Australia’s Most Eligible Bachelor (15 page)

“I don’t intend to inform on her. I must make that plain. I thought I would hate her, but in a way I feel sorry for her.”

“You
won’t
,” Corin predicted bluntly. “I can guarantee that. Are you going to come here? Sit with me?” How many times would he have to tell her she was the best thing that had ever happened to him?

“I think better over here,” she said with a shake of the head. “It’s all changed, hasn’t it, Corin?” She lamented. “Simple and sad as that. Our golden days, our
stolen
days, are over. I’ll never forget them. But we’re back to
real
life. The way things actually
are
. I confess I’m disappointed in you. I never thought I would be. It really hurts.”

“Hurts?” That stung him. Purposefully he closed the distance between them. Loomed tall over her. “You think I should have told Zara?” He took her by the shoulders. “You don’t know how badly traumatised Zara was as a young girl. She’s fought out of it, but a big reason for that is having Leila out of her life.”

“All right. I accept that.” She stared up at him, seeing the muscle working along his chiselled jawline. “I can see how it happened with Zara and with
you
. I don’t want to read more into this than I
saw
, Corin, but I watched you and Leila together tonight. I’m not stupid. I’m a trained observer. You
know
she’s in love with you. Why do you deny it? It couldn’t be more obvious.”

“Well, it’s not
obvious
to me,” Corin exploded, sick to death of the noxious Leila. “Leila does the big come-on on rare occasions when we’re alone. If Dad caught her at it, God knows what would happen.”

“Take a guess,” she lashed out. At Corin! But she
loved
him.

No matter what?

“Would he throw her out?” she suggested, with a forced little laugh. “Alternatively, would he throw
you
out? God, it could all end in tragedy. At the very least a huge scandal.”

“And you think I don’t
know
that?” Corin rasped. “Zara knows it. Leila knows it, but doesn’t seem to care. Now
you
know. For the record, I’d never for a single second think you stupid. You’re as smart as they come. Incidentally, Dad
can’t
throw me out. Zara and I have our mother’s shares, and my grandparents stand very strongly behind me. Even Dad can’t risk that sort of internal fight. Besides, I have the backing of the board. I’m regarded as top man to replace Dad. My position in that regard is quite safe. Dad
needs
me. Our investors are happy dealing with me if Dad is not around. I’m his Number One man.”

“And it would appear you’re also Leila’s Number One man,” Miranda said with a trenchancy that shocked her.

His glittering regard gave fair warning. “Don’t talk like that, Miranda. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it either.” She threw up her head in challenge. “Leila has already tried something on, hasn’t she?”

No, no, no. Don’t let it be true.

Corin’s handsome features tightened into a mask. “Miranda, please accept once and for all I have no tender feelings for Leila.”

“But I’m not talking about
tender
feelings,” Miranda said very crisply. “Leila is one dangerous, over-sexed woman.”

“No argument there. But to put it bluntly I
loathe
her. She’s a viper. She did her best to cripple my mother emotionally. She succeeded in alienating my beautiful sister from Dad. But, as you so correctly identified, Leila
is
a very sexual person.”

“So are
you
!” It was out before she could call it back.

“And so are
you
,” he retaliated, his hands tightening on her shoulders. “Maybe I’d better remind you.” He took her face between his hands, held it still, then kissed her hard, like a brand. “I want to lead you to bed. I want to make love to you for the rest of the night. Instead we’re embroiled in an unsavoury family drama. Leila wants what she
can’t
have. Some people are like that. The chase is everything. She went after Dad. She got him. Only he wasn’t enough for her. As the years passed, she turned her attention to me.”

She tried to break away, but he wouldn’t allow it. “Well, it would have been a temptation, wouldn’t it? You would have been remarkable even then. A brilliant, sexy young man. I’m sorry if I’m making you angry, but I want the truth. I need it. Maybe it was all a grand illusion, but we’ve been as close as two people can be. That doesn’t mean I believed it was going to last. Or be
allowed
to last. We control nothing in life. We just think we do. This woman, this catalyst in our midst, is my
mother
. There’s no physical resemblance. She’s much taller than I am. More lavishly built. Her colouring is totally different. I have to be the living image of my father or someone in my father’s family. Someone with
my
distinctive colouring. The resemblance is so strong Leila recognised me immediately. She probably thinks I’m up to something. A go-getter like her? Who knows? I could have some of her characteristics in me, just waiting to break out. Ever thought of that?” She held his eyes.

“You’re
nothing
like Leila.” His black eyes smouldered in his dynamic face.

“Maybe you’ve only seen me at my best?”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Miranda,” he said. “Leila is a one-off. Meeting her tonight, so unprepared, has been a big shock for you.”

“More than a shock, Corin,” she said. A torrent of emotions was racing through her. “Have you ever slept with her?”

“What?”
Corin’s expression turned very daunting. “I can’t believe you said that!” He held her so tightly she winced. Instantly his grip relaxed. “I’m going to
forget
you said that.”

“But you
can’t
forget.” Her beautiful blue-green eyes glittered with unshed tears. “You’ll always think of it now. I asked the question. Perhaps you might consider I have a right to.
Have
you?”

“Don’t cry.
Don’t.
” He wiped a tear clear of her luminous cheek. “This is the last time I’m going to say it. I loathe Leila.”

“You
could
very easily loathe her. That’s perfectly understandable. She tempted you against your will. It might have been years back. She’s seductive enough to make the head of a male of any age swim.”

“Never
mine
!” He released her as though all his former feelings for her were dissolving. “I adored my mother. There’s a sacred principle involved here, Miranda. A son’s love for his mother. My mother didn’t deliberately leave us. She loved us too much. When her car went flying off the Westlake Bridge, it was at a time when she was in terrible distress. She was at the wheel of a powerful car. Perhaps blinded by tears. She really did love my father. Then she had to confront the fact he had fallen in love with another woman, many years younger. He had brought her into the house. Forced her upon us all. His mistress. I’m sure she was. Even then. When I was seventeen, nearly eighteen—” an unmistakable note of outrage entered his voice “—Leila came to my room. Dad hadn’t arrived home. They were going to a party. She needed someone to fix the zipper on her evening dress. Zara was just down the hall. But she wanted
me
.”

“Of course she did!” Miranda released a long shuddering breath.

He’ll hate you for making him remember. He’ll hate you for making him recount an ugly, disturbing incident.

“You needn’t go on if you don’t want to.”

His brief laugh cut her off. “You
wanted
to know, didn’t you? Kindly let me finish. Weigh up the evidence, Miranda, before you sit in judgment.”

“I’m
not
judging you,” she protested. “I can understand this, Corin. I’ve
seen
Leila in action.”

“You
are
judging me,” he corrected flatly. “I can see it in your eyes. Eyes are the windows of the soul. So don’t back away from it. You started this. Let me finish it. I have nothing to feel guilty about in relation to Leila. She engineered it so her dress—a slip of satin—all but fell from her. Her breasts were uncovered. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Most of her body was exposed. I was supposed to be turned on. Instant arousal. Instant disgust, more like. I was supposed to be the callow boy, about to lose control. But she had it all wrong. Even without my love for my mother, my aversion to Leila, I would never betray my father. The whole situation was appalling. I remember yelling at her to get out.
Get out! Get out!
She wasn’t such a fool she didn’t pull up her dress and make a bolt back to her bedroom.
Their
bedroom—the master suite.”

“And that was the only time?” Miranda wasn’t shocked. She had
seen
her mother the sexual predator, seen the overweening confidence in the way she stood. Head up, back arched, hand on hip. She’d probably seduced the man who had fathered her. Not the other way around. Her grandmother had admitted Leila had been very
mature
for her years.

Mature?
One could define maturity in a number of ways.

“Need I say more?” Corin spoke coldly, as though deeply disappointed in her and her reactions.

“But she hasn’t let you alone, has she?” Miranda persisted.

“Okay, let’s have this out,” Corin retorted in an abrasive voice. “Leila is an extraordinary woman. A man-eater. A home-wrecker. She’s very motivated.”

“Like me?”

“Let me finish.” He cut her off. “Leila thinks sooner or later it’s going to happen. She and I
will
eventually have sex.”

“Instead it happened with
us
.” Solid ground had turned to shifting sand. “Some of that loathing has to wash up on me? If not now at some future time?”

“Now you really are being ridiculous. And unforgivably insulting,” he said. “Both to me and to yourself.”

“So I should be disgusted with myself?” Miranda asked, low-voiced. “Well, I feel like I’m being pulled apart, Corin. Try to understand that. I
am
my mother’s daughter. There’s a lot of twisted emotion going on here. In you. In me. Even in Zara.”

He rounded on her. “Don’t get into the psychobabble, Miranda. Where has our sense of
belonging
, our depth and balance gone?”

“No psychobabble,” Miranda said sadly. “A conclusion based on hard evidence. I take the scientific approach. Leila has badly affected your family. Affected me, the abandoned child. We all bear testament to that. She’s that kind of woman.”

“Ah, to hell with her!” Corin threw up his hands. “We lose the good people in life. The devil looks after his own.” What he desperately needed was to hold her, but at that moment it seemed impossible. It was obvious she needed time. As for him—he accepted the fact he had fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with a young woman whose life story was drastically entwined with his own.

But love was a form of armour. Wasn’t it? He
had
to believe that.

“If Leila thinks there’s anything between us she’ll become even more of an enemy,” Miranda said. “I think I should go home. Get a job for the rest of the year. I’ve had almost seven months of luxurious living. I’ve learned a great deal. I’ll never forget it. But it’s imperative I keep my feet on the ground. I’ll miss Zara, but she has her job and good friends here. You’ll be joining your father in Beijing. He’ll have Leila with him. So far as she’s concerned I’m
Zara’s
friend. Which I desperately hope I still am.” She paused, watching Corin slump dejectedly into an armchair. “I should take some of my clothes upstairs. Leave most of them here, if I may. Leila obviously doesn’t have a key to your apartment.”

“I hope that’s not a question?” he shot back, his expression dark and forebiding.

“Don’t be angry with me, Corin.” She was careful to keep her tone level. “I know she doesn’t. If she had, she’d already have checked.” She gave a humourless laugh. “I called myself Miranda Graham.”

“She wasn’t fooled.”

“Of course not. At least she knew I wasn’t about to bring her immediately unstuck. Your father didn’t know her as Leila Thornton?”

“Got it in one. Leila Richardson. That’s if he even bothered to look at any documents.”

“I would never have taken him for a fool.”

“He’s obsessed with her,” Corin said. “Makes fools of us all. I want you to stay with me tonight, Miranda. We’ll take some of your clothes up tomorrow. I suggest you go out for the day. I have a meeting I can’t put off in the morning. Otherwise I would. Should go on for hours, then I’ll be taken out for the obligatory lunch. But I’ll be back no later than 3:00 p.m. Leila will make a rush to get at you. She’s probably raised all sorts of possibilities in her mind.”

“Blackmail, most probably,” Miranda said soberly. “She’ll be sure I want to blackmail her. Take her for all she can manage to get from your father. I blackmailed you in a way, didn’t I?”

Corin came to his full height—a very formidable young man. He went to her, pulling her tightly into his arms. Hunger, anger, a counter-balancing protectiveness blazed out his eyes. “Let’s go to bed,” he said roughly, putting his mouth to hers.

Immediately, touch leapt across the barriers between them as if they were of no consequence. The kiss lengthened, deepened. Physically, they were in perfect accord. “We must stick together,” he muttered passionately when he lifted his head. “Trust together. If we do, all the Leilas in the world can’t hurt us.”

At that moment Miranda, fathoms deep in love, believed him.

She wasn’t sure exactly why she did it, but Miranda elected to remain in the house the following morning.

Zara looked worried. “I can ring and say I won’t be in to work,” she offered, thus validating their closeness. “I’ll make some excuse. No one will mind. I pull my weight.”

“I’m sure you do, but I don’t want you to do that, Zara,” Miranda said, showing her gratitude for the offer. “Even if Leila does turn up I’ll be okay. It’s not as though she would physically attack me. She might come off second best if she did. A few of my girlfriends and I undertook a course in self-defence a year or so back. I was the shortest, the slightest and the best of the lot.” She laughed at the memory. “For months on campus I was called Mighty Mouse. Besides, this is something deeply personal between us. Leila is the mother who abandoned me. Not only me, but her own mother and father, who never got over her defection. My grandmother spoke about it on her deathbed. This won’t be a one-way thing. It works two ways. I’ll let Leila tell me her side of the whole sorry story.”