Duel of Passion Read online

  Duel of Passion - Madeleine Ker

  An overweight owl' was how attractive financier Kyle Hart described Sophie when she had put on three stones for her big-break film. He never bothered to look beneath the exterior; she'd only been Maisie, a physically unattractive woman whose so obvious infatuation with him had been laughable. Only now Sophie was back to her normal, slim self ... and Kyle Hart didn't recognise the attractive woman on the beach. It was Sophie's chance to turn the tables on him — but could she escape with her heart intact?

  printed in Great Britain

  Books you will enjoy by MADELEINE KER

  A SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

  It might be the twentieth century, but arranged marriages still existed, as Romy found out when Xavier de Luca blackmailed her into marrying him. He wanted heirs for his Sicilian estate, and in return he would save Romy's father from bankruptcy. But could she cope with such an arrangement when her feelings for him were so extreme?

  PASSION'S FAR SHORE

  Dorothy had accepted the job as governess to Pearl, not because she wanted to go to Japan, but because the little girl needed her. But it seemed Pearl's father, Calum Hescott, thought differently...

  TIGER'S EYE

  Working so closely with Blaize Oliver in Spain, Leila couldn't help but acknowledge his powerful charm.

  But Blaize's hostile teenage daughter had warned Leila off her father—and it was a warning Leila, with her inbred instinct for self-preservation, was determined to heed ...

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual

  known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent

  purchaser.

  First published in Great Britain 1990 by Mills & Boon Limited

  © Madeleine Ker 1990

  This edition 1990

  ISBN 0 263 76657 8

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE rhythm of the Caribbean surf was the most soothing sound Sophie had ever known. It was so different from the pounding of the North Sea, that gravelly hammering she had listened to all her childhood on the North Yorkshire coast; and different, too, from the peaceful lap-lapping of the Mediterranean, the only other sea she'd known.

  Lying on her back in the baking sun, her eyes shut behind the opaque sunglasses, she had been listening to the alternate rush and hiss of the ocean waves all morning, wrapped in a world of peace and warmth.

  Now and then there had been the distant voices of other people sharing this Jamaican morning; but the exclusive San Antonio Hotel owned the whole white sweep of beach, and since Sophie had walked almost half a mile from the hotel to find the most sheltered spot in it, encircled by rocks and sheltered from the breezes, she'd had the surf and the sun and the sand all to herself all morning.

  She hoped it was going to be like this every day for the next three weeks.

  For a single girl in her early twenties to have chosen to spend a three-week holiday by herself in Ocho Rios, on the beautiful north coast of Jamaica, was slightly unusual. But then, Sophie Aspen was a slightly unusual person. And she'd had strong reasons for choosing this kind of break.

  After less than four days of her holiday, Sophie was already starting to tan a rich golden-brown. Her slim body, as she lay completely relaxed in her black bikini, might have served as a mouth-watering image for some lavish advertisement.

  She was tall for a woman, and her figure was delectable, with slender and graceful limbs. The outsize sunglasses covered a lot of her face, but what showed was distinctly interesting: a short, straight nose and a neat chin, framing a full, rather passionate mouth, and an abundance of mahogany-rich hair, now taking on golden highlights under the influence of the sun.

  It was the mouth to which one's attention returned. Warm and sexy, it was also determined. There was courage in its curves, evidence that the owner possessed strong and definite feelings. Whatever the eyes were like behind those sunglasses, the casual observer might have guessed that they would be both beautiful and marked by a strong character.

  The casual observer, if asked to guess her occupation, might have suggested modelling, the theatre, or television. In fact, all three would have been accurate guesses, because Sophie Aspen had worked intermittently in all three of those fields.

  But since leaving drama school she had thought of herself primarily as an actress.

  That was the goal she had always had throughout her adolescence. During the past two years, however, she had struggled through one of the worst periods for the theatre in recent years, counting herself lucky to have got walk-on parts in minor productions, with the odd bonanza of an appearance in a television commercial. Until last autumn, that was.

  Last autumn—in October, to be precise—she had been given her first real, meaty role.

  And not just in some small company, either; she had landed the part of Maisie Wilkin in The Elm tree Road Murders, a glamorous period murder mystery being made by BBC

  's drama department.

  The play was scheduled for a peak-viewing two-hour slot this summer, on Thursday the fifteenth of August. Only a few weeks away, in fact.

  It had been her biggest break ever, and it had called forth her finest performance so far.

  Yet, now, she could not think of The Elmtree Road Murders without a touch of sadness. What had started out as such an exciting challenge for her had ended on a note of bitterness and hurt.

  It had taken all the eight months since then to get over that hurt.

  The past days of swimming and long walks along the beach had already seen a few ounces of excess weight disappear from her hips and thighs, and, in fact, she was slimmer now than she'd ever been since leaving drama school. Her body was honing down to exquisite lines, and her skin was recovering from the awful period of greasy lifelessness it had gone through.

  She felt optimistic and healthy...

  All that remained to fix now was the old-fashioned hairstyle that she'd worn for the three modern dramas. The hairdressers had advised her to let it grow out before she had it cut.

  As soon as she got back to London, she would have to start preparing for her next job: a television commercial for bath oil, scheduled to be filmed in six weeks' time. The fifty-second sequence of her soaping herself languidly in a bathtub would hardly be great theatrical art, but it would certainly pay a few bills!

  She would have to contact the art director of the advertising company about her hair.

  She wanted it cut into something glamorous and short, but she would have to go by what they decided.

  There were voices nearby again: the soft laughter of a child, and the husky bass of a man. Too soft to contend with the musical suck and rush of the surf, they scarcely intruded into Sophie's thoughts.

  `Give me your hand. Come on, don't be frightened.'

  Lazily, Sophie turned her head to half open her eyes. A man, the owner of the bass voice, was hoisting a little girl up to stand on the rocks beside which Sophie was lying.

  They were against the sun, and through
her sunglasses they were just two silhouettes.

  Òh, look at that beautiful boat!'

  `W hich one?'

  `The one with the red sail. There!'

  Àh, yes. That's rather nice. Want one like that for your birthday?'

  Something about that husky voice was starting to make Sophie's nerves prickle with tension.

  Ùncle Kyle! Look at this.'

  Kyle? It couldn't be. Not here! It had to be a figment of her imagination.

  Her peaceful reverie had turned into a waking nightmare. She listened tautly as the man answered the child's chattering questions, trying to establish whether that husky voice was the one that had once cut into her with the force of a rhino-hide whip.

  The last time she'd heard that voice had also been on a beach, almost nine months ago. On that occasion, his words had carried, clear and deep, across the beach. But today the sea and the wind made voices sound different, softer...

  `Let's go down there. It looks interesting.'

  They were clambering down the rocks towards the little enclave where Sophie lay. Let them not come down here, she prayed hastily. Escape was impossible—there was no way out of her little inlet. But it was too late for prayers. They were down now, and walking towards her.

  Ùncle Kyle,' she heard the child exclaim, 'someone's already here!' Then, in a confidential voice, she added, `Gosh. She's lovely.'

  Sophie sat up quickly, and lifted her sunglasses to stare at the pair.

  Ì'm so sorry,' the man said, speaking directly to Sophie. 'We didn't mean to wake you'

  Recognition of that husky voice was superfluous. As soon as she'd looked into the dark-fringed, deep green eyes, she'd felt a giant fist close around her heart and start squeezing.

  It was Kyle Hart.

  Unbelievably, it was. Wearing only a dark blue Speedo that emphasised, rather than concealed, his manifest masculinity, he stood between her and the sea, considering Sophie with that assessing, smouldering gaze she knew so well.

  A formidably male face, etched with lines that said he'd lived through plenty of experience, in more departments of life than one. The mouth looked as though it had kissed a thousand women, and had left them all crying for more.

  The silvery streaks among the dark, almost black hair said that he was no boy. Yet his potency and vigour were unquestioned. His lithe body was tanned darker than her own, a symphony of lean muscle, emphasised by the dark hair that curled lazily down his flat belly to his loins. His legs were long and muscular, and he had the powerful shoulders and taut waist of a man who took his exercise seriously.

  The child beside him was dark-haired and pretty, and was carrying a red plastic bucket full of pebbles and sea shells.

  Sophie's throat had been too choked with shock to answer him. She was waiting for him to recognise her, to remember, to say something. She found words with an effort.

  Ì—I wasn't asleep.'

  His gaze was moving down the satiny skin of her body appreciatively, with no sign that he had ever set eyes on her before now. He swung his wide shoulders to glance round her little cove. 'Nice place you have here.' he smiled. "A fine and private place."'

  ... But none I think do there embrace. Her memory finished the couplet for her, but her voice was still frozen.

  `You are English?' he asked, turning the dark green eyes back to her with a quizzical look.

  The direct question forced an answer out of her. `Yes. I'm English.'

  He laughed, a pleasant, husky sound. 'For a moment I thought you might be French or Italian. You could be, with that tan, although the grey eyes are a give-away. You're staying at the San Antonio?'

  `Yes,' she said again, dry-mouthed.

  He considered her blank expression, her hand still holding the sunglasses up against her forehead. 'Are we bothering you?'

  `N-not at all.'

  He nodded, evidently deciding not to attempt any more conversational gambits, and squatted next to the little girl, hard muscles tightening along his thighs. 'Look at all these lovely shells, Emma. Isn't that a cowrie?'

  Together, they wandered away from Sophie, the man holding the child's hand. He didn't look back.

  He had stared her straight in the eyes, and hadn't known.

  Don't you recognise me? The disbelieving cry was still echoing in Sophie's head as she lowered the sunglasses again, and wrapped her slim arms around her knees.

  Her heart was pounding behind her breast-bone, making her breathing quicken involuntarily. What was he doing here?

  What perverse fate could have brought him all this way, to land in the very little cove where she had been lying? It just didn't seem possible that his presence here could be a coincidence. Was it possible that there was a connection, that he had followed her here—?

  She rejected the idea before it was even half formed, with a flicker of scorn. Of course he hadn't. That was absurd. If he'd wanted to contact her after Brighton, he'd had eight long months to do it in.

  And she'd told no one except Joey that she was coming to Jamaica. Helene didn't know: she was filming in Scotland. No, it had to be coincidence.

  Sophie sat in a kind of trance, watching him stroll along the beach with the child, as if the slightest movement would break the spell and make him vanish

  But he didn't vanish. It was Kyle Hart, here in Ocho Rios. She was still getting to grips with the idea. The little girl had called him 'Uncle'. His real niece? The daughter of his current lover? There was no way of telling.

  The situation would be almost funny if it weren't so weird. A mad desire to laugh rose up in her. They hadn't seen each other since last October. Had she really changed that much in the eight months since then?

  Yes, of course she had changed. Though why should he remember her, whether she'd changed or not? It was as inevitable that he would forget her as that she would remember him with needle-sharp clarity. Their meetings had been brief, forgettable, and he would probably never know how much he had offended her.

  A slow, ironic smile tugged at her lips. Well, he hadn't changed much, anyway. Kyle Hart was still the most beautiful male animal she had ever set eyes on.

  The last time she'd seen him, on Brighton beach at the end of last year, he'd worn an elegant cream linen suit. He was even more magnificent now, more complete, as he wandered semi-naked along a very different beach.

  The child laughed happily as she and Kyle moved along the waterline, searchi ng the white sand for treasures. Sophie followed them with grey eyes that were starting to mist behind the sunglasses, as she remembered the way it had all started, in the summer of last year ...

  `You'll have to put on three stones, of course.'

  `W hat?'

  `There's a limit to what padding can achieve. It's the arms and legs, you know. And the face, of course'

  Sophie's agent, Joey Gilmour, had been excited about the role from the very start.

  He'd felt that it was the right opening for Sophie, and he'd been proved right. Though the big roles had already been earmarked for popular and established actors like Helene le Bon, there was going to be a sprinkling of new faces in the cast.

  And the part of Maisie Wilkin had been one of those scheduled to go to an unknown.

  The blackmailing housemaid, Maisie Wilkin, was a grotesque character in every respect. Not only was she a leech who had battened on her erring but beautiful mistress for two years, but she was physically far from inspiring. The scriptwriters had been very firm about that.

  Her being plain, overweight and ungainly was an essential part of the story, as Sophie's agent had impressed upon her while he'd been grooming her for the

  auditions. It explained her bitter jealousy and resentment of her elegant employer's many affairs with men.

  Maisie Wilkin was certainly a challenge, a role for a character actress to get her teeth into. If she landed the job of playing Maisie, it would be Sophie's most important part since leaving drama academy. And, considering that a large proportion of that period had been
spent sitting in her agent's waiting-room, or casting for parts she'd never got, Sophie had launched into the task of landing Maisie with every ounce of enthusiasm at her disposal.

  She had embarked on the task of putting on thirty more pounds of adiposity. Before the audition, Joey had also made her have her hair cut in a hideously unflattering s style, with a parting down the middle, and short, ungainly bangs like spaniel's ears. She'd completed the outfit with low-heeled shoes that reduced her height, old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses that were alternately like Billy Bunter and a particularly hung-over barn-owl, and a thick coating of sallow make-up.

  Similarly, she'd had to overlay her hint of a northern accent with a southern counties intonation. She'd had to unlearn the elegant model's walk that had taken so long to perfect, and had developed a shuffling, flatfooted gait.

  It had all been a challenge. But she'd risen to it with the will of one who hadn't worked in a long while, and the results had bowled the casting director over.

  `That's it,' she'd all but shouted, as Sophie had finished the speech they'd given her to read. 'That's Maisie Wilkin!'

  All she needed, she had been told, was to dye her hair black, and put on just fifteen more pounds.

  Ìt'll come off again in a flash,' she'd been assured, ànd it really is essential for the part. Don't you like cream cakes?'

  `W ell, yes—'

  `Just let yourself go, darling. Fifteen pounds'll go on in no time. Frankly, an order like that is my idea of heaven!'

  That was the way it had begun.

  The first time she had met Kyle Hart had been several weeks after that.

  It had been in Brighton, during the final stages of filming The Elmtree Road Murders, before they'd gone back to London to do the courtroom scenes. She remembered it all so well. It had been at a stage when she'd been most preoccupied with her characterisation, and most concerned to give a good performance in her first major role.