Bridal Bargains

Then he spoke. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ he bit out. ‘Do you have to look so disturbed that you find me here? I have not come to ravish you—though it may be prudent for you to—do something about the robe,’ he suggested, with a grim flick of the hand that sent her wide eyes jerking downwards.

In an agony of dismay she dropped the towel so she could whip the two sides of the robe together across her naked front, then clamped them there with her plastered wrist.

‘Have you never heard of knocking?’ she choked, almost suffocating in her own embarrassment.

‘I did knock,’ he replied. ‘But when I received no answer I let myself in, believing you may well be sleeping.’

‘Which makes it all right, does it?’ She flashed him a hot, resentful glance. ‘You see nothing wrong in coming into a guest’s bedroom while she sleeps in blissful ignorance of your presence?’

If she said all of that to hit back at him for embarrassing her, it didn’t work. All he did was throw up his arrogant head and glare at her as if he was waiting for her to apologise for his intrusion!

Then he let out an impatient sigh. ‘This is all so unnecessarily foolish,’ he muttered, and began striding towards her with the kind of purpose that had Claire backing warily.

‘Stop it!’ he hissed, reaching down to grab hold of the two ends of the robe belt that were hanging at either side of her. With a firm yank he brought her to a standstill, then proceeded to tower over her like some avenging dark angel.

He was angry, she could see that. But there was something else going on behind that hard, tight expression that seriously disturbed her—though at that moment she wasn’t sure why.

Then he bent towards her. He’s going to kiss me! she thought wildly, and gasped out some kind of shaky little protest as her heart gave a painful thump against her ribs then began palpitating madly when panic erupted in a roaring mad rush that set her brain spinning.

What he actually did do was knot her robe belt around her middle. It was like being on a helter-skelter ride of out-of-control emotion. Instead of feeling high as a kite on panic, she suddenly felt dizzy with the effects of a sinking relief.

Then he kissed her.

And after everything else that had gone before it she had nothing—nothing left to fight him with. The sense of relief had relaxed all the tension out of her, so he caught her undefended, his mouth crushing hers with a ruthless precision that literally shocked her breathless.

Warm, smooth, very knowledgeable lips fused warmly with hers. Blue eyes wide open with shock and staring, she found herself looking straight down into the black abyss of his. The rest of her followed, free-falling into that terrible darkness without the means to stop herself.

Then he was gone. As abruptly as he had made the contact, he withdrew it.

‘Now be afraid,’ he grimly invited, and while she stood there just staring at him with huge blank blue eyes he turned on his heel and strode off to the other side of the room.

In the sizzling taut silence which followed she could have heard a pin drop on the thick carpet beneath her bare feet. She was too stunned to speak and he was obviously still too angry.

For anger it had been that had made him kiss her like that; she wasn’t so punch-drunk as not to have recognised that. It had been a kiss to punish, not a kiss to frighten. He had already warned her several times today that he reacted badly to challenge.

Well, she had just received personal experience of that bad reaction, Claire acknowledged. ‘If you ever do that again, I will scratch your eyes out,’ she informed him shakily.

‘Before or after you expose your body to me?’

He was such a merciless devil! If her legs hadn’t felt so shaky she would have gone over there and scratched his eyes out anyway!

Then she remembered what it had felt like to fall into them, and shivered, the will to fight shrivelling out of her because she never wanted to risk looking into those eyes like that again.

So instead she began looking around her in a rather dazed effort to remember what she had been doing when she’d discovered him here.

She saw the white towel lying on the deep blue carpet and remembered she had been using it to dry the excess water off her wet hair. Knowing that bending to pick it up again was completely beyond her physical abilities at the moment, she ignored the towel and went over to the dressing table where, earlier, she had spied a hairbrush.

He was standing with his back to her, in front of a polished wood tallboy inside which, Althea had shown her, were housed a television set and a very expensive-looking music system.

The room with everything, she thought sarcastically, and grimaced as she picked up the hairbrush and began drawing it through her damp hair.

‘What are you here for anyway?’ she asked, needing to break through the silence. ‘I presume you did have a reason to come in here?’

He turned, stiff, tense, and supremely remote—like a man sitting alone on the top of a mountain, she thought, and felt a return of her earlier sense of humour at the absurd image.

No apology forthcoming this time, she noted, and the smile actually reached her eyes.

He saw it, didn’t like it and frowned, something interestingly like the pompous male equivalent to a blush streaking a hint of colour across his dark cheekbones. Fascinated by that, Claire turned more fully to face him so she could see how he was going to deal with this momentary loss of his precious composure.