her new and very dear friend Caro—to prove to the world that the supposedly high-minded Mr Speed had ripped Caro off—had stolen the film-script which Caro had spent a lifetime working on, and was planning to use it under his own name!

      It had astonished and horrified Kitty to discover just how devious she could be. She had planned this interview with the film-maker with the precision of a military campaign. She had applied to him first in a letter, stating her qualifications and references. What had seemed like ages had passed, until she had been certain that she was out of the running—and then a well-spoken man had rung her up out of the blue to arrange an interview time.

      ‘Are you free tomorrow evening?’ the voice had asked.

      She had remembered Caro showing her the newspaper clipping which had pictured a girl draped round the film director’s neck like a boa-constrictor. ‘Tomorrow evening, Mr Speed?’ she had enquired frostily.

      ‘I’m not,’ an amused-sounding voice had said, ‘Darius Speed. I’m Simon Parker—his secretary.’

      ‘It seems rather an—odd—time for an interview,’ Kitty had ventured.

      The voice had sounded even more amused. ‘Not so much odd as unusual. He’s an unusual man. And besides, he’s out doing research during the day.’

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘So are you available or not?’

      It had struck Kitty that he could have chosen a word with slightly less awkward connotations than ‘available’, in the light of what Caro had told her about Darius Speed’s reputation with the fairer sex, and she couldn’t help feeling a little shiver of apprehension, half tempted to tell him no. But then she had thought about what she had promised Caro. ‘Yes,’ she had said, forcing a note of enthusiasm into her voice. ‘I’m free.’

      ‘Good. Can you meet him in Barbary’s restaurant at eight? Oh, and don’t eat first.’

      A meeting in a restaurant. At night. Don’t eat first. Kitty’s face, she hoped, hid her misgivings as she paid her cab fare and walked into the fashionable and already crowded restaurant at five minutes before the appointed time.

      ‘Mr Speed, please,’ she said to the maȋtre d’.

      He gave her an expansive smile. ‘Mr Speed hasn’t arrived, madam. If you would like me to show you to your table?’

      She followed him across the room to a table which was suitably central for an important customer, yet far enough away from other tables to prevent any conversation being overheard.

      ‘Would madam like a drink?’

      ‘Just a mineral water, please,’ she said instantly, vowing that alcohol wouldn’t cloud her senses. ‘Sparkling.’

      The drink was produced immediately in a long crystal glass packed with ice, With a piece of lime floating decorously on the surface, and Kitty had just started sipping it when there was the momentary lull which, she knew, heralded the arrival of Somebody Very Important, and the man whose photograph she had seen in the newspaper appeared in the doorway.

      Darius Speed.

      He looked straight across the restaurant, at the table at which she was sitting, and their eyes met. He stood very still for a moment, and stared hard at her. His own face was stern, although he said something to the maȋtre d’ which produced a wide smile.

      Wow! was her first thoroughly instinctive thought. In the photograph he had looked devastating, but in the flesh he was something else! He had to be the most delectable man she had ever, ever set eyes on, and then she reminded herself what kind of man he was, and immediately felt appalled at herself.

      He began to walk towards her, full of both grace and power, and Kitty watched him approach, suddenly exceedingly nervous of what she was intending to do. She was intending to infiltrate the house of this man, to gain his trust, and then coolly to rob him. And while that was OK in theory, the reality of such an intimidating opponent quite unnerved her.

      He was so much bigger than she had imagined— well over six feet—and his shoulders were distinctly and disturbingly broad. His hair was as dark as the night, unmarred by any trace of grey. And as he came closer to the table she could see that his eyes were the light, mercurial colour of quicksilver—grey one minute, silver the next.

      He wore a suit in some dark grey material which fell loosely about the powerful frame, yet hinted at the strength which lay beneath, but there all conventionality ended because beneath the suit he was tieless, wearing a shirt of black silk—the hard inky colour somehow at odds with the softness of the material, as the penetrating look in his eyes was curiously at odds with the polite half-smile he gave her as he extended his hand.

      ‘Miss Goodman? No, don’t get up—I’m Darius Speed.’

      She took the hand he offered, felt it give hers the most cursory of firm squeezes, before he sat down opposite her, his eyes questioning as he waited for her to speak.

      ‘Good evening, Mr Speed.’ Stop sounding like a mouse speaking to a lion, she told herself firmly.

      ‘Darius,’ he corrected shortly. ‘And you’re Kitty?’

      She nodded, taking her courage in both hands. ‘I am.’

      The grey eyes flicked over her face, briefly taking in the well-pressed but fairly unremarkable outfit she wore. ‘You don’t,’ he said, the deep voice holding the faintest undercurrent of warning—or was that just in her guilty imagination—‘look in the least bit like a cook.’

      Her instinct was to counter-attack, but she wanted the job, so she forced herself to be pleasant. From everything that Caro had told her, she already despised this man, but he wasn’t going to discover that. Not for a little while, anyway. ‘Whereas you,’ she smiled, ‘look exactly like a film director.’

      There was an almost imperceptible tensing of his facial muscles. ‘You’ve heard of me, then?’

      ‘Naturally,’ she concurred. ‘I’m applying to work for you, aren’t I?’

      Grey eyes narrowed instantly. ‘But the job description said only that the successful applicant would be working for a businessman. I don’t remember specifying which business.’

      ‘Well, I recognised you as soon as you walked into the restaurant,’ she amended hastily. ‘From your photo in the paper.’

      He leaned back a little. ‘Did you?’ he enquired lazily, and Kitty got a strange and vivid impression that he would easily be able to differentiate between truth and fiction. She had better be careful. ‘Well, that makes a refreshing change,’ he said.

      ‘What