‘It means, Lance, that I’ve decided not to go home after all.’
‘You never did explain why you were leaving in the first place.’
‘I guess I was worried you were lining me up as another notch on your gun.’
‘Ah. Back to Casanova, are we?’ He shook his head as he restarted the car. ‘I can see I have no hope of changing your opinion of me. It’s fixed in concrete in your mind. Still, maybe I can chip away at that concrete over time...’
Glancing over his right shoulder, he executed a perfect U-turn and accelerated back up the road, neither of them saying another word till he swung his car into Bud’s driveway and braked barely an inch from Angie’s bumper-bar.
‘Very impressive,’ she muttered caustically.
Lance laughed. ‘Glad to see I’ve impressed you in some small way. There was a time, though, when I impressed you in just about every way, wasn’t there? I could have said the world was flat and you would have believed me. I could have asked you to walk on water and you would have tried.’
Angie twisted to stare at him with pained eyes. ‘That...that time is long gone,’ she said, shaken by his words.
‘True,’ he bit out. ‘But there is one way where I suspect I still make an impression. And that’s this way,’ he rasped, snapping off his seat belt and leaning over to capture her startled mouth with his before she could do a damned thing to stop him.
CHAPTER SIX
SHOCK held Angie compliant for a few seconds, giving Lance the opportunity to kiss her very thoroughly, and to very good effect. But, despite her pounding heart and swirling senses, Angie was just mustering her courage to bite his marauding tongue when it withdrew.
Unfortunately, Lance misinterpreted her moan of dismay.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered, raining soft wet kisses all over her face. ‘I feel the same. This had to happen one day. You know it as well as I do.’
‘No!’ she gasped. Or was it groaned?
‘Oh, yes,’ he insisted, then kissed her again, as if to prove it. She did her best to ward him off, moving her head from side to side while her hands pushed at his shoulders, but both gestures proved futile.
‘Don’t be such a little hypocrite,’ he muttered, grabbing her hands and pressing them into the leather seat on either side of her twisting head. ‘You want me to make love to you. That’s why you’ve been calling me names all night, because underneath you despise yourself for wanting me. That’s why you tried to run away back there, because you were afraid to stay—afraid of what I might do.’
‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she spat at him.
‘Then what is it you’re afraid of?’ he taunted. ‘Surely not the consequences of our making love? Have you forgotten I’ve got your very own protection in my pocket?’
‘I haven’t forgotten a thing.’
‘Which, of course, is the main thrust of your dilemma. I’m still being punished for what I did nine years ago. Would you believe me if I said I did what I did back then for you, sweet Angie? Would it be unthinkable to attribute me with some honour?’
‘Honour?’ she repeated in blank amazement.
‘Well, maybe not honour,’ he said drily. ‘You always did produce dishonourable thoughts in me. But I tried to do the right thing in the end.’
Which just showed how much she had meant to him that summer. The only feelings she had inspired in him back then had been lust. Nothing more.
‘And now, Lance?’ she asked derisively. ‘Are you trying to do the right thing now?’
‘Hell, no, Angie. I can see this is my one and only chance to have what I’ve always wanted—in a fashion—and I aim to take that chance by fair means or foul.’
‘Bud will throttle you if he comes out and sees us together like this,’ she warned him.
‘No one can see into this car. It has specially tinted glass. Besides, Bud isn’t going to come out.’
‘Wh-why not?’
‘Because he’s very, very busy with that potential client of his. On top of that, he has no idea we’re out here.’
‘But-but...’
‘Bud didn’t ask me to buy any beer. I made that up on the spur of the moment to get you alone.’