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He twisted the thick gold band on his finger. ‘Is that a piece of detective school lore?’ He slid the heavy ring off his finger and rolled it in his palm. ‘I must say it’s been very useful for keeping the society she-wolves at bay. You’ve no idea the offers I was inundated with after Leigh died…’
She could imagine, and for that reason she was sour. ‘The rich never have to be lonely for long.’
He slipped the ring into his trouser pocket. ‘I never bought into the illusion that sex is an adequate substitute for love, and a love that has to be bought isn’t worth the investment. What about you?’
‘What about me?’ She looked at him wide-eyed, startled by the discovery that beneath the sophisticated shell Matthew Riordan was a romantic.
‘After David Weston died did you take up any male offers of comfort?’
‘Why are you asking? I’m sure by now you have a full list of my ex-lovers,’ she said sniffily.
‘I was interested in your present, not past, and at present there doesn’t seem to be any man in your life. Unless you and your partner have a secret thing going…’
‘Frank?’ Her jolt of incredulous laughter brought a subtle curve of satisfaction to his mouth.
He leaned on elbow on the bar. ‘You don’t find him attractive?’
‘He’s handsome enough, I suppose, but we’ve never particularly hit it off.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s hardly irresistible.’
‘Is that what you’re looking for? A man whom you find yourself totally unable to resist? That’s not very PC of you.’
‘Since when has political correctness had anything to do with it? And I’m not looking at all. I’m quite content with my life as it is!’ she lied, with a fierceness that rang slightly hollow.
‘So…what did Weston say when you told him I was blackmailing you?’
‘What makes you think
I’d automatically go running to Frank? I can handle my own problems.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You haven’t told him? I would have thought you’d value his professional opinion.’
‘I haven’t told anyone. If Frank knew about those photos there’d be nothing professional about his attitude.’ She shuddered. ‘He’d go totally ape!’
He straightened, frowning, his shoulders tensing under the tailored blue cotton. ‘You mean you’re afraid he might get violent. Has he hurt you before?’
‘No, of course not! I didn’t mean physically. But he’d probably demand I disassociate myself from Westons, and I wouldn’t blame him!’
‘I would. You were his brother’s fiancé; surely he’d stand by you?’
‘I told you, we’re not that close. He’d consider that I’d brought it on myself by being careless. And I was. Someone else followed us to that room and took those photos, and I didn’t even notice.’
‘Neither did I.’
‘Matthew, you weren’t in any condition to notice anything, or do anything about it if you had.’
Seeing that she was determined to punish herself with the full blame, he was equally determined that she should not.
‘I beg to differ. For example, I certainly noticed a great deal about you…and if I hadn’t been in a condition to do something about it you wouldn’t have had to tie me to the bed.’
He had the pleasure of seeing her wrestle with the urge to explode, her self-control only winning by the narrowest of margins as she clipped, ‘Dammit, I should have been more careful.’
It was time someone forced her to acknowledge that she sometimes needed help. ‘How?’
‘I don’t know.’ She raked her hand through her hair, drawing his attention to the flawless sheen of sun-kissed skin at her temples and the thickness of the lashes that fringed her frowning hazel eyes. The lips he had so recently kissed were compressed into a prim line which he knew was a lie. The lady’s disdain was only skin-deep; under that armour of tough self-sufficiency was a passion as reckless as it was strong.
‘Don’t beat yourself up over it. No one could have planned for things to turn out exactly the way they did that night,’ he told her. ‘There were too many variables involved, so it had to be a purely spur-of-the-moment thing. Someone saw an opportunity and grabbed it. You were only involved because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s been no demand for money, so this isn’t a straightforward case of financial extortion—this is a vindictive act, a smear aimed at the Riordans—specifically me.’
So now he was relegating her from starring role in a drama to bit-player in a farce?
