Read Online Price of Passion by Susan Napier - Free Book Online Page A

who thought five minutes of conversation and his personal autograph to her in the flyleaf of a book meant they were soul mates.’
    She hadn’t known, but the evasive reply had the red flags snapping briskly. ‘How tragic. I’ve never even sent Drake a postcard, but if I get an overwhelming urge to buy stamps in bulk I’ll be sure and check myself into a facility. Now, if you wouldn’t mind moving out of my light, I’m trying to get a suntan.’
    ‘You—’
    ‘Melissa?’
    The older woman spun around and saw Drake stepping around the end of the hedge. She immediately walked jerkily back the way she’d come, the two of them exchanging a terse word as they passed each other on the grass without stopping.
    Kate took a long pull from her drink bottle and stood up as he came to a halt at the end of the sun lounger. He wore the same disreputable blue jeans that he had worn the day before, with battered workman’s boots and a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The decadent, city-dwelling Drake Daniels who wore expensive designer-casual with careless flair was nowhere in sight. Until you looked into his cynical eyes—then the rumpled, down-home, easygoing country-boy was revealed to be the sham. Or perhaps the double life he lived had actually split him off into two distinct personalities. In which case, both of them were in the doghouse with Kate!
    She took off her sunglasses to blister him with her naked scorn. ‘Next time do your own dirty work.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’ His Lady Bracknell wasn’t a patch on hers, she thought.
    ‘Either you sent her over, or you primed her to go off in my direction,’ she accused.
    He tipped his head down, scowling. ‘What did she tell you?’
    She gave him a brittle smile. ‘That you were fantastic in bed, but since I knew that already the conversation sort of stalled out.’
    A trace of discomfort shifted in the dark eyes. ‘Kate—’
    She didn’t want his pity, or his remorse. ‘Oh, don’t ruin the callous, two-timing image she sketched out so vividly. Just be grateful that I know you don’t really believe I’m a bunny-boiling psychotic, or you wouldn’t have let your trash-talking girlfriend come within a mile of me. My own father is mooching his life away on a dot in the Pacific because he couldn’t handle the responsibility of a relationship with me. You needn’t worry that I’m the type to slit my wrists just because a man I respected turns out to be a self-absorbed idiot and coward to boot—’
    His face paled, eyes burning in their sockets. ‘Don’t even say it!’ he said harshly, grabbing her arm and jerking her into silence. ‘Look, if Melissa went too far, I’m sorry—she thought she was helping…’
    ‘Helping herself to you,’ she joked warily, easing her arm out of his painful grip as he seemed to go into physical lockdown.
    He looked sick as he watched her massage the blood back into the pale streaks his strong fingers had left on her forearm. She had hormones to blame for her disruptive urges; what made his behaviour so strangely contradictory? For a moment she had had a brief awareness of his potential emotional depths, and realised for the first time that perhaps this journey was going to be more painful for him than it was for her.
    In the midst of her own turmoil she felt an irresistible urge to make him smile, to banish that disquieting bleakness from his eyes.
    ‘Gee, and to think Oyster Beach came across as such a pleasant little backwater when I was planning this holiday,’ she mused. ‘Who knew it would be such a hotbed of passion and intrigue? Inspiration must bite you at every turn—lucky you have your best writing-boots on.’
    His mouth twitched, his eyes falling automatically to his feet, which unfortunately brought the book she had been reading into his purview. Face up on the grass, the cover blared its author’s first mega-seller in its third reprint. With seven books published in the last six years, in a