Heart of the Outback (3 page)

“And since Ivan has proclaimed—” Jill chimed in.

“It would be terrible not to do it!” Suzanne finished.

Ivan’s temperamental outbursts when his artistic eye was offended were legendary and had earned him the soubriquet of Ivan the Terrible. He relished the name, deliberately choosing to write under it when he did his titillating and scathing gossip column for the Sunday newspaper.

Suzanne’s pun brought a general burst of laughter. All her friends were riding on a high. Wit bubbled around the table along with the champagne Ivan had ordered. His flamboyant nature made him scintillating company, and Alida was content to sit back and watch him perform.

The evening wore on. Couples crowded onto the dance floor. People table-hopped, commenting on the fashion display they had seen.

Alida did not move from her table. She did not want to risk an accidental meeting with Gareth Morgan. She did not want to acknowledge his presence in any shape or form. However, a great many people flocked to them. She didn’t have to say much. Her boisterous friends were only too happy to fill in for any reticence on her part.

Jill resumed her running commentary on what was happening around them, who was with whom and why. Ivan gleefully embroidered on it with choice bits of gossip. They were both in top form, and Alida was amused out of her private introspection until Jill spoke the one name she did not want to hear.

“Gareth Morgan is moving purposefully towards us,” she warned on an uncharacteristically sober note. “His radar antenna is definitely focused on you.”

One sharp glance at Jill’s shrewd eyes and Alida saw that her agent knew altogether too much. Yet there was a promise of support in her expression, as well.

“A courtesy call, I expect,” Alida forced out flatly.

It could be nothing else, her mind dictated. There were people here who had seen the catalogue, knew of the connection. His sister had probably blabbed it to her party. Perhaps Gareth Morgan felt obliged to offer her congratulations on being given the top award tonight. Such a move from him, however, was totally unanticipated by Alida, and it threw her into emotional turmoil. Nevertheless, she managed to lift her glass of champagne to her lips with apparent unconcern. She needed a drink. Her mouth had gone as dry as the desert on which Gareth Morgan imposed his will.

She knew precisely when he came to a halt beside her. All her friends looked at him, various degrees of curious interest or speculation on their faces. She continued to sip the champagne until he addressed her.

“Alida.” Soft and low, but resonant enough to undercut the noise around them and make her pulse throb in her temples.

She turned slowly and lifted her gaze to his, her green eyes cool and steady. “Gareth Morgan. How surprising to see you in such a milieu!” she said with light mockery. “But I’m not sure it doesn’t suit you.” She said it to hurt, and it did.

His mouth quirked in sardonic acknowledgment. The blue eyes gleamed with worldly cynicism. “Not my usual stamping ground, I’ll admit, but my sister makes efforts to civilise me from time to time,” he replied easily. He nodded at the statuette on the table. “Congratulations on your success, Alida.”

“Thank you.” She nodded towards her publicity agent. “You might remember Jill Masters? I owe much of my success to her and others.”

“Yes, of course I remember Jill. You must be very pleased with all the accolades tonight,” he said with smooth urbanity.

He could don civilisation like a cloak, Alida thought. But that was all it was to him, a veneer that had its usefulness when it suited him. In the formal black dinner suit he wore, he looked every inch a man of supreme sophistication. Underneath the cloak was a raw barbarian, a total savage.

Some perverse pride goaded her to make him acknowledge every one of her friends. He handled the introductions she made around the table with grace and polish.

For once, Ivan did not make some titillating or outrageous comment. Alida didn’t know if she was grateful or disappointed. It rather irked her that Gareth Morgan had the innate quality of commanding respect without so much as raising a finger. He didn’t deserve it, she thought bitterly.

“It was kind of you to come out of your way to offer us congratulations, Gareth,” she said dismissively, meeting his eyes once again with all the casual aplomb she could muster.

“I wanted to.” The blue eyes of blistering hot summer skies bored into hers with disconcerting and challenging directness. “I also wanted to ask you to dance with me. Will you, Alida?”

Her heart squeezed tight. Gareth Morgan was on the prowl. He wanted her again! As easily and as casually as that!

A surge of white-hot rage burned through Alida. Her first inclination was to refuse outright. But then the soul-deep frustration he had dealt her forged into iron purpose.

Gareth Morgan needed to be taught a lesson. He couldn’t know it—he would not even conceive such a possibility—but his sins of five years ago were about to come home to roost. She would show him the same blackness of heart he had shown her. Exactly the same! She would be every bit as ruthless in her treatment of him as he had been with her. Let him learn what it felt like!

“Yes,” she said, rising slowly to her feet. “Yes, I’ll have this one dance with you.”

He didn’t smile. Perhaps the bitter hardness in her heart was reflected in her eyes. Perhaps he sensed some danger to himself. “Thank you,” he said, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Alida had the sharp impression he had anticipated a refusal, which he had determined to fight. Her ready acquiescence had shifted the ground between them. But there was no hint of retreat from him. He meant to go on, no matter what he met.

Alida swept a smile at her friends. “Please excuse me.

Her mind didn’t register their replies. They were totally irrelevant. Everyone and everything in the ballroom became totally irrelevant as she took the arm Gareth Morgan offered her. The whole world had shrunk to contain only him and herself. Which was precisely how it had felt before. The only difference was that Alida now held control, which Gareth Morgan could not foresee.

“Why did you accept your sister’s invitation to come here?” she asked lightly as they moved towards the dance floor. “You must have been bored out of your mind.”

“I’d be a most unmannerly bore if I admitted to that,” he demurred.

She sliced him a look that mocked his smooth sidestep.

He made a rueful grimace. “I said too much five years ago.”

She felt his hold on her arm tighten. “Yes, I remember it well.” She tossed the words at him in disdain, as if it didn’t matter.

“I’m sorry. Will you accept my apology now?”

“Why apologise? At least you had the decency to speak the truth in the end. I wouldn’t change that. However unpalatable it might be, I prefer directness to social niceties.”

She felt his eyes on her but she didn’t look at him. She kept her face utterly impassive, her gaze fixed on where they were heading.

“Perhaps lies would have been kinder,” he suggested, as if musing on that idea for the first time.

“Perhaps.” She threw him a fleeting little smile, a nothing smile that he could interpret any way he liked.

“I’m sorry. I should have thought more about you. I recall that at the time I was certainly not feeling kind. I was feeling very direct and—” he paused, his voice dropping to a low murmur “—exceedingly primitive.”

He had taken her at her word about being direct and was going straight to the heart of his purpose. Alida took a deep breath. Exceedingly primitive was a good description for what had happened between them. It was also a good description of what she was feeling right now. Revenge. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

“You haven’t answered my question, Gareth,” she reminded him, changing the topic, not letting him see her purpose. “Why are you here?” She couldn’t afford to let her feelings show. Not yet.

He released a short sigh. “My sister’s husband is in New Zealand. She inveigled me to take his place as her escort. I owe her some indulgence so I came with her,” he stated matter-of-factly. Then in a softer, more intimate tone, he added, “But from the moment I knew you would be present, I was not bored, Alida.”

“Oh? What did you feel?” she inquired lightly.

“Excitement, vitality, intensely alive, invigorated…”

The throb of promising sexuality in his voice pummelled her heart. He was not pulling any punches, Alida thought grimly. She paused at the edge of the dance floor, digesting the fact that he had not actively sought a chance to see her again, but the thought of her had done something to him. The excitement of the chase, the pursuit, the capture.

There had been no plan to establish any kind of relationship with her. But for his brother-in-law’s absence Gareth would not be here at all. He was simply picking up on an opportunity. And going for it flat out. That knowledge cemented her resolve to make him pay for the pain he had given her.

She looked at him with flat, empty eyes. “When did you know I would be present, Gareth?”

“I read your name in this evening’s newspaper.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Did that evoke interesting memories, or interesting possibilities?” she asked derisively.

“Both.” The blue eyes glittered with some indefinable emotion. Resentment? Anger? A bitter acceptance of something he couldn’t control? “Is that what you wanted to hear, Alida?”

“How is your wife, Gareth?” she shot back at him. “Still giving you your sexual freedom?”

His face tightened as though she had slapped him. “Kate died six months ago,” he said quietly.

The shock of that statement brought a sudden rush of shame for the callous way she had spoken. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes mocked her. “Do you really care, Alida?”

That stung her out of her shame. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing! “No,” she flung at him, all the blackness in her heart coming to the surface. She wouldn’t let him know she cared. All Kate Morgan had meant to her was pain. But it wasn’t the poor woman’s fault. It was all her own for loving a man she could never possess.

“You don’t mince your words.” His voice had hardened. Clearly that had stung him, despite his cynicism about her feelings.

“I told you I prefer directness.”

“I loved Kate.” There was the throb of deep emotion in his voice this time. He knew how to hurt, too.

The wounds of the past were well and truly open now. “You might recall I never got to know her. I’m sorry you lost someone you loved. But I didn’t know her,” she said fiercely. “You meant nothing to me when I went to Riordan River. And neither did she. I didn’t know you were married until you told me about your wife.”

His eyes burned into hers, challenging her statement, not believing it. “If my marriage concerns you, why did you accept my invitation to dance, believing my wife was still alive?”

She sensed the same violence of feeling in him that was churning through her. She lifted her chin in scornful defiance of what he thought of her. “You opened the door to memories, Gareth,” she flung at him. “And I wanted to hurt you with them.”

“You’re doing a good job of it.”

“You came to me,” she reminded him. “I didn’t come to you.”

“Then try coming to me now,” he said bitterly.

He didn’t wait for a reply. He swung her into his arms, pulling her close to him as he steered her into the throng of dancing couples, moving with an aggressive sureness of step and total confidence in his power to rekindle the physical attraction that had once before exploded into compelling need.

Alida did not resist. All her defiance and bitter resolutions were caving in under the shattering knowledge that Gareth was not married any more. The feel of his body against her own weakened her even further. She no longer had any clear idea of where this might lead. All she could think of was that Gareth was free.

The band was playing “Hey, Jude.” The hour was late. The frenetic earlier energy had given way to the more languorous beat of soulful songs.

Gareth held her intimately against his body, ensuring she would have no trouble following his every step. She could feel the hard play of his muscles as he swept her effortlessly around the floor, using the seductive rhythm to turn every movement into a tantalising exercise in sensuality.

He was very good at doing what he was doing, Alida thought. She had given up on her body. It was far too hungry for the feelings he aroused to take any notice of cerebral instructions.

Every slide of his hard muscular thighs against hers sent a quiver of excitement through her stomach. Gareth was over six feet tall, but her own above-average height and the high heels she wore made them well-matched for the subtle sexuality he employed in his dancing. The palm of his hand in the pit of her back pressured the vertebrae of her spine, controlling her movements, their togetherness. It was a pressure that made her extremely aware of his masculinity, of her femininity.

Perhaps it was stupidly defeatist of her to still want him. But she did. No man measured up to Gareth Morgan. Not before or since. He had scarred her life with such careless, arrogant ease, yet somehow that didn’t seem to matter now. She loved the touch of him, the feel of him, the scent of him, the thought of him.

Common sense insisted he only wanted to use her again and she should not let him have this effect on her. It was wrong. Hopelessly, hurtfully wrong. His wife’s death did not change Gareth’s opinion of her. She was not a woman he would ever take seriously. He simply did not see her as a woman he could love. Or want to love. He had loved Kate. Still loved the memory of her. Whereas she…

“Alida.” The gravelly murmur was a command for her attention.

She looked up reluctantly, hoping that her eyes did not reveal her intense desire for him.

There was a grim set to his face, a dark world of torment in his eyes that told her she had certainly aroused memories that hurt. “If you had known I was married would you have acted differently?” he asked.

Had she made him feel guilty for using her as he had? Did he want his conscience cleared? Or did he simply want to feel justified in what he had done? Once again the primitive urge to revenge herself on him seared her mangled heart. He should pay for his callous treatment of her!