LITMIR.BIZ

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one other person recognised the ploy. ‘Ten months, actually, if my memory serves me correctly,’ said Joshua. He looked her slowly up and down. ‘From your outfit I take it that you’re still not sure whether you’re half in mourning or half out of it…’

      Carolyn gave a high-pitched nervous giggle as Regan struggled not to throw her drink in his insulting face. His eyes glittered, and she knew he almost wanted her to do it. Didn’t he care that his thinly veiled hostility was bound to raise questions about their former relationship?

      ‘God, when did you become such an insensitive bastard!’ Chris swore, his arm curving protectively around Regan’s waist. ‘I’d have thought you, of all people, would know better than to taunt anyone about the tragedy in their life.’ He turned to Regan and fired out rapidly in a low voice, ‘Maybe you should know that my parents—Joshua’s father and stepmother—died in an arson attack on our house when Josh was seventeen. He got badly hurt saving my twin sisters and me, and then had to give up the career he’d planned to fight for custody of us kids, against our father’s scavenging relatives and business partners who wanted to plunder our inheritance. I guess he feels that all that gives him the monopoly on suffering, so that he can sneer at those who can’t match him for sheer angst—’

      ‘I haven’t asked you to apologise for me,’ grated Joshua. ‘Or speculate on my motives. You don’t have to dredge up every last detail of my personal history—’

      ‘I wasn’t apologising—you can damned well do that for yourself,’ Chris shot back, raking back a lock of darkbrown hair that had fallen over his forehead. ‘I was just letting you see what it feels like to have someone violate your privacy in public. It’s about time someone gave you a taste of your own medicine.’

      Regan sensed unknown cross-currents and realised that while she might have been the catalyst for this confrontation she wasn’t the sole cause.

      A muscle flickered in Joshua’s hard jaw. ‘Back off, Chris.’

      ‘Or what? You’ll cut off my allowance? I’m not a little boy any more, to be bribed into living my life the way you think I should. I’m ten years older than you were when you took over our father’s company. I’m a qualified doctor now, pal, and I earn my own damned living.’

      A doctor? Somehow Regan hadn’t pictured the cocky young man in his designer white suit as anything but a frivolous playboy.

      Perversely, as Chris heated up Joshua cooled down, withdrawing behind a rigid barrier of self-control. ‘I said, back off. This isn’t the time or place.’

      Chris threw his hands up, palms out, in a gesture of contemptuous surrender. ‘Sure. Anything you say, bro. After all, you’re the boss. The head of the family. The man who makes all the decisions on behalf of the rest of us—purely for our own good, of course—and takes it for granted that we’ll fall in with his plans—’

      ‘Don’t, Chris!’ Surprisingly it was Carolyn who put the brake on the runaway tension. Her eyes were sparkling with suspicious moisture, her lower lip trembling. ‘This is supposed to be a party—I want everyone to be happy. Please, please don’t spoil it for me…’

      Very effective, thought Regan as she watched both men fold like limp handkerchiefs to dry out the little-girl tears. She wondered if Carolyn practised that look in the mirror, then told herself not to be catty.

      ‘Maybe Regan and I will just take ourselves outside for a stroll,’ said Chris, grabbing her hand without even glancing at her for permission. ‘Or maybe we’ll take a row across the lake and I’ll show her what the gazebo is like in the moonlight.’

      Regan decided that Joshua wasn’t the only one in the Wade family who took things for granted. She knew that whatever was going on, she didn’t want to be involved.

      She wriggled her fingers free. ‘Thanks, but I get seasick in small boats.’

      There was a tiny, startled silence, engulfed in the swirl of partying around them, then Joshua said smoothly, ‘I’m sure the good doctor can find some medication somewhere so that you won’t vomit on his romantic pretensions.’

      Regan seethed. If he thought to push her into Chris’s arms to neutralise the threat she clearly presented, he had another think coming!

      ‘I prefer not to rely on chemicals to maintain my equilibrium.’

      ‘You don’t say?’ His eyebrows shot up in taunting disbelief and Regan fought not to blush as she was forcibly reminded of the alcohol that had been flowing in her bloodstream the night that they had spent in bed together, making love for hours on end…

      She hadn’t been concerned about her equilibrium then; she had purely revelled in the explosive reaction of their mingled body chemistries. And they hadn’t just made love on the bed…there had been the chair, the floor, the bath: the cold, shiny surface of the big mirror slamming against her back and buttocks, frosted by the heat from her steamy, straining body as he knelt between her legs, so that when he pulled her down to mount him she was faced with a fleeting, graphic imprint of herself fading mistily against the glass…

      She lost the battle against the wave of heat that swept through her body, clenching her hands around her glass as she felt her soft nipples peak against the white silk. She just hoped anyone who noticed would put it down to the chill of the punch sliding down her throat.

      ‘The lake’s as calm as a millpond,’ Chris was protesting.

      ‘And it only takes a few minutes to get across.’

      ‘Oh, come on, Chris, leave it alone.’ Carolyn unexpectedly came to Regan’s rescue. ‘Can’t you see she’s trying to let you down politely?’

      ‘And was succeeding, too, until you stuck your oar in,’ he sniped back.

      ‘So why aren’t you taking your rejection gracefully?’

      ‘Because maybe she was just leaving herself open to persuasion. Some women like their men to do the wooing.’

      Carolyn stopped leaning on Joshua’s arm and put her hands on her hips. ‘I guess it all depends on what your definition of a man is. I’d say a real man is one who’s willing to respect that a woman is capable of saying exactly what she means,’ she struck back, leading Regan to revise her opinion of her as a total lightweight.

      She threw back her head, her long hair shimmering like a veil over her shoulders. ‘It’s not as if you really wanted to row over there, anyway. You were just trying to get at Jay and me…’

      Chris’s handsome face darkened at her carelessly provocative stance. ‘Don’t presume to tell me what I was trying to do—’

      ‘Maybe it’s you two who should step outside,’ murmured Joshua, but they didn’t appear to hear him as they continued their crackling exchange, and he turned to Regan, effectively cutting her off from the other two.

      ‘When Frank pointed you out from across the room and ordered Carolyn to introduce us he suggested I get to know you—since you’re apparently going to be spending some of your time in the site office at Palm Cove while I’m familiarising myself with the operation there.’ Regan’s hands went clammy with dismay as he continued smoothly, ’So, tell me…how does a university drop-out with no qualifications keep herself such a cushy job in the legal department of a company than runs such a lean, mean operation?’

      ‘I didn’t sleep my way there, if that’s what you’re implying!’ she flared.

      ‘Trading favours? But you do it so well…’ he taunted, lifting a hand to rub his jaw.

      Regan caught her breath as the gold and jade winked mockingly in the light.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ He tilted his strong wrist, looking down at it in mock surprise. ‘Ahh, you’re admiring my cufflinks—attractive, aren’t they? And, as far as my investigations show, definitely a one-off.’

      The

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