The Price of Scandal (5 page)

Neve tried to look anywhere but at his lean muscled torso and failed miserably, conscious of a dragging liquid sensation low in her abdomen as she stared.

She was ashamed of her helpless physical response to him but at least he appeared oblivious to her discomfort—she hoped!

Meeting her wary gaze, he placed the pile of towels he carried on a chair. His glance dropped to the jeans concertinaed around her ankles. The little beads of sweat along her upper lip suggested that she had been struggling in his absence.

Severo felt something break free inside him, something that felt suspiciously like tenderness.

‘You’re going to have to accept a little help,
cara
.’ Without waiting for her response—it would obviously be negative; the woman took self-reliance to unattractive extremes—he dropped to his knees in front of her and, sliding his hands under the blanket, began to ease the wet, heavy denim down her legs.

Neve looked down at the dark head of the kneeling man. She didn’t move, she didn’t breathe—not until, having completed his task, he laid a hand against her calf. Then her control snapped and she flinched away, unable to bear the sensations crawling under her skin.

He swore. ‘You’re like ice.’ He began to rub her bare legs vigorously with his hands, working his way up from her slender ankles, over her calves to her knees. His touch made her stomach muscles quiver violently with tension.

‘Can you even feel me?’

‘Not much…’ she lied, thinking,
If only
, as she bit her lip and squeezed her eyes closed. Despite this she could still see the disturbing—on so many levels—image of his strong hands, the long fingers moving against her skin.

She tried to think through the swirl of conflicting emotions in her head. Why did this man affect her this way? There had to be a perfectly logical explanation for all this weirdness.

Sex-starved and desperate would have fitted the symptoms had it not been for the fact she had never had a strong sex drive. It was probably why she’d never had a real boyfriend. Resisting uncontrollable burning lust had never been a problem for her, possibly because her lust had never even ignited. When it came to sex all she had felt was mild curiosity about what she was missing, but so far she’d refused the offers of men who had been eager to show her. The idea of sex without any emotional connection just didn’t work for her.

She caught her breath sharply and flinched as she felt his long brown fingers move a little higher over the bare flesh of her thigh.

He angled a questioning look at her face.

‘That hurts,’ she lied.

This, she told herself, was clearly some mild form of posttraumatic stress, not that it felt particularly mild or, for that matter, post anything—his touch was causing her stress to reach unprecedented levels.

‘It’s meant to hurt. Do not be a baby.’

Her lips tightened at this bracing advice.

‘I’m trying,’ he continued, his voice, it seemed to her, slightly strained as he concentrated on the task in hand, ‘to get your circulation moving.’

His own circulation was very active.

‘Make up your mind. I th…thought you didn’t want me to be b…brave.’

‘I want you—’ Severo’s head lifted, his eyes brushing her face as he broke off, appearing to lose his drift midsentence.

His fixed hypnotic stare was so intense that it had an oddly paralysing effect on Neve. She was tempted to give herself up to the enervating heat that seeped through both her body and mind as the silence stretched.

She was tempted to stop fighting.

Stop fighting what? Or who? asked the voice in her head.

‘You can’t count them. I’ve tried.’ She forced the croaky words out but was unable to produce a creditable grin to accompany them.

He angled a dark brow.

‘My freckles.’

Without responding to her feeble effort at humour, he reached for a towel from the stack he had fetched and continued his task, using it instead of his bare hands. This actually did hurt, but Neve found it infinitely preferable to the more disturbingly intimate skin-to-skin contact.

Still disturbing enough though. His ministrations were clinical but her reaction to them was not. She only managed to bear it for a few more uncomfortable moments before she blurted, ‘Thanks, that’s much better now, Mr…?’ She stopped, realising she didn’t even know his name.

The half-naked man had just been responsible for the most erotic experience in her life—possibly making her the saddest twenty-four-year-old on the planet—and she didn’t even know his name!

He stopped, studied her face for a moment, then nodded and rose to his feet with a fluid grace that typified all his actions. ‘Severo. Severo Constanza.’

Neve had never seen the appeal of the Latin male; she wished she still couldn’t.

‘We had lunch at an Italian restaurant today before the snow started. I don’t think I saw you there?’

It took him a few seconds to realise that she was asking him if he was a waiter. Severo had been anticipating his name eliciting a reaction but not this one!

His sense of humour reasserted itself. ‘No, you would not have.’

‘Are you laughing at me?’ she asked, suspicious of his grave expression, but relieved that some of the tension in the air appeared to have dissipated.

‘No, myself. If ever I feel in danger of believing my own press releases I shall know where to come to have my ego deflated.’

Her lashes fluttered wider. ‘You have press releases?’

He shrugged. ‘A figure of speech.’

Still frowning suspiciously across at him, she sat in the armchair set beside the fire and tucked her legs up under her as she drew the blanket up to her chin.

‘Shall I see if I can rustle up something to eat and drink?’ Without waiting for her response, he moved across to the kitchen area and started opening doors.

To call the atmosphere cosy would have been a massive overstatement; a person could not feel
cosy
when they were in the same room as the human equivalent of a wolf, but the antagonism had definitely lessened and she was hungry.

Had the antagonism been replaced by something more dangerous?

The thought made Neve, in the act of relaxing into her chair, stiffen. As she rose, the blanket covering her from her neck to her feet, she did not pause to identify this dangerous
something
—anything that made her lose focus and lessened her sense of urgency was dangerous.

‘I’m not hungry. I need to find Hannah.’

Severo expelled a hissing sigh through clenched teeth and dragged a frustrated hand through his dark hair as he moved to intercept her. ‘Sit down before you fall down!’

Her chin went up, the angry flush of colour that washed over her fair skin condensing into bright patches of angry colour on her cheeks as she glared up at him.

‘I have to find Hannah. Don’t worry,’ she added quickly. ‘I’m not asking you to help.’ Just because he looked like her personal identikit image of a hero who laughed in the face of danger. it did not mean he was one, and it was utterly irrational to expect him to act like one, though less irrational to wish he’d put on some more clothes!

Clearly he was of the mindset that said, ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it.’ Her eyes slid down the hard muscled contours of his gleaming torso before she dragged her gaze clear, deeply ashamed of her shallow and ill-timed fascination with his body.

In her defence—he
definitely
had it!

Chapter Five

‘How?’

Neve blinked at him in a dazed fashion and shook her head.

‘How are you going to find your sister, Neve Gray Macleod?’ he elaborated, voicing the question he had been asking himself since they had reached safety.

Severo had reached the conclusion that his best hope of discovering the youngster was to retrace his steps to the point where he had found her sister. The first step would be persuading this girl that it was a trip he had to make solo.

He could appeal to her reason and explain she would slow him down, or if reason failed—a distinct possibility based on her attitude to this point—he would have to adopt less subtle methods.

He knew his chances of finding the kid were not good, but
not good
was a great deal better than the zero they would be if he did not try.

Only half listening, Neve turned to him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It is not a trick question. I mean how are you going to find her?’

He watched as her smooth brow knitted in furrows of consternation and felt his irritation fade away to be replaced by a sudden and uncharacteristic desire to pull her into his arms and tell her it would be all right.

He would make it all right.

Her strong jaw tightened a notch. It was not a promise he could make and even if it had been it was not his place to play her emotional anchor.

‘I just will.’ Even to her own ears this sounded lame. ‘She can’t be far away,’ Neve reasoned, directing a resentful look up at his lean face.

‘Far away from where exactly? Do you have any idea where we are?’ The image that flashed through his mind of her still, cold, lifeless body, the soft pink lips blue, made Severo’s voice harsher than he had intended as he added grimly, ‘Maybe you should consider how much use you’re going to be to this Hannah in a body bag, Neve.’

The stark observation drew a gasp from Neve.

He watched her flinch and brushed away the irrational surge of guilt.

If any situation called for brutal, this was it.

‘You have to face facts and the fact is you can’t do anything but wait and hope—the chances are that unlike you Hannah had the sense to stay in the car and wait to be rescued. The men in the pub said that the last time this happened there were zero casualties.’

Severo preferred to think of it as an invention rather than a lie, and when he saw the flicker of wary hope in her eyes he did not regret abandoning his policy that the truth was always best.

‘Really?’ Neve
wanted
to believe him. ‘You really think it’s possible someone found her?’

Her startled eyes opened wide when his big hand moved to frame her face, but she did not pull away. ‘I do.’

He projected such total assurance that Neve felt some of the muscle-burning tension between her shoulder blades reduce a notch. For the first time she allowed herself to believe in a ‘less than complete disaster’ scenario.

‘I think it more than likely that your Hannah is even now sitting somewhere safe and warm worried out of her mind about you.’

Neve was too emotionally drained to think about censoring her response as she gave a shaky laugh and said with total conviction, ‘Oh, she won’t be.’

She gave a tired sigh and wondered if she would ever be able to convince the troubled and grieving teenager that she was not the enemy.

Severo watched the expressions drift across her extremely expressive face; you could almost hear the thoughts inside her head.

Her transparency fascinated and at the same time appalled him. How, he wondered, could a person go through life with their emotions this close to the surface?

‘You and your sister had a falling out?’

‘Hannah’s not my sister.’

Explaining this reminded her of the occasions when James had been forced to explain that Neve was not his daughter, but his wife. If the marriage had been real and not simply a legal convenience Neve would not have been embarrassed by the raised eyebrows and knowing glances this information frequently produced.

The admission caused the indentation above his hawkish nose to deepen as his hand fell from her face. ‘
Not
your sister?’

He did not normally make assumptions, but younger sister had seemed to explain the level of her almost hysterical anxiety.

‘Hannah is my stepdaughter.’ Neve winced inwardly as she registered the defensive note in her voice.

His lean body tensed as an expression she could not decipher flashed across his face.

He wasn’t the first to look dubious about the title, but on the plus side she had always found incredulity to be infinitely preferable to the occasional flash of recognition she saw in people’s eyes when she explained her relationship to Hannah.

It hadn’t actually happened that often, not even at the height of the scandal, probably because the only photo the press had ever managed to take of her had been taken at the funeral.

Wearing a classic black shift dress and equally timeless pearls, her hair slicked smoothly back for the occasion in an elegant chignon, Neve had barely recognised herself.

A mere week later with her hair tucked into a beret, wearing a fifties polka-dot dirndl skirt, flats and a yellow angora cardigan, she had walked unrecognised straight through a crowd of photographers looking for a glimpse of the elegant ‘scarlet widow’, as they had dubbed her.

Not that it mattered if this stranger placed her, she had more important things to worry about than stressing over the possibility this man thought she was a mercenary gold-digger.

She had taught herself not to care what people thought about her, or at least to tell herself she didn’t. It had been the only way to survive the experience. Luckily the public appetite for the scandal had proved short-lived.

Severo’s eyes slid to her hand. There was no ring—he would have noticed it when he had noticed her slender fingers and neatly trimmed polish-free nails.

He noticed them again now and found himself thinking about them on his skin. He struggled for the focus, the mental control that normally was no effort for him.

It continued to elude him.

‘You’re married?’ At one level Severo was aware that his level of shock was totally out of proportion with the discovery.

Her lashes lowered in a protective sweep as she nodded and said abruptly, ‘I was. He, Hannah’s father, is dead.’

Even now she was unable to refer to James as ‘my husband’. Legally he had been but not in any way that really mattered; a good kind friend whom she really missed, yes, but husband? No.

Severo’s dark eyebrows shot upwards as a thoughtful expression crossed his face.

‘You are a widow?’

Catching himself in the act of stating the obvious yet again, a habit he despised in others, he stopped and changed the subject—or tried to.

‘How long?’ he asked, telling himself that his fascination stemmed from the fact she looked far too young to be married let alone widowed.

‘James died six months ago.’

‘And you are left bringing up
his
teenage child.’

She had been anticipating a slightly embarrassed murmur of sympathy as she inevitably received at moments like this; the implied criticism of James she received in its place made her spring angrily to his defence.

‘
My
stepdaughter, and for your information it’s very rewarding being—’

‘A guiding influence?’

Neve bit her lip, flushing at the sardonic interruption. ‘All right, I know I make mistakes.’

‘Of course you make mistakes.’ His eyes slid over the soft contours of her heart-shaped face and he felt his indignation rise. She should be out there enjoying herself—possibly in his bed? ‘You’re a child yourself,’ he said, trying hard not to think about the unchildlike aspects of the body beneath the blanket.

‘I’m twenty-four,’ she retorted with dignity.

‘So old,’ he mocked. ‘Surely there was someone more suitable?’

Under the circumstances she was in no position to take offence. ‘Someone who doesn’t let a teenager wander off into a snowstorm, you mean.’ She shook her head and pushed away the guilt; it was an indulgence she had no time for right now.

‘I thought she drove off at speed.’

She flashed him a smile of deep insincerity and drawled, ‘Thanks for reminding me of that. It’s at least two minutes since I ran the mental picture where she was crashing into a tree or off a cliff.’

Severo clicked his tongue in irritation. ‘You make everything a drama.’

She flung her arms wide in an expansive gesture and loosed a bitter laugh, conscious that hysteria was only another callous comment away. ‘And you don’t think all this constitutes a drama? You must lead a much more exciting life than I do.’

‘Your problem is you have an overactive imagination.’ he contended.

Overactive! Was he serious? If she’d allowed her imagination full rein she’d be a basket case by now, and then, she thought grimly, he’d have room to complain.

‘It might not be so active if you put a damned shirt on!’

For a split second their glances connected long enough for her to see the flash of heat, the spark of something sensual, before she closed her eyes and thought, Let the floor open up and swallow me.

It didn’t and she was left with little choice after a few mortifying moments to open her eyes.

‘It’s off-putting,’ she said, struggling to regain a little dignity as she directed the comment at a point over his left shoulder; she couldn’t stop him laughing at her but she didn’t have to watch.

What if he wasn’t laughing? What if she hadn’t imagined the raw sexual hunger in his eyes? The possibility made her stomach dissolve and her heart bang a little louder against the confines of her ribcage.

‘My body offends you?’

The comment drew her gaze reluctantly to his face.

His expression of mild surprise did not fool her for a moment; he could hardly be unaware of the effect he had on women clothed or unclothed, and he was palpably enjoying her discomfiture.

‘Not
offends
me,’ she rebutted. ‘I’m not a prude or anything.’

Aware the denial had made her sound more like a prude than anything else she could have said, she bit her lip and added with a flash of angry belligerence, ‘Though I’d prefer to be a prude than an exhibitionist.’ She allowed her eyes to move in a condemnatory sweep from his feet to his dark head.

That was the plan, at least. The only problem was her eyes did some unscheduled and pretty obvious slowing on the way, causing a ripple of sensation to move through her body.

Why am I acting like a sex-starved bimbo?

‘You think I am an exhibitionist?’ he asked, sounding mildly curious and not at all offended.

‘I think you’re…’ She stopped, slowly shaking her head as her spurt of anger lost momentum. Unfortunately the motion did not shake loose the sensual fog that lingered on in her brain, making it hard for her to think as she struggled to keep her hormones under control.

‘I have no idea what you are,’ she admitted, thinking some people might think it would be fun to find out, but she was definitely not one of them.

‘Don’t worry, I’m harmless—a pillar of the community.’

Sure you are, she thought, refusing to rise to the bait. ‘That’s a comfort to know.’

‘Your stepdaughter—’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘
Dio
!’ he ejaculated, his glance sliding over the soft contours of her youthful face. ‘It is hard to credit that you’re a mother of any kind.’

‘Maybe you shouldn’t judge by appearances.’ Anger sparkled in Neve’s eyes as she lifted her chin and began to move past him.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t,’ he agreed.

Neve turned her head. ‘What makes you such an expert on the qualities that make a good stepmother anyway?’

‘I’m an expert on the qualities that make a bad one.’

Something in his voice made Neve, in the act of walking away, swing back. ‘Everyone is,’ she said, unable to totally disguise her bitterness. ‘We get a lot of bad press.’

‘My expertise is more personal. My father remarried when I was ten.’ And you are telling her this why, exactly, Severo?

Now the
something
in his voice made sense. ‘And you resented her?’

The perceptive comment caused his expression to blank. There were some things he did not share with anyone; he was not about to start now.

‘Thank you for that psychological insight,’ he drawled, looking anything but grateful for her soft-voiced sympathy. ‘But my childhood is not the subject under discussion.’ It never had been, which made his introducing it all the more bizarre.

Neve, oblivious to the warning in his voice, asked earnestly, ‘Has it occurred to you that your stepmother was trying to do her best?’

‘Oh, Livia was trying to do her best.’ And her best had been good enough to drive a wedge between father and son.

‘I know nothing about your particular circumstances, of course, but—’

‘No, you don’t, and that situation is not about to change any time soon.’ In contrast to his colourless tone and bored expression, the gleam reflected in his dark eyes was nothing short of combustible. ‘I suggest you put your own house in order before you share the benefit of your vast wisdom with the rest of us.’

The chilling hauteur in his cutting put-down drove the colour from Neve’s face. ‘I don’t want to share anything with you.’

It afforded her some comfort that her painfully childish response drew an equally immature retort from him.

‘Imagine my devastation.’ He swore under his breath and rubbed his temples with his thumbs to relieve the build-up of pressure there, before returning his attention to the redhead, who for some incomprehensible reason felt she had a licence to offer him advice.

The silence stretched as she stood looking at him with blue eyes that gave him a shock every time he saw them, radiating a mixture of defiance, anger and hurt.

‘Where are my clothes?’

Eyes like ice drilled into her as he snapped, ‘Do not be ridiculous. Sit back down.
You
are not going anywhere.’

But he was, before he gave into the compulsion to drag her into his arms and either throttle her or drive his tongue between those soft, tempting lips. This woman had pushed him closer to losing control than he had ever been in his adult life.