Page 27 of His Last Gamble

CHAPTER SEVEN

Charmaine clung weakly to the deck rail. In love? Now where had that preposterous notion come from? Of course she wasn’t in love. Not with Payne Lacey, the man who wooed, threw over, and nearly killed her sister. She couldn’t possibly be in love with him, of all men.

She shook her head, fighting off a giddying sense of panic. She was just . . . overwhelmed. Yes, that was all. After all, that was understandable, she told herself fervently.

As a child she’d always been shy, and in the shadow of her famous family and her beloved sister. So she’d sought refuge in her one talent, and through sheer hard work and diligence, had succeeded in the world of fashion design. But although her career had always been as bright and shining as anyone could have wished for, her social life had been non-existent. She had, literally, no experience of men. Even her closest male friend was gay.

So when a man like Payne Lacey suddenly began to court her, of course she was bowled over. She wouldn’t be human otherwise. He was rich, sexy, handsome, exciting. All the things that were supposed to turn a girl’s head.

But not her heart! There was nothing about the man that touched her heart — there couldn’t be. He was callous, uncaring, and probably didn’t even believe that such a thing as love actually existed. In his world, women were for wooing and bedding then dumping, ready for the next one.

She thought of his nephew and his defence of some unknown friend’s wife and sighed. OK, so the man wasn’t a total monster. No human being was. But that didn’t mean she’d lost her heart to him. It didn’t!

She inhaled deeply, relishing the perfume of night-blooming flowers scenting the sea breeze.

Perhaps she was just in love with this place, and with this moment in time. But not with the man. She couldn’t be in love with the man. She wouldn’t let herself be. It was just too . . . unthinkable.

‘Dinner’s ready,’ he said softly, cutting across her agonised thoughts and making her whirl around with a small gasp. She had no idea how she looked in that moment, all bare-legged and defensive, eyes widened in alarm and lips softly parted.

For a second, his eyes seemed to glow as soft as a wisp of wood smoke. But surely that was an optical illusion she told herself unsteadily. There was nothing soft in this man’s make-up!

And then he stepped aside, and she forced herself forward, back into the yacht’s interior. She must act naturally. It was time she stopped being such a rabbit, she admonished herself, and showed some backbone.

He led her silently to the galley, which had its own dining room off to one side. As a centrepiece it had a small, round dark oak table and matching chairs. Pure white candles, held in intricate silver candlesticks, were placed either side of two perfectly laid-out table settings. A silver ice bucket contained an opened bottle of wine.

He pulled out the chair nearest to her, and she sank down gratefully, her heart fluttering in her breast.

The flicker of the candle glow cast her face into light and shadow, and rendered her silvery gold hair almost magical. When he reached out to pour the wine, his hand was not quite steady. He brought a huge wooden salad bowl to the table, then deftly slipped two perfectly fried pieces of fish onto the plates.

It looked and smelt wonderful, but Charmaine doubted her ability to force down a single bite.

‘Is everything all right?’ Payne said, sitting opposite her and opening out his napkin. The natural guttering of the candles was doing wonderful things to his dark gold hair and deeply bronzed skin, and she was almost sure she could feel the male strength oozing out of him with his every movement. She supposed working so hard in the gardens every day kept him super fit.

She wondered what it would feel like to slip her hand under his shirt and explore the washboard hardness of his abdomen and the firm muscles in his chest and biceps. What must it be like to touch a man that way?

She reached for her glass of wine and took a shaky sip. ‘Of course, everything’s fine. Just perfect,’ she said, with a smile that felt as false as her words.

And suddenly, for the first time, it occurred to her what a mean thing she was planning to do. Lucy had got her heart broken by this man, but now that she’d actually met and had seen for herself his careless attitude to life, the insane risks he took, she would have bet her last penny that at least it hadn’t been deliberate.

Lucy would have been fair game in his eyes — an up-and-coming actress, here for a holiday and perhaps a romance. It would never have even crossed his mind that she wouldn’t know the rules. That she might actually fall in love. He would probably be amazed if she were to blurt out right now that her sister had been almost mortally wounded by his treatment of her.

So he was reprehensible, yes. But he was not deliberately cruel.

But she would have no such defence to put forward, should her own plan succeed, she realised miserably. She would have come here expressly to hurt and wound, humiliate and belittle. She’d have done it with her eyes wide open.

And as she stared at him across that candlelit table, she knew she couldn’t do it.

Not now.

Payne too reached for his wine and sipped, but his eyes were shuttered and revealed nothing. Behind them, though, his mind was racing.

What was going on? She looked as if she’d just seen a ghost, or had lost her best friend, or had some other life-changing calamity befall her. What could he possibly have done or said to make her look like that?

‘I’m really not very hungry, I’m afraid,’ Charmaine said, picking up her fork, but only to listlessly part her fish and push the tender flakes around her plate.

‘Not dieting I hope,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to lose weight.’

Charmaine smiled. ‘No, you needn’t worry. Besides, Jonniee doesn’t employ ultra-thin models.’ She had always been horrified by the prospect of even unintentionally endorsing anorexia nervosa by going along with the trend for almost skeletal models, a policy in which Jo-Jo was in total accord. They both designed clothes for healthy women of all sizes.

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