The Tycoon's Forbidden Temptation Read online

  One look at him and Chelsea felt her heart sink. Ann had been quite right; this man had sensuality written all over him—it was imprinted into his skin, drawn tautly over high cheekbones, olive-tinted as though he spent a considerable amount of his time in climates far warmer than Melchester’s.

  As he bent his head to Kirsty’s Chelsea was forced to acknowledge the fascination he would undoubtedly have for a girl her niece’s age—and for many considerably older.

  The way he moved, his smile, the lean fitness of his body, all bespoke a maleness that would attract the majority of women.

  But not her, Chelsea thought contemptuously, wishing she could forget the adoration in her niece’s eyes as she looked up at him. They had now safely crossed the street and were walking past Melchester’s one and only fashionable boutique when an elegant blonde emerged, the smile she gave Kirsty’s escort a very clear invitation.

  Chelsea didn’t miss the way Slade Ashford’s eyes admired the blonde’s slender curves, and her fears that she wouldn’t be able to free Kirsty vanished on another wave of contempt. Even when he was with her niece the creature couldn’t keep his eyes off other women! What could he possibly want with Kirsty, a man of his undoubted experience? Was her very innocence the challenge which his jaded appetite demanded? Would he simply seduce her and then leave her? Not if she had anything to do with it, Chelsea vowed grimly.

  She telephoned her sister when she returned home, and ascertained that Kirsty was indeed spending the afternoon with Slade Ashford.

  ‘I didn’t want to let her go,’ Ann admitted, ‘but what could I do? If I’d refused she’d only have arranged another meeting behind my back. I don’t want to force her into lying to us.’

  ‘Don’t worry too much,’ Chelsea comforted her. ‘Kirsty might be blinded by adoration, but he’s far from being similarly afflicted.’ She told her sister briefly about the blonde. ‘You know the type—skin-tight jeans, brief tee-shirt and a very come hither smile.’

  ‘Poor Kirsty!’

  ‘I expect he finds her refreshingly different,’ Chelsea said bitterly, remembering Darren using those words about her in what now seemed another life. ‘But at least it means that he shouldn’t be too difficult to detach from her, and perhaps the humiliation of it being done so publicly at your party will be enough for her to refuse to see him again.’

  ‘It ought to be,’ Ann agreed. ‘She shares your pride.’

  ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea to introduce me to him as your sister,’ Chelsea warned Ann. ‘He just might smell a rat. In fact, it might be as well if I engineered my own introduction. I suspect Kirsty will try to stick to his side like glue, so we’ll have to find some means of detaching her for long enough for me to introduce myself. I only hope I haven’t forgotten all my old drama training, although playing femmes fatales wasn’t high on the list of our studies.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but you’re an excellent mimic,’ Ann reminded her sister, ‘and travelling as you do, you must have had ample opportunity to study the breed in its natural habitat.’

  Chelsea grinned. If it wasn’t for her concern for poor Kirsty, she might almost enjoy cutting Slade Ashford down to size. He and men like him had preyed on her sex for too long. Picturing Slade Ashford’s expression when she had seen him with Kirsty, Chelsea doubted that a woman had ever said ‘no’ to him in his life. All the bitterness she had experienced over Darren welled up inside her. Now, she realised, she had a chance to even the score.

  Like any good actress she laid her plans carefully, including a visit to London to find a suitable outfit. Something definitely provocative and sexy, she decided, as she sat in the train; something to appeal to the experienced male predator; not too blatant though…

  She found it after several hours’ search in a small boutique tucked away off Bond Street. It was part of their new Christmas stock, the salesgirl told Chelsea as she admired it. It was also criminally expensive, but nevertheless she agreed to try it on.

  Normally the rich blue taffeta dress with its tight moulded bodice wouldn’t have appealed to her at all, but as she emerged from the changing cubicle to study herself full-length in the pier glass she had to admit that it suited her. The tight bodice clung seductively to her breasts, her shoulders and throat glowing softly pale against the rich fabric. The rustling skirts billowed gently from the narrow waist in piquant contrast to the sophistication of the bodice, and the salesgirl produced a matching band of velvet ribbon adorned with silk roses sewn with pearls and diamante which she fastened round Chelsea’s throat.

  ‘If you wore your hair up very simply and just decorated with the same flowers, you’d look absolutely stunning,’ she told Chelsea, scooping up her long hair to reveal the pure length of her slim throat.

  The effect was a bewitching one, Chelsea admitted, and although the dress was outrageously expensive, she found herself weakly agreeing with the girl that it might have been made for her.

  As indeed it might, she admitted a little later as she stepped out of the boutique, clutching a black and gold embossed box and a piece of paper on which the girl had scribbled an address where Chelsea could have a pair of shoes made up to match the dress. The boutique had also been able to provide the silk flowers to decorate her hair, and on a sudden impulse, as she was walking past the store, Chelsea hurried into Harrods and headed for the cosmetics department.

  Two hours later she emerged exhausted but delighted with the new make-up she had bought in colours far stronger than those she had normally used. The salesgirls had been more than willing to show her the latest winter styles, and Chelsea had been pleased and a little startled to discover her stage training came flooding back as she memorised and elaborated in her mind, adapting what they had shown her to suit not her own personality but the image she intended to project in order to lure Slade Ashford.

  The weekend before the party, Chelsea was surprised to hear someone knocking on her door and to discover Kirsty standing shivering outside in the cold east wind which was blowing.

  ‘Come on in,’ she invited her niece. ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’

  She had already noticed the storm signals flashing in Kirsty’s blue eyes, and the stubborn set of her mouth, and her heart sank as Kirsty shook her head and flung herself into a chair.

  ‘It’s impossible at home,’ she announced bitterly. ‘Anyone would think I was seven, not seventeen!’

  ‘Do you know,’ Chelsea remarked conversationally, ‘I’ve often noticed that people have a tendency to treat us the way we behave.

  There was a pregnant pause. She looked up and smiled guilelessly at Kirsty, adding sympathetically, ‘What’s wrong? Arguments over the curfew?’

  ‘You mean Mum hasn’t told you?’ Kirsty asked suspiciously.

  ‘Told me what?’ Chelsea frowned. ‘The last time I saw her she was full of preparations for the party.’

  ‘I want to go to drama school,’ Kirsty told her aggressively, ‘but they won’t let me.’

  ‘You’ve still got a year to do at school,’ Chelsea reminded her, her heart sinking a little. She and Kirsty had always been able to talk to one another, but here was her niece masking her involvement with Slade Ashford by pretending her quarrel with her parents was about her desire to go to drama school.

  ‘Yes, and then I’ll be eighteen; able to do exactly what I want.’

  Fear shafted through Chelsea.

  ‘The acting profession is a very gruelling and often heartbreaking one,’ she warned her niece. ‘You know I went to drama school?’

  ‘Yes, but you left.’

  ‘Not just because I realised that the stage wasn’t for me,’ Chelsea admitted. ‘I got involved with someone I met there—an older man.’ Beneath her lashes she studied Kirsty’s set face. ‘He was married, of course,’ she continued carelessly, ‘but I was far too naïve to realise that he was just using me—until it was too late. I’d hate that to happen to you, Kirsty.’

  ‘Things are different nowadays.’
Kirsty tossed her head and eyed her thoughtfully. ‘I never knew you were involved with a married man.’

  Chelsea winced at her choice of words.

  ‘He was very attractive—sophisticated and extremely worldly. I thought he genuinely cared about me, but of course he didn’t. How could he? We were worlds apart. I was a girl of seventeen who knew next to nothing about life, he was a man in his thirties who’d already experienced nearly everything it had to offer.’

  There was a small silence and then Kirsty got to her feet.

  ‘Mum’s told you about Slade, hasn’t she?’ she demanded scornfully, making Chelsea wince for her own clumsiness. ‘You just don’t understand—any of you!’

  She was gone before Chelsea could protest, black curls bouncing on her shoulders, her coltish jean-clad legs padded with scarlet striped leg-warmers a bright splash of colour as she ran quickly down the street.

  Cursing herself for mishandling the situation, Chelsea paced her small living room. There had been disappointment and wariness in Kirsty’s expression—and a barrier that had not been there before.

  As she watched her niece disappearing Chelsea resolved that no matter what it cost she would somehow rescue Kirsty from Slade Ashford.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALTHOUGH not a dedicated partygoer, Chelsea was not normally averse to accepting the many invitations that came her way; mainly as a means of in-depth study of the human race at play. Ann often protested that she spent far too much time watching from the sidelines when she could have been joining in the fun, but her experiences with Darren had left her wary and cynical and more especially reluctant to get involved.

  Tonight, though, was different. Normally she would have enjoyed the thought of attending Ann’s wedding anniversary gathering, but there was no thought of enjoyment in her mind as she made careful and thorough preparations for the evening, the maxim of her drama school tutors ringing warningly in her ears. ‘Immerse yourself completely in your part,’ had been their favourite command. ‘Remember that when you walk on the stage you are the character you are playing. If the audience is to believe it, you must believe it.’ Something told her that Slade Ashford was the most demanding ‘audience’ she was ever likely to meet, and so, as she lay in a deep bath of scented water, mentally relaxing and breathing deeply, she forced herself to put aside her own character and assume that of the woman who—for tonight—she was going to be.

  Her efforts were so convincing that by the time she was ready to emerge from her bath she had almost come to like the rich Oriental perfume she had chosen for her role—one that normally she would have avoided in favour of something more Establishment.

  No bra was necessary because of the way the bodice of her dress was boned, and smoothing fragilely sheer matching blue stockings over silkily perfumed legs, she paused for a moment to study her appearance objectively in her bedroom mirror. Her skin was creamily pale; her breasts firm and full, the, curve of her waist lending a delicate sensuality to the narrow-boned hips.

  Minute petrol blue briefs matched her stockings and suspenders. Her fingertips brushed accidentally against one silk-clad thigh and with a slight grimace of distaste Chelsea turned away from the mirror. She looked like a slave girl adorning herself for the market. Unbidden, a memory struggled to be unleashed from the chains in which she had bound it—herself at seventeen, bright-eyed, eager, and more than a little embarrassed as she spent her meagre savings on cheap fake satin undies, hardly daring to imagine how she would feel if Darren saw her in them.

  Fool! Fool! she goaded herself. Why remember all that tonight? And the ridiculous thing was that when Darren had tried to make love to her all she had felt was fear and revulsion. Frigid, he had called her, and with good reason.

  Stop it—stop it! Her teeth ground together with her efforts to deny the memories. She had never dreamed when she went round to read the script that night that Darren would… Somehow whenever she had envisaged them making love it had been in some secluded hideaway, remote and fairytale; not the house he shared with his wife. The moment she had realised that script-reading was the last thing he had on his mind, her desire had disappeared, too weak to overcome the suffocating awareness all around them that Darren was married to someone else.

  Since then she had walked warily, too fastidious to ever allow herself to become involved with any man who had ties elsewhere and too cautious to trust even those who did not.

  Her phone rang, and she went to answer it. It was Ann, ringing to bolster her courage and thank her yet again.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet,’ Chelsea warned her sister. ‘All I’ve promised to do is try.’

  Half an hour later, fully dressed and made up, she studied her reflection critically. The blue dress was perfect against her pale skin and dark red hair, emphasising the rich blue of her eyes which she had deliberately emphasised with her new make-up. Gold glitter shimmered in her cleavage and along her high cheekbones. As the salesgirl had suggested, she had twisted her hair into a smooth chignon and decorated it with the blue silk flowers.

  It was only when she secured the band of ribbon round her throat that her fingers betrayed a fine tremble. With their coating of lip-gloss her lips looked full and softly vulnerable, matching varnish gleaming softly on the nails she had deliberately allowed to grow. She normally detested anything other than natural or faintly pearl varnish on her nails, but tonight hers were those of a predator—dipped in blood, she thought, shuddering.

  For Kirsty’s sake she had to succeed, and yet already she was hating the thought of the pain she knew she would inflict upon her niece.

  Rather than drive herself to the Clarendon she had ordered a taxi. It arrived promptly, and because the night was cold Chelsea pulled on a cream wool coat which had been a present to herself the previous Christmas.

  The hotel was ablaze with lights when her taxi drew up outside, and in the car park she glimpsed several familiar cars. Melchester was a relatively small market town and her family were fairly well known. She and Ann had grown up there, and when Ann had married the young man who had come south from Birmingham to work for Lutons, Ralph too had been absorbed into the closely knit society Chelsea and Ann had known from childhood, hence the party tonight was well attended with the friends and families of their school friends.

  The early arrivals were clustered round the bar of the self-contained hotel suite Ralph and Ann had hired for the evening, when Chelsea walked in. She left her coat with the cloakroom attendant and quickly sought out her sister.

  Apart from the slight concern shadowing her eyes, Chelsea didn’t think she had ever seen Ann looking better; not even on her wedding day. Maturity suited her fair prettiness, and even as they stood side by side no stranger could have guessed at their relationship. Ann in her early forties was small and inclined to be slightly plump, her fair hair cut short and waving softly round her face.

  ‘Chelsea!’

  They kissed. Ann was wearing Guerlain’s Chamade, and raised her eyebrows slightly as they drew apart, her murmured, ‘Very, very sexy!’ drawing a reluctant smile from Chelsea.

  ‘Where’s Kirsty?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, she refused to come with us. Apparently Slade is picking her up.’ Ann sighed, and looked unhappy. ‘I’m so worried about her. She’s changed completely. Oh God,’ she protested feelingly, ‘there are the Rosses. I’ll have to go and speak to them. See you later!’

  * * *

  Humanity the world over was much the same, separated only by the greater or lesser degree of sophistication their particular society enjoyed, Chelsea reflected, observing the delicate cut and thrust of conversation between two well-known rivals and co-members of the Town Council.

  Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a slight disturbance by the door, and the suddenly prickling awareness shivering along her spine alerted her before they came into view that Kirsty and her escort had arrived.

  Wondering if she was being over-sensitive in thinking how silent the room had suddenly b
ecome, Chelsea reflected that if she was successful in detaching Slade Ashford from Kirsty he would have scant chance of restoring himself to her good books. Desertion in the face of so much interested observation would be a bitter pill for any seventeen-year-old to swallow, and she was relieved to see that the son of Ann and Ralph’s closest neighbours was obviously home from university. Was it really only last Christmas that Kirsty had been swooning over him? She had grown up a good deal in ten short months.

  Discreetly keeping out of sight, Chelsea studied her quarry meticulously. Expensive dinner suit, obviously neither hired nor bought off the peg; thick silk shirt; even thicker dark hair brushing the collar of his jacket. He turned, and Chelsea automatically stiffened slightly, hoping that Kirsty hadn’t seen her. It was not part of her plan to be introduced to Slade Ashford as Kirsty’s aunt.

  Kirsty had spotted her parents. Slade Ashford cupped her elbow. Poor Kirsty, she didn’t stand a chance. It was almost literally possible to see the awed reverence in the eyes of the women they walked past, as they rested appreciatively on Slade’s lean form.

  For almost an hour Chelsea circulated among the other guests, deliberately creating a subtle presence, a distinct awareness of her as a woman. Several men of Ralph’s generation paid her heavily gallant compliments, while many of the younger ones were a little more obvious in their attentions, responding to her sensuously appealing aura.

  To anyone watching her Chelsea’s progress across the room had neither purpose nor pattern, but it did bring her into a circle of people barely two feet away from Kirsty and Slade Ashford. Across the room she caught Ann’s eye. It had been arranged between them that when eventually Chelsea managed to get Slade’s attention, Ann would distract Kirsty.

  Perceiving her signal, Ann moved discreetly towards her. Summoning every ounce of control, Chelsea stepped backwards, deliberately allowing herself to collide with Slade. Her drink spilled as he turned to apologise and steady her, a cynical awareness in his eyes which at any other time would have made her writhe with shame. Out of the corner of her eye Chelsea saw that Kirsty was about to make some comment.