He liked the way he could unsettle her. He saw her blushing and trying not to stare at his chest. He got that reaction a lot when he took his shirt off.
‘Maybe you should wear a T-shirt,’ she said.
He took a bite of the salmon and chewed. It was good. For this princess, nothing but the best, he supposed.
‘No point. It’d get soaked in sweat.’ He winked at her, which made her blush harder. ‘Nothing wrong with having your shirt off in hot weather, Miss Lancaster. Maybe you should try it.’ Logan glanced at the high-buttoned white thing she was wearing. The buttons would pop off
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easily enough if he ran his hand down through it. He imagined what her bra would be like. Virginal white cotton, with the little bud nipples straining against it …
Ah, that had been a daydream too far. He felt himself stirring inexorably beneath his jeans, which fitted him snugly. Annoyed with himself, he turned aside abruptly. It had been over a fortnight since he’d had a woman, since he had sent Elsie packing. He shouldn’t take risks with silly little twenty-somethings.
‘Don’t be silly. And you can call me Becky.’
‘OK, Becky,’ he said abruptly, ‘thanks for lunch.’ He put the plate back on the tray and handed it to her. ‘I have to get back to work.’ And he picked up his spade so there could be no further argument on the matter.
I wish I had a dog, Becky thought furiously as she stomped back up to the house. If I had a dog, I could go for a walk with it. Get away from him.
If she went for a walk on her own, Will Logan might imagine she was running away from him. And she couldn’t bear to have that happen.
She retreated back into the house and got out a book from the library. Something totally distracting, one off her shelf of modern paperbacks. Jackie Collins, The Bitch. Perfect. And exactly how Logan made her feel. She tried to concentrate on work, go over in her mind what she might do with that extension, but it was no good. Whereas before she’d had trouble getting her mind off Lancaster, todaT thinking about it was just impossible.
She sat on the sofa and tried to read. Mostly, it didn’t work. Her gaze kept slipping to where he worked in the sunlight, shovelling mountains of earth, tearing up the ground. She thought about offering him another drink, but she was too proud to go out tl-mre. When the phone eventually rang, just as the long shadows were beginning to fall over the
orchard, she was pathetically grateful for the distraction.
It was Ken Stone.
‘Yes,’ he said, once they had gotten past the pleasantries. ‘I’m afraid it seems as though we may have a bit of a problem.’
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Their name was Wilson Shipping, and she knew all about them.
Jocelyn Wilson had started the business from scratch twelve years ago, and he was one of the seventies’ hottest stories. He specialized in what the City boys called ‘bottom fishing’. He liked to buy failing shipping companies for pennies on the pound, liquidate their assets, sell their real estate and integrate the better parts - whatever they had - into his company.
Wilson loved the recession. He even loved the soaring inflation, the strikes, the power outages, because they made his targets go bankrupt. He sold enough of an acquired company to keep his loans low, and so he could afford what they could not - the cost of money. Meanwhile, he had started Wilson Ferries. He ran both passenger and industrial ferries, no-frills operations which his firm advertised as money-savers.
And in Britain, in the seventies, you needed every penny you could get. Wilson Shipping was a huge success. And now it was after Lancaster.
Becky shuddered at the thought of it. She would have loved to have bought back enough of the stock to make her a majority shareholder, but she simply didn’t have the money. Lancaster would struggle to sell the mines in time to cover the bridge loan they had just negotiated. Well, so much for her relaxing weekend. She had pulled on her coat and purse and called for a cab. Once she was in the train, heading north, Becky had thought of Will Logan, sweating in the hot sun, without anything else to drink. Oh, well. Let him sweat, she thought crossly. If he walked out on her, she wouldn’t care. She could hire someone else to install a maze and a rose garden. Right now, she had to figure out a way to deal with Jocelyn Wilson.
‘It shouldn’t be that hard,’ Ken Stone had told her, trying to stop her from coming up to Whitby on her weekend. ‘Just something we have to take care of. Persuade the stockholders not to sell.’
‘Why would they? Our plan gives them full value for the stock. And it’s going to appreciate.’
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‘They wouldn’t. Lancaster isn’t a failing company. I think you can handle this on Monday, lebecca.’
Ken steadfastly refused to call her Becky. It had taken some work to pry him off ‘Miss Lancaster’.
‘I’m still coming up. Put together a takeover defence package, Ken.
Initial thoughts. We’ll meet at my flat.’
‘On Sunday?’
‘Wilson won’t be taking the weekends off, Ken.’
‘Well?’ Lita asked.
Edward took a long look around. Lita felt herself tense, waiting for his judgement. She felt an intense need for him to approve, to back her. To forgive her for having done this.
The fight they’d had about her coming to England had been epic. The sex they’d had afterwards even more so. Edward hadn’t even let her get two steps from him, crushing her to him, tilting her face upwards, trapping her lips in a kiss, his hands cupping her through the thin fabric of her silk pantsuit, stroking her lightly with his fingers, brushing over her sex until she was absolutely frantic. He’d made her wait, too, unbuttoning each fastening of her satin shirt agonizingly slowly, bending his salt-and-pepper head to the lace La Perla bra that struggled to confine her olive-skinned breasts, breathing on her nipples until they were so swollen with blood that the lace chafed against them mercilessly. Lita had been almost whimpering when he finally let her clothes slither to the floor in a soft rustle, and bushed himself inside her. She was hot and slick for him, the blood pooling in her belly, and he knew it, his hands tracing a line on her skin.
But then, as he started to thrust, and sweat, and his breathing became as ragged as hers, Lita took her revenge. Her hands crept down to tease his feathery skin, her nails brushing so lightly against him as they slid down to the floor, making love on the mess of clothes littering his priceless Persian rug. He groaned, and she knew she had him. With her pleasure there came a sweet sense of power. Lita swung her lithe, curvy body around so that she was mounted on top of him, her full breasts swinging over him as she rode him, her dark nipples jet black and hard with blood, pointed out at him, making him fight to keep his control, and she tightened herself around him, flexing the hot, wet heart of her around him.
The pleasure that had started to build in her was tightening, her body feeling each shuddering wash of ecstasy build up into a block of tight, hard bliss, and Lita had to bite down on her lip to stop herself from surrendering. She looked down at Edward, her future husband.
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Goddamn him! She leaned forward so her large tits were brushing against the grey hairs of his chest, her glossy hair was teasing his skin and he could smell the heat of her. One hand snaked downwards to toy with him further, the other raked his burning skin with her nails, and Lita rocked him with a merciless, driving rhythm, until Edward could no longer bear it and exploded inside her with a deep groan, and she was able to let go, her whole body juddering with the force of the orgasm that rocked her, before she slumped against him, kissing him hotly.
That had been the last time they had made love. The hunger for Lita that had seemed so urgent in him had been replaced by a simmering anger that she was really leaving.
‘It’ll only be for six months,’ she promised him. ‘Just enough to set up
the European offices. Find some talent, and set it up to run itself.’ ‘We’ll see,’ he said flatly.
That was why she was so glad that Edward had agreed to come and see her in London. She’d arrived here two weeks ago and found a place in less than a day, a tiny jewel of a mews house, in Kensington, a two bedroom house with a minute paved garden in the back. Lita had rented it for six months. She wanted to show Edward the short lease to prove her bona tides, but he hadn’t been interested. Now he was here. In the UK on another acquisitions trip, this time to buy some paintings by the hippest artists -Jackson Pollock and David Hockney. He had called her from his room at the P,.itz.
‘I might as well see what you’ve done with the place.’
Lira, newly unpacked, had tried to hide the excitement in her voice. ‘Come on over.’ She gave him directions, and ran out to her favourite Indian restaurant for take-out, vhich she was now keeping warm in the
oven. The champagne was chilling. And he was here.
‘Interesting,’ Edward said eventually.
Lita smiled. From Edward, this was high praise.
He looked down at her. That glorious smile lit up her whole face. God, she was young, though. So goddamn young and stubborn. It was why he had fought back that crazy impulse to propose. Bullheaded Lita, single-minded and defiant.
His life was in America. It was inconceivable that hers might not be. He was sure this new pet project of hers would burn itself out in a couple of months. New Wave wasn’t even well established enough in America for her to be over here.
‘It is pretty cool, huh? I didn’t want anyone to think I’d come to England and turned stuffy.’
He chuckled. ‘Nobody could ever think that about you.’
Lita had furnished her pad in the latest style. It was a complete break
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from the delicate carpets and mahogany sideboards of his place in New York - you opened the old-fashioned English oak door and you stepped into a James Bond fantasy. It looked like Blofeld’s lair. Lita had thick shaggy rugs in cream that your feet sank into when you stepped on them, low-slung coffee-tables stained a deep shade of chocolate brown, a TV that rose up from its black wooden stand when you pressed a button on the remote control, and large mirrors everywhere, the one in the bathroom lined with light bulbs. Her face, he thought idly, might be .just young and beautiful enough to take it. She had piles of magazines stacked on her dark glass occasional table. Vogue and Elle and Tatler and Harper’s, and in the bedroom, with its large, industrial steel-framed king size bed, she had glass cupboards topped with her make-up in a sleek metallic case. In fact, he loved it. It was young and fresh and, considering she was here in grey, wet London, refreshingly shocking. Like his girlfriend.
Kahn reflected on the relief some of his partners had felt when he told them that Lita was moving to Europe. They liked having him free for the social circuit, free to flirt with all the society matrons. Not that he needed it. The company was too prestigious now to need the help of flirtation.
‘Are we going out to dinner?’ he asked.
‘No. We’re staying here.’ Lira took his hand, tugging him through to her kitchen, which had an eat-in island in the centre of it. Yes, a perfect
place for a single girl. ‘You like Indian food?’
‘I like it in India.’
‘This is almost the same thing. Trust me, you’ll love it.’ She opened her oven door and spooned dishes from little foil containers on to her china, which was, incongruously, Royal Doulton. ‘Chicken Tikka
Marsala, vegetable dahl, lamb Basan Paranda …’
The scent was delicious. ‘I’ll try it.’
Lira opened her fridge and cracked the bottle of champagne. PerrierJouet, he noted approvingly. Well, she certainly didn’t seem as if she was suffering unduly out here. She filled his champagne flute, offering him
the first glass, then clinking her crystal to his in a toast.
‘What are we drinking to?’ Edward asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘England. Life. Everything.’
It had taken half a bottle of wine but, Lita thought, she had finally got him to relax, or at least to unwind a fraction. They were now on their second bottle of ice-cold champagne, sitting coiled against each other on the deep, soft, buttery leather sofa she had installed opposite her large TV. She had a small, fully stocked bar in one corner of the room,
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complete with barstools, but she didn’t think she’d need to use it tonight.
‘You’re sure about this,’ he murmured.
Lita brushed her lips against the skin of his neck. ‘Yeah, babe. You have to understand. I want New Wave to have a global presence.’
They had only just gotten a New York presence, he thought, but successfully managed not to say. She looked good tonight. It was a sunny evening in May, just at the time when spring started to shift into summer, and it was warm in London, with lots of clear light streaming through the windows, tinged with the reds and pinks of sunset. Lita was taking advantage of the good weather. She wore a white dress, a tight, halter-necked thing made of very fine ]jersey. It was distractingly snug around her large breasts, tapered down across her waist and then flared out a little, but not enough to hide the firmness and roundness of her glorious ass. It stopped halfway down her thighs, which, he couldn’t help but inventory in his mind, had stayed.just as firm and silky smooth to the touch as when he had last caressed them. The dusky tones of her golden skin were dramatically accentuated by the dress, to the point where you longed to peel it offher just to check everything was equally delicious underneath. He didn’t want to blow it by saying something stupid. Or thinking too much about their relationship and what she was doing.
When Lita Morales looked like this she had his brain in a fog. ‘So who’s going to be your first client?’
She stood up and walked over to a sleek white filing cabinet. Kahn watched the high, round ass muscles rolling under the white fabric and felt his groin tighten up again. Hell. She was like a sweet addiction.