It took all her will-power not to shrink back as he came to an unsmiling halt in front of her and reached out to unhitch his jacket from her shoulders with a single finger and draw it away. The slippery silk lining slid down over her bare arms like a caress. He tossed the jacket over the elaborately carved newel post at the bottom of the stairs and casually leaned against the wall, his hand planted beside her tense shoulder.
‘Now who’s trying to put whom in their place?’ he mocked softly. ‘After tonight you won’t ever dare call me sir again. Get used to it, Vanessa.’
‘Used to what?’ Her eyes were slightly higher than his but she felt small and surrounded.
‘The new relationship between us. If you’re going to run this inn for me, you’re going to have to do it with authority. You have to decide whether you want to be a butler for the rest of your life or whether you’re ready to move on and up.’
‘Me? Run the inn?’ Vanessa said faintly, pressing herself back against the supporting wall to try and escape the heat of his body.
He had loosened the black tie on the way in from the car and unbuttoned the top pearl stud of his shirt. The white pleated shirt was so thin, she could see the shadow of his torso outlined through the silk. His chin was dark with regrowth. He looked tired, disordered, and disturbingly sexy. It was incredible, but this man, with his only mildly good looks and his spectacles and his studied emotional colourlessness, harboured a smouldering sexuality that was as electrifying as it was astonishing. Vanessa was bewildered. Why had she never seen it before? And why, now that she could see it was so obvious, wasn’t he smothered in women wherever he went?
His eyebrows rose. ‘Isn’t that what you had in mind when you suggested a manager?’
She shook her head. ‘No, it never occurred to me!’
‘Not even in your secret dreams?’
Her eyes slid away from his. She had no intention of telling him what her secret dreams involved. ‘How could I?’ she asked huskily. ‘I don’t know anything about running a hotel—’
‘The job you’re doing now isn’t so far removed from it,’ he pointed out quietly. ‘You provide accommodation services for my guests, manage staff and purchase supplies. You do accounts and supervise building and maintenance. I think you’d be surprised how well-equipped you are for the job. A small hotel like this needs an intimate, highly individualistic management style, preferably by someone attuned to its unique atmosphere. Who better than you? You love it here, don’t you? Wouldn’t you like to know that you didn’t have to leave? That you could stay on and build it into something that we can both be proud of? If you feel inadequate in any way, there are always courses you can take to improve your management skills...’
It was such a powerfully seductive offer that Vanessa was afraid to question the motives behind it.
‘Why me?’
‘Because I’m already used to having you around.’
‘Oh.’
She was convenient. That hurt and she lowered her lashes against him. From the corner of her eye she watched his free hand move up to finger the velvety loop on the open edge of the neckline which lay against her collarbone, his knuckles almost brushing her chin, and he continued, softly chiding, ‘You should be flattered. I don’t let people into my life very easily. My mother elevated emotional manipulation to an art form, and to this day I still have a natural disinclination to trust my feelings for fear they’ll be used against me, particularly where women are concerned. I think we’re alike in that respect—slow to trust—which is why I’m willing to forgive you for playing games with my head. I realise you were only trying to protect yourself. But I’m offering you a unique opportunity here and the beauty of it is, you don’t even have to leave home to take advantage of it.’
His finger counted down to the next empty loop and the next, not touching anything but the fabric and yet managing to make her feel as if her skin was being brushed by a thin trickle of fire. At her sharply indrawn breath he looked up from his fascinating tracery and murmured persuasively, ‘I do trust you, you see. Will you trust me? If not as a man then at least as a businessman. I’ll be totally honest with you, Vanessa. I’d very much like to have you back in my bed, but neither offer is contingent upon your accepting the other. Whether we become lovers or not has no bearing on the fact that I think you’re the perfect person to run the inn. I won’t make it difficult for you if you choose to make profit with me rather than love, and I certainly won’t attempt any emotional manipulation. Ask Dane—I might not like losing, but I’m graceful in defeat.’
His finger flicked down the rest of the open loops to wedge into the fabric V where the bodice was fastened between her breasts and he paused before adding slyly, ‘Although you may have to bear with me a little; I’m so rarely defeated that I might be a little rusty about my graces...’
Her mouth came open but nothing issued forth from her parted lips. She was very conscious that the boning of her bodice had made wearing a bra unnecessary and wondered if he had guessed. Her breasts rose and fell, the inner slopes caressing his relaxed finger. He watched the expressions flitting across her face with a faint smile and delicately curved the other fingers of his hand under the smooth edge of the bodice, rubbing his thumb lightly over the top of the fabric. The backs of his fingers moved delicately against the silky swell of her breast in a secret caress that they were both intensely aware of. Only millimetres away from his touch, the soft, satiny peak tightened in an agony of anticipation. Blood rushed to her head, making her feel dizzy with unimagined pleasure.
‘This is a very elegant, sexy dress. It looks as if it’s melting over you,’ he purred, bending a knee so that it touched hers through the folds of her skirt.
‘I made it myself,’ she heard herself whisper inanely, thinking that it was what was under the dress that was melting.
‘Resourceful Vanessa.’ His praise curled around her ears and stroked across her senses. ‘Your hands are obviously as quick and clever as your tongue.’
She blushed right down into her cleavage and he laughed huskily, his whisky-warm breath teasing her mouth.
‘I was complimenting you on your wit, Nessa. What did you think I meant?’
‘Exactly what you wanted me to think,’ she said, simultaneously hot with excitement and shivery with fear.
Benedict probably thought she was able to hold her own with this kind of dangerous sexual banter but Vanessa knew she was already in over her head. The only other time she had tried it she had been badly hurt. What had started out as a seduction in
which she had willingly participated had become little better than rape when Julian St Clair had become brutally impatient with her inexperience. Her slowness to respond to his physical cues had made him lose his temper and abandon any further attempts to arouse her.
He had taken what he wanted and left her bleeding and in pain, telling her flatly that virgins were more trouble than they were worth. This despite the fact that her innocence was what had attracted him in the first place. He had deliberately set out to make her fall in love with him and then abandoned her as just another of life’s challenges that hadn’t lived up to his jaded expectations.
‘I don’t know what happened between us so you shouldn’t tease me about it,’ she said uneasily. ‘It’s not fair.’
His fingers stilled their delicate by-play. ‘Does that worry you?’