A Terrible Misunderstanding (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 6)

“Let’s go,” Niall ordered.

Once they were alone, Clara turned to look at the stranger. She was painfully aware that she had to tip her head right back to look him in the eye. His presence was positively commanding, but she wasn’t scared by it. She felt safe, reassured, protected. So much so, she tipped her head and studied him a little more.

“Now, why do I get the feeling that we have met somewhere before?” she murmured.

“I have no idea,” Niall replied dismissively.

He cringed at the intent way Clara was studying him as if trying to remember if they had met before. He could read the questions she wanted to ask in her eyes.

“Let’s get you home before any more amorous suitors can make their intentions clear,” he growled.

Rather than grab her arm and drag her as Erasmus would have done, Niall held his elbow out and waited.

Clara hesitantly took it and ambled alongside him as he guided them down the street.

“Where are we going?” he asked when they had taken no more than a few steps.

“At the end of the street turn to the right. My house is the third on the left.”

Niall didn’t speak as he escorted her home. He casually ignored the fact that if anybody had seen them they witnessed nothing more than a couple walking arm in arm down the street.

Unfortunately, that is what my colleagues will see as well. They are going to think I have lost my damned mind. Once they have stopped laughing of cours

e.

“We have met before, haven’t we?” Clara asked, but it wasn’t a question.

There was something about him that was familiar. She had no idea what it was because she was certain she had never been introduced to him. Niall was not a man a woman was ever likely to forget. There was a compelling magnetism about him that was impossible to ignore. It wasn’t anything to do with his looks either. There was a power, a raw strength, that was an intrinsic part of him that was as alarming as it was reassuring. The only people she had ever met who were like it was Sir Hugo Dunnicliffe, the boss of a hidden organisation within the War Office; the Star Elite.

The men of the Star Elite all had an air of danger about them; a calm yet ruthless air of command which was enough to worry and reassure at the same time. In fact, the more she studied the stranger, and contemplated the effortless way he had pinned Boyle to the wall, the more she began to suspect she was right. He was one of the Star Elite.

“No, we have never met before,” Niall bit out, his tone cold and dismissive.

Clara knew instinctively that he was lying, but rather than take him to task over it, lapsed into thoughtful silence.

“What?” Niall demanded, not liking just how quiet she had gone.

“Nothing.”

“Really.” His tone was disbelieving.

“Really,” she repeated firmly, and purposefully ignored the put-upon sigh that whistled through his clenched teeth.

Until they reached her house.

CHAPTER FOUR

“You keep doing that,” Clara chided.

“What?” Niall demanded.

“Sighing. Are you bored?”

“I am tired and in no mood for this. I would suggest that to stop this evening ever happening again you go home, stay there, and don’t come out again without a chaperone. Where is your family in any case?”

“At home,” Clara replied without doubting the wisdom of telling him the intimate details of her life.

“Is your father at home?” Niall knew Atticus was in London.