A Match for Celia

“You weren’t with Alexander. He’s been in his office all day.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve been watching him, too?”

“Damn it, Celia, I want to know where you’ve been!”

“Why should you care?” she challenged, facing him defiantly. “It’s not as if you’ve been waiting alone for me!”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

She tilted her chin. She was tired and grubby and hungry, and in no mood to discuss the gorgeous redhead before she’d had a chance to freshen up. “I want to take a shower,” she said, trying to speak in a “royalty dismissing the staff” tone. “I’d like you to leave now.”

He moved

so fast that her heart jumped into her throat again. His hands gripped her forearms with a force that was just short of painful. His dark eyes burned angrily into hers. “Where were you, Celia?”

“I was out,” she snapped. “Sightseeing. Now let go of me.”

“Were you alone?”

“No,” she answered recklessly. “There was a whole busload of people with me. Are you satisfied?”

“Why did you leave? I told you to wait for me here.”

“I know you told me to wait. I chose not to. Who the hell do you think you are anyway? I—”

Whatever else she might have yelled at him was smothered beneath his angry kiss.

She stiffened, shoving futilely against him. She’d be damned if she’d be manhandled this way! Oddly enough, she wasn’t frightened of Reed. Just completely furious.

And then he did something that disarmed her temper as effectively as a bucket of cold water. He wrapped his arms around her, buried his face in her hair and said in a notably unsteady voice, “Oh God, Celia, I’ve been so worried about you. Please don’t ever scare me like that again.”

Utterly astonished, Celia went limp against him. Reed had been worried about her? So worried that his hands shook now as they stroked her back? “Reed? I don’t understand. Why were you so worried?”

“I didn’t know where you were,” he answered, drawing back to search her face, as though looking for injuries. “The last I knew you were headed for your room. And then you disappeared for hours. I heard you’d gone into Alexander’s office, but no one knew what happened to you after that.”

“Did you ask Damien?” Celia asked, hoping he hadn’t gotten Damien worried, as well.

Reed shook his head. “I was just about to go after him. Five more minutes and I would have stormed his office and demanded to know what he’d done with you.”

“Reed, I can’t believe you’re overreacting this way. Why are you so quick to suspect that Damien would do anything to harm me? Why can’t you believe that he’s really a very nice man?”

Reed grunted.

“He is,” Celia insisted, gripping his shirt as though to force him to believe her. “Even when I told him this morning that he and I will never be more than friends, he was very sweet and understanding. He even insisted that I stay on here as his guest for as long as I want. As his friend.”

Reed jerked his chin up. “You told him that?”

“Yes. He…er…he asked me if my decision had anything to do with you.”

Reed’s eyes narrowed. “What did you tell him?”

Her temper kindled again. “I told him it did. That was before I saw you climbing all over that woman this afternoon. Just what the hell is it with you, anyway, Reed? If you’re interested in someone else, why should it matter to you who I spent my afternoon with?”

He looked startled. “I wasn’t climbing all over anyone!”

“I saw you,” she repeated. “On the bench with that redhead. You hugged her. And she hugged you back.”

He stared at her a moment, then made a sound of utterly male exasperation. “It was just a hug, damn it. We’d been talking about you.”