Sophisticated Seduction
Opposites attractHaving fled to India to escape the painful disillusionment of one relationship, Bridget had no intention of embarking on another… especially not with someone as complex and dangerously attractive as Nicholas Stirling!While he was ruthless and sophisticated, Bridget was shy and gentle. To let down her guard to such a man would be pure folly. His talent was for seduction, not commitment. Nicholas might just break her heart again.
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“Why would I want to get involved with you?”
Bridget continued, “Anyone who is interested in you is lacking in discrimination.”
“As you are?” he derided. “Since you happen to be attracted to me, Bridget.”
She hesitated. “I’m too—fastidious to want anything to do with a man like you.”
“And what am I like, sweetheart?”
“Cynical, decadent, incapable of proper feelings!”
JAYNE BAULING was born in England and grew up in South Africa. She always wrote but was too shy to show anyone her work until the publication of some poems in her teens gave her the confidence to attempt the romance novels she wanted to concentrate on, the first published being written when she was attending business college. Her home is just outside Johannesburg, a town house ruled by a seal point called Ranee. Travel is a major passion; at home it’s family, friends, music, swimming, reading and patio gardening.
BRIDGET retrieved the long white T-shirt she had just discarded and pulled it on again, accepting that she would have to wait a little longer for the cool shower she needed so badly. She was still not fully acclimatised to the Delhi heat, although almost a week had passed since she had flown from London to this sometimes troubled, always fascinating city.
The sounds from the front of the house were unmistakable. Someone in possession of a set of keys was entering, and it could be almost anyone, Stirling Industries having company houses in the capitals of most countries in which they were active, and any newly arrived employee had only to call on the head of their Indian office to obtain a spare set of keys.
Or it might be a specially favoured girlfriend of the notorious Nicholas Stirling, permitted to have her own set. If so, she was destined to be as disappointed as those others without keys who had called so optimistically over the last few days, having noticed that the house was occupied and hoping to find him in residence.
An air hostess, an English girl currently working for All India Radio, and an elegant young woman from the British Embassy here in Delhi, they had all claimed to have been passing by chance, but even Bridget, unburdened by cynicism, had suspected that the route was a regular pilgrimage among the man’s admirers.
‘Hello!’
‘And who are you?’
There were two people in the beautiful entrance hall, but Bridget hardly noticed the woman who had spoken first, her shadowy green eyes instantly drawn to the man who had asked that coolly disdainful question. He had that rare quality, a presence which commanded and held the attention and would do so in any company however large and glittering.
She had never seen him in the flesh before, but there was no mistaking Nicholas Stirling. Tall, lean and obviously powerful, with a strong but sharply chiselled face unusually allied to sensuously curved lips, dark grey eyes and the sort of true black hair which had eventually made her realise that her own was not the black she had believed it to be as a child, but simply very dark brown.
His skin was dark too, especially against the pale, cool colours of the hall, and he wore the glamour and decadence of his reputation like a patina. Bridget had never seen anyone so overtly sophisticated, and for several seconds she could only keep on staring at him, as if under some compulsion that excluded conscious thought.
Then she realised that he was waiting for an answer.
‘I’m Bridget…’ She saw disdain become irritation and tried again. ‘Bridget Greer, Mr Stirling. I work for your sister.’
‘Oh, yes? In what capacity, precisely?’ he wondered in a sceptical drawl. ‘Where is Virginia, anyway?’
The question presented her with a dilemma. Virginia had issued all sorts of instructions as to what might be divulged in the event of her brother’s arriving in India— the unlikely event, she had assured Bridget—but here he was, and how much loyalty did she owe her employer?
‘Somewhere in America, I think,’ she answered vaguely but with absolute truth.
‘Why? She’s supposed to be here,’ Nicholas Stirling snapped. ‘Buying fabrics for Ginny’s.’
‘I’m doing it for her,’ Bridget supplied, her voice still naturally soft and gentle, despite slowly rising resentment.
‘Nonsense—or highly unlikely, anyway.’
The grey eyes flicked disparagingly over the strands of dark silky hair that were escaping untidily from the loose French braid that hung down her back, before sweeping her face, so completely bare of make-up, and finally skimming the loose T-shirt which concealed the slenderness of her body but left most of her long, slim legs on display.
Bridget’s face heated in response to a surge of chaotic emotion. No one had ever called her a liar before, and she was lost for an adequate response. She glanced at his blonde, blue-eyed companion, but there was no help to be had there.
