LITMIR.BIZ

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not what I mean and you know it,’ Beverly snapped. ‘They were just business dinners. One could not call them proper dates by any stretch of the imagination.’

      ‘Oh, I see—you’re talking about sex!’ Amber said bluntly, having learnt since going into business that, occasionally, attack was the best defence.

      ‘That’s right. I’m talking about sex. Is that a dirty word with you?’

      ‘Not if it’s accompanied by the word ’love’, Beverly. I’m one of those peculiar girls who needs to be in love to enjoy making love.’

      And that’s the most hypocritical thing you’ve ever said in your life, whispered her conscience. A lie of the most mammoth proportions. A whopper, in fact. The most memorable lovemaking you ever experienced in your life was when love had nothing to do with it.

      Amber tried to keep the hot memory of that incredibly brief and incredibly torrid encounter from tumbling into her mind. But it was impossible.

      She was back there in her head, and in her body. Behind the staff block, pressed up against the darkened door, panting as Ben pushed her panties aside and entered her as they stood there.

      My God, she could still remember how it had felt as he’d done it to her! She’d been consumed by a wild, hot pleasure, plus the most compelling need. How would it have felt if he’d continued? she’d often wondered since.

      She hadn’t been sure why he’d stopped at first. Till he’d sneered his contempt at her.

      ‘You might be incredibly beautiful,’ he’d snarled, ‘and you might be filthy rich. But underneath that high and mighty touch-me-not air you’re nothing but a slut, Amber Hollingsworth. A cheap little slut! Don’t go imagining for one moment I really like you. I just wanted to show you how easily I could have you. But, quite frankly, I’ve never been partial to girls who open their legs at the drop of a hat.’

      If he’d been expecting her to argue, or cry, or fall apart, he’d been sadly mistaken. Amber had always possessed a fierce self-protective pride which made her react to hurt and embarrassment—and, yes, shame —by withdrawing behind a façade, a shell of cool, even icy indifference.

      People often thought her a snob at times like that—or a hard-hearted bitch—but that was not so. It was simply a survival mechanism she’d learnt as a little girl when she hadn’t had a mother to advise or protect her. In those days her father had rarely been home, leaving the childminding to paid help who hadn’t given a damn about Amber on a personal level. It had been easier to withdraw from a distressful or confusing situation than ask a virtual stranger how to handle it. Eventually it had become an automatic behaviour pattern to deal with any kind of emotional conflict.

      Which was why she’d always behaved so badly around Ben Sinclair. From the first moment he’d walked into their class, when she’d been fifteen, she’d been bewildered by her feelings for him. She’d been strangely drawn to those dark, angry eyes and his intriguingly antisocial personality. She hadn’t liked him, but she’d been attracted nevertheless. Oh, how she’d wanted him to look at her, to chase after her like most of the other boys in school. When he hadn’t, she’d tried to rouse some sort of reaction by making sarcastic remarks.

      On the one day she’d caught him actually staring at her, with undisguised lust in that brooding black gaze of his, she’d been in danger of self-combustion. So rattled had she been by the instant heat he’d evoked in her, she’d only just managed to hide her fluster behind another of her highly caustic comments.

      There was no doubt she’d hurt him that time with her barb, for he’d glared at her with hatred in his eyes. After that encounter he had not looked at her again with anything other than contempt.

      Not till the night of the graduation ball...

      Dear heaven, she’d nearly died when he’d walked into the school hall that night. He’d been smoulderingly handsome in that black dinner suit. He’d looked a man where the rest of her classmates had been just boys.

      And he’d looked at her as a man would have looked at her.

      His very adult desire had seared across the dance floor, sending darts of fire licking along her veins. She hadn’t been able to stop glancing back at him; hadn’t been able to stop wanting him to ask her to dance. Yet when he’d finally come over, he hadn’t asked her to dance. He’d asked her to go outside with him.

      She’d known what he wanted. She’d heard the recent rumours about him, how he only took girls outside from school dances for one thing.

      Yet she’d gone with him. Not only gone with him, but let him. Let him kiss her, touch her. Let him do what she had never let Chris do, never let any boy do before.

      Not for one moment had she even thought of stopping him. Her body had had a mind of its own. Had been burning for him. Reaching for him. Begging for him. It was only afterwards that she’d realised it hadn’t hurt. No pain at all. Only the wildest, sweetest pleasure. Her flesh had opened and closed around his as though it had had a secret agenda, as though this had been what it had been waiting for all its life.

      The hurt had come later—when he withdrew, when he spat his appalling contempt at her, when she understood that he’d done what he’d done out of some kind of sick revenge for all those times she’d looked at him with seeming contempt

      Naturally she’d had to protect herself from the blinding emotional pain which had threatened to overwhelm her. Dear God, she’d just given her virginity to him. And there he was, calling her a cheap slut!

      Spitting back a counter-attack in words would have been not only inadequate but impossible at that moment. So she’d retreated behind her usual hard-nosed shell. She’d managed somehow to return to the dance, to find Chris and pretend she’d just been outside for some fresh air. He hadn’t found out the truth till later, when her female classmates had been kind enough to tell him. She’d steeled herself when Ben had walked back inside. She’d even managed to laugh at something Chris had said, and, when she’d looked over Chris’s shoulder at him one last time, Ben’s face had been filled with even more contempt than before.

      ‘The only person you have ever loved, Amber Hollingsworth,’ her stepmother sniped, snapping Amber back to the present, ‘is yourself!’

      ‘You’re entitled to your opinion, Beverly,’ Amber said coolly. ‘But you’re wrong. I love my father very much. And he loves me very much.’

      ‘Oh, I know that. Your father is a fool when it comes to his precious darling daughter. He gave you the business to run in the same way he let you trot along to work with him every day. Just to keep you happy. To make up to you for your supposedly miserable marriage and divorce.

      ‘As if you ever loved that Chad person in the first place!’ she raved on. ‘All he was to you was another sugar-daddy who indulged you as shamelessly as Edward did. But when his money started running out, you left him. If you cared for your father at all,’ Beverly scoffed, ‘you’d stop playing at being a tycoon and give him what he really wants. A grandchild.’

      Amber was taken aback. ‘A grandchild!’

      ‘Yes, of course. Men like Edward like to see their line continued. Unfortunately I was too old when we married to give your father more children.’

      ‘Dad has never said anything to me about wanting a grandchild,’ Amber said stiffly.

      ‘Neither would he. But I know he would like nothing better than to see you happily married and pregnant. But you and I know that isn’t going to come about, don’t we, Amber? You were married six years and never had a baby. But there again, having a family wasn’t the aim of that marriage, was it? It was money. Too bad there wasn’t much left for a decent divorce settlement. And now...now you’ve got your sights set on other goals. You’re into power these days. Power and position.’

      Amber could only stand so much. She stood up, her hand tightening around her glass to stop it from shaking. ‘Now you look here, Beverly. I’ll have you know that—’

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