"Do you even know what bugger means?" he said in that superior way that annoyed her. Rachel had no idea how wanton she looked at that moment, the vibrant red of her hair in the same brandy-colored sunset that brushed her cheeks to a glow.

"Make sure you eat something, Rache." Beneath the quiet of his words, an order again. "And be on your best behavior tonight."

He settled his hat on his head, one corner of his mouth tilting slightly.

Ryan let himself out of her room before he did something he would regret, like attempting to dress her- or God forbid kiss her again or take her to bed, the demon in his mind taunted. He strode down the long hallway, almost running to escape.

"Ryan?" He heard Rachel's voice, and turned just before he reached the stairs.

She stood in her doorway, shadowed by sultry lace and dusk, her girlish pink wrapper not as thick as she probably thought it was. He could see her legs limned against the thin cloth, and far more as his gaze climbed over the gentle swell of her hips. A hasty glance behind him told him that they were alone.

"Thank you for talking to me," she said.

Before his tongue could catch up to his mind, she shut the door. Leaving the hallway filled with the scent of her presence and reminding him all over again that an adolescent obsession was more dangerous to him now that it ever had been years ago.

He should have kept his hands off her this weekend. He probably shouldn't even have come to the hotel, if the heightened state of his body was any proof of his folly.

He had left a meeting at Whitehall earlier in the day and returned to his office at Ore Industries. For some reason when he sat down at his desk, he'd pulled out Rachel's project files. She had left them outside his dressing room the night they'd argued. Her grand, unexpected entry back into his life had caught him cold. He was not prepared to see her as a civil engineer, which he discovered he now did. He was not prepared to feel anything for her-not any part of her-yet, he had kissed her.

Ryan never did anything impulsively. Spontaneity was dangerous-and still he'd found a way to get her a seat at the opera, even if it was his seat in his personal box he was giving her. Johnny would see to her welfare and, in all good conscience, Ryan couldn't exclude her. But neither was he going to sit with her. Or trust himself to be near her, inhaling her like she was dessert. He only knew he was due for a diet.

Ryan stopped a hotel maid and ordered dinner and coffee brought up to Rachel's room. Noise from the lobby filtered up the staircase. He peered over the banister, did a mental survey of the boisterous crowd below, and descended the stairs into the busy lobby, where the famous Four Seasons plaster figures peered from each corner of the foyer. This hotel was not far from Covent Garden and was always crowded on show nights. Only an exclusive invitation could get one inside the restaurant tonight. Such invitations were issued only to the largest sponsors of the arts.

His height easily distinguishable, Ryan reached the lobby and paused as he glimpsed Lady Gwyneth standing near the entrance to the restaurant. He glanced at the large dome clock on the wall above her head and considered that he was supposed to meet her in a half hour at Cassavas for dinner. She stood as if holding court over her admirers. Three of those men sat on boards of international banking firms; another owned a shipping business, and the fourth sat on the board of a South African diamond mine. None was older than thirty-five, and all probably represented more accumulated wealth among them than the economic output of Ireland last year.

They were Ryan's peers.

He suddenly caught himself studying the tableau like an architect examining a design he knows to be flawed. It was a world that had always fascinated him. One that surrounded him. Tonight it all suddenly seemed lackluster.

Gwyneth looked up and glimpsed him standing near the stairs. Her rich skirts flowering over her legs like a tinseled garden of flame, she stood among her minions, chatting gaily. A pearl-encrusted tiara folded into her hair and matched her smile as she touched the man beside her and pointed. Ryan recognized Lord Bathwick. The others in the group turned.

His satchel tucked beneath his arm, Ryan squeezed his way through the crush, pausing here and there to greet a business associate or acquaintance as he made his way to the crowd of men surrounding his betrothed.

"Ryan-" Her generous blue eyes smiled at his approach. "I told you he would come here if I sent him a note. Did I not?" she said to the others.

The men surrounding her departed in deference to his arrival. His manner easy, his hand appeared dark against her willowy waist. "What are you doing here, Gwyneth?"

"Hey, old chap." Marquart slapped him on the back. "We missed you at Lords on Saturday. If you leave your lady betrothed unattended, do not get vexed when she decides to pay mind to others."

"I believe you only missed him for part of the occasion," Lord Bathwick replied to Marquart. "He was merely fashionably late." His gaze touched the stairway, then the satchel beneath Ryan's arm. "Are you here on business or pleasure, Donally?"

"Maybe we should all ask that question." Lord Marquart laughed. "It seems your meeting with the Commons Select Committee adjourned early today."

"Or mayhaps they changed the meeting venue to someplace cozier," Bathwick replied, the grin on his mouth reaching no higher than the corners of his lips, the animosity between them nothing new. "I am told this is a favorite meeting place for those fellow countrymen unhindered by the moral decay of our society."

"Is your father allowing you to stand in his stead tonight?" Ryan asked.

"I am not here as a member of Ore Industries if that is bothering you, Donally."

"Truly, Ryan, you could be a little nicer." Gwyneth wrapped her arms around his and leaned against him. "Do let's not be jealous." Her breathy whisper touched his ear. "I refuse to remain at home with a new gown and bored out of my wits awaiting your arrival. Gideon is merely entertaining me before the opera tonight. I wanted a spot of sherbet." She regarded the crowded doorway to the restaurant. "And we cannot get inside tonight." Her mouth pouted. "The reception is by invitation only, and not one of us has an invitation."

"It's what her ladyship wanted," Marquart replied. "We met them outside."

"I am wearing a new gown, Ryan." Gwyneth turned in a circle, then executed a flawless curtsy that had every man straining to glimpse the swell of flesh above her decolletage. "I wore it for you, and I'm angry that you have said nothing."

"I believe that it is the most beautiful gown in all of London," Lord Marquart deferred.

"Only because of the woman inside the gown," Sir Boris replied.

"At least I am not ignored by everyone."

Ryan's mouth quirked faintly. Clearly, in her element, Gwyneth turned to flirt with his new head of accounting at Ore Industries. She put her considerable skills to work in her attempt to capture the attention of every man present, but should have exercised more prudence in public. Ryan didn't like possessive women and despised the notion that anyone owned any part of him. He disliked in equal proportion finding himself distracted and, tonight, having arrived in a singularly unpleasant state of mind already, he had no desire to play the jealous suitor.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out an engraved invitation. "Enjoy yourself, my lady," he said, presenting the gift to Gwyneth.

His gaze touched Lord Bathwick's. And, as Ryan made his way out the front door of the hotel, walking away from a night of entertainment with one of the most beautiful women in England, he found himself caught by an indifference he didn't entirely understand.

The next hour Rachel was fully occupied with combing the tangles from her hair. Elsie had returned with her dress a few minutes ago, and it now lay pressed and on the bed. Her door into the adjoining salon was shut, and Rachel looked through the strands of her hair, frustrated that her maid had vanished.

"Elsie?" Rachel stretched around the vanity.

She set down the ivory comb. She'd dressed in her stockings and underclothes. She wore her stays beneath the pink robe loosely belted at the waist. She was going to be late if Elsie did not get in here and help her with her hair.

Rachel left the bedroom. None of the lamps in the room had been lit. The bathing room connected to this suite, but the door was closed.

She walked into the salon. "Elsie?"

"I believe she is not here, Miss Bailey."

The masculine voice jolted her around. Her hand against her heart, she searched the shadows. A man stood against the wall, as faintly familiar as he was arrogant. He was tall, with graying hair at his temples and dressed as Ryan had been that evening.

"What have you done with my maid?"

"I believe she found it prudent to wait outside. Don't worry, Miss Bailey," he said, stepping into the shaft of light that angled from her bedroom, and she recognized Lord Devonshire from the Telford Ball. "If I wanted to rape you, I wouldn't do it within hearing distance of the lobby." His brown eyes, set too deeply in his face, did not camouflage the look that entered his gaze when his eyes slid over her. "I knew you looked familiar when I saw you at the Telford Ball," he said, nonplussed by her alarm or the threat that she might scream anyway. "You've a very titillating past."

Her heart racing, she knew there was no possible answer to that, and forced herself to hold his gaze. He held up the champagne she'd been drinking earlier and sloshed some into a glass. "This is better than what the Engineering Society served. I compliment you on your taste." His eyes went over her body again, and she closed the robe more tightly. "Sit down, Miss Bailey. I only wish to talk. For now."

"Why would you possibly want to talk to me?"

"I'm very particular about my new soon-to-be relatives as I am about losing what belongs to me." His feet made little sound on the carpet as he walked nearer. "One might even argue that I have a bias against poverty."

Rachel moved around the small desk at her back, only because it put up a barrier that separated her from him. Her gaze fell on the packet someone had leaned against the crystal lamp. "That envelope contains two tickets back to Ireland."

He appraised her over the rim of his glass. "Quite frankly, I couldn't care less about what you've done in your past or with whom. It's Donally who interests me."

Her alarm escalating, she felt her grip on the desk tighten.

"You mean it's his money that interests you."

"A bigger fortune than you could possibly know." He sat in the leather chair facing the desk and propped his leg over the other. "Should I go to the scandal sheets with what I know about you, it would be obvious to everyone how you received the authorization to take an exclusive engineering exam. The fact that you scored the second highest in a classful of men would be irrelevant under the circumstances. How do I know this? you are asking yourself. I'm on the university board of trustees in Edinburgh. I actually knew your father when he was a physics professor there. I knew who you were when you audited classes there."

Rachel forced herself to breathe. She felt faint.

"And why you were quietly removed from the university."

"Why are you doing this, Lord Devonshire? I've done nothing to you. Why would you come here and threaten me. That is what you are doing, isn't it?"

"Before you harp on my cruelty to you, let me tell you what I am offering Mr. Donally compared to what he will lose with you."

"I don't know what you are talking about," she whispered.

"Don't take me for a fool, Miss Bailey." He set down the glass and stood. "I don't play games. I certainly won't with you. At least not verbal ones." Pressing his palms on the desk, he leaned toward her. "Half the people downstairs saw Donally leaving this hotel earlier. Some of us were even present when he danced you out onto the hotel terrace at the ball, and rumors abound that the two of you have known each other a long while. Now he's not attending the opera tonight, and it is widely speculated that he has given his seat to you. My niece came home in tears tonight and has locked herself in her room. But that is neither here nor there. Men take mistresses all the time." He waved his arm in casual dismissal. "Tiffs happen. He won't leave everything that I offer to him. Certainly not if I should tell him the truth about you."

Rachel looked from his hard fingers pressed against the desk to his equally hard face and managed with considerable difficulty not to smash a fist into his face or retreat.

Devonshire pushed off the desk. A flicker of something like admiration showed briefly in his eyes. "Donally and I make excellent bedfellows as it were, more alike than you know, Miss Bailey. We both will do exactly what it takes to get what we want. I've nominated him for his orders. Other than military heroes, such honors are typically awarded for services rendered to society, irony indeed for someone who's been denied entrance to the very echelon of society that he's served." He strolled to the door. "He will not make a fool of me. I hope I am making myself clear."

Rachel did not move from her place behind the desk. Her mouth was dry. He was threatening Ryan, and she could do nothing. Tears burned behind her lids.

"Scandal has brought down kingdoms. Think what it can do to both of you."

Chapter 6.

"T here has never been a more opportune moment to acquire any company. They're primed to be acquired...."

The conversation droned in the background of Ryan's thoughts, behind the storm outside the window, and the one inside him. He stood with his hands clasped at his back as he watched the rain beat on the glass. Eight stories on the street below the Ore Industries boardroom, a solid sea of black umbrellas bobbed in and out of the traffic stopped on the street. Even from this elevation, he could hear the sound of horses and carriage wheels meeting the pavement, a bobby's whistle.

Rachel did not attend the opera. She had not shown up at D&B for three days. Ryan had finally gone to the hotel only to learn that she'd checked out. He knew only that she'd returned to Ireland.

Behind him sat the eight-man board he'd put into place since his conquest of Ore Industries became final eleven months ago. Men that he had personally handpicked to help manage this corporation. "It shouldn't be difficult to close the deal in Paris," a voice replied, and he recognized Sir Boris was speaking. "They aren't willing, but they've weakened enough financially that they will not be able to put up much of a fight. Valmonts, with all its lucrative connections, is as good as ours."

"Who did the initial analysis?" Ryan asked without turning.

"I did." Sir Boris leaned forward.

Ryan met his gaze in the glass. A strange-looking man with protruding brown eyes that never quite focused on a person, he was the best financial asset Ryan had ever hired. Those eyes never missed a bloody thing. "Valmonts used to build the finest locomotives on the Continent until the price of iron outpaced their profits. We will make a huge profit selling off its assets and taking over all contracts."

"See that the man in charge of the team is current on international law," Ryan said, finally turning to the younger man who sat scrawling notes to his left. "Put the team together, Brendan."

The younger man's face lifted. This was the first assignment he'd received since Ryan had brought him over from D&B.

"And for God's sake don't make a hash of it," Ryan said. "I don't want a repeat of what happened in Spain last month."

Ryan turned to face the room. Banked on two sides by expansive glass, the office allowed gray light to flood the room. Johnny sat apart from the group at one end of the table. He'd been invited to take part in the meeting, something Ryan had not known until he'd walked through the door that morning. Cigar smoke was thick in the air. Devonshire, the only member present who sat in the House of Lords, lounged to the left of Ryan's seat at the head of the table. Devonshire owned the foundry that had given Ore Industries its start. Ryan kept him under his thumb for personal reasons.

"The preliminary papers have been drawn up to begin acquisition of D&B," Ryan's financial advisor said, as they moved to what was obviously the main topic of the afternoon, the reason Johnny had been summoned.

Ryan walked to the end of the long conference table and scraped up the file, flipping it open. "This is not an issue on the agenda today."

"You were given a briefing yesterday, sir."

Then the briefing sat in a folder in his satchel, a satchel that Rachel now had.

Ryan had accidentally taken hers when he'd left her hotel room the other night. In the approaching darkness, her satchel, with its monogrammed RB, had looked like his, with RD.

His gaze lifted to Devonshire. "Is this your doing?"

"D&B is essential to our expansion," Sir Boris answered for Devonshire.

This was nothing Ryan did not know.

Devonshire watched him with interest. "Acquiring D&B is a matter of economics. We need its assets. The acquisition will make Ore Industries the biggest iron ore supplier and construction firm in the world."

Except Ryan knew the mechanics of a merger as well as an acquisition. Hell, he dismembered companies every year. Ripped their internal guts out. Took what he could to make a profit and sold off the rest.

Yet, knowing that this moment was inevitable didn't make it any easier to accept.

Everyone present knew that D&B could become a part of Ore Industries, or, as a competitor, the entire company would go down. Ryan couldn't have it both ways. He had known that from the beginning, when he'd pursued Ore Industries a year ago.

"Think, Donally." Devonshire tapped his cigar in the tray at his elbow. "When this is finished, you will no longer have the stigma of the firm's Irish label with which to contend. There will be no more Donally & Bailey. That will also be a positive to consider as we continue to expand overseas."

Ryan dropped the folder on the table. Getting rid of the Irish label was essential in a competitive overseas market, but hearing the statement from someone else made it all seem sordid.

"Choose whom you want to bring from D&B," Devonshire said, looking down the long table at Johnny as he spoke. "There is a place for you at Ore Industries, Mr. Donally."

"And for most of your staff," Sir Boris said.

Ryan leaned both palms on the shiny surface of the table and took in the group of men gathered, men whom he had appointed to their positions because they weren't afraid to act. Softness was not a character trait found in any one of them.

"My brother isn't the only member of the D&B board of directors," Ryan finally said into the silence, reading Johnny's mood with unerring accuracy.

"Miss Bailey will be treated as any other stockholder." Sir Boris sucked on a pipe, his blue eyes magnified behind his spectacles. "Her shares will be absorbed, and she will receive dividends accordingly."

"It's convenient that you have planned this little coup when Miss Bailey is no longer in London," Johnny said to the men present.

"I'm sure that Miss Bailey is savvy enough at her job," Devonshire said. "She heads your Dublin division. But if the extent of her misconduct should become public knowledge, you understand the ramifications."

Ryan shifted his gaze. The information took a moment longer to register. "What are you talking about?"

"I've done my own inquiries on the elusive R. Bailey," Devonshire said. "It's rumored that she has more than a professional relationship with your junior engineer, Allan Marrow, and that she is the brains behind the company in Dublin. Last year, D&B was awarded the contract to rebuild the bridge over the Avonmore River near Rathdrum. The project was delayed. Now Dublin will not honor the contracts until the project is completed. Our guess is someone learned she has put herself in charge of said project because someone made a mistake. That fact would come out should she fight the council in a public forum. Whoever is refusing to pay the monies owed is probably counting on pocketing the money himself, knowing she could not take it to court."

Ryan met Johnny's stare across the long length of the table. "Is this the kind of blather she has had to deal with over there?" Except Ryan knew there was more.