The Silver Bride

'No!' Stella gasped, reeling in bemus.e.m.e.nt from that invitation. Dark color scored his hard cheekbones. His dense lashes swept down low over his stunning gaze and he breathed in deep, his tension as strong as her own.

'You're right. We have to talk this out first,' he conceded with gritty reluctance. First? Stella spun away on legs that shivered, shattered that he could reduce her to such a level with just one smoldering glance.

'I went off on a tangent with you on the island,' Dior admitted without hesitation. 'When my chief accountant called me with the bad news, I cut him short. I didn't want to discuss it any further. I'm afraid I just assumed that you had made that phone call from the airport.

I was outraged.' 'Yes,' Stella conceded stiffly. 'But this morning I learned that you had been telling the truth all along. There was someone else there that night. His arrival and his departure were recorded by the security camera in the corridor,' Dior revealed ruefully.

'If I had been in a more focused frame of mind at the time, I would've recalled the presence of that camera and I would have been able to check out your story immediately.' Stella nodded in silence without looking back at him, her delicate profile taut. 'I have a hot temper. But I don't usually rush into making instant judgments based on circ.u.mstantial evidence,' Dior continued.

'Well, it didn't look good for me, did it?' Stella responded with determined lightness, keen to bring his visit to a speedy conclusion. 'You didn't know me, so how could you know that I wouldn't do something like that?'

'You're being very generous, but that's not an excuse I need to hide behind. We had spent enough time together. I should have known,' Dior contradicted levelly. 'I very much regret the way I treated you on Chandos.

I was...brutal.' Stella didn't argue that point. She stared at her own feet, eager to focus on anything that helped her to resist the temptation to look at him again. He was making resistance difficult. He hadn't leaped on the excuse she had offered him, as most men would have done.

He wasn't trying to lessen his offense. He wasn't trying to deny that he had cruelly humiliated her. The silence stretched and stretched. She knew he was waiting for her to say something, but she had nothing to say. Dior exhaled in a soft hiss.

"The employee who tipped off one of my competitors was an accounts manager called—' 'Joshua Clark ?' Stella interrupted before she could think better of it. His dark eyes narrowed. 'How did you know who it was? I thought you didn't see the man.'

'I didn't, but during my break this evening Grace told me that he'd asked where I was that night, and he is an accounts manager—' 'Why would Clark have been asking where you were?' Stella grimaced.

'He was the guy who was always trying to chat me up on level eight.' At that admission, Dior's jawline took on an aggressive slant. 'I was even denied the p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e of sacking him. He resigned from his job the next day.

He exchanged the data he had picked up for a more senior position in the other company—not that he'll be there for long.' 'Why not?' A grim smile curved Dior's wide, sensual mouth. 'He has no company loyalty. How can he be trusted? The first excuse they get, he'll be fired.' 'Oh...' Her shadowed gaze clung to that lean strong face, her mouth running dry, her breath feathering in her throat.

'You don't seem as upset as I thought you'd still be.' 'I put my plans for a buy-out on hold. And before word got out I made a healthy profit selling the stock I held in company A...' His brilliant dark eyes held hers as he utilized the same terminology he had employed to explain his tactics as they had lain in bed together at the beach house.

Stella flushed, but she still couldn't break that enervating visual link. 'As for company B, my competitors mistakenly assumed that if I was interested, company B must have some wonderful new technology under wraps. They bought a massive amount of their stock,' Dior continued with a sardonic edge to his deep pitched drawl.

'Having now discovered otherwise, when they unload that stock, they are likely to make a loss.' 'So, in the end, you'll probably pick up that company for a song...' Silence fell and lingered. Dior studied her with dark, deep, intent eyes. Stella tensed like a mouse sensing a cat. She was unbearably aware of his potent masculinity.

Indeed, beneath that slumbrous appraisal, her b.r.e.a.s.ts stirred and ached, their s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e peaks straining to wanton tautness. Hot pink embellished her cheekbones. In one fluid movement, Dior closed the distance between them. 'I won't hurt you like that again, Stella.' The color in her face receded. 'I think you should leave now, Dior.'

His winged ebony brows pleated, his surprise is unconcealed. 'Why?' And with that one word, which revealed just how easily Dior had expected to win her forgiveness, Stella was armored against him. All weaknesses put back under safe lock and key. 'Surely that's obvious?' she whispered drily. 'What happened on the island isn't ever going to happen again.

We've got nothing more to say to each other.' 'I won't let you go,' Dior declared in a silken tone of steel. Her green eyes flared bright with hate 'Who the heck do you think you are to say that to me?' 'Your lover,' Dior responded softly.