‘I was not!’ she denied, flashing a protesting glance up at him, only to sigh ruefully when she saw his teasing expression. But she still felt compelled to add, ‘I still think that they think you’ve gone a little mad, marrying someone so obviously out of their league as I am.’
‘And you think I care what they think?’ he countered.
No, she accepted, on another small sigh. This man did not care a jot what anyone thought of him—or he wouldn’t have married his brother’s jilted fiancée in the first place, would he?
‘You all seem to know each other very well,’ she remarked.
‘That’s because I used to live here,’ he murmured, smiling briefly at her look of surprise. ‘I returned to London to run the company after my father died. But I’ve been commuting here on a fairly regular basis ever since. And we all tend to meet up at least once for dinner like this while I’m here.’
She frowned. ‘But I thought you said this was a business dinner.’ Not that she’d heard much business mentioned during dinner, she realised.
‘It is in a way,’ he confirmed. ‘They are all business colleagues as well as friends. That’s how it works, I’m afraid,’ he added rather ruefully. ‘Business and friendship tend to melt into one at our level. Which is why I couldn’t afford to offend them when they offered us this—a wedding celebration dinner tonight.’
Was that what it was? Shaan suddenly felt even more guilty for not managing to rise to the occasion.
‘I’m sorry if it’s all been a bit too much for you.’
‘It hasn’t,’ she quickly denied, knowing it was a lie even as she said it. ‘They all seem very nice people. It’s just that I’m so—tired,’ she finished lamely.
‘Well, a few more minutes of this,’ he murmured as he drew her even closer to the solid warmth of his body, ‘and I think we can leave without offending anyone.’
It was an assurance that took some of the tension out of her as they continued to sway together like that. Though it felt strange, very strange, to be held this close by a man she hardly even knew.
She was used to dancing with Piers, but Rafe was so much bigger than Piers—harder than Piers, she added, with a new feeling of breathlessness as her senses registered the tight firmness of the well-structured bone and muscle she was being pressed gently up against
With Piers, who was so much more slender and lithe, she’d used to feel quite equal to him when they had danced like this. But with Rafe she felt small and rather delicate—‘female’ was the surprising word which flashed into her mind. No match at all, in fact, for the latent power he exuded.
And where Piers had always been laughing, chatting, teasing, full of a light-hearted exuberance she’d always found easy to respond to, Rafe was quiet and more controlled about everything he did.
Yet, she realised, though she might have found Piers easier to be around, in a situation like this, where she felt stressed out, vulnerable and tired beyond belief, she would rather have Rafe’s quiet, solid presence than Piers’ noisy exuberance.
‘Rafe,’ she thought contentedly, and didn’t even know she had sighed his name out loud as she relaxed more heavily against him.
But he heard it. His expression was difficult to define, but the way he gently lifted her hands up and placed them round his neck before he gathered her in even closer was a message in itself—if Shaan had been alert enough to pick up on it.
As it was, she simply lifted her face to smile at him—then found herself drowning in a pair of darkened grey eyes which held her utterly transfixed.
It was desire she read there, a desire Rafe was doing absolutely nothing to hide from her. It made her lips part on a soft, breathy gasp as full awareness shivered through her. Then, as if that soft gasp was the answer to some question he’d been asking, Rafe lowered his mouth down onto hers.
She stopped moving, the arrival of that mouth rendering her utterly breathless while she absorbed with a shock how pleasant she found the contact.
But this was Rafe, she told herself hazily.
It made no difference; his lips began to move gently on her own and she found herself instinctively responding.
And in the middle of a dance floor, in the middle of a restaurant packed full of people, something began to slowly erupt inside her.
The eruption of an answering desire.
It went quivering through her like a feathery caress on her most intimate senses. She arched her spine so she instinctively moved closer to its source, her fingers curling into the silk-fine hair at his nape, her heart breaking into a clamouring stammer.
It didn’t last long, barely more than a few seconds, but her breathing was fractured by the time he drew away again, and her eyes were glazed by confusion.
‘Now you look as a woman should look on her wedding night,’ he murmured. And, with that one softly voiced sentence, broke the spell completely.
Was that why he’d done it? Kissed her like that simply to create the right impression for the benefit of his friends?
Relief swept through her—followed so quickly by a disturbing sense of acute disappointment that it actually stunned her for the few moments it took her to pull herself together.