Sam raked his hair back from his forehead. No, of course he didn’t mind getting her a glass of water, but first he wanted to apologise, tell her he hadn’t meant for things to go that far. At least not outdoors, at a party of all places! He cursed inwardly again. ‘Sure, water.’ The apology could wait. ‘Just...stay put until I get back.’ Hesitating, he glanced down at her, his brows pulling together as he took in her trembling mouth. ‘You’re sure you’re okay?’
She nodded, fussing with her voluminous skirts so that she wouldn’t have to look at him.
Leaving his jacket on the ground Sam strode back the way they had come, blinking as he rounded a corner and his eyes met the brighter lights of the terrace, small clusters of partygoers thankfully ignoring him as he stalked inside.
Quickly fetching a glass of water, he rehearsed a short speech in his head on his way back, trying to come up with some plausible explanation for what had just happened between them, only to find the place he had left her empty.
Worried, he spun around, searching out the shadowy garden for any sign of lavender silk. It took him a full minute to realise that she wasn’t there. Then another to realise that she’d done a runner. Worry gave way to guilt that he’d taken things so far with her, and finally to fury that she wasn’t still waiting where he’d left her.
Did she do this kind of thing all the time? Pick up a man, have unforgettable sex with him and then ditch him when his back was turned? Was that why she had insisted that they keep things anonymous?
Jaw clenched, Sam yanked off his mask and tossed it to the ground. He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that she had used him in such a way, but if she thought he wouldn’t pursue it she couldn’t be more wrong.
CHAPTER THREE
‘RUBES, IF YOU don’t hurry up you’ll miss yoga,’ Molly called from outside her bedroom door.
Still in bed, Ruby rolled over and wondered if she could pretend to be asleep. Considering that she hadn’t slept all night, she felt heavy enough to pass it off as real.
‘Ruby?’ Molly opened her door and poked her head inside. ‘Are you ill?’
Yes, she was. She had just told a man she didn’t even like that she needed him the night before. While they’d been having sex. Outside. At a party. The very thing she had warned her younger sister not to do!
Sex?
Was that really all it had been? It felt more like a cataclysmic event that had changed everything for ever from this point on. Certainly it had been the most erotically charged event of her life. In fact, before last night she had never understood how anyone could get so carried away with a man that they didn’t stop when their common sense asserted itself. Unfortunately if her common sense had asserted itself she hadn’t heard it.
It was the way he had looked at her and touched her that was the problem. He made her feel so special and so hot she literally lost her mind in his presence. Not that she was special. How could she be when he hadn’t even known her name?
‘Ruby?’
Or that she’d been a virgin? Although there was a moment of hesitation where she’d wondered if he had guessed at her inexperience. It had been cowardly, but the fear that he would question her about that, coupled with his soft curse of regret afterwards, had been the reason she had run when he’d gone to get her water. Not her finest moment, for sure, but when faced with the alternative of unmasking herself and saying ‘Hi, it’s me, Ruby. Great sex, by the way, thanks for the initiation’ she’d chosen the easier, less confronting option. And didn’t regret it for a second!
The fact that Sam Ventura would never know she had been the one he’d had hot vertical sex with was the one saving grace that made her confident she could face the day.
‘Ruby, you’re scaring me.’
Ruby glanced up to find Molly’s worried brows knitted together. ‘What? Sorry.’ She forced her mind back to the present.
‘You don’t look well. What happened last night?’
‘Nothing. I’m fine.’ Ruby pinned a smile on her face, hoping that one day it would be true. ‘Give me five minutes and I’ll join you for yoga.’